Episode 641 - Jake Kasdan / Fred Stoller
Marc:all right let's do this how are you what the fuckers what the fuck buddies what the fucksters what the fucking ears what the fuckaholics uh what the fucktopians what's happening i'm mark maron this is my show wtf the podcast as you can tell my i might have a little nasal issue i'm
Marc:I don't like it.
Marc:And it was my birthday yesterday.
Marc:It's my fucking birthday.
Marc:And I was sick on my birthday.
Marc:But I wasn't immersed in a nightmare of drama and horror.
Marc:Like my 50th birthday.
Marc:Oh, wait.
Marc:It's going to happen.
Marc:Oh, God.
Marc:Oh, God.
Marc:Why can't that?
Marc:What a good feeling that is.
Marc:Oh, my God.
Marc:How great are sneezes when they happen, when the buildup is just like it was.
Marc:You heard it.
Marc:Just a little bit of buildup.
Marc:And then, bam, delivers the goods.
Marc:And you get that wonderful feeling.
Marc:How fucking pathetic is this?
Marc:How pathetic is it?
Marc:A sober dude, and I'm sitting here celebrating the buzz of a fucking sneeze.
Marc:Wow.
Marc:Right?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Look, I know that some of you already know this, but we got some... Well, actually, we have new news and just a reiteration of some other news.
Marc:You already know that the WTF archives are now on Howl Premium.
Marc:You know that.
Marc:Well, guess what?
Marc:The Howl app for Android is officially here.
Marc:We got it.
Marc:And to celebrate, Howl is giving you a chance to win a piece of my garage.
Marc:I'm going to take a little saw or a knife or something and cut off a piece, and I'm going to take photos of me doing it, and I'll sign the piece, and we'll have an official certificate of authenticity that you have a piece of my garage.
Marc:So if you're a premium subscriber and you haven't gotten this news yet, just go to wtf.howl.fm and enter your email address.
Marc:Even if you're on a free trial, anyone who's subscribed can enter to win a piece of the garage.
Marc:If you use Howl on Android, iPhone, or on your desktop, if you want to become...
Marc:a new premium subscriber, go to Howl.fm and use the promo code WTF at checkout.
Marc:Howl Premium is the only way to access all the WTF archives, whether you are on a iPhone or an Android or using the web.
Marc:And if you're already a WTF Premium subscriber and haven't transferred your account to Howl yet,
Marc:You can do it today.
Marc:Your price and plan stay exactly the same.
Marc:Check your email to see if the transfer instructions that Hal sent came and they're in your inbox or send an email to support at hal.fm.
Marc:Fucking piece of the garage.
Marc:Where am I going to find that?
Marc:I want to give you a real piece, though, a real piece of the fucking garage.
Marc:We have a kind of a mixed bag of a show today.
Marc:I've got Jake Kasdan, who's a film director, also the executive producer of The Grinder.
Marc:That's a new comedy with Rob Lowe.
Marc:It's going to premiere on Fox tomorrow night.
Marc:um his dad is lawrence kasdan writer of star wars and uh many other things body heat one of my favorite movies um and you know lawrence kasdan is sort of a mythic presence here in the show business and jake is his son who directed a couple of movies uh in his own right and i ran into him in new york once and we talked for a bit i'm like you should go on the show
Marc:So here he is on the show.
Marc:Also, in a few minutes, a repeat guest for a quick chat, Fred Stoller.
Marc:Always engaging and entertaining to talk to Mr. Stoller.
Marc:He'll be up soon.
Marc:But what about life, man?
Marc:I'm 52 years old.
Marc:I have a lot to be grateful for.
Marc:Thank you for all the birthday greetings.
Marc:Thank you for listening.
Marc:I am grateful.
Marc:I'm happy to provide this show for you.
Marc:I do need to figure out what I enjoy doing.
Marc:And I do need to learn how to relax.
Marc:And I do have a fantasy of disappearing.
Marc:But you know what the problem with disappearing is?
Marc:Disappearing.
Marc:Terrifying.
Marc:What if you really disappear?
Marc:What if no one really cares if you come back?
Marc:Oh, that seems like, that seems like, you know, parent stuff.
Marc:That seems like some issues.
Marc:So Fred Stoller always makes me happy.
Marc:Fred's book, Maybe We'll Have You Back, The Life of a Perennial TV Guest Star is available now wherever you get books.
Marc:Fred also has a podcast, The Mild Adventures of Fred Stoller.
Marc:You can go to fredstoller.net for everything Fred Stoller.
Marc:And I love when he comes by.
Marc:This is me and Fred Stoller.
Guest:It was this farmer's market table, you know, at Paul Mazursky.
Guest:Right.
Guest:So after doing your podcast, people started showing up and sitting down.
Guest:Because I mentioned.
Marc:So Fred Stoller is back in the garage talking.
Marc:I don't know why I'm introducing like that.
Marc:I never do that.
Guest:I thought you were saying, I don't know why he's here again.
Guest:No.
Guest:There's this table at the farmer's market.
Guest:Paul Mazursky passed away.
Guest:But you were saying, like, what do you do during the day?
Guest:Like, what's your routine?
Guest:Do you have one?
Guest:And the only real one I had was there's this morning table of the late Paul Mazursky, George Segal.
Guest:All these people would sit there.
Guest:Jack Riley, character actors.
Guest:And I go, I sort of sit at the end, like the children's table, because I'm sort of with people but don't have to interact.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:You know, and...
Guest:And then people would just sit down.
Guest:They would just say, oh, there's the table.
Guest:And I heard it on Marc Maron.
Guest:People go, who are you?
Guest:He goes, oh, I heard you on WTF.
Guest:And yeah, George Segal's a very private person.
Guest:So they got mad at me.
Guest:And then what'd they do?
Guest:Did they have to move the table?
Guest:No, it didn't happen.
Guest:There was one guy, he brought a really pretty girl, his girlfriend, so he kind of used that.
Guest:She was flirting with everyone.
Guest:And they wedged themselves into the conversation?
Guest:Well, they were just sitting there and staring at people.
Guest:Like it was a show.
Guest:Yes, yes.
Guest:We're here for the show.
Guest:Yes, yes.
Guest:Sadly, Paul Mazursky died, but then the table revolved around his dialysis schedule.
Guest:It used to be every day, but then it was just Monday, Wednesdays, and Fridays, and then he died, so people like Quentin Tarantino, Sharon Stone wouldn't come.
Guest:All these people would come to the table because of Paul Mazursky, and so then he died, and now it's just two days a week.
Guest:And who's there now?
Guest:Who's there now?
Guest:A guy, Charlie Bragg, who's famous for being a painter to the stars.
Guest:He sells paintings.
Guest:There's one person, I won't mention his name.
Guest:He's an actor, but he won't look me in the eye.
Guest:I never was one of these guys at the comedy cell who would sit there with Colin and argue about race relations.
Guest:Fuck you.
Guest:So there's one guy, I won't mention his name.
Guest:He's a very aggressive comedian.
Guest:You know him.
Guest:And they like to argue.
Guest:So you just sit there frightened?
Guest:Yeah, well, again, I don't like being isolated.
Guest:So I sit like at a table to the side.
Guest:So it feels like I'm with people, but I'm not in the mix.
Guest:You know what I mean?
Guest:Like the children's table.
Guest:So I'm not alone.
Guest:You're just a quiet guy at the end.
Marc:Yes, I'm not committed to it.
Guest:So when did you write this, Maybe We'll Have Your Back book?
Guest:Well, actually, the thing was, I had this in the making for like 10 years.
Marc:And it's a memoir.
Guest:It's a memoir.
Guest:See, I think, I don't know if you're a sports guy.
Guest:Not really.
Guest:Not at all, actually.
Guest:It's all right.
Guest:But I like following people.
Guest:I used to love what's called garbage time.
Guest:I'm not saying I'm a garbage time player.
Guest:When they're up by 30, they throw in these guys and I'm rooting for them.
Guest:This guy gets to make a basket.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So I felt like being a sitcom actor, I've never been a regular.
Guest:So I always was attracted to stories of people, excuse me, that what it's like going from show to show, the guy, like a foster kid, going from show to show, hoping one keeps me on.
Guest:You know what I mean?
Guest:Right.
Guest:So I had this idea when I was doing a lot more guest spots because, you know, I've been on Seinfeld, Raymond, what it's like walking on eggshells.
Guest:which stars are assholes to you, lets you eat lunch with them.
Guest:I thought that's interesting.
Guest:So then many years ago, I wrote up a draft, and this is before PDFs.
Guest:So then I'd get a lead on a literary agent, and I'd print it up.
Guest:I have to do double space and go to Kinko's.
Guest:It would cost me $40 to send, and they'd say things like...
Guest:It's not gritty enough because they want 30 days in rehab.
Guest:I masturbate on kids in the street.
Guest:And mine's just a guy who walks around the grove.
Guest:And sits at the end of a table and doesn't talk.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Well, I'm really selling the book.
Guest:One of them was interested, but he said he wanted a happier ending.
Guest:Because I didn't have that.
Guest:Oh, now I'm a regular on, you know, Parks and Recreation.
Guest:Now I talk at the table.
Guest:Yes.
Guest:And one of them actually said, we wish there was more sex.
Guest:And then a joke, it's me too, you know, because it's not, you know.
Guest:So then...
Guest:I sat in my computer because I kind of gave up, you know, and I gave up.
Guest:I said, maybe one day I'll really be famous and I'll have memoirs.
Guest:But then, you know, with PDFs, I was able to send it around with it costing 60 bucks.
Guest:And people said, this is kind of interesting.
Guest:I said, yeah, I'm not so much the perennial guest star guy anymore.
Guest:You know, I said, these are still good shows.
Guest:So someone had a lead, something called Kindle Singles.
Guest:Have you heard of it?
Guest:Well, besides me?
Guest:No.
Guest:Okay, it's really, really... It got big because it's these...
Guest:on amazon these books right you just put them right on the kindle and then you can self-publish no no but i was lucky because i the editor where it's on amazon's main page right so anyone could do it but this is hey these are the ones amazon likes oh right so it was called my seinfeld year i just siphoned off the chapter about what it was like writing on seinfeld for a season so that was from the book that you had been working on
Guest:Yes.
Guest:I sent the guy the book.
Guest:He goes, this is funny.
Guest:It's sad.
Guest:It's good.
Guest:But how could this be a single?
Guest:Then I thought, oh, the Seinfeld chapter stands alone.
Guest:Right.
Guest:What it was like trying to maneuver with Jerry and Larry.
Guest:And they did a nice cover.
Guest:And it did really well.
Guest:So someone helped me get a literary agent that...
