Episode 982 - Seth MacFarlane
Marc:all right let's do this how are you what the fuckers what the fuck buddies what the fucksters what's happening i'm mark maron it's the new year this is it is it happy have it has it worn off are y'all where are you at does it feel different do we feel different
Marc:What did you do on New Year's?
Marc:I mean, really, what did you do?
Marc:One thing I don't do is stand-up comedy on New Year's.
Marc:I learned that a long time ago.
Marc:Unless they're paying you a million dollars, what is the fucking point of performing on that night?
Marc:Especially if you've got to bring in the New Year.
Marc:Nothing but a nightmare.
Marc:I don't recommend it for anyone.
Marc:But look, I don't have to.
Marc:So it's easy for me to say.
Marc:But that was one lesson I learned.
Marc:Why perform on that night?
Marc:I don't even know if it's expectations.
Marc:The one thing you can expect on New Year's is that people are going to act like fucking idiots.
Marc:They're going to get shit faced.
Marc:They're going to make a lot of noise no matter what.
Marc:The world could be on fire, which it kind of is.
Marc:And that night people would just be like, woo, yeah.
Marc:Happy New Year for that hour, for that five minutes, whatever it is leading up to it.
Marc:But man, what a clusterfuck.
Marc:What a nightmare.
Marc:And then just a drive to the club to hopefully not get plowed into by some drunken idiot not paying attention or texting his buddy, getting directions to the next party so they're in the right place when the clock chimes midnight.
Marc:That was always the panic.
Marc:Where are we going to be for New Year's?
Marc:Where do you want to be for New Year's?
Marc:Which party do you want to be at?
Marc:Scrambling around, making it just under the wire to a mediocre party.
Marc:Looking around.
Marc:Ten.
Marc:Nine.
Marc:Is there anybody I like here?
Marc:Eight.
Marc:Seven.
Marc:God damn it.
Marc:Why did we come to this one?
Marc:Six.
Marc:Five.
Marc:Four.
Marc:Oh, fuck.
Marc:I don't know anybody here.
Marc:Three.
Marc:Two.
Marc:God damn it.
Marc:Why is it?
Marc:That guy just fucking stepped on my foot and fucked up my new shoes.
Marc:Happy New Year.
Marc:Blah.
Blah.
Marc:Point is, I don't go out.
Marc:I don't go do comedy.
Marc:I stay off the roads.
Marc:I was asleep by 11 with Sarah the Painter.
Marc:And I don't mind.
Marc:I woke up and it was the new year and I didn't feel like I missed anything.
Marc:I got up and I was like, well, this is it.
Marc:We're in it.
Marc:It's happening.
Marc:What did we miss last night?
Marc:Not a fucking thing.
Marc:Zero.
Marc:We didn't get to watch, you know, mid-level celebrities get shit-faced on television while a bunch of people froze their balls off in Times Square waiting for a thing to drop.
Marc:See, now I sound cynical.
Marc:I hope you had a good New Year.
Marc:I hope it was fun.
Marc:I hope you brought it in the right way.
Marc:I hope you got your shit and your mind straight.
Marc:Today on the show, Seth MacFarlane is here, the creator of Family Guy, his new show, The Orville.
Marc:He's directed and written movies.
Marc:He's hosted the Oscars.
Marc:He's a song and dance man.
Marc:He's a crooner, jack of all trades, somewhat controversial, extremely talented.
Marc:And I just wanted to I wanted to talk to him and I got the opportunity to do that.
Marc:So Seth MacFarlane is on the show today.
Marc:Also, my friend, Christina Pazitsky, Christina P just texted me.
Marc:She's on a thing on Netflix now, a special called The Degenerates, which is a bunch of comics.
Marc:She's the the sixth one, the sixth.
Marc:One out of the gate.
Marc:Very funny.
Marc:Love, Christina.
Marc:She wanted me to mention that.
Marc:And I said I would mention that.
Marc:So The Degenerates, which is on Netflix, enjoy.
Marc:As I said on Monday, I've begun.
Marc:I've begun the disengagement from social media.
Marc:platforms i deleted my facebook page not the fan page you can still go to that i don't have much to do with that that's where i post the episodes and whatnot but my personal page which i no longer really went to at all but i did i did push delete and it's gone
Marc:And I feel good.
Marc:I don't feel as liberated as I would if I completely just dissolved my Twitter, which I'm processing.
Marc:The problem with me is there's many, but the main problem with me and that stuff is
Marc:is that I don't have the wiring.
Marc:I don't have the organic personal boundary technology within my machine that enables me to not be affected on some level by garbage and bullshit dumped into my Twitter feed.
Marc:I'd like to be over it.
Marc:I'd like to be able to just roll with it.
Marc:But maybe I wouldn't.
Marc:Maybe I don't need to be numb that way.
Marc:Maybe that's it.
Marc:I'm going to try to figure out what we do with real time.
Marc:Time time.
Marc:Just time away from that engagement with the speed of technology just pummeling our brains all the time.
Marc:This is what I've been thinking about.
Marc:This is some of the stuff I want to do in New Year's.
Marc:Spend more time with human beings.
Marc:Spend more time with my own thoughts.
Marc:Process things at a regular pace, not at the pace demanded of me by how fast it comes in.
Marc:Through my phone or my computer.
Marc:Think about shit at my own speed.
Marc:I don't even know if my brain can do that anymore.
Marc:Yeah, my life is good.
Marc:Things are okay.
Marc:But do I have any friends?
Marc:Where have all my friends gone?
Marc:Have I talked to anybody recently?
Marc:Is texting talking?
Marc:Is seeing somebody on Twitter knowing what they're up to, is that talking?
Marc:Have I sat down with people?
Marc:I swear to God, most of my social life outside of my very personal life, which only has a couple people in it, is in here talking to guests.
Marc:And I'm looking at my phone at my friends.
Yeah.
Marc:And out of all of them, I just, for some reason, I texted Dave Cross.
Marc:I'm like, dude, how's it going?
Marc:It's a new year.
Marc:I'd like to see you sometime.
Marc:If you're ever out here, love Mark.
Marc:And then he said, boy, you're such a sucker for the holidays.
Marc:Yes, don't know when I'm there next, but let's get Tex-Mex.
Marc:And I said, okay, pal, not a sucker.
Marc:Those of us with no wives or children given too much time just sit around and look at domestic animals and wonder if we actually have any friends anymore.
Marc:By those of us, I mean me.
Marc:Hope you're well.
Marc:And then I thought about that for a few minutes.
Marc:And before he texted back, I texted, I am good.
Marc:Looking at that text could appear suicidal.
Marc:Not the case.
Marc:Just saying hi.
Marc:He said, I hear you.
Marc:I'll hit you up next time I'm out and bore you to tears with cliches about having a kid at age 54.
Marc:And then he wrote thumbs up emoji.
Marc:And then I wrote panicky, gritted teeth emoji.
Marc:And he wrote, that's known as a Marin.
Marc:And I wrote, ha.
Marc:So now that was me, you know, talking to my old friend.
Marc:But that might be all I talk to him for maybe six months to a year.
Marc:And I just started thinking, and this is part of the resolution thing.
Marc:You know, where are they?
Marc:Who are they?
Marc:And then it takes effort.
Marc:Got to start inviting people over for dinner.
Marc:I just I want to get back to, you know, flesh and blood relationships with human beings.
Marc:And you got to plan that stuff.
Marc:Not these one offs, not these very emotionally cathartic connected one offs here in the garage.
Marc:And also, look, the other thing about social media is that I'm just sitting on there.
Marc:I'm not doing anything.
Marc:You can see that I'm barely tweeting and people are like, you have a comment on this.
Marc:How about this?
Marc:Look, the guy from Counting Crows and you look exactly like each other to some people.
Marc:Are you the same person that carried a comment?
Marc:No, I don't.
Marc:I don't care.
Marc:I don't care.
Marc:I don't want to comment.
Marc:No.
Marc:OK, that was someone's clever idea.
Marc:Fine.
Marc:But have fun with it.
Marc:What do you need me?
Marc:What do you need my input?
Marc:Of course, we're not the same guy.
Marc:What's going on?
Marc:What do you think about Louis?
Marc:What about Louis C.K.?
Marc:I don't care.
Marc:I have not talked to the guy since that New York Times article.
Marc:I don't know what he's up to.
Marc:It seems like he's full of anger and survival.
Marc:Survival mechanism has kicked in.
Marc:That's my take.
Marc:I don't know his life.
Marc:It doesn't seem good.
Marc:But it's not my fucking responsibility to comment on fucking everything that happens in the world on Twitter.
Marc:I'm talking like that, that someone I'm talking as if someone is attacking me right now.
Marc:See what it does to me.
Marc:Do you see what it does to me?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:I just I don't know about that.
Marc:That friend thing.
Marc:I guess that's really what it is.
Marc:Everybody goes and they do their own life, but when you make the choices I've made, and that's to live alone, not have a wife, not have children.
Marc:Cats, you kind of hit a wall with cats.
Marc:I love them, I know them, they're good to have around, but there's not a lot of deep conversing going on, and there's not a lot of change in the conversation with cats.
Marc:But, you know, I'm happy they're around.
Marc:Here's a here's a cat related email.
Marc:You healed our cat, Mark.
Marc:Thank you.
Marc:The other day, our boy wasn't in the driveway when we pulled up.
Marc:He's an outdoor cat, but he's always there waiting for us when we pull into the driveway 100 percent of the time.
Marc:So we knew something was wrong when he wasn't there.
Marc:About 15 minutes after we parked and went in the house, we heard a meow.
Marc:We opened the door and felt so relieved to see him.
Marc:But he was limping.
Marc:So badly, we were just trying to decide whether to take him to the vet immediately or in a couple of days.
Marc:His collar was also gone.
Marc:Scary moment.
Marc:What happened to the kitty?
Marc:The next day we took him in.
Marc:We had to wait in the room for two hours.
Marc:to be seen.
Marc:He's a stoic little guy, but after an hour of waiting for anything, especially while in pain, anybody would get restless, cat or human.
Marc:He began shaking and shifting his body every 10 or 15 seconds.
Marc:So I decided to throw on WTF in the background to give us something to focus on.
Marc:It was the latest episode, your interview with Ronaldo Marcus Green.
Marc:Great convo, just great.
Marc:But the monologue was the standout.
Marc:Our cat Julius immediately lied down, calmed down and started meditating with his eyes rolled back.
Marc:All three of us listened intently as you began reviewing movies, made your New Year's resolution to shut off your connection to social media and become more grounded into your purpose and to spend more time with the people you love.
Marc:In particular, your review of the Indian pottery documentary left us so chilled out and relaxed.
Marc:That review was, dare I say, spiritual, but in an everyday people kind of way.
Marc:We will definitely check that film out.
Marc:Just your review of it made our cat purr.
Marc:So even before the vet came in to see him, you had already healed him.
Marc:Thank you, Mark.
Marc:You're an inspiring dude on multiple levels.
Marc:We're waiting to see if our little guy's leg is broken.
Marc:But while we wait, I figured I'd write to say thank you to your twice a week service.
