BONUS The Friday Show - Open Comments

Episode 734017 • Released May 17, 2024 • Speakers detected

00:00:00Marc:My shit isn't straight.

00:00:03Marc:I don't know why it's not straight.

00:00:04Marc:Yeah, I've heard that before.

00:00:06Marc:Yeah, you'll just deal with it.

00:00:08Marc:I feel like I haven't had my V8 today.

00:00:09Marc:It's like all slanted like.

00:00:12Marc:yes man would people even know what that means anymore oh probably not that's like i mean first of all commercials in general right yeah yeah right but uh but yeah v8 like have they ever had have they had an ad since 1995 is the question i don't know it's a good question yeah has anyone drank v8 since 1995

00:00:33Marc:I'm sure they have, right?

00:00:35Guest:I drink it all the time.

00:00:36Marc:Do you?

00:00:37Marc:You're such a weird guy.

00:00:38Marc:You got all these weird things that going on.

00:00:41Marc:They're like, yeah.

00:00:41Marc:Why?

00:00:41Marc:What's weird about V8?

00:00:43Marc:I mean.

00:00:43Marc:It's vegetable juice.

00:00:45Marc:Vegetable juice.

00:00:46Marc:But like, I don't know.

00:00:47Marc:When have I, when, when, where do you get it?

00:00:50Marc:Do you get it in like the juice aisle, I guess?

00:00:53Marc:Is that the supermarket?

00:00:55Marc:Yeah.

00:00:55What the fuck do you think?

00:00:56Yeah.

00:00:56Marc:What do you think is a V8 aisle?

00:00:59Marc:Is it just V8s?

00:01:01Marc:I must have blindness because I don't think I've ever seen V8 since I've been an adult shopping.

00:01:07Marc:Like, I just don't see it in the aisles, you know?

00:01:10Guest:You're like Don Draper to the V8.

00:01:13Guest:You're like, I just never think about you at all.

00:01:15Guest:So it doesn't...

00:01:17Guest:it doesn't even like it might be staring you right in the face and i'd be pointing to it look at v8 right there and you're like i i don't know i don't even see what you're pointing at yeah yeah you're right it's not seltzer so i have no idea what you're talking about

00:01:46Marc:Hello, Chris.

00:01:48Marc:Hang on a second, Bernie.

00:01:49Marc:I'm going to sneeze.

00:01:51Marc:No, no, it passed.

00:01:53Guest:Have you ever met anybody in your life who can't sneeze as much as Mark can't sneeze?

00:01:58Marc:It was a runner throughout the week, which was great.

00:02:01Guest:It's been a runner through my life, knowing that.

00:02:03Guest:He never can get the sneezes out.

00:02:06Guest:It's quite fascinating.

00:02:09Guest:I think it has something to do with his mustache.

00:02:11Guest:Like the mustache is blocking them in.

00:02:13Marc:Or it's tickling, right?

00:02:15Marc:Isn't there a thing where you're supposed to rub your nose to get your sneeze out or something?

00:02:20Marc:Or no, maybe it's the chin.

00:02:21Marc:Anyway, yeah, I think the mustache definitely plays a part in it.

00:02:25Guest:I just also just love that it's like everything else in his life.

00:02:29Guest:This can't happen easily.

00:02:31Guest:Like this is the most normal thing a person does.

00:02:34Guest:It's an involuntary response.

00:02:37Guest:You sneeze, it comes out.

00:02:41Marc:Even that is so hard, so difficult to accomplish.

00:02:45Marc:But, you know, I will admit my cat also doesn't understand my sneezing.

00:02:51Marc:Like my cat Calvin, when he sees me like ramping up a sneeze, he's just like, what's happening?

00:02:56Marc:And like, he just jets out of the room.

00:02:58Marc:Does not understand.

00:02:59Guest:It's like he thinks you're the big bad wolf.

00:03:01Guest:Like you're going to huff and puff and blow him away.

00:03:03Guest:Yeah.

00:03:04Marc:Totally.

00:03:07Marc:So how's it going?

00:03:08Marc:What's going on with you this week?

00:03:10Marc:Man, nothing as good as your guests that you've had on.

00:03:16Marc:You've had some really quality people that I personally have never heard of before.

00:03:21Marc:Wait a minute.

00:03:22Marc:You never heard of A. Whitney Brown when we worked with him?

00:03:25Marc:See, that's the thing.

00:03:26Guest:I was going to ask you, did I work with this guy?

00:03:29Guest:Did I?

00:03:29Marc:Well, yes.

00:03:29Guest:I mean, but I don't know how much interaction you had with any of those guys until we started using the writers directly on Morning Sedition.

00:03:37Guest:But Whitney was there during that period at Air America when like there was a writer's room for all the shows, right?

00:03:45Marc:I remember that room.

00:03:46Guest:Remember Jen Hodgkins, who we wound up becoming friends with?

00:03:50Guest:She was, I think, one of Rachel's producers for a while.

00:03:53Guest:Yes.

00:03:54Guest:And she was the writing assistant.

00:03:57Guest:That was what she was hired to do.

00:03:59Guest:So we never saw any of those people.

00:04:01Guest:They went to a room somewhere and wrote things that never got used on any of the shows, which I think was why Whitney got fired, because he made a big stink about that.

00:04:11Guest:I remember...

00:04:12Guest:I have two memories of Whitney.

00:04:16Guest:One was that the first time I met him, he came up to the studio.

00:04:21Guest:That was this crazy thing.

00:04:22Guest:We didn't know the writers.

00:04:24Guest:They weren't around.

00:04:25Guest:And he came up to the studio while we were doing test shows for Morning Sedition.

00:04:31Guest:And he came in the booth and was just watching through the glass and that.

00:04:34Guest:And I turned around and I see him.

00:04:35Guest:And he's like, oh, hey, Whitney Brown, I'm a real flamethrower.

00:04:39Guest:And I was like, what?

00:04:40Guest:That's a crazy thing.

00:04:42Guest:And I only found out like within the last month from Sam Seder, who was talking with Mark on Sam's show, Majority Report, about like the 20th anniversary of Air America.

00:04:56Guest:And he was reading a letter that Whitney sent to Evan Cohen and...

00:05:01Guest:And apparently it was the letter that got Whitney fired for insubordination.

00:05:07Guest:And he was basically doing what you did before you found out Evan was a crook.

00:05:12Guest:He was like, what are you doing with this place?

00:05:15Guest:Nothing here makes sense.

00:05:17Guest:This and this and that.

00:05:18Guest:And he's like, I know you've labeled me a flamethrower.

00:05:21Guest:or whatever it was in the meeting.

00:05:24Guest:But I assure you, I'm only doing this out of my interest in having this company succeed.

00:05:30Guest:So he must have just come from a situation where he was giving Evan Cohen shit, and Evan was like, well, you're just a flamethrower, man.

00:05:38Guest:And so then he came in and introduced himself to me.

00:05:41Guest:Hey, hey, Whitney Brown, I'm a real flamethrower.

00:05:44Marc:What?

00:05:44Marc:Wow.

00:05:45Marc:So that was a 20 year sort of play for you to get the story of why he called himself a flame thrower.

00:05:52Guest:Yes, which is fine.

00:05:54Guest:Although I actually also thought it was fine for him to just say that to me.

00:05:57Marc:Yeah.

00:05:58Guest:Like I was like, I'd introduce myself that way if it fit.

00:06:01Guest:Like what a great way to be introduced.

00:06:04Yeah.

00:06:04Guest:The other thing I remember about him was that he like came around, like he was being that guy, like, you know, it's kind of obstinate or whatever.

00:06:15Guest:And then he came around one afternoon and he was like, all right, I got to see you later.

00:06:18Guest:I've been fired for insubordination.

00:06:20Guest:What?

00:06:22Yes.

00:06:22Guest:And that was the end of him.

00:06:24Guest:That was the end of Whitney.

00:06:24Guest:And then Mark and I saw him on the street on 42nd Street one day.

00:06:29Guest:Like, you know where that IMAX theater is on like by Times Square?

00:06:32Marc:Yeah.

00:06:32Guest:Yeah.

00:06:33Guest:We're just like walking there and he's like, Mark Barron.

00:06:35Guest:Turned around.

00:06:36Guest:It was Whitney.

00:06:36Guest:Yeah.

00:06:37Marc:Wow.

00:06:37Marc:That's, that's wild.

00:06:39Marc:Was he, the entire time I was listening to that episode, it sounded like he was the inspiration for the character that Carrie Fisher played in 30 Rock, where he, just a, just a hippie who's talking about like, you know, all this comedy.

00:06:57Guest:Don't you get it?

00:06:58Marc:The mailbox is Halderman.

00:07:02Yes.

00:07:02Marc:You've been drinking wine all day?

00:07:05Marc:Don't worry.

00:07:06Guest:It's good for my heart.

00:07:08Guest:I'm sure that Carrie Fisher was supposed to be a woman, like, you know, a female writer from that same era.

00:07:15Guest:Like, I guarantee it's like...

00:07:17Guest:you know, a composite of all those people who worked on SNL in that first year, Annie Beats and a bunch of, there were a bunch of, you know, very prominent writers that I'm sure Tina Fey had that exact experience with.

00:07:31Guest:Right.

00:07:32Guest:Right.

00:07:32Guest:Like, oh my God, this is one of my heroes.

00:07:34Guest:And then just realizes it's this person who is trapped in Amber, you know, like completely locked into the time and place where they came of age.

00:07:42Yeah.

00:07:42Marc:Yeah, and I mean, his stories, I can't believe he hung out with Chris Farley, and I can't believe he sort of got Chris down that path.

00:07:52Marc:Like, that was the first time I ever heard that, and that is very sad.

00:07:56Marc:So, okay, here's something I want to point out about that.

00:07:59Guest:What's that?

00:07:59Guest:Mark doesn't agree with me.

00:08:01Guest:And I understand Mark's side of this.

00:08:06Guest:I got the sense with a lot of what Whitney was saying, and this is not a criticism and this is not like a personal judgment, but he had to basically invent himself from the ground up because he was like a wayward youth, right?

00:08:22Guest:And he has no real formal education.

00:08:25Guest:He's all completely self-taught.

00:08:28Guest:He has that autodidact style of like basically treating everything that every bit of knowledge that he has as hard earned.

00:08:36Guest:And I get that.

00:08:38Guest:But in listening to it, I couldn't help but think that like he is the hero of every part of his story in

00:08:44Guest:even the stuff that's not heroic.

00:08:46Guest:He's like, yep, and I did that, and that was how it went.

00:08:49Guest:And so when I hear that, my ears perk up because I'm on the lookout for bullshit.

00:08:56Guest:And I don't think I came across anything in the episode that was definitely not slanderous and definitely not in any way troublesome.

00:09:08Guest:But at the same time, I could very easily see...

00:09:13Guest:Stories not being the way he was saying them.

00:09:17Guest:And like the way that Dana Carvey has a different version of that Paul McCartney story than he does.

00:09:24Guest:And Whitney's version actually does make more sense that he would have said it that way.

00:09:29Guest:But who's to know?

00:09:30Guest:And then when drugs are involved, you really throw everything into the air.

00:09:34Guest:A lot of drugs involved.

00:09:35Guest:Right.

00:09:36Guest:So when he said the thing about Farley, like I said to Mark, I was like, I don't know.

00:09:40Guest:Do you really think...

00:09:42Guest:that a whitney brown had that much sway over chris farley's life like you know in terms of the people that farley was hanging out with like i have no doubt that and mark was like all it takes is that one guy you just gotta have one guy who puts you down the wrong path and i was like i get it but why would it be whitney like it just didn't you know and and and mark was also like i don't know why you would want to own that part of it as a story i'm like oh

00:10:09Guest:I don't think he's thinking about it as cool.

00:10:12Guest:But I do think that in Whitney's life, everything's circled around him.

00:10:16Guest:And so even a negative thing like that, getting Chris Farley hooked on drugs, in his mind, it's like, oh, that's my fault.

00:10:22Guest:Like, I kiss...

00:10:24Guest:I couldn't help but think of the David Carr book, The Year of the Gun, as I was reading this, which is all about, you know, David Carr's biography about him, you know, being drug addicted.

00:10:35Guest:And then later in life, when he was a reporter, going back and trying to piece together the parts of his life that made no sense because he was so zonked out on drugs.

00:10:44Guest:And he realized all his memories were horseshit and were like conflated.

00:10:49Guest:And, you know, I just feel like...

00:10:52Guest:A lot of what was going on in that story I don't think was fabricated.

00:10:55Guest:I don't think it was like a Cat Williams thing where he's just telling tall tales or Bob Zamuda where it's like entertaining.

00:11:02Guest:It's part of his shtick that he's going to make up these stories.