Guest:And then I buffed it up, and then I got all the same rejections.
Guest:Like, who cares about a guy who you don't know, you sort of know his face?
Guest:I was getting these emails that are, like, really putting me down.
Guest:Like, we think that Seinfeld is all he's got.
Guest:One of them said, I'm glad Fred still had his moment in the sun, but we don't see this as a booker.
Yeah.
Guest:And actually, because you're a podcast, I got a marketplace.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:And it did well.
Guest:So then it was funny.
Guest:As I was getting rejections, I was buffing it up.
Guest:All right.
Guest:So then I forgot.
Guest:I had a one night stand with Kathy Griffin.
Guest:So I put that in.
Guest:That's the sexual stuff.
Guest:She wanted to punch me.
Guest:That's the big seller.
Guest:That's the big picture.
Guest:I found one.
Guest:I found a celebrity.
Guest:A sad fucking sex.
Guest:experience yes exactly a very sad one and so then i i got some uh publisher and uh did you thank kathy i i i should have yeah i i i'm thanking her remember that horrible night well the funny thing is is that um she you know i don't know if i want to go this no you don't have to sued me and stuff um but all the people i was afraid of
Guest:Like she went on Howard Stern and somehow Stern heard about this, said, this guy, who's this schmuck?
Guest:You know, he's saying you slept with him and you wanted to punch him in the face after sex.
Guest:And aren't you mad?
Guest:She goes, no, I love it.
Guest:If I see Freddie Stoler, I'll give him a hug.
Guest:So, Norm MacDonald, there was a chapter called Norm Stole My Jacket.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And Norm asked me to be on his podcast.
Guest:I said, Norm, I got to come clean.
Guest:I said, you were a bully.
Guest:He goes, I don't give a shit.
Guest:So, no one cares, but the people who I didn't think would, would.
Guest:And...
Guest:I did things like I had to do, you know, permissions.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:So the cover had logos of shows.
Guest:I paid someone to make them a little bit off so I wouldn't get sued.
Guest:So this came out as a real book.
Guest:That's funny.
Guest:There's one guy, Ronnie Schell, when you mention it, at the morning table.
Guest:He used to be on Gomer Pyle.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And this table, they love when people are suffering because Jeff Garland comes to the table.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And they don't like... I shouldn't say they don't like that he's got another show.
Guest:So...
Guest:They go, oh, I heard it's not going to do good in the Midwest.
Guest:They just love the schadenfreude of show business.
Guest:They love when people fail.
Guest:That has nothing to do with them.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I heard the new Fantastic Four.
Guest:That's not going to do good.
Guest:I see that in show business all the time.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It's just this sort of like negative speculation about things.
Guest:And it's nothing to do with them.
Guest:So this guy, when I had the book- Yeah.
Guest:Ronnie Shug goes, self-published, right?
Guest:Like he was hoping it'd be self-published.
Guest:And I go, no, it's sort of a real book, sort of.
Guest:So people can get it.
Guest:They can get it.
Guest:Yeah, and it's got a cover in everything.
Guest:It's got a cover.
Guest:It's on Amazon.
Guest:It's even in libraries.
Guest:Someone just on Facebook said they got it in a library.
Guest:I haven't made a penny from it, but I don't care.
Guest:It was 10 years in the making.
Guest:What do you mean you got an advance?
Guest:Um, yeah, define advance.
Guest:Books are hard, dude.
Guest:It was, uh, yes.
Guest:I was so thrilled.
Guest:I know we say this a lot, like the money's not important to labor love, but that's, I went into a depression 10 years ago when it was getting rejected because when you're an actor, you get rejected and you're, oh, I'm a New York Jewish accent.
Guest:I'm not going to be, you know, a sheriff or a racist.
Guest:You don't take it personally.
Guest:But when they're saying, who cares about this guy's life?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:All these agents, it was... And at that point, you weren't doing stand-up, really.
Marc:No.
Guest:This was my expression.
Marc:Right.
Marc:And some of the work had dried up on you?
Guest:Yes.
Marc:And this was... So writing the book got you out of the darkness?
Guest:Well, the darkness came when everyone said, who cares?
Guest:No, no, years ago.
Guest:But then, yes, when the Kindle single did well and the book, it really, it sounds all those cliches.
Guest:It was my baby.
Guest:It was really expressing myself.
Guest:As a stand-up, I really didn't feel like I was like you expressing myself.
Guest:I remember I did, when I tried coming back, I did a show and Steve Scrovan, who you did a benefit for, can't you be like Mark Maron and sit?
Guest:You sit on a stool and...
Guest:just tell a long story i can't because i'm at flappers and i'm following guys singing money money and you know what i mean they're drunk mark maron could just sit and talk about mel brooks yeah so i don't have that i could that's why i quit stand up after 17 years i came and stopped again but the book got renewed interest in your stand-up because i i heard that you were doing stand-up well what happened was
Guest:People tracked me down.
Guest:I didn't know there was a Jewish book festival circuit.
Guest:Did you know that?
Marc:There's a Jewish book festival circuit, and I think there's a Jewish comedy circuit.
Marc:I think Elan Gold does very well on the Jew circuit.
Guest:I thought this window would open for me, but it didn't quite happen.
Guest:Okay, what happened?
Guest:So the Jewish book... So this woman tracks me down.
Guest:She heard about the book.
Guest:There's things, what they call imprints?
Guest:No, that's the... What are they called?
Guest:Galleys.
Guest:You got a galley.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And she said, we're in Detroit.
Guest:We're the biggest Jewish book festival...
Guest:thing, the oldest.
Guest:And I thought, wow, I thought it's going to be like a Comic-Con with Jews from all over, from everything sit there.
Guest:So then I was on this circuit of, no, they asked me to do a few.
Guest:A few of them wanted me to do my act, like Atlanta, St.
Guest:Louis, La Jolla.
Guest:And when was the last time you did your act?
Guest:It was like 17 years before that.
Guest:So I thought, all right, I got to kind of remember my act.
Guest:Did you look at tapes?
Guest:I tried that.
Guest:Then I thought,
Guest:I should try to get in shape a little bit.
Guest:So I was doing these little events pushing my book where I sort of thought I was coming up with material.
Guest:Like I said, like Kathy Griffin, they said, we wish there was more sex.
Guest:Me too.
Guest:Then I remembered I had sex with Kathy Griffin.
Guest:All right, he suffered enough.
Guest:Give him the book.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Get a laugh.
Guest:Yeah, I would get a laugh.
Guest:People, what else was part of the thing?
Guest:Like, I thought was part of my act where people think I'm rich because they see me on one Seinfeld and they point to the Hollywood Hills.
Guest:He must live up there.
Guest:And then I point the hand where I really live.
Guest:I don't know.
Guest:Just nonsense.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I thought, all right, I got some jokes, you know, from doing podcasts.
Guest:So then I go to these comedy clubs to try to remember my act.
Guest:And it was weird because some of these jokes are 30 years old and they still work.
Yeah.
Guest:And not the weird, morbid one line as I did when I first started, but dating.
Guest:And I felt like I'm like Three Dog Night.
Guest:Here come the hits, man.
Guest:Yeah, like these 30-year-old things.
Guest:Play joy to the world.
Guest:Yes.
Guest:And at first I go, I'm having fun because I don't have an agenda.
Guest:I'm not going to do a Netflix special or a CD.
Guest:Right.
Guest:So, at first I thought, I quit because I said you can't dabble.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Then I thought, well, maybe I could dabble again.
Guest:So, this Jewish book festival circuit, they have Jews that volunteer.
Guest:And in every city, they pick you up at the airport.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And then you have to schmooze with them before the show.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And places like St.
Guest:Louis or wherever...
Guest:They don't look like Jews.
Guest:We know that every city had different Jews.
Guest:Some had athletic-looking, tall, Danish-looking Jews, lesbian, big Jews picking up at the airport.
Guest:One of them, they had young people because they were like 55 or 60.
Guest:And they're going, hey, how's Howard?
Guest:Have you met?
Guest:Could you believe Artie?
Guest:And so one of them, I told about Kathy Griffin.
Guest:So this guy was following me around, go, who else?
Guest:Who else?
Guest:Go, what are you talking about?
Guest:Who else you sleep with?
Guest:I want more.
Guest:And so at Detroit, some of them came up to me.
Guest:They go, I'm blind.
Guest:You haven't done the audio.
Guest:There were two blind people.
Marc:So that experience, it was different than you might have hoped.
Guest:Well, I kind of liked being flown to different cities and I could tell stories about dealing with Larry David and
Guest:And I actually wanted to do the Jewish Book Festival circuit again for the paperback.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So what happened was with the hardback, I was lucky that someone sought me out.
Guest:But they have this thing where all the Jewish people from Alabama, they're from everywhere.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And they come to this thing in New York.
Guest:Right, right.
Guest:And all these Jewish authors, everything, even if they're self-published, do a two-minute pitch.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And you hope to get... Right.
Guest:It's like a NACA convention.
Guest:Yes, yes.
Guest:So then I said, all right, I'd like to do it for the paperback.
Guest:They said, oh, you got to do the pitch thing.
Guest:I go, well, don't you know me?
Guest:I didn't have to do that for the hardback.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:They said, no, no, no.
Guest:So you have to pay $600.
Guest:Oh, it's a racket.
Guest:Put yourself up in New York.
Guest:And all these Jews are getting flown to New York going, I like him.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So it's not, I like expressing myself.
Guest:I love, you were the first podcast I went on.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I didn't know what a podcast really was.
Guest:I feel like my mother, people say, hey, you got to get on WTF.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But you psych yourself out though.
Marc:I mean, there is like a certain element to, you're not going to, your brain's not going to let you win.
Guest:I guess, but I still like expressing myself like this where it's not joke, joke, da-da, joke, joke, da-da-da.
Marc:Yeah, it's one of the reasons why I like it too.
Marc:So wait, so you want to talk about the real Kramer or you do?
Guest:It's all right.
Guest:Yeah, this guy sued me for defamation for a million dollars.
Guest:For the Seinfeld piece.
Guest:Maybe we'll have you back.
Guest:But for the Seinfeld section?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yes, the part that we talked about.
Marc:So this is the guy that Kramer was based on.
Marc:What's his name, Kenny?
Marc:Kenny Kramer.
Marc:Kenny Kramer.
Marc:Yes.
Marc:So he decides to sue Fred Stoller.
Guest:For a million dollars.
Guest:For what?
Guest:What did you say?
Guest:Well, I ruined his standing in the gay community.
Guest:That's what he says on the thing.
Guest:What was the... Well, okay, so basically...
Guest:When in 96, I was in New York and he heard I needed a place to stay because I didn't want to stay with my mother.