Marc:You give a sense of home to so many people and cats.
Marc:By the way, our little boy is named Julius because you guessed it, he's orange.
Marc:With much respect and appreciation, Brian.
Marc:Glad to help out.
Marc:Yeah, see, like you people who fast forward through this, you're missing the spiritual value of my rambling intros.
Marc:You're missing it.
Marc:You're missing the spiritual value.
Marc:There was another one.
Marc:Subject line to kill the loneliness.
Marc:Hey, Mark, my name is Brooks.
Marc:I am a 20 year old.
Marc:In June, my first love broke my heart where I where I lost 15 pounds during the heartbreak.
Marc:I found your show Marin.
Marc:It helped me, made me laugh and feel better.
Marc:I also work at a grocery where at times I have to work in a one man kiosk gas station where I have to stand alone and wait for people to come to the window.
Marc:WTF helps kill the loneliness.
Marc:And the interviews fill the white wall kiosk.
Marc:Thank you for the laughter during my first real heartbreak.
Marc:Happy New Year, Brooks.
Marc:I'm a loneliness killer.
Marc:Man, that is a service.
Marc:I'm going to put that on my business card.
Marc:Mark Maron, loneliness killer.
Marc:WTF, loneliness killer.
Marc:Dig it.
Marc:Yes, I'm watching shit.
Marc:Somehow or another, there's some weird old Sam Kennison set on Netflix.
Marc:It was a disaster.
Marc:It was a Las Vegas set a year or so before he died.
Marc:And that kind of got me watching the original HBO special, which I hadn't seen in years.
Marc:Now, this is a guy, some of you know my story, and this has been sitting with me for a while because I did a...
Marc:Interview for a documentary about the comedy store that Mike binder is directing and he asked me to talk about my experience there and a lot of it had to do with that guy and my sort of my position has always been that he doesn't really get the respect he should as one of the great comics and Mike was like I don't know if he was that great.
Marc:And I'm like, but, you know, he had this momentum.
Marc:He had this this pace, this intensity.
Marc:He really owned the stage like nobody had ever seen before.
Marc:He had this fury and this like force, this kind of kind of like just, you know, the air changed when the guy went on.
Marc:I'd never seen anybody really do that.
Marc:And Mike was like, yeah, but I don't know.
Marc:I think it was the time.
Marc:I think if you really look at that material, it might just be those bits.
Marc:I mean, anyone could have good bits.
Marc:I just don't think he was that great.
Marc:And, you know, it just stuck with me.
Marc:And this is a couple of months ago that we had this conversation.
Marc:I watched the HBO special, half of it.
Marc:And I watched the old Vegas thing.
Marc:And I was like, God damn it.
Marc:He wasn't.
Marc:He was not a right minded dude, man.
Marc:He was not.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:not a righteous cat.
Marc:And I don't know how I got so sucked into that.
Marc:Looking back on it could have been the Coke.
Marc:It could have been the, uh, just the, the excitement of the time, the late eighties, or just the sheer brute force of that guy's personality.
Marc:And that guy's charisma sucked me in the, the, the brute force of charisma, charisma with a punch.
Marc:That's why, that's why we're, where we're at with, uh, you know, politically, uh,
Marc:You've got to watch your brain, man.
Marc:You get sucker punched by some forceful, wrong-minded charisma.
Marc:And you get all lit up.
Marc:Got to watch that.
Marc:So I've reassessed it.
Marc:And I do not think he was as good as I thought he was.
Marc:But stylistically, there was nothing like it.
Marc:And I think that was the primary lesson there.
Marc:How do you own the stage?
Marc:I think that was really more of what I was learning.
Marc:I also watched a bit of, watched a little Hicks.
Marc:I was just flipping around the comedy.
Marc:There's a lot of new comedies that were dumped onto Netflix, old comedy specials.
Marc:Watched a little of the Hicks stuff from the Vic, where I did a special.
Marc:It's always good to see Bill bouncing around.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Sleep tight.
Marc:So Seth MacFarlane is here, and I've never met him.
Marc:I've seen some of his stuff.
Marc:I've always wondered about him and he's got this the second season of this space show that he's got the Orville is on Thursday nights at 9 p.m.
Marc:Eastern on Fox.
Marc:I think Fox is by and large the Seth MacFarlane station.
Marc:outside of the propaganda operation the rest that i think is seth mcfarland but i was excited to talk to him and this is uh this is me talking to seth here in the garage
Marc:It's weird where my research takes me because I'm like, I'm looking up Kent, where you come from.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Because I have like, I've had things happen to me in Connecticut.
Marc:Really?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:That's a vague kind of dark thing.
Marc:What?
Marc:Is everything all right?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:No, when I started, not too traumatic, but when I started my comedy career, it was one-nighters, and there was one in New London.
Marc:You'd go drive to a bar in New London, and I saw a guy that I was opening for lose his mind on stage.
Marc:Oh, really?
Marc:It was great.
Marc:Oh, I bet that was something to say.
Marc:It was just one of these things where you drive for two hours from Boston.
Marc:I was living in Boston.
Marc:And you'd be taking a headliner who you didn't really know.
Marc:And this guy, Bob Batch, the whole way down, he's going like, I don't know why I can't get on fucking Letterman.
Marc:Why can't I get on fucking Letterman for two hours?
Marc:That's his act.
Marc:No, this is in the car.
Marc:Oh, this is in the car.
Marc:But that's what happens.
Marc:We get to this shitty fucking bar by the sub base.
Marc:There's like nine people in there.
Marc:And I go on and do my half hour.
Marc:And he just gets up.
Marc:And within minutes, he's like, why can't I be on fucking Letterman?
And he's like,
Marc:He's yelling at the people.
Marc:Oh, God.
Marc:And it's like uncomfortable.
Marc:And for the first time in my life, and I was younger, I went into the middle of the room because there were so few people there.
Marc:I go, let's just take a break.
Marc:Bob, just relax a minute.
Guest:That's like finding a four-leaf clover when you catch a stand-up who's angry with the audience.
Guest:It's the best.
Marc:It doesn't happen anymore.
Marc:No, it doesn't.
Marc:Because they're afraid of the phones.
Marc:But yeah, man, in Boston, I'd see guys snap all the time.
Marc:There were guys that you could sort of count on it.
Guest:Well, doesn't Chappelle...
Guest:makes his audience put their phones in like steel cases or something before he does a show?
Marc:Some clubs have bags now.
Guest:The club in Denver has these bags.
Guest:You have to.
Guest:It's like part of me hears these stories and just thinks, you know what, America, you don't deserve comedy anymore.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:No more comedy for you.
Guest:Because this is how the acts are honed.
Guest:That's how you know where the line is.
Guest:They don't understand it.
Marc:They don't get it.
Marc:And I don't understand.
Marc:They don't gain anything by putting the thing up.
Marc:Fortunately, I'm at a level of celebrity where no one has tried to tape me or put my shit up.
Marc:There's been times where I'm like, why don't you tape this?
Guest:Because I'd like to remember what I did.
Guest:But no.
Guest:It's like they need to have it explained to them.
Guest:Look, the...
Guest:You get to the point where you go to an arena with thousands of people and you're seeing a honed, polished stand-up act.
Guest:You don't get to that point unless that act is tested and retested.
Guest:And some of the jokes work and some of them don't.
Marc:And they go through periods.
Guest:Some of them are offensive.
Guest:You pull those jokes out.
Guest:But the only way you know is by testing it in front of an audience.
Marc:You pull them out only if you can't shoulder the possible reaction.
Yeah, exactly.
Marc:There's a lot of gauging that has to go on.
Marc:But they don't get it.
Marc:They don't get it.
Marc:And the press doesn't even get it.
Marc:No, I don't think anyone- And they should.
Marc:I'm surprised how little people understand about anything.
Marc:Like during the writer's strike, it was sort of amazing to me that most somewhat intelligent people were like, oh, they don't just make it up?
Marc:You mean John Stewart's not making it up every day?
Guest:The one I like is, now does each writer write for an individual character?
Like-
Guest:Yes, I write all the Stewie lines.
Guest:He writes all the Peter lines.
Guest:And he can't do anything else.
Guest:No.
Guest:That's all he does.
Guest:And we have to hope that it all comes together in a cohesive fashion.
Marc:Well, the other thing about Connecticut, I went to the P.T.
Marc:Barnum Museum in Bridgeport and had a very uncomfortable- It's a beautiful town, Bridgeport.
Marc:Yeah, uncomfortable moment at the P.T.
Marc:Barnum Museum.
Marc:We were taking the ferry over to Port Jeff in college, and the guy who worked at the P.T.
Marc:Barnum Museum, he had one eye, and he was just there.
Marc:He must have been with the circus at some point.
Marc:And he grabbed my hand, and he said, let me see your hand.
Marc:And he looked at my palm, and he said, you're going to get in a very bad accident.
Marc:Oh, my God.
Marc:Wow.
Marc:For about four years.
Marc:I admire that kind of honesty.
Marc:But wait, so Kent, Connecticut, because I talked to Ted Danson.
Marc:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Marc:It's specifically about the Kent School where you went.
Marc:It seems like you two were it.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:And he gets credit for going there.
Guest:I think Lana Del Rey also went to Kent.
Guest:I think it's the three of us.
Guest:But you grew up there.
Guest:Yes.
Guest:And what is that?
Guest:It's a very small town?
Guest:Really small town, very idyllic, very beaver cleaver.
Guest:Really?
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:I mean, it was like you hear people say, that was a great place to grow up.
Guest:This is like the cookie cutter, gorgeous, peaceful, calm, wholesome place to grow up.
Marc:Was it a great place to grow up?
Guest:It was actually, yeah.
Marc:yeah yeah i i loved it i mean i i go back there every you know whenever i can you do um yeah it's it's it's you have family there still i have uh grade school friends that i still talk to grade school yeah yeah you check in with them like yearly yeah by it by annually isn't it kind of weird it's kind of weird because you like in like you don't have kids right and you don't have a me neither so you kind of need to check in with those people to see that you're aging yeah yeah
Guest:It is, that is a really, yeah, it's a good barometer, because you look at everyone else, you're like, God, everyone looks so fucking old.
Guest:Well, I don't look like that.
Guest:No, the odds are you're not the only one in the room who has retained the video.
Marc:How can you know?
Marc:You can't.
Marc:I took a picture of myself this morning for a thing, and I'm like, it's happening.
Marc:There's some moment, like I'm 55, and it's right around this time where it's like, you turn into the old man.
Yeah.
Marc:because you see it with presidents you know they start out like oh look he's young and then like within four years it's like oh and it's around in the 50s yeah feel it happening yeah you yeah yeah i i've i'm you seem pretty i'm starting to see things that you know like what's that bump those kind of things boy the the weenus is a little flappier than it used to be
Marc:Who was that?
Marc:One of those guys.
Marc:I can't remember.
Marc:He's been on the show.
Marc:Writer.
Marc:Fuck.
Marc:He tweeted once.
Marc:He said, I had a bad case of dad dick this morning.
Marc:I thought that was genius.
Guest:Just this morning.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Not every day.
Marc:I noticed it.