00:11:05Guest:I just think that, you know, in a life that had a lot of tumult –

00:11:10Guest:you tell these things to yourself.

00:11:12Guest:And if you, you know, now especially are like out of the show business and away from it all, it's like, oh yeah, this was my place in it.

00:11:19Guest:And you, and those things cement and you know, that becomes the narrative.

00:11:24Guest:But I, I, I definitely, this, we, you've asked me this before and listeners have written in and asked this before.

00:11:29Guest:What, like, what about a guest who's not telling the truth?

00:11:32Guest:And this is a perfect example of an episode where I didn't think that Whitney was lying.

00:11:37Guest:I didn't think that,

00:11:38Guest:There's even any reason to question his narrative.

00:11:43Guest:But I do think a lot of it centers around his own stake in being the kind of main character of all these stories.

00:11:52Guest:And, you know, that makes me, you know, have a little skepticism about them.

00:11:58Marc:It's like an Obi-Wan situation.

00:12:00Marc:It was true from a certain point of view.

00:12:03Guest:That's so funny because the other Obi-Wan thing I thought of with him was like basically like he's this guy who like nobody knows or has heard of or whatever.

00:12:12Guest:And it's like, hey, Whitney Brown, now there's a name I haven't heard in a long time.

00:12:18Marc:Totally, right?

00:12:19Yeah.

00:12:19Marc:It's like this myth of a person.

00:12:23Marc:I wish that, I mean, I'm sure I could probably find it, but I've never tried to find an old episode of The Daily Show.

00:12:31Marc:But I would love to see him host that show like that.

00:12:35Marc:I can't believe he had guest hosted.

00:12:37Guest:I guess so.

00:12:38Guest:Yeah.

00:12:38Guest:Now that I think about it, that makes sense.

00:12:40Guest:There were a bunch of the writers on that show that guest hosted.

00:12:44Guest:Brian Unger was another one.

00:12:46Guest:And he because he was Brian Unger was one of the like correspondents.

00:12:49Guest:Man, that's wild that are you saying you'd want to go seek it out because you never saw early episodes of that?

00:12:55Marc:I remember watching early episodes like Craig Kilbourne and like, didn't he do a thing with an interviewer, like five questions or something?

00:13:03Guest:Yeah, that was, well, he then brought that over to his late night show.

00:13:06Guest:But yeah, the five questions was a great gimmick.

00:13:09Guest:Like it was at the end of the, it was at the end of an interview, he'd just run a quick quiz on the guests.

00:13:16Marc:Yeah, I remember that.

00:13:17Marc:And it'd be random questions.

00:13:19Marc:But the show must have been totally different from when,

00:13:23Guest:It was, and I watched it religiously, and even my dorm mates, we went to tapings of it.

00:13:30Marc:Oh, cool.

00:13:30Guest:Because you get in for free.

00:13:31Guest:Yeah.

00:13:31Guest:So it was a good, like, college-era free thing to do.

00:13:35Guest:And it was very funny.

00:13:37Guest:It was much more heavily reliant on the field pieces.

00:13:41Guest:Yeah.

00:13:41Guest:Like the people who were the real stars of that show in those early days were like Carell, Colbert, Beth Littleford, Mo Rocca, all these people.

00:13:52Guest:Brian Unger was one of them.

00:13:53Guest:They were doing the field pieces and the field pieces took up a chunk of the show.

00:13:57Guest:And Kilbourne was like the punchline of the show.

00:14:00Guest:almost to the point where he didn't know it like that was and that was why it worked was like oh we've got this you know almost ron burgundy type obsequious host right and that was the joke of the thing it's supposed to be kind of like a spoof on the local news as opposed to the the um you know kind of political satire that it became with stewart yeah and um

00:14:25Guest:You know, I remember when Jon Stewart took the show over, there was like a year where he was still trying to work in that Liz Winstead format.

00:14:35Guest:And it was bad.

00:14:36Guest:And he blew that shit up, which is why everybody we worked with at Air America came from The Daily Show and had negative things to say about Jon because he fired all of them.

00:14:47Marc:Oh, wow.

00:14:47Marc:I didn't realize that.

00:14:49Marc:Yeah.

00:14:49Marc:And I did what didn't didn't when John took over the Daily Show, didn't he try to do five questions and then like kind of buried it or something or like, I think, no, no, I think he couldn't do it.

00:15:00Guest:I think it was taken with.

00:15:02Marc:Oh, really?

00:15:03Marc:Yes.

00:15:04Guest:I remember that there was like a little bumper.

00:15:07Guest:that they brought in five questions with.

00:15:09Guest:And it was like from a Kung Fu movie where a guy did like a power clap and blew somebody's head, like clapped somebody's head and the head exploded.

00:15:17Guest:And that would be your intro to five questions.

00:15:20Guest:And they went, they would do that.

00:15:22Guest:They'd be like, well, we don't have five questions anymore, but we still like this thing.

00:15:25Guest:And he would show that, but that went away quickly.

00:15:28Guest:All the kind of desk pieces that he would do went away, but within that first year or so.

00:15:35Marc:Yeah.

00:15:36Marc:Yeah.

00:15:36Marc:The Liz Winstead era of The Deli Show is probably something that probably hasn't aged well.

00:15:45Marc:Again, I haven't sought out an old version of The Deli Show, but I'd like to kind of seek it out just so I can see the differences.

00:15:54Guest:Yeah.

00:15:54Guest:I bet most of it wouldn't age well, including the Stewart era stuff, just because everything is so rooted in the day and the time that it's done.

00:16:01Guest:Like, what do you want to go back and watch like 2003 era daily show where he's talking about the Iraq war?

00:16:06Guest:Like, no thanks.

00:16:07Marc:Right, right.

00:16:07Guest:But I also, but that show at least had a legacy.

00:16:11Guest:Right.

00:16:11Guest:as part of the cultural conversation.

00:16:15Guest:And that definitely doesn't exist anymore for that initial Killborn stage of The Daily Show to the point where I remember feeling it would almost get ridiculous, like when I would work at MSNBC and Liz would be on as a guest.

00:16:27Guest:And they would Chiron her as co-creator of The Daily Show.

00:16:30Guest:And it's like, well, yeah, that's what she did.

00:16:32Guest:That's absolutely a deserved credit.

00:16:34Guest:But that makes it sound like she is the one out there.

00:16:38Guest:You know, she was the one who decided like, hey, we should really turn this show against Crossfire and get, you know, Tucker Carlson kicked off CNN.

00:16:46Guest:Like all the things that were very active about The Daily Show at that time and very prominent in the culture that led to John doing that thing on the National Mall down in Washington.

00:16:56Guest:Like Liz had nothing to

00:16:57Marc:do with any of that stuff yeah but she's still in the credits right yes yeah which like totally should be it's her like she created it with madeline smithberg and they like absolutely should have the credit for it yeah for sure and uh and on thursday you had this kid billy strings and

00:17:17Marc:And I've never heard of him before.

00:17:19Marc:Have you?

00:17:20Guest:Just from Mark.

00:17:21Guest:I heard of him because of the, the Willie Nelson birthday concert that he went to.

00:17:25Guest:And he said this guy, Billy strings was amazing.

00:17:27Marc:I'm, I'm going to seek this guy out and like try to see him in concert.

00:17:30Guest:Cause he's.

00:17:31Guest:Well, yeah.

00:17:31Guest:Did you hear that song he played at the end?

00:17:34Marc:It was so great.

00:17:35Marc:What is happening right now?

00:17:36Marc:Like that sounded awesome.

00:17:38Marc:And I loved, I mean, this guy had such a life, so much drug talk, by the way, this week, a lot of, a lot of, a lot of drugs happening.

00:17:47Guest:I did notice that when I was editing Billy Strings, I was like, oh, this is... I maybe should have spaced these two out, but I guess it's kind of thematic.

00:17:57Marc:It's drug week on WTF.

00:18:00Marc:That used to be every week, by the way.

00:18:03Marc:Yes.

00:18:04Marc:But like...

00:18:05Marc:this kid grew up in such a hard way and like just had all this like stuff happened to him like finding out that your dad died with a needle in his arm and still doing drugs like it's a bit shocking and uh and i'm happy he you know did not follow down that path but uh but yeah that would have scared me straight honestly

00:18:27Guest:Well, but I noticed that when he says things like that, he recounts the real things in his life like a songwriter.

00:18:36Guest:It's very poetic and image-evoking, the way he talks about not just his biological father, who he found out later had died of a heroin overdose when he was two, but...

00:18:49Guest:How he talked about his stepdad and the beauty of that moment of getting the guitar back and all that stuff.

00:18:56Guest:And I said to Mark when it was done, I said, I think this dude is so good because he's all heart.

00:19:05Marc:Yeah.

00:19:05Guest:Right.

00:19:05Guest:Like he lives his whole life with his heart engaged at all times.

00:19:11Guest:So that comes through in the music.

00:19:13Guest:And like Mark has brought this up before.

00:19:15Guest:Like he says that like he can't listen to the Beach Boys because Brian Wilson makes him too sad.

00:19:21Guest:And I think it's the same thing here, though, but without the sadness.

00:19:25Guest:Like you can feel certain artists so deeply in their music and

00:19:30Guest:And with a heavy dude like Brian Wilson, for someone like Mark who has a very intense empathy when he engages it, that can feel too much, right?

00:19:44Guest:But this dude is just very soulful and earnest.

00:19:48Guest:And you can't help but attach that to the music, even when there's no lyrics, even when he's just playing.

00:19:56Guest:You feel the heart and the soul in the music.

00:20:02Guest:I totally get what Mark's saying when he was like, oh, this brought me around to bluegrass in a way that I hadn't before.

00:20:08Marc:I like this episode so much that I now want to go to Nashville to just seek out bluegrass and like, you know, just dip in and see what it's all about.

00:20:17Marc:I also thought it was funny that Mark's talking to a kid whose mom listens to one of my favorite bands, Pearl Jam.

00:20:25Marc:So, yeah, that, you know, cracked me up.

00:20:28Marc:Also, would love to have Mark and Eddie Vedder in the garage.

00:20:31Guest:Yeah, we've tried that, and hopefully someday that'll happen.

00:20:34Guest:I don't get any sense that there's a reason it hasn't, other than it's just like a timing thing.

00:20:38Guest:But we'd absolutely have Eddie Vedder on.

00:20:41Marc:Yeah, I mean, why wouldn't you, right?

00:20:43Marc:But is Mark a fan of Eddie Vedder and Pearl Jam?

00:20:47Guest:I mean, I don't think he's kept up.

00:20:49Guest:Same as me, frankly.

00:20:50Guest:I think like what Billy was talking about, the Yield album, that was like the last time I listened to Pearl Jam.

00:20:57Guest:But I mean, of course, for someone who grew up in the 90s, are you kidding me?

00:21:03Guest:It's like, you know, it was Pearl Jam Nirvana.

00:21:05Guest:That was it.

00:21:06Guest:That was Beatles Rolling Stones, right?

00:21:09Guest:Right.

00:21:10Guest:So for me, totally.

00:21:13Guest:And, you know, Mark, I know was, you know,

00:21:15Guest:Right there with the early days of the, you know, 10 album and verses and all of that stuff.

00:21:21Guest:Gotcha.

00:21:22Marc:I got a kick at your bonus episode this week with Mark being mad that you weren't getting any credit in that New York Times piece.

00:21:32Marc:I thought that was really funny.

00:21:34Guest:I just thought it was funnier that he didn't realize I didn't care at the time.

00:21:39Yeah.

00:21:39Marc:It's almost like the reverse of Don Draper saying, well, that's what the money's for.

00:21:46Marc:But yeah, so you didn't care at all.

00:21:48Marc:You had this hit show that was being featured in the New York Times, and you just weren't – you were okay being just –

00:21:58Guest:No, I was more than okay.

00:22:00Guest:I found that it was an effective strategy.

00:22:03Guest:Strategy how?

00:22:05Guest:Because I knew that the success of the show was all because of... Mark would be... If all of a sudden... You think about it this way.

00:22:14Guest:If all of a sudden you find out that... Think about somebody you like, right?

00:22:20Guest:A musician or an actor or a writer or whatever.

00:22:25Mm-hmm.

00:22:25Guest:You find out that person is like, well, what I really want to point out is that there's this other person who you don't even know what they look like.

00:22:33Guest:You never heard of them, but they're responsible for like 50% of what I put out.

00:22:38Guest:You'd be like, well, then do I care as much about you as I thought I did?

00:22:42Guest:Right?

00:22:44Guest:And...

00:22:44Guest:I know the role of the producer is to make the talent the best they can be.

00:22:52Guest:It's a great thing that I've kind of lived my career by was something Letterman said to one of his producers.

00:22:59Guest:He said, your job is to protect me from myself.

00:23:04Guest:And I've always thought of that as like, you know, it's not in a negative way.

