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Speaker 1: I had to look at the failure as the path

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Speaker 1: to success. I thought, well, every joke that doesn't get

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Speaker 1: a laugh is teaching me what not to do.

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Speaker 2: Sometimes we wait for the result to make us believe

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Speaker 2: that we're worthy. But there's a moment that I think,

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Speaker 2: when you do what you love, you're like, oh, no,

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Speaker 2: I can do this. It's just a matter of time

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Speaker 2: before people kind of figure it out.

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Speaker 1: And Number one Health and Well Inness Podcast.

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Speaker 2: Jay Shetty Jay SHENNYE shet Hey, everyone, welcome back to

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Speaker 2: On Purpose, the place you come to listen, learn and grow.

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Speaker 2: Today on on Purpose, I welcome a true icon, Judd Apatow,

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Speaker 2: one of the most influential storytellers in modern comedy, and

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Speaker 2: the filmmaker behind Just the Name of You, the four

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Speaker 2: year Old Virgin, Knocked Up, and Funny People. Together, we

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Speaker 2: explore how to tap into your creativity, push through self doubt,

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Speaker 2: hues humor to get through tough moments, and build the

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Speaker 2: kind of resilience that lasts in both life and work.

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Speaker 2: We'll be diving into Jud's newest book, Comedy Nerd, a

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Speaker 2: vision usual memoir of his life and career. This book

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Speaker 2: is epic, honestly I've been flicking through it and taking

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Speaker 2: moments out that I want to talk about today for

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Speaker 2: the past couple of weeks, and I can't wait for

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Speaker 2: you to grab it.

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Speaker 1: Please.

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Speaker 2: Welcome to On Purpose, Chad Apatow. Chad, It's great to

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Speaker 2: have you here.

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Speaker 1: It's great to be here.

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Speaker 2: Truly, thank you so much for being here. I'm like,

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Speaker 2: I'm so fascinated by your career, your life, and I

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Speaker 2: feel like there's so many directions with which we can go,

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Speaker 2: and that's my favorite kind of person to sit down with.

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Speaker 2: But the first thing I want to ask is you

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Speaker 2: have a book called Comedy Nerd. Yes, you've made people

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Speaker 2: laugh for decades. What was the last thing that made

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Speaker 2: you laugh out loud?

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Speaker 1: There's a TV show on Hulu called Such Brave Girls.

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Speaker 2: I've not seen it, Okay, I just.

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Speaker 1: I'll just recommend that to everybody.

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Speaker 2: It's just you make this show.

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Speaker 1: I have nothing to do with it other than my

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Speaker 1: daughter Maud said to me, I think I've seen the

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Speaker 1: funniest thing ever. And then we watched it together and

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Speaker 1: we went, yeah, that's about it. And I've been catching

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Speaker 1: up on the Righteous Gemstones, which which I was behind her.

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Speaker 2: Okay, I've not seen that either.

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Speaker 1: You got two good ones.

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Speaker 2: Great two recommendations. I love that. I feel like you

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Speaker 2: and your family just have such a sweet, fun relationship.

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Speaker 2: Are you always watching shows together and nineteen recommending? What

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Speaker 2: does that look like?

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Speaker 1: Yeah? I mean when they're young, you're just you know,

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Speaker 1: watching The Iron Giant eight hundred times in a row

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Speaker 1: with them, or a toy story, and then at some

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Speaker 1: point you go, I wonder if they could enjoy the

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Speaker 1: Blues Brothers and you try to slip you know, some

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Speaker 1: Caddy Shock or Ghostbutchers in there, and maybe a third

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Speaker 1: of them they like, yeah, like you kind of can't

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Speaker 1: get them to love the stuff that you loved.

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Speaker 2: Yeah.

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Speaker 1: But then every once in a while, I'll you know,

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Speaker 1: when they were young, I'd walk by their room and

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Speaker 1: they're like watching Anchorman or something, and I think, Okay,

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Speaker 1: they're beginning to get it.

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Speaker 2: How long did it take them to get your sense

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Speaker 2: of humor in your style?

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Speaker 1: I don't know. I used to joke all the time

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Speaker 1: that like, they just so don't think I'm funny, and

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Speaker 1: you know, I would go do stand up and they

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Speaker 1: would be like, how long did you put them through it?

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Speaker 2: For?

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Speaker 1: I'm like fifteen minutes like, oh god, you know, like

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Speaker 1: they felt so bad for anybody that had to listen.

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Speaker 2: To me, anyone who paid to see you exactly.

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Speaker 1: But I think that's the fun thing about kids is

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Speaker 1: they just have no respect for you soever. I mean,

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Speaker 1: maybe hit it like everyone saw a little sneak out like, oh,

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Speaker 1: I guess they did like that. They think it's funny

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Speaker 1: to hold back. Yes, you know, like maud Is in

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Speaker 1: the movie Funny People, And the running joke for her

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Speaker 1: in the house is she's never seen it, right, So

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Speaker 1: when she comes over, I'll just have it playing on

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Speaker 1: a TV and then she'll just leave the room.

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Speaker 2: That's amazing.

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Speaker 1: Just decided this one I will never watch.

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Speaker 2: That's amazing. What's the reason, What does she want to

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Speaker 2: watch it?

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Speaker 1: I think she just realized that it bothered me. And

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Speaker 1: now it's a lifelong gag.

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Speaker 2: That's what it is. That's that's exactly it. I don't

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Speaker 2: have kids yet, but I can totally relate to the

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Speaker 2: fact that if I thought something my dad did was cool,

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Speaker 2: I did not want him to know exactly like I

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Speaker 2: did not want him to know. And you're just gonna

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Speaker 2: be prepared for that as a dad, I guess and

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Speaker 2: a mom that I saw one clipper. I think you

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Speaker 2: and your wife were talking and I think you said

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Speaker 2: that her her like best feeling of being a parent

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Speaker 2: was when you realized your daughter's actually got along.

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Speaker 1: Yeah. Oh that was a big, big moment. Yeah, because

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Speaker 1: you know when they don't get along for a while,

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Speaker 1: then you're like, wait a second, they called each other.

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Speaker 1: Oh my god, they text each other now, And then

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Speaker 1: you just get excited that you know, the relationship you

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Speaker 1: always thought would happen happens.

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Speaker 2: How did you get over that as a parent? I

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Speaker 2: think so many parents struggle with that. Obviously, we all

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Speaker 2: want to be liked. Yeah, you want to be liked

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Speaker 2: by your kid, yes, and this is the person you

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Speaker 2: love more than anything else in the world, But for

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Speaker 2: years they don't love you, Like I always say, like,

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Speaker 2: I feel like I was grateful to my parents when

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Speaker 2: I was like twenty one, Like it took all those

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Speaker 2: years for me to turn around and be like, thank

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Speaker 2: you mom and lay in a deep, sincere way. Yeah

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Speaker 2: I may have said it before. Then, how did you

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Speaker 2: deal with that? Like, it seems like you have a

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Speaker 2: really great relationship with your kids, and how did you

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Speaker 2: get over that hump? Of not them seeing you as

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Speaker 2: cool and funny and all the rest of it when

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Speaker 2: you'd achieved so much.

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Speaker 1: Well, I think that they you know, I think we

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Speaker 1: all got a kick out of each other. Like we

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Speaker 1: always thought that they were really funny and we enjoyed

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Speaker 1: their personalities. And so even when you know, you go

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Speaker 1: through the rough middle school years, you know, we're still

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Speaker 1: having fun most most of the time. But I also

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Speaker 1: think like we're like the kind of parents who were like,

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Speaker 1: you know, don't go to college, then leave me alone.

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Speaker 1: Like we were like the pressure parents. You know, we

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Speaker 1: were trying our best to say, you know, just figure

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Speaker 1: out what you want to do, and you know, chase

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Speaker 1: your passion. And that's the main thing I realized later,

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Speaker 1: which is people who are always obsessing on grades or discipline,

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Speaker 1: But the thing you're really hoping your kids have is

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Speaker 1: some sort of fire to chase a dream. And I

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Speaker 1: had never thought about that before. Oh I need my

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Speaker 1: kids to have some ambition, some energy to take a

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Speaker 1: risk and go after something. And so, you know, when

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Speaker 1: I saw that both of them, did you know, that

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Speaker 1: was a great, great relief.

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Speaker 2: How were you in school? Did you get good grades?

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Speaker 1: I was like a very mediocre, mediocre student. I went

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Speaker 1: to school on Long Island and they used to do

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Speaker 1: this thing where they would test you, I guess, like

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Speaker 1: in sixth grade, and they would decide how smart you were, basically,

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Speaker 1: and they would put you in track one, which was

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Speaker 1: the smartest, Track two, which is kind of most people

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Speaker 1: Track three kids having a problem. And if you were

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Speaker 1: put like me in track too, it was really hard

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Speaker 1: to get them to ever switch you to a class

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Speaker 1: and track what So I always thought like that kind

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Speaker 1: of messed me up because it was very early, like twelve,

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Speaker 1: where they basically said this is the limit of your intelligence.

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Speaker 1: You know, that like really bugged me. And you'd see

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Speaker 1: like the smart kids go to class and you can

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Speaker 1: kind of tell that the track when teachers were probably

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Speaker 1: a little cooler than the other ones. And so but

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Speaker 1: I got my act together. I went to USC Film

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Speaker 1: School and studied screenwriting. But how I got in was

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Speaker 1: I just wrote a really funny essay. My grades weren't amazing.

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Speaker 1: I just sent in a couple ideas from movies. But

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Speaker 1: my essay was it was meant to be funny. I

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Speaker 1: just described what the buildings would look like that I

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Speaker 1: would give them the money to build, So I just

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Speaker 1: kept promising them how much money I would donate. It

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Speaker 1: was basically the college scandal what in nineteen eighty five,

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Speaker 1: And I think it made them laugh. Yea, I said,

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Speaker 1: you know, you think that George Lucas building is nice?

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Speaker 1: Get ready for the JUG building. But I still have

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Speaker 1: not given them any much.

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Speaker 2: Is that happening? I was, abouts, are we getting a

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Speaker 2: JUG building?

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Speaker 1: I just just so that they're not part of a

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Speaker 1: bad agreement. I literally have never given them a penny.

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Speaker 1: I'll go speak there all the time, but I don't

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Speaker 1: want them to be caught in anything.

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Speaker 2: Have you ever reconnected with any of your like school

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Speaker 2: or high school teachers or anyone else who taught you

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Speaker 2: and you had any interactions with back then that you

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Speaker 2: remember now you well.

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Speaker 1: You know the man who ran the media program and

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Speaker 1: the high school radio station that I used to interview comedians,

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Speaker 1: that was named Jack to Macy, and we're still good friends.

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Speaker 1: And you know, he was the first person to say

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Speaker 1: to all of us, you know, treat this radio station

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Speaker 1: like it's real and just you know, use use it.

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Speaker 1: And so we would like call up and try to

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Speaker 1: figure out how to get free tickets and free books.

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Speaker 2: And live on.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, we would just like use it. You know, people

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Speaker 1: were interviewing politicians and sports people. My friend was interviewing

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Speaker 1: bands like Ram and then one day my friend was like,

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Speaker 1: you should try to interview comics because he knew I

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Speaker 1: was into it. And then one day I got an

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Speaker 1: interview was Steve Allen, and then I got an interview

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Speaker 1: with Howard Stern Sandra Bernhard, and that became how I

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Speaker 1: educated myself about comedies. I did fifty interviews in high

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Speaker 1: school with like Seinfeld and Leno, and as I look

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Speaker 1: back now, I go it helped. Like they did give

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Speaker 1: me good information and most importantly, they were nice to me,

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Speaker 1: which I think made me feel safe trying to get

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Speaker 1: in the business because I thought, oh, there's people like

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Speaker 1: that in there.

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Speaker 2: Yes. Yeah, What was the most memorable interview that you

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Speaker 2: remember for yourself at that time because you were fifteen

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Speaker 2: years old?

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Speaker 1: Yeah, I was fifteen, sixteen years old. I mean yeah,

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Speaker 1: Martin Short I interviewed when he was promoting SETV and

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Speaker 1: he was just so funny. I was always amazed when

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Speaker 1: anyone would try to make me laugh because I was

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Speaker 1: just a kid and I just thought, Wow, this is

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Speaker 1: the nicest person in the world. They're like really like

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Speaker 1: going for it with me. You know, some people would

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Speaker 1: seem like, oh, no, this is a kid, I didn't

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Speaker 1: want to do this, and they'd be like fine, but

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Speaker 1: a few people would be really funny. Jerry Seinfeld was

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Speaker 1: hilarious talk to me about how to write jokes and

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Speaker 1: gave me examples of jokes was working on, and that all,

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Speaker 1: you know, you know, stayed with me forever.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, it's so subtle. I feel like in those years,

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Speaker 2: the things that you were and the people that you're around,

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Speaker 2: and I wish everyone got work experience like that. I

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Speaker 2: mean that sounds amazing.

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Speaker 1: Well it was also a lesson in how to treat people, yes,

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Speaker 1: because you know, I was just a young person and

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Speaker 1: I would go in and talk to someone and you know,

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Speaker 1: for someone like Jerry Seinfeld just to say I'm going

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Speaker 1: to sit with you for forty five minutes and really

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Speaker 1: take all your questions and seriously and thoughtfully, and that

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Speaker 1: was a big deal.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, it's such an amazing experience and entry into the

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Speaker 2: industry too. Like you said that, Oh, if I become

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Speaker 2: like these people, then I can still be a good

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Speaker 2: person and a nice person.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, and I didn't realize that until like a few

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Speaker 1: years ago, Like, oh, that was a big thing about

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Speaker 1: how I try to handle myself in the business. Was

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Speaker 1: I saw these people like Harold Ramis, and they were

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Speaker 1: just so kind and funny that I just thought, Oh,

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Speaker 1: that's the vibration you want, go for it.

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Speaker 2: Yeah. Did you ever worry about it? I feel like

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Speaker 2: everyone has so many thoughts on the industry. Did you

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Speaker 2: ever have a negative idea of the industry or worry

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Speaker 2: or fear that it would change you or make you

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Speaker 2: different or in any way change your path.

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Speaker 1: I was just really excited by it. I think as

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Speaker 1: a kid in the seventies and eighties, just Variety TV,

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Speaker 1: Bob Hope and Saturday Night Live at Richard Parry, it

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Speaker 1: seemed so exciting. And I also thought there's not that

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Speaker 1: many people in comedy back then. It really felt like

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Speaker 1: all of comedy was one hundred people. So for some reason,

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Speaker 1: I thought I can get in there. I think I

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Speaker 1: can get a job in there, and so I really

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Speaker 1: was just determined to figure out what is the path?

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Speaker 1: You know, how do you do it? Yeah?