Marc:Dad dick's problem.
Marc:It's a problem.
Marc:But I have a friend of a friend who says that there are people in that town.
Marc:This guy, I think he's in Kent.
Marc:He runs an excavating business.
Marc:And I've heard his name is Bill.
Marc:And he's got a caricature you did of him when you were like 10 or something.
Marc:Wow.
Marc:Probably.
Marc:I've heard that there are many people in town that have found these caricatures that you did of people, and now they're on the wall because of who you are.
Marc:Did you have a caricature business?
Guest:I did.
Guest:When I was really, really young, my father was a butcher at the local grocery store.
Marc:Is that true?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I don't know why you'd make that up.
Marc:Why do I say it like that?
Guest:Come on!
Guest:He was a teacher, and he worked part-time as a butcher, and I would go into the grocery store and draw on the grocery bags before the groceries were bagged, and then eventually graduated to doing sidewalk caricatures on the street during the summer fair days.
Guest:Yes, there were summer fair days.
Guest:It was an idyllic town.
Guest:And yeah, I did a bunch of them.
Marc:For money?
Marc:For money, yeah.
Marc:So when does this start?
Marc:Because it seems like this was an obsession that obviously turned into a billion dollar a year industry.
Marc:But I mean, at what point do you sort of retreat into paper?
Guest:Uh, you know, I, I tend to be, those are the, those are the parts of the process that I actually enjoy the most.
Guest:I'm, I'm a little bit of an introvert by, by nature.
Marc:He must've been just sitting there drawing all the time.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:So like, what, like why do you ever think about that?
Guest:Uh, why, why am I an introvert?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I don't know.
Guest:I think, I think it's, I think it's that, that was, that was, you know, the, the craft that I gravitated to when I was young was something that, that was a solitary craft.
Guest:And, and that's just what I got comfortable with.
Marc:Cause I mean, I used to draw when I was a kid and you know, you can get lost for hours and hours, but you sort of stuck with it and there's a relief to it, but you seem to like, I guess it's better when you have a true knack for something where you can look at things and go like, no, I'm pretty good at this.
Marc:You go,
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:It's, you know, I, at the time, thought, okay, I think I have a pretty good handle on this.
Guest:But it is, you know, the result is, you know, I enjoy writing.
Guest:I enjoy post-production.
Guest:You know, the most stressful part of a film or a television show for me is the production, where there's tons of people around.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It's a big crowd.
Guest:It's very bustling.
Guest:Like, that's the part where I'm the most kind of...
Guest:uptight but were you always like that like as a kid oh yeah i hated i hated uh and i got better as i got into college right but i got you know it was a long time i just hated going to parties like the whole idea was just so because of the noise because of the noise the noise the loudness the energy the intensity is just too much really yeah so you got so you just and then i discovered alcohol and i was like oh that's the that's what was
Marc:that's the key ingredient this is what i need to feel whole to this day man i tell you it's like you go to a party sober and it's just it's parties are terrible but did you i did you quit drinking the only reason we think they're so great is because we're drunk right and then and then you have to deal with the repercussions of that like you know i i don't love parties i i find myself i'm i like if i have to if i get invited to something there's a long month or two of like i
Marc:You've got to, fuck, I'm just going to be there.
Marc:What am I going to do?
Marc:Once I get there, I'm all right.
Marc:But then you've got to worry about what people say afterwards.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:It's all just a big mess.
Guest:Did you stop drinking?
Guest:No.
Guest:God, no.
Guest:No, no, no.
Guest:Rather the reverse, sir.
Marc:Oh, really?
Marc:When did you start?
Marc:High school?
Marc:College, actually.
Marc:Oh, really?
Guest:You waited.
Guest:Yeah, I waited.
Guest:I probably would have enjoyed high school more if I had... No, actually, I had a good high school experience, but in college, it was like, oh, okay, this is what...
Marc:But in high school, like, so you're this guy's drawing pictures.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And, like, was that the key to your, you know, sort of, like, because, like, I know being a funny guy in high school, you could just kind of move through all groups because you were the funny guy.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:So did you walk around?
Marc:There was a little bit of that.
Marc:Showing your pictures to people?
Guest:There was a little bit.
Guest:There was a little bit of that.
Marc:Look, like me.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:I drew you.
Guest:Exactly.
Guest:You're not too far off.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It is.
Guest:I mean, people give you a little bit of, like, a...
Guest:As I recall, I was given a little bit of a respectful berth.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Because you were the weird kid drawing, but the drawings were cool.
Guest:B-E-R-T-H, not B-I.
Guest:But, you know, they kind of figured, all right, this guy seems to know, he seems to be on a trajectory to something, and we're just going to kind of let him do his thing and not beat the shit out of him.
Guest:So thank you, classmates.
Marc:Leave the kid with the pencil alone.
Guest:Yes, thank you for not beating the shit out of me.
Marc:But were you like, would you, because you seem like you're pretty, I mean, were you, do you think you were like a nerdy kid or?
Marc:Yeah, I think so.
Marc:Yeah?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And what was it like?
Marc:Not in the traditional sense, but yes.
Marc:Because I saw some of this stuff when he started doing actual cartoons for the paper.
Marc:When I was a kid, who were the guys that you were, because I liked, what's that guy's name, Gahan Wilson?
Marc:Gahan Wilson.
Marc:The guy from the Playboy.
Marc:He's a great cartoonist.
Marc:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Marc:But the single panel stuff.
Marc:Yeah, yeah.
Marc:Like, were you reading Mad Magazine?
Guest:Were you looking at... I liked Mad.
Guest:The far side was the thing that really was groundbreaking for me.
Guest:Yeah, that's your generation, I guess.
Guest:Yeah, that was like... That just altered my whole perception of... And God, you look at those panels now.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And they're so great and they're so classic, but you remember at the time, if there had been bloggers then, if there had been think pieces, they would have torn them to shreds.
Guest:People were like, this is horrific, this is offensive.
Guest:But they were brilliant.
Marc:Oh, they're great.
Marc:Well, that's just sort of a problem, because even in some of those old panels, I could see you were drawing from a grown-up world, that there was an edge to them, and you already had a cynicism, but it might not have been yours.
Marc:Was it yours, did you think?
Marc:I don't...
Guest:You know, I don't, a lot of it came from my family.
Guest:My family was like, you know, it was a happy family, but there was like a healthy cynicism.
Guest:There was like a really, certainly on my mother's side of the family, there was a very, they were big laughers.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:A really dark sense of humor.
Guest:Really?
Guest:Like a lot of stuff that just wouldn't fly now.
Guest:That's great.
Guest:But, yeah, but it was, but it was very,
Guest:Were they progressive people?
Guest:They were, yeah.
Guest:Yeah?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Like your dad was a butcher and a teacher?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And your mom was?
Guest:Yeah, she was in college guidance at the Kent School, actually.
Marc:Really?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:So there was a premium put on education?
Marc:Yes.
Marc:Creativity?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Let the kid do what he wants and then rein him in if you need to?
Marc:Exactly.
Marc:Yeah, yeah.
Marc:And you got, what, one sister?
Marc:One sister, yeah.
Marc:Now, were they like, were your folks like, were they waspy people?
Guest:They weren't.
Guest:They were actually, they were both kind of ex-hippies.
Guest:My dad was at Woodstock and, you know, had his share of LSD stories.
Marc:Really?
Marc:Like the good stuff?
Marc:The good stuff, yeah.
Marc:So he told you about Woodstock?
Marc:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:Did he live on a commune?
Guest:Did he do the whole thing?
Guest:He didn't go that far, but he was, you know, he was a folk singer.
Guest:Really?
Guest:And that's how my parents met.
Guest:My mother went to a pub in Massachusetts, and my dad was up on stage playing the guitar.
Guest:And my mother found out where he lived.
Guest:And it's not the healthiest story, actually.
Marc:Stalked him?
Guest:Yeah, stalked him, banged on his door, asked for guitar lessons, and basically just went at him like a praying mantis.
Yeah.
Marc:And so he's a folk singer.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:There's guitars around the house.
Marc:Oh, yeah.
Marc:A lot.
Marc:Did you like your dad's music?
Guest:Because I was, it was kind of weird because like I was, I was.
Guest:Feels like you're pushing back a little now.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:I guess, you know, he was in, you know, this was the counterculture music.
Guest:So I guess my way of rebelling was gravitating towards the Sinatra.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Exactly.
Guest:I'll show him.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:What was good.
Guest:These kids, they don't know what's good.
Yeah.
Guest:But yeah, you know, no, I wasn't, you know, they were the Simon and Garfunkel, Peter, Paul and Mary, you know, Rita Coolidge.
Guest:Ooh, Rita Coolidge.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:There's some sadness there.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:So that was what was in the house on the record?
Guest:That was what was in the house, yeah.
Guest:And you didn't like it then?
Guest:I can, I can, I didn't, you know, I was fine with it.
Guest:It just, I was, I gravitated a bit more towards...
Guest:Fuller, you know, I loved orchestra.
Guest:I loved film scores.
Guest:I was like a big John Williams fan.
Guest:At nine?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Really?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Loved John Williams.
Marc:It actually connected with you at that age?
Marc:Oh, yeah.
Marc:Where you could hear, like, that music is doing something?
Marc:Yeah, yeah.
Marc:Because usually when you're nine, you're like, I like the movie.
Guest:You know, it was a very musical town.
Guest:We had a choir director that would put on these Gilbert and Sullivan shows.
Guest:So we were all doing, like, fucking Gilbert and Sullivan at eight and nine.
Marc:Oh, you're in the show.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:So you're doing musicals.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Because I noticed when you hosted the Oscar, I was like, this is Song and Dance, man.
Marc:This guy's not a cartoon guy.
Marc:Look at him.
Marc:He just wants to dance.
Marc:He just wants to dance.
Guest:That's all he wants to do.
Guest:It kind of is, right?
Guest:I mean, you know, who doesn't enjoy that?
Guest:It scares me.
Guest:Wasn't that, what's the, somebody said, what the reason you become a DJ is so you don't have to dance?
Guest:Or be seen.
Guest:I think when you, I remember going to the, or be seen.
Marc:At all.
Guest:I remember going to the derby at one point when that was still around.
Guest:With the swing thing?
Guest:Yeah, I'm not a good dancer, and there's a guy on stage singing, and I'm like, yeah, I want to be that guy.
Guest:He doesn't have to deal with any of this shit.
Guest:He never has to get on the dance floor.
Guest:And he can still be cool.
Guest:And yet he's still cool.
Marc:Yeah, yeah.
Marc:He's driving the whole thing, that guy.
Marc:Exactly, exactly.
Marc:Well, Favreau was a big swing guy, right?
Marc:And you work with him a lot, right?
Marc:Yeah, oh, yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:But you don't see yourself as part of that thing?
Marc:Because that was sort of a trendy thing.
Marc:It seems like there were a lot of guys wearing zoot suits and jumping around.
Guest:Yeah, there's lounge swing and then there's true... To me, the best Sinatra recordings are his ballad albums.
Guest:Only the Lonely and Where Are You and No One Cares.