00:23:08Guest:Like, I don't think like, you know, oh, this guy's going to go out and commit crimes if I don't protect him.

00:23:15Guest:But keep Mark being the best version of Mark on the air because that's going to connect most with the audience.

00:23:25Guest:And so, you know, it's why you've heard me say from time to time, I'm not a big fan of the Instagram lives because it's like,

00:23:33Guest:There's things on that that he would take back instantly as soon as he says them.

00:23:37Guest:And it's like, why are you doing that to yourself?

00:23:40Guest:Why are you putting yourself out there in this unadulterated live format for people to pick apart and not see you at your best?

00:23:49Guest:I just don't get it.

00:23:50Guest:So I've always understood that to be the job.

00:23:53Guest:I've always understood that to be the reason of the success of the job.

00:23:56Guest:I mean, it's like, look, you've talked about Taylor Swift on this show plenty of times.

00:24:01Guest:Have you ever once talked about Max Martin?

00:24:03Guest:Have you ever once talked about Jack Antonoff?

00:24:06Guest:No, you have not.

00:24:07Marc:I have.

00:24:08Marc:I've said his name, but maybe not on this podcast, but I know who Rick Rubin is, right?

00:24:15Marc:Yes, but do you then go like, man, I love the Beastie Boys and Rick Rubin?

00:24:22Marc:No, but when I hear that Jay-Z is working with Rick Rubin, I'm like, oh, cool.

00:24:29Marc:I'm going to check that out.

00:24:30Marc:But that's because he already built up the Capitol.

00:24:33Marc:Yeah.

00:24:33Guest:So, like, okay, great.

00:24:34Guest:So, if I move on from doing WTF and go work with somebody else, and then they say, oh, I'm working with the producer who started WTF with Marc Maron, that's fine.

00:24:47Guest:That's a credit, right?

00:24:49Guest:Right.

00:24:51Guest:And and what purpose do I serve in 2011 to have myself as part of the narrative of WDF?

00:24:59Guest:I have not only zero purpose.

00:25:01Guest:It's a negative impact to be like, oh, there's also this guy you don't know or you don't care about.

00:25:07Guest:And he's involved in it.

00:25:09Guest:No, get me out of there.

00:25:11Marc:I think you're you're dead wrong and you're very selfless, you know, very, very.

00:25:15Guest:You're making it sound like it's something that I invented.

00:25:19Guest:This is standard.

00:25:21Guest:You don't hear about the people behind the scenes when you don't know who they are.

00:25:25Guest:You just don't.

00:25:27Guest:We go through this every time there is a writer's strike and people are like, well, at least these late night shows will still be on because those guys just stand there and tell jokes themselves.

00:25:39Guest:It's like, no, they have fucking writers.

00:25:42Guest:And smart people think that.

00:25:44Guest:Well, OK, but at least these shows will still be on because those guys can just be funny.

00:25:48Guest:But do you know what would be really bad?

00:25:50Guest:If at every night, you know, Jimmy Fallon walked out on stage and was like, OK, here's a joke by this writer who you've never heard of before.

00:26:00Marc:And now I will tell it.

00:26:02Marc:I guess.

00:26:03Marc:But, like, in 2011, you're 30-something years old.

00:26:08Marc:You're trying to make a name for yourself, right?

00:26:11Marc:I mean, I guess... Yeah, and I did.

00:26:13Guest:I made the name for myself by having this show be successful.

00:26:16Marc:Yeah.

00:26:17Marc:Yeah.

00:26:17Marc:I mean, look, I...

00:26:20Marc:I think – and you brought it up to Mark when you recounted my question to you.

00:26:27Marc:It really does sound like the end of a – like one of those romantic comedies.

00:26:34Marc:Like you going back to Air America because of Mark and this guy.

00:26:38Marc:Like you, you just knew this was your guy.

00:26:41Marc:So I guess in that respect, you're just like, look, it's all him.

00:26:46Marc:I'm going to make this guy and –

00:26:49Marc:to the best of his ability and prop him up.

00:26:54Marc:So I guess for me, it seems like if anyone else was in that position, like, I don't know, Dan Pashman or someone else, they would have been like, yeah, I want to be mentioned in that article.

00:27:08Marc:And it wouldn't have worked.

00:27:09Guest:Okay, Dan's a friend of ours, so we can bring this up.

00:27:13Guest:Dan and I were both producers with the same title on Morning Sedition.

00:27:18Guest:Right.

00:27:18Guest:Senior producer, right?

00:27:20Guest:And so, why did Mark pick me and not Dan?

00:27:23Guest:It's not because Dan had any less, you know, ideas than I did.

00:27:28Guest:We were both doing a lot of work on the show.

00:27:30Guest:Right.

00:27:30Guest:But Dan is now the host of his own show.

00:27:34Guest:Mm-hmm.

00:27:34Guest:Right.

00:27:35Guest:And his own brand, the Sporkville, he's been doing it for 14 years now.

00:27:39Guest:He invents pasta and that.

00:27:40Guest:Dan wanted to be out in the front.

00:27:44Guest:Guess who figured that out?

00:27:46Guest:Mark.

00:27:46Guest:Yeah.

00:27:47Guest:He knows, oh, that guy, he wants to be on the microphone.

00:27:51Guest:He wants to be doing the thing in the world just as much as me.

00:27:56Guest:Can't have that if it's the guy you want building you up.

00:28:00Marc:So did you and Mark have a conversation?

00:28:02Marc:No, we didn't have to.

00:28:03Marc:It was innate.

00:28:04Marc:That's fucking wild to me.

00:28:06Marc:It's just so, it's almost subliminal.

00:28:10Marc:Like you guys just caught each other's wavelength, you know?

00:28:14Guest:Oh, I think that's exactly why it worked.

00:28:17Guest:I mean, because you could do it with somebody and you don't catch the wavelength the same way and it will peter out.

00:28:22Marc:Yeah.

00:28:23Marc:Or just not, I mean, I've seen it with, you know, a bunch of producers.

00:28:26Marc:We've seen it a million times.

00:28:27Guest:You and me separately and together.

00:28:29Guest:We've seen it with talented, but, you know, but it just like, it's, this is all alchemy.

00:28:35Guest:It does it.

00:28:35Guest:There's no direct, like, you know, oh, you know, absolutely put this person with this person.

00:28:41Guest:No, you got to put, you got to experiment.

00:28:43Guest:You got to test out the pH levels and whatever and see if it works.

00:28:47Guest:And Mark and I had the advantage of, you know, working...

00:28:50Guest:in an ensemble group together for two years before realizing like we can do this on our own, like one-on-one and, and that helped that helped big time.

00:29:01Marc:Did you ever tell that story?

00:29:03Marc:I know you're wrapping up the origins, but did you ever tell the story of the one time you yelled at Mark?

00:29:10Marc:Is that a story for air?

00:29:11Guest:Oh, not only have I not told it, I plan to tell it in this episode because somebody asked a question about that.

00:29:18Marc:Get out.

00:29:19Marc:Oh, awesome.

00:29:20Guest:Great.

00:29:21Guest:Great.

00:29:21Guest:All right.

00:29:21Guest:Well, I'll wait for that.

00:29:23Guest:I also want to take issue with how you just said that.

00:29:26Guest:I did not yell at Mark.

00:29:29Marc:Absolutely not.

00:29:31Marc:Then how did I remember you saying this then?

00:29:34Guest:Well, we'll get to it.

00:29:35Guest:I'll get to it with this person's question.

00:29:36Guest:But before we do, before we move on to your listener questions...

00:29:40Guest:I want to bring up something you glossed over from this week's shows.

00:29:43Guest:And it was because I have a question for you.

00:29:47Guest:When you heard Mark say it in the intro, did you go and Google the Sphinx in the cemetery?

00:29:53Guest:Oh, you know I did, my friend.

00:29:58Guest:Those are some real knockers.

00:30:01Marc:First of all, I just want to say, I'll take the Pepsi challenge on that cemetery compared to the Greenwood Cemetery.

00:30:07Marc:Okay.

00:30:08Marc:All right.

00:30:09Marc:I'm sure it's fine, but the Greenwood Cemetery is the creme de la crepe.

00:30:14Marc:Okay.

00:30:14Marc:All right, all right.

00:30:16Marc:But yes, the mausoleum with the breasts is a sight to behold.

00:30:23Marc:And you should definitely seek it out.

00:30:25Guest:I will say that was one of those things of Mark, like one of the reasons why after 20 years I still work with him.

00:30:31Guest:That like, I love about his brain, his comedy brain, that he always tries to find like what like the...

00:30:40Guest:backstory would be to something and so like the idea that like this guy's dead and his kids are like that's what he wanted no he drew pictures this dying wish i don't know i know but that's he said that he wants this sphinx

00:30:59Marc:They look great.

00:31:00Marc:I wonder how often they are... Defaced?

00:31:03Marc:Polished, I would say.

00:31:05Marc:Oh, polished.

00:31:06Guest:Yeah, probably frequently.

00:31:07Guest:Yes.

00:31:08Guest:Although they are awesome.

00:31:10Guest:Like if you saw those in real life, you'd be like, ooh, you better go back to that doctor.

00:31:14Guest:That was...

00:31:15Guest:That was a little harsh.

00:31:16Guest:Just kind of attached those two things.

00:31:18Marc:That's a 90s sort of job.

00:31:20Marc:Yes, right.

00:31:21Marc:Exactly.

00:31:22Marc:Exactly.

00:31:23Marc:Yeah, they've made upgrades.

00:31:26Guest:Yes, 90s.

00:31:27Guest:Like the year 90 was when those were carved.

00:31:35Guest:All right, well, we will now start off where we intended to be last week.

00:31:39Guest:We wound up running out of time, but I have a lot of stuff coming in from listeners over the last several months, and I wanted to get to your comments and questions and reactions to things that we're doing.

00:31:51Guest:If you have any others with new ideas or new thoughts, things you've heard this week, things you want us to do in the future, you can send it to us by using the comment link right there in the episode description.

00:32:02Guest:Um, one thing that I want to point out, cause there's a few comments that relate to this.

00:32:06Guest:And I'll just say overall, if you have questions and you write in about like feed issues, like things, I'm not seeing this episode.

00:32:13Guest:I'm not seeing that doing this particularly, I think because there's a problem with people who were using Google podcasts and they like moved everything over to YouTube podcasts now or something that

00:32:24Guest:there's nothing I could do to help you out with that, but go right to support at a cast.com.

00:32:30Guest:Okay.

00:32:31Guest:They will help you because they know the deal with every single platform and how it's operating now with the WTF plus content and all their plus content.

00:32:39Guest:So support at a cast.com.

00:32:42Guest:If you have an issue and if you wrote in on the comment sheet and didn't put an email address, because if you put an email address, I can write back to you and say, Hey, go to support at a cast.com.

00:32:51Guest:But if you just said, Hey, what's the deal with the feed on my phone?

00:32:54Guest:I can't help you, but ACAS can.

00:32:57Guest:All right, let's get into some actual comments that came related to the shows we did.

00:33:03Guest:Since we've made it a monthly series, we continue to get comments about Quentin Tarantino movies.

00:33:08Guest:This one came in from Lorenzo in Vancouver.

00:33:10Guest:All the recent talk on your show of Tarantino, video stores, Siskel and Ebert has me nostalgic even more than usual for 90s movies.

00:33:18Guest:Along with the 70s, that's my favorite decade for movies.

00:33:21Guest:I'm born in 1977, so I'm very close in age to you guys.

00:33:25Guest:I too would watch Siskel and Ebert every week, and I too became obsessed with Tarantino from the first time I saw Pulp Fiction.

00:33:32Guest:Long story short, as fellow 90s movie lovers, I would love to hear you guys discuss your top 10 movies of the 90s.

00:33:41Guest:Thanks, guys.

00:33:42Guest:And always enjoy listening to your movie discussions.

00:33:45Guest:And again, that's from Lorenzo.

00:33:46Guest:So this is a catnip for us.

00:33:50Guest:We always like talking about movies and making lists and that.

00:33:55Guest:But man, this was hard.

00:33:57Marc:Yeah.

00:33:57Marc:Yeah, this was rough.

00:33:59Marc:Like last week you were like talking about like, oh, I was listening to my favorite podcast.

00:34:05Marc:And like some guys were just like, you know, some guy, you know, mentioned something and just ruined my day.

00:34:11Marc:I wanted to be like Lorenzo.

00:34:13Marc:what the fuck, man?

00:34:14Marc:Why did you have me do this exercise?

00:34:17Marc:This is like killing all my darlings.

00:34:20Marc:There are too many movies to go through.

00:34:23Guest:The way I narrowed it down, I went year by year, right?

00:34:28Guest:And I went, what's my favorite movie in each year of the 90s?