Guest:I should have stayed with my mother.
Guest:That would have been less stressful.
Guest:So he says, you stay with me, but you got to go on my Kramer reality tours, the special guest.
Guest:He has a bus tour where he shows, hey, this is where they bought the cookies.
Marc:That's his big racket.
Marc:That's his payoff for the Seinfeld show.
Marc:Yes.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So I thought, okay.
Guest:So I was just making jokes because it's true that he had this sidekick running around the bus screaming out expressions from the show.
Guest:Everyone, the pig, the pig.
Guest:Hello, Newman.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I was writing how the second day in the tour, I was holding my hands to my ears.
Guest:I couldn't stand the guy running up and down the bus.
Guest:Yes.
Guest:And I was begging with Kramer, please let me off the bus.
Guest:I can't take this.
Guest:And I said things like I was surprised a show like Seinfeld could be so lame down.
Guest:Because, yeah, you have a 50-year-old guy with a list screaming, not that there's anything wrong with it or whatever.
Guest:I don't know.
Guest:So then he writes this open letter to me on Facebook.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:demanding a public apology.
Guest:For what?
Guest:Well, I called him an opportunist, which we all are.
Guest:And so he sues me for calling him an opportunist.
Guest:And he was just livid because, yeah, I said Seinfeld was lame down with this bus tour, which, yes, that's probably the biggest show in sitcom history.
Guest:And a bus tour with a guy running up and down a bus is, I guess I could say, a lamer version.
Guest:So you would say this is First Amendment, free speech, saying,
Guest:And I said things like, you know, whatever.
Marc:How'd you ruin his standing in the gay community?
Guest:Okay, well, this is... So I said the guy screamed out in the village where the gays are, not that there's anything wrong with it.
Guest:Come on, not that there's anything wrong with it.
Guest:So he said, I said he was taunting gays.
Guest:And it made him look like a homophobe for taunting gays.
Guest:Kenny or the other guy?
Guest:Well, it was the other guy doing it, but it made him look like a homophobe because the guy.
Marc:But you didn't say anything like that.
Guest:No.
Guest:I said.
Guest:You just said what happened.
Guest:Yes.
Guest:The guy screamed out not that there's anything wrong with it.
Guest:And so Kenny was just he just got pissed off.
Guest:He was pissed off that I hurt his feelings.
Guest:How did it end?
Guest:Seven months of litigation.
Guest:Oh my God.
Guest:Spence's, because he sued the publisher and we had to write, first of all, he's a, what's it called?
Guest:A public figure and all this stuff.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So then after seven months, finally they had oral arguments.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So the judge says to his lawyer,
Guest:If the supposed taunts was in the bus air-conditioned with the windows down, so his lawyer goes, what if there were gays on the bus?
Guest:And then the judge says, wouldn't they know that's an expression from Seinfeld and not that there's anything wrong with it?
Guest:And then the lawyer goes, that's the worst thing you could say to a homosexual in 2014.
Guest:So then the judge threw it out.
Guest:So then he appealed based on his lawyer never saw Seinfeld.
Guest:He tried to appeal.
Guest:What?
Guest:That's hilarious.
Guest:Is it over?
Guest:Yes, unless... I'm just kidding.
Marc:So this is all in the book?
Marc:Yes.
Marc:And the book, you can get it on Amazon, and hopefully they'll have you back on the Jewish book show.
Guest:You know what's funny, the Jewish book show, even on the book tours, I was a guest because I wanted to strand in New York City.
Guest:you know, big book thing.
Guest:And they said, all right, we'd love to have you.
Guest:What celebrity can you get?
Guest:I go, what are you talking about?
Guest:They go, well, to bring the people in.
Guest:I go, but I'm the guy.
Guest:They go, well, this is the Strand.
Guest:Oh, no, really?
Guest:Yeah, so then before, you know, Amy Stiller, I know from New York, our dad is Jerry.
Guest:So then I said, all right, I got Jerry Stiller.
Guest:They said, all right.
Guest:And then so then they call me up someone in publicity saying, well, you and Jerry Stiller go on some big morning show afternoon show in New York.
Guest:And he goes, I could get you on if Jerry comes.
Guest:So he's co-signing for me.
Guest:I'm not going to ask him.
Guest:It makes no sense sitting next to me.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So it was kind of, yeah.
Guest:Did you get Jerry to do the event?
Guest:He did.
Guest:How was that?
Guest:It was a lot of fun.
Guest:It was a homecoming in New York.
Guest:He was great.
Guest:Nice of him to do it.
Guest:It was very nice.
Guest:Good guy.
Guest:Yes.
Guest:Menchie, I learned about getting blurbs.
Guest:Yeah?
Guest:Oh, good.
Guest:Ray Romano wrote the foreword.
Guest:Oh, it's great.
Guest:So it's updated.
Guest:It's not a 10-year-old book.
Guest:I put in stuff...
Guest:that, you know, I buffed it up.
Marc:Well, I think you're hilarious, and I'm glad you came back, and I'm glad things sort of- So you get it?
Marc:In some ways worked out for you.
Guest:So when I would do podcasts, they would end the podcast, maybe we'll have you back, Fred.
Guest:You know, so that's a good tag.
Guest:You can always come back.
Guest:Hey, Mark, I really, again, this is, I hope I wasn't,
Guest:No, I love you, man.
Guest:All right, because sometimes I'm trying to get all the stories in.
Guest:It's all right.
Guest:The first time I was on this, I wasn't trying to score.
Guest:I was just trying to talk.
Marc:Well, you know what?
Marc:It didn't feel like you were trying to score.
Marc:No, no, first time.
Marc:No, no, this time either.
Marc:It was exciting.
Marc:And I think that people that listen, if they remember the first time, I think we're all happy that this thing worked out a little bit.
Marc:And if you don't want to do stand-up anymore, you don't have to.
Guest:I love being conversational.
Guest:I'll do it.
Guest:I was supposed to open for Norm MacDonald in Austin, and that would have been fun, me and Norm.
Guest:Right.
Guest:I have it.
Guest:Yeah, but just to just, I say, I still say you can't dabble, and 99% of the comics I know rather do that than anything else.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I think you kind of got to be that.
Guest:All right, Fred.
Guest:Thank you.
Guest:Thank you so much, Mark.
Thank you.
Marc:Oh, my God, it always makes me feel better to talk to Fred.
Marc:Go to his website.
Marc:Get involved with Fred Stoller at fredstoller.net.
Marc:Will you?
Marc:Can you?
Marc:So Jake Kasdan is a good guy.
Marc:Like I said, I met him once before.
Marc:We have some common friends.
Marc:But it's one of those situations where I'm a pretty huge fan of his father.
Marc:And I think a lot of you might be.
Marc:You know what I'm saying?
Marc:He wrote The Empire Strikes Back.
Marc:He wrote The Raiders of the Last Ark.
Marc:He wrote and directed Body Heat.
Marc:He wrote The Return of the Jedi.
Marc:He wrote, directed The Big Chill.
Marc:You know, Grand Canyon was an interesting movie.
Marc:He's done a lot of movies that I didn't see, and he's back in business with the Star Wars franchise.
Marc:But that's his dad.
Marc:So, you know, part of me is sort of like, what's it like growing up with that guy?
Marc:So I can't avoid that stuff.
Marc:But Jake is done when he was a little kid.
Marc:He had small parts in a few of his dad's movies.
Marc:But he was also involved as a director and producer on Freaks and Geeks.
Marc:He made a couple of movies, Zero Effect.
Marc:He directed Orange County.
Marc:He produced, wrote, and directed the TV set.
Marc:He directed, produced, and wrote Walk Hard, the Dewey Cox story that some people know.
Marc:He directed Bad Teacher, and he directed Sex Tape.
Marc:He did some other stuff.
Marc:But he's a young guy that's obviously capable and has done some great work.
Marc:But there's still part of me that's like, Lawrence Kasdan's your dad.
Marc:But I'm sure he gets that all the time.
Marc:But he's a sweet guy.
Marc:And it's a good story.
Marc:It's a good career story.
Marc:It's a guy that sort of had to adapt and learn how to do a lot of different things.
Marc:And I enjoy talking to the young Mr. Kasdan.
Marc:As I said earlier, he's the executive producer of The Grinder, which is that comedy that's coming out with Rob Lowe tomorrow night, Tuesday, September 29th, 8.30 p.m.
Marc:on Fox.
Marc:So this is me and Jake Kasdan.
Marc:He's a comic.
Marc:He lives a comic's life.
Marc:Yeah, he could use it then, maybe.
Marc:Well, he could definitely use the car.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:But he's going to give me a couple grand for it, and then part of me is sort of like, I'm doing all right.
Guest:Take the car.
Guest:Maybe this is a moment where you give Ryan a car.
Guest:I get it.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I hear you.
Guest:Have you had those moments in your life?
Guest:I relate to the moment, I guess, and I... Not that specific moment, but I...
Guest:The generosity, Jake.
Marc:Have you found it in your heart?
Guest:It's an impulse, I hear you.
Marc:Oh, it's an impulse.
Marc:So now that might be something I regret.
Marc:No, I don't think so.
Marc:10 years down the line when I had nothing, I don't have a pot to piss in.
Guest:And you're wishing you had that car back?
Marc:Yeah, yeah.
Marc:Wish I had that fucking two grand.
Marc:Wish I had that 2006 Camry.
Guest:Yeah, either the two grand or the car.
Marc:So where are you coming in from, man?
Marc:You're working?
Guest:I am.
Guest:Got a new show that I'm working on called The Grinder.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:With Rob Lowe and Fred Savage.
Guest:Oh, really?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You're working on Fresh Off the Boat.
Guest:I'm working on Fresh Off the Boat as well.
Guest:And then New Girl, which I've worked on for years now, is starting to figure out their next season.
Guest:The writers start working next week.
Marc:Explain to me how TV works, Jake, and then we'll move back.
I feel like...
Guest:I feel like you know a little though.
Marc:No, I don't pay attention.
Marc:My manager tells me like, well, since you're doing this and that, we're going to get you this.
Guest:Yeah, and you show up, I get it.
Guest:This one, they've all been a little bit different, but this one and New Girl as well were shows that somebody sent me the script and asked me to direct the pilot.
Guest:And in both cases, I sort of loved working on the shows and worked well with the guys who created the show.
Guest:In the case of New Girl, it's Liz Merriweather.
Guest:And on Grindr, it's these guys, Jared Paul and Andy Mogul.
Guest:In both cases, writers that I had known and been a fan.
Marc:But you're brought in as a director.
Right.
Guest:Brought in as a director and producer.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Which means different things in different cases.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And a lot of times is just sort of, you know, a credit.