Guest:The stuff where there's the minute-long orchestral intro before he even starts singing.
Guest:The big bill.
Marc:The strings.
Marc:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Marc:Did you read Dino by Nick Toshis?
Marc:No.
Marc:Oh, dude.
Marc:Come on.
Marc:That's an all Amazoner right now.
Marc:It's this poetic, dark investigation into the soul of Dean Martin.
Marc:Really?
Marc:Oh, my God.
Marc:When did it come out?
Marc:It's a classic.
Marc:uh geez it's got to be maybe the early 80s dino nick toshis he's a very dark guy and a very dark writer and it's a biography of dean martin that you know just it it's you know whether it is yeah whether you uh whether i don't know how much of it is poetic speculation but there's a lot of history in there and it's very well researched what a title dino living high in the dirty business of dreams yeah
Marc:Dude, you got it.
Marc:He's written a couple of great books, Toshes.
Marc:But but like I it was I didn't realize that that Dean Martin, a couple of things that there was these guys that set these precedents like being Crosby that like Martin, you know, got into the racket to just be sort of a Crosby knockoff.
Guest:So did I mean, so did Sinatra.
Guest:Like they both idolized Crosby.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And it's like the phrasing and everything.
Marc:But nobody like who who knows about that shit now?
Marc:Is there part of what you're doing now?
Marc:Because it seems to be a real focus for you.
Marc:I mean, did Grammy nominated swing records?
Marc:I mean, is there is there some party that sort of like you got to respect these guys?
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Because, you know, it's there's there's a.
Guest:It was an era of high musicality where every part of the equation was its own deal.
Guest:If you take a song that everybody knows, like I've Got You Under My Skin, Cole Porter wrote the song.
Guest:He was revered for his craft.
Guest:Nelson Riddle did the arrangement.
Guest:He was revered for his craft.
Guest:Sinatra sang the song.
Guest:He was revered for his craft.
Guest:It was this amazing collaboration of talent.
Marc:And also, back in the day, if you wanted to go to a dance, there were 30 guys on stage.
Guest:Yeah, sure, yeah.
Marc:And that was just normal.
Guest:They had to have room for that shit.
Guest:You watch the Grammys, you know, what, 40 years ago or whatever it was, and there's Henry Mancini playing the Pink Panther theme with like a 40-piece orchestra behind him.
Marc:It is really something that that's all gone away.
Marc:It's gone away.
Guest:And I don't think it's just an evolution.
Guest:I think it's a cheapening.
Guest:I think it's less expensive to not do it.
Marc:Yeah, it's less expensive and also like, and they've somehow not unlike with movies and stuff, they've over time just hypnotized people into believing that this was good.
Marc:Exactly, yeah, yeah.
Marc:But I don't know that there's any coming back to that.
Guest:I don't know.
Guest:No, I mean, that's why we do these records is that just kind of say, look, this can still be done.
Guest:You know, you can still make music that has a real, you know, that has a lot of different music.
Guest:And I'm just talking from a technical standpoint, you know, layers to it.
Guest:It's just a hard thing.
Guest:It's just kind of vanished.
Marc:And the first time that you sort of got engaged with this was when you did the Family Guy episode, the Vegas episode?
Marc:Was that the first time where you realized like, wow, I have freedom, I can put together
Marc:as many musicians as I want.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:Well, I mean, The Simpsons did it for a number of years.
Guest:They were one of the few shows left on the air that used a live orchestra, and so we decided to, you know, God, if they can get away with it, maybe we can too, and we were able to pull it off, and it just makes a huge difference.
Guest:I do think that even if an audience doesn't know that what they're hearing on a show like Family Guy is live music, is a live orchestra...
Guest:On a subconscious level, it just makes the show a little bit more resonant.
Marc:Resonant, yeah, and authentic somehow.
Marc:And what's interesting to that, like I'm not a huge animation guy, you should know.
Marc:Believe it or not, neither am I. But I think that's true.
Marc:There's things I've learned over time.
Marc:But the interesting thing about orchestras is each one of those guys has a story.
Marc:You read about big bands and the ones that kind of spun off onto heroin and then became bebop guys and just drove their lives into a ditch.
Guest:To me, the biggest problem is the...
Guest:The source of the creative impetus has fallen out of the hands of the composer and into the hands of the producer.
Guest:And it's an oversimplification, but it's true.
Guest:A producer cannot give you what George Gershwin could have given you.
Marc:It almost makes you cry.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Oh, yeah.
Marc:To feel the, you can feel all the instruments in the right room.
Guest:Yep.
Marc:And it's such a beautiful, life-embracing thing that's just gone.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And it's an interesting point.
Guest:It's hard to think of anything in recent years that has evoked, you know, that I've listened to.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:That's gotten me to that point where it's like, oh, I'm listening to this music.
Guest:I could cry.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But it's... For the right reasons.
Guest:For the right reasons.
Marc:Absolutely.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Yeah.
Marc:But when you do it, though, you're very meticulous about it.
Marc:I mean, I don't know how much you go through it.
Marc:My buddy, my producer, said he was listening to a Christmas record, and you did a Christmas record.
Marc:And he said, it's very clear that Seth wants to do the best version of these songs.
Marc:He just felt it that, like, you know, you're out to kill this thing.
Guest:Well, you know, there was a secret to... My theory is, like, Sinatra was a vocalist who surpassed any of his contemporaries.
Guest:But beyond that, I think part of that is the fact that he...
Guest:His secret weapons, he understood better than anybody what an orchestration, what an arrangement, what an orchestra can do for you and the cushion it can give you.
Guest:It can just make you sound better.
Guest:And his orchestrations are just light years beyond anything else that was being written.
Guest:With the records that we do, it's the same thing.
Guest:It's not just about singing the songs.
Guest:It's a showcase for the orchestra.
Marc:Right.
Marc:And you got nominated for a Grammy for the one you wrote for, oh, an Academy Award for the- Oh, yeah, yeah.
Marc:Was it from Ted?
Marc:From Ted, yeah.
Marc:Yeah, for that song.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Do you see yourself as having a, is that going to be a thing you do?
Marc:Are you going to be Randy Newman?
Marc:Are people going to-
Guest:I mean, I can't... I would love to be able to write for orchestra.
Guest:I'd have to go back to school for years.
Marc:So now you write the things and you say to the guys, can you put something together?
Guest:You know what?
Guest:It's the one part for me that's retained this kind of mystery because I work with composers that I love, but I'm not able to...
Guest:to orchestrate myself.
Marc:You can't say, can we take it to the nine after that?
Guest:Yeah, I mean, my communication skills have gotten better.
Guest:Like I can say, you know, can we make that a little more rubato, which I didn't used to be able to do.
Guest:But I, you know, before it was like longer.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But it is the one part of the process for me that I kind of like the fact that it's still sort of this magical thing that I don't completely understand.
Marc:Right, right, right.
Marc:And you've got guys that know what they're doing and you can be sort of like enchanted by it.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:As opposed to sort of like, no, you got to bring up the oboe.
Marc:Exactly.
Marc:You want to be that guy, then all the love is gone.
Guest:I think I have been that guy once or twice.
Guest:Well, thanks for copping to it.
Guest:It's Biggie.
Guest:You shit on the oboe guy.
Guest:I know, there's so few of them, too.
Marc:I know.
Marc:It's hard for those guys.
Marc:Tough being it.
Marc:Yeah, man.
Marc:So when did you think you started enjoying pissing people off?
Marc:Because it must have happened with the comics.
Guest:Yeah, it did, actually.
Guest:I used to do a weekly comic strip for our local paper in Kent, and I did one when I was, God, nine or ten.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And it was a guy taking communion, and he says, can I have fries with that?
Guest:Right.
Guest:And we went to church because I was in a choir.
Guest:We weren't a religious family, but we went.
Guest:Catholic?
Guest:Episcopalian.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:And I was always just weirdly confused and fascinated by communion.
Guest:The whole process was just so creepy.
Guest:Dude, the whole thing is witchcraft.
Guest:yeah it's just it's just it was just but it was just such a strange weird thing like i just don't i didn't get it i still don't get it um ritual magic it's like they're putting these little wafers on the tongue and you know i kind of want to know what they taste like but but these look at these adults kneeling while other adults put things in their mouths like it's you know which better than i guess that's all over the internet but right
Guest:But so I did this comic strip and I got an angry letter from the local priest who said, shame on you for insulting the almighty God and those who love him.
Guest:And you're like, yeah.
Guest:I'm like...
Guest:And down below he had written, do you like me?
Guest:Check yes, no, or maybe.
Guest:But it was a very interesting thing to kind of process at that age.
Guest:How old were you?
Guest:I was like nine or ten.
Marc:Can you remember how you processed it?
Guest:Was it a good feeling or did you feel horrible?
Guest:I didn't because my parents helped me.
Guest:They said, look, this is... I don't think they particularly liked the guy anyway, so I think they were like, yeah, fuck this guy.
Guest:But they kind of said, look, you got a reaction from something you did artistically, and that's neither good nor bad.
Guest:It's just what you want out of it.
Guest:So they had a very kind of...
Guest:Really?
Guest:Sophisticated attitude about it.
Marc:It's diplomatic.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:I mean, they didn't say like sometimes when you do satire.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:The object of it is actually to piss these guys off.
Marc:Exactly.
Marc:This is exactly what you need to be doing with your life.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I mean, that would have been.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I mean, they were there again.
Guest:Their sense of humor was so like, I mean, it was it was just dark.
Guest:Yeah, it was dark.
Marc:So that was normal to you.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:That was probably like on the on the lighter side of the spectrum.
Marc:Yeah, I remember there was a moment, for some reason, whatever this is triggering in me, that there was a moment when I was with my parents on a ski trip with another couple and their kids.
Marc:And one of the other couples said, if you were on the mountain and one of you died and you were stuck up there, which part of them would you eat first?
Marc:And I must be like eight.
Marc:And my mother goes, the penis, at least I'm used to that.
Marc:And I'm like, that's where I get it.
Guest:That is, that is, that is, my mother was exactly the same way.
Guest:That is exactly the kind of thing that would have come out of her mouth.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:And so that gets normalized and that's a, it's, that's a fucking gift really.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So like, you know, there was, there was a line in, uh, in Wayne's world that my mother was like, thought was the funniest thing and she would butcher it when she would retell it.
Guest:But it was the, the Seymour Wayne's on the phone.
Guest:to the Chinese restaurant, and he goes, yes, I'll have the cream of some young guy.
Guest:And my mother would tell this at partially, have you seen the movie?
Guest:It's hilarious.
Guest:He's on the phone with his Chinese restaurant, and he says, I'll have the cream of some young guy.
Marc:Delivery is her own.
Marc:Delivery is her own.
Guest:There was a handful of jokes, and now they're all coming back to me, that my mother would tell in all kinds of company.
Guest:There was a joke that she told over and over and over, where a male grocery bagger walks out to the car with a bag of groceries for this woman, and the woman says, you know, in a flirtatious way, I have an itchy pussy.
Guest:And the guy goes, you know, I get all those Japanese cars mixed up.
Guest:And my mother would tell this joke to everyone she met.