00:34:33Guest:And then if there were competing ones within that year, I'd leave them on the board, right?

00:34:39Guest:And see, okay...

00:34:40Guest:Where can I knock other ones off?

00:34:43Guest:And so ultimately, that was how I narrowed it down.

00:34:46Marc:Gotcha.

00:34:46Marc:I went year by year to see all the movies by their release date.

00:34:51Marc:And I must say, it was like going back in time, being like, oh, yeah, I remember when that came out.

00:34:57Marc:And like, oh, yeah, then that one came out.

00:34:59Marc:And got to say, a lot more comedies.

00:35:02Marc:were released in the 90s like then then that are released now like i miss those times where you can just have like a dazing views and what about bob and like the ref like just love those those comedies that are just non-existent these days

00:35:17Marc:Well, what, uh, what did you do?

00:35:19Marc:Did you rank them in order or did you just make 10?

00:35:22Marc:I, I, yeah, I ranked them in order.

00:35:26Marc:I, I, every year I like, you know, went through and then.

00:35:30Guest:So do you have a 10 to one list right now?

00:35:34Marc:Yeah.

00:35:35Marc:Yeah.

00:35:35Marc:I mean, I do not.

00:35:37Guest:I just have 10.

00:35:38Marc:Oh, that's funny.

00:35:39Marc:So, yeah, the first, the top four, I'd say, are like locked in and are interchangeable.

00:35:45Marc:Like they can go, you know, one to four.

00:35:47Marc:They're in those four.

00:35:48Marc:Yeah.

00:35:49Marc:But like the bottom 10 are just like movies that I love from the 90s.

00:35:53Marc:Okay.

00:35:53Guest:Yeah.

00:35:54Guest:Well, what I'm going to do then, I'll go through mine first because they're not ranked that same way.

00:35:58Guest:I just went in chronological order here.

00:36:00Marc:Oh, wow.

00:36:01Guest:So these are the 10 movies of the 90s from 1990 to 1999 that I would say are my favorite 10, okay?

00:36:10Guest:So we've got Goodfellas, 1990.

00:36:13Guest:The Fugitive, 1993.

00:36:16Guest:1994 has two movies, Pulp Fiction and The Paper.

00:36:21Guest:Nice.

00:36:21Guest:1996, Fargo.

00:36:23Guest:1997, Boogie Nights.

00:36:25Guest:1998, The Big Lebowski.

00:36:29Guest:And then 1999, the greatest year of films in my lifetime, and yours too probably, where there are just 20 movies that could qualify as the greatest movie of that year.

00:36:43Guest:I narrowed it down to three.

00:36:45Guest:American Movie, Magnolia, and Three Kings.

00:36:49Guest:So those are my 10.

00:36:51Guest:I have five that are just off the page.

00:36:54Marc:Yeah, yeah.

00:36:55Marc:And we have similar ones, not too similar, I must say, but yeah, similar ones.

00:37:00Marc:By the way, the Criterion Channel is doing like this 1999 retrospective and it's great.

00:37:07Marc:I've been going through that and it is fantastic.

00:37:10Marc:I highly recommend the Criterion Channel.

00:37:14Marc:Okay, so my 10 favorite movies from the 90s.

00:37:19Marc:And for me, number 10 is a comedy that I absolutely love, and it's Office Space.

00:37:26Marc:That's a movie that was like a seminal moment for me.

00:37:30Guest:Also 1999.

00:37:31Guest:Yeah.

00:37:31Marc:Yeah, yeah.

00:37:32Marc:So yeah, that's number 10.

00:37:33Marc:Number nine, My Cousin Vinny.

00:37:37Marc:I love courtroom dramas because of this movie, and I just love this movie.

00:37:43Marc:So yeah, that's number nine.

00:37:44Marc:Number eight, Fargo from 1996.

00:37:47Marc:Number seven, Groundhog's Day from 1993.

00:37:49Marc:And I mean, this is a movie I've watched a million times, you know?

00:37:55Marc:So that's number seven.

00:37:56Marc:Number six, Defending Your Life, 1991.

00:37:59Marc:Wow, that's great.

00:38:01Marc:Like, honestly, like the key is if the movie was on it on HBO after school, I was watching that.

00:38:10Guest:You watched it a lot.

00:38:11Marc:I had no parental guidance.

00:38:13Marc:So, yeah.

00:38:15Marc:Number five for me is Heat.

00:38:18Marc:And now coming at number four, The Fugitive.

00:38:21Marc:Number three, Boogie Nights.

00:38:24Marc:Number two, Pulp Fiction.

00:38:26Marc:And my favorite movie of the 90s is Goodfellas from 1990.

00:38:30Marc:Yeah.

00:38:31Guest:So yeah, we have a little overlap there.

00:38:33Guest:Do you have any that fall into like just missing the list?

00:38:36Guest:Yes.

00:38:37Guest:Oh, my God.

00:38:38Marc:For me, Apollo 13, man.

00:38:40Marc:I fucking love that movie.

00:38:42Marc:That's a great movie.

00:38:44Marc:I mean, it's an all-timer.

00:38:46Marc:You know what?

00:38:47Marc:I've seen this movie on the flight deck of the intrepid.

00:38:50Marc:I love this movie.

00:38:52Marc:yeah and you know what's crazy my dad watched this movie with me um like on hbo we didn't go to the movies uh together but uh he was blown away that this was a true story because apparently he missed it when he was in vietnam is that fucking crazy he didn't know that this actually happened well did you do you remember ron howard's uh wtf episode he talked about uh having this movie like when he knew the movie was going to be a hit did you remember this

00:39:20Marc:No.

00:39:21Guest:Well, what did he say?

00:39:22Guest:He was at a test screening for it.

00:39:25Guest:And, you know, at the test screenings, they give you the comment cards, right?

00:39:30Guest:Like you're supposed to say what you thought of the movie.

00:39:32Guest:So he's looking at the comment cards after.

00:39:34Guest:And there was one like the numbers are on the front.

00:39:37Guest:And then you flip the card over and you could write something if you wanted to say, you know, want to expand on how you rated the movie.

00:39:44Guest:So he's going through all these cards, great numbers, great numbers.

00:39:46Guest:And he gets to one and it's just ranked like zeros.

00:39:49Guest:Like just the person that wrote this card hated the movie.

00:39:53Guest:And he turns it over and it says, pure Hollywood crap.

00:39:57Guest:They never would have survived.

00:40:01Guest:And he was like, once he saw that, he was like, oh, we did it.

00:40:04Marc:Yes.

00:40:07Marc:That's perfect.

00:40:09Marc:Oh, that's great.

00:40:10Marc:But yeah, there's Seven.

00:40:13Marc:There's Crimson Tide, Tommy Boy.

00:40:15Marc:I mean, there's just a ton of movies from the 90s that are just bangers.

00:40:20Guest:honestly i uh i these are my five that if you know if if we're expanded to a list of 15 i would put these five on there uh total recall 1990 yeah silence of the lambs 1991 reservoir dogs 92 heat 95 and one that just doesn't make anybody's list but like mine dark city in 1998 oh really love that movie uh one of the reasons why i'm not a huge matrix fan was because i saw dark city first and

00:40:49Guest:And I thought The Matrix was a lesser version of it.

00:40:53Guest:But The Matrix, that brings to mind 1999, which if you go through the list of the movies that came out that year, it is insanity that these movies were all at the same time.

00:41:08Guest:Being John Malkovich, Election, Fight Club, The Insider, The Iron Giant, Magnolia, as I mentioned, Run Lola Run, The South Park Movie, which is one of the great movie musicals ever made, The Straight Story, one of Woody Allen's great movies, Sweet and Lowdown, a tremendously good movie.

00:41:29Guest:Three Kings, The Limey, Titus, Topsy Turvy, Toy Story 2.

00:41:35Guest:Those are the ones where you could argue at any point that those are the best movie of that year, and you'd get no argument from it.

00:41:43Guest:Right.

00:41:44Guest:including the ones I mentioned, right?

00:41:46Guest:The American movie, Three Kings.

00:41:48Guest:But then there's also, it's like the second tier of that are all great too.

00:41:52Guest:American Beauty, which is, say what you want to say about Kevin Spacey and everything.

00:41:58Guest:It's still a good movie.

00:42:00Guest:Analyze this.

00:42:01Guest:Any Given Sunday, The Blair Witch Project, Bowfinger, Boys Don't Cry, Bringing Out the Dead.

00:42:08Guest:You've got a Martin Scorsese movie that ranks in the second tier.

00:42:13Yeah.

00:42:13Guest:The movie Dick, really funny movie.

00:42:18Guest:Deep Blue Sea, amazing.

00:42:21Guest:Galaxy Quest.

00:42:22Guest:I can't believe Galaxy Quest came out that year.

00:42:25Guest:Wow.

00:42:26Guest:Go, The Green Mile, John Sayles Limbo, Man on the Moon.

00:42:33Guest:Of course, we mentioned The Matrix, but also The Mummy comes out right around the same time.

00:42:38Guest:As you said, Office Space, The Sixth Sense.

00:42:42Guest:Oh, wow.

00:42:43Marc:It's almost as if everyone wanted to get rid of all their stuff because they didn't know if the Y2K thing.

00:42:49Guest:So I was going to delete the files.

00:42:54Marc:What a banger of a year.

00:42:56Marc:Holy shit.

00:42:56Marc:Absolutely amazing.

00:42:58Marc:Wow.

00:42:59Marc:That is an incredible run.

00:43:01Marc:And yeah, Three Kings.

00:43:02Marc:That's a movie I used to have on DVD.

00:43:05Marc:I think maybe it was my brother's DVD.

00:43:07Marc:But yeah, I have to rewatch that.

00:43:09Marc:I haven't seen that in a while.

00:43:10Yeah.

00:43:11Guest:Well, that's our 1999 list.

00:43:14Guest:There was no Quentin Tarantino movie in 1999.

00:43:18Guest:But going back to Quentin Tarantino, I did want to mention this.

00:43:21Guest:Someone pointed out, Chris, that the Nighthawk is not showing the whole bloody affair of Kill Bill, which is what the poster on their page says.

00:43:33Guest:If you actually read the fine print, it says...

00:43:36Guest:that they're showing the theatrical releases of Kill Bill Volume 1 and Kill Bill Volume 2.

00:43:41Guest:So I didn't want to put that out there to anyone if they thought we were saying, you will go see this, The Whole Bloody Affair, which is a special edit that Quentin did as like a road show that has like extra material in it.

00:43:55Guest:I think it's about 20 minutes longer, which...

00:43:57Guest:Frankly, I'm happy that this is not that.

00:44:00Guest:Yes, exactly.

00:44:01Guest:It's like I'd like to just watch what I wanted to watch in the first place.

00:44:04Guest:Not like the Peter Jackson extended version.

00:44:07Guest:Right.

00:44:08Marc:Well, which brings up like the Hateful Eight.

00:44:11Marc:There's a theatrical version, which I have never seen.

00:44:14Guest:Not watched.

00:44:14Guest:Right.

00:44:15Marc:But I've seen the Netflix version.

00:44:17Marc:So it begs the question, which version should we be watching?

00:44:22Guest:Oh, we should definitely watch the theatrical.

00:44:24Guest:Well, a hundred percent.

00:44:25Marc:Yeah.

00:44:25Guest:Because first of all, we've never seen it.

00:44:28Marc:Right.

00:44:28Guest:And, and second of all, we want to watch these as they were intended.

00:44:32Guest:That's true.

00:44:32Guest:Although I do, I guess we are kind of reneging on that when it comes to the planet terror.

00:44:38Guest:I mean, not planet terror death.

00:44:39Marc:Oh yeah.

00:44:40Guest:Because grind house, you know, in the theater had a different version of planet terror, but I just kind of want to watch the movie completely.

00:44:47Marc:removed from grindhouse right i want to watch the version that if it went out in the theaters on its own this is what you would have seen right right yeah that's what i want too okay cool so i'm excited to watch a new quinn tarantino movie uh that i've that i haven't seen before so yes this is gonna be great

00:45:05Guest:All right, so we've got a couple of Jackie Brown things here that I want to read, people's good takes on the movie.

00:45:12Guest:This is from Ryan.

00:45:12Guest:Jackie Brown really disappointed me when I was 17, but it blew me away when I went back to it in my mid-30s.

00:45:19Guest:I've been watching them in order to keep up with your show, and Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction both seem like the early works of a young man, but Jackie Brown seems an adult movie...

00:45:29Guest:Not that kind, thank God, but by an adult.

00:45:33Guest:Tarantino's change of tone from the first two was a bit of a surprise at the time, but in retrospect, Jackie Brown picks up thematically where Butch's story in Pulp Fiction left off.

00:45:43Guest:I wonder if Tarantino would have gone further down that path had Jackie been better received because his post-Jackie turn towards moralistic fantasies seems like a regression.

