Episode 351 - Seth Green
Guest:Lock the gates!
Guest:Are we doing this?
Guest:Really?
Guest:Wait for it.
Guest:Are we doing this?
Guest:Wait for it.
Guest:Pow!
Guest:What the fuck?
Guest:And it's also, eh, what the fuck?
Guest:What's wrong with me?
Guest:It's time for WTF!
Guest:What the fuck?
Guest:With Marc Maron.
Marc:All right, let's do this.
Marc:How are you, what the fuckers?
Marc:What the fuck buddies?
Marc:What the fuckineers?
Marc:What the fuckalopes?
Marc:What the fucktopians?
Marc:What the fuckheads?
Marc:That one's a little abrasive.
Marc:What the fuckaholics?
Marc:How's that?
Marc:I'm feeling a little edgy myself.
Marc:I am Mark Maron.
Marc:This is WTF.
Marc:This is my show.
Marc:I'm glad you guys are enjoying the show.
Marc:You guys and gals, don't want to be exclusionary, are enjoying the shows as of late.
Marc:Seems they've been pretty popular.
Marc:Got some good ones coming up too.
Marc:I don't want to tip it or anything, but next week we've got Elizabeth Banks and Dave Grohl.
Marc:Yes, that is true.
Marc:Those are true things.
Marc:Today, Seth Green is here to talk about Seth Greenism.
Marc:He's a specialist in Seth Greenism.
Marc:What have I got going on tonight?
Marc:North Carolina, the triumphant return of me to good nights in Raleigh.
Marc:I'll be there tonight, Thursday, tomorrow, Friday, and Saturday.
Marc:One show tonight, two shows Friday, two shows Saturday.
Marc:Back in the clubs.
Marc:Excuse me.
Marc:Hold on.
Marc:Pow, look out.
Marc:I just shit my pants.
Marc:Classic.
Marc:That was a classic delivery of that.
Marc:I'm that guy now.
Marc:I'm going to talk about myself in the third person.
Marc:That was classic Mark right there.
Marc:Classic Marin.
Marc:Our friends at Comedy Central have hit the ground running in 2013, people.
Marc:They just premiered new episodes of The Burn with our pal and first ever WTF guest, Jeff Ross.
Marc:On Sunday night, they are airing a new special from longtime WTF friend,
Marc:anthony anthony anthony jettleneck anthony jettleneck uh comedy central continues to support the world of comedy and stand-up including wtf so let's do the same for them can we will we comedy central jessleneck's got a special
Marc:Ross is back on the burn.
Marc:Jezelnik.
Marc:Jezelnik.
Marc:Jezelnik.
Marc:I had a friend that talked like that.
Marc:His name was Mike Vertz.
Marc:This guy's name was Mike Vertz.
Marc:And he had that speech impediment.
Marc:So it was Mike Vertz.
Marc:Mike Vertz.
Marc:That's not a great last name to have when you have that impediment.
Marc:Anyway.
Marc:Ah, fuck you guys.
Marc:I'm just recovering from South Florida.
Marc:Yeah, to be honest with you, I went down there and I got a little depressed.
Marc:I got a bit of the heaviness where you got that feeling in your heart and you're not sure whether this is sadness or dread or depression or there's actually something inside of your chest that's lightly squeezing your heart, some little monster of some kind.
Marc:That might have started in your brain and then sort of worked his way down or is actually reaching down from your brain into your chest and just cradling your heart in his little demon hands and pressing slightly just to remind you that this could be consuming.
Marc:But no, it was weird because I'm not I don't see myself as a casino act.
Marc:And it was a difficult weekend.
Marc:And I had some WTFers, some what the fuckers came out.
Marc:It was great to see you guys.
Marc:I'm sorry you were a little outnumbered, but I'm just glad we got people at all.
Marc:And also, I have to remind people or I don't that my mother's down there.
Marc:So I get off the plane on Thursday because I got to do radio in the morning with Paul and young Ron.
Marc:Great guys.
Marc:Had a good time over there.
Marc:It's nice to walk into a radio crew that knows what they're doing.
Marc:But Thursday night, I get off the plane, go to my mother's house for a few minutes, pick up her boyfriend, and then we go to a restaurant where I'm just surrounded by Jews eating furiously.
Marc:Just tables full of Jews eating massive amounts of Italian food.
Marc:Maybe I'm reading into it, but I decided there was a fury to their food.
Marc:And as you all know, we go to the same Italian restaurant because my mother's boyfriend's got a guy there.
Marc:They worked their whole life to get that guy.
Marc:So we did that.
Marc:Then I went to the hotel and I entered casino land.
Marc:And there's just no fucking way.
Marc:And the hard rock, I'll tell you, is not a bad casino.
Marc:They play good music.
Marc:There seems to be a generally happy vibe over there as far as casinos go.
Marc:It felt like there was life in there.
Marc:It didn't feel like it was draining life.
Marc:I didn't see a lot of the sort of like, this is my last run type of people, and they play good music in there.
Marc:And I don't know, they're starting to stretch a little bit on what could be considered rock paraphernalia, but that goes with any hard rock.
Marc:When you're down to things like Keith Moon's Washcloth,
Marc:You know, not that I saw that, but you get what I'm saying.
Marc:There's a stretch there with the memorabilia.
Marc:But there's just something about the casino.
Marc:And I just know it was not my world.
Marc:You know, there's a big sporting event there.
Marc:It was a Notre Dame in Alabama.
Marc:And I don't know anything about that.
Marc:And that's like like cancer just taking over the entire landscape in the in the in the form of people wearing sports jerseys.
Marc:Again, not judging.
Marc:Perhaps I was.
Marc:I guess if you call something cancer that is not cancer, there's no good implication to that.
Marc:Friday, my mother came, which is never good.
Marc:Not that she's a bad person, but she came with my cousins, my aunt and everybody else.
Marc:And they're sitting right up front because no matter how many years I've told them that I prefer not to see their faces.
Marc:I don't need to see my mother's face when I'm on stage.
Marc:You know, clearly something went wrong in the process of me becoming me with her presence that that caused me to be on stage and sort of defy or ask a group of people to approve of me.
Marc:To have her be one of them in my sight line is not necessarily a good thing.
Marc:I love her.
Marc:She did what she could.
Marc:Right.
Marc:And we had a nice time.
Marc:I found that a nice time with my mother is really that, you know, I detached enough not to become a dick.
Marc:And I was pleasant to her.
Marc:And she was very nice.
Marc:And her boyfriend was very nice.
Marc:He only repeated some stories that I'd heard before two or three times.
Marc:You know, usually garment district related stories or, you know, how he's still working.
Marc:But, you know, good guy.
Marc:Jazz guy.
Marc:Just kind of skips around the house humming jazz and talking fast.
Marc:And I'm with Mike Lawrence, who's great.
Marc:We had a good time hanging out, talking.
Marc:I was very happy for him because he was down there on a victory lap.
Marc:He grew up there and this was a he came.
Marc:He went down there.
Marc:And he actually went, because you know him from my show, he went to the McDonald's he worked at to get a little closure, had something to eat.
Marc:He made the rounds of a returning Viking.
Marc:And it was good for him.
Marc:And I was glad that he was able to do that.
Marc:But I felt that by Sunday, I just was like, fuck it.
Marc:Let's go.
Marc:Let's do it the old way.
Marc:Let's get an edge to this thing.
Marc:Let's sharpen this shit up.
Marc:and i walked out of that club every night and i'll tell you folks i don't understand it i don't understand it every night
Marc:I would walk out of that club and they've got like nine nightclubs there.
Marc:There's the Indian Casino.
Marc:I don't know why I had to call it that.
Marc:Well, that's what it is.
Marc:The Seminole Casino.
Marc:It's really sort of sad in a way because it's a hard rock and they had one little wall with like three or four pictures, you know, tribal pictures and whoever the tribal leader is right now that just was by an escalator, you know, and just across from it was like, you know, Michael Jackson's underpants or something.
Marc:But look...
Marc:So there's about nine nightclubs at this complex.
Marc:And the place is hopping in South Florida.
Marc:I don't know what is going on down there.
Marc:But I walked out of the club every night into just sort of like it looked like the it was like the the gateway to chlamydia.
Marc:I mean, it was just like just people dressed up.
Marc:tacky garish you know badly hundreds of them just sexing it up and waiting to get into these fucking nightclubs and it was like i was on another planet i never understood that and i kept trying to i mean i never did it i think i went to a nightclub once and was frightened away for a lifetime i don't know what people do where they just you know try to get through crowds holding drinks in the air rubbing up against people and saying what's up baby and
Marc:How you doing?
Marc:How you doing?
Marc:Yeah?
Marc:Yeah?
Marc:That's a nice dress.
Marc:Oh, I'm sorry.
Marc:Did I spill on you?
Marc:And then just that boom, boom, boom, boom, boom.
Marc:Is that it?
Marc:Just that sound and trying to get through a crowd of people?
Marc:I don't know.
Marc:Look, please come down to Good Nights if you're in North Carolina.
Marc:We got Elizabeth Banks on Monday and Dave Grohl on Thursday.
Marc:Things are good.
Marc:Right now, though, let's talk to Seth Green.
Marc:And we talk, man.
Marc:Here we go.
Marc:Yeah, you can get right up on that.
Marc:You're a voice guy.
Marc:It's true.
Marc:You're a voice guy whose voice is fucked up.
Marc:Old radio guy.
Marc:No, but you're like a voice.
Guest:Looks like it's the top of the seventh, and Barry is stepping up to the plate.
Guest:He's got a lean and a wind.
Guest:You do the voices.
Guest:I do voices.
Guest:But you know, as I get older, it's like, I don't want to compare myself to Steven Tyler, but if you listen to Steven Tyler in the 70s.
Marc:You sound like Steven Tyler right now.
Guest:What the fuck is wrong with your voice?
Guest:You know, Mark, the thing is, hosting American Idol, I just didn't feel like that was what I wanted to do artistically.
Marc:Yeah, way after the fact, he made that decision.
Guest:I love Steven Tyler, actually.
Guest:Do you know him?
Guest:We've met a bunch of times, and he came and did our show, and then I got to see them at the bowl this last time around.
Guest:How'd they do?