Guest:You instantly know what you were dealing with.
Guest:It seems like she liked the Asian-themed joke.
Marc:My God, that may be it.
Marc:That may be it.
Marc:Something about the language mix-up.
Marc:What a breakthrough.
Marc:Yeah, it's just weird, like, that moment where, I don't know, man.
Marc:Like, something just happened on this set of GLOW the other day.
Marc:Like, I'm in that show GLOW, you know?
Marc:So it's me, and it's just, like, all women.
Marc:And I don't know why.
Marc:Like, you're always waiting.
Marc:Like, you know, like, I just keep my mouth shut.
Marc:I behave.
Marc:You know what I mean?
Marc:And it's not a chore for me.
Marc:You know, it's fine.
Marc:I'm just working in a cast and I love them all and everything.
Marc:But there was a moment the other day where I'm on set and we start a take and I go into it and I fuck the lines up.
Marc:And for no reason, just because I do it sometimes on the mic when I'm doing my monologues, I just went, ah, fucking cunt.
Marc:And I...
Marc:And I'm like, why?
Marc:Did it go over well?
Marc:No.
Marc:But it was like I walked up to the AD and I said, do I need to apologize for that?
Marc:It wasn't directed at anybody.
Marc:It was really just a moment of frustration.
Marc:She's like, no, no, no, it's fine.
Marc:But I had like a whole day of like, why that word?
Guest:There's probably like a hundred of those in the script, I would imagine.
Marc:No, no cunts.
Guest:Oh, really?
Guest:No cunts, no.
Guest:It's like an HBO show, right?
Marc:No, it's on Netflix, but no, it's not that kind of show.
Marc:It's about women wrestlers in the 80s, but it wasn't completely out of character, but it's just one of those things like sometimes I'll do it here, like if I'm redoing an ad read, and it's not for my producer, it's just what I do.
Marc:I'm like, ah, fucking boss.
Marc:You just say it.
Marc:Because it feels good to say it.
Guest:I think most people, you know, most reasonable people of all sexes are just going to see that for what it is.
Guest:Of course.
Guest:It's an expletive.
Marc:There was a moment of like, ha ha, wait, wait, wait, that word?
Marc:But it wasn't, no.
Guest:I could be right.
Guest:I'm Mr. Straight White Male here saying, I think it's fine.
Guest:I can't see the problem.
Marc:No, no, I think you're right, and it was clearly just a thing that, it was just, yeah, an expletive.
Marc:But talking about offending people, because in your hometown, and I know you've probably talked about this a lot, but the pushback from that one guy in your own town, that almost sunk fucking family guy, have you gone into the history of that guy?
Marc:The Griffin guy?
Marc:Griffin was his secretary and he was the headmaster of the school.
Guest:Yeah, that was an interesting experience because it's like your high school principal calling you as an adult and asking you to do something.
Guest:And it's like, well, that doesn't really work anymore.
Marc:But it was just the name, right?
Marc:So how long had the show been on?
Marc:It was the name.
Marc:Yeah, the show hadn't premiered yet.
Guest:So how did he know?
Guest:The show had... I think there was a lot of press.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:There was a lot of press about it.
Guest:And, you know, it's something that just never occurred to me.
Guest:Like, writers take... You know, writers take names of people that they know, or their last names, first names.
Guest:You just draw from wherever.
Guest:And if there's a resemblance, there's a team of lawyers, the studio and the network, is there one, you know...
Guest:chuck emmerich in this town or they're right if there are 50 you're fine right if there's one then he's got a potential case plenty of griffins in the world yeah so so it was it was the issue was that there was there was i think a panic about you know is this about us and it wasn't it was it was it was a name that i you know i was like this is gonna be a show about an irish family and that was a name that i chose and
Marc:But it wasn't even him, right?
Marc:No.
Marc:It was someone who worked for him.
Guest:It was sort of a murky kind of thing that went down.
Guest:I never really got the full- You don't know the backstory?
Guest:Never really got the full, you know, all the details.
Guest:Really?
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:But it caused you trouble.
Yeah.
Guest:It caused a little bit of a flap.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Like he aligned himself with the parents, whatever council, the parents television council.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It's that's which it's interesting.
Guest:That's an organization that, you know, it's it's historically been a contentious relationship with family guy.
Guest:I, I.
Marc:What's the guy's name?
Marc:Brent Bozell?
Guest:He's gone.
Guest:He's gone.
Guest:That guy was a nut.
Guest:The fellow running it now is, you know, I actually had drinks with him a couple times and is a terrific guy.
Guest:You know, like he has his job.
Guest:That organization is, they do what they do.
Guest:Their job is to police the networks.
Guest:But, you know, you can have- In the name of kids.
Guest:Yeah, supposedly.
Guest:It was in the name of decency and taste, but it's nice.
Guest:It was interesting to find, oh, we can actually have a conversation in a friendly way, and it was a nice surprise.
Guest:And it came about... I think we had written a letter...
Guest:to the parents television council saying listen we invite you guys to write an episode if you think you can do this better than we can oh good that's a good way to hand and the letter we we got back was you know and it was sort of a way of of of trying to make a point the letter we got back was was was very kind and respectful and and and uh and so i reached out to the guy and said hey thanks a lot and and
Guest:ended up becoming friendly with him.
Marc:So it's... Do I keep your enemies closer?
Marc:I guess.
Marc:I guess.
Marc:Well, I mean, it just... I guess when you... Like, the whole genre of animation that, you know, at some point, I think, before you...
Marc:You know, there was grown-up animation always, kind of, you know, Betty Boop, Wizards, whatever the stuff I saw when I was a kid.
Marc:But there was a point on television where it appealed to both kids and adults.
Marc:And then, you know, what the freedom there was, you know, how much are you...
Marc:filling a kid's head with i guess was a real predicament for the uh moralizers yeah right so like who's this for is this like you know how how did they you know look at at cartoons there was always a subtext but but by the time the simpsons came on certainly by family guy it was like it's not a subtext yeah yeah and that was that's that was part of the the conflict is that that was still a period where
Guest:cartoons were for kids.
Guest:You know, it's interesting.
Guest:This is sort of the first generation of adults that I guess that has held on to the practice of watching cartoons and reading comic books, and it used to be something you left behind, but now it's a... Let me do a joke about that.
Marc:Really?
Marc:Yeah, like I said, I read some comics when I was nine, but at 11 I decided I'm not going to make this my life.
Marc:LAUGHTER
Marc:I think it's some sort of belief system.
Marc:I think it's beyond entertainment.
Guest:Yeah, there's a passion there that is... It's something that I probably should be able to lock into with what I do for a living.
Guest:It's hard for me.
Guest:I've seen maybe two superhero movies in the past 10 years.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:It's just like it's a choice.
Marc:I'm not sort of like, fuck that, but I don't think to do it.
Marc:Yeah, no, I don't either.
Marc:I think there's also a fear that like, well, what if I become one?
Marc:I've made it this far.
Marc:But what do you think like in terms of offending people?
Marc:Because I know it's it's on my mind is a comic.
Marc:It's on your mind because it's come up a couple of times already just in passing.
Marc:But like even the Oscars.
Marc:So they didn't ask you to host, right?
Guest:No, not this year.
Guest:Not this year.
Guest:It hasn't come up yet.
Marc:You're the last guy on the list, right?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Do you want to go back to him?
Marc:Would you do it again?
Guest:You know, I don't know.
Guest:Actually, I got asked back the year after I hosted, I guess because the numbers had gone up.
Guest:And so they asked me back, and I was making the Western comedy that I made in Santa Fe, and I was so wrapped up in that, and I thought, you know, there's no way I'm going to be able to finish this
Guest:and stay alive if I try to do the Oscars as well.
Guest:And, you know, part of me wanted to say yes, and I realized, God, you know, the only reason I'd be saying yes is to kind of, you know, show up the detractors, and it's just not a good enough reason.
Guest:it's not as is that a new shift for you no no no even at the time it was it was but i mean it just was not to put in that kind of work it was i love having done it yeah um it was a it was a thrill as you know to do it i have a great experience and it was i think the the you know what it did for you know it opened up a lot of doors for me for other things and
Guest:It did?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Like what?
Marc:Well, just the visibility you get from the Oscars is... But mostly as a live performer, you think?
Guest:Yeah, I think it's sort of a real boost in that regard.
Guest:But it's something that... I don't know.
Guest:I...
Guest:Maybe.
Guest:I don't know what the what the upside is of doing it at this point in time.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Right.
Guest:But I think that's what everybody's realizing.
Marc:But I think that but like just looking back and how the culture has changed over since you've done it, which was what, five years ago?
Marc:How long ago?
Marc:Yeah, about five years ago.
Marc:So, like, do you think you could do we saw your boobs again?
Marc:I mean, would it even accommodate your personality at all?
Guest:What's interesting is that thing came about, and I've never mentioned this, but that gag came about because I read a lot of the, which you should never do, I know this now, you should never read any of your own press.
Guest:But, you know, I read a lot of press.
Marc:You should stay away from the computer altogether.
Marc:Yes, completely.
Guest:But I read a lot of press leading up to the Oscars, and it was a lot of, like, really angry, foaming-at-the-mouth kind of stuff that was just like, oh, I bet I know what he's going to do, and I hate him for it, you know, from a lot of these outlets.
Guest:From the left and the right?
Guest:No, you know, I...
Guest:I think mostly from like the Hollywood press.
Guest:Oh, okay.
Guest:More from the left.
Guest:Not a political, oh yeah, okay.
Guest:But it's, and it got to the point where like, God, I have to sort of comment on this in some way.
Guest:I mean, I can't just go up and, you know, because my original idea was very kind of tame and very kind of old style song and dance.
Guest:And I thought, God, this is like, I gotta, it's, you know, in a way it's like you helped create what you despise.
Guest:But I, you know, so it was this idea of- You felt challenged.
Guest:Yeah, in a way.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And it was the idea of creating this alternate Oscars
Guest:that was exactly what they were afraid would happen.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And that's the part that gets a little forgotten.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:That there was a context.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:They always forget context.
Guest:They always forget context.
Marc:Quick bait is essentially the lack of context.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:It's like taken out of context.
Guest:It's the only way that industry works.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But that was the thing.
Guest:And, you know, I've...
Guest:It's hard to know how I would approach it if I host it again.
Guest:It's hard to... Because there's no upside.
Guest:Look, it's a very visible...
Guest:high-profile thing that all odds are on it.
Guest:Not according to ratings.
Guest:I mean, isn't that the big problem?
Guest:True, yeah.
Guest:It's maybe press visibility, but... But it's an easy thing to shit on.
Guest:Like, it's so easy to shit on the Oscars because it's... All you gotta do is you don't have to know... You don't have to read the news.
Guest:You don't have to know history.
Guest:You don't have to do any work.
Guest:All you have to do is sit down, watch, and tweet.
Marc:right yeah that's all you gotta do yeah and just and also because it takes it takes a lot you see a lot more outrage about about that's impestuous Oscars than you do about a piece of harmful legislation there's no winning either side yeah because I would imagine most people who are who think Hollywood is some sort of bastion of evil they don't watch it you know I you know they don't watch it I used to like watching it just because I like I like seeing movie stars but I
Guest:But I think a lot of that is an example.