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Speaker 2: I heard an interview where you were talking about how

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Speaker 2: you almost grew up in comedy with all these amazing

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Speaker 2: other people that are all icons in their own right

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Speaker 2: as well, like Jim Carrey and Adam Sandlan, and you

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Speaker 2: were almost like you were like we all grew up

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Speaker 2: with our friends in our career, and I was thinking,

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Speaker 2: what was it that allowed you or to be friends

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Speaker 2: and not competitors and not see each other as your

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Speaker 2: art rivals or your auton nemesis in that sense, and

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Speaker 2: actually say, oh no, you said in that interview, You're

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Speaker 2: like I saw them as friends, and I was like, Wow,

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Speaker 2: that's that's special. It's unique.

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Speaker 1: I think it's different for everyone. Like for me, I

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Speaker 1: just thought, I can't compete with Jim care, I can't

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Speaker 1: compete with Adham saying that, I had an awareness that

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Speaker 1: these were very special people. I mean, they were great

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Speaker 1: friends and remain and are so nice. But back then

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Speaker 1: just a fan, even when I was, you know, around

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Speaker 1: Adam or Jim, I always thought, oh, that's the guy

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Speaker 1: that's going to be the guy, you know, like it

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Speaker 1: was like hanging out with Charlie Chaplin or something. And

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Speaker 1: it just turned out to be true that they were

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Speaker 1: the people who were going to change everything, and so

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Speaker 1: I never felt competitive. Sometimes I was depressed, like I

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Speaker 1: had lost the competition. That's really what I thought. It was.

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Speaker 1: Oh wow, I'm not built like that. You know, if

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Speaker 1: you're around Jim Carrey, you're like, yeah, I can't do that.

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Speaker 1: I can't think that. I mean I used to help

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Speaker 1: him at writing jokes and punging up scripts and stuff,

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Speaker 1: So that felt like the greatest thing ever that he

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Speaker 1: trusted me enough to be a part of his creativity

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Speaker 1: in any way.

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Speaker 2: Well, well that's a great point too, Like I was

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Speaker 2: looking at it from the other angle, but I love

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Speaker 2: I love the lens you took it through, which is then,

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Speaker 2: how did you How did you maintain your motivation and

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Speaker 2: your drive when you're looking around and you're thinking, God,

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Speaker 2: this guy's ahead of me, this guy's going to be

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Speaker 2: the next big thing. Who am I? How did you

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Speaker 2: channel that feeling that could lead to depression and giving

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Speaker 2: up to actually going well, no, I still have something

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Speaker 2: to say.

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Speaker 1: I think I just thought something's gonna something's gonna happen.

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Speaker 1: I don't know what it is. I started out as

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Speaker 1: a comedian and I was studying screenwriting, and I didn't

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Speaker 1: really have a vision of if I was going to

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Speaker 1: be an actor. I wanted to be a comedian. I didn't.

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Speaker 1: I didn't really think that much about being a director.

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Speaker 1: I thought about being a writer a little bit. And

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Speaker 1: everyone was jockeying to break in. And suddenly Jim Carrey

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Speaker 1: was on a living collar, and then Adam got Saturday

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Speaker 1: Night Live, and I was beginning to write some HBO specials.

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Speaker 1: I wrote for Tom Arnold and Roseanne was one of

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Speaker 1: my first gigs. And then I met Ben Stiller and

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Speaker 1: we created a sket show, The Ben Stiller Show together,

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Speaker 1: and suddenly that was happening, and out of some weird fluke,

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Speaker 1: even though I was very young, we both ran the show,

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Speaker 1: which was weird. We didn't really climb the ladder. We

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Speaker 1: got a show on the Fox network, and so I

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Speaker 1: was just trying to not screw it up. And Ben

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Speaker 1: was a genius. So I was watching what he was

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Speaker 1: doing and trying to figure out how I could help

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Speaker 1: him run the show and not ruin this opportunity. And

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Speaker 1: you know, he got canceled after twelve episodes, but we

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Speaker 1: won an Emmy six months later, and so it became

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Speaker 1: this how.

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Speaker 2: Did he canceled? I'm win an Emmy.

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Speaker 1: It was a funny thing because I think how many

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Speaker 1: people really liked it. It was on at seven thirty

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Speaker 1: against sixty minutes. It was a very weird time slot,

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Speaker 1: and Ben was really trying a lot of new things

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Speaker 1: in comedy. You know. Bob Odekirk and Andy Dickens g

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Speaker 1: and Garoffolo were on the show, and so we knew

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Speaker 1: this that the head of the network didn't like it,

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Speaker 1: and so the whole time we were like, Oh, this

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Speaker 1: isn't gonna last long. And six months later we won

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Speaker 1: an Emmy, and then people categorized us as people who

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Speaker 1: are doing something interesting, almost like an alternative rock band,

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Speaker 1: like we were the Replacements or something, and I thought, well,

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Speaker 1: that's pretty cool to be a failure.

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Speaker 2: Yeah too terrible.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, it did not get ratings, but certain people

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Speaker 1: that I respect think what we did was great, and

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Speaker 1: so that kept me going for a while.

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Speaker 2: Yeah. I love that for two reasons. Because I remember

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Speaker 2: reading Bob Byder's book and he talked about how Steven Spielberg, Tarantino,

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Speaker 2: George Lucas that they would all premiere their movies to

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Speaker 2: each other and ask for feedback. Yeah, and when I

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Speaker 2: read that, I was like wow. And he goes on

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Speaker 2: to talk about how they were so confident in their

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Speaker 2: own style, and they so trusted that every person had

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Speaker 2: their own style that they never felt someone was going

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Speaker 2: to steal something or take something off each other. And

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Speaker 2: I thought, well, that's an incredible, incredible And these they're

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Speaker 2: all young at this age. It's not like they're you know,

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Speaker 2: they're adults, but they're not mature people with wisdom. And

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Speaker 2: for them to have that at that point, and it sounds

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Speaker 2: like you all had the same where you're helping each

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Speaker 2: other with jokes, you're putting shows together, you're running together.

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Speaker 2: Like it almost feels like the comedy version of that.

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Speaker 2: If that was the film version, this is the comedy version.

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Speaker 1: Well, when I was young, we would watch you know,

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Speaker 1: Saturday Night Live or a Monty Python or Second City TV,

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Speaker 1: and it was these groups of comedy people, these communities.

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Speaker 2: Where would you do this?

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Speaker 1: You know, it would just be on TV. You know,

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Speaker 1: you'd be home and you'd watch you know, Mounty Python

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Speaker 1: would be on PBS when I was a kid, and

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Speaker 1: and you would see them and think, oh, maybe they weren't,

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Speaker 1: but to me they were all buddies. Yeah, right, And

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Speaker 1: so Saturday Life felt like a group of friends. I'm

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Speaker 1: sure they weren't. I'm sure like a couple were teams.

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Speaker 2: They were with Jim and with Yeah.

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Speaker 1: So in my head, I was like, this is so

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Speaker 1: fun that, like there's a community here in Los Angeles

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Speaker 1: of people trying to break in to comedy. And I realized, oh,

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Speaker 1: that was the goal really, maybe more than even the work,

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Speaker 1: was like to find that community of like minded people

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Speaker 1: to have fun with.

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Speaker 2: What convinced you? What was the first moment you were

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Speaker 2: convinced that I'm funny, I can write funny, I can

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Speaker 2: do funny. When did that happen in that journey and process.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm trying to figure out when I thought I

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Speaker 1: was doing well, because I was very comfortable in not

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Speaker 1: being good because when I did all the interviews, they

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Speaker 1: all said it takes like seven years to find your voice.

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Speaker 1: So in my head, I thought, oh, I started stand

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Speaker 1: up at seventeen, so when i'm twenty four, i'll be great.

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Speaker 1: And so when I was nineteen and I was terrible,

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Speaker 1: I thought, perfect, this is where I'm supposed supposed to

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Speaker 1: be right now. So I had this clock that was

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Speaker 1: very aware that this was going to take time and

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Speaker 1: that I had to I had to look at the

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Speaker 1: failure as the path to success, and so I thought, well,

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Speaker 1: every joke that doesn't get a laugh is teaching me

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Speaker 1: what not to do. And then I'm trying think of

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Speaker 1: the first thing that I thought was very.

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Speaker 2: You thought not that the result worked, because I think

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Speaker 2: that's a really interesting part, right. I feel like sometimes

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Speaker 2: we wait for the result to make us believe that

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Speaker 2: we're worthy. But there's a moment that I think when

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Speaker 2: you do what you love, you're like, oh, no, I

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Speaker 2: can do this. It's just a matter of time before

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Speaker 2: people kind of figure it out.

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Speaker 1: Yeah. I started writing jokes for comedians George Wallace and

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Speaker 1: Taylor Negron, and then I got hired to write jokes

403
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Speaker 1: for Tom Arnold when he first moved to town and

404
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Speaker 1: everyone was like, who's this guy that's with Roseanne? And

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Speaker 1: he was trying to figure out his point of view

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Speaker 1: and stand up and so I was a part of that.

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Speaker 1: And then we did a bunch of HBO specials where

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Speaker 1: he would try to solve the world's problems, like reality

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Speaker 1: comedy specials, and we would write these setups for these

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Speaker 1: reality pieces, which were film sketches, and Roseanna and Tom

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Speaker 1: would get big people to be in and Frank Zappa

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Speaker 1: was in one. Fred Willard, I got Jim Carrey to

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Speaker 1: do one of these intros and Stiller and so these

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Speaker 1: intros were funny, and so maybe those are the first

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Speaker 1: things that they shot, Like, oh my god, I wrote

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Speaker 1: a joke for Frank Zappa and it got a laugh,

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Speaker 1: and that gave me something that was it. Yeah, to

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Speaker 1: see Martin Maull do your better and just go wow,

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Speaker 1: he's my favorite. And I think I didn't screw him up.

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Speaker 1: I think I gave him a good joke there.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, that's I mean. The success the failure to

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Speaker 2: success piece is so interesting. I saw someone you said

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Speaker 2: something like you that someone sold their tenth script and

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Speaker 2: so you felt you could not sell nine and it

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Speaker 2: would take time. And I love that idea that you said,

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Speaker 2: Hey started at seventeen, and it takes seven years to

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Speaker 2: be a great comic, and so at twenty four. I

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Speaker 2: think the reason why I'm picking those two things that

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Speaker 2: you've said is today I feel like a lot of

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Speaker 2: young people just feel like they have to be successful tomorrow.

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Speaker 2: Because there is a sixteen year old who has one

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Speaker 2: hundred million followers on TikTok, or there is a twenty

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Speaker 2: one year old that is a billionaire or whatever it

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Speaker 2: may be. And so and now you're aware of what

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Speaker 2: everyone's achieving, not just your classmates or the people you're around.

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00:19:01,200 --> 00:19:03,440
Speaker 2: And I wonder if you've ever thought about, especially with

437
00:19:03,480 --> 00:19:06,280
Speaker 2: your daughters going into the industry too, how do you

438
00:19:06,640 --> 00:19:10,840
Speaker 2: help them reconcile that pressure and that timeline that's just

439
00:19:10,920 --> 00:19:14,040
Speaker 2: totally shifted where you can't take seven years to become

440
00:19:14,359 --> 00:19:16,320
Speaker 2: an icon anymore. You should be an icon tomorrow.

441
00:19:16,560 --> 00:19:19,040
Speaker 1: Yeah. I think that that must be tough on everybody

442
00:19:19,119 --> 00:19:22,400
Speaker 1: trying to do anything, because I look back at when

443
00:19:22,440 --> 00:19:25,800
Speaker 1: I was living with Adam Sandler, and I always think

444
00:19:26,080 --> 00:19:28,680
Speaker 1: no one was paying attention to us. So we would

445
00:19:28,720 --> 00:19:30,640
Speaker 1: go to the improv every night and Adam would experiment

446
00:19:30,680 --> 00:19:33,880
Speaker 1: and do weird characters, do cajun Man out of the blue,

447
00:19:33,920 --> 00:19:36,040
Speaker 1: and just do all these weird things, and no one

448
00:19:36,119 --> 00:19:37,880
Speaker 1: was judging it, no one was taping it, no one

449
00:19:37,920 --> 00:19:40,560
Speaker 1: was commenting about it. So there really was this gestation

450
00:19:40,800 --> 00:19:43,719
Speaker 1: period where you could be really weird and funny and

451
00:19:43,800 --> 00:19:47,680
Speaker 1: take chances and really fail some nights really kill other nights.

452
00:19:47,760 --> 00:19:50,520
Speaker 1: And so the idea of people paying attention to that

453
00:19:51,359 --> 00:19:53,840
Speaker 1: where when you're really young you feel the need to

454
00:19:53,880 --> 00:19:58,440
Speaker 1: put yourself on the internet probably is not great for everybody,

455
00:19:58,560 --> 00:20:00,920
Speaker 1: because it's also really fun and fail when no one's watching.

456
00:20:01,119 --> 00:20:01,359
Speaker 2: Yeah.

457
00:20:01,480 --> 00:20:03,639
Speaker 1: No, it's fun to play a club if one in

458
00:20:03,680 --> 00:20:05,320
Speaker 1: the morning, in front of thirty people and just do

459
00:20:05,440 --> 00:20:07,440
Speaker 1: something wild just to see if it would work.

460
00:20:07,640 --> 00:20:10,119
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. And it's almost like you've got to

461
00:20:10,200 --> 00:20:12,240
Speaker 2: kind of even if you are putting yourself online, you've

462
00:20:12,280 --> 00:20:14,520
Speaker 2: got to you've got to feel or remind yourself that

463
00:20:14,600 --> 00:20:17,440
Speaker 2: no one's really watching right now, and hey, people won't.

464
00:20:18,119 --> 00:20:21,359
Speaker 2: They'll only watch my first videos after I get a following,

465
00:20:21,359 --> 00:20:23,520
Speaker 2: which will be okay, And so there's some of that

466
00:20:23,520 --> 00:20:24,800
Speaker 2: that you can kind of take forward.

467
00:20:25,119 --> 00:20:26,600
Speaker 1: And I, you know, I didn't direct, so I was

468
00:20:26,640 --> 00:20:30,000
Speaker 1: like thirty six, thirty seven years old a movie. I've

469
00:20:30,040 --> 00:20:33,600
Speaker 1: done some television before that, and I was better because

470
00:20:33,640 --> 00:20:37,040
Speaker 1: I wasn't given the shot earlier. I think I just

471
00:20:37,119 --> 00:20:38,840
Speaker 1: knew how to do it. I was more mature, I

472
00:20:38,840 --> 00:20:41,760
Speaker 1: had more to say, and so I don't necessarily think

473
00:20:41,760 --> 00:20:44,400
Speaker 1: it's always great to get the big break right off

474
00:20:44,400 --> 00:20:44,800
Speaker 1: the bat.