Guest:It was really fun.
Guest:I've never gotten to see an Aerosmith show, and they put on a fucking show.
Marc:Okay, so, okay, you're Seth Green.
Marc:You're Mark Maron.
Marc:I am.
Marc:We're in your garage.
Marc:Yeah, that's, okay, just establish that.
Marc:I've actually done entire episodes where I don't, where I'm like, oh, by the way, and I got to drop it in later.
Marc:You should do it like Larry King.
Marc:We're here with Seth Green.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Every several seconds.
Marc:Well, they have to do that because it's not...
Marc:You know, it's not on demand thing.
Marc:They do that because people might come in in the middle.
Marc:Like one of the old radio guys said that to me.
Marc:These podcasters, they don't reset.
Marc:We don't need to.
Marc:Why would you?
Marc:I'm still listening.
Marc:People have made a choice to listen.
Marc:It's not like they just, what the fuck is on my radio?
Marc:Must be one of these podcasts.
Marc:How did this happen?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:But Tyler, did you have that moment?
Marc:I mean, you've been in show business since you were what?
Marc:Two?
Marc:Six.
Marc:Six.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Well, like professionally since I was seven.
Yeah.
Marc:Now, how did that come about?
Marc:Because I have this weird, I'm having some weird kind of bittersweet poetic feelings about show business.
Marc:Are you?
Marc:Well, just in that, like Stephen Tower is a good example.
Marc:I did Conan the other night, which I think is the last time I saw you.
Marc:And Alice Cooper was on.
Marc:Oh, wow.
Marc:And, you know, Alice Cooper is Alice Cooper.
Marc:And, you know, when he gets on stage, he's Alice Cooper.
Marc:But backstage, he's just a guy putting on makeup.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And, you know, I've been in this business a long time, too.
Marc:And I don't always think of myself as a professional entertainer necessarily.
Marc:But when you're backstage and people are preparing for a show, there's a sort of weird...
Marc:beauty to it.
Marc:Yeah, absolutely.
Marc:Because you walk in, and I walk in to meet Alice, and he's not done with his transformation yet.
Marc:He's like, hey, what's up, man?
Marc:And we're just talking.
Marc:And then I'm on stage, and he comes out with the full-on eye makeup and the belt, and he's 64 years old.
Marc:And there's a sadness to it that I identify.
Marc:But it's not, you know, he's a professional entertainer.
Marc:He's not sad in any way.
Guest:Not at all.
Marc:But this is the idea that they're still doing it.
Marc:There's a sort of sweatiness to it all.
Marc:I'm not sure what it is.
Guest:I guess it's perception, though, because I always look at it in a different way and say, wow, he's 65 and he is still doing it.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Here's a guy who's made a lengthy career.
Guest:Yeah, that's who he is.
Guest:And so I've always looked at that moment as something fun, I guess, because I grew up in theater where there is what's on stage that the audience sees and then there's what's backstage that's for you.
Guest:And you get the secret of being a part of the magician's...
Marc:secrets you know right right well no i i don't think i'm sad for him i don't feel sorry for him but there there's uh what you see is you know the show that they're putting on the mask that they have on that everybody enjoys is that you sort of now get to really feel the humanity behind it like there's that that moment of you know like when you watch uh even someone like robin williams who's been doing it for like 40 years you know when you see him like you know off stage like okay here we go
Marc:And then when he gets up there and he just puts on the thing, the fact that they're still doing it is impressive, but there's a vulnerability to it that wasn't there anymore.
Guest:It is.
Guest:Well, yes, absolutely.
Guest:When you meet somebody and see that they're human and not the great and powerful Oz, it is...
Guest:But I actually find that a little more inspiring because I like to perform.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:And so when I see the human being inside these iconic people, it makes it feel more accessible.
Guest:Oh, it's great.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:And I don't know.
Marc:I know that that must come through to the audience.
Marc:But when you're in the business, you're sort of like that.
Marc:You marvel at it.
Marc:And there's a I don't know.
Marc:I get sort of it's heart swelling to me.
Marc:It's a good thing.
Marc:It's not a bad thing.
Marc:I feel the same way.
Good.
Marc:So when you started acting, I mean, what made that happen?
Marc:Where do you come from, first of all?
Guest:Came from Philadelphia.
Guest:Do you have family there still?
Guest:Yeah, everybody's still there.
Marc:Really?
Marc:Because I'm going there next weekend.
Marc:Are you?
Marc:Do you need a place to stay?
Marc:Sure.
Guest:Can I stay at your mom's house?
Guest:You just told me she had some good records.
Guest:She would be so happy to have a house guest.
Guest:Are you kidding me?
No.
Guest:She's got some cool records.
Guest:Mark, I watched your old Kinison work.
Guest:You, I, you, I like you so much, Mark.
Guest:Mom, please leave Mark alone.
Guest:Mark, do you want some tea?
Guest:You'll just have to make it yourself.
Guest:Mom, please, at least if you're going to serve him, give him something that he wants.
Guest:what's what's philadelphia like because i'm going there and do you go back a lot um i was just there for thanksgiving i don't get to go back too much because i work a lot and i live 3 000 miles away but you're jewish i was raised jewish yeah okay then what's the full name uh your full name my full name like without it's just seth green there's got to be more
Guest:Oh, Benjamin's my middle name.
Marc:Okay.
Marc:And then just Benjamin Green.
Marc:So you're raised Jewish.
Marc:You say that like, you know, I got out of the business.
Guest:Well, I, you know, you don't have a lot of saying it when you're a kid and you don't know a lot.
Guest:So everybody gives you information to give you perspective, to give you context, to form your own opinion.
Guest:Right.
Marc:So...
Guest:So as time went on, you're like, I'm not sure this Jewish thing is really going to hold up for me.
Guest:I find a lot of organized religion to be ritual based.
Guest:And it's all trying to help people get to their own higher sense of self.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And so if you're able to achieve that peace, that comfort, that connection to some kind of, you know, higher power.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Without those rituals, then you just don't need to go to church anymore.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:Or synagogue or do the dance.
Guest:It really is.
Guest:It's just where human beings desperately want to commune with each other.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You just want to hang out with each other and feel like, oh, I'm not dumb for thinking this way or feeling this way.
Marc:Or you want to hang out with each other and not think like, oh, no, I have the right shirt on.
Marc:Is my hair look okay?
Guest:You just want to be at ease.
Guest:And a lot of people find that communion in some kind of religious place.
Marc:But, I mean, you don't socially identify as a Jew.
Marc:You avoid that.
Guest:Yeah, I don't really socially identify with any particular organized religion.
Marc:But it's a cultural thing.
Marc:Because in my mind, and I don't talk about this with everybody.
Marc:I don't talk about it with all Jews.
Marc:But in my mind, there's a thing that Jews have where it's sort of like, Jew?
Marc:Yeah, Jew.
Marc:It's not about a religious thing.
Marc:It's just a cultural thing.
Guest:Well, I can definitely relate to things that I was raised around.
Guest:Were you bar mitzvahed?
Guest:I was.
Guest:I was bar mitzvahed and confirmed.
Guest:And all through the confirmation class, it was less about religious study than it was philosophical life study.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And the understanding of human beings and the way they relate to each other and what your needs are.
Marc:And a slight suggestion that you stay in the tribe and perhaps go to Israel.
Guest:Well, no, I plan to go to Israel.
Guest:I like to travel, and I especially love to see ancient civilizations.
Guest:It's amazing.
Guest:I'm dying to go there.
Guest:A friend of mine's actually going in January, and I'm really envious.
Marc:I've been a couple times, and not for Jewish reasons necessarily, but the history of all the religions is all there, and it's all pretty intense.
Marc:Cradle of civilization.
Marc:That's the cradle of something.
Marc:Yeah, I think the cradle civilization, isn't that a little lower down?
Marc:Isn't that more rock?
Marc:Africa.
Marc:Mesopotamia.
Marc:Ethiopia.
Marc:Yeah?
Guest:Yeah, that's where the oldest bones and fossils are being found.
Guest:So you're heading there?
Guest:I want to go there, too.
Guest:I went to Africa to touch those skulls, to put my hands in the cast of the Leotoli Trail.
Guest:Like, I like all that stuff.
Guest:What is that?
Guest:Hit me to it.
Guest:In Africa, there was this archaeological study.
Guest:Someone kept bringing bones back from this region.
Guest:They were trying to find ivory and things like that, but they kept finding these old bones, and this one archaeologist went there and spent 25, 30 years studying, and they found a place where the volcano erupted
Guest:People were getting the hell out of there.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And as the ash fell to it's it's three people, three upright hominids and one what they decided was a three toed horse and their footprints are hardened in the ash.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:And so it's an actual and they carbon dated.
Guest:It's like thousands of years old.
Guest:So they found the people and the footprints?
Guest:No, no, no, they didn't find the people.
Guest:The people, like, stepped in this place and then trekked on as the volcano erupted.
Marc:And the reason this is significant is because they didn't assume that people were walking upright or living with three-toed horses before?
Guest:No, it's just a literal footprint from our ancestors that we have never had before.
Guest:And then they found a bunch of bones and tools and things in that area.
Guest:They found arrowheads and things for stripping the skin off of animals and bowls that had been constructed.
Guest:And then the craziest thing that they found along the site over this archaeological study was two iterations, two evolutions of hominid that coexisted in the same time period.
Marc:Really?
Guest:Like dated from the same...
Guest:like month or year.
Marc:So like probably one of them was like, you know, kind of making fun of the other, like slouchers.
Guest:Well, it's, I think it's, I think it is like that.
Guest:Like one of them was rolling a wheel and the other one was going, I got no idea what the fuck you're talking about.
Guest:How'd you figure that out?
Guest:You think that's cool?
Guest:Not even that, just more, what does that even mean?
Guest:I can't,
Marc:Yeah, and they rolled off into the next evolutionary step.
Guest:Exactly.
Marc:And the other people that were still banging on rocks.
Guest:But I think about that all the time.
Guest:Really?
Guest:When I'm with my nieces, who I held from the time they were babies.
Guest:Is your brother's kids?
Guest:My sister's kids.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Because they are so adept with touchscreen technology that there's no disconnect where they have to go, how does this work?