Guest:It's the loudest voices controlling the conversation.
Guest:I think most people, you know, look, I can sit down, as I said before, I can sit down and have a conversation with the head of the Parents Television Council.
Guest:I'll go even further than that.
Guest:I can sit, I've sat down, I've had conversations, civil conversations with Rush Limbaugh.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I mean, it's... Rush Limbaugh.
Guest:You can...
Guest:disagree with someone and have a civil discourse.
Guest:It's a lot.
Guest:And I think a lot more people are able to do it than we think right now.
Marc:No, I agree with that.
Marc:But the problem is, and you know from show business, is that, yeah, you can have those conversations, but then he'll go, I got to get back on the mic.
Marc:This guy's Seth MacFarlane.
Guest:came in here you know and so like there's a public you know those guys who have control of the public narrative and and their humanity can be very different things yeah well yeah it's it's it's true but i mean it's but once you once you have you know that i'm not claiming he has humanity once once there's a face-to-face interaction it gets it gets a lot harder and so it's so it's and that's look i mean that's where the internet is so destructive is that
Marc:Yeah, because you could do it in Nominus.
Marc:But I can't tell you how many comics I know.
Marc:They're like, I knew Trump when he was on Stern.
Marc:I mean, you listen to on Stern and Jeff Ross has been on his plane.
Marc:It's like.
Guest:Well, you know, I think that was before the deification.
Guest:I think whoever you are, you have to be made of the strongest stuff.
Guest:To survive deification.
Guest:To survive that kind of lionization when you're standing in front of a crowd of thousands of people who are treating you like a god.
Guest:Unless you are made, and Trump is not strong enough to handle it.
Guest:And in some ways, you saw little inklings at the last debate where Bernie might have been getting into it a little bit.
Guest:That he was maybe feeling a little bit lionized.
Guest:He's made of much stronger stuff than Trump is.
Guest:You have to be superhuman to be a really special kind of person to avoid that.
Guest:To maintain at least a false sense of humility.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You have to maintain a healthy amount of self-loathing.
Marc:Something to stay humble.
Marc:Exactly.
Marc:Well, I mean, I've been trying to sell this joke on stage, I can't quite do it yet, about how in the world of narcissists, Trump has tremendous success because he's actually achieved and making it everything about him.
Marc:He's a hero to narcissists.
Marc:It's actually all about him, literally.
Marc:He did it.
Guest:And, you know, you wonder how much of it is, you know, he's obsessed with brand.
Guest:He's mentally ill.
Guest:Yes, yes.
Guest:At this point, he's mentally ill.
Guest:But, you know, he's obsessed with brand, and he's probably thinking to himself, you know, when I'm done with this, I'll be able to start the conservative news outlet to rival Fox News.
Marc:Only if he can do it from prison.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But, you know, that's what I think is going on in his head.
Guest:He's thinking, all I got to do is hang on to this bass.
Guest:So I can, yeah.
Guest:No, I think that's true.
Marc:So I can make money off it when it's done.
Marc:That's right.
Guest:Which is probably all he wanted to do in the first place.
Guest:I mean, that's the rumor is that he just never really wanted the gig.
Guest:Well, now we're here.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:I can't find any, I don't have any sympathy for his plight.
Marc:No, I don't either.
Marc:But but let me ask you on the other thing, like, you know, in most of the shows, certainly in Family Guy, that there was a, you know, the the idea was the Rick Rickles and the Rickles like, you know, equal opportunity offender thing.
Marc:But now that, you know, there's there's.
Marc:there are people that specifically put Trump in office so they could, you know, shamelessly say those words and have those ideas that, you know, what place does it, what is the conversation for you now in your head about what it means to still do that?
Marc:Or I know you're a little distanced from it now.
Guest:And by the way, that's one of the reasons that I am distanced from it is that it's a tightrope that... It's almost impossible.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah, it's not enjoyable anymore because comedy used to be this kind of, if you'll pardon the term, safe space that could kind of exist in its own little bubble.
Guest:And when you have your sensitivity seminars that every corporation does nowadays,
Guest:it's an interesting little asterisk that, because the one thing they say is that, you know, in the context of that writer's room or that creative space, it's, it's, it's sort of a different set of rules because you have to have the creative freedom to just spit ball, whatever, particularly in comedy.
Guest:And that, that is still protected.
Guest:You know, it's not that, it's not like that's, that's gone out the window for the most part within reason.
Guest:It's still protected at least for, at least in my experience.
Marc:Well, yeah, I mean, comedy writing rooms are like some, it must've been like your family.
Marc:I mean, that's sort of dark.
Marc:I mean,
Guest:Just a way to get loose.
Guest:It's exactly... It's the way to put it.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I mean, there has to be this... And you have to respect people and you have to treat people well.
Marc:Sure, sure.
Guest:But you also have to have the freedom to... Push the envelope.
Guest:And figure out where that line is.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And sometimes you cross it.
Guest:Right.
Guest:So that part of it is...
Guest:you know, it's when it gets out into the public, that's the part that's, that's just too, it's too stressful now for a lot of people.
Guest:And, and I, you know, I, I, I love what I'm doing now because I just don't have to really deal with that as much.
Guest:I am distanced from family guy, but as far as the, you know, what it does to the conversation and what it does to the, the, the medium, I mean, animation is strangely in its own sector.
Guest:You know, these aren't real, these aren't faces.
Guest:It's different than sending a tweet.
Marc:You have a freedom.
Marc:What happens if we just, in a broad sense, become afraid of even trying to find that line?
Guest:And I think that's the problem.
Guest:And again, I don't think that reasonable people...
Guest:I don't buy that this... I don't know anyone who would be offended by... I've been in this business for 20 years.
Guest:I don't know anyone who would be actively offended by...
Guest:you know, anything that is, I don't know, maybe there are people who would have been offended by what you said on the set, but I don't know, I think everyone that I know would have said, yeah, this is, you know, even people are maybe uncomfortable, it's like, yeah, you know, he's pissed, he had a moment.
Guest:So I don't think it's this, there's this kind of sense that there's a witch hunt situation
Marc:It's not a... Oh, you're saying that... I don't think that's true.
Marc:It's not most people.
Marc:It's a few people, in a sense, that put their life into being, you know, over-sensory.
Guest:To being angry about comedy.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:And I don't think that that's... Like...
Guest:You know, things that get me mad, things that get me angry.
Guest:You know, it's science denial.
Guest:It's social injustice.
Guest:It's, you know, I'll read an article about mass incarceration.
Guest:These things piss me off.
Guest:Right.
Guest:I don't ever remember feeling any rage at anything I heard in a fictional setting.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:In a television show or a film or a stand-up routine, which is a form of storytelling.
Marc:Right.
Marc:But isn't it interesting, though, because, you know, just professionally and also personally as people that sort of, you know, broker and funny that you may not be offended.
Marc:But when you watch it now, you're sort of like, no, that's going to offend somebody.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Well, yeah.
Guest:And, you know, again, it's like, as I say, it's easy for me as, you know.
Guest:Again, straight white male.
Guest:It's easy for me to say that.
Guest:So I'm coming at this from a place where I'm not entirely, you know, I don't have all the tools for a proper perception of that.
Marc:Well, I think that's probably the most important outcome in terms of women, ethnic groups, is that finally there is...
Marc:a sensitivity and an empathy that probably wasn't there.
Marc:And I think that's healthy.
Marc:Absolutely.
Marc:But then how do you shit on them?
Marc:Well, you know, I think I think that's I mean, I should reframe that a little bit.
Marc:There was the idea of using stereotypes or being an equal opportunity offender or investigating, you know, the differences between people.
Marc:There was something humanizing about it.
Marc:And it was not in its best form meant to be isolating or hateful.
Guest:I think we'll find that balance again.
Guest:I think, you know, was it Ronan Farrow pointed out that when you have this kind of a sudden release of oppression, it's going to be like opening a floodgate.
Guest:I mean, it's going to be big and loud and forceful, and that's justified at the outset.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I think, you know, at a certain point, it's just going to be a matter of, okay, once we've acknowledged the problems and we actively seek to correct them, then I think we'll be able to find some equilibrium.
Marc:Right.
Marc:That's right.
Marc:I think that's true.
Marc:But I also think that in terms of...
Marc:uh clickbait the internet in general that that and i you know and that's an industry i mean clickbait is clickbait is not a productive part of no no i know that's my point is that and i don't talk about it too much is that the idea that everybody you know has a voice that can be heard and exploited
Marc:It might be at some other juncture in history a democratic ideal, but now it's just become like a malignancy.
Marc:Well, now you can't get anything done.
Guest:Right.
Guest:You can't have a discussion with 50 million people.
Guest:I mean, you have to... The whole thing of... There's a reason we elect representatives to go and have these discussions in smaller groups and arrive at...
Marc:And it's not some guy named at Sling Blade.
Guest:Yeah, exactly.
Guest:Yeah, I mean, no, it's... There are good and bad elements of... I think most of Twitter is immensely destructive.
Guest:I think you can point to something like... And I remember when Bruce Jenner became Caitlyn Jenner and the Internet... You know, this was... It was all over Twitter the next day.
Guest:And...
Guest:She was accepted in a way that I think would not have happened 10 years prior.
Guest:I think 10 years prior, you would have had people at the water cooler going, my God, did you see that interview?
Guest:Holy shit, what a nut.
Guest:But because suddenly you have this smaller community because of Twitter, because of the internet, it happened like that.
Guest:It was an amazing giant leap forward.
Guest:So you have these little glimmers of positivity from that, but most of it is just a cancer.
Marc:I think that's important because I think what's happening culturally in terms of white male perspective and also the administration we have and what that's empowered is that the one thing it seems that whoever is still on board with this shit, the one part of democracy they couldn't seem to manage or handle was tolerance.
Marc:yeah yeah and and just the license to be like i don't have to put up with this shit anymore yeah great yeah and it and that's enough to crush the whole thing yeah so i think that push in terms of culture and in terms of what you're saying the benefit of twitter is is that there's this kind of you know constant push for you know you have to tolerate yeah yeah and and you start to realize too how much
Guest:How much it really matters.
Guest:You know, a lot of Trump's base does not, you know, they're not bothered by his by his crudeness, by his lack of of of civil discourse.
Guest:Or by the fact that he's a fucking grifter.
Guest:Right, right.
Guest:They're not bothered by that.
Guest:But even just in how you present, it's amazing how that can alter the whole, like it really does matter how the president conducts themselves because it was just a different country under Obama.
Guest:And I think a lot of that had to do with the fact that you were getting a different message from the top down.
Guest:It's stability.
Guest:Yeah, one of my castmates on the Orville pointed out that it's shocking how quickly...
Guest:after Trump took office, a large portion of the country goes, oh my God, whew, I can say this shit now.
Guest:Oh man, it's like it was just right under the surface.
Guest:Right there, man.
Marc:It's like pulling the Band-Aid off a wound that will never heal.