475
00:20:45,000 --> 00:20:46,760
Speaker 2: I love hearing these stories, and that's why I love

476
00:20:46,840 --> 00:20:50,000
Speaker 2: the book Comedy Nerds so much, is because for me,

477
00:20:50,359 --> 00:20:52,399
Speaker 2: like my first experience of Ben Still it would have

478
00:20:52,400 --> 00:20:55,679
Speaker 2: been Zoolander or you know, I'm trying to think of

479
00:20:55,680 --> 00:20:58,040
Speaker 2: the first Adam Sounder movie. I watching Click or maybe

480
00:20:58,040 --> 00:21:00,920
Speaker 2: something like that, and it's like you, I'm across this

481
00:21:01,119 --> 00:21:04,480
Speaker 2: work when or like with you, it's like forgetting Sarah

482
00:21:04,480 --> 00:21:07,320
Speaker 2: Marshall or like and you're talking about these huge hits

483
00:21:07,760 --> 00:21:10,320
Speaker 2: that are like worldwide famous people. You know, people talk

484
00:21:10,359 --> 00:21:13,680
Speaker 2: about them, laugh for hours, and that's your first experience

485
00:21:13,720 --> 00:21:15,320
Speaker 2: and then you realize, wait a minute, this person had

486
00:21:15,359 --> 00:21:18,240
Speaker 2: a TV show that had twelve episodes and got canceled

487
00:21:18,800 --> 00:21:21,719
Speaker 2: and then they went on to do something else. And

488
00:21:21,760 --> 00:21:25,040
Speaker 2: so I feel like it's so sobering to hear it.

489
00:21:25,080 --> 00:21:27,320
Speaker 2: And I feel like for our community that are full

490
00:21:27,359 --> 00:21:30,480
Speaker 2: of creatives, people who are entrepreneurs, whether you're building a business,

491
00:21:30,480 --> 00:21:34,040
Speaker 2: whether you're launching a podcast, whether someone's trying to create

492
00:21:34,080 --> 00:21:37,440
Speaker 2: their own brand or clothing line, it's almost like there's

493
00:21:37,440 --> 00:21:40,119
Speaker 2: so much pressure to be first and for your first

494
00:21:40,160 --> 00:21:43,399
Speaker 2: thing to be your thing today, I feel, and to

495
00:21:43,560 --> 00:21:47,000
Speaker 2: know that your main thing that you do today that

496
00:21:47,040 --> 00:21:51,280
Speaker 2: you're most known for directing, happened like you know, twenty years,

497
00:21:51,520 --> 00:21:54,399
Speaker 2: twenty years into you're doing the thing as opposed to

498
00:21:54,440 --> 00:21:58,479
Speaker 2: two years in and you've continued to build an amazing

499
00:21:58,480 --> 00:22:00,680
Speaker 2: career from it. It wasn't it and like that was

500
00:22:00,760 --> 00:22:03,800
Speaker 2: lost time. Even you wouldn't say that from seventeen to

501
00:22:03,840 --> 00:22:05,080
Speaker 2: thirty six was a waste of time.

502
00:22:05,160 --> 00:22:08,199
Speaker 1: No, And there were fun projects that we you know,

503
00:22:08,280 --> 00:22:11,360
Speaker 1: we all learned how to make movies while making so

504
00:22:11,480 --> 00:22:14,160
Speaker 1: you know, I worked on a kid's movie called Heavyweights,

505
00:22:14,160 --> 00:22:16,320
Speaker 1: and that was the first movie that we shot. And

506
00:22:16,400 --> 00:22:17,560
Speaker 1: you know, at the time it was a little ten

507
00:22:17,600 --> 00:22:20,240
Speaker 1: million dollar movie that made twenty million dollars and you know,

508
00:22:20,840 --> 00:22:22,960
Speaker 1: Ben Steller played the bad guy. Paul Figue was an

509
00:22:23,000 --> 00:22:26,600
Speaker 1: actor in it. Keenan Thompson was in it, and our

510
00:22:26,640 --> 00:22:28,719
Speaker 1: friend Steve Brill, who I wrote it with, directed it.

511
00:22:29,000 --> 00:22:30,720
Speaker 1: And you know, we didn't know what we were doing

512
00:22:31,000 --> 00:22:33,679
Speaker 1: and made this kind of super weird Disney movie and

513
00:22:33,720 --> 00:22:36,640
Speaker 1: at the time, I guess considered a failure. And now

514
00:22:37,000 --> 00:22:39,560
Speaker 1: thirty years later, it's on Disney Plus right now, and

515
00:22:39,600 --> 00:22:42,119
Speaker 1: it's like a big movie that kids keep watching. So

516
00:22:42,200 --> 00:22:44,760
Speaker 1: even the things where you were learning, sometimes over time

517
00:22:45,480 --> 00:22:48,880
Speaker 1: you realize, oh, people love that one. Even the things

518
00:22:48,920 --> 00:22:51,440
Speaker 1: that at the time were failures or people didn't quite

519
00:22:51,520 --> 00:22:53,879
Speaker 1: get what your point of view was, and then you know,

520
00:22:53,960 --> 00:22:57,240
Speaker 1: twenty years later people say, oh, I love the cable guy. Yeah,

521
00:22:57,240 --> 00:22:59,320
Speaker 1: I took a beating for that in nineteen ninety six.

522
00:23:00,560 --> 00:23:03,119
Speaker 1: And so that's the other thing you learned that it

523
00:23:03,160 --> 00:23:06,280
Speaker 1: takes time for the world to really tell you if

524
00:23:06,280 --> 00:23:09,840
Speaker 1: you succeeded or failed. You may think that you failed,

525
00:23:10,160 --> 00:23:12,320
Speaker 1: and then you realize, oh, that never went away. Like

526
00:23:12,320 --> 00:23:14,880
Speaker 1: people like that, Yeah, and they watch it. So now

527
00:23:14,880 --> 00:23:17,919
Speaker 1: when I make things, and that is crazed about the

528
00:23:18,040 --> 00:23:21,800
Speaker 1: immediate reaction because so many times I've seen things bubble

529
00:23:21,880 --> 00:23:22,360
Speaker 1: back up.

530
00:23:22,680 --> 00:23:25,399
Speaker 2: Yeah. That's why I guess making what you believe is

531
00:23:25,440 --> 00:23:27,399
Speaker 2: so important. And that's one of the reasons why I

532
00:23:27,400 --> 00:23:30,360
Speaker 2: love TikTok so much, because songs that are five, ten

533
00:23:30,440 --> 00:23:33,240
Speaker 2: years old, yeah, twenty years old, some of them will

534
00:23:33,240 --> 00:23:36,560
Speaker 2: have a full refresh because they hit the TikTok algorithm

535
00:23:36,600 --> 00:23:38,720
Speaker 2: and now a whole new generation is in love with

536
00:23:38,760 --> 00:23:41,080
Speaker 2: that song. Would you say, though, Judge, that you felt

537
00:23:41,080 --> 00:23:43,680
Speaker 2: that way or you've felt that way over time? Did

538
00:23:43,720 --> 00:23:46,040
Speaker 2: you have you always made stuff that you believed was

539
00:23:46,080 --> 00:23:48,000
Speaker 2: funny and was made for you and your friends, or

540
00:23:48,040 --> 00:23:51,840
Speaker 2: did you always put the audience at the heart of it,

541
00:23:51,920 --> 00:23:54,679
Speaker 2: and it was their response that designed it. Because I

542
00:23:54,720 --> 00:23:57,720
Speaker 2: feel like in creativity there's these two versions where people

543
00:23:57,720 --> 00:24:00,560
Speaker 2: are like, I don't care what any one else thinks.

544
00:24:00,600 --> 00:24:02,679
Speaker 2: I just make what I believe is funny and what

545
00:24:02,800 --> 00:24:05,000
Speaker 2: my friends would laugh at. And then there's like, no,

546
00:24:05,119 --> 00:24:08,280
Speaker 2: I'm listening and learning and taking all the outside notes,

547
00:24:08,320 --> 00:24:10,280
Speaker 2: and then that's what I'm focusing on. What was your

548
00:24:10,320 --> 00:24:14,560
Speaker 2: process in the days when it wasn't working. Yeah, externally,

549
00:24:15,640 --> 00:24:16,120
Speaker 2: you know.

550
00:24:16,200 --> 00:24:18,199
Speaker 1: The main thing is do you like it? So as

551
00:24:18,240 --> 00:24:20,440
Speaker 1: a comedy fan or just someone who wants to make

552
00:24:20,480 --> 00:24:23,480
Speaker 1: things that are great, that's the main bar, Like do

553
00:24:23,600 --> 00:24:25,439
Speaker 1: I like it? Am I proud of it? And then

554
00:24:25,440 --> 00:24:28,280
Speaker 1: the second question is how many people would like it

555
00:24:28,280 --> 00:24:30,320
Speaker 1: the way I like it? Because you can make something

556
00:24:30,359 --> 00:24:33,440
Speaker 1: and you know, oh, this is a very niche idea.

557
00:24:33,560 --> 00:24:35,119
Speaker 1: There's going to be a small crowd of likes it

558
00:24:35,160 --> 00:24:37,160
Speaker 1: and certain ideas. You're like, I think this is great,

559
00:24:37,200 --> 00:24:38,600
Speaker 1: but I actually think everyone will like it.

560
00:24:38,720 --> 00:24:39,360
Speaker 2: Yeah.

561
00:24:39,400 --> 00:24:41,760
Speaker 1: And I was always a big fan of James Brooks

562
00:24:42,480 --> 00:24:44,680
Speaker 1: from when I was a kid, you know, watching the

563
00:24:44,720 --> 00:24:47,800
Speaker 1: Mary Tyler Moore Show and broadcast news, and I got

564
00:24:47,840 --> 00:24:50,280
Speaker 1: a chance to working the show he did called the critic,

565
00:24:50,359 --> 00:24:52,560
Speaker 1: and I just saw that he really cared if the

566
00:24:52,760 --> 00:24:56,240
Speaker 1: if the audience liked it, and he would always say,

567
00:24:56,880 --> 00:24:59,399
Speaker 1: if the audience doesn't love it, you failed. Yeah, like

568
00:24:59,440 --> 00:25:01,760
Speaker 1: that's it's a but it's a simple as that. If

569
00:25:01,760 --> 00:25:04,480
Speaker 1: they're not touched emotionally, if they're not laughing, you didn't

570
00:25:04,480 --> 00:25:05,919
Speaker 1: do a good job. And you know, he was a

571
00:25:05,920 --> 00:25:09,320
Speaker 1: big support of table reads and getting input from people

572
00:25:09,400 --> 00:25:13,560
Speaker 1: and doing test screenings and seeing how people were interpreting

573
00:25:14,000 --> 00:25:16,679
Speaker 1: the work. So it's a weird process because on one level,

574
00:25:17,160 --> 00:25:19,399
Speaker 1: you're trying to be an artist and stay true to

575
00:25:19,920 --> 00:25:22,280
Speaker 1: what you believe in and what you like, but you're

576
00:25:22,280 --> 00:25:25,720
Speaker 1: also having this conversation with the audience because they don't

577
00:25:25,760 --> 00:25:27,160
Speaker 1: get it. It's bad.

578
00:25:27,320 --> 00:25:32,160
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I think now creativity has become, in

579
00:25:32,200 --> 00:25:38,040
Speaker 2: one sense, more difficult because the idea of a trend

580
00:25:38,440 --> 00:25:41,040
Speaker 2: and everyone doing the same thing is far more normal

581
00:25:41,080 --> 00:25:44,159
Speaker 2: and common, whereas in what you're talking about, there was

582
00:25:44,200 --> 00:25:47,800
Speaker 2: a sense of uniqueness and ingenuity and everyone's kind of

583
00:25:47,800 --> 00:25:49,520
Speaker 2: doing that, Like Jim Carrey's not doing the same thing

584
00:25:49,520 --> 00:25:51,840
Speaker 2: Adam Sands doing, you're not doing the same thing if

585
00:25:51,880 --> 00:25:53,560
Speaker 2: you're working with them on a project that's different but

586
00:25:53,600 --> 00:25:57,639
Speaker 2: you're not doing the same thing they're doing, and it's

587
00:25:57,680 --> 00:26:01,040
Speaker 2: almost become harder to start now when once that you

588
00:26:01,040 --> 00:26:02,760
Speaker 2: could argue to I'm easier to stand up because lots

589
00:26:02,800 --> 00:26:06,240
Speaker 2: of people are doing the same thing. But it's almost

590
00:26:06,280 --> 00:26:09,920
Speaker 2: like creativity has very much become about what the algorithm

591
00:26:10,000 --> 00:26:11,280
Speaker 2: rewards exactly.

592
00:26:11,320 --> 00:26:17,480
Speaker 1: And I'm glad to have escaped that era because I

593
00:26:17,480 --> 00:26:21,320
Speaker 1: think that is really dangerous to doing something very unique,

594
00:26:21,680 --> 00:26:24,040
Speaker 1: because the next great thing is the thing no one

595
00:26:24,080 --> 00:26:28,040
Speaker 1: saw coming. It's just the wild idea or a band

596
00:26:28,080 --> 00:26:30,760
Speaker 1: that doesn't sound the way anyone else sounds. And so

597
00:26:30,800 --> 00:26:33,119
Speaker 1: there's a lot of great stuff that all sounds the

598
00:26:33,160 --> 00:26:35,960
Speaker 1: same in music, and you think, yeah, that's good, but

599
00:26:36,080 --> 00:26:38,520
Speaker 1: it does sound like these other twelve things. Yeah, and

600
00:26:38,560 --> 00:26:41,960
Speaker 1: then there's this other thing where it's like Radiohead or whatever.

601
00:26:42,400 --> 00:26:46,800
Speaker 1: And I think, especially in comedy, you do need someone

602
00:26:46,880 --> 00:26:49,480
Speaker 1: to reinvent the whole thing. Like when you saw The

603
00:26:49,520 --> 00:26:52,879
Speaker 1: Hangover and you're like, where did this come from? It

604
00:26:52,920 --> 00:26:53,840
Speaker 1: was so black?

605
00:26:54,160 --> 00:26:57,320
Speaker 2: It was definitely that. Yeah, Will and Kman was completely that.

606
00:26:57,840 --> 00:27:00,400
Speaker 1: Will and Adam had their sensibility of what they want

607
00:27:00,760 --> 00:27:03,240
Speaker 1: to be in a big comedy, and there really wasn't

608
00:27:03,640 --> 00:27:07,119
Speaker 1: an exact precedent for it. We loved movies like The Jerk,

609
00:27:08,119 --> 00:27:10,320
Speaker 1: but they had their real take on you know, this

610
00:27:10,400 --> 00:27:14,840
Speaker 1: kind of arrogant American man who needed to learn some lessons,

611
00:27:14,840 --> 00:27:16,800
Speaker 1: and that changed, you know, the game for a lot

612
00:27:16,800 --> 00:27:17,200
Speaker 1: of people.