Marc:Do you know what I mean?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:No, I because I am the how does this work?
Marc:I spent an hour with a Kindle just trying to not be frightened.
Marc:Right.
Guest:And that's a pretty easy telepathically to it.
Guest:So that I feel is that progress or is that frightening?
Guest:Well, it's it's the same thing.
Guest:It's just human evolution.
Guest:At one point, we're all going to be, you know, skulls and somebody thousands and thousands of years is going to estimate what we were doing culturally.
Guest:And they'll compare these two iterations of hominid brain and say, wow, they they were evolving.
Guest:Right.
Marc:Right, but when do we get to the point where the tools sort of become more important and less useful than the people?
Marc:I had this moment where I'm driving behind a car, and I don't have kids.
Marc:You don't either, right?
Marc:And I see the TV in the large SUV, and I'm like,
Marc:That's I had this weird flash and I know I'm getting to middle age here.
Marc:I'm past it.
Marc:So I have weird reflective moments.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And I remember like I saw that TV and I'm like, that's a little fucked up because I did some of the best early thinking in my life sitting in the back of a fucking car looking out a window.
Marc:And like, I think it was life defining, like just, you know, when you're on a long trip with your parents, you're just like looking at clouds, making things in your head, wondering about things.
Marc:And now it's just sort of like whatever it is on the screen.
Marc:It's got to be hurting them.
Guest:I don't I don't argue that the glut of available media makes it less necessary for kids to imagine things.
Guest:And the availability of information makes people less inclined in general to have to work for something.
Guest:But what it seems to be doing is just separating the wheat from the chaff.
Guest:I mean, it just seems to be thinning the herd in the right ways, you know?
Guest:Really?
Guest:Don't you feel the people that aren't paying attention
Guest:are just going to get stuck in the tar and they'll be sated by some shiny thing on television.
Marc:Yeah, but they're also going to be laying the tar so we can drive on streets.
Marc:You got to be careful of the sort of weird philosopher king sort of like... I mean, there's always going to be people that are not going to be involved in that pace.
Guest:Don't get me wrong.
Guest:All I mean is that I don't spend time worrying about it.
Guest:I...
Guest:That sounds elitist, and that's not what I mean.
Guest:Both my parents are teachers.
Guest:Is that true?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Why would I say is that true?
Guest:Are you lying?
Guest:Yeah, I thought I'd say that much.
Guest:But it makes me keenly aware of the decline of public education.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:And just the lack of governmental interest in actually leaving no child behind.
Guest:What grades do they teach?
Guest:My dad was all high school.
Guest:And they're both still around?
Guest:They're both still alive.
Guest:Yeah, my mom hasn't taught.
Guest:She stopped teaching over 25 years ago.
Marc:So that's a very encouraging environment.
Marc:You grew up in a Jewish household.
Marc:And I'm not way in heaven.
Marc:And there was a strong sort of focus on education and I'm sure fairly liberal ideas about, you know,
Guest:If he wants to do that, let him do that.
Guest:Well, you know, they tried to turn me away from acting because neither one of them thought it was going to be a successful living.
Guest:It's always out of fear.
Guest:It's certainly not something to rely on.
Marc:Yeah, absolutely.
Marc:It's never like, you know, why the fuck are you doing that?
Marc:It's stupid.
Guest:They were actually concerned.
Guest:I never want to make a living out of this, said both of my middle class teacher parents.
Guest:And you've done all right.
Guest:I did all right, yeah.
Guest:But I mean, when was it?
Guest:I'm still trying to do this for the rest of my life, you know.
Marc:It never there's never that moment where, well, there is for some people, but it's still a rare you still got to work.
Marc:You know, there's only a few people that are like, you know, they don't have to work anymore.
Marc:But there's never that sort of fear that that fear doesn't go away of like, oh, fuck.
Marc:It just depends what you're satisfied with.
Guest:Like if you make enough money to never have to work, then you don't have to work.
Guest:But if you're unsatisfied sitting back, you'll always find a reason to be looking.
Guest:No, I get that.
Marc:But I would just like to, as I get older, just make enough money to not be afraid that I'll have to work when I'm 70 or 80.
Guest:Absolutely.
Guest:I think I think everybody just wants a little bit of just insurance.
Marc:I would just like to not die broke.
Marc:Is that okay?
Marc:Can we do that?
Marc:Somebody help me do that?
Guest:It seems like a reason a lot reasonable aspiration.
Guest:When did you first get this acting bug?
Guest:I liked
Guest:I liked it really young.
Guest:I remember watching TV and Sesame Street and all of those shows, Electric Company, like everything that had live actors and talked about culture, schoolhouse rock, things like that.
Guest:I just remember being really interested in the idea of the people that entertained and the people that were entertained by it.
Marc:So you always kind of thought about that, like what we were talking about earlier.
Marc:That like, that guy's a guy and he's doing that.
Guest:Yes.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Well, that becomes, you become more, I became more aware of that as I got older.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:That people that I held to be iconic were actually just people.
Guest:It's weird, right?
Guest:Well, it.
Marc:What was the first experience you had with that?
Marc:Like where you met somebody and you're like, oh, that's weird.
Guest:Well, no, I had the opposite experience.
Guest:I got to meet Pee Wee Herman when I was 12 and he was awesome.
Guest:He was just as awesome as could be.
Guest:He was so cool and everything I wanted him to be and was as nice as you can imagine and even nicer than you would imagine.
Guest:And it affected me.
Guest:It changed your life.
Guest:Well, it just affected me.
Guest:It affected me like, oh, a celebrity could be like that.
Guest:And I met Johnny Depp in the same way.
Guest:And I was so young and awkward and didn't know how to behave.
Guest:He was on 21 Jump Street and I thought he was so cool.
Guest:I wanted to talk to him and I, like a stupid teenager, was like, so what's Dustin Gwynn like to work with?
Guest:Because you were already in the game.
Marc:I was already in the game.
Marc:You were meeting these people at events?
Guest:He didn't know me, yeah.
Guest:Yeah, I met him at an event.
Marc:And this was after what, Radio Days?
Marc:That was, yes, after Radio Days.
Marc:Because I just saw that recently, or I saw parts of it, and I saw you running around.
Guest:It's surreal, isn't it?
Marc:How old were you?
Marc:I had just turned 12.
Marc:There's been a series of guys that have played young Woody Allen.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:You only did it once.
Guest:I only did it once.
Marc:We've only worked together the one time, yeah.
Marc:And was that your first, that was your first movie?
Marc:No, no, I had made like...
Guest:Seven or eight movies before I got to do that.
Guest:Really?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And how old were you?
Guest:You were 12?
Guest:I was 12, yeah.
Guest:So I was lucky, man.
Guest:I worked a lot.
Guest:I did a bunch of commercials and TV and film stuff really young.
Marc:But what was the first stuff you did as a performer before you started working in show business?
Guest:My parents worked at a summer camp that had a drama program, and I was a staff brat there.
Guest:I wasn't even enrolled.
Guest:And I just liked to hang around the teenagers and watch them play.
Guest:do stage you know they were like doing the makeup and putting their costumes on singing and dancing I was like I want to do that but how the hell does it happen that like you're in Philadelphia yeah you're 11 or whenever the hell you started I mean how when did you become what was the first gig and how did you end up in Hollywood I called my godfather's brother who had done some radio casting in Philadelphia and I asked him what I was supposed to do how old were you I was uh I was about to turn seven
Guest:I was lucky.
Guest:I was lucky.
Guest:I knew what I wanted to do really young.
Guest:I felt like that was what I was supposed to do really young, and then I've had that affirmed for me consistently throughout my career.
Marc:Because you have to recommit.
Marc:Okay, so you're seven.
Marc:Just to help the kids out there who are listening.
Guest:I called my godfather's brother who had done casting in Philadelphia, and he recommended me to this on-camera training school that's still downtown in Philadelphia called Weiss Barron.
Guest:And one of the co-owners of the place is a talent manager named Edie Robb.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And she hired me and sent me on auditions, and I got the- Local, regional commercials?
Guest:No, we took the train to New York.
Guest:I went on a bunch of New York casting.
Guest:Uh-huh.
Guest:Yeah, two-hour train ride.
Marc:She was your Colonel Tom Parker.
Marc:She was like, I'm going to make a fortune with this kid.
Guest:I don't know that she ever thought that, but she saw a tiny red-haired boy who looked a lot younger than he was who could read and memorize dialogue and sing and dance.
Marc:So the idea was that he can play five and look like a genius.
Guest:I did.
Guest:In Can't Hardly Wait, I play 18, and I was like 23 when we made that.
Marc:That's a good thing, right?
Marc:It's a good thing, yeah.
Marc:You want it to stop eventually.
Marc:I mean, you still probably play younger than you.
Guest:I don't know.
Guest:Michael J. Fox still looks a little like a kid.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:He's not so bad.
Marc:Okay, so your parents are letting you go on the train to New York.
Guest:My mom was taking me, yeah, my mom took me on auditions to New York five days a week, back and forth on the train every day.
Guest:that's a good parent you know you're seven years old yeah and so what were the first uh gigs um i got a bunch of stuff i got a bunch of commercials right off the bat and then i got into voiceover too and did a bunch of voiceover because i could read and i sounded like a little kid right um and i started when i was eight uh i got the hotel new hampshire right and that was the first time i ever got to make a real movie and it was just full of actual movie stars and
Guest:Who was in that?
Guest:It was Beau Bridges and Jodie Foster and Rob Lowe and Wilford Brimley.
Guest:Wilford Brimley?
Guest:Nastassia Kinski and Wallace Shawn and Amanda Plummer.
Guest:It was all these people that were.
Guest:And it was right after Cat People had come out.
Guest:The Outsiders had come out.
Guest:Jodie Foster had been nominated for Taxi Driver like five years before, something ridiculous like that.
Marc:I'm trying to remember that movie.
Marc:I can't remember it.
Marc:I can remember Gorp.
Marc:Is that the other one?
Marc:Garp.
Guest:Yeah, it's John Irving.
Guest:Right.
Guest:It's a very weird book about a family that opens a hotel in New Hampshire.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And there's...
Marc:So did you have any context for these actors before you showed up?
Marc:I had seen The Outsiders.