Marc:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Marc:Oh, that thing's not going to get better.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:But now we can see it.
Marc:Yeah, exactly.
Marc:That's the thing.
Marc:If we make it through this, we're going to know who they all are.
Marc:It's true.
Guest:It's true.
Guest:It's true.
Guest:But it is... We on the left have to figure out a way to...
Guest:you can't sit down at Thanksgiving with your racist uncle and call him a fucking idiot and expect to get anywhere.
Guest:And maybe you do think he's an idiot.
Guest:Maybe he is, but it's like, but you can't go into it without it.
Guest:You have to go in with...
Guest:With a little piece of information.
Marc:What did you think of that thing, that thing?
Guest:What did you think of that?
Guest:Just a calm, constructive... And it may be frustrating, but it's just the only way to let things progress.
Marc:My dad, who's not...
Marc:It was never really a political guy who voted Democrat his whole life.
Marc:And, you know, and now, you know, he's got whatever he he somehow just he watches Fox News like it's the real news.
Marc:He's not politically sophisticated in any way, but he did vote for Trump.
Marc:And, you know, because of whatever he felt, because he got he got bamboozled.
Marc:He got brainwashed.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:So, like, you know, he you know, he.
Marc:He'll say about Hannity, he seems to know what he's talking about.
Marc:It's like, well, that's just a dumb bullshit skill.
Marc:But it was weird after the last two days, he calls me up, my old man, and he's like, I think you were right about Trump.
Marc:I guess you never know until you know.
Marc:I'm like, no, more than half the country knew.
Guest:But it's a problem, you can't, you know, as hard as it is to, you know, we all want to blame the voters.
Guest:We all want to blame the Trump voters for this, but you can't, it's not that simple.
Guest:You can't expect, you know, look, a lot of us had the advantage of being armed with a certain skill set that allows us to detect bullshit.
Guest:I couldn't fix a car if you paid me.
Guest:And yet, you know, we all need each other.
Guest:You have to look at it in terms of are these people to blame or is Fox News to blame?
Guest:Are these people to blame or is it Harold Hill selling the boy's band?
Guest:Is it his fault or is it the people who get suckered into it?
Marc:Well, yeah, and also my fear is that the real problem is that once you are able to sort of disassemble people's ability to assess or believe facts or truth, there's a good chance that those brains are broken forever.
Yeah.
Guest:You know, it's a good question.
Guest:I don't know.
Guest:That'd be a question for a psychologist.
Marc:Because like, you know, with all this antagonism of the sort of, you know, people who consider themselves practical and working class and they're feeling that they're being condescended to by scientists.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:And that they can be presented with scientific fact and go like, I don't know, jury's still out.
Marc:Is it not out?
Guest:that's not out that's that's and that's where that's where it gets dicey because then it starts to affect the rest of us in a in a in a big way um and you know when when those kinds of issues come into play and scary that's it is it is but as somebody like you like you know in sense of of like you know you're clearly positioned as culturally and politically left but you take a lot of shit from the left
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:I mean, like, how do you handle being, you know, accused of being a misogynist or being homophobic?
Guest:I mean, well, you know, I've never had an interaction with anyone who's written anything like that about me, which I think is conspicuous.
Guest:Like, it all happens from the safety of a tweet or a blog.
Guest:It's never presented to me in a way that is...
Guest:where it can be a conversation.
Guest:So that's conspicuous.
Guest:And that allows me to sort of dismiss a lot of it as clickbait.
Guest:I mean, you have to, like, outrage makes money.
Marc:So you've never had somebody sit down with you on a panel or have a debate with you and your political points of view.
Marc:Because, I mean, you do do a lot of activism work for the LGBT community and whatnot.
Marc:But that is not in some way, you know, some kind of like, you're not doing that out of guilt
Guest:No.
Guest:No, I'm doing it because that's what my parents, my parents, they raised me to believe that those things are important.
Guest:But it's also, I think, the inability to separate, you know, what I run into a lot is people watch Family Guy.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And then assume that that is a microcosm of my personality.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And it all goes part and parcel with this inability to separate fact from fiction that is infecting the whole country.
Guest:And I think, you know, look, reality shows were kind of the first sort of... Cancer?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And then social media, Instagram, you know, what's real and what's fake, and it's...
Guest:And, you know, I look back at a show like All in the Family, and it's almost like, you know, you wouldn't have blamed Norman Lear for Archie Bunker's racism.
Guest:Right.
Guest:He was showing a... He was parodying a certain type of personality.
Marc:Oh, yes.
Marc:Everything happens at the same frequency.
Marc:Right?
Marc:That's what's happening.
Guest:And I'm not saying we're all in the family, but I'm saying that there is...
Guest:But they can't discern.
Guest:They can't distinguish.
Guest:It's a statement.
Guest:They track it to a person.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:That person's a fuck.
Guest:Exactly.
Guest:Exactly.
Guest:And it's this oversimplification.
Guest:It's an inability to make that separation.
Guest:And you see it on both sides.
Marc:And then the problem is, is that- I think it's more destructive on the right, but you see it on both sides.
Marc:No, I think that's probably true.
Marc:So how did you go to RISD and not become some sort of fucked up artist?
Marc:Um...
Marc:They must have been surrounded by them.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:There were a handful.
Guest:Most of the school when I was there, most of the student body was very gravitated towards fine art.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:There was a handful of us that were a little more, we gravitated toward the commercial end of things.
Guest:Practical minded.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I did a student film, and I had phenomenal professors at RISD.
Guest:They struck just the right balance between instruction and freedom of tone.
Guest:And I made a student film that was sort of a rough version of a family guy in a lot of ways.
Guest:Is that what started it?
Guest:And I remember...
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I remember one of my professors saying to me, this is your one chance to do that self-expressionistic project that you may never get to do again in your whole life, and I'm just worried you're wasting it on a lot of bathroom humor.
Guest:And, you know, God bless them.
Guest:They supported the hell out of me.
Guest:Have you written that guy a Christmas card?
Guest:You know, I love them because they taught me all the skills I needed to make that project.
Guest:But then I got a few laughs at the screening and they're like, all right, maybe this guy, maybe this is his trajectory.
Marc:He's a comedian.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:But I mean, but there's but I mean, you must have been like because you seem like a pretty well managed individual personally.
Marc:And I don't know how much you were drinking or whatever, but were there different camps?
Marc:I mean, there must have been people going on state or painting with blood or, you know, or doing performance art pieces and all.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And you were coexisting with these people.
Marc:Did you have peers that were out there?
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:Yeah, there was some out there people.
Guest:There were... I'm racking my brain to think of specifics, but nothing's coming to mind.
Guest:But there were a lot of heavy-duty... Did you appreciate that?
Guest:Yeah, I mean, you know, they're people that you interact with and for most of the time you can converse and you're all kind of after the same goal.
Guest:You know, a few people who are kind of out there on the fringe.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:But, you know, for the most part, the guy painting with his own feces would have a beer with you an hour later.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:and go, what do you think?
Marc:And then you'd be diplomatic.
Marc:Sure.
Marc:Hey, interesting.
Marc:Exactly.
Marc:Doing interesting stuff.
Marc:No one's going to go to the show because it smells bad.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It's a great education in the art of bullshit too in a lot of ways because you had to have these sessions where you critique each other's work.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:And, you know, there was some really good stuff and there was some stuff that was not good and it really taught you
Guest:the politics of diplomacy and criticism?
Marc:Yes.
Marc:I think, yeah, find the good thing.
Marc:The compliment sandwich.
Marc:Yeah, that corner is interesting.
Marc:The rest of it.
Guest:The grain of the paper is just really, man, you must have gone to the right drugstore.
Marc:But you never tried stand-up?
Guest:I did, actually.
Guest:I did when I was in college, and I did a little bit of it when I came out to L.A., and I didn't do a whole lot.
Guest:Didn't stick?
Guest:No.
Guest:I liked it.
Guest:I enjoyed it, and I never had a horrific experience, but it was just a lot of... It wasn't...
Marc:it wasn't where my heart was i was i was i was drawn to film and and well i like that that you know even in the single panel stuff you did when you were nine that that's joke writing and that you know somehow or another that is joke writing founded in in in human experience or at least some of that but i mean how are you getting informed like you know because you're it's also really hard well you like it's really hard to write jokes yeah
Guest:You know.
Guest:Yeah, I'd stay away from it.
Marc:I just talk until something funny happens and I make note of it.
Guest:I mean, you know, when I left Family Guy and the Orville, writing the Orville is interestingly the happiest I think I've been.
Marc:Dude, I think there's some really good jokes in there because I was watching it.
Marc:I mean, because I think the trick to it is you seem to... I don't know if you...
Marc:I don't know if you like inhabiting nostalgia somehow, like, you know, whether it's a singing or Star Trek or whatever, Western, you know, there's something about, you know, kind of rethinking these things that we're all very familiar with, but I mean, but humanizing the, the, the sort of crew, the angle of that, it's just a job, I think is very funny, but there's also like, there's, and you're not doing with a laugh track, which is always tricky, you know, there, and you wouldn't do it with it, but you know, there are definitely jokes there.
Marc:And I kind of liked the responsibility being on me to laugh a
Marc:alone if i'm going to laugh you know what i mean but even something as simple as like can i have one of these mints it's a marble and you're like even that like like it's just so funny and then like to set up you know this in the pilot though in the first episode but just to have that guy go can we still drink soda like they're like it's a very human question but you know like towards the end of the show he's got a soda so like it pays off but that stuff is i i you know i like it and i like it that it's not the thrust of the show it's not all joke no joke
Guest:And it settled into what it eventually became when we found that balance.
Guest:Initially, there was a sense that, all right, we're going to have to... And it was self-imposed.
Guest:It was this pressure to kind of do what I've been doing lest I deviate and piss off my audience.
Guest:And it was Jon Favreau who directed the pilot and read the script and essentially said to me, you know what, this is good stuff.
Guest:I like this.
Guest:This is a breezy read.
Guest:Some of these jokes seem like you may be scared of the story that you've written, and don't be.
Guest:It works.
Guest:And so I kind of, I took that to heart as the show went along and it really settled into something that was, as you say, more about just kind of regular people working in space as opposed to a sitcom that takes place on a spaceship.
Marc:No, yeah, I kind of feel that.
Marc:And also because it's space, you know, the suspension of disbelief is necessary, but because it's such a familiar terrain in that it is on some level a reflection of Star Trek.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:So you're cool with that.
Marc:And there's definitely a lot of space in space in the work environment.
Marc:It's very tricky to create something that is so clearly a stage and just have people having these brief interactions.
Guest:And that guy who plays your friend is very funny.
Guest:Yeah, Scott Grimes.
Guest:He's fantastic.
Guest:He's very funny.
Guest:Yeah, he's great.
Guest:But yeah, it is a...
Guest:The nice thing about that, the bridge of a spaceship.
Guest:Look, even Star Trek adopted that from sci-fi that had come before.
Guest:It's a trope that's so familiar at this point that you almost get away with it like it's an office because people are just used to it.
Guest:Right, and they'll take it.
Guest:Yeah, so that part of it, you don't have to worry about explaining.