00:45:52Guest:Absolutely.

00:45:53Guest:Absolutely.

00:45:53Guest:even though he continued to make outstanding movies.

00:45:55Guest:I mean, this is why in my pre-rankings, right before we started watching these things, I have Kill Bill ranked so low because I think it is a regression from where he was with Jackie Brown.

00:46:06Guest:But we will see.

00:46:08Guest:We're going to watch it next week and we'll talk about it next week here on this show.

00:46:11Marc:You know, this listener brings up something that, you know, it's a very mature movie.

00:46:17Marc:Right.

00:46:17Marc:And I in my algorithm, I actually I, you know, a Jackie Brown take popped up and it was it was a quote by Paul Thomas Anderson that I've never seen before.

00:46:30Marc:And it's one of those things where like, oh, wow, I'm going to bring this up on the show.

00:46:33Marc:But then I was like, wait a second.

00:46:34Marc:It's not sourced anywhere.

00:46:36Marc:I don't know what this is from.

00:46:38Marc:So I actually use like chat GBT to like make sure this is an actual quote from Paul Thomas Anderson.

00:46:45Marc:And it is.

00:46:45Marc:It's from like some short of a YouTube short.

00:46:48Marc:But Paul Thomas Anderson said, Jackie Brown is a film so cool and so breezy about middle aged people that feel the clock ticking.

00:46:58Marc:It reduces me to tears.

00:46:59Marc:I consider Tarantino a peer, but it is a watermark for how to shoot and film a scene with delicacy and compassion, which so eloquently put.

00:47:11Marc:And, you know, for him to pick up that this is a movie about middle aged, you know, people and they feel the clock ticking.

00:47:19Marc:And like, I feel like I've said that.

00:47:22Guest:Yeah, you were on the money with that when we talked about it.

00:47:24Marc:Man, it feels so great to know that a genius like Paul Thomas Anderson and I had a very similar thought.

00:47:30Marc:Like, you know, you like it's so fucking cool.

00:47:34Marc:Even when you mentioned that I've I, you know, brought up something that you thought about.

00:47:38Marc:I feel like a million goddamn bucks.

00:47:40Guest:Well, I mean, but like, look, hey, you know, I think that's both a testament to you and Tarantino.

00:47:47Guest:He did the right job as the director of that movie in communicating what he intended.

00:47:52Guest:And it's, yeah, it's very interesting that the movie maintains this kind of

00:47:58Guest:Knowing maturity about middle age, older age from a guy who was still in his 30s when he made it.

00:48:06Guest:And I thought this was very interesting.

00:48:08Guest:We got this comment in from Kristen Louise, and it is a much needed film.

00:48:13Guest:female perspective on the film, on Tarantino in general.

00:48:18Guest:And I really want to read this.

00:48:20Guest:It's lengthy, but I think it's important.

00:48:21Guest:It's an important voice to have in this conversation.

00:48:24Guest:So this was from Kristen.

00:48:26Guest:After listening to your in-depth analysis of Jackie Brown, I nixed the diatribe I was working on and decided I would address the one aspect of the film that meant the most to me.

00:48:35Guest:It begins with Tarantino's women.

00:48:38Guest:Other than Madonna's discography, Reservoir Dogs is not a movie with a feminine perspective.

00:48:44Guest:I suppose it speaks something about Madonna's influence on my generation at the time.

00:48:49Guest:Perhaps it is foreshadowing or wishful thinking when Nice Guy Eddie incorrectly identifies Pam Greer as the actress in Get Christy Love, but we would not see Quentin's adoration of the woman who would be Jackie Brown until five years later.

00:49:03Guest:In Pulp Fiction, we see Tarantino is married, and she means Tarantino as Jimmy, is married to Bonnie, a strong black woman.

00:49:11Guest:I'd argue that he is a kept man in Pulp Fiction, not unlike the other women in his films.

00:49:16Guest:Mia, Melanie, Sharonda, Simone, all kept women to some degree, but not Jackie.

00:49:23Guest:Men are intimidated by Jackie Brown.

00:49:41Guest:Yeah.

00:49:44Guest:But I saw the vulnerability of a woman of a certain age.

00:49:48Guest:I saw young women so afraid of losing their looks that they literally cut themselves to keep the illusion alive.

00:49:55Guest:Jackie was more than a pretty face.

00:49:57Guest:She didn't readily trust men, but she wasn't scarred enough to dismiss Max Cherry.

00:50:03Guest:And even though she is fiercely independent, she still has compassion for the other women.

00:50:07Guest:When she asks Sharonda if she's hungry and also about Ordell...

00:50:11Guest:when she's trying to help Sharonda see Ordell for who he was.

00:50:16Guest:Jackie wanted Sharonda to help herself.

00:50:19Guest:Also, when Melanie went to pick up the bag, Jackie said, I put a little cherry on top.

00:50:24Guest:What the hell did he ever do for us?

00:50:27Guest:Jackie has always looked out for herself, but she's still a sister.

00:50:31Guest:About the screenplay, I didn't know the origin story, but I always felt Jackie Brown is a disconnected movie.

00:50:37Guest:There's the heist and then there's Jackie and the men who revolve around her story.

00:50:42Guest:I can see why you rated the movie the way you did.

00:50:45Guest:But other than being fiercely independent, distrusting most people, and constantly aware of my morality, I don't really see myself as Jackie Brown.

00:50:53Guest:The character in Tarantino's film I relate to is Winston Wolfe.

00:50:57Guest:I solve problems.

00:50:58Guest:I'm good at fighting fires and troubleshooting under pressure.

00:51:01Guest:I've never been an ingenue, and I do love other Tarantino films.

00:51:05Guest:But Jackie Brown will always remind me of what it's like to rise from the ashes.

00:51:10Guest:Quentin raised Jackie to a height she deserves to be in,

00:51:13Guest:in a role Pam Greer could only play.

00:51:15Guest:She is adored, feared, and valued as a grown woman of substance, and I would like to think she spent the rest of her life living somewhere, being worshipped.

00:51:24Guest:That's a tremendously astute observation and analysis, Kristen, and thank you for sending that in.

00:51:30Guest:And it made me realize that

00:51:34Guest:Again, there's a bit of a tragedy in the movie getting the reception it got when it came out, because if you think about the feminism of Jackie Brown versus what we're about to watch next week in the feminism of Kill Bill...

00:51:49Guest:They're obviously both female-centered movies with a female lead who is driven and who is strong and who is independent.

00:51:59Guest:But the motivations are completely different, whereas one is fully about revenge and the other is fully about loving herself.

00:52:08Guest:And that is...

00:52:09Guest:I do think of it as a bit of a tragedy that he went back toward the revenge point rather than continuing to explore what he explores in Jackie Brown, which is this fully realized, active, very complicated, but admirable woman who's at the center of the film.

00:52:29Marc:Yeah.

00:52:30Marc:And, you know, I've been reading the scripts for all these movies, and there is a scene when Jackie Brown meets up with Melanie at the bar, and Melanie is trying to convince her to, you know, take all the money.

00:52:45Marc:And she is like, no, like, you know, like, she doesn't want Melanie in on it.

00:52:52Marc:And so she calls her a chicken shit.

00:52:54Marc:And I'm glad that they cut that out from the cut of the movie.

00:52:58Marc:Yeah.

00:52:59Marc:And I feel like that would undercut it.

00:53:01Marc:But yeah, that was really well said.

00:53:03Marc:And yeah, you know what's great is just thinking about movies this way.

00:53:08Marc:Like my wife and I have been watching these movies together as well.

00:53:12Marc:And it's something that she never did as a kid.

00:53:16Marc:She would just like watch a movie and then it would be over.

00:53:18Marc:But then, you know, she met me and like after a movie, I'm like talking about it and like wanting to know her opinion on stuff.

00:53:25Marc:And like, she's like, oh, I've never, never thought about movies like this.

00:53:28Marc:And it's actually really,

00:53:29Marc:really fun to like analyze movies and like talk about like like we will watch challengers which is a great movie and i and i was talking about all these reference points to the to the prior in the movie and she's like this is this is great it's like it's like watching the movie with new eyes so uh so

00:53:46Guest:Well, I mean, I think it's only by virtue of film being a relatively new medium in the course of human history that, you know, we are raised, you know, through our educational system studying literature and our first, you know, real...

00:54:02Guest:at least our generations and prior to us, you know, our first attempts at critical theory were all in print, right?

00:54:11Guest:Like you're asked to read something and analyze it.

00:54:13Guest:And I don't see any difference in doing that with film or plays or music, frankly.

00:54:19Guest:So I, and I'm sure there's, that's happening more and more in the educational system.

00:54:24Guest:I know that for me, it happened when I got to college and I did basically, you know, I took courses that were like this, that were like, let's watch a bunch of movies and then we talk about them.

00:54:32Guest:them you know yeah so uh it's it's uh it's definitely a big part of my life and i know i know i remember aaron saying to you once like years ago she's like wait you're going why do you go watch movies you've already seen like yeah that's weird and i'm glad she's she's come around yeah yeah to it not being weird uh i like this is a perfect segue to this comment from gina uh because boy do i love hearing this

00:55:01Guest:Just wanted to say that I'm one of those people who had never watched Jackie Brown until I heard you guys talk about it a month ago, and I thoroughly enjoyed it.

00:55:09Guest:The acting, the story, the comedy.

00:55:11Guest:It's hard to compare it to other Tarantino films.

00:55:13Guest:They're all quite different, in my opinion.

00:55:15Guest:That's fantastic.

00:55:17Guest:I love that you watched it for the first time.

00:55:19Guest:I get so envious of people who get to see things with fresh eyes that I love.

00:55:24Marc:Yeah.

00:55:24Marc:Yeah, I did that recently with The Insider.

00:55:26Marc:I never saw The Insider before.

00:55:28Guest:Oh, that's so good.

00:55:28Guest:Yeah, I was just getting excited of you writing to me about The Insider and just talking about it.

00:55:33Guest:I'm like, God damn, this is so good.

00:55:35Marc:I went back and watched it again, like in the span of like two weeks.

00:55:39Marc:Like it was really fucking phenomenal.

00:55:42Marc:Like what a great movie.

00:55:43Marc:If you have not seen The Insider, seek it out.

00:55:45Marc:It was always one of those movies where we're like, okay, I should watch it.

00:55:48Marc:It feels like homework, but it's not.

00:55:50Guest:Oh no, it's a Cracker Jack movie.

00:55:53Guest:Yeah, yes.

00:55:54Guest:OK, here's another Jackie Brown comment and it says, bear with me.

00:55:57Guest:Jackie Brown on Amazon Prime captioned Ordell's major line after shooting Lewis as follows.

00:56:05Guest:Her ass used to be beautiful.

00:56:08Guest:Now, I agree that is the best line in the film, even as your ass used to be beautiful.

00:56:15Guest:But Ordell's jaws and lips appear to say her ass rather than your ass and does not sound like what we would expect from him, which would be yo ass.

00:56:27Marc:Yeah.

00:56:27Guest:Yeah.

00:56:28Guest:Hmm.

00:56:29Guest:Hmm.

00:56:43Guest:And this person also wants to know if we think Melanie was one of the Fox Force Five, which is very possible, especially considering how Tarantino was teasing the idea that all these movies were connected at some time.

00:56:55Guest:But here is one area where I think you can...

00:56:59Guest:dispose of the ambiguity and the possible nature of not really wanting to get the answer revealed.

00:57:09Guest:Tarantino said he'll never say why inglorious bastards is spelled wrong.

00:57:13Guest:He's just never going to reveal certain things that he feels are his artistic choices.

00:57:19Guest:This is a case where I absolutely think

00:57:22Guest:the caption is just wrong.

00:57:24Guest:And I watched it again and I watched his lips.

00:57:27Guest:And even though there might be a, there's probably ADR done there.

00:57:30Guest:He probably revoiced that line because it's, you know, hard to get a quiet whisper in a, uh, in a van.

00:57:36Guest:And that might be why you're not watching the lips match up as closely as, as you'd think you would.

00:57:41Guest:He says your ass and it's to the true to the character.

00:57:46Guest:He doesn't care about Melanie.

00:57:48Guest:Yeah.

00:57:48Guest:He loves Lewis.

00:57:50Guest:He loves this old... He loves being crime guy.

00:57:53Guest:He loves being like, oh, we're going to go out, we're going to score this thing.

00:57:57Guest:I'm going to drink margaritas on the beach.

00:57:59Guest:Like, Ordell is venal and is, you know, a classic slimy character who...

00:58:07Guest:of all the Tarantino films loves living in the muck.

00:58:11Guest:And, uh, yeah.

00:58:12Guest:And, and, you know, this is just maybe an hour earlier in the film.