Guest:I think The Outsiders was before they had to have been.
Marc:Yeah, definitely.
Guest:And I had seen billboards in the subway for the Broadway Plane 9.
Guest:So I knew who Anita Morris was because she was on a bunch of those posters and she was in the movie.
Guest:And then I knew who Jodie Foster was, sort of.
Guest:And then everybody told me who all these people were.
Guest:Like I saw Nastassia's posters for Cat People...
Marc:Yeah, everywhere.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And she had just done that.
Guest:She had done a poster, like a nude poster with a snake or some weird thing.
Guest:So all that stuff.
Guest:I remember that.
Guest:You remember that, right?
Marc:Yeah, yeah.
Marc:It was for Vanity Fair or something where the snake was wrapped around her.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:All that stuff seems, it's really weird information for an eight-year-old to receive, by the way.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:You don't know what to do with it.
Guest:Especially in a movie that's got incest and all these other themes, rape and a lot of positive stuff.
Guest:You weren't able to process that, were you?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I mean, no, not really.
Guest:I had a sense that it was weird, but it was also all make-believe.
Guest:And everybody behind the scenes was so playful.
Marc:It's interesting because I just had the experience of casting people and doing these 10 episodes of this show for me.
Marc:And we had kids.
Marc:There's one scene where we had to have a kid in there.
Marc:And some of the script was stuff I knew that that kid would never understand.
Marc:Right.
Marc:And I guess the parents know that, too, because there's got to be a line where the parents were like, I'm not you can't go out for this.
Marc:I don't want you saying that.
Marc:But you really are separate from from that.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:That's that show.
Marc:That's that line.
Marc:We're talking about it, too.
Marc:That as the performer, you just show up.
Marc:You kind of put yourself into that thing.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:And the investment you have is is not necessarily like this is fucking with my head or this.
Guest:You know what I mean?
Marc:I can't handle this.
Guest:I've gone pretty deep into some characters.
Guest:Like what?
Guest:Well, I made this movie Party Monster.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And we spent two years developing it.
Guest:Is that one you shot yourself?
Guest:No, no, no.
Guest:It was a movie that Macaulay Culkin and I got to make with... I don't remember the movie.
Guest:It came out...
Guest:Wow, that's part of the problem with it.
Guest:It came out in early 2000s, and it was based on a documentary by the same writer-directors about the club scene in New York in the early 90s.
Guest:Right.
Guest:How old were you now?
Guest:How old was I in that?
Guest:At that time, yeah.
Guest:Let's see, 2004.
Guest:I was like 28, I guess?
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:All right, so you and Macaulay, was he in trouble yet?
No.
Guest:He's never really been in trouble.
Guest:I just think he's so widely misunderstood.
Guest:And I think we socially have gotten used to a particular cycle with our child actors.
Guest:Do you know what I mean?
Marc:Right, the success, the sadness, and the drug addiction.
Guest:Yeah, it's like we've all watched VH1s behind the music so much that by the time Kings of Leon hits the scene, we're anticipating their fall.
Guest:The fall, yeah.
Guest:miracle comeback but but i think that you know to you know for the sake of argument that you know it has happened oh yeah with child actors absolutely as several of them but the thing that no one understands about mac is he's still got money yeah he doesn't care what anyone thinks about him
Marc:But my question was really just relative to, you know, as somebody who's a recovering drug addict, whether he was in trouble.
Guest:And that's kind of my point is that he's never really been in trouble with drugs the way that people get in trouble with drugs or the way that people think that he's in trouble.
Guest:It's a misrepresentation.
Guest:Yeah, he's really just...
Guest:the most remarkably well-adjusted person I've ever met, especially considering what he's been through.
Guest:He's incredibly smart.
Guest:He's always been at an elevated level of maturity.
Guest:But because he's had the world's eyes on him as a child, he's evolved in a faster way than people would.
Marc:Well, I think that must happen with all you guys.
Marc:I mean, you as well.
Marc:You're telling me that when you're cast primarily for your ability to play a younger person because of your intelligence that you bring.
Marc:You know, I can't imagine.
Marc:So you're still buddies with him.
Marc:Yeah, we're still really close.
Marc:Is there like some sort of club of child actors that...
Guest:No.
Guest:Well, I mean, a lot of people know each other, but Mac and I are actually friends.
Guest:And it's so funny.
Guest:I was in New York the week before that Inquirer story came out that had the headline six months to live.
Guest:And he knew that it was going to come out.
Guest:And we were talking about what do you want to do?
Guest:Like, how do you get in front of that?
Guest:He goes, that's not true.
Guest:So I really don't care.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And they're just going to say these things anyway.
Guest:And the more I try and get in front of and say, hey, that's not true.
Guest:All they're doing is drawing me into their game.
Guest:And then they like he had to release a statement that said, guys, I'm not even going to acknowledge this except to say, please stop saying such hurtful, hateful lies about me.
Guest:And then they said, well, Mac, if you'll just submit to a blood test, we can clear this whole thing up.
Guest:So they want to chuck you in.
Guest:And he's like, really?
Guest:You guys want my fucking DNA?
Guest:So I'm going to give my DNA to the Inquirer?
Guest:Let me go on record giving my clonable DNA to the Inquirer.
Marc:Yeah, that's their plan is to make an army of Macaulay Coughlin's.
Guest:Well, regardless of that, it just sort of illustrates how inappropriate and unreasonable that request is.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:For a magazine that isn't even a journalistic magazine.
Marc:Well, they were just trying to bait him.
Marc:I mean, then like if he says anything that shows any weakness or availability, then the story's got legs.
Marc:I know.
Guest:We had a minute where I said, well, do you want to...
Guest:Do you want to stage a Twitter photo?
Guest:I said, we'll put you in a hospital bed.
Guest:We'll get you really, really pale.
Guest:So it goes under your eyes, wrap your wire, your arms in wires.
Guest:And you can look at us like, oh, I don't know if I'm going to make it.
Guest:And then my wife and I would lean in like holding his hands.
Guest:We'd have a prayer book and some beads and we would look very concerned.
Guest:And then the tweet would be something like treasuring the last six months we have with our dear friend Mac.
Guest:You didn't do it.
Guest:You didn't want to.
Guest:We were so close to doing it.
Marc:It's an interesting sort of predicament and problem that I don't think I've ever talked to anybody about because I've never talked to somebody who has been in show business as long as you.
Marc:that the expectation of child actors to sort of burn out or to not even maintain a career.
Guest:That's a new thing, though.
Guest:That's really escalated.
Marc:And I feel it's pop culture.
Marc:You don't think it's been around since Jackie Cooper or Shirley Temple Black?
Guest:I think it's been around, but I think the public's relationship with it, their awareness of it, and their expectation of it has accelerated.
Guest:Of course, they want to see it.
Guest:The more we all have these very intimate exchanges via Facebook or podcasts or online, being able to...
Guest:Being able to see every person's sum total works in a click, that changes the way that people perceive information and what their expectation is.
Marc:But tabloid, sort of sordid tabloid fascination has always been around, but obviously everything's about bigger.
Guest:Not like this, and you're not going to really get into this, because this is part of my doctoral thesis.
Guest:You're writing one?
Guest:Good.
Guest:Yeah, I'm starting to get into it.
Marc:You're not really in school, are you?
Marc:No.
Guest:Okay, go ahead.
Guest:But it's actually like an area of interest for me.
Guest:Go ahead.
Guest:In early 2000, after 2001, specifically after September 11th, the publisher that used to run, I think it was Globe and Mirror in the UK, came to the US.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:to relaunch Us Magazine.
Guest:Us Magazine, theretofore, had been the sister publication of People.
Guest:Still had mostly human interest stories, some celebrity stories.
Guest:At that moment, it changed to a weekly publication and focused solely on tabloid.
Guest:And not just tabloid.
Guest:Young tabloid.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:The Olsen twins.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:Britney.
Guest:Are you friends with them?
Guest:I'm not friends with them.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:I just, I'm like aware of this and I thought it was fascinating.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:And then within a year, there were five magazines.
Guest:It went from Us Magazine to five different magazines, Life and Style, Okay, all these other things.
Guest:And they started out selling them at a quarter.
Guest:They were like, oh, ladies, you can buy this for a quarter.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Next thing you knew, people are addicted to buying five different magazines.
Guest:And all of a sudden, all these adult women, adult professionals are buying these things in mass and having an opinion about Lindsay Lohan or Britney Spears.
Guest:where just five years earlier, let alone, or two years earlier, professional women over the age of 25 would not have had an opinion about the comings and goings of the cast of Boy Meets World.
Guest:And now all of a sudden, they're being put out as the most important kings and queens of our community.
Guest:Whether it's Justin and Selena or Zach and Vanessa.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:You know what I mean?
Marc:It becomes like, you know, I know somebody who's somewhat into gossip and it just, to them, sadly, it just becomes a narrative, like almost a soap operatic narrative.
Guest:But that's changing the relationship that the audience has with their performers and making it into something personal.
Guest:That's something that the UK has been doing forever.
Marc:But that's happening on all levels and we make ourselves available to it as well.
Marc:I mean, even with Twitter, I mean, the access that people have.
Marc:To a degree, because that's an access without intimacy.
Guest:Like Twitter is only as intimate as you make it.
Guest:That's your choice.
Guest:So you're saying this exists without choice.
Guest:Well, Twitter at its core is just an unencumbered interaction between an entertainer and their audience.
Marc:But you can make it as intimate as you want.
Guest:Absolutely.
Marc:But it's still in your hands.
Marc:What you're saying is that these, the exploitation.
Guest:It's not like Facebook where you click and it's somebody's virtual teenage bedroom and you see like all their records and their posters and all their friends.
Guest:Well, that's still a choice.
Marc:It's still a choice.
Marc:Totally.
Marc:Totally.
Marc:But you're saying that the exploitive nature of these narratives, you know, the way they're presented to the public, it's predatory and a lot of it's not true and things are taken out of context and misrepresented.
Guest:I mean, that's all true.
Guest:But more than anything, I think culturally over the last 10 years, it's evolved us in a very particular direction.
Guest:And where are we going?
Guest:I think we're turning Dutch and Japanese at the same time.