Marc:Right, and you don't have to worry about explaining just weird aliens around with regular jobs.
Marc:Right, exactly.
Marc:You're kind of used to it.
Marc:I'm not a sci-fi guy, but you're obviously a Star Trek guy.
Guest:Yeah, I was a fan.
Guest:I'm not a huge sci-fi guy, but I loved The Twilight Zone.
Guest:Well, yeah, it's a little different.
Guest:I loved Star Trek.
Guest:Anything that humanized the genre.
Marc:But do you have an opinion on the Captain Pike episode and whatnot?
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:I remember I remember them all very well.
Guest:Yeah, I think I think I may have enjoyed it.
Marc:But what is it about this?
Marc:Like you seem to have a sense of a strange sense of nostalgia for things that were around long before you.
Marc:And I don't know whether it was coming up through Hanna-Barbera or what sort of made you want to integrate yourself into this particular, these different histories of show business.
Marc:Can you identify it?
Guest:I...
Guest:I mean, look, you come out to Hollywood and what's the thing everybody wants to do?
Guest:Make a Western.
Guest:It's just... Is it?
Guest:It's got such... I've talked to other filmmakers who are drawn to that genre.
Marc:They feel like they have to.
Guest:Well, it's something that's so... It's such a classic part of where we work and where we live and this industry that we're in.
Marc:But the weird thing is, it's rare.
Marc:I've seen a few.
Marc:I just bought a big book on the making of The Wild Bunch.
Marc:I started watching that again.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And, you know, it's very specific and it is a thing.
Marc:So you just wanted to take a crack at it.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I mean, I was a fan of the genre.
Guest:I had seen a lot of Westerns.
Marc:What's your Western?
Guest:You know, Man Who Shot Liberty Valance is probably my favorite.
Marc:I've got to watch that.
Marc:Because that's like, you know, it's one of the ones, you know, I've seen Shane, The Searcher.
Marc:Shane's great.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah, and The Searchers is great, too.
Marc:And you know what is a genius Western is that, like, Clint Eastwood has made some great Westerns.
Marc:Oh, yeah.
Guest:It's weird.
Guest:Hang them high, I remember being very good.
Marc:But even, like, The Pale Rider, it's such a classic structure, but The Unforgiven, it's like, I'm gonna put it all in here.
Marc:It's all going in here.
Marc:And like the, at the end where it says he went on to own a haberdashery in San Francisco is the best part of that movie.
Marc:Like people with histories.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:You know?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:So, so that, so you just wanted to take.
Guest:Well, it was, it was also a, you know,
Guest:When I would watch these things, my co-writers, Alex Salkin and Wellesley Wilde, had had the same reaction.
Guest:We were all fans of the genre, but we'd all independently had the same reaction that, God, they're so cool and they're so epic in the scope, but at the same time, God, it would have been horrible to live there.
Guest:It's this odd combination of magnetic romanticism and just disease and death.
Marc:Yeah, everywhere, and no ability to stop it.
Marc:In the opening shootout in The Wild Bunch, they kill literally most of the town, trying to kill the outlaws.
Marc:Which is probably barely a town.
Marc:And it's never even spoken of.
Marc:Everyone's laughing at it, literally on the way away from it.
Marc:Both sides.
Guest:What do you do, particularly if you weren't an alpha, what do you do, the sun goes down, you go home, what do you do?
Guest:You sit there and wait for death.
Guest:That's kind of all there is to do.
Marc:I don't know.
Marc:It's a good question.
Marc:I guess that's what we're all doing anyway.
Marc:Yeah, we just have a lot more things to distract us.
Marc:That's what it's all about.
Marc:I know anthropomorphizing is part and parcel to the line of work you're in, but it's one of the great gifts of animation.
Marc:You can make anything talk.
Marc:But what compelled you to do TED?
Guest:Yeah, I I liked that there was something that was
Guest:But look, that goes back to the far side too.
Guest:One of the fundamental tropes of the far side was this conventionalizing of talking animals.
Guest:There's one that I remember where there are two cows that are sitting in their living room and the wife cow has all these pearls and this
Guest:wearing this beautiful dress and is like just clearly living a very good life.
Guest:And the caption is just, Wendell, I'm not content.
Guest:And it was just such an awesome non-joke that just like, why this needs to be two cows?
Guest:And so that was the idea.
Guest:I just hadn't seen anything.
Guest:I hadn't seen anything like Ted.
Guest:I hadn't seen that part of the story told where, okay, after the fairy tale is done.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Show me the...
Guest:Show me the toy that, you know, look, there's always the trove of only the pets can hear each other talk or only the toys can hear each other talk.
Guest:And the humans can't.
Guest:And I was always kind of partial to the Muppets, like the fact that the Muppets were just kind of walking around.
Guest:Kermit and Fozzie worked for a newspaper in one of the movies.
Guest:And, you know, it wasn't, oh, my God, that frog can talk.
Guest:It was like, man, that frog was just really passive aggressive with me.
Guest:So, you know, in the age of CGI, I thought, God, you know, I haven't seen this done yet.
Guest:And where just everything about this character is treated as human and casual and normal and just mundane and boring, except for the fact that he's talking bear.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:So it's sort of like it's a human story.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Right.
Marc:Right.
Marc:You're just sort of like.
Marc:And I think that's sort of the thing about space, too.
Marc:And the thing about your humor in general is that that, you know, you're going to humanize these these environments that that, you know, are really kind of sterile in a way or over the top.
Guest:And it's in a dramatic way.
Guest:You know, that's that's.
Guest:I mean, look, that's what the best sci-fi has done.
Guest:I think he's going to kill me if he didn't, but one of my co-writers, Brandon Braga, I can't remember if this was his episode or not, wrote an episode of Star Trek where there were two characters beaming up at the same time.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And they accidentally got merged into one guy.
Marc:Oh, yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Completely fictitious, absurd premise.
Guest:But it was presented as in this very human kind of civil rights sort of way, because the guy was now saying, I want to stay this guy.
Guest:I don't want to be these other two guys.
Guest:I want to be this guy.
Guest:And they're saying, well, if if if we if if these two guys still existed, they would probably want to be themselves.
Guest:Right.
Guest:So do we make this decision for you?
Guest:Do we force you back into two guys or we let you stay one guy?
Guest:It's ridiculous.
Guest:But it was so like philosophical conversation and it was presented as real.
Guest:So that's a lot of what I do does.
Guest:I am fascinated by the impossible, the fictitious, the absurd presented in a very accessible, normal way.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah, in that first episode when the blue guy's eyes blow up for no reason, just squirts blue.
Marc:It's not explained or anything, but it's just a reaction.
Marc:Was he afraid or what?
Guest:Yeah, I think that's the... We keep that vague.
Guest:It's network television.
Guest:You'd have to ask Rob Lowe.
Marc:So now you're safely flying around in space and doing swing music.
Marc:That's what's happening.
Marc:So have you gotten all the fuck you out of your system?
Guest:Yeah, you know, I don't know.
Guest:As I said, I'm enjoying myself more than I have at any point in my career with the Orville, probably because, as I said, it's so hard to write jokes when you're doing it.
Guest:An hour long show that's kind of focuses on story and character.
Guest:You just, you just can, you know, you don't have to worry about ending a scene with a gag.
Guest:You can end a scene with a thought.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And it's, it's, it's just, it's like, you know, being a bootcamp for years and suddenly being stationed, you know, someplace tropical.
Marc:But, and now do you, do you feel like family guys behind you?
Um,
Guest:The idea of doing a Family Guy movie is still very much in my head.
Guest:I think that's still a possibility.
Guest:I don't know.
Guest:That would be a challenge at this point because to go back in and it'd be a fun challenge to figure out how that franchise works
Guest:translates for me after having been away for so long you know if i came back would i write it the same way and and and uh and i don't know it's it's it's interesting to to i i'm i look forward to exploring it at some point right so you're still you're willing to try yeah and uh so you're uh your your mom's past but your dad's around he's around yeah and he's out here he's out here so you see him a lot i do yeah yeah he he he shows up at my house sometimes when i don't even know he's there
Guest:Yeah?
Guest:You guys get along good?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:No, he's great.
Guest:He's great.
Marc:Well, that's good.
Marc:So from what I understand, you seem to have been stricken from the books at Kent.
Guest:You know, I don't know because I haven't...
Guest:i haven't looked into it in a while i think there was a there was a third party attempt to reach out recently but i i it was kind of an odd to reconcile yeah yeah i think so and and and it was i gotta i gotta dig it up because i don't know what was the approach it was just hey you know there's there's a desire to may you know make amends and and really bury the hatchet and over the griffin thing
Guest:Yeah, over the, I mean, mainly over the headmaster parents television council thing.
Guest:I just didn't know what to make of it because I didn't know who.
Guest:What they wanted from him.
Guest:I didn't recognize the name and who it was from.
Guest:But yeah, I think there's absolutely room for that to be patched up.
Guest:Um, I, I do only because when I go back to visit my hometown, I kind of like to, you know, I am a very nostalgic person and it's nice to kind of walk around campus and, and, and, you know, see where you, you once spent so much of your time.
Guest:And, you know, I, I, it's like going to visit your childhood home.
Guest:It's just, there's, there's a, it's, it's, yeah, it's, it's a, it's a nice thing to be able to do.
Marc:Is your childhood home still there?
Marc:It is, yeah.
Marc:And do you still like, at some point when I go back to Albuquerque where I grew up and I drive by the first house, at some point it stopped doing the thing.
Marc:Oh, really?
Marc:A little bit, a little bit.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Like, you know, just like I have memories of it, but it becomes- It becomes very distant.
Marc:A little bit.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:It's kind of weird.
Marc:And the second house I lived in, it's no longer there, so that's kind of weird.
Marc:Yeah, yeah.
Marc:And the city changes around it.
Marc:And I don't know what I'm looking for, but when you do go back, even just the sky or a tree, it's sort of like it takes you to something.
Marc:Yeah, and it smells.
Guest:It's like you walk into the old bookstore, and it's like, oh, my God.
Guest:But this is a town that doesn't – it's changed, but it hasn't changed that much.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So a lot of that's still – And do people see you walking down the street, and they go like, Jeff!
Guest:Um, no, it's, I mean, it's a small enough town that, that, that, and also, you know, I, I don't, I don't have that kind of contrary to popular belief.
Guest:I don't, I don't have that kind of visibility.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I can, I can, I can disappear.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I can, I can walk around Manhattan and nobody gives a shit.
Guest:It's a gift.
Guest:It's, it's nice.
Guest:They don't care.
Marc:Yeah, it is good.
Marc:All right, buddy.
Marc:Well, I think this is good.
Marc:You feel good?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Oh, good.
Marc:Thanks, man.
Marc:Cool.
Marc:Seth MacFarlane, folks.
Marc:I enjoyed that.
Marc:I hope you did.
Marc:The second season of The Orville is on Thursday nights at 9 p.m.
Marc:Eastern on Fox.
Marc:Oh, my God.
Marc:I'm going to play an echoey old blues riff for a couple minutes now.
The Orville
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Guest:.
Marc:boomer lives