00:58:16Guest:He's willing to let Melanie go with Lewis as a, as a kept woman, as, uh, as Kristen Louise mentioned.

00:58:24Guest:So, uh, yeah, I think that we can do away with the question mark of this one and, uh, chalk it up to be, and, and go with the shooting script, right.

00:58:34Guest:Uh, that, that you see online and,

00:58:36Guest:It's your ass used to be beautiful.

00:58:38Marc:Especially since they've been together since, you know, they were in the joint in Detroit or something like, like, and also like Rum Punch is the sequel to another book by, by that author.

00:58:51Marc:So yeah, like there's, there's so much history.

00:58:54Marc:And I, I, I really felt it this time around that like these two are just brothers and like, they've grown up, you know, you know, together and,

00:59:03Marc:Yeah.

00:59:04Guest:And you know what?

00:59:04Guest:Part of it is the problem we were talking about the last time of De Niro not fitting the part is that he De Niro, his gravitas automatically puts him above almost anyone he's on screen with.

00:59:16Guest:Right.

00:59:17Guest:And I think the dynamic you're supposed to get here is that Ordell has always been in charge and he loved Lewis as this, you know, stoner flunky who did whatever he told him.

00:59:28Guest:And so that's why his ass used to be beautiful because he was like awesome at crime and was like, it was like, Oh, you know who I could get on this?

00:59:36Guest:My boy Lewis.

00:59:37Guest:Right.

00:59:37Guest:And Lewis would just do forever, do, do whatever he wanted.

00:59:41Guest:Right.

00:59:41Guest:And now he has to look at him being this like, you know, older guy who's,

00:59:46Guest:Who's done too much pot and is kind of like, you know, subordinate to this woman until he decides to kill her.

00:59:53Guest:And he's just he's just he's disappointed is my buddy.

00:59:57Guest:He's not the same guy he once was.

01:00:00Guest:And, you know, trapped in the past.

01:00:02Marc:Yeah.

01:00:03Marc:You know, when I first watched this movie, I couldn't separate the actors from the characters.

01:00:10Marc:So for me, when I remembered vividly watching it for the first time, I thought it was and I took it as like this meta way of Quentin Tarantino and Samuel L. Jackson shooting scenes.

01:00:26Marc:the the persona of robert de niro being like you used your ass used to be beautiful you used to make great movies like goodfellas and casino and like now you're just you're you're just out of date or you're you're out of touch so i that's how i took it for a long time because again i couldn't separate the actors from the characters you know like is that is that a weird thing like do you ever i think i mean i think

01:00:54Guest:it's a big part of casting you have to be aware of that you know and it's also why there are certain people who get deemed character actors because they work in whatever context you put them in yeah yeah um well speaking of that ambiguity though there is somebody who sent in the inevitable comment what do each of you think is in the briefcase in pulp fiction and i mean i have my set answer for this i've had my set answer since the moment i saw pulp fiction and

01:01:20Marc:I've never cared.

01:01:22Marc:Like my answer to, it doesn't matter.

01:01:26Guest:It's actually my, the answer is there's everything and nothing in the briefcase.

01:01:30Guest:It's literally the MacGuffin.

01:01:32Guest:And that's, he, he's playing with that idea.

01:01:36Guest:Yeah.

01:01:36Guest:He's not trying to make you think it's something else.

01:01:39Guest:And I know all the internet lore about, oh, it's the soul and the thing on the back of Ving Rhames' neck is a soul removed and all that.

01:01:47Guest:Fine.

01:01:47Guest:Good.

01:01:48Guest:Great.

01:01:48Guest:Do that stuff all you want.

01:01:49Guest:Like, I just watched Total Recall again.

01:01:51Guest:It's another movie with an ambiguous ending.

01:01:54Guest:There's also the, you know, the ending of The Sopranos or the ending of Inception.

01:01:58Guest:It always drives me crazy.

01:02:00Guest:When there's a debate about what actually happened, because the fact is, if there was an answer to what happened, they would have shown it to you.

01:02:09Guest:Right.

01:02:10Guest:The fact that you don't see it means nothing happened.

01:02:13Guest:It's not a you're not supposed to figure out what happened.

01:02:17Guest:It's nothing.

01:02:18Guest:It's there's no closure.

01:02:20Guest:It's there for you to go away with and have whatever little thought you want, but not no thought you have is the right answer.

01:02:28Guest:It's whatever works for you, which is part of art.

01:02:32Marc:Yeah.

01:02:33Marc:And.

01:02:33Marc:We were talking about, you know, you were saying that you in college, you took a class on movies.

01:02:39Marc:I took a class on Alfred Hitchcock movies.

01:02:42Marc:So I learned up about MacGuffins.

01:02:45Marc:And like with that knowledge, I was like, oh, yeah, like the briefcase is just the standard MacGuffin.

01:02:53Marc:He didn't answer it.

01:02:54Marc:I don't want it to be answered.

01:02:56Marc:And I will tell you.

01:02:58Yeah.

01:02:58Marc:if quentin tarantino's last movie comes out and he has a brief you know some character has a briefcase and it has a light on it and he turns it around and we see what's in it i will be i will be sad yeah i would i would be sad exactly that would i would i would actually think your ass used to be beautiful yes

01:03:20Guest:yes it's all it would just be too much for me yeah uh i thought this was a funny comment uh something about the last episode it was mentioned the guy from reacher is like six foot ten in actuality he's shorter than me at only six foot three he absolutely cuts a huge figure due to his physique and that's understandable but figured you might be a little shocked i just love that this guy reading this was like reacher he ain't six ten i'm bigger than reacher

01:03:51Guest:That's crazy.

01:03:53Guest:You are.

01:03:53Guest:I'm not going to mess with either of you.

01:03:55Guest:I'm not going to mess with the guy who wrote this in, and I ain't going to mess with Reacher.

01:03:58Guest:So tall.

01:03:59Guest:Good Lord.

01:04:00Guest:All right.

01:04:01Guest:This was a fun, surprising email here, and it is related to Madam Web.

01:04:07Guest:Oh.

01:04:07Guest:Which is on Netflix now.

01:04:09Guest:Go enjoy.

01:04:10Guest:Yes.

01:04:10Guest:Go enjoy, and then you can go back and listen to our episode about it.

01:04:13Guest:Or maybe listen to our episode first so that you don't watch Madam Web.

01:04:18Guest:Yes.

01:04:18Marc:Anyway.

01:04:20Marc:Yes.

01:04:21Guest:All right.

01:04:43Guest:But back to the podcast, you said, I would give a medal to you for understanding that that was some kind of warehouse.

01:04:50Guest:Well, I'm pretty sure I have the answer.

01:04:52Guest:Just prior to the final battle, when Madam Web and Sidney Sweeney are running into the warehouse, she proclaims that it's a death trap.

01:05:00Guest:That's it.

01:05:00Guest:That's how Madam Web stands.

01:05:02Guest:We're supposed to know that it was the same warehouse.

01:05:05Guest:A two-word callback that happens almost two hours after it was first muttered.

01:05:10Guest:And you know what's weird?

01:05:12Guest:I understood it right away.

01:05:13Guest:Amazing.

01:05:13Guest:I made the connection immediately, but I assume most of my fellow Madam Webaholics did not.

01:05:19Guest:I was able to do this not because the script was sufficiently written.

01:05:23Guest:I did it because much like Madam Web, I too have an impressive superpower, ADHD.

01:05:29Guest:When Mike Epps said, death trap, it made me think of the Seinfeld episode where Jerry and the gang see a movie called Death Blow.

01:05:36Guest:My attention drifted, and I began vividly recounting the Seinfeld episode in my mind's eye.

01:05:41Guest:Two hours later, when Madame said, death trap, I clearly remembered Mike Epps saying it too, concluding that this must be the same warehouse.

01:05:50Guest:So when you design my medal, please include the inscription, to Rye Doon, the number one most distractive Madame Web Hound.

01:05:59LAUGHTER

01:05:59Guest:now here's the here's the great kicker to this that's a great email in and of itself from rye but he he added this for some further context uh thank you so much for the great bonus content i've been a what the fuck nick from the very start which made it a dream come true to play an asshole youtuber on season three of marin the one about mark's niece

01:06:23Guest:no way shad from the shad shack do you remember that episode where mark's mark's niece comes into town and like she he he let meets he introduces her to some youtuber because he thinks it will impress her and the guy's just a total dick yeah that's this guy

01:06:39Marc:No kidding.

01:06:41Guest:Yes.

01:06:42Marc:Wow.

01:06:42Marc:I'm going to seek that out.

01:06:43Guest:So, Rye, if you're listening, I was very amused by your performance as Shad in Shad Shack.

01:06:49Guest:And actually an episode that's kind of ahead of its time, frankly.

01:06:53Guest:Yes.

01:06:54Guest:Like that guy was like a Logan Paul before Logan Paul.

01:06:58Guest:Yes.

01:07:00Guest:That was great.

01:07:01Guest:I'm very happy that we got that.

01:07:03Guest:And I'm happy to have you listening, Rye.

01:07:05Guest:Yeah.

01:07:05Guest:OK, let's go into this stuff here about pop culture quotes and what we, you know, laughingly refer to as our love language is just kind of quoting things back and forth.

01:07:15Guest:There were there were a lot of good ones sent in.

01:07:17Guest:Heath sent in a bunch.

01:07:19Guest:He said from Blazing Saddles, what in the wide, wide world of sports is going on here?

01:07:24Guest:That's a good one.

01:07:26Guest:And excuse me while I whip this out.

01:07:29Guest:well those are all opie and anthony uh are they really they used to have their 360 machine drop yeah yeah uh many from princess bride uh we cannot say it's possible without following with a short pause and pig uh also anybody want a peanut uh

01:07:48Guest:uh this one made me laugh because i don't say this but now i feel like i want to start doing it in star wars bib fortuna in jabba's palace day wanna wonga often used as a general greeting or nod of approval that's great uh

01:08:09Guest:Also, Darcy had this great one from Cheers.

01:08:14Guest:It's Sam Malone saying, ignore the problem.

01:08:17Guest:It'll go away.

01:08:17Guest:Great advice he gives to Woody.

01:08:21Guest:And it reminds me of one from The Simpsons I use all the time.

01:08:26Guest:Kids, you tried your best and you failed miserably.

01:08:29Guest:The lesson is never try.

01:08:32Guest:Yes.

01:08:33Guest:But then I was also reminded that there's one I say, it's kind of related to these, but it's one from Homer where the prophecy of the stone cutters puts him in charge.

01:08:45Guest:And Lisa's trying to like, you know, talk him down from his arrogance from it.

01:08:49Guest:And she's like, dad, nothing lasts forever.

01:08:52Guest:And he goes, everything lasts forever.

01:08:54Guest:Yeah.

01:08:57Guest:That one, that one I've said and been received with like someone going like, wait, what?

01:09:08Marc:I feel like that's a way for you to gauge how intently the person is listening to you or just waiting to talk.

01:09:15Guest:Yeah.

01:09:15Guest:It's like yesterday I was, I was, we were talking something about x-rays and you were like, look at you looking at x-rays.

01:09:21Guest:And I was like, yeah, it's a hobby of mine, which you knew right away was from the fugitive.

01:09:26Yeah.

01:09:26Marc:Yeah, there are a lot of those moments where I'm like, oh, man, someone smarter than me would have a good follow up to this in character.

01:09:36Marc:But yes, you're very good at those.

01:09:39Guest:OK, this is from Julian in Queens.

01:09:41Guest:Some things that have been prominent filters throughout my life include SpongeBob SquarePants, Monty Python, Star Wars, various Coen Brothers movies, Twin Peaks and The Sopranos.

01:09:52Guest:And then the list goes on from there.

01:09:53Guest:Yeah.

01:09:58Guest:Yeah.

01:10:11Guest:as I've acquired and read many books on Mark's recommendation, such as Cliff Nesteroff's The Comedians, Warren Zane's Deliver Me From Nowhere, and Ernest Becker's The Denial of Death.

01:10:21Guest:Still have yet to get to Robert Firestone's The Fantasy Bond.

01:10:24Guest:That's a notable holdout.

01:10:26Guest:But here's my single favorite example of how WTF pervades my life.

01:10:30Guest:In the last few years, whenever I recall an embarrassing or awkward experience from my past, my default brush-off has become, it was a different time.

01:10:39Yeah.

01:10:39Guest:I thought both of you might enjoy hearing this.

01:10:42Guest:I'm greatly influenced by WTF at large, but I felt seen time and again listening to the Friday show specifically over the last several months.

01:10:50Guest:It only feels right to sign off with a very deep cut WTF reference.

01:10:55Guest:Keep up the good luck.

01:10:56Guest:And Julian, I was there for that.

01:11:00Guest:I was with Mark when that is a deep cut.