Guest:We're becoming increasingly fascinated with pop culture and shiny things and squash and stretched animated versions of all of our superheroes.
Guest:Multi-platform coexistence of single brands over 20 and 30 years.
Guest:Us working so efficiently every single day that...
Guest:We're managing hundreds of thousands of projects in a single 24-hour period.
Guest:And we're becoming less and less concerned about privacy, security.
Guest:People's feelings?
Guest:Well, no, we've always been really PC and we're still super afraid of getting sued over hurt feelings.
Guest:But people are leaving their windows open.
Guest:Kids are video blogging themselves and living their life on the web in real time so that other people can vicariously share their experience.
Guest:It's a narcissistic propensity.
Guest:I don't know if it's narcissistic as much as it's sort of this weird growing community.
Guest:Like I was in Amsterdam and I remember looking out the window and seeing A, there were no blinds on the window and B, I could see into the windows of like dozens of other people and all those other people were looking out their windows and you would just sort of catch eyes with one person and they wouldn't even be weirded out by it.
Guest:They're just like, oh, hey, I'm sipping tea.
Guest:You're looking out your window.
Yeah.
Marc:But that speaks to a less frightened culture.
Marc:I agree.
Guest:And so maybe we're evolving in that way.
Guest:As we're so policed by cameras and the availability of our personal information online, maybe people are just becoming more resigned to living comfortably in that context.
Marc:But that's crazy because that's sort of like a voluntary fascism.
Marc:It's like, I feel better because my information is being taken care of or I'm being seen or I'm being...
Guest:I'm on your side and I agree with you that that's terrifying, but it's impossible to say that that's not happening.
Marc:I agree it's happening.
Marc:But I think that, you know, because the argument you're sort of making is that this sort of weird, unavoidable intrusion and voluntary complicity with with a lack of privacy is actually making us all sort of closer.
Guest:not necessarily closer, more willing to give away our personal information.
Guest:Like kids born in these generations won't be aware of a time that they didn't have a homing beacon in their pocket that aggregated all their metadata.
Marc:But sadly, the faith that you have to have in that situation is that whoever is, you know, has you on their screen and is following you is well intended.
Marc:And there's no reason to ever think that because they're either going to like, there's the guy, let's sell him something or there's the guy, let's pick him up and put him away.
Guest:It is mostly that.
Guest:It is mostly the let's sell him something.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Like that's really all it is.
Guest:That's all the Google sidebar ads are.
Guest:That's all the reading the mail seems to be is selling you shit faster.
Guest:Yeah, this kid's desires.
Guest:It's Malcolm X's theory of targeted marketing really realized.
Marc:Sure.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Well, well, aside from that, you know, in when you first had that experience of of making these these intellectual assessments of us magazine as a no, no, which is good.
Marc:And it's provocative.
Marc:But I mean, as a child actor, there must have been something aggravating about.
Guest:I mean, you know, yes, it's just manageable is all you can manage it.
Guest:And I say that because they're not stalking me the way that they stalk a lot of people like my wife.
Guest:They leave my wife and I alone.
Guest:They don't.
Guest:Every time we go out, all anybody can talk about is that she's taller than me.
Guest:That seems to distract them well enough from ever caring about our personal lives.
Guest:But you make choices to go to certain restaurants, to go to certain places, to live your life in a certain way that will get you followed, that will get you hunted.
Guest:They do it on purpose.
Guest:I wouldn't say they do it on purpose.
Guest:And it's not to say that there aren't creepy, predatory camera stalkers that would follow you anyway.
Guest:But there's plenty of things you can do to avoid it.
Guest:But what I'm asking is- So to that degree, there's somewhat of a symbiotic relationship.
Marc:But as a guy who started in show business very young and had a lot of his success before he was, what, 20?
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Right?
Guest:Well, no, the bulk of my- I worked all the time and I was able to make a comfortable living, but nobody really knew my name.
Guest:Right, there's that guy.
Guest:There was that moment where I stopped being somebody that people thought they went to high school with or dated their sister and people knew my name.
Guest:What moment was that?
Guest:It was like 1998.
Guest:Austin Powers came out on video.
Guest:I was a series regular on Buffy and Can't Hardly Wait was in theaters.
Guest:So that year.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And how old were you?
Guest:I was about 22.
Marc:Right.
Marc:So was there like, have you had to struggle with, I mean, obviously you're not going to have the same struggles as Macaulay Culkin, who is like blazed into our unconscious from home alone.
Guest:I didn't have anything to outrun.
Guest:I didn't have anything to, like by the time people knew my name, I was already an established character actor.
Guest:Right.
Guest:I'd already played a wide variety of roles and couldn't quite be pigeonholed.
Guest:So you didn't suffer from the child star situation?
Guest:No, I knew a ton of casting directors.
Guest:I'd worked with a lot of people.
Guest:I had no liens against me.
Guest:All of my mistakes were made in private.
Guest:No one was following me with a camera.
Marc:You know what I mean?
Marc:But was there ever that point?
Marc:Because I mean...
Marc:Was there ever the point where you're like, fuck, you know, I'm known to be this like kid-ish that, you know, am I going to be able to grow up in this business?
Guest:The closest thing I had to that was Scott Evil in Austin Powers where I was known as like a prototypical comedic teenager.
Guest:Right.
Guest:But I didn't play that role in anything but that movie.
Marc:So that was lucky.
Marc:You made a choice.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:I mean, were they seeking to cast you as that kid in other movies?
Yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Oh yeah.
Guest:Anytime you do something that works, anytime you do something that works, they'll call you with like six other projects that are the same.
Guest:And you chose not to do that.
Guest:No.
Guest:That's good, right?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I mean, how many, after like a short attention span theater, were you wanting to host?
Guest:Were you wanting to do a ton of hosting?
Guest:I don't know that I did that good a job, man.
Guest:You did great, man.
Guest:I love that show.
Marc:I actually love that show.
Marc:It was the last incarnation of that.
Marc:My problem was in the difference between, you know, you and I, aside from... You hosted after John did.
Marc:Long after.
Marc:I was the last incarnation of that show.
Marc:But, um...
Marc:The problem with me is I never had a plan.
Marc:You know, I was always sort of like, can I do that?
Marc:Okay, I'll do that.
Marc:Like, I never had a plan to, I never saw show business as a business.
Marc:I never, you know, I didn't say, like, I want to do this.
Marc:All I wanted to be was a comic because, you know, I could not do anything.
Guest:But as a comic, did you see that path, like, in the late 80s, early 90s of making your own show and...
Guest:It seemed to be what every comic was working for.
Guest:And then Seinfeld had like the biggest version of that that anybody.
Marc:Well, that was sort of the idea was you become a headliner and then they build a show around you.
Marc:And I certainly pitched ideas and I had a couple of deals to do pilots.
Marc:But still, I was more in search of a sort of grounded sense of self and expression.
Marc:You know, in retrospect, that's what it was.
Marc:I never had a plan other than spitefully calling my manager.
Marc:Why the fuck is that guy doing that?
Marc:How come I'm not doing that?
Guest:Did you see yourself more like, and not that you would make those comparisons, but other people sure would.
Guest:Do you see yourself more like Carlin or Lenny Bruce or any of those guys that made a living out of consistently being able to speak their opinion?
Marc:I think I wanted to do that earlier on and I was a little angrier and I think that was sort of the direction I was going.
Marc:Now it's really just being as personal as possible.
Marc:That seems to be where it's gone.
Marc:Before it was like, I'm angry about things.
Marc:And then it was, I'm just angry.
Marc:And now it's sort of like, aren't we all sad?
Guest:So it is, though.
Guest:It's kind of more for you in a cathartic way.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:To commune with people.
Guest:Absolutely.
Marc:Creates a great way to say.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And sadly, for most of my career, I fought those people.
Marc:I was like, really?
Marc:You like me?
Marc:How about now?
Marc:And now?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Isn't that funny, though?
Guest:I think a lot of people do that.
Guest:Like as you, especially if you hold yourself to a very high standard.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Even if you don't know what that standard is.
Guest:Even if you don't know.
Guest:As you start to have success.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And then you get tired.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And you don't maybe try as hard.
Guest:You don't put as much energy into it.
Guest:If your audience still responds with the same amount of enthusiasm, it can make you build a resentment towards them for not knowing the difference.
Guest:Or not letting you grow.
Guest:Or not forcing you.
Guest:Like, where are you guys to challenge me?
Guest:Yeah, exactly.
Marc:It's like, well, there's a fine line between like if you were to have done more of those movies.
Marc:Mm-hmm.
Marc:Where you were established as a quintessential teenager.
Marc:If I had made my version of Snow Dogs, you're saying.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Whatever.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:If that had happened, then people would expect that out of you.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And you would be in prison.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Movie jail.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Is that what it's called?
Guest:Did you just make that up?
Guest:No, no.
Guest:That's a fact.
Guest:Like before Jon Favreau cast Robert Downey Jr., Gwen Paltrow and Jeff Bridges in Iron Man, they were all in a form of movie jail.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Because none of them had had a big hit.
Guest:recently enough that the studios which are run by corporations that basically aggregate all that information and figure out how they can guarantee a quarterly performance and so they look for the commodities that are trading the highest none of those people were trading high and John fought for them and they were ripe for the movie and the movie was low profile enough when it was being made he's a good guy that guy I like Favreau
Marc:So, okay, so you're saying he released them all from movie jail.
Guest:Just an example of how you can get released from movie jail.
Guest:Make a hit movie that no one would expect.
Marc:The fucking Robert Downey epic story is beyond anything that I couldn't even fathom.
Marc:Like, I still, you know, his rise from the ashes was amazing.
Guest:It's a testament to how uniquely talented he actually is.
Marc:Yeah, I agree 100%.
Guest:How special a performer he is that everyone has been consistently willing to help him come back.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:That is exactly what it is.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:And then you sort of- Because they're not, people aren't doing that for Corey Feldman.
Guest:No.
Guest:You know what I mean?
Guest:I've known Corey a really long time and I see him struggle in that same way with the way that he sees himself versus the way that the world sees him.
Guest:And if you think about it from his perspective, he's worked with all the top directors from Richard Donner to Rob Reiner.