613
00:27:17,320 --> 00:27:19,800
Speaker 2: Yeah, what was what was your sliding doors moment or

614
00:27:19,840 --> 00:27:23,480
Speaker 2: like moment of like if that didn't happen, my life

615
00:27:23,480 --> 00:27:26,639
Speaker 2: could have completely gone on a different trajectory or in

616
00:27:26,680 --> 00:27:27,600
Speaker 2: a different format.

617
00:27:27,840 --> 00:27:29,800
Speaker 1: I mean, there's so many of them, you know. I

618
00:27:29,840 --> 00:27:34,480
Speaker 1: met Ben Stiller online at an Elvis Costello Unplugged taping,

619
00:27:35,480 --> 00:27:38,560
Speaker 1: and you know, we thought of this sket show idea

620
00:27:39,000 --> 00:27:41,959
Speaker 1: and pitched it two weeks later, and everybody thought we

621
00:27:41,960 --> 00:27:43,920
Speaker 1: were old old friends and we had known each other

622
00:27:43,920 --> 00:27:47,040
Speaker 1: for fourteen days and suddenly we were just you.

623
00:27:46,960 --> 00:27:47,960
Speaker 2: Know, and it was just natural.

624
00:27:48,000 --> 00:27:49,840
Speaker 1: From the moment you met, we just got along grade

625
00:27:49,840 --> 00:27:53,360
Speaker 1: and and creatively were insanc. So if I didn't bump

626
00:27:53,359 --> 00:27:55,439
Speaker 1: into Bend that day, I mean, that was, you know,

627
00:27:55,720 --> 00:27:58,359
Speaker 1: a pretty big one. I remember seeing Jim Carrey at

628
00:27:58,359 --> 00:28:01,720
Speaker 1: a comedy club and thinking, I think I've just seen

629
00:28:01,720 --> 00:28:03,960
Speaker 1: the best comedian in the world. And I called my

630
00:28:04,040 --> 00:28:05,760
Speaker 1: manager and I was like, you have to come see

631
00:28:05,800 --> 00:28:09,680
Speaker 1: what Jim Carrey's doing, and that was a big moment

632
00:28:09,840 --> 00:28:16,439
Speaker 1: just to witness it. And in movies. Yeah, it's just

633
00:28:16,440 --> 00:28:18,960
Speaker 1: like an opportunity. Steve Real saying, Hey, I wanted to

634
00:28:19,000 --> 00:28:22,359
Speaker 1: make a summer camp movie that's about a camp for

635
00:28:22,440 --> 00:28:26,119
Speaker 1: overweight kids. And I just said, oh, that's hilarious. If

636
00:28:26,200 --> 00:28:28,440
Speaker 1: you need help, let me know, and just him saying yes,

637
00:28:29,160 --> 00:28:46,000
Speaker 1: you know, it changes your whole life.

638
00:28:47,080 --> 00:28:50,320
Speaker 2: Was there anyone that you felt was so good but

639
00:28:50,480 --> 00:28:53,000
Speaker 2: then you know, didn't have the creer. Did you see

640
00:28:53,040 --> 00:28:54,480
Speaker 2: people that you were like, oh my god, this person

641
00:28:54,560 --> 00:28:56,800
Speaker 2: is amazing, but they didn't have the career that you

642
00:28:56,840 --> 00:28:57,480
Speaker 2: thought they would.

643
00:28:57,800 --> 00:29:00,520
Speaker 1: Yeah, there's so many comedians who are in incredible but

644
00:29:00,560 --> 00:29:04,280
Speaker 1: they didn't necessarily transition to movies or sitcoms. But they

645
00:29:04,480 --> 00:29:07,880
Speaker 1: remained the best comedians of all time. Yes, or they

646
00:29:07,880 --> 00:29:10,760
Speaker 1: were just road comedians were just way funnier and better

647
00:29:10,840 --> 00:29:13,800
Speaker 1: than other people. But some people never had that energy

648
00:29:14,440 --> 00:29:16,959
Speaker 1: to go, all right, how would I work in a movie?

649
00:29:17,800 --> 00:29:21,200
Speaker 1: I think it's a very specific understanding of yourself and

650
00:29:21,400 --> 00:29:24,720
Speaker 1: story and what you do. Adam Sanders started writing screenplays

651
00:29:24,720 --> 00:29:27,760
Speaker 1: for himself when he was right out of college, when

652
00:29:27,800 --> 00:29:29,840
Speaker 1: no one wanted him to write a screenplay for himself.

653
00:29:29,880 --> 00:29:31,400
Speaker 1: No one was saying, hey, write a movie for you

654
00:29:31,440 --> 00:29:34,800
Speaker 1: to star in. He just had the sense of, oh,

655
00:29:34,920 --> 00:29:38,400
Speaker 1: this is a path I think that I could succeed in.

656
00:29:38,840 --> 00:29:40,960
Speaker 1: And so even when no one thought you could be

657
00:29:41,000 --> 00:29:42,600
Speaker 1: the lead of a movie, he sat in a room.

658
00:29:43,280 --> 00:29:45,239
Speaker 1: I remember we sat with my friend Joel Madison. They

659
00:29:45,280 --> 00:29:47,840
Speaker 1: just wrote a movie, and I was like, Wow, you

660
00:29:47,880 --> 00:29:49,680
Speaker 1: just sat down and wrote a movie. You can do that.

661
00:29:49,800 --> 00:29:52,800
Speaker 1: You can get out the computer and do that. But

662
00:29:53,320 --> 00:29:55,040
Speaker 1: not anyone had that belief in themselves.

663
00:29:55,200 --> 00:29:57,640
Speaker 2: Yeah, why did you feel that turn was so important,

664
00:29:57,640 --> 00:30:00,640
Speaker 2: that connection between comedy and becoming a writer and director.

665
00:30:00,960 --> 00:30:03,440
Speaker 2: Why was that calling important to you? Where did that

666
00:30:03,480 --> 00:30:06,200
Speaker 2: come from? Like you're saying, not everyone made that crossover.

667
00:30:06,560 --> 00:30:08,600
Speaker 1: Well, when I was interviewing people, you know, some people

668
00:30:08,640 --> 00:30:11,400
Speaker 1: like Harold Ramas said that he made a living by

669
00:30:11,440 --> 00:30:14,080
Speaker 1: selling jokes, and I just thought, oh, I don't have

670
00:30:14,120 --> 00:30:16,760
Speaker 1: to make burritos. I could like sell a joke for

671
00:30:16,800 --> 00:30:19,680
Speaker 1: fifty bucks, a joke to somebody, or you know, because

672
00:30:19,680 --> 00:30:21,640
Speaker 1: I had, you know, worked in a restaurant for a

673
00:30:21,680 --> 00:30:24,160
Speaker 1: long time as a busboy and a dishwasher. So some

674
00:30:24,240 --> 00:30:27,400
Speaker 1: of it was just I need money, and most comedians

675
00:30:27,440 --> 00:30:29,720
Speaker 1: didn't want to write for other comedians because they wanted

676
00:30:29,760 --> 00:30:33,160
Speaker 1: to be famous. Yes, yeah, And I thought, I think

677
00:30:33,160 --> 00:30:36,200
Speaker 1: I can do it and still do my stand up.

678
00:30:36,440 --> 00:30:38,080
Speaker 1: And I think what it really was is I enjoyed

679
00:30:38,080 --> 00:30:41,880
Speaker 1: hanging out with other comedians and I enjoyed collaboration. Like

680
00:30:41,960 --> 00:30:47,360
Speaker 1: my desire to be successful solo wasn't very strong. I

681
00:30:47,360 --> 00:30:49,280
Speaker 1: think on some level, I thought, oh, this is fun

682
00:30:49,320 --> 00:30:52,920
Speaker 1: hanging out with Ben, and I'm not looking to be isolated.

683
00:30:53,400 --> 00:30:56,280
Speaker 2: That's such a great sense of self awareness. I love that,

684
00:30:56,360 --> 00:30:58,320
Speaker 2: Like I love hearing that for everyone who's listening, because

685
00:30:58,360 --> 00:31:02,200
Speaker 2: I think there's again and I'm just looking at thinking

686
00:31:02,240 --> 00:31:05,080
Speaker 2: about our community that watches our show and listens to

687
00:31:05,120 --> 00:31:08,560
Speaker 2: our show and has dreams and has aspirations, And how

688
00:31:08,600 --> 00:31:12,160
Speaker 2: often by wanting to be the face or wanting to

689
00:31:12,200 --> 00:31:15,080
Speaker 2: be number one in a certain way, you can lose

690
00:31:15,080 --> 00:31:18,880
Speaker 2: out on like this, Yes, you know, tapestry of stories

691
00:31:18,920 --> 00:31:22,560
Speaker 2: and experiences and amazing friendships and relationships where you're like, yeah,

692
00:31:22,560 --> 00:31:25,120
Speaker 2: I just I didn't really care about being the guy

693
00:31:25,160 --> 00:31:27,440
Speaker 2: who was on the screen telling the joke. I was

694
00:31:27,440 --> 00:31:30,600
Speaker 2: happy being the person who wrote and built these universes

695
00:31:30,640 --> 00:31:32,320
Speaker 2: that these comedians played in.

696
00:31:32,560 --> 00:31:34,080
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean it was so fun, Like I would

697
00:31:34,080 --> 00:31:36,720
Speaker 1: go to rose Ane's house and just write jokes with her.

698
00:31:36,720 --> 00:31:41,640
Speaker 1: On Sunday, let's go like at breakfast time, sitator breakfast

699
00:31:41,640 --> 00:31:44,280
Speaker 1: table with She'd bring out legal pads, and to me,

700
00:31:44,440 --> 00:31:46,960
Speaker 1: that was success. I mean almost to the point of

701
00:31:47,720 --> 00:31:49,960
Speaker 1: if it didn't get much farther than that, I was

702
00:31:50,000 --> 00:31:52,680
Speaker 1: already pretty happy, Like, Wow, there are people that are

703
00:31:52,720 --> 00:31:54,880
Speaker 1: the best at this who will let me be a

704
00:31:54,880 --> 00:31:57,520
Speaker 1: part of their thing. And so I was just so

705
00:31:57,560 --> 00:32:00,640
Speaker 1: excited to be allowed in the room. You know. Sometimes

706
00:32:00,680 --> 00:32:03,200
Speaker 1: I joke that the only reason why I even wrote

707
00:32:03,240 --> 00:32:06,160
Speaker 1: anything was to get to be allowed in the room,

708
00:32:06,640 --> 00:32:08,600
Speaker 1: you know, like I had to prove I was credible

709
00:32:09,000 --> 00:32:11,160
Speaker 1: to have these relationships with everybody.

710
00:32:11,320 --> 00:32:13,600
Speaker 2: Yeah, when do you feel most creative and when do

711
00:32:13,600 --> 00:32:15,200
Speaker 2: you feel most creatively blocked?

712
00:32:15,640 --> 00:32:17,440
Speaker 1: I mean, I work so hard to try to figure

713
00:32:17,480 --> 00:32:22,280
Speaker 1: that out. I think it's just an ongoing, uh search

714
00:32:22,480 --> 00:32:26,480
Speaker 1: for flow state. And so I used to never understand

715
00:32:26,480 --> 00:32:30,200
Speaker 1: anything about how the brain works, and so you know,

716
00:32:30,240 --> 00:32:32,160
Speaker 1: I would, you know, when I was young, I would write.

717
00:32:32,440 --> 00:32:35,400
Speaker 1: My process was I would sleep till noon, I would

718
00:32:35,400 --> 00:32:40,280
Speaker 1: get up to write. I'd watch MTV like Road Rules,

719
00:32:40,520 --> 00:32:42,560
Speaker 1: or some like I would just said watch TV for

720
00:32:42,600 --> 00:32:46,000
Speaker 1: like six hours, and then at six I think I'm

721
00:32:46,000 --> 00:32:48,680
Speaker 1: gonna write. Then I would eat dinner, and then after dinner,

722
00:32:48,680 --> 00:32:51,240
Speaker 1: at some point I slowly moved to the computer and

723
00:32:51,240 --> 00:32:52,720
Speaker 1: now it was like seven, eight o'clock at night, and

724
00:32:52,760 --> 00:32:54,320
Speaker 1: then I would write to like two in the morning,

725
00:32:54,680 --> 00:32:57,920
Speaker 1: and that was like my my foot, my flow, and

726
00:32:57,960 --> 00:32:59,680
Speaker 1: I realized, oh, this so it's almost like a post

727
00:32:59,720 --> 00:33:03,560
Speaker 1: food relaxation, burnt out all my interest in TV in

728
00:33:03,600 --> 00:33:05,560
Speaker 1: the world, and then my brain would just like get

729
00:33:05,640 --> 00:33:09,040
Speaker 1: so tired it would relax, and then stuff would come

730
00:33:09,080 --> 00:33:11,640
Speaker 1: to me. But then, you know, when you have kids,

731
00:33:12,600 --> 00:33:14,480
Speaker 1: you can't work from eight till two in the morning,

732
00:33:14,480 --> 00:33:16,320
Speaker 1: and then you have to figure out, oh, I guess

733
00:33:16,880 --> 00:33:19,640
Speaker 1: I have to almost set an appointment, like okay, from

734
00:33:19,720 --> 00:33:22,520
Speaker 1: nine to twelve, I'm just going to sit in this chair.

735
00:33:23,120 --> 00:33:25,840
Speaker 1: And that's something I learned from David Milch, you know

736
00:33:25,880 --> 00:33:30,880
Speaker 1: who created Deadwood, who always said you can't think your

737
00:33:30,920 --> 00:33:34,400
Speaker 1: way into writing. You have to write your way into thinking.

738
00:33:35,240 --> 00:33:38,200
Speaker 1: So if you just start writing, your brain will eventually go, oh,

739
00:33:38,200 --> 00:33:40,760
Speaker 1: we're doing this now, and that if you do it

740
00:33:40,800 --> 00:33:43,920
Speaker 1: at a similar time, the second you hit the chair,

741
00:33:44,000 --> 00:33:46,200
Speaker 1: your brain will go it's time to do the thing

742
00:33:46,240 --> 00:33:49,640
Speaker 1: that we do. And I even took a class on

743
00:33:49,800 --> 00:33:54,720
Speaker 1: flow states, one of those Stephen Kottler classes, and it

744
00:33:54,840 --> 00:33:57,240
Speaker 1: just totally worked like it was like kind of hilarious.