01:11:03Guest:And I can't tell you what episode it's on, but it was in a monologue.

01:11:09Guest:And it was around sometime Mark was here in New York City.

01:11:12Guest:We were across the street from his hotel getting some coffee.

01:11:16Guest:And a dude was doing that thing where he kind of like looks, you know, we can tell like that's a fan.

01:11:22Guest:You know, he's like, you know, doing the side eye thing.

01:11:24Guest:And, you know, you know, the look.

01:11:26Guest:And we went, we sat down outside the place, like at the tables in front of the coffee shop.

01:11:31Guest:And the guy comes out and as he was coming out, he was like, you know, did the thing, very polite, you know, hey, I'm a big fan.

01:11:37Guest:And Mark was like, hey, thanks, man.

01:11:38Guest:What's your name?

01:11:38Guest:He said his name.

01:11:40Guest:And he's like, oh, great.

01:11:41Guest:I appreciate it.

01:11:42Guest:And the guy turned to walk away and he goes, great, great.

01:11:45Guest:Yeah, yeah.

01:11:45Guest:Keep up the good luck.

01:11:47Guest:And Mark was like...

01:11:48Guest:like it was like pause and he was like wait what keep up the good luck that's the greatest thing i've ever heard it was obviously the guy was he was like oh like he put his hands on his head and everything but we were like no no that's good keep up the good luck is great that's awesome

01:12:13Guest:All right.

01:12:15Guest:Oh, some things came in about WTF Origins since we've been doing those episodes.

01:12:19Guest:And Chris, you might want to address this with me here.

01:12:22Guest:I'm a huge Mark fan going back to the Air America days.

01:12:25Guest:I was a huge Air America fan as well and dying for more gossip and stories.

01:12:30Guest:Any insights or stories on Randy Rhodes in particular?

01:12:33Guest:Full disclosure, I love her, but she seems like she could probably be quite the monster in a team meeting or any sort of interaction.

01:12:40Guest:Any fun stories for this longtime fan?

01:12:42Guest:That's from Danielle.

01:12:44Guest:Now, Chris, what was your interactions with them?

01:12:47Guest:Because I worked on that show for a brief period of time.

01:12:51Marc:I had very limited experience or exposure to her.

01:12:56Marc:I remember she wouldn't even be in the A studio.

01:13:00Marc:Right, she wouldn't be in the tiny booth.

01:13:02Marc:Yes, where like Wayne Gelman would be doing the news.

01:13:06Marc:And yeah, so she was in like this little hopper.

01:13:10Marc:And it was kept dark.

01:13:12Marc:Yes, it was kept dark.

01:13:13Marc:So it was very mysterious and I never really interacted with her.

01:13:17Marc:I remember her going to smoke cigarettes.

01:13:20Marc:I have very little memories of her.

01:13:24Marc:Maybe you could jog my memory.

01:13:25Guest:Well, I think the reputation for her around the building was somewhat negative because she and her production team, particularly her producer, John Manzo, they kept separate like that.

01:13:40Guest:And people were like, they're weirdos from Florida, whatever.

01:13:44Guest:When I started working for them with all the reputational stuff that came along with that and people telling me like, oh, you're going to work with Randy.

01:13:51Guest:That's going to be tough.

01:13:52Guest:I found that not to be the case.

01:13:54Guest:Especially now later in my life, having worked with many types of talent, Randy would be on the bottom tier level of difficulty.

01:14:05Guest:I'm not going to say that she wasn't particular and quirky like all on-air talent is, but I never...

01:14:15Guest:I would say she kept herself somewhat unknowable, which was fine.

01:14:19Guest:I don't ask to be people's friends when I'm working with them.

01:14:22Guest:We just want to work professionally.

01:14:24Guest:But there was nothing where I was like, oh, man, Randy's going to kill me or do this or that.

01:14:29Guest:It's terrible.

01:14:30Guest:Right.

01:14:30Guest:I think she just had her way of doing it.

01:14:33Guest:She was an established radio person before she got to Air America, which a lot of Air America people weren't.

01:14:38Guest:So she kept it her way.

01:14:39Guest:And maybe that ruffled some feathers or whatnot.

01:14:42Guest:I don't remember ever having monster interactions with her.

01:14:46Guest:I don't ever remember her destroying a team meeting.

01:14:49Guest:I think that...

01:14:51Guest:she might've rubbed some people the wrong way with just her, you know, attitude, but nothing that I could say negative.

01:14:58Guest:Uh, in fact, you know, I always felt like they had their thing going on and far be it from me to interfere.

01:15:05Marc:Yeah.

01:15:06Marc:If anything, they were just siloed off.

01:15:07Marc:And I, I had that experience in other radio stations where I'm just like, yeah, you know, these people just doing their thing.

01:15:14Marc:They don't want to mingle, you know, and like they were,

01:15:18Marc:They were kind of a big deal.

01:15:19Marc:Randy Rose was kind of like the big name.

01:15:22Marc:You know, they were like the people that knew how to do the thing that we were doing.

01:15:27Marc:Everyone else was not really a radio person besides Rachel Maddow.

01:15:31Marc:So, yeah, it was and Mark Riley.

01:15:34Marc:So, yeah, it was like basically like the adults in the room.

01:15:38Guest:This person wrote in and said, maybe you skipped over this because it was already covered.

01:15:41Guest:But in Brendan's origin story, I would have enjoyed his first meeting of Mark.

01:15:47Guest:And I'd be curious to hear about when Brendan and Chris first met.

01:15:52Guest:And yeah, Mark and I have talked about our first time meeting.

01:15:54Guest:It was really just at Air America on the first day of work.

01:15:57Guest:We're kind of paired together and...

01:15:59Guest:you know, for me, I was like, I knew who he was.

01:16:01Guest:I knew like, you know, there's a comedian I'd seen him on comedy central.

01:16:05Guest:And, uh, I didn't have, you know, really much thought about him prior to that, frankly.

01:16:11Guest:Um, and you know, it just kind of got off to a working relationship.

01:16:15Guest:It was, it was not, it was, there was no big dramatics to meeting Mark.

01:16:19Guest:It was just like, okay, you guys are working together.

01:16:21Guest:And, uh, that's part of the team and the mornings and go to it.

01:16:25Guest:And we did.

01:16:26Guest:And with you, Chris,

01:16:27Guest:My memory is you didn't meet us that first day.

01:16:30Guest:You came in either maybe later that day or the second day.

01:16:33Guest:For whatever reason, we're not at that initial launch meeting.

01:16:38Guest:And same thing.

01:16:39Guest:It was just like, oh, we're working with you.

01:16:41Guest:Great.

01:16:41Guest:I think you and I became friends just through the Mets.

01:16:44Guest:Like that kind of wound up happening as we worked on a day-to-day basis.

01:16:48Guest:And it was like, oh, you watched that Mets game last night.

01:16:51Guest:You know, just the way things like that happened.

01:16:53Guest:I think the first time I remember hanging with you outside of work was going to a Mets.

01:16:57Marc:game was that yeah yeah i remember i have a picture that that's in my house of uh you me dan pashman and john krimmings oh that was well after the fact but i remember yes i remember that was at that was at shea stadium yeah yes so i mean shea stadium was around to 2009 so i remember going with you to opening day 2005

01:17:21Guest:Oh, that's right.

01:17:22Guest:With Iceman.

01:17:23Marc:Yeah, yeah, yeah.

01:17:24Guest:I remember that.

01:17:24Guest:So April 2005, I remember feeling like we were friendly enough that we could go to a Mets game.

01:17:33Guest:And that was probably like, okay, this is not just a work acquaintance.

01:17:38Guest:We're friends.

01:17:39Marc:Yeah.

01:17:39Marc:And I think I was only hired like a couple of days before and I was still working.

01:17:45Marc:I was working as like an assistant to like an art director.

01:17:49Marc:Oh, right.

01:17:49Marc:So so I just came in, you know, that that day, the first day that I was hired to meet you guys.

01:17:55Guest:OK, well, I teased this out earlier, but somebody wrote in saying Mark recently talked about flying off the handle at the hotel staff and the barista.

01:18:05Guest:Has he ever done this with either of you?

01:18:07Guest:And this, I think, is what you were referring to in terms of the time at Air America between me and Mark.

01:18:15Guest:And I could tell that story.

01:18:16Guest:Absolutely.

01:18:17Guest:But I am pretty sure I know the answer to this.

01:18:21Guest:Did he ever like, you know, blow up at you?

01:18:24Guest:I mean, at me?

01:18:25Guest:No.

01:18:27Guest:No, you've seen him blow up about things in front of you.

01:18:31Marc:Like we all have.

01:18:31Marc:He's like the Tasmanian devil, like just going around talking about anything, but I don't think I ever heard.

01:18:37Guest:But it was never like, fuck you, Chris, for, you know, not giving me an extra cup like the baristas did.

01:18:43Marc:Right.

01:18:44Marc:Or like, you didn't have my mic up or something.

01:18:46Marc:No.

01:18:46Guest:No, nothing like that.

01:18:47Marc:Yeah.

01:18:48Marc:I was never the target of his ire.

01:18:51Guest:Right.

01:18:51Guest:Well, for me, this goes down as probably one of the most consequential decisions of my life.

01:18:58Guest:Like, for real.

01:18:59Guest:Like, I think about it.

01:19:00Guest:I think about it often.

01:19:01Guest:And it wasn't like a calculating decision.

01:19:05Guest:It couldn't be because it was based on something happening in the moment.

01:19:08Yeah.

01:19:08Guest:And I had to make a decision, how am I going to handle this?

01:19:12Guest:And I handled it a certain way.

01:19:13Guest:And it quite literally changed the course of my life.

01:19:18Guest:Because Mark had been at odds with the guy who was the EP of our show.

01:19:23Guest:Now, he was the EP, but he had also left the live daily activity of the show and left it to me and Dan Pashman.

01:19:32Guest:And this guy, Jonathan, he then decided he was going to be working together

01:19:37Guest:during the day, not in the morning.

01:19:38Guest:And he would be like, you know, building the show out from there.

01:19:42Guest:Like, you know, and, and I think it was kind of part of his hiring was that I won't stay on the morning show the whole time.

01:19:51Guest:Right.

01:19:51Guest:Like that was an agreement he made with the people who hired him.

01:19:54Guest:So that was then butting up against the fact that Mark was like, what the fuck are you abandoning us?

01:19:58Guest:Like we're, we're here at three in the morning.

01:20:00Guest:What are you, you're going to get to go hang out in the afternoon and do like post-production.

01:20:06Yeah.

01:20:06Guest:So Mark was like unhappy about that.

01:20:08Guest:And then they started arguing more.

01:20:10Guest:And then it just got to the point where they were like, let's just go separately on this.

01:20:15Guest:Like Jonathan will not be involved in the show.

01:20:18Guest:And the team that's currently in place will just produce the show, which was, you know, me and Dan.

01:20:24Guest:And then you, Chris, as the board op and anyone else we had writing on the show, assisting with bookings, that kind of stuff.

01:20:30Guest:Yeah.

01:20:30Guest:So I think it was like within... It was like the week that was decided.

01:20:34Guest:It was not the first day it was decided, but like the week of it.

01:20:39Guest:And I cannot tell you what had happened, but something happened where Mark was losing his shit, just the same way he talked about losing it at that hotel desk, in the studio during a commercial break.

01:20:51Guest:Like something had happened.

01:20:52Guest:He was pissed off about it on the air.

01:20:54Guest:He started freaking out.

01:20:56Guest:And I walked into the studio...

01:20:59Guest:And he's now he starts yelling at me, like whatever had happened, like he was looking for someone to blame, blame it on.

01:21:07Guest:And he starts yelling at me and I just stayed quiet and I folded my arms across my chest and

01:21:14Guest:And I was standing like in front of you, Chris.

01:21:16Guest:Like, you remember how there was that bench?

01:21:18Guest:Like when you walk in the studio door, there's a bench, then the board that you were on.

01:21:22Guest:So you're looking at me.

01:21:23Guest:And then behind you is Mark looking at me.

01:21:26Guest:And Mark Riley sitting there who's turned around in his chair.

01:21:29Guest:So all I see is three faces looking right back at me, like waiting for my reaction to this tirade that Mark is going on.

01:21:38Guest:And I just folded my arms across my chest and like waited till he hit some fever pitch.

01:21:44Guest:And I said, are you done?

01:21:47Guest:Cause if you're not done, we can just wait till you're done.

01:21:49Guest:And then we'll talk about this like adults.

01:21:51Guest:And I walked out of the studio.

01:21:53I,

01:21:53Guest:And I remember he said to you, you told me after the fact, he was like, and this is the funniest thing in the world.

01:21:59Guest:He said, what do we got a bully working here now?

01:22:03Guest:Like I was a bully because I didn't engage with it.