Guest:Like he's been in big deal movies with no shit movie stars.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And mind you, I'm not saying that Corey Feldman and Robert Downey Jr.
Guest:are the same person.
Guest:No, but are you friends with him, with Corey?
Guest:We've known each other a really long time.
Marc:See, that's an interesting case, you know, because that's that weird child actor thing that, you know, he's not even in movie jail.
Marc:He's sort of stalled.
Guest:Well, because he doesn't know how to turn it around.
Guest:He doesn't know how to put himself out there in a way that would...
Guest:convince a new generation of something.
Guest:Look at a guy like Freddie Prinze Jr.
Guest:So when Freddie and I were growing up, he was like the hunky teen dude in all of the teen movies.
Guest:And now that he's older and has kids and a family, it was harder for him to make that transition until he outgrew
Guest:all of the people that were teenagers when he was in teenage movies so now the next generation of kids that watched him on 24 or see him in mass effect they have no idea that he was like a teen heartthrob right they just have no idea right it becomes a generational thing you got to keep swinging right and that's that's what you do yeah yeah let's get back to uh the risks you took in that movie with macaulay the party movie
Guest:oh yeah we got really far away from that the risk that i took well we were talking about as an actor that you know that you know sort of pushing the envelope or oh yeah you know that well those characters those characters were real people uh that were woefully addicted to drugs and never ate anything and lived for several years under these conditions that just they do something to you physically and so mac and i were hyper attentive to doing justice to this we had tons of real footage tons of documentary footage of these people party
Guest:Like it is the rave era.
Guest:I mean, what era are we talking about?
Guest:It was the club kids in New York where they were going around the country.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Going around the country on Sally Jesse.
Guest:And it was earlier than that.
Guest:They were in the early nineties, I think.
Marc:Okay.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Like 94.
Marc:But it was that weird all night dance party shit.
Marc:Crazy.
Guest:Big pants.
Guest:Special K. Like everybody on drugs, tons of nudity, wild sex parties, like just uncontrolled utopian drug parties.
Guest:Right.
Guest:All over New York City that ultimately devolved into everybody becoming depraved and the ringleader of the whole thing, killing his drug dealer lover, dismembering his body, leaving it in a box in their living room.
Guest:This is the real story.
Guest:This is what actually fucking happened.
Guest:I kind of remember this.
Guest:It's grizzly.
Guest:It's grizzly.
Guest:And the cops didn't even care about the murder because they were trying to take down Peter Gation, who was the guy that ran all the clubs.
Guest:Limelight.
Guest:Exactly.
Guest:The limelight.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So I lost some weight for it.
Guest:I hit a particular diet and workout regimen, so I wanted to look like somebody that was on K all the time.
Guest:Everybody has those cably veins.
Guest:You know what I mean?
Guest:Weirdly muscly, but hyper thin.
Guest:So we tried to make that work.
Guest:Did you get there?
Guest:I got there.
Guest:You can see it on camera.
Guest:yeah we look i mean we look sick when we're in the movie yeah um but it's also the most makeup i've done the craziest turnovers i've done and i was on buffy and i played a zombie in idle hands so to say that this was like the biggest makeup movie i've ever done is something um
Guest:But it was beautiful.
Guest:We went for it.
Guest:We really fucking went for it.
Guest:And what happened to the film?
Guest:What happened to the film is that we got a couple offers out of Sundance.
Guest:We got accepted into Sundance and then a couple offers out of Sundance.
Guest:The company that financed it originally was not a cash rich company.
Guest:And so they had invested a lot to actually make the movie and they needed to see a return on it.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:The offer that we got from Lionsgate was not...
Guest:any real upfront money, but it was a guarantee of P&As with a bunch of screens.
Guest:And we were like, put the movie out.
Guest:We had just seen Boys Don't Cry get Oscar nominated.
Guest:And we were like, it is all about how the movie is seen.
Guest:But the finance company got scared and they took a much bigger deal from Blockbuster to have the exclusive post rights.
Guest:And then they hired a small company called Strand to release it on four screens nationwide.
Guest:I know.
Yeah.
Guest:It was actually really sad.
Guest:Is it on Netflix?
Guest:Oh yeah, it's all over and people discover it, which is nice and satisfying.
Guest:What's it called again?
Guest:Party Monster.
Marc:I remember it now.
Marc:It got a little bit of... You were in New York, weren't you?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You would definitely have heard of it.
Marc:What year was it?
Marc:It was the early 90s.
Marc:Yeah, I was definitely there.
Marc:I do remember it.
Marc:Because it was like Culkin's sort of return to a real thing.
Guest:It was the first movie he'd made in like seven years.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And he just took it so seriously and we worked so hard.
Guest:And after that, he did Saved, which I thought was great too.
Guest:And then he just, he made a pilot with Conan that didn't go.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:He just kind of lost interest.
Guest:He wrote a book.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You know what I mean?
Guest:He just wanted to do something else.
Marc:But he stashed all the Home Alone money and he's good.
Guest:Yeah, dude, he's fine.
Guest:You just don't even have to worry about Mac.
Yeah.
Guest:I can take that off my list.
Guest:Look back at the look back at the deals that he made.
Guest:Like you can find old premier magazines online and every one of those deals was reported and then just add that money up and then make reasonable subtractions from it based on years and expenses and things like that.
Guest:And you will still see a ton of money.
Guest:yeah yeah well good he's fine so you've been running around which is why your voice is burnt out where where where have you been what have you been doing it's been a long run actually it's a couple months now i got to make a movie in nashville where i played a drummer um so that was a lot of fun but it took a lot of work and then over those six weeks um i had to fly to new york for the comic-con and then wait what's in nashville so you spent six weeks in nashville yeah
Guest:It's a great town, right?
Guest:It's a great town.
Guest:Yeah, I really enjoy it.
Marc:It's a good time.
Marc:I always like going there.
Marc:What did you do over there?
Marc:Did you get out?
Guest:I mean, it was mostly work.
Guest:I got to go to a bunch of- Is that the trailer?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I got to go to a bunch of restaurants and bars and clubs and see a lot of live music and eat a lot of great food.
Guest:But what's the movie?
Guest:It's called The Identical.
Guest:And it's not based on Elvis, but it's based on that hypothesis of, you know, Elvis had a twin brother that died in childbirth?
Guest:I did think I know.
Guest:So it's like, what if the twin of someone that became the biggest rock star of all time was raised by different parents?
Guest:And so you've got these parents that have twins and they don't have any money and they go to church all the time.
Guest:And the preacher is talking about what you can and can't have and giving things to God.
Guest:And
Guest:the preacher and his wife can't have a baby.
Guest:And so these faithful attendees of their church, they give them one of their newborn babies and say, this is God's will.
Guest:It's more than we can handle.
Guest:You guys need a child.
Guest:So the kid that's raised by the birth parents grows up to be
Guest:you know an elvis like superstar right and this other kid is raised by preacher parents and it's all through his perspective so it's it's the argument of nurture versus nature it's someone raised in a particular environment with particular type of parents telling them that they're supposed to be something versus what you genuinely feel inside of you and what you need as a person and the way that family connects you and it's all these really cool themes that i liked a lot who did it
Guest:It was just a family that made this movie.
Guest:They're record producers and their one son is a filmmaker, went to school for it.
Guest:And so they wanted to make this movie based on one of their friends' stories and another friend of theirs wrote it.
Guest:And then everybody in town got together to make it.
Guest:They hired all these musicians locally who were all great musicians to play, all the period musicians in the film.
Guest:And it was just really fun.
Guest:Sounds wild.
Guest:It's cool, yeah.
Guest:And it's more meaningful than you'd expect.
Guest:It could so easily be written off as a lifetime kind of story.
Guest:But it's just really well done.
Marc:I think Harmony Corrine's down there.
Marc:Are you friends with him?
Guest:I've met him before.
Marc:Yeah, I think he's in Nashville hanging around.
Guest:Yeah, I mean, I know Jack White is down there.
Marc:Yeah, I interviewed him down there at his place.
Marc:Yeah, it's a cool place.
Marc:You didn't go over there to Third Man?
Marc:I didn't get to make it, no.
Marc:I like him a lot.
Marc:Yeah, he's great.
Marc:He's really... I had a good talk with him.
Marc:Super special.
Marc:Yeah, so, okay, so then you go to New York for Comic-Con.
Marc:Why are you... You're like one of the nerd princes, right?
Marc:I mean, you're...
Guest:I'm just lucky enough.
Guest:An ordained nerd priest.
Guest:I'm lucky enough to be organically, authentically interested in stuff that's become very popular and vogue over the last 10 years.
Guest:What would that list be?
Guest:I like nerdy stuff.
Guest:I mean, I read comics and play some video games and I know a ton of pop culture and I ate the same cereal and watched all the same shows.
Guest:What comic books do you read?
Guest:Well, I don't read anything anymore, really, unless somebody puts a book in my hand.
Guest:I don't really get to read it.
Guest:What were your things?
Guest:The first book I read was Fantastic Four.
Guest:Loved that.
Guest:And then I got into Spider-Man from there, and that became the thing that I really carried on.
Guest:I was crazy about Spider-Man.
Marc:Did you go in for any of those movies?
Marc:In any sort of parts?
Guest:I wanted to get a shot at Harry Osborn, but by the time they cast Toby, they had already decided on Franco.
Guest:There's some things you don't even get close to because they happen in the same way that...
Guest:If you're right next to somebody, you know somebody, right place, right time, you know, that happens a lot.
Guest:It does.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:That's a sad realization about show business after you're in it a lot is that there are a lot of people that come out here going, I'm going to be a star.
Marc:And I'm like, it's going to take a little more.
Guest:Well, it's also, I spent a lot of time, and I don't know if you ever did this, I spent a lot of time looking over my shoulder and comparing myself to other people, especially my peer group.
Guest:And so the success that they would have, I'd be like, why am I not doing that?
Guest:Or why am I not there yet?
Guest:And I realized everything that I've actually cared deeply about and forced to happen have been the most successful.
Marc:Well, how did you let go of the resentment?
Marc:I mean, what that realization must have been like, that's a big moment.
Marc:It's over time.
Marc:It's a big moment to sort of realize like, well, I'm doing what I do and it's enough.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It's over time.