Guest:In television.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I've somehow done it in a way where it means that I actually stick around for a long time and help them figure out how to get it going.
Marc:But not a showrunner, necessarily.
Guest:Not a showrunner.
Guest:Working with the showrunners.
Marc:Okay.
Marc:Like a consultant.
Guest:but like a consultant who's there all the time like a guy with a job on set it's a lot like a guy with a job that's for sure so it's a production it is an actual producer job yeah it is like producing but not a writer not writing with them in the room no so you bring to it uh you're you're reading everything watching everything and then helping them kind of construction uh some of that shooting yes exactly maybe this isn't funny exactly maybe this character doesn't need to be here
Guest:Does this feel like of a piece with the last thing we did?
Guest:Is this about anything?
Guest:Do we care whether it's about anything?
Marc:You're like the in-house fixer.
Marc:Where's Jake the fixer?
Guest:A little bit sometimes.
Guest:For better or worse, that is what it is a lot of the time.
Marc:Well, let's go back.
Marc:Let's track it because you have a famous name to some of us.
Marc:I think to movie buffs and perhaps Star Wars nerds.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Exactly.
Guest:Certainly to Star Wars nerds, yeah.
Marc:Lawrence Kasdan is your father.
Marc:Yes.
Marc:The funny thing is that I first really learned about him through the first movie, through Body Heat.
Marc:Through Body Heat, yeah.
Marc:You know, that was like when I was in high school and starting to get into film.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:We saw that movie and it was like, holy fuck, man.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:It's like a noir.
Marc:It's like a contemporary noir.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:That's when he first started throwing around words like that.
Marc:Contemporary noir.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah, that's like an insanely cool movie too.
Guest:It is a good movie.
Guest:And it's one that holds up and it's so good, yeah.
Guest:So you grow up with that guy.
Marc:Where were you born?
Guest:I was born in Detroit, but we moved out here when I was really young.
Guest:Right.
Guest:So that he could start trying to do that work.
Marc:And do you remember that?
Marc:Do you remember the struggle for him or were you already in, are your first memories on the set being held by Harrison Ford?
Yeah.
Marc:Running up, pushing that boulder, maybe.
Guest:Do I remember the boulder?
Guest:Yeah, no.
Guest:I remember when it was starting to happen and the excitement around that, but I was a little kid, you know, and I remember...
Guest:I remember the transition from a little kid's point of view of from nothing going on, like he was working in advertising.
Guest:Is that what he did?
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Like copywriting?
Guest:Copywriting.
Marc:It's interesting that that's sort of like a creative person's outlet sometimes initially, like creative people who are either clever and visually creative, but also like literary do that.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And are frustrated by it.
Guest:Of course.
Guest:I think is a big part of it, you know.
Guest:And I think in his case, there was a little bit of like he was kind of willfully doing something that he was frustrated by knowing that it would help, you know, spur him on.
Guest:Right.
Marc:Oh, really?
Marc:So he's that guy like, I need to hate myself.
Marc:Good.
Guest:I guess he might have had a little bit of that.
Guest:He needed to do it.
Marc:To move on.
Guest:Yeah, a little.
Guest:I mean, I think he was very focused on what he wanted to do when he was writing like crazy.
Guest:Screenplays.
Guest:Yeah, screenplays.
Marc:And you have a younger brother?
Guest:I do.
Marc:Now...
Marc:So you remember when Body Heat opened well, perhaps?
Guest:I don't really.
Guest:I don't really remember that detail of it.
Guest:I remember when he was making it.
Guest:I remember going to visit where they were shooting in Florida.
Guest:And meeting William Hurt.
Guest:Yeah, I remember that.
Marc:And his weird naisy, like, oh, how does he talk?
Marc:He's got a very specific way of... He has a very specific rhythm.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:Sound, yeah.
Marc:That's probably more memorable than the screenwriting and all that stuff is meeting that weirdo.
Guest:i remember that and then you know they made a bunch of movies together so he was kind of around yeah for for years oh really yeah at the house a little bit i mean there were williams here again why is he outside dad why is william hurt outside he was initially like the guy who you know he was in all the movies that that my dad made at that time do you ever him and kevin klein
Marc:Right.
Marc:Those are big actors at that time.
Marc:When do you remember, because I'm assuming, you get along with your dad?
Marc:We're very close, yeah.
Marc:That's nice.
Marc:You seem like a guy that gets along with his family.
Marc:It's a nice thing.
Marc:Strikes me as a pleasant disposition.
Guest:You can tell right away.
Marc:Yeah, you can actually.
Guest:I'm sure you can at this point.
Guest:You've probably talked to enough people about their family to where they walk in your door, sit in it.
Guest:I'm sure when the president got here, you probably thought...
Guest:I knew that he had a problem with his father.
Marc:I knew immediately.
Marc:Just by looking at him, yeah.
Marc:Well-documented problem with his father.
Marc:I cheated on that one.
Marc:But you were, like, I think I mistook, I thought that maybe you were the kids in the bathtub in The Big Chill, but no.
Guest:No, that was my brother.
Guest:Oh, he got the big... He got the bathtub.
Guest:He got the bathtub scene.
Guest:I am in there, but he's the kid in the bathtub in the beginning.
Guest:Because he needed a younger kid.
Guest:The famous memorable scene.
Marc:Yeah, singing Jeremiah was a bullfrog.
Marc:Exactly.
Marc:That's how he got his SAG card?
Guest:I suppose it is.
Marc:And you were in the movie as well?
Guest:That was how he finally got his SAG card.
Marc:Yeah, it was a long haul for him.
Marc:Exactly.
Marc:A lot of non-union commercials.
Yeah.
Marc:For secondary baby food.
Guest:Frankly, embarrassing work.
Marc:So you were in it, though?
Marc:You were, right?
Guest:I was.
Guest:I'm in the funeral scene.
Guest:I walk up to Tom Berenger's character and ask him for an autograph.
Okay.
Guest:oh okay yeah yeah i remember that i watched the shit out of that movie did you sure that's a movie that like you can return to every x number of years and it will have a slightly different uh right as you get older a little bit and you know as you get older and then suddenly the characters are younger than you you're like what i had that happen once recently and you know you you have sort of with that movie are they younger than us they are i mean they're like that well they late 30s yeah
Guest:I mean, mid-30s.
Marc:It was interesting that movie defined a generation's evolution into sort of upper middle class, middle class people.
Marc:It has a lot of stuff in it.
Marc:It has a lot of stuff in it.
Marc:It's not easy to dismiss.
Marc:No.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Now, when you're growing up with that guy...
Marc:He wrote Star Wars after Body Heat, right?
Marc:Body Heat got him to what?
Marc:What did he write?
Guest:No, actually it was the other way.
Guest:He was writing screenplays just like in- You don't mind talking to him, do you?
Guest:Not at all.
Guest:No, no.
Guest:He was writing screenplays at night, kind of.
Marc:While he's doing ad work.
Marc:While he's trying to think of slogans.
Guest:Exactly.
Guest:Catchphrases.
Guest:That's exactly.
Guest:Jingles, maybe.
Guest:That's right.
Guest:Catchy stuff to say about paper towels.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Does he have any to his credit?
Marc:Is there some...
Guest:I don't really know the ad you can point to, exactly.
Guest:But that's a Kasdan.
Guest:Larry Kasdan.
Guest:That's an early Kasdan.
Guest:I know you like Raiders, but this thing he did for toilet paper.
Guest:Exactly.
Guest:Exactly.
Guest:It's like an area that he doesn't talk about that much.
Guest:Maybe he wasn't that good at it, I don't know.
Marc:I mean, I feel like people would talk about it if you were there.
Marc:I'd love it if he did an A&W campaign.
Marc:Something ridiculous.
Marc:It doesn't exist anymore.
Guest:I mean, it was a Detroit-based ad firm, so it was probably car-centric stuff.
Marc:I can't believe you haven't asked him.
Marc:Maybe I'll have him in here.
Guest:I'll ask him.
Guest:Yeah, you should.
Guest:Absolutely.
Guest:But he was writing screenplays at night kind of thing.
Guest:And...
Guest:He wrote The Bodyguard, you remember that movie with Costner?
Marc:Yeah, and Whitney Houston.
Guest:Yeah, he wrote that many, many years before it was made.
Guest:Right.
Guest:For who?
Guest:For McQueen.
Marc:Stephen McQueen, many years, yeah, yeah.
Guest:And it was sort of like on the strength of that...
Guest:I believe, he got the job to... And then another movie called Continental Divide, actually.
Guest:I kind of remember that.
Guest:And it was those two scripts.
Marc:What was that movie?
Guest:It was Belushi.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And it was sort of like on the strength of those two spec scripts, he was hired to...
Guest:I believe, I want to say that it was Spielberg's company had bought Continental Divide.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And he was hired sort of on the strength of those to write Raiders of the Lost Ark.
Guest:And worked with those guys, wrote that script with Lucas and Spielberg.
Guest:I guess they had had a good time in the course of doing that.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:the story, at least as it's been told to me, is he sort of turned it in.
Over and over again.
Guest:Exactly.
Guest:As I've heard agnosium.
Guest:That's not quite, but I've heard it, is that he turned it in.
Guest:Sometimes you just witness the story.
Guest:But also you maybe alter it in your head, but I think that the thing is that he turned it in.
Guest:Raiders.
Guest:Raiders.
Guest:And basically like that day,
Guest:Lucas said, the person, the woman who was writing Empire Strikes Back just passed away.
Guest:And will you do that?
Guest:And so he went directly into writing Empire.
Guest:So he wrote Raiders and Empire Strikes Back in the space of several months.
Guest:Those turned out to be fairly big movies.
Guest:Those were popular.
Guest:Kids liked those movies.
Guest:They did.
Guest:And then off of those, he went and made Body Heat and Lucas kind of in a uncredited position sort of helped him.
Guest:Direct?
Guest:Direct, yeah.
Marc:And so he learned how to direct from Lucas on the sly.
Yeah.
Guest:Yeah, I guess so.
Guest:Although, I don't know if he was really there, but he helped make it happen.
Marc:Right.
Marc:Oh, okay.
Marc:And he went on to write which other Star Wars movies?
Guest:And then he wrote Jedi, the third.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And then he had nothing to do with the next set that came out 15 years ago.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But now- He's back.
Guest:He's back.
Guest:Are they going to put that in the credits?
Guest:Yeah, maybe.
Guest:Lawrence Kasdan is back.
Guest:He's back.
Guest:I think that's how they say it at Comic Con.
Guest:At the scribe helm.
Guest:Exactly.