745
00:33:57,560 --> 00:33:59,680
Speaker 1: And you know, there were people giving advice about all right,

746
00:33:59,680 --> 00:34:02,200
Speaker 1: I get it, don't have breakfast, just drink a little

747
00:34:02,200 --> 00:34:04,960
Speaker 1: bit of black coffee, try not to eat lunch till noon,

748
00:34:05,040 --> 00:34:09,279
Speaker 1: don't let your office interrupt you. And then suddenly I realized, Oh,

749
00:34:09,280 --> 00:34:11,960
Speaker 1: I'm really getting a good four or five hours done

750
00:34:12,280 --> 00:34:15,719
Speaker 1: just by listening to some very simple advice about not

751
00:34:15,800 --> 00:34:19,200
Speaker 1: being distracted. Because I could look at the news feed

752
00:34:19,280 --> 00:34:21,799
Speaker 1: on my phone and be in a bad mood for

753
00:34:21,800 --> 00:34:24,120
Speaker 1: three days, and a bad mood that will prevent me

754
00:34:24,160 --> 00:34:27,080
Speaker 1: from being funny. I won't be able to go to

755
00:34:27,160 --> 00:34:30,160
Speaker 1: my world of imagination because I'm thinking about some problem

756
00:34:30,239 --> 00:34:32,280
Speaker 1: in the world, and so I really have to protect

757
00:34:32,760 --> 00:34:36,719
Speaker 1: my mental state to disappear into imagination.

758
00:34:37,080 --> 00:34:39,680
Speaker 2: Yeah, how do you balance that then in staying informed?

759
00:34:39,719 --> 00:34:42,680
Speaker 2: And then and does that ever inform your comedy? Does

760
00:34:42,719 --> 00:34:44,719
Speaker 2: that ever informed the messaging you want to put out there?

761
00:34:44,920 --> 00:34:48,000
Speaker 1: I mean, yeah, as who's the writing's over, I go

762
00:34:48,120 --> 00:34:52,560
Speaker 1: deep down you know, a terrible rabbit hole of tracking everything.

763
00:34:52,719 --> 00:34:57,680
Speaker 1: And I have to, you know, be aware that it

764
00:34:57,719 --> 00:35:00,640
Speaker 1: could just put you in a massive depression because we

765
00:35:00,760 --> 00:35:02,160
Speaker 1: know too much. Like when I was a kid, we

766
00:35:02,160 --> 00:35:04,320
Speaker 1: didn't really know what was happening in the world. Like

767
00:35:04,480 --> 00:35:06,680
Speaker 1: I lived in New York and I knew a little

768
00:35:06,680 --> 00:35:09,200
Speaker 1: bit about what like ed Kotch was doing, and I

769
00:35:09,280 --> 00:35:11,719
Speaker 1: knew they were trying to capture the mob, and occasionally

770
00:35:11,760 --> 00:35:14,080
Speaker 1: you hear about some crime or a murder. I didn't

771
00:35:14,080 --> 00:35:17,560
Speaker 1: really understand what was happening in Congress as a kid.

772
00:35:17,560 --> 00:35:18,920
Speaker 1: I watched the news all the time, even in like

773
00:35:18,960 --> 00:35:23,120
Speaker 1: middle school, And now I know the major, terrifying problems

774
00:35:23,120 --> 00:35:26,200
Speaker 1: of every country in the world. And it's too much.

775
00:35:26,520 --> 00:35:28,680
Speaker 1: It really is too much. And if you find it interesting,

776
00:35:28,680 --> 00:35:32,359
Speaker 1: which I do, like I'm fascinated by how politics work,

777
00:35:32,480 --> 00:35:35,800
Speaker 1: how people treat each other, the problems of the world,

778
00:35:35,920 --> 00:35:39,839
Speaker 1: the drama of crime, the drama of corruption, I could

779
00:35:39,920 --> 00:35:42,400
Speaker 1: really I could read it forever. I just find it

780
00:35:42,520 --> 00:35:45,680
Speaker 1: so interesting as a storyteller, too, Like, look, that person

781
00:35:45,760 --> 00:35:48,080
Speaker 1: was in this position, and there's the choice they made.

782
00:35:48,120 --> 00:35:49,759
Speaker 1: They could have gone this way or that way, and

783
00:35:49,760 --> 00:35:53,600
Speaker 1: they went this way. So for me, one of my

784
00:35:53,719 --> 00:35:57,520
Speaker 1: flaws is I'm looking at too much, And when I'm

785
00:35:57,560 --> 00:36:00,640
Speaker 1: in a good writing groove, it's usually because I've found

786
00:36:00,640 --> 00:36:03,080
Speaker 1: a way to limit it so that i could go

787
00:36:03,120 --> 00:36:04,840
Speaker 1: in my own head and see what's there.

788
00:36:05,000 --> 00:36:07,960
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, I read a study that said we're exposed

789
00:36:08,000 --> 00:36:11,040
Speaker 2: to more tragedy today in twenty four hours than we

790
00:36:11,040 --> 00:36:13,239
Speaker 2: were in our whole lifetime twenty five years ago.

791
00:36:13,760 --> 00:36:16,240
Speaker 1: Just today there was like, it's the equivalent of today

792
00:36:16,239 --> 00:36:19,680
Speaker 1: that there was eleven Pearl Harbors in the last three days.

793
00:36:20,280 --> 00:36:23,279
Speaker 1: And so I was like depressed the other morning, and

794
00:36:23,320 --> 00:36:25,680
Speaker 1: I thought, how would you not be depressed just based

795
00:36:25,760 --> 00:36:28,520
Speaker 1: on what you read this morning? Yeah, Like it's a

796
00:36:28,520 --> 00:36:30,920
Speaker 1: trauma response to all of that.

797
00:36:31,280 --> 00:36:33,840
Speaker 2: So for me, what do you do with that? What

798
00:36:33,880 --> 00:36:35,960
Speaker 2: do you personally do with that? Because I feel like

799
00:36:36,000 --> 00:36:37,760
Speaker 2: that's an issue everyone who's listening, and really.

800
00:36:37,680 --> 00:36:39,319
Speaker 1: I mean I try to find things that I can

801
00:36:39,360 --> 00:36:44,399
Speaker 1: do to support people or organizations and causes that are

802
00:36:44,480 --> 00:36:48,560
Speaker 1: fighting for values that I agree with. You know. You know,

803
00:36:48,600 --> 00:36:50,640
Speaker 1: every month I do a benefit at Largo in LA

804
00:36:50,960 --> 00:36:53,239
Speaker 1: for a different charity. You know, my first job was

805
00:36:53,280 --> 00:36:57,640
Speaker 1: working for Comic Relief, the homeless charity, and so I've

806
00:36:57,640 --> 00:37:02,400
Speaker 1: always tried to, you know, be connected to philanthropy. And

807
00:37:03,520 --> 00:37:05,719
Speaker 1: you know, then some part of your brain's like, okay,

808
00:37:05,760 --> 00:37:08,360
Speaker 1: you're doing something. You're doing something, and it never feels

809
00:37:08,360 --> 00:37:12,680
Speaker 1: like enough. But I think everyone has to do something

810
00:37:13,200 --> 00:37:15,719
Speaker 1: and just hope that its collective that there, you know,

811
00:37:16,239 --> 00:37:19,799
Speaker 1: you know, move certain causes forward and helps take care

812
00:37:19,840 --> 00:37:22,600
Speaker 1: of people. Because it is rough to hear about so

813
00:37:22,680 --> 00:37:26,360
Speaker 1: much suffering and and then you know the guilt response

814
00:37:26,440 --> 00:37:29,160
Speaker 1: like should I be doing more? So I try to

815
00:37:29,160 --> 00:37:31,640
Speaker 1: spend some time every day thinking about it. And I

816
00:37:31,680 --> 00:37:33,560
Speaker 1: remember I went and had lunch in Dorman Lear, and

817
00:37:33,600 --> 00:37:36,600
Speaker 1: Norman Lear had the newspaper out, and I said, what

818
00:37:36,600 --> 00:37:38,799
Speaker 1: are you doing? And he said, this is something that

819
00:37:39,239 --> 00:37:41,680
Speaker 1: Frank Sinatra taught me, which is he would open the

820
00:37:41,719 --> 00:37:43,800
Speaker 1: paper every day. He would look for somebody in a

821
00:37:43,840 --> 00:37:46,800
Speaker 1: bad situation and then he would get on the phone

822
00:37:47,040 --> 00:37:51,600
Speaker 1: and writing a check and you know, someone's house burnt

823
00:37:51,600 --> 00:37:53,920
Speaker 1: down or like he would just follow up, you know,

824
00:37:54,440 --> 00:37:58,080
Speaker 1: and just someone's got a tragedy, Sinatra, just write him

825
00:37:58,080 --> 00:38:01,320
Speaker 1: a check, not tell anybody, just And Norman le Or

826
00:38:01,400 --> 00:38:03,080
Speaker 1: tried to do that. So you know, I like that

827
00:38:03,160 --> 00:38:05,120
Speaker 1: type of thinking.

828
00:38:05,400 --> 00:38:07,200
Speaker 2: Yeah, I love that. Yeah, I feel like if you

829
00:38:07,680 --> 00:38:10,400
Speaker 2: if you feel like you're a part of the solution,

830
00:38:10,520 --> 00:38:13,880
Speaker 2: and even a small part, then the big problem feels

831
00:38:14,000 --> 00:38:16,080
Speaker 2: a little bit smaller, and you know.

832
00:38:16,040 --> 00:38:17,600
Speaker 1: So you can go and go fund me or something

833
00:38:17,640 --> 00:38:19,600
Speaker 1: and help out in some way. The hard part is

834
00:38:19,600 --> 00:38:21,560
Speaker 1: you go and go fund me and there's two million

835
00:38:21,640 --> 00:38:25,319
Speaker 1: people with really difficult problems. So that gets in your head.

836
00:38:25,360 --> 00:38:26,000
Speaker 2: How do you choose?

837
00:38:26,160 --> 00:38:29,120
Speaker 1: As you can make yourself crazy, but you still have

838
00:38:29,280 --> 00:38:31,160
Speaker 1: to find a way to do it if you have

839
00:38:31,600 --> 00:38:32,800
Speaker 1: the means.

840
00:38:32,640 --> 00:38:35,879
Speaker 2: What was the biggest creative risk you feel you ever took.

841
00:38:36,719 --> 00:38:41,719
Speaker 1: I don't think of any of them really as creative risks.

842
00:38:42,040 --> 00:38:45,880
Speaker 1: I usually just try to only work on things that

843
00:38:45,920 --> 00:38:48,720
Speaker 1: I think can be really good that I care about,

844
00:38:48,800 --> 00:38:51,480
Speaker 1: so it's not like there's any one decision. I just

845
00:38:51,960 --> 00:38:54,280
Speaker 1: think I want to be proud of everything I tried

846
00:38:54,320 --> 00:38:56,680
Speaker 1: to do, and if it fails, I'd like to feel

847
00:38:56,680 --> 00:38:59,759
Speaker 1: like I understand why I thought it could work, and

848
00:38:59,840 --> 00:39:01,880
Speaker 1: I like for things to have a good heart and

849
00:39:01,920 --> 00:39:06,440
Speaker 1: to say something positive. I want to be aware of

850
00:39:06,480 --> 00:39:07,840
Speaker 1: what I'm putting into the world.

851
00:39:08,239 --> 00:39:10,319
Speaker 2: It's almost easier to deal with failure when you've really

852
00:39:10,320 --> 00:39:12,839
Speaker 2: believed in what you were doing to some degree. Because

853
00:39:12,840 --> 00:39:14,280
Speaker 2: if you didn't believe in it and then it fails,

854
00:39:14,280 --> 00:39:16,000
Speaker 2: then you're like, well, I didn't believe in it anyway,

855
00:39:16,000 --> 00:39:16,759
Speaker 2: I knew it would fail.

856
00:39:16,880 --> 00:39:19,200
Speaker 1: Well, it's a miracle that anything works, because everything in

857
00:39:19,239 --> 00:39:22,880
Speaker 1: comedy is an experiment. There's no precedent that lets you

858
00:39:22,920 --> 00:39:25,719
Speaker 1: know this will definitely work, So you're always on the

859
00:39:25,800 --> 00:39:30,319
Speaker 1: verge of massive humiliation and failure. And then that's just

860
00:39:30,360 --> 00:39:32,640
Speaker 1: the spirit of it, like, I guess this will work.

861
00:39:32,880 --> 00:39:35,280
Speaker 1: And sometimes things work for some people but not other people.

862
00:39:35,320 --> 00:39:37,239
Speaker 1: You go, oh, this does work, but for a way

863
00:39:37,360 --> 00:39:40,279
Speaker 1: less people. And then some things, you know, out of

864
00:39:40,280 --> 00:39:45,080
Speaker 1: the blue, like the entire world loves Bridesmaids. Ye, right,

865
00:39:45,200 --> 00:39:48,440
Speaker 1: And it's the same efforts that everyone puts on. And

866
00:39:48,480 --> 00:39:51,560
Speaker 1: then just sometimes things, you know, connect in a big way.

867
00:39:51,840 --> 00:39:54,319
Speaker 2: Such a great movie, such a great movie. Absolutely, there's

868
00:39:54,320 --> 00:39:56,200
Speaker 2: something you say in the book. You say in your

869
00:39:56,200 --> 00:39:59,400
Speaker 2: book Comedy Nerd, you say, when I stopped performing to

870
00:39:59,480 --> 00:40:03,360
Speaker 2: pursue my writing career, on some level, I betrayed myself.

871
00:40:03,719 --> 00:40:06,360
Speaker 2: The truth was I didn't believe in myself. Yeah, So

872
00:40:06,480 --> 00:40:08,799
Speaker 2: that's a part of that story too, was that there

873
00:40:08,880 --> 00:40:10,960
Speaker 2: was a sense of sure belief lost.

874
00:40:11,080 --> 00:40:14,320
Speaker 1: Well, as a fan I was weird the difference between

875
00:40:14,360 --> 00:40:17,359
Speaker 1: me and the people that I was hanging out with.

876
00:40:17,719 --> 00:40:21,200
Speaker 1: And I also felt very self conscious. I look back

877
00:40:21,960 --> 00:40:24,000
Speaker 1: and I think, oh, I I think I was pretty

878
00:40:24,280 --> 00:40:26,799
Speaker 1: in my head. I didn't really know who I was.

879
00:40:26,840 --> 00:40:28,759
Speaker 1: I didn't have a strong point of view. You know,

880
00:40:28,800 --> 00:40:31,320
Speaker 1: some comedians are very like surreal. Some comedians are very angry,

881
00:40:31,320 --> 00:40:33,279
Speaker 1: and they tell you how you should do this or that,

882
00:40:33,480 --> 00:40:35,680
Speaker 1: And I was always right in the middle. I was

883
00:40:35,719 --> 00:40:38,640
Speaker 1: just more talking about things I was confused about and

884
00:40:38,680 --> 00:40:41,440
Speaker 1: I didn't have solutions to anything, and I wasn't that weird.