Guest:And I've had it at different points in different ways.
Guest:Like after I did Can't Hardly Wait and I was getting a bunch of good offers, they asked me to come in for American Pie.
Guest:And I read that script and it was about a bunch of kids trying to lose their virginity.
Guest:And I had just done this movie that did well about a kid trying to lose his virginity.
Guest:And I'm like, let me not play this role twice in a row.
Guest:And so then that movie became insanely successful and all of a sudden every kid in it is getting million dollar offers for the next movie.
Guest:And I had that moment of like, oh man, should I have gone out on that?
Guest:And then I had to like take it and go, that's, you didn't want to make that movie.
Guest:You didn't want to make that movie.
Guest:So regardless of what happens after or how much I enjoyed the movie when I watched it, and I did.
Guest:I fucking loved that movie.
Guest:At the time, you make the choices that you make.
Guest:And so there's nothing to say that it would have gone that way had I been in it.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And I didn't want to make it at the time.
Guest:So you let it go.
Guest:You just accept that.
Marc:Right.
Marc:Was it a struggle to accept that?
Marc:How much self-beating did you do?
Guest:I had that moment where I was like, oh, man, it'd be so nice to make a million dollars on a movie right now.
Right.
Guest:but i didn't begrudge any of those kids that success they were all really good yeah so what but how did you end up uh your parents i guess are okay with your choices now yeah now now that's i've now i've proven to them that i'm gonna make a living at this yeah which which uh which role did that
Guest:I mean, my mom was always supportive and she abjectly believed that I could be successful, at least enough to commit to it.
Guest:And there was only one or two points where my dad actually sat me down and was like, hey, you might want to consider going back to school or trying something.
Guest:But when...
Guest:We had a premiere of Can't Hardly Wait at The Man Chinese, which was really cool.
Guest:And I got to fly my family out.
Guest:So they got to see that.
Guest:And I think it was the first time that they actually connected that this is what I do for a living.
Marc:Like it's a job.
Marc:These people a lot went into this.
Guest:Well, they just saw it all.
Guest:There's like the people taking pictures and they meet all the producers and there's all this production and there's the piece of paper with the poster that's got our faces on it.
Guest:And they're like, oh, you're in this movie.
Guest:And this is a movie like the movies that we go see.
Guest:You know what I mean?
Guest:Because every movie that I had made, that they were there when I worked on it, it just didn't seem like a thing the same way.
Guest:I don't know.
Marc:I don't know.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:No, I get it.
Marc:Because they don't really understand.
Marc:It's always sort of like, yeah, but maybe you should talk to- Well, it was also their responsibility in a weird way.
Guest:So once I'm on my own and now they come out to LA where I've been living for several years and I'm in a movie, then they can see me more as an adult, I guess.
Marc:How old were you when you moved out here?
Marc:Permanent.
Guest:Uh, 16.
Guest:They just let you do that?
Guest:You know.
Guest:I was responsible.
Guest:I was still keeping my grades up.
Guest:So who would you live with?
Guest:I had different guardians at different times.
Guest:I moved out here permanently right before I turned 17 after I graduated.
Marc:Right.
Marc:So when you came out here to work, you'd have a hired person.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Or my manager would be my acting guardian for the time or whatever.
Guest:That's insane in a way.
Guest:You know.
Guest:No, I know.
Guest:But for parents to just be like, they couldn't stop you.
Guest:Well, I mean, what was the alternative?
Guest:I would get emancipated like Juliette Lewis and never see my parents again.
Guest:Right.
Guest:You know?
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:And what's your sister do?
Guest:She's a counselor, actually.
Guest:She's a teacher and a counselor.
Guest:Ah, that's nice.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Raising kids.
Marc:And you just have the one sibling?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Well, I've got some steps.
Marc:We're close.
Marc:Oh, your folks are not together.
Marc:What's that?
Marc:Your folks aren't together.
Marc:No.
Guest:No.
Guest:No, that was, I was about 15 when they split for good.
Guest:Oh, really?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:How'd that fuck with your head?
Guest:I mean, it did for a while, but I don't know.
Guest:As I got older, I kind of looked at it more objectively and thought about my sister and myself.
Guest:And I like the fact that we exist and we're who we are.
Guest:And we wouldn't have had any of that if the two of them hadn't hooked up and raised us at least to the point that they did.
Guest:It's always...
Guest:easy to look back at things that happened and say oh it should have been this way it could have been this way but at the end of the day literally everything that's happened to me good or bad has put me here and I I mean I like it here I don't feel like this is the be all end all obviously I keep wanting to push further but I feel I feel like this is a manageable life you're a well adjusted fucker well I had the great example of Macaulay Culkin for the last 15 years to study yeah
Guest:He was your mentor.
Guest:Well, he was the first person actually that when we were on a press line, we weren't even on a press line together.
Guest:We were just at an event together before we made the movie.
Guest:And they were just, he didn't do a lot of public appearances.
Guest:And so the photographers hunted him.
Guest:And I didn't understand the vicious relationship that they, the tone that they took with him.
Guest:You just assume that he's pursued.
Guest:You don't expect that they, these guys have set up some personal vendetta that he's never even interacted with.
Guest:It's scary.
Guest:And we were just outside.
Guest:And, you know, I always thought that if people are standing behind a line, taking pictures and yelling your name, you turn and face them and give them a wave or something.
Guest:And he just kept talking.
Guest:We were in the middle of a conversation.
Guest:We were actually talking about something.
Guest:And behind us all these people, Macaulay, Macaulay, Macaulay, Macaulay.
Guest:And I go, oh, this guy's trying to get your attention.
Guest:He goes, yeah, I know.
Guest:And I was like, you don't want to.
Guest:And he goes, we're talking.
Guest:And I was like, all right.
Guest:Yeah, that's fair.
Marc:Lesson one.
Guest:And one time we were out in public playing pool or something.
Guest:And somebody came over and asked for a picture and they were like, hey, would it be cool if we took a picture?
Guest:He goes, hey, I don't want to like alert that we're here.
Guest:So let's just shake hands.
Guest:And they walked away all pissed off.
Guest:And I thought he handled it classy.
Guest:They walked away all pissed off.
Guest:And then they snapped a flash photo from a few feet away.
Guest:And he walked over to them and said, that was rude.
Guest:I'd already said no.
Guest:And then he turned away.
Guest:Oh, no, before he turned away, they go, I'm sorry.
Guest:And he goes, that's all I wanted.
Guest:And turned away.
Guest:And I was like, wow, that's really interesting.
Guest:And so I got into the habit of...
Guest:forcing people in those situations to recognize that they're a human being and that I'm a human being.
Guest:And not just sort of accept, oh, these are the burdens of celebrity.
Guest:It's like, you govern that situation, you govern that interaction.
Guest:It's up to you to say, nice to meet you, thank you, we're done.
Guest:Or control what you want the experience to be.
Guest:And if people approach you in a rude way or they violate the agreement,
Guest:you got the right to tell him to fuck off.
Marc:Right.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:How long have you been married now?
Marc:Two and a half years.
Marc:It's going good?
Guest:Yeah, we like each other.
Guest:That's good.
Guest:Yeah, it is really cool.
Guest:I married somebody that I actually like hanging out with, and we have a lot of shared interests, so that makes it infinitely easier.
Marc:What are your shared interests?
Marc:Are you going to have kids?
Guest:We're not saying never, but neither one of us are craving it.
Guest:And she's the oldest of eight, so she raised all of those children.
Marc:That's a trip, right?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Now let's talk about the robot chicken thing for a minute.
Marc:Sure.
Marc:That's all you, right?
Guest:Well, it's not all me.
Guest:I mean, it was something that I co-created.
Guest:How long ago?
Guest:We started doing webisodes in 2000.
Marc:Because it's funny.
Marc:I watched it.
Marc:Oh, thanks.
Marc:I did a little research.
Marc:I don't usually do a lot of research.
Guest:No.
No.
Marc:But my girlfriend's like, the robot chicken thing's popping.
Marc:I'm like, all right, so I got to go look at robot chicken.
Marc:But it's funny.
Marc:Thanks.
Marc:And you created that?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It started because I wanted to not do an on-camera interview with Conan.
Guest:And I had seen a bunch of funny people like Fred Armisen and Dana Gould come on with shorts.
Guest:And I thought, oh, I'll make a short.
Guest:And then I thought, oh, I'll make a stop motion short with Conan's toy and my toy.
Guest:Like, that'll be funny.
Guest:And so I called my friend in New York, who is the editorial director for Wizard, which is like the premier nerd banner.
Guest:And I said, do you know anything about it?
Guest:producing stop motions you want to learn how to do this with me and while we were approaching all these different stop motion studios uh sony called us up and in 2000 they were planning a portal destination site for linear content something like youtube something like hulu and so it was pre it was pre-broadband though so it was just dial up right nobody had the bandwidth to support the media right but they financed
Guest:a bunch of shorts for us.
Guest:They wanted short form content.
Guest:And so we shot 12 little stop motion things with action figures.
Guest:And it's most of it's unairable because it's all kinds of copyright violating before we understood how any of that worked.
Guest:But then we took those that like 40 minutes of content and shopped it around for the next four years.
Guest:And we met everybody from Comedy Central to Cartoon Network.
Guest:And the marketplace just evolved over those four years.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Adult Swim bought reruns of Family Guy to air.
Marc:Which you were involved with as well.
Guest:I was involved in that.
Guest:And that was pre-Family Guy getting re... How many episodes?
Guest:Are you still on?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:You've done a lot of those.
Marc:We've done a lot.
Marc:I think we're in our eighth or ninth season.
Marc:And that airs, that's very popular.
Marc:It airs like several thousand times a day all over the world.
Marc:Yeah, it's crazy.
Marc:So that's your primary living right now.
Guest:Um, it's, it's definitely a good, uh, stable income as long as it, as it goes on.
Guest:But I, you know, I've been, I've been smart about my money and I've been working for over 30 years.
Guest:So I do.
Marc:All right.
Marc:Okay.
Marc:I'll stop worrying.
Yeah.
Guest:I only invest in gold coins.
Guest:You see, when the apocalypse comes, I want a currency that's going to have value.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Good for you.
Marc:Thinking ahead.