Guest:And then he was sort of recruited into working on this new set and then his role in that has gradually increased a little bit and so he's really involved in that.
Marc:So that's exciting for him.
Guest:It's really cool, yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And it's a wild thing where like 30 years later... Yeah, guess what?
Guest:We're going back to space.
Guest:Yeah, you know?
Guest:And people are interested in those movies.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:People are excited about him.
Marc:Well, I imagine they're excited that he's back because he probably represents to them the integrity of the franchise in some way.
Marc:Like from the old days.
Marc:I imagine there's plenty of Star Wars people that are like, they haven't been good since Kasdan was writing them.
Guest:I'm sure there are people who feel that way, and I think that he certainly represents some continuity to the original movies.
Guest:I mean, he is not even just representing it.
Guest:I mean, he is direct continuity to the original movies.
Guest:Right, sure.
Marc:And he's got a great sense of story, that guy.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:For sure.
Marc:So now let's move to you.
Marc:Don't be insulted.
Marc:When I had Jacob Dillon in here, it was a little more difficult to get him to talk about his father.
Marc:Really?
Marc:Yeah, but I asked.
Marc:Because you went into the same racket.
Guest:Yeah, and I'm not at all insulted, by the way.
Guest:I'm happy to, not at all happy to talk about it.
Marc:Well, I think, you know, what happens, not so much with what you do, but with somebody like Jacob, you know, you're sort of publicly, you know, drawn into comparisons to your father.
Guest:If you're going to go out with a guitar and be Jacob Dylan, people are going to be like, really?
Guest:Really?
Guest:Yeah, that's a pretty radical example of that thing too.
Marc:No, no, but it is.
Marc:And I think that, you know, on some level in my mind, you know, I don't compare you two, but you think in terms of like the decisions you make, obviously as a writer, as a director, you're not as public and the comparisons are going to be different.
Marc:Right.
Marc:But there are sort of thoughts of like, you know, did you think about doing something else?
Marc:Was it easier because he was your dad?
Marc:But I mean, when did you start realizing that show business was the business you wanted to be in?
Guest:Well, I mean, I think that I had this incredible sort of access and point of view from like a really young age that let me see what it looked like and what it seemed like.
Guest:And, you know, it was really attractive, like even when I was a little kid.
Guest:Right.
Guest:How could it not be?
Guest:Yeah, I mean, it looked like the best job in the world, you know.
Guest:And he certainly...
Guest:reinforced that idea you know directly like this is incredibly uh fortunate circumstance and you know realize how lucky you are like even as a kid right you know to be here yeah yeah to be tough this is what our life is like right and um
Guest:you know, that we get to, that he got to do that stuff at that time.
Guest:And I think, you know.
Marc:And he paid some serious dues.
Marc:I mean, he was working, supporting a family, writing scripts at night, probably turning in dozens of scripts.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:That didn't go anywhere.
Guest:Exactly.
Guest:And he has, you know, like this, he's got this thing framed in his office that's like everybody who passed on
Guest:bodyguard oh really you know it's like a lot of people and um and then you know it's like so it's you know a testament to the kind of persistence of it which is another you know real um like lesson and a worthwhile thing to that i guess i could see close up you know that there was you have to no easy route yeah you got to keep working at it you know
Marc:You've got to keep working, and once you do get your break, you've got to deliver on some level, right?
Guest:That's another big important part of it.
Guest:And your brother's in show business as well?
Guest:Because it runs out really quickly.
Guest:The goodwill?
Guest:Yeah, a little bit.
Guest:You know, as much as there is any to begin with, which is quite, you know, but there's certainly like... So the jump between, so you're Larry's kid, to like, all right, you did a thing, now you're in.
Guest:Yeah, a little bit.
Guest:It doesn't quite follow to like, you're Larry's kid, I can't wait to see your movie.
Marc:You know, that's not... It's more of a like... It's not a direct line.
Marc:We gotta do something with Larry's kid.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:It's funny, because now I think back on it,
Guest:With like a slightly different perspective.
Guest:And I imagine, I mean, I think about the things that I'm asked to read or, you know, it, um, I can't imagine it was like that exciting to read Larry's kids stuff, you know?
Yeah.
Guest:Like, I can't imagine that people were stoked that they got that opportunity necessarily on that basis.
Marc:What were those scripts?
Guest:You know, I mean, I... I don't know.
Guest:Like, I mean, I started writing scripts at a certain point, you know, and... How old?
Guest:I was like, you know, early 20s.
Guest:Yeah?
Guest:Did you go to school and shit?
Guest:I dropped out of a couple of different colleges and then started basically doing that.
Marc:Okay, so you grew up pretty much here in Los Angeles.
Marc:Bev Hills?
Guest:The Valley initially and then Beverly Hills when I was in high school.
Marc:And you're living that life, Beverly Hills teenager life.
Guest:Sort of, but probably maybe like a slightly odd version of it.
Guest:Oh, yeah?
Guest:How so?
Guest:A little bit.
Guest:I mean, I went to high school.
Guest:I finished high school at like a sort of small kind of artsy private school.
Marc:The one down in Santa Monica?
Yeah.
Marc:Which school?
Guest:No.
Guest:My brother, you're thinking of Crossroads, where my brother went and where my now wife went.
Guest:But I went to a different one called Wynward that was at the time sort of another one kind of like that.
Guest:And is sort of a slightly different thing now.
Guest:But it was sort of like a progressive artsy kind of school.
Guest:And so it wasn't, you know, with a surprisingly diverse...
Guest:kind of student body yeah that a lot of whom are still my very close friends actually like I kept a lot of close friends from high school were these Hollywood kids people we would know that's the thing is that they weren't mostly you know Crossroads was Crossroads was a little sort of more developed and had a little more of that at that time right um
Guest:You know, there was a little bit of it, but not that much.
Guest:And so it didn't really feel like a Beverly Hills life exactly.
Guest:Although I'm sure in many ways it was, but it wasn't...
Guest:You know, it felt like everybody came from slightly different kinds of worlds and the people that I was close to were sort of, had a very diverse, you know.
Guest:So you weren't running around with celebrity kids?
Guest:No, I wasn't really like running around with celebrity kids that much.
Marc:You don't strike me as the party guy.
Guest:No, I've never been that guy.
Guest:It's that obvious.
Marc:You strike me as the thoughtful kid that hang around with the delicate ones.
Guest:Yeah, I was the thoughtful one with the delicate ones, exactly.
Guest:It's just a perfect read.
Guest:Maybe still am.
Guest:Like maybe nothing changes from the time you're 15.
Guest:It's possible.
Marc:Well, I think a little bit.
Marc:You do sort of find that you're whatever you were with a little more confidence, hopefully.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And a little less anger for me.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:A little more confidence and a little more...
Guest:Although I don't know actually if I – it's a different confidence.
Guest:I probably had too much confidence then in some ways.
Guest:I was very comfortable with my thoughtful – Delicate friends.
Guest:Thoughtful, delicate friends.
Guest:Yeah, exactly.
Guest:And then, you know, I think that – I don't know.
Guest:You went to college and what?
Guest:I like all the same stuff I liked then.
Guest:Like what?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I mean, I like the same movies.
Guest:Yeah?
Guest:I like a lot of the same... Kind of.
Guest:Like, I loved Bob Dylan then.
Guest:I don't know.
Marc:What about movies?
Marc:What movies were the ones that made you... Outside of your dad's movies, maybe, that made you want to pursue things in this business?
Guest:I mean, I think, you know, I had like a...
Guest:on the initially like I was definitely a kid who was like you know just enraptured by comedies of that time you know the the Bill Murray Harold Ramis canon and then you know those kind of movies but then there was a as I got older I sort of you know you start to
Guest:more sophisticated hopefully a little more and you know as i was kind of really starting to try to do the work i was more focused on like you know network and all the presence yeah so you go to college to study what
Guest:Well, I went to college briefly, twice, to study.
Guest:What happened?
Guest:I just kept dropping out.
Guest:I was unhappy in the first place and left, and then I went to another place where I thought maybe I would be better.
Guest:Which places were these?
Guest:The first place was Hampshire College.
Guest:Sure, hippie school.
Guest:So you went right from a progressive- You must go to these places.
Guest:No, the progressive- You must play those.
Guest:No, I don't play Hampshire.
Marc:Do you play Northampton?
Marc:No.
No.
Marc:But it's funny to me that you go from a progressive- Yeah, well, that was the thing.
Guest:But then I went to another one, too, because I went to Santa Cruz after that.
Guest:Oh, my God.
Guest:Yeah, I just kept going to these progressive hippie schools.
Guest:You just never went to a real school.
Guest:And then didn't like them.
Guest:So it was like, I didn't learn my lesson.
Guest:I just kept trying the same thing.
Marc:The freedom of not having structure was appealing to you.
Guest:Yeah, exactly.
Guest:So much so that I eventually abandoned the whole endeavor to where there was no structure at all.
Marc:Did you get a credit for that?
No.
Guest:I don't think so.
Marc:How do you want to design your education?
Marc:I want to abandon education.
Guest:Yeah, exactly.
Marc:Wow, so that's your thesis, leaving school.
Guest:And I really followed through with that.
Marc:That's great.
Marc:They must be proud of you.
Marc:You should go back and get some sort of doctorate.
Guest:I think it's unlikely.
Marc:wasn't that kind of education right right like he's back this is the guy that majored in leaving exactly that's exactly right i was majoring and leaving so okay so you get back here and you're just gonna put your nose to the grindstone and write shit yeah and then you know your dad said um i'm projecting everything well okay look if you put something together i'll give it to uh my agent um
Guest:not exactly but i i mean he wasn't that you know he was kind of reading stuff for you yeah and giving me great kind of like feedback and a lot of how i learned to do that well let's talk about that so what what was the first script that you said all right dad i got i did it here's 120 pages of mess that i made
Guest:It was a, you know, why initially before that actually had been writing.
Guest:This will give you a real sense.
Guest:I was writing plays in high school.
Guest:It was that version of it.
Guest:Yeah, absolutely.
Guest:Especially in high school.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And so I started doing that like really young and he could be.
Guest:He and my mother both were like a great sort of first audience.
Guest:She's a writer as well?
Guest:She probably wouldn't call herself a writer, but they have written together a bunch.
Guest:They've written a couple of movies together.
Marc:Which one?
Marc:Accidental Tourist?
Guest:No, Grand Canyon.
Marc:Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:And a recent movie called Darling Companion.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:But she's like a thoughtful person and a great reader.