885
00:40:41,760 --> 00:40:43,640
Speaker 1: So when I first did stand up when I was young,

886
00:40:43,920 --> 00:40:45,799
Speaker 1: you know, I was on all the talk shows and

887
00:40:46,080 --> 00:40:48,520
Speaker 1: did all that stuff, but I knew on some level, oh,

888
00:40:48,520 --> 00:40:50,840
Speaker 1: I'm not reaching the heights of some of the people

889
00:40:50,840 --> 00:40:52,920
Speaker 1: that I admire. And then I started doing stand up

890
00:40:52,920 --> 00:40:56,640
Speaker 1: again about ten years ago, and it's much more fun

891
00:40:56,640 --> 00:40:58,799
Speaker 1: and I have a lot more to say, and I

892
00:40:58,800 --> 00:41:02,640
Speaker 1: don't feel pressured, you know, to feed myself with it. Yeah,

893
00:41:02,680 --> 00:41:05,080
Speaker 1: and so I can really be experimental in that fat.

894
00:41:05,400 --> 00:41:08,040
Speaker 2: I love knowing though, that you could be that uncertain,

895
00:41:08,880 --> 00:41:12,000
Speaker 2: confused and have some self doubt and still find your way.

896
00:41:12,480 --> 00:41:12,640
Speaker 1: Yeah.

897
00:41:12,640 --> 00:41:14,080
Speaker 2: I gets something beautiful about that.

898
00:41:14,560 --> 00:41:17,279
Speaker 1: I mean, the standard is very confrontational because every time

899
00:41:17,320 --> 00:41:19,440
Speaker 1: you go on stage, you're like saying to people you

900
00:41:19,520 --> 00:41:22,479
Speaker 1: should listen to me. I'm worth hearing. And you're also

901
00:41:22,520 --> 00:41:25,960
Speaker 1: saying I'm entertaining, like they should delight you for twenty minutes.

902
00:41:25,960 --> 00:41:29,120
Speaker 1: So there's a certain amount of confidence and arrogance to

903
00:41:29,239 --> 00:41:31,320
Speaker 1: do it at all. Some people do it out of neediness,

904
00:41:31,320 --> 00:41:34,360
Speaker 1: like they so need the approval that even though they're terrified,

905
00:41:34,360 --> 00:41:36,400
Speaker 1: they'll do it anyway. Yeah, you know, to get it

906
00:41:36,480 --> 00:41:40,200
Speaker 1: like crack or something. But it's like writing, Like sometimes

907
00:41:40,200 --> 00:41:42,440
Speaker 1: like when I don't want to write, I realize, oh,

908
00:41:42,480 --> 00:41:44,480
Speaker 1: I'm not writing today because I feel like I'm going

909
00:41:44,520 --> 00:41:48,080
Speaker 1: to find out today that I've lost it, you know,

910
00:41:48,680 --> 00:41:52,480
Speaker 1: like literally by yeah, because every time you sit down

911
00:41:52,520 --> 00:41:55,120
Speaker 1: to type, you're like, this better be good and I'm

912
00:41:55,160 --> 00:41:57,360
Speaker 1: going to find out how good I am right now.

913
00:41:57,640 --> 00:42:00,440
Speaker 1: And that's the most unhealthy way to do it. Like

914
00:42:00,520 --> 00:42:03,040
Speaker 1: that's the opposite of flow state, is like that the

915
00:42:03,080 --> 00:42:05,960
Speaker 1: critical voice is just there the whole time.

916
00:42:06,080 --> 00:42:07,919
Speaker 2: And you have the pressure to be good right now

917
00:42:08,239 --> 00:42:09,960
Speaker 2: in this moment. What do you do with that thought?

918
00:42:10,440 --> 00:42:13,120
Speaker 1: You know, sometimes I have to play tricks on myself.

919
00:42:13,520 --> 00:42:16,279
Speaker 1: So if I'm going to write a scene, the thing

920
00:42:16,320 --> 00:42:18,600
Speaker 1: about you know, you say you're using a program like

921
00:42:18,640 --> 00:42:21,399
Speaker 1: Final Draft, and it looks all pretty, and so when

922
00:42:21,440 --> 00:42:23,600
Speaker 1: you type, like it has to be good because it's

923
00:42:23,600 --> 00:42:26,040
Speaker 1: so formatted. You know, it looks so beautiful. It looks

924
00:42:26,040 --> 00:42:28,560
Speaker 1: like a screenplay. So sometimes I have to write without

925
00:42:28,600 --> 00:42:30,840
Speaker 1: the format. So I'll just open up a word document

926
00:42:31,280 --> 00:42:34,400
Speaker 1: and if I'm going to write a scene, I'll say, okay,

927
00:42:34,440 --> 00:42:39,080
Speaker 1: take the next fifteen minutes and just babble, you know,

928
00:42:39,120 --> 00:42:44,480
Speaker 1: with no punctuation, ideas for the scene, and just keep

929
00:42:44,520 --> 00:42:46,880
Speaker 1: going and maybe like do it experiment, like you're not

930
00:42:46,880 --> 00:42:50,200
Speaker 1: allowed to stop typing for ten minutes, just anything, lines

931
00:42:50,239 --> 00:42:54,680
Speaker 1: of dialogue, things that could happen, crazy stuff, and try

932
00:42:54,719 --> 00:42:58,799
Speaker 1: to get in a state of just pure spewing, and

933
00:42:58,840 --> 00:43:02,080
Speaker 1: then take a break and then read it with a

934
00:43:02,120 --> 00:43:05,640
Speaker 1: highlighter and go was anything in there good? And usually

935
00:43:05,680 --> 00:43:07,560
Speaker 1: there is, you know, it may be very little, or

936
00:43:07,600 --> 00:43:09,279
Speaker 1: maybe it's like the whole thing's garbage, but this one

937
00:43:09,320 --> 00:43:11,680
Speaker 1: idea is so good I can't believe it. But you

938
00:43:11,719 --> 00:43:17,239
Speaker 1: kind of have to let your subconscious speak and get

939
00:43:17,280 --> 00:43:17,799
Speaker 1: out of the way.

940
00:43:18,040 --> 00:43:20,840
Speaker 2: Yeah, and get that perfectionist out of the way that

941
00:43:20,960 --> 00:43:23,640
Speaker 2: was blocking you in saying every line you write down

942
00:43:23,760 --> 00:43:26,600
Speaker 2: has to be almost like this final line that will

943
00:43:26,800 --> 00:43:27,880
Speaker 2: make it into the scene.

944
00:43:28,040 --> 00:43:29,359
Speaker 1: It's like if you were trying to think what would

945
00:43:29,400 --> 00:43:31,360
Speaker 1: a woman say to break up with me? And you

946
00:43:31,440 --> 00:43:34,440
Speaker 1: just sat for ten minutes and just wrote the speech

947
00:43:34,560 --> 00:43:37,400
Speaker 1: of why she's bringing up with you over and over again,

948
00:43:37,760 --> 00:43:40,319
Speaker 1: and maybe the twentieth time you did it, you have

949
00:43:40,600 --> 00:43:43,839
Speaker 1: reached some bizarre place in your brain and it would

950
00:43:43,840 --> 00:43:46,200
Speaker 1: be something you never would have thought you'd written. Yeah,

951
00:43:46,320 --> 00:43:49,080
Speaker 1: from just some old injury, like because I really don't

952
00:43:49,080 --> 00:43:51,840
Speaker 1: even understand how the brain works, but it certainly stores

953
00:43:51,920 --> 00:43:54,919
Speaker 1: up a lot of stuff, yes, and it pops out

954
00:43:55,080 --> 00:43:58,200
Speaker 1: if you keep coming at it from different angles.

955
00:43:58,640 --> 00:44:01,319
Speaker 2: Do you believe there are rules to good comedy or

956
00:44:01,360 --> 00:44:02,920
Speaker 2: there are I don't.

957
00:44:02,719 --> 00:44:05,239
Speaker 1: Really understand any of it, you know, Like I'm not

958
00:44:05,239 --> 00:44:07,520
Speaker 1: one of those people that can really lay out why

959
00:44:07,520 --> 00:44:11,400
Speaker 1: things work or don't work. I tend to try to

960
00:44:11,400 --> 00:44:15,399
Speaker 1: think pretty simply about if I write it as a drama,

961
00:44:16,600 --> 00:44:20,440
Speaker 1: like the construction would work if there were no jokes,

962
00:44:21,080 --> 00:44:22,839
Speaker 1: that it won't be hard to figure out a way

963
00:44:22,880 --> 00:44:25,520
Speaker 1: to make it funny. So I try to not chase

964
00:44:25,560 --> 00:44:30,000
Speaker 1: the joke, try to chase the emotional story and then

965
00:44:30,400 --> 00:44:33,000
Speaker 1: look at it like, how can I make it funny?

966
00:44:33,160 --> 00:44:35,200
Speaker 1: Because I think all the situations in life which are

967
00:44:35,239 --> 00:44:39,720
Speaker 1: painful are really close to funny. That's why, like in movies,

968
00:44:39,760 --> 00:44:42,040
Speaker 1: there's so many movies, it's just like someone's breaking up

969
00:44:42,040 --> 00:44:45,800
Speaker 1: with you, and it might be funny because you start crying.

970
00:44:45,880 --> 00:44:48,080
Speaker 1: It might be funny because you start screaming. It might

971
00:44:48,120 --> 00:44:52,799
Speaker 1: be funny because you run away. So I just trust that,

972
00:44:53,000 --> 00:44:56,040
Speaker 1: you know, I that that sense of why things are

973
00:44:56,040 --> 00:45:00,399
Speaker 1: funny that are challenging or awful, that'll just come. Yeah,

974
00:45:00,600 --> 00:45:02,680
Speaker 1: you know. So when I think about like knocked up

975
00:45:02,719 --> 00:45:06,680
Speaker 1: and Seth's trying to talk to Katherine Heigel and she

976
00:45:06,719 --> 00:45:09,520
Speaker 1: wants to tell him that she's pregnant with his baby,

977
00:45:10,280 --> 00:45:13,360
Speaker 1: and so the idea is before that, she's just asking

978
00:45:13,400 --> 00:45:15,799
Speaker 1: him questions about his life because she doesn't know anything

979
00:45:15,800 --> 00:45:17,800
Speaker 1: about him, because he had one night's stand and everything

980
00:45:17,800 --> 00:45:21,439
Speaker 1: in his life sounds like the worst information. If he

981
00:45:21,520 --> 00:45:24,160
Speaker 1: was the father of your child. Yeah, no, he he

982
00:45:24,520 --> 00:45:26,360
Speaker 1: has five grand in the bank, he thinks of the

983
00:45:26,480 --> 00:45:29,000
Speaker 1: last two years. You know, he got it because he

984
00:45:29,040 --> 00:45:31,440
Speaker 1: got ran his foot got run over by a postal truck,

985
00:45:31,880 --> 00:45:33,840
Speaker 1: and you know, just on and on and on. So

986
00:45:34,440 --> 00:45:37,279
Speaker 1: but on another level, you think, well, that's what you

987
00:45:37,320 --> 00:45:38,839
Speaker 1: would do. So if you were going to have lunch

988
00:45:38,840 --> 00:45:40,520
Speaker 1: with someone to tell them that you're pregnant, you might

989
00:45:41,000 --> 00:45:43,040
Speaker 1: in the warm up go how's your life and try

990
00:45:43,080 --> 00:45:44,920
Speaker 1: to get some info out about what am I in

991
00:45:45,000 --> 00:45:45,399
Speaker 1: for here?

992
00:45:45,920 --> 00:45:48,719
Speaker 2: That's the emotional need of safety and certainty.

993
00:45:48,800 --> 00:45:51,400
Speaker 1: Yeah, and she's not getting any safety and he's oblivious,

994
00:45:51,400 --> 00:45:53,279
Speaker 1: which is funny. He doesn't know what he's walking into

995
00:45:53,280 --> 00:45:57,640
Speaker 1: a buzzsawa and so it's inherently a very real situation,

996
00:45:57,960 --> 00:46:01,480
Speaker 1: but for some reason with certain people it's it's funny.

997
00:46:01,640 --> 00:46:04,879
Speaker 2: I love how much you love the scenes and even

998
00:46:04,920 --> 00:46:07,960
Speaker 2: the characters you've created, because I find sometimes creatives get

999
00:46:08,040 --> 00:46:11,719
Speaker 2: quite jaded when something's passed on. You don't feel that way.

1000
00:46:11,760 --> 00:46:13,840
Speaker 2: Through the book Comedy Nerd, through talking about it with

1001
00:46:13,880 --> 00:46:15,880
Speaker 2: you today, through all the interviews that I watched in

1002
00:46:15,920 --> 00:46:18,719
Speaker 2: preparation for this, I don't you don't sound when you

1003
00:46:18,719 --> 00:46:21,080
Speaker 2: talk about your characters and your movies it's like you're

1004
00:46:21,120 --> 00:46:23,120
Speaker 2: in them and we're in them, and like it's fun,

1005
00:46:23,200 --> 00:46:25,799
Speaker 2: Like how is that stayed? And have you seen other

1006
00:46:25,840 --> 00:46:28,040
Speaker 2: people get jaded. How have you held on to that

1007
00:46:28,520 --> 00:46:29,800
Speaker 2: joy of what you created?

1008
00:46:30,320 --> 00:46:34,839
Speaker 1: Usually, like when it's done, I feel disassociated from having

1009
00:46:34,920 --> 00:46:37,840
Speaker 1: been a part of it. It's it's just a feeling

1010
00:46:38,080 --> 00:46:41,799
Speaker 1: like that world exists. It's almost like it happened. I

1011
00:46:41,840 --> 00:46:45,000
Speaker 1: don't think of it as the construction. And I know

1012
00:46:45,040 --> 00:46:47,880
Speaker 1: about all the construction, the levels and the rewrites and

1013
00:46:47,920 --> 00:46:50,840
Speaker 1: the rehearsals of how we got there. But when the

1014
00:46:50,880 --> 00:46:53,960
Speaker 1: movie's done, I feel like it's a real world, like

1015
00:46:53,960 --> 00:46:56,560
Speaker 1: it's in another dimension and those people are there and

1016
00:46:56,600 --> 00:46:59,360
Speaker 1: they're still going, you know, and I like them, you know,

1017
00:46:59,440 --> 00:47:01,360
Speaker 1: like I know, you know, for all of them, Like

1018
00:47:01,480 --> 00:47:04,120
Speaker 1: I like the characters. I spent so much time with them,

1019
00:47:04,480 --> 00:47:09,160
Speaker 1: and if the movie came out really well, a lot

1020
00:47:09,200 --> 00:47:11,000
Speaker 1: of times I don't, you know, I don't watch them

1021
00:47:11,800 --> 00:47:14,680
Speaker 1: just because I work so hard. There's no part of

1022
00:47:14,680 --> 00:47:17,160
Speaker 1: me that's like looking to experience it again. So I

1023
00:47:17,160 --> 00:47:20,920
Speaker 1: don't have that that that viewing of a movie that

1024
00:47:20,960 --> 00:47:23,120
Speaker 1: other people get because I know the story. I'll never

1025
00:47:23,200 --> 00:47:26,120
Speaker 1: really get to see the movie the way someone else

1026
00:47:26,120 --> 00:47:27,760
Speaker 1: gets to see it, because I just know what happens,

1027
00:47:27,760 --> 00:47:30,080
Speaker 1: and I've slaved over like the music, you and the

1028
00:47:30,160 --> 00:47:32,600
Speaker 1: sound effects. But recently, I went to see the fourt

1029
00:47:32,640 --> 00:47:34,600
Speaker 1: yie old version for the first time in twenty years.