Guest:But when you go to.
Guest:Imagine if I just had a buried sack of gold coins.
Marc:I don't know if it's a bad idea.
Marc:Maybe not.
Marc:But you've got to remember where you bury it.
Marc:That's the problem.
Guest:That's the key.
Marc:But how do you avoid the copyright stuff?
Marc:Because I watch some of those robot chickens, and you definitely use characters that are identified.
Guest:It's very specific, and it's all U.S.
Guest:parody.
Guest:It has to do with how the First Amendment works and what's considered parody and what the comment or joke that we're making is.
Guest:Really?
Guest:Yeah, and we vet out all of our stuff.
Guest:We don't ask permission as much as we make sure that what we're saying is inarguable.
Guest:Explain.
Guest:Example and explain.
Guest:You can't just have Superman doing stand-up comedy.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Unless you could somehow create a context for why in Superman's existing established world he would be doing stand-up comedy.
Right.
Guest:So you have to honor the character.
Guest:You have to.
Guest:Every joke that you make has to come from source or else it's not a comment that you can make.
Guest:That's just fiction.
Guest:So you can use Batman as long as he's Batman as we understand him.
Guest:There's degrees.
Guest:And there's degrees of it.
Guest:And then because of the... It gets really complicated.
Guest:It can get down to what color Batman's belt is.
Marc:You know what I mean?
Marc:In the sense of whether or not it's infringement?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:As long as you respect the belt?
Yeah.
Marc:It's situation specific every time.
Guest:Yeah, but I mean, I thought that was like some big fucking no-no.
Guest:It depends on what you're doing.
Guest:Like I couldn't just put Batman on a t-shirt and start selling those t-shirts.
Guest:Right.
Guest:But if I'm Saturday Night Live, I can make a sketch about Batman and use a Batman Halloween costume.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:Like we would be making a joke that makes a comment about Batman and therefore you can use certain underlying copyrights because they're valuable in illustrating the point.
Marc:Okay, so like the sketch I watched with Batman in the car, where the car breaks down and then he's on the wheel.
Guest:Oh, but that's just based on Dark Knight Returns.
Guest:No, I get that.
Guest:So in that movie, The Dark Knight Returns, he's got the Batmobile that gets wrecked.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And it turns then into a bat bike.
Guest:And so I thought what was, well, what happens if the bike gets wrecked?
Guest:Right.
Guest:And so he goes to a unicycle and then he's like treading on a pipe.
Guest:And that's that is an absolutely organic extrapolation of a concept that is in that movie, inarguably in that movie.
Guest:Oh, okay.
Guest:They invented, they decided.
Guest:That's a parody thing.
Guest:And then we just said, well, I bet it could go further.
Marc:Right.
Marc:So you got to, okay.
Marc:So if you depart from an existing reality almost.
Guest:It has to be parody.
Marc:Right.
Guest:Like it has to be an understood parody as opposed to just something that you're saying.
Guest:He-Man and Strawberry Shortcake are fucking.
Guest:You know what I mean?
Guest:There's no context.
Guest:Right, right.
Guest:To create that scenario.
Guest:Then you can't do that.
Guest:No.
Guest:You'd have to go through a lot of effort.
Guest:We'd have to find an episode of Strawberry Shortcake where they travel to a different dimension.
Mm-hmm.
Marc:What's the writing process on that?
Marc:Because it's all very funny.
Marc:They're almost like illustrated jokes.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:It's a rapid fire joke dispensary.
Marc:Yeah, exactly.
Marc:And that's something you learn from Family Guy?
Marc:It was something that coexisted in a way like we.
Marc:But I mean, that style, because I think that's relatively new.
Marc:I think that's almost like, well, I mean, it's sort of Marx Brothers, but I mean, The Simpsons kind of made that nerdy and culturally.
Guest:The notion of cutaways in context is something that family got really pioneered.
Guest:But we were doing, you know, short form content jokes, jokes without a setup.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Like our show is all punchline.
Marc:Oh, the Billy Gibbons beat.
Marc:I can't imagine how many people really actually get that.
Guest:We do a lot of stuff that's just for you, Mark.
Guest:Just for one person.
Guest:Just for that one.
Guest:We'll get to do the Comic-Con crowd, and you're in a room of a couple thousand people, and one person will stand up and be like, I saw that thing, the penguins.
Guest:And everyone in the audience is like, what?
Guest:And we were like, that was for you, dude.
Guest:It was just for us.
Guest:It was just us.
Guest:When we first put the show on the air, that was the thing I was most excited to realize was that so many people shared a point of view and shared a sense of humor.
Marc:Right.
Marc:It's all based on just a sort of a tidal wave of pop culture references that just keep coming and you're going to get what you can.
Guest:Yeah, and then we have some original content, too, that's just silly.
Marc:Now, is that usually what your presence at these Comic-Cons are about now?
Guest:Yeah, we usually have the biggest room for Robot, or I go for the Family Guy room.
Guest:Family Guy's in Hall H, that's the biggest room they got.
Guest:That's a fun...
Guest:panel it's it's devolved a little bit into people attempting to audition for the show right which is annoying um but it's also just a free-for-all on stage and everybody's up there and everybody just gets ridiculous and seth is a genius right yeah i like him a lot so you think we've got enough here it's your show man you know your audience yeah you're a well-adjusted guy thanks
Marc:I've always enjoyed your point of view.
Marc:I appreciate that.
Marc:You went to San Francisco for what?
Guest:I've been working under a shroud of secrecy with Lucasfilm for the last four years on this cartoon that has yet to be released.
Guest:And so because Disney is buying Lucasfilm, we're having a lot of conversations about what that means in general.
Marc:For the future of your project.
Guest:yeah well in general like what we've been we've been talking about where we want to put it and george was being very not coy yeah but but not uh you know so you sit down with george lucas and we didn't have to sit down with george this time this was all but you do sit down with george lucas occasionally i have on occasion sat down with george lucas yes how's that experience
Guest:um it's it's pretty amazing yeah it's pretty awesome well because i had to get past the point where i was super freaked out to even talk to him and i had to get to the point where i could relate to him um even even give the appearance of relating to him as a peer yeah um and that's what that's what he needs to communicate he needs somebody who's not like bugging out he needs somebody who's like well how do we get this done um and so it took a while to get past that and then we've actually been working together for the last several years which is amazing
Marc:And when you talk to him, I mean, how do you identify as genius in conversation?
Marc:I mean, we all know George Lucas does all these things, but is there a way he thinks that where you've gone like, oh, that's why George Lucas is George Lucas?
Guest:He's very big picture, and he's a futurist that understands people and culture.
Guest:Like, he has a...
Guest:He has an enormous comprehension of the way that people work, why they make the choices that they do, how we are evolving as a species.
Guest:He just comprehends it through art and culture and news and media.
Guest:He's a very smart person.
Marc:A futurist.
Guest:Futurist.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Are you a futurist?
Guest:I like to think that I hypothesize and look towards the future with a degree of... I'm informed.
Guest:But are you hopeful?
Guest:Yeah, absolutely I'm hopeful.
Marc:Are you hopeful?
Marc:Yeah, kind of.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:I mean, I don't see impending doom.
Marc:Not in the way that people assume it.
Marc:My hope is based on... It's clear that the one thing people do is adapt.
Marc:And if shit doesn't get too fucked up, we'll adapt.
Guest:yeah and it's just the nature of these cataclysms that we're experiencing and just certainty that we will persevere are you one of those people that's sort of like i want to fly in a spaceship yeah okay yeah i went and had an hour with elon musk when i toured uh tesla and spacex and i'm as soon as they start letting people ride that rocket i'm gonna ride it yeah yeah hey did you already pitch that you're like i want to be the monkey
Guest:I said to Elon, I was like, I go, as soon as you start sending these up with people, he's SpaceX and Tesla and PayPal and SolarCity.
Guest:I said, as soon as you start sending up people, I want to go.
Guest:He goes, you could go in this one.
Guest:The life support's not engaged.
Guest:You could stow away.
Guest:It's going to get there.
Guest:And I was like, I don't know if I want to take that trip with no air.
Guest:But they did two successful space station docks with the capsule.
Guest:Splashdown was all perfect.
Guest:Everything went great.
Guest:The rockets are going up.
Guest:They're sending supplies to the ISS.
Guest:I want to ride it.
Guest:Yeah?
Guest:Yep.
Guest:Wow.
Guest:He wants to colonize Mars.
Guest:You're going to be part of that too?
Guest:I'll check it out.
Guest:I've been to Australia.
Marc:All right, man.
Marc:Thanks for being here.
Marc:Thanks, Mark.
Marc:Appreciate it.
Marc:That's it, people.
Marc:That's the show.
Marc:That's Seth Green.
Marc:That was a very engaged conversation, my friends.
Marc:As always, go to WTFPod.com for all your WTFPod needs.
Marc:Kick in a few shekels.
Marc:Get on that mailing list.
Marc:Pick up some merch.
Marc:Going to be introducing some new posters there soon.
Marc:I got Box Brown made me a batch of those Philly posters that everybody likes.
Marc:Some artsy posters.
Marc:Hand printed and signed and whatnot.
Marc:Those are going to be up soon.
Marc:What else have I got to tell you?
Marc:Yeah, get the app.
Marc:Upgrade to the thing, to the big one.
Marc:Get all the episodes.
Marc:We're going to start a second printing of the first 100 episodes on DVD and hopefully get started on doing the second 100.
Marc:Also, look on the horizon.
Marc:There's a Mark and Tom show.
Marc:Me and Sharpling did some verbal jamming.
Marc:And also the tour, the Out of the Garage tour.
Marc:Pretty much all the...
Marc:The tickets are available.
Marc:There's pre-sales going on, I think, till tonight for San Francisco.
Marc:I'm going to be at the Palace of Fine Arts up there on April 13th, I believe.
Marc:Are we okay?
Marc:Are we good?
Marc:Are we good?
Marc:Are we good?
Marc:Oh, my God.
Marc:I'm fighting.
Marc:I'm fighting.
Marc:I'm in combat with my heart.
Marc:God damn it.
Marc:I better get to the bottom of that.
Marc:What if there is no bottom?
Marc:Boomer lives!