01:22:07Guest:Like, like basically me saying, I will talk to you when you're ready.

01:22:12Guest:Like an adult was me bullying him.

01:22:14Guest:But I, when you told me that I was like, Oh, okay.

01:22:16Guest:I, I, I won.

01:22:18Guest:Like I knew that I won in that moment.

01:22:21Guest:And it never happened ever again.

01:22:25Guest:That was it.

01:22:26Guest:That was the start of our working relationship where we never got in any arguments, never got in any fights.

01:22:34Guest:We can basically work through anything.

01:22:38Guest:There was one time a similar thing happened doing the podcast.

01:22:42Guest:It was just like what's happening now where he was getting all overwhelmed about his schedule.

01:22:47Guest:And he...

01:22:49Guest:He was like freaking out and this is going to cross with this.

01:22:53Guest:And I would write back like a text like, okay, well, what about this date or whatnot?

01:22:57Guest:And then he wrote back to me, maybe you don't understand what the fuck I'm going through.

01:23:03Guest:And this is just over text, right?

01:23:05Guest:And so I just wrote, call me if you're going to do this.

01:23:08Guest:And he called and was like, Hey man, sorry.

01:23:15Guest:I don't know.

01:23:16Guest:I'm freaking out over here.

01:23:17Marc:Hand in hand.

01:23:20Marc:Like he, he knew.

01:23:21Marc:Oh, that's, that's wonderful.

01:23:24Guest:Yeah.

01:23:25Guest:Uh, I mean, there was one time I do remember him doing that same thing to me, like while we were on the phone and he started getting off, you know, yelling and whatnot.

01:23:33Guest:And I just hung up the phone.

01:23:34Guest:Like I just didn't, I wouldn't let it keep going.

01:23:36Guest:I just hung it up.

01:23:37Guest:And then he called back and he was like, you know, all right.

01:23:41Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.

01:23:42Guest:Whatever.

01:23:43Guest:You know, it's just like, it's why I say it was one of the most consequential decisions of my life.

01:23:48Guest:Because if I had engaged with him and like, or either tried to defend, if I engage on any level up where he was or down low, whatever, but by deciding in that moment,

01:24:00Guest:Not only not engaging, telling him that we as professionals don't do this, right?

01:24:06Guest:We will do it a different way later when you're done.

01:24:09Guest:And because of that, I've been able to have a 20-year business partnership with the guy.

01:24:15Marc:Yeah, I remember that moment now that you say it.

01:24:18Marc:And I remember it because I felt like a lot of different people were trying to tame him or try to get, just get him to calm down and no one was able to do it.

01:24:33Marc:Yeah.

01:24:33Marc:That guy, Jonathan, wouldn't be able to do it.

01:24:36Marc:Dan wasn't able to do it.

01:24:37Marc:I like, and like, we all, I feel like we all tried various things.

01:24:41Marc:We all tried, you know, like I tried, you know, raising my voice to Mark, you know, to be like, you know, relax or whatever.

01:24:47Marc:And like, that didn't do it.

01:24:49Marc:And like, it was that moment where I was like, oh, wow, that guy, that guy, like I did it.

01:24:55Guest:He's like a Jedi, you know?

01:24:57Guest:But I do think it's interesting that when this came up earlier in the show, you mentally remembered it as me yelling at him.

01:25:03Guest:Right.

01:25:03Guest:Yeah.

01:25:04Guest:Because it had such an ability to shut him down that it must have been that I screamed at him.

01:25:10Guest:Right.

01:25:10Guest:But the real story was that it was the absence of anything.

01:25:17Guest:It wasn't even like I talked to him calmly.

01:25:19Guest:I it was like it was a vacuum.

01:25:22Guest:I was like anything you want right now.

01:25:24Guest:It's gone.

01:25:25Guest:Like it has just been sucked out.

01:25:27Guest:There's no you get no response.

01:25:30Guest:And when you're ready, we can do it elsewhere.

01:25:32Guest:We won't do it in this studio.

01:25:33Marc:Did you, did you, did Mark help you become a better father?

01:25:38Marc:I was a father to Mark before I was a parent.

01:25:45Marc:Absolutely.

01:25:45Marc:Like, like, I mean, not saying that Mark is a child, but like, I feel like these are the same lessons you would get to be a dad, you know?

01:25:55Guest:Dude, here, I'll tell you this, two things.

01:25:57Guest:And these are, these are all said like with love for every person I'm going to mention right now.

01:26:02Guest:Yeah.

01:26:02Guest:Mark has helped me be a better husband, for sure.

01:26:05Guest:Like, I relate better to my wife by the conflict avoidance that I have with Mark, right?

01:26:13Guest:And then, yes, also with a child, it's the same thing.

01:26:16Guest:But then the other thing is I realized that I have spent more time...

01:26:21Guest:In therapy, going through situations with how I relate to Mark than any other human in my life.

01:26:29Guest:Right.

01:26:29Guest:And it's not because Mark drives me crazy or Mark makes it so that I have to go to therapy.

01:26:35Guest:It's just that in the course of doing work on myself, particularly like codependency, which is ingrained in me.

01:26:41Guest:from, from childhood that I have to realize like, Oh, that's how I get through this with Mark.

01:26:48Guest:And I have to set boundaries for this, or I have to make sure that when I'm saying this to him, I'm not projecting his emotions onto me and all this stuff.

01:26:58Guest:And I realized like, I do all this work on myself largely because one of the big relationships in my life for 20 years has been him.

01:27:05Guest:Right.

01:27:06Guest:And so then that filters down into all other areas of my life.

01:27:10Marc:Wow, yeah.

01:27:10Marc:Fills all the other buckets.

01:27:12Marc:Yeah.

01:27:12Marc:That's really interesting.

01:27:14Marc:Great.

01:27:14Guest:All right.

01:27:15Guest:Well, we're not going to get too much farther into this list since we've already pushed the time here, and we'll get to the remainder of your questions on a future show.

01:27:25Guest:But I did want to give you, Chris, a chance to address...

01:27:30Guest:This here, going back to the episode we did about you traveling, and someone wrote in saying, Chris, let's hear how you did Galapagos affordably, as the only way to be on the islands, as it is a national park, is with a guide.

01:27:44Guest:I just did it with a National Geographic tour, and the one thing it was decidedly not was affordable.

01:27:49Guest:So I'm curious.

01:27:50Marc:Yeah, I remember seeing the price tag for that.

01:27:54Marc:And I was like, no, thank you.

01:27:56Marc:So I flew into Quito and had to spend a day in Quito where I almost got mugged.

01:28:04Marc:And I found some company, this Galapagos Alternative Company.

01:28:09Marc:That's literally their name.

01:28:10Marc:And I don't know if they're still around anymore.

01:28:13Marc:But yeah, that was the site that I booked my stuff through.

01:28:19Marc:So the answer to the question is do some shady shit.

01:28:23Marc:No, no, not at all.

01:28:24Marc:Like, no, you know what?

01:28:25Marc:They're still around.

01:28:26Marc:I can still see them.

01:28:28Marc:So they're Galapagos alternative.

01:28:31Marc:And it was, you flew in.

01:28:33Marc:Like, I didn't take a boat from Ecuador to the Galapagos.

01:28:39Marc:You fly in.

01:28:40Marc:And the flight, they like douse you with like stuff so you're not bringing in any like foreign stuff with you.

01:28:49Marc:But yeah, it was like, I want to say 700 bucks a person, maybe even less.

01:28:56Marc:And it was great.

01:28:58Marc:Like we didn't...

01:28:59Marc:We didn't, like, have to be in a big bus or anything.

01:29:03Marc:We got to pick what we want to do.

01:29:06Marc:Like, do we want to swim with tortoises?

01:29:08Marc:Do you want to be there for penguins?

01:29:11Marc:Like, do you want to swim with penguins and sea lions?

01:29:13Marc:So, like, they took all that into account and they just...

01:29:18Marc:booked this itinerary that we could, you know, say yay or nay to.

01:29:22Marc:And it was great.

01:29:23Marc:Like, I mean, again, not too expensive, like 600 bucks.

01:29:28Marc:I don't know if that is still the case, but it was great.

01:29:34Marc:And for the days that we weren't...

01:29:38Marc:you know going around to different islands we could like walk around the main island and uh and see like the charles darwin um conservatory which is really great uh and yeah it was it was just it was it was perfect for what i wanted so yeah so galapagosalternative.com i can't wait until we get the feedback from people are like you guys know that is a like chinese mob front right

01:30:05Marc:why would they know that come on that's a real site i'm on their site right now they they have nice all right all right you heard it here first oh man now i i i indemnify myself for any liability uh suggesting galapagos alternative you know what i'm i'm gonna book this again motherfucker i'm gonna do this again

01:30:28Guest:It's a spite vacation.

01:30:31Guest:One other thing.

01:30:32Guest:Somebody wrote in and said, Teddy Roosevelt is the president who is responsible for the national parks, not Woodrow Wilson.

01:30:39Guest:So that was something you said.

01:30:40Guest:Guess what, Chris?

01:30:41Guest:What?

01:30:42Guest:You are right.

01:30:44Guest:Right?

01:30:45Guest:It is Woodrow Wilson.

01:30:46Marc:I thought so.

01:30:47Guest:In August 25th, 1916, he signed the Organic Act, creating the National Park Service as part of the Department of the Interior.

01:30:55Guest:Teddy Roosevelt, absolutely, our naturalist president, was responsible for opening and founding at least five actual national parks, was obviously the one who set it all in motion.

01:31:09Guest:Everything about the

01:31:10Guest:America in the wilderness, you know, kind of somehow ropes back around Teddy Roosevelt.

01:31:14Guest:But it is, as you said, Chris, the act of Woodrow Wilson to create the National Park Service.

01:31:21Guest:And that is absolutely true.

01:31:23Guest:So I wanted to make sure I had your back on that.

01:31:26Guest:Yeah.

01:31:26Guest:And look, this got us through about half of the things that I was going to talk about that came in from our listeners.

01:31:31Guest:So you guys are doing a great job programming the Friday show, I should say, because I keep having to create more episodes around the stuff you're writing in.

01:31:41Guest:It's really that good.

01:31:42Guest:Please don't stop.

01:31:44Guest:Send us stuff whenever you want.

01:31:46Guest:We will continue to get to it.

01:31:48Guest:It might not be next week, though, because next week we have a four hour plus long movie to talk about.

01:31:53Guest:which is Kill Bill Volumes 1 and 2, or as Quentin Tarantino just calls it, Kill Bill, considers it his fourth film, not his fourth and fifth, which is hilarious because he could have just so easily done his 10 movies and out with the one that might be his best movie.

01:32:11Marc:I know.

01:32:11Marc:It's so, so silly.

01:32:14Marc:And now he's all fucked now.

01:32:16Guest:You said it to our friends.

01:32:18Guest:You said this is a prison of his own devising that he has trapped himself in.

01:32:23Marc:Yeah.

01:32:24Marc:Goddamn, man.

01:32:25Marc:And have you done any research?

01:32:27Marc:Like, have you, like, you know, like, something that I didn't do the first time I watched these movies?

01:32:33Marc:Like, did you, are you watching any Bruce Lee movies?

01:32:36Marc:Watching any, like, movies that are influenced?

01:32:37Guest:Unfortunately, the big thing I was going to do was last week, and I just did not have the time, was the same movie theater near us was showing Lady Snowblood, which I really wanted to go see because so much of Kill Bill is rooted in it.

01:32:49Guest:And then this week, I've been all stuck in Arnold Schwarzenegger land watching Total Recall and doing research for that podcast, The Cinephiles, that I'm going to be on.

01:32:59Guest:And so, no, I haven't watched any additional Kill Bill stuff.

01:33:03Guest:But I will say, I don't think I need to.

01:33:06Guest:I think that I want the movies to stand or fall on their own merits, as we've been doing for all of them.

01:33:12Guest:And I think we could just do that again when we watch Kill Bill next week.

01:33:16Marc:Nice.

01:33:17Marc:And I have watched Lady Snowblood because it's on Max.

01:33:20Marc:I highly recommend people watch it.

01:33:22Marc:I also watch Battle Royale.

01:33:24Marc:So yeah, I'm all ready.

01:33:28Marc:I'm ready for Kill Bill.

01:33:29Marc:Rip Roaring.

01:33:30Guest:Okay, well, that will be next week's show, but we will continue to do your comments, your questions, your feedback.

01:33:35Guest:I got plenty more here and whatever you send in to me, I'll throw it into the mix.

01:33:39Guest:That's on the episode description.

01:33:41Guest:Click on the link there and fill out the form with whatever you want to send us.

01:33:45Guest:And that's the Friday show.

01:33:46Guest:So until next time, I'm Brendan and that's Chris.

01:33:50Guest:Peace.