1030
00:47:34,640 --> 00:47:39,000
Speaker 1: We did a standing wow at the Academy Museum and

1031
00:47:39,080 --> 00:47:41,440
Speaker 1: I had literally forgotten eighty percent of the jokes. I

1032
00:47:41,440 --> 00:47:43,360
Speaker 1: didn't remember any of it. And it was the first

1033
00:47:43,360 --> 00:47:46,000
Speaker 1: time in my life it felt like I wasn't a

1034
00:47:46,000 --> 00:47:48,640
Speaker 1: part of it and I could just enjoy it and

1035
00:47:48,680 --> 00:47:51,279
Speaker 1: I was laughing. I was proudly like, Wow, look at

1036
00:47:51,320 --> 00:47:55,120
Speaker 1: these lunatics go. They're really funny. They're they're going hard everybody.

1037
00:47:55,360 --> 00:47:57,719
Speaker 2: I love that. I love that. What's a joke you

1038
00:47:57,760 --> 00:47:59,759
Speaker 2: could make twenty years ago that you call make now.

1039
00:48:00,719 --> 00:48:04,440
Speaker 1: I think people are sensitive to how we define people,

1040
00:48:04,520 --> 00:48:07,200
Speaker 1: how we goofund people. You know, when I rewatched this stuff,

1041
00:48:07,239 --> 00:48:08,919
Speaker 1: there's not like a ton where I'm like, oh God,

1042
00:48:08,960 --> 00:48:11,440
Speaker 1: why do we do that? But there's a few where

1043
00:48:11,600 --> 00:48:14,720
Speaker 1: you think, yeah, today, I wouldn't have done that joke,

1044
00:48:15,920 --> 00:48:18,320
Speaker 1: you know, making fun of people for just being themselves,

1045
00:48:18,680 --> 00:48:20,839
Speaker 1: whatever that is. But a lot of the times we

1046
00:48:20,840 --> 00:48:23,960
Speaker 1: were talking about people who get made fun of. So

1047
00:48:24,800 --> 00:48:27,120
Speaker 1: when I worked on super Bad with Seth and Evan, yeah,

1048
00:48:27,719 --> 00:48:29,720
Speaker 1: you know, we were talking about how in every Marx

1049
00:48:29,719 --> 00:48:32,640
Speaker 1: Brothers movie they would always have a really rich guy

1050
00:48:32,840 --> 00:48:35,520
Speaker 1: punch Harpo marks in the face, like in the first

1051
00:48:35,600 --> 00:48:38,920
Speaker 1: ten minutes, because then Harpo could do anything to them, right,

1052
00:48:39,239 --> 00:48:42,759
Speaker 1: and you know, they represent rich people or power. But

1053
00:48:42,840 --> 00:48:46,359
Speaker 1: because they did something really mean to him, Harpo had

1054
00:48:46,440 --> 00:48:50,879
Speaker 1: free reign to cause massive pass And so when we're

1055
00:48:50,920 --> 00:48:53,960
Speaker 1: doing Super Bad, they had, you know, one of the

1056
00:48:54,080 --> 00:48:57,640
Speaker 1: kids spit on Jonah, you know by the seven to

1057
00:48:57,640 --> 00:49:01,480
Speaker 1: eleven type place, and that was it, Like whatever Jonah does.

1058
00:49:01,600 --> 00:49:04,000
Speaker 1: I know where he is in school, I know how

1059
00:49:04,280 --> 00:49:07,000
Speaker 1: he's treated grades, and I kind of want him to succeed.

1060
00:49:07,080 --> 00:49:09,600
Speaker 1: I want him to, you know, have something nice happen

1061
00:49:09,680 --> 00:49:12,000
Speaker 1: to him. Yeah, that's I always looking at it that way.

1062
00:49:12,160 --> 00:49:13,960
Speaker 2: Yeah, I love that. What's your take on what's your

1063
00:49:13,960 --> 00:49:17,000
Speaker 2: take on the impact of AI and chat GPT on writing? Yeah,

1064
00:49:17,200 --> 00:49:20,360
Speaker 2: creative block, you're a fan. Do you feel it's going

1065
00:49:20,400 --> 00:49:22,880
Speaker 2: to be useful for writers? Now? Do you feel it's

1066
00:49:22,880 --> 00:49:25,680
Speaker 2: a hindrance? Where where do you land on the fisation.

1067
00:49:25,880 --> 00:49:30,520
Speaker 1: I think that the danger of it is it allows

1068
00:49:30,560 --> 00:49:35,040
Speaker 1: you to shut off part of your critical thinking, and

1069
00:49:35,120 --> 00:49:38,040
Speaker 1: so if you really were into it, I think that

1070
00:49:38,080 --> 00:49:43,440
Speaker 1: you'd be losing something while gaining something. So if you

1071
00:49:43,480 --> 00:49:46,720
Speaker 1: think about GPS and you go, I kind of couldn't

1072
00:49:46,800 --> 00:49:50,240
Speaker 1: drive around LA because I don't know where anything is anymore,

1073
00:49:51,560 --> 00:49:54,399
Speaker 1: or I don't remember anyone's phone number anymore. I think

1074
00:49:54,440 --> 00:49:57,680
Speaker 1: that if you were asking a machine to do certain

1075
00:49:57,719 --> 00:50:01,160
Speaker 1: work for you, like oh, fix my letter. Uh, it

1076
00:50:01,239 --> 00:50:04,239
Speaker 1: seems kind of good, but at some point, if your

1077
00:50:04,320 --> 00:50:06,680
Speaker 1: JUDGBT went down, you you might not be able to

1078
00:50:06,719 --> 00:50:09,040
Speaker 1: do the letter. And so that's the thing that makes

1079
00:50:09,040 --> 00:50:13,319
Speaker 1: me nervous. I think it's very helpful for research. So, yeah,

1080
00:50:13,440 --> 00:50:15,680
Speaker 1: I'm writing a movie that takes place in college, and

1081
00:50:15,719 --> 00:50:17,680
Speaker 1: I'm trying to think of classes to go, Oh, what's

1082
00:50:17,719 --> 00:50:21,120
Speaker 1: the what's an interesting class about music? What's a that

1083
00:50:21,280 --> 00:50:24,200
Speaker 1: is like really really helpful. But if you start going

1084
00:50:24,600 --> 00:50:27,759
Speaker 1: write me the scene about that clause, I think that

1085
00:50:27,800 --> 00:50:29,520
Speaker 1: you're in danger. And then you have to ask yourself, well,

1086
00:50:29,560 --> 00:50:32,239
Speaker 1: why do I do it? You know? I mean, if

1087
00:50:32,239 --> 00:50:34,160
Speaker 1: you're just in it for the money, I guess you

1088
00:50:34,160 --> 00:50:36,640
Speaker 1: could use it as a tool. But if you're also

1089
00:50:36,680 --> 00:50:41,560
Speaker 1: in it to learn about yourself and through creativity have

1090
00:50:41,640 --> 00:50:45,839
Speaker 1: some self knowledge and it's an expression of you either,

1091
00:50:45,880 --> 00:50:48,560
Speaker 1: then you don't want it in your world.

1092
00:50:48,640 --> 00:50:51,280
Speaker 2: That way. It's almost like how hard you hand hurts

1093
00:50:51,280 --> 00:50:54,320
Speaker 2: when you try and hand right now? Not used to

1094
00:50:54,360 --> 00:50:58,520
Speaker 2: it anymore? Yeah, wait a minute, if I'm to write something.

1095
00:50:58,239 --> 00:51:01,000
Speaker 1: Now, No, there's no cursive And they say that you're

1096
00:51:01,080 --> 00:51:04,239
Speaker 1: more creative when you write in cursive when you type. Absolutely,

1097
00:51:04,320 --> 00:51:06,640
Speaker 1: And so we've kind of eliminated this thing, which probably

1098
00:51:06,719 --> 00:51:09,360
Speaker 1: led to a lot of you know, beautiful expressions of

1099
00:51:09,400 --> 00:51:13,040
Speaker 1: how people are feeling in letters and notes and when

1100
00:51:13,080 --> 00:51:16,280
Speaker 1: people would write novels, you know, long hand mel Brooks.

1101
00:51:16,400 --> 00:51:18,959
Speaker 1: I'm doing a documentary on mel Brooks. He would write

1102
00:51:19,239 --> 00:51:21,000
Speaker 1: all those scripts of the legal Pad.

1103
00:51:21,160 --> 00:51:23,760
Speaker 2: Yeah, and there's all the research around how doodling helps

1104
00:51:24,120 --> 00:51:26,560
Speaker 2: our connect ideas. And now when we'd be on the phone,

1105
00:51:27,000 --> 00:51:28,800
Speaker 2: we would doodle while we would talk to someone and

1106
00:51:28,800 --> 00:51:29,720
Speaker 2: it would help us.

1107
00:51:30,040 --> 00:51:32,080
Speaker 1: You get in the flow state, yes, I mean, and

1108
00:51:32,160 --> 00:51:36,000
Speaker 1: so okay, so now no one doodles. How much creativity

1109
00:51:36,000 --> 00:51:38,560
Speaker 1: have we lost as a result of it. But I'm

1110
00:51:38,600 --> 00:51:41,240
Speaker 1: scared of all AI stuff. I mean, I go on

1111
00:51:41,440 --> 00:51:43,440
Speaker 1: YouTube and I just watch videos about what could go

1112
00:51:43,520 --> 00:51:46,680
Speaker 1: wrong every night, all night, so, you know, because I'm

1113
00:51:46,680 --> 00:51:49,879
Speaker 1: always terrified by the fact that the people who are

1114
00:51:49,880 --> 00:51:53,080
Speaker 1: in charge of AI are also scared of it. So

1115
00:51:53,200 --> 00:51:55,239
Speaker 1: even the people are doing it, they're like, you know,

1116
00:51:55,280 --> 00:51:57,359
Speaker 1: it's great, it's going to change your life. It may

1117
00:51:57,400 --> 00:52:00,920
Speaker 1: solve some diseases. It also made decide to murder all

1118
00:52:00,960 --> 00:52:03,440
Speaker 1: of us and not want us around. But I do

1119
00:52:03,520 --> 00:52:05,160
Speaker 1: think it's also going to be good at teaching you

1120
00:52:05,200 --> 00:52:05,920
Speaker 1: how to play the guitar.

1121
00:52:08,440 --> 00:52:12,600
Speaker 2: Yeah, great, Trader exact. Another line that stood out to

1122
00:52:12,600 --> 00:52:15,400
Speaker 2: me Jad in your book, you said I learned later

1123
00:52:15,440 --> 00:52:18,400
Speaker 2: in life through therapy that I had projected all of

1124
00:52:18,440 --> 00:52:23,320
Speaker 2: my childhood divorced drama onto the network executives who'd rejected

1125
00:52:23,440 --> 00:52:26,080
Speaker 2: or abandoned me. Yeah, and so I want to dive

1126
00:52:26,120 --> 00:52:28,719
Speaker 2: into multiple parts of that. Let's first start with I

1127
00:52:28,719 --> 00:52:30,680
Speaker 2: think you've talked about how you've done therapy for like

1128
00:52:30,719 --> 00:52:32,880
Speaker 2: twenty years. Yeah, it's been a big part of your journey.

1129
00:52:33,080 --> 00:52:36,320
Speaker 2: Walk me through how the questions have evolved in therapy

1130
00:52:36,920 --> 00:52:39,320
Speaker 2: twenty years, ten years, five years, zero years today.

1131
00:52:39,640 --> 00:52:42,920
Speaker 1: It's amazing how many new things you learn as you

1132
00:52:42,960 --> 00:52:47,759
Speaker 1: get older that you didn't quite understand before. Because and

1133
00:52:47,840 --> 00:52:49,760
Speaker 1: some of you understand that there's a lot of projection

1134
00:52:49,840 --> 00:52:52,839
Speaker 1: happening in your life, but no, in maybe the last

1135
00:52:52,880 --> 00:52:55,920
Speaker 1: five years, I think I learned a lot more about

1136
00:52:56,760 --> 00:53:01,560
Speaker 1: trauma responses to things and the ways that we just

1137
00:53:01,640 --> 00:53:03,920
Speaker 1: change a whole way of dealing with everything based on

1138
00:53:04,000 --> 00:53:07,759
Speaker 1: trying to avoid past pain. And that was something I

1139
00:53:07,760 --> 00:53:11,560
Speaker 1: didn't learn about for the first two decades of therapy,

1140
00:53:11,719 --> 00:53:14,560
Speaker 1: the idea that a lot of time we're just in

1141
00:53:14,680 --> 00:53:18,520
Speaker 1: a fight or flight or freeze response to everything. You know,

1142
00:53:18,560 --> 00:53:19,920
Speaker 1: at a therapist say, you know, when you walk in

1143
00:53:19,920 --> 00:53:22,239
Speaker 1: a room, like say you're walking in a party, the

1144
00:53:22,280 --> 00:53:23,880
Speaker 1: first thing you do, you might get anxious and you

1145
00:53:23,960 --> 00:53:27,520
Speaker 1: scan for threat, and then your brain assesses the threat

1146
00:53:27,520 --> 00:53:30,520
Speaker 1: and they might go, oh, looks like these people seem

1147
00:53:30,600 --> 00:53:33,480
Speaker 1: nice enough, we can enter the party. And then he said,

1148
00:53:33,480 --> 00:53:38,360
Speaker 1: the thing you're supposed to choose is opportunity, and Okay,

1149
00:53:38,360 --> 00:53:40,239
Speaker 1: I'm going to actually go try to talk to that person.

1150
00:53:40,320 --> 00:53:42,600
Speaker 1: Maybe something nice would happen if I talk to them.

1151
00:53:43,080 --> 00:53:45,319
Speaker 1: And in some way, we're doing that all day long.