Guest:and anyway like in that at that time they were they would read stuff and they were very supportive but also could be strong about like this is not really a play because it has no drama that kind of thing as a note a parental note kind of i mean you know maybe slightly more you're going a little arty were you
Guest:delicately I don't even think I was I mean it was more it was just like learning or you know trying to learn how how drama works I guess you know and and so you know that we it started very young I had this kind of like
Guest:conversation going with them that continued into the first few scripts and there were a couple of like I'm trying and you know would try for a long time to get something to be really good and had a couple mediocre attempts that were you know probably sort of embarrassing and then got to one that
Guest:It seemed like maybe there was something to it, and I kept writing that for a long time.
Marc:Which one was that?
Guest:It was called Zero Effect, and that became my first movie.
Guest:Ben Stiller.
Guest:Yeah, with Ben and Bill Pullman.
Guest:That was my first movie.
Guest:Did not do well.
Guest:No.
Guest:There's no way to... I mean, you know, it was sort of...
Guest:People liked it enough to where I was able to make a credible case that I could do more of this maybe.
Guest:So that was a big undertaking.
Guest:It was a big undertaking.
Marc:And throughout the course of writing Zero Effect, you were in touch with Lawrence Kasdan, your father.
Marc:I was.
Marc:And he helped you in structuring it and directing it as well?
Guest:He didn't like locating what the big problem was kind of in the writing part of it.
Marc:What do those problems look like?
Marc:Is it like it turns into the story?
Marc:I mean, you got no third act?
Guest:In that case, it was probably like a... There's sort of a character comedy central to it, but it's a detective story.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And the detective story part of it was...
Guest:Not totally figured out.
Guest:And it took a long time to figure out.
Marc:You kind of need to have that figured out so it goes somewhere.
Guest:Yeah, a little bit.
Guest:And so it feels like it has an ending.
Guest:That's tricky.
Guest:It was tricky.
Guest:And it took a long, you know, it was like I spent another year working on it or something before.
Marc:And once you got the gig, who produced the movie?
Marc:Did your father produce it?
Marc:No.
Marc:It was Castle Rock.
Marc:Castle Rock.
Marc:Oh, yeah, I remember Castle Rock.
Marc:What was that guy's name, Glenn?
Marc:Well, he was the TV guy.
Guest:Yeah, the TV guy, yeah, exactly.
Marc:I remember meeting with him post-Seinfeld.
Guest:He can give a fuck about anything.
Guest:Seinfeld was very good for those guys.
Guest:They were great guys, though.
Guest:Martin Shafer was the president of the company, and Rob Reiner was his company, and Rob was kind of around.
Guest:As well, and sort of had a, you know, would respond and give notes and thoughts and stuff.
Guest:So he was like an early voice as well.
Marc:Yeah, I like his voice.
Marc:I'd like to hear him giving notes.
Guest:Yeah, he was great.
Guest:He was great.
Guest:He's made some good movies.
Guest:And he was the guy who would watch the movie and suggest that you cut out your favorite scene and make you talk it all the way through.
Guest:You respect his filmmaking?
Yeah.
Guest:Yeah, well, Rob, I mean, absolutely.
Guest:And he had just this incredible run of movies, you know, back-to-back movies.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:That started with Spinal Tap.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Which is one of my all-time favorite comedies.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And then The Kids...
Marc:Stand By Me.
Guest:Stand By Me.
Marc:And then when Harry Met Sally, Misery.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Harry Met Sally was right after that.
Guest:It's hard to think of anybody who's got a first five movies quite like that.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And that are that popular and that and sort of broad and audience appeal.
Guest:Varied.
Marc:So that was your first movie experience.
Marc:And your father, did he come to set?
Guest:They came to visit at that time.
Marc:But what about figuring out your way around the camera and shit?
Guest:Well, you know, I'd been around it a lot, and I had been around one of his movies, Wyatt Earp, like really closely a few years before that.
Marc:Because you were old enough to take it in.
Guest:Yeah, and I was there sort of for most of that production, and the idea was that I was writing a book about the making of that movie.
Marc:How'd that book come out?
Guest:Well, what had ended up happening was I wrote this, I sort of like put together this kind of promotional thing from these interviews because I did like crazy amounts of interviews with everyone involved in making the movie.
Guest:Like a lot of like behind the scenes, like the cowboys who take care of the horses.
Guest:You know, like this incredibly detailed sort of survey of like everything that goes into making a huge Western.
Guest:And then I wrote like a hundred pages of a book.
Guest:like an actual text about this, like trying to synthesize it into something.
Guest:And then, you know, the movie came out and it was sort of like a disappointment.
Guest:And I think that at that time... I liked the movie.
Guest:The movie's great.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It was to the... What happened with it was disappointing to the people who made it.
Guest:But it was... You know, the movie's really cool.
Marc:It's a monster.
Guest:It's a monster.
Guest:And it was, you know, a seven-month shoot.
Guest:And it was just this kind of scope that...
Guest:It's like an unusual thing to be able to see.
Guest:You don't see it anymore.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:It was the last of them.
Guest:It was right up there.
Guest:It's certainly a dying breed a little bit.
Marc:Isn't it interesting your father's compulsion to make the... That was the second Western.
Marc:Yeah, it was the second Western.
Marc:And Silverado, I enjoyed it.
Marc:He loves Westerns, yeah.
Guest:And so did Costner.
Guest:And they had that partnership.
Guest:They made a bunch of movies together.
Guest:And it was just this...
Guest:But, you know, it was this massive thing.
Marc:It's such a film thing.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:To sort of take that, you know, I think what it seems like your old man might have liked about story, you know, you could put it all into a very human package with a Western.
Marc:Create these mythic personalities.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I think, you know, he grew up on them a little bit and it was just like those guys love cowboy movies.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:So you're watching his relationship with the cinematographer.
Guest:I was watching it really closely and he had the most amazing people working on that movie too.
Guest:So it was like, you know, it was Owen Roisman who was just like a genius DP who...
Guest:which had French Connection, and they work amazing movies.
Guest:And it was this incredible sort of, I sat there quietly, basically taking notes for like seven months.
Guest:And then actually beyond that, all the way through the editing and everything, and it was a real.
Marc:That was your film school.
Guest:It was a little bit of a film school, yeah.
Marc:So by the time you got to zero effect, you had a certain amount of knowledge.
Guest:You knew your way around a set.
Guest:I did, and I knew what everybody did, and I had some sense of how the kind of mechanism of it worked and the intention behind things.
Guest:And then I surrounded myself with really good people was the other thing.
Guest:And I had a DP named Bill Pope, who's like a brilliant guy, that taught me a ton about how that worked.
Marc:But then you didn't do another movie for years.
Guest:For a few years.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:What'd you do?
Guest:I did, I went and I made the pilot for Freaks and Geeks.
Guest:With Judd.
Guest:How'd you get involved with those guys?
Guest:uh you know he called me up out of nowhere and um and basically we had met once or twice through ben in the course of making zero effect um and basically he he
Guest:He called up one day and said, there's this pilot that I'm producing and I need someone to come and direct it.
Guest:And I remember he said, and help me with the music.
Guest:That was like in his head.
Guest:That was the hole that he needed filled or something.
Guest:And he described it to me.
Guest:And I had been at that time, it had been about a year since Zero Effect had come out and I had been sort of...
Guest:I'd been writing.
Guest:I was living in San Francisco mostly at that time.
Guest:I went up there for a little while right after that movie came out to just kind of like... Run away?
Guest:Yeah, just get out of town for a minute.
Guest:Oh, yeah?
Guest:Well, how'd you feel?
Guest:See friends and stuff.
Marc:Were you disappointed?
Guest:You know, initially I was... It was a little bit of a...
Guest:Yeah, I guess I was disappointed that it wasn't quite what you imagine as you're making it in terms of when it came out, but it was also a great experience, and I was really proud of it.
Guest:And it's just the first time you put one of those things out, it...
Guest:it usually beats the hell out of you a little bit one way or another why wouldn't it and i guess no matter how you frame it or what you've been through what your family's been through there's party that's like yeah this is a good one this is a good movie yeah you just hope for the best you know yeah and even if you know as i did like that it can go any different way it's still you know and the truth is it's always like that i mean whenever you put these things out you're
Guest:you sort of know that it can be any kind of thing.
Guest:Yeah, it might be.
Guest:It's out of your control.
Guest:It can be great.
Guest:It can be brutal.
Guest:Right.
Guest:You know?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So I, yeah, I went up to- Was it well received by critics?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It was.
Guest:I mean, it had been, I had no legitimate complaints about anything.
Guest:And I kind of knew that too.
Guest:You know what I mean?
Guest:Like I had a, I-
Guest:I knew exactly what it was, sort of.
Guest:That I had gotten to do this thing.
Guest:It was all I had wanted to do.
Guest:It was thrilling and all of that.
Guest:you know and then you got to do it again so it's just like and i think that there was i'd been working on it for a long time at that point and i was just kind of like resetting and wanted to see you know some friends who live somewhere else kind of and be somewhere else for a minute find seek uh uh refuge with the thoughtful delicate people exactly i'd lost track of the thoughtful delicate people and i needed to find them
Guest:And where were they?
Guest:San Francisco.
Guest:They were in San Francisco, obviously.
Marc:Yeah, they were dropping out in a different way.
Marc:That's where they are.
Guest:Exactly.
Marc:That town's built for them.
Guest:Exactly.
Marc:That's where you graduate to.
Guest:They felt like they had finally found the right place.
Marc:They probably had.
Marc:Exactly.
Marc:And then Judd calls you up to direct and pick music.
Guest:He called me up and asked me if I wanted to direct this pilot, and he described it to me over the phone and described the opening with the Freaks and Geeks pilot opens with, like,
Guest:You know, in the bleachers of a football game, it's like a cheerleader and a jockey guy kind of like having an overwrought, very emotional sort of typical high school television show conversation about their relationship.
Guest:And then the camera like drops under the bleachers and you meet the like freak dirtbag guys who the show is actually going to be about.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And then you sort of like get into their conversation and then swing over to the geek kids who are like...
Guest:you know, reciting dialogue from Caddyshack to each other.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And then get confronted by a bully.
Guest:And I just thought it was, it was like in that description.
Guest:I mean, he probably said about that, you know, it just sounded, I just, I loved it.
Guest:And I loved talking to him about it kind of.
Guest:And basically he said right in that moment, like,
Guest:Yeah, sure.
Guest:And I hadn't worked in television before and didn't really know that much about it.
Guest:And it was something I was interested in and kind of on a whim decided to do it.
Guest:And then they sent me Paul's script and it was great.
Guest:But, I mean, all this happened in about 36 hours, and it was just sort of like, yeah, sure, why not?
Guest:And it ended up being this experience that kind of changed a lot of what followed.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:So it still impacted a lot of my life.
Guest:So you directed that pilot.
Guest:Mm-hmm.
Guest:And then four other ones.
Guest:So I directed about a third of it.
Guest:Yeah.
Yeah.
Marc:Great people to work with.
Guest:And was there the whole time, you know, like stuck around.
Guest:It was the first show that I directed the pilot and then ended up sticking around kind of.
Marc:And that's become sort of what you do.
Marc:It's one of the things I do, yeah.
Marc:Jake will hang out.
Guest:He does the pilot.
Guest:He'll stick around forever.
Guest:He likes to hang out.
Guest:A little bit, yeah.
Guest:Just give the producer credit.
Guest:He'll fucking hang out.
Guest:Just he'll do whatever the thing is.
Guest:He'll probably go do it.
Guest:Whatever you least want to deal with, he'll probably run down there and do it.
Marc:But so that was an amazing experience because, you know, that crew, a couple who I've talked to has gone on, as you have, to do amazing things and continue working from that juncture forward.
Guest:It was an amazing thing.
Guest:I mean, it was just this, you know, that you kind of couldn't have anticipated, really.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:If you would have projected to now from then...
Guest:And described it to everybody, you would sound insane.
Guest:All three guys will be bankable leading men.
Guest:And Seth Rogen will be the first.
Guest:Everybody involved has kept going.
Guest:It was certainly the other side of the coin of my... It was the other major formative experience.
Marc:And also that show is pretty...
Marc:Filmic, it's not a three-camera box.
Marc:Yeah, no, that's right.
Marc:So it was more in your wheelhouse anyways coming into it.
Guest:It was, and I think that maybe that is something that I helped bring to it almost without knowing because that was sort of the look and feel that I knew and related to, and it felt like was...
Guest:was right for that thing.
Guest:But there was also just this huge learning curve at that moment.
Guest:About what?
Guest:About comedy, you know, about like a, a classic kind of comedy process, a joke oriented comedy process.
Marc:Really?
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Because that's sort of sublimated in that anyway as well.
Marc:I mean, that's not, again, it's not an audience show.
Marc:It's not, the comedy is very, it comes from an organic place.
Marc:You're not doing, you know, joke to joke.
Guest:It's not punchy in the way that certainly a lot of those people, you know, their subsequent work has been.
Guest:But it's it was definitely a world where it had to be funny.
Guest:And if something was funny, it was going in the show.
Guest:That would be enough to get it in the show.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You know, it's a way of thinking about whether something's scoring and making check marks in a script and all of that, you know, just sort of like, because Judd really did come from, as is well documented, you know, a kind of strict comedy background.
Guest:And I was really interested, but just didn't know anything about that, you know.
Marc:So that's really what you had to learn.
Guest:And it was a big thing, you know.
Guest:Do you remember specific?
Guest:And also like, you know, the idea that they could improvise, the idea that you could depart from the script and what happens might be better.
Guest:Right.
Guest:That you could shoot alternate jokes.
Guest:And, you know, and part of it was me sort of trying to figure out how to build a system for doing that stuff that kind of allowed for that.
Guest:room as a director as a director yeah and then i think a lot of what we together figured out about how that would work has informed a lot of what a lot of us have done since you know sure um in terms of like how can you shoot something in sort of a filmic way that feels like a movie but
Guest:has that kind of looseness to it and all of you have done it all of you have directed pretty big comedies i mean you have judd paul you yeah and i guess ben was off doing the stiller show at that time right during freaks and geeks or was that yeah ben was not involved in freaks and geeks except that he came to do a in a sort of like because we could feel the axe coming down on freaks
Guest:Really almost the whole time it was on the air.
Marc:Just because of viewership?
Guest:Yeah, the ratings were terrible.
Guest:And we didn't really, you know, it had fans for sure, but there was just a strong sense of the way the network would talk about it that it was not going to last very long.
Guest:And as sort of a last ditch effort to, you know, trying to come up with everything we possibly could to be able to keep making them, Ben generously came and did like a cameo in what in retrospect seems like a fairly forced kind of thing.
Guest:Story idea, which is that he was playing a Secret Service agent.
Guest:Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:Accompanying the vice president to speak in the auditorium of their school.
Guest:But he was really, really funny.
Marc:And then when you started to do the bigger movies, I mean, what was it?
Marc:After Freaks and Geeks, you did...
Guest:I did that right after Freaks and Geeks.
Guest:I did the pilot for Undeclared, which was Judd's next show.
Marc:The sort of like the follow up.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Follow up.
Guest:And then was going to do my standard hang around thing.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I instead got a call to make Orange County, which had been written by Mike White, who was a writer on Freaks.
Guest:And I knew from there and Scott Rudin was making that movie.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:With the Hanks kid.
Marc:And that movie was popular.
Marc:That was a good movie.
Guest:It was somewhat popular.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It was popular enough.
Marc:And then you start making movies.
Marc:So now you're making movies?
Guest:Well, I was always sort of bouncing back and forth.
Guest:Which is not a bad place to be.
Guest:I continued to do sort of both things a little bit.
Guest:And after Orange County, there was...
Guest:There was a little period of figuring out the next thing, and then I ended up writing scripts that didn't totally pan out and stuff.
Guest:And then I wrote a movie called The TV Set that's about the television business.
Guest:I saw that.
Guest:I saw that one.
Guest:Did you?
Guest:It's like a satire.
Guest:Yeah, kind of.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:The inspiration for it, somewhat counterintuitively maybe, had been the...
Guest:watching the sort of unraveling of John Kerry in the presidential campaign, which felt like this very acute case of the crapification of everything where some really worthwhile guy
Guest:just sort of gets chipped away at by this process.
Marc:Yeah, a very well-funded process of character assassination.
Guest:A little bit, yeah.
Guest:The character assassination and the screwiness of that.
Guest:And somehow from that
Guest:I started writing about this other thing that I knew much more closely.
Guest:And we originally intended that to maybe be like an improvised movie, possibly, but then ended up just writing it and put it together, very small.
Marc:But then you did Walk Hard, which is a big movie.
Guest:Then I did Walk Hard with Judd.
Marc:He was producing and he brought you in?
Guest:Um, he, well, I had had that idea.
Guest:He had called me up and, um, because part of Judd's sort of genius is that at exactly the moment when he
Guest:could first sort of anticipate what was about to happen with him.
Guest:And he really did sort of anticipate it in a way that I've never quite seen anyone do.
Guest:Which is right when 40-year-old Virgin was coming out, he called his friend sort of and said, if you've got anything you can think of, let's get a bunch of stuff going basically.
Guest:And we had remained...
Guest:close in the time since freaks right and um and one night you know partly in response to all of the like biopics there had been a few of these kind of big very important elegantly made biopics with you know that always sort of feature these like a staggering performance at the center of it and um
Guest:But have sort of this very, you know, the kind of like trappings of the important biography sort of movie.
Guest:I had this idea to make like a fake one.
Guest:Sort of like in like a Ben Stiller show-esque movie.
Guest:you know, with a lot of sort of filmic veracity, that it would be this kind of crazy, over-the-top journey biopic about a fictional musician who, you know, goes through everything all the way to 11, all of them combined, every musical style.
Guest:And also, you know, I love music, and a lot of my friends are musicians, and my wife is a musician.
Marc:There's an original score on that, right?
Guest:Original soundtrack, yeah, where we tracked...
Guest:40 original songs with John Riley, who played the character, Dewey Cox, John singing the songs.
Guest:And we spent like, I mean, something like eight months writing these songs and working with songwriters, a lot of whom were friends of mine.
Guest:You feel it.
Guest:It's a big, fun movie.
Guest:It's definitely like no group of people has ever worked harder for such an unbelievably silly idea, kind of.
Guest:And it was this years-long process.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And John was the perfect person to do it because he can really...
Guest:And he's just like an amazing actor.
Guest:So he could do it.
Guest:And could actually be cast in a movie like the ones we were kind of parodying.
Guest:And just put everything he had into it.
Guest:So it was like we all...
Guest:really kind of like left it on the floor in the most insane way for this ridiculous movie and it was like this really fun couple and it got it got a rollout like one of those they they you know all the promotion yeah no we do we we i mean maybe it might have bit us in the ass a little bit but we we definitely were very into and judd
Marc:You satirized what you were doing, the thing you were making fun of all the way through.
Guest:Yes, exactly.
Guest:Promotionally and every other way.
Guest:All the way, the ads, the trailers.
Guest:Judd somehow got them to do a parody of an Oscar campaign for John and stuff.
Guest:So it would be like him running down the street in a diaper.
Guest:It was just like...
Guest:Looking just overwrought and dramatic kind of.
Marc:He's a good sport with comedy.
Guest:Oh yeah, he was awesome.
Marc:Yeah, so was that like the high point of the fun you've had in show business?
Guest:It was right up there.
Guest:I don't know if anything's ever been more fun than that.
Guest:I've had some really fun ones, but that was a really fun movie to make.
Guest:And again, this didn't really work commercially, but it was this sort of crazy thing.
Guest:And then as soon as it doesn't, you kind of look at each other and you're like, well, of course it didn't.
Guest:I remember my wife said at the time, what did you think was going to happen?
Guest:It was like the weirdest idea.
Guest:What do you mean what did you think was going to happen?
Guest:Then everybody would like it.
Guest:yeah you think everybody's gonna like you know and it's one of these movies that like people return to and we hear about and we all still hear about it and also like rock stars end up seeing it on the bus and we end up hearing about that which is great too like a wide array of people relate to it and will approach john various places it's a cult movie yeah it's like its own little thing you know
Marc:Did Bad Teacher do alright?
Guest:Yeah, it did.
Guest:It did.
Guest:It did well.
Guest:And it was one that we had, you know, it was just a really funny script that these guys, Lee Eisenberg, Jane Subnitsky had written, and I...
Guest:thought again i mean that's a sort of the inverse thing where i just thought this was a really fun little movie that you could do i just thought it was a really funny script and then you know and kind of weird and dark and then it ended up being this kind of commercial movie you know like a summer comedy which i hadn't yeah it was great no good experience for you
Guest:It was a great experience.
Guest:It was fun with, it was the first time I'd worked with Cameron and that was a great, great thing.
Guest:And Jason was in it too?
Guest:And Jason was in it and it was the first time that we had worked together in the time, you know, since.
Guest:Since Freaks?
Guest:Freaks.
Guest:I mean, we'd remained in touch and were friends and everything.
Guest:Sweet guy.
Guest:Really good guy.
Guest:Just one of the best.
Marc:And then you do some more TV and then you do the sex date movie, which was Jason as well.
Marc:How'd that do?
Guest:Didn't do so great.
Guest:Got her ass kicked on that one.
Guest:You never know, man, that's the thing.
Guest:It's like, you can get your ass kicked on any given day.
Marc:But you seem to be, like, is it because, it seems the ones you had a great deal of personal investment in, which would be, you know, Zero Effect, TV Set, and Walk Hard.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:That...
Marc:You know, you appreciate what they were and you're able to put it into context.
Marc:And the other ones are sort of like, you know, jobs that either go one way or the other.
Guest:You know, I get fully immersed.
Marc:But writing something and directing it.
Guest:Is different, yeah, totally.
Guest:Writing it and directing it.
Marc:But you seem to fare pretty well with it.
Marc:It doesn't seem like you're too beat up by the degrees of variation in the success of these movies or TV shows.
Marc:Is it because you are able to sort of frame it as part of the job?
Guest:I think that it's, you know, I... Or are you hiding something from me?
Marc:Do you go home and yell at the wall?
Guest:I mean, when you get the... You know, when a movie comes out, it's either kind of like you made it through, and you can be happy about that, or you feel like it's like you got in a car accident, and I've had that happen a few times, you know?
Guest:I've had both things, and I've had it with the TV shows, too, where it's like...
Guest:something can sort of catch for whatever reason.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And maybe not, and you don't really have that much control over it.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And when it doesn't go the way you want it to, you feel it much more than you do when it goes well.
Guest:Right, right.
Guest:You know?
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:If you continue, if you keep enough stuff going, then hopefully you're able to continue doing the work, which is the main thing.
Guest:I definitely like feel it when it's hard, you know, and can get,
Guest:knock down yeah but i do feel like you know there's sort of a basic perspective that you try to keep in is this something you learned from your father i think so i think it's partly something that i learned from although he has taken his hits as well that's what i mean how does he handle it
Guest:He can get down, and I think part of it is you see that, and so you know that it's there.
Marc:It's so much time invested in these things.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You know, then you also just have a little bit of a... I mean, it sounds trite, right, maybe, but it's just...
Guest:You're lucky to do it.
Guest:So that stuck with you?
Guest:Yeah, a little bit.
Guest:It did.
Guest:I try to hang on to that.
Guest:When I was making my first movie...
Guest:And as I was in the middle of, I guess I'm allowed to say this, but as I was in the middle of making my first movie, he's talked about it.
Guest:My brother got very sick and he had Hodgkin's disease, which is, you know, they always say like the most treatable disease.
Guest:That's the cancer you want.
Guest:Which was still, you know, shake you to your bone kind of terrifying at the time.
Guest:And it was right while I was like in pre-production on Make Zero Effect.
Guest:And there was something about that I really do feel that has...
Guest:truly stuck with me, which is, you know, the best, most exciting phone call you ever get could be separated by 10 minutes from the most terrifying phone call you ever get that will make everything else in your world seem incredibly small.
Guest:That your brother has cancer.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And, and, you know, he was then treated and he's, you know, now I knock wood every time I talk about it, but he's,
Guest:It's been a long time that he's been healthy.
Guest:And you guys are close and we're really close.
Guest:And I think that it I mean, we're really close.
Guest:Like we talk all the time, you know, and I think that you need to have access to the party that remembers that.
Guest:a little bit perspective yeah you know because you uh you can get wound up in this and the work is like you say it's you know you can get you can get lost in it a little bit and it's a lot of time and it's a lot of energy and you can take stuff personally but you do have to sort of keep some access to just you know what's important sense of scale and
Marc:Scaling what's important.
Marc:It sounds like your family's tight and you're making a living.
Marc:You're doing all right.
Guest:That's exactly right.
Guest:And the main thing is continuing to do the work, which I love.
Guest:It doesn't mean that I don't have...
Guest:I can be tough on myself about what I'm working on sometimes.
Guest:And you know, like it's been too long since I've made a movie.
Guest:It's been, no, not exactly like it's beneath me, but like, it's like, what am I doing?
Guest:Am I swinging hard enough?
Guest:Kind of, you know what I mean?
Guest:Sure.
Guest:Like, am I, am I,
Marc:When you're doing a lot of TV.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Of a certain kind.
Guest:You can feel it a little bit.
Guest:You're like, when am I going to write a movie?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And then, you know, you can get all the way down the road on a movie and go like, what am I doing here?
Guest:Is this the right thing?
Guest:Am I going to be out of TV jobs?
Guest:You can have some kind of massive insecurity about whatever it is that you're working on.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:But yeah, I mean, you know, I can, so I can, I'm certainly go through all of that, you know, process about, sort of neurotic process about the work.
Marc:Hard on yourself, yeah.
Guest:But I, I do love doing it and I'm, you know, you try to keep in touch with that, I guess.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You know, the TV stuff gives you a great opportunity to continue to hone various skills, which I really love.
Guest:And work with incredibly funny people.
Marc:It's interesting that you are able to do both, and you've done big budget movies, and you continue to work as a TV director and then go do a big budget movie, whether it fails well or not, that eventually, Jake, when the moment comes, when you've got the idea...
Guest:Yeah, exactly.
Guest:That's going to... Maybe.
Marc:That's going to just fucking knock it out of the park.
Marc:Exactly.
Marc:You're going to be so on top of that shit.
Guest:Maybe so.
Guest:I mean, you definitely know that when you... One big thing, and this goes back to the freaks thing, is like...
Guest:You just never know what you're going to decide to do one day that's going to end up affecting the next many years of your life.
Guest:And I've had this experience with television a lot where you find some major collaboration that I would put up there with anything, you know.
Guest:And...
Guest:It's like that's where I met Judd, that's where I met Siegel, you know, Liz Merriweather I work with on New Girl.
Guest:We're years into that now and that's like a great thing that, you know, has had a lot of different, you know, she kind of has helped me out on other stuff.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You just never know where these things are headed, you know?
Guest:Sure.
Guest:Yep.
Guest:So it's, I take it all for, try to figure there's usually something good in there.
Marc:Okay, well, the question, are you working on a movie?
Guest:A little bit.
Guest:Yeah, I'm trying.
Guest:I mean, right now I'm in deep on these shows, though, for the fall.
Marc:Well, yeah, Jesus, you got the Grindr and you've got the- It's potentially a 60 episode year.
Marc:Fresh off the boat, right.
Marc:So you're in for TV for a little while.
Guest:For this year, I'm in deep, yeah.
Marc:Focused.
Guest:Kind of, yeah.
Guest:I try to just keep it all in your head.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:But do you make notes sort of like, okay, this is a scene.
Marc:I continue to write a little.
Marc:You've got the framework of the film in your head and just like a scene will pop out sometimes or what?
Guest:Or more like an idea and then the framework is like the last thing to fall into place.
Marc:All right.
Marc:Well, I mean, well, fucking good luck with the work.
Guest:Hey, man.
Guest:Thank you.
Guest:It's good to talk to you.
Guest:It's great to talk to you.
Guest:Can I say one thing to you?
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I think you are the best talker to people going.
Guest:Thank you.
Guest:It's true.
Guest:I mean it.
Guest:I will tell you honestly, I've had this commute for years, and there was this moment two years into it where I started listening to your show a lot.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And it was like a great moment.
Guest:Oh, good.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It was like a thing where it was like, and it's partly because you've talked to everybody and you've talked to them great,
Guest:But there's just this kind of humanity to the whole thing.
Guest:You get to something with people that makes everybody feel human and highlights the connectedness of people in a way that I really do appreciate and admire and I love the show.
Marc:Oh, thank you so much.
Marc:How do you feel about our conversation?
Marc:You all right?
Guest:Oh, yeah, it's great.
Guest:It's all right for you?
Guest:Yeah, it was great.
Marc:I'm glad we did it.
Guest:I don't know how interesting it'll be to whoever, but that's not mine to judge.
Guest:I think you will judge it.
Marc:It'll be interesting to people who are interested in this.
Marc:I think the journey is always interesting, especially when you... What's interesting to me about talking to somebody like you is sort of...
Marc:that a lot of times people in show business or people outside of show business make these assumptions about families who continue to work in show business generationally.
Marc:And the truth of the matter is a lot of times it's no different than any other job.
Marc:That you grow up in something and your father, your brother, your mother, whatever, they work in this thing and you look at it and you learn it.
Marc:And despite whatever level anyone operates on, I think what was interesting about talking to you is that you look at your father's track record and there were some hits and misses.
Marc:But he's a very thoughtful screenwriter, and he's high-minded, and he takes risks.
Marc:And then to sort of learn about your evolution and growing up in that and how he had an effect on you and seeing your ability to sort of move through your own processes is pretty amazing.
Marc:And then on top of it all, your dad's like back in the Star Wars game.
Guest:Yeah, it's crazy.
Marc:And it's sort of exactly what you're talking about.
Marc:So whether you know it or not, your weird kind of practical optimism about being open to collaborating and new experiences and not becoming cynical about your own career in any way, despite whether you love what you're doing or not on the level of the actual product, is a testament to working hard and having a good point of view about it.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I mean, I think, you know, I usually love it for enough time to do it fully.
Marc:No, you don't seem like someone who hates what you're doing.
Guest:No, never.
Guest:Never.
Guest:I'm never working on anything I hate.
Guest:I think that I do have probably something I got from him.
Guest:And probably something that you relate to on some level, I'd imagine, which is a sense of you hope to be building some larger thing.
Marc:Look, I'm 100% in support of the day Jake breaks out.
Marc:I'm with you on that.
Marc:I'll be here for you when it happens.
Guest:I mean, even the little stuff, though.
Guest:It's like you're building a body of work.
Guest:You have to look at it like that.
Guest:You think of it like what you're worried about on any given day is
Marc:it's all fit into some of course it's all all the experience of doing the work yeah is going to to you know add yeah there's nothing nothing you can take away from unless you shut down and and and turn part of yourself off you know the part of you that that part of you that you talk about that i can hear right underneath your throat that where you're sort of like something's gonna
Marc:I'm going to do the thing.
Marc:I got to do another thing soon.
Guest:I love that I'm like completely transparent.
Guest:Again, you sit with enough of that.
Guest:What was sitting directly beneath the president's throat?
Marc:Why am I doing this?
Guest:Good to talk to you.
Guest:It's great talking to you, man.
Marc:Sweet guy.
Marc:Good talk.
Marc:Has a career in show business.
Marc:That's a real career in show business right there, people.
Marc:Go to WTFPod.com.
Marc:Get that Howl app for Android and everything else.
Marc:Get in there and register to win a thing, a piece of my garage.
Marc:Get on the mailing list.
Marc:Check the episode guide.
Marc:See who's been on.
Marc:I do field those questions.
Marc:Get some JustCoffee.coop over there.
Guest:Oh, my God.
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