1152
00:53:45,360 --> 00:53:48,080
Speaker 1: We're like scanning, where's the problem, where's the problem. And

1153
00:53:48,120 --> 00:53:52,040
Speaker 1: I think that's something that has been very destructive for

1154
00:53:52,200 --> 00:53:55,880
Speaker 1: me as someone who's always looking to solve problems in

1155
00:53:55,920 --> 00:53:59,040
Speaker 1: a very OCD type way, like what's the problem, how

1156
00:53:59,080 --> 00:54:02,120
Speaker 1: can I solve it before happens? And then you realize

1157
00:54:02,120 --> 00:54:07,720
Speaker 1: that you're consumed all day long running potential problems, and

1158
00:54:07,840 --> 00:54:09,360
Speaker 1: so that's been a big thing, Like, how do you

1159
00:54:09,440 --> 00:54:13,520
Speaker 1: let go of a mind that wants to look for trouble?

1160
00:54:14,680 --> 00:54:15,120
Speaker 2: How do you?

1161
00:54:16,719 --> 00:54:19,719
Speaker 1: It's uh, I mean, obviously it's some some version of mindfulness,

1162
00:54:19,719 --> 00:54:25,320
Speaker 1: some version of noticing the process and having some higher

1163
00:54:25,320 --> 00:54:27,800
Speaker 1: self separation to go, oh, I'm doing that thing again,

1164
00:54:28,400 --> 00:54:31,520
Speaker 1: and can I connect that the one who's observing is

1165
00:54:31,600 --> 00:54:35,200
Speaker 1: me and the rest is just kind of mental clutter.

1166
00:54:35,400 --> 00:54:37,960
Speaker 1: But it's really hard. It's really hard.

1167
00:54:38,040 --> 00:54:39,880
Speaker 2: It is really hard, especially if you get caught in

1168
00:54:39,880 --> 00:54:43,480
Speaker 2: those cycles and they just repeat themselves around and around around,

1169
00:54:43,480 --> 00:54:45,840
Speaker 2: and you're back in square one. What was the particular

1170
00:54:45,880 --> 00:54:48,359
Speaker 2: aspect the one that I quoted that you're talking about

1171
00:54:48,360 --> 00:54:51,560
Speaker 2: projecting all of your childhood divorce drama onto the network

1172
00:54:51,600 --> 00:54:53,440
Speaker 2: executives talk to me about that exactly.

1173
00:54:53,640 --> 00:54:56,960
Speaker 1: Well, I feel like there's always healthy and unhealthy reasons

1174
00:54:56,960 --> 00:54:59,680
Speaker 1: to do most everything, and that's what's tricky, right. So

1175
00:55:00,000 --> 00:55:01,640
Speaker 1: one level, you're like, I love to be creative, I

1176
00:55:01,640 --> 00:55:04,600
Speaker 1: love comedy, But in your unhealthy part, you feel like

1177
00:55:04,719 --> 00:55:08,280
Speaker 1: I want validation, I want to succeed, I want safety.

1178
00:55:08,640 --> 00:55:11,600
Speaker 1: Like if I succeed, I'll have safety and they'll have love.

1179
00:55:12,080 --> 00:55:15,360
Speaker 1: And so you have both this very pure creative love

1180
00:55:15,440 --> 00:55:21,120
Speaker 1: for something and then this trying to protect yourself through it.

1181
00:55:21,600 --> 00:55:25,520
Speaker 1: And so then you're doing work. Let's say you hand

1182
00:55:25,520 --> 00:55:29,920
Speaker 1: in a script and then someone says I hate your script.

1183
00:55:30,200 --> 00:55:33,360
Speaker 1: The studio hates your script. So in your mind you

1184
00:55:33,400 --> 00:55:35,600
Speaker 1: could go, oh are they Are they correct? So maybe

1185
00:55:35,600 --> 00:55:38,719
Speaker 1: I should read it again? Or you could go, why

1186
00:55:38,719 --> 00:55:41,160
Speaker 1: are they trying to murder me? Why are they trying

1187
00:55:41,200 --> 00:55:41,759
Speaker 1: to destroy me?

1188
00:55:42,000 --> 00:55:42,200
Speaker 2: Yeah?

1189
00:55:43,360 --> 00:55:45,600
Speaker 1: And then you're mad at them because you've given them

1190
00:55:45,600 --> 00:55:49,399
Speaker 1: so much power and now you're irrational. You're just in

1191
00:55:49,840 --> 00:55:52,279
Speaker 1: they don't care about me? How come they don't see me?

1192
00:55:52,400 --> 00:55:54,920
Speaker 1: How come they don't understand me? And then you have

1193
00:55:55,080 --> 00:55:58,120
Speaker 1: just that insecure what if they're right? What if I'm

1194
00:55:58,280 --> 00:56:00,719
Speaker 1: terrible at this? And so you project all these old

1195
00:56:00,760 --> 00:56:05,720
Speaker 1: wounds and needs onto a creative relationship. But I didn't

1196
00:56:05,719 --> 00:56:08,200
Speaker 1: know that because I was just a young person. Yes,

1197
00:56:08,280 --> 00:56:10,040
Speaker 1: so you know, when people would give me notes that

1198
00:56:10,040 --> 00:56:12,680
Speaker 1: I didn't agree with, I really felt like, oh, you're

1199
00:56:12,719 --> 00:56:15,640
Speaker 1: trying to destroy me. Yeah, And you know, to learn

1200
00:56:15,680 --> 00:56:18,719
Speaker 1: how to have those conversations in a healthy way, it

1201
00:56:18,800 --> 00:56:21,200
Speaker 1: took a long time. For me, it was literally a

1202
00:56:21,239 --> 00:56:23,279
Speaker 1: moment where I went, oh, I'm treating the head of

1203
00:56:23,360 --> 00:56:27,960
Speaker 1: the of the network like it's my mom. I'm mad

1204
00:56:28,000 --> 00:56:29,839
Speaker 1: at her in the same I felt like I'm mad

1205
00:56:29,840 --> 00:56:31,000
Speaker 1: at her in the same way i'm mad at my

1206
00:56:31,040 --> 00:56:33,839
Speaker 1: mom when she's not there for me. Yeah, and I

1207
00:56:33,920 --> 00:56:37,400
Speaker 1: need to take that energy out of this. But it

1208
00:56:37,480 --> 00:56:40,319
Speaker 1: is a fight or flight response. Oh you don't like it, Well,

1209
00:56:40,400 --> 00:56:41,680
Speaker 1: if you don't like it, I'm not gonna be able

1210
00:56:41,719 --> 00:56:43,800
Speaker 1: to eat and now I need to fight you. Yeah,

1211
00:56:43,880 --> 00:56:48,440
Speaker 1: and it's heated, right, and so you know, as you

1212
00:56:48,440 --> 00:56:52,120
Speaker 1: get older, you know, maybe your testostero levels dropping helps

1213
00:56:52,160 --> 00:56:56,160
Speaker 1: as well. You just go, oh, that's what that is. Yeah, Okay,

1214
00:56:56,200 --> 00:56:58,279
Speaker 1: take a breath. What are we really talking about? What's

1215
00:56:58,280 --> 00:57:01,480
Speaker 1: their note? And you may decide you'd completely disagree, and oh,

1216
00:57:01,480 --> 00:57:03,399
Speaker 1: maybe let's not do the project together. Maybe I'll take

1217
00:57:03,400 --> 00:57:06,640
Speaker 1: it to someone else. Yes, But you can't be rational

1218
00:57:06,680 --> 00:57:09,400
Speaker 1: till you calm down and go, oh, everything i'm filtering

1219
00:57:09,400 --> 00:57:12,040
Speaker 1: this through has nothing to do with what we're doing.

1220
00:57:12,960 --> 00:57:15,480
Speaker 2: That's such a great note. And I love the visual

1221
00:57:15,480 --> 00:57:18,840
Speaker 2: of you saying I'm treating the network exact like my mom,

1222
00:57:18,840 --> 00:57:22,160
Speaker 2: and I'm thinking about just the moments in my life

1223
00:57:22,200 --> 00:57:25,680
Speaker 2: where my reaction has been totally based off of a

1224
00:57:25,680 --> 00:57:30,280
Speaker 2: trigger response or a trauma response, that now you're turning

1225
00:57:30,320 --> 00:57:33,280
Speaker 2: this scenario into something that it totally isn't and it's

1226
00:57:33,320 --> 00:57:36,160
Speaker 2: coming from something in the past and something you've experienced

1227
00:57:36,160 --> 00:57:38,080
Speaker 2: and feels real, but this isn't that.

1228
00:57:38,160 --> 00:57:41,520
Speaker 1: Yeah, you're having a tantrum like a kid. Yeah, and

1229
00:57:42,120 --> 00:57:46,280
Speaker 1: it's also embarrassing to realize that you're wired that way, Like.

1230
00:57:46,280 --> 00:57:47,880
Speaker 2: Oh man, I'm so basic.

1231
00:57:48,120 --> 00:57:50,160
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean I would just be so hurt. You know,

1232
00:57:50,160 --> 00:57:53,360
Speaker 1: when Prees and Geeks was basically about to be canceled,

1233
00:57:53,360 --> 00:57:55,320
Speaker 1: and they would give me notes, and the notes were

1234
00:57:55,440 --> 00:57:58,080
Speaker 1: usually notes which would have made the show not as good.

1235
00:57:59,160 --> 00:58:01,400
Speaker 1: You know, it was like I was at war and

1236
00:58:02,280 --> 00:58:04,080
Speaker 1: and my back went out. I had to have like

1237
00:58:04,600 --> 00:58:07,720
Speaker 1: bag surgery. I was putting myself under so much stress.

1238
00:58:08,360 --> 00:58:11,880
Speaker 1: I had made it so important. And the hard part is,

1239
00:58:11,920 --> 00:58:14,920
Speaker 1: you know, can I work just as hard and not

1240
00:58:15,120 --> 00:58:17,920
Speaker 1: make it emotionally important?

1241
00:58:18,240 --> 00:58:20,920
Speaker 2: Can you with creative tasks? That's a great question, like

1242
00:58:21,040 --> 00:58:25,560
Speaker 2: can you Because Freaking Geeks was super successful because you

1243
00:58:25,640 --> 00:58:27,200
Speaker 2: pushed yourself to that limit.

1244
00:58:27,400 --> 00:58:29,680
Speaker 1: And because we didn't give in correct.

1245
00:58:29,400 --> 00:58:31,960
Speaker 2: That's that's the give in part so important. And so

1246
00:58:32,000 --> 00:58:36,600
Speaker 2: I'm like, have you found that you've been able to

1247
00:58:37,360 --> 00:58:40,600
Speaker 2: not give in but not emotionally carry all that load

1248
00:58:40,960 --> 00:58:44,000
Speaker 2: and still create something that successful? Is that even possible?

1249
00:58:44,680 --> 00:58:47,720
Speaker 1: Yeah? Yeah, you can, and you realize that, like, oh,

1250
00:58:48,240 --> 00:58:50,520
Speaker 1: I didn't get emotional and we had a good conversation,

1251
00:58:50,640 --> 00:58:54,640
Speaker 1: and you know it's but it's it takes a lot

1252
00:58:54,680 --> 00:58:56,640
Speaker 1: of years to see it. Yeah, because what it is,

1253
00:58:56,640 --> 00:59:00,200
Speaker 1: it's because it's a trigger response. It happens fast, your

1254
00:59:00,200 --> 00:59:02,920
Speaker 1: emotional reaction. So do you have that extra five seconds

1255
00:59:02,920 --> 00:59:06,040
Speaker 1: to go, oh, I'm getting heeded, you know, And you

1256
00:59:06,080 --> 00:59:07,880
Speaker 1: still have those moments where you snap and then like

1257
00:59:08,240 --> 00:59:10,080
Speaker 1: years later, you'll wake up in the middle of the night, Oh,

1258
00:59:10,160 --> 00:59:12,360
Speaker 1: I feel so bad about young and that guy, you know,

1259
00:59:12,480 --> 00:59:14,440
Speaker 1: And it just happens out of nowhere. And it's usually

1260
00:59:14,880 --> 00:59:18,640
Speaker 1: around the idea of are we about to ruin the work?

1261
00:59:19,120 --> 00:59:20,520
Speaker 1: For me, it's always about is the work going to

1262
00:59:20,520 --> 00:59:23,360
Speaker 1: be good? It's ever about like the release, the success.

1263
00:59:23,680 --> 00:59:26,480
Speaker 1: It's always My only thing that makes me crazy is

1264
00:59:27,240 --> 00:59:29,440
Speaker 1: if I think someone can get me to ruin it.

1265
00:59:30,480 --> 00:59:33,400
Speaker 1: That really kind of freaks me out, you know, and

1266
00:59:33,440 --> 00:59:37,560
Speaker 1: that's not healthy. The level to which it freaks me out.

1267
00:59:37,800 --> 00:59:41,200
Speaker 1: And I worked for people like Gary Shanling who were

1268
00:59:41,280 --> 00:59:46,120
Speaker 1: so sensitive and they really felt like, you're trying to

1269
00:59:46,160 --> 00:59:48,400
Speaker 1: destroy me. And I always thought, oh, I feel so

1270
00:59:48,480 --> 00:59:51,880
Speaker 1: bad for them that that's how they experience this, And

1271
00:59:51,920 --> 00:59:54,040
Speaker 1: then I realized, oh, I do it. I'm doing it

1272
00:59:54,080 --> 00:59:57,280
Speaker 1: in my own way. I have a variation of this

1273
00:59:57,600 --> 01:00:01,720
Speaker 1: need for the work to be good and why for who?

1274
01:00:01,960 --> 01:00:04,120
Speaker 1: Like can I make it so people can enjoy it?

1275
01:00:04,200 --> 01:00:06,160
Speaker 1: Or is it so I can make a living and

1276
01:00:06,160 --> 01:00:09,360
Speaker 1: people like me? You know? Can I separate the healthy

1277
01:00:09,400 --> 01:00:12,440
Speaker 1: from the unhealthy? I always think about Rhamdas talking about

1278
01:00:12,920 --> 01:00:14,360
Speaker 1: I guess it's part of like the idea of like

1279
01:00:14,400 --> 01:00:18,200
Speaker 1: all Dharma's dreams that like, you live your life and

1280
01:00:18,240 --> 01:00:22,000
Speaker 1: then you also realize that life is ridiculous and meaningless,

1281
01:00:22,680 --> 01:00:24,480
Speaker 1: and so you still have to be in the game

1282
01:00:25,040 --> 01:00:27,480
Speaker 1: and you still have to do your best. But can

1283
01:00:27,520 --> 01:00:29,280
Speaker 1: you hold at the same point like this is all

1284
01:00:29,400 --> 01:00:33,240
Speaker 1: so silly? Yes, yes, and when I think about that,

1285
01:00:33,320 --> 01:00:36,240
Speaker 1: I do better. Yes, But it's really hard because you're

1286
01:00:36,240 --> 01:00:38,520
Speaker 1: trying to care and not care, like have attachment and

1287
01:00:38,640 --> 01:00:39,919
Speaker 1: non attachment at the same time.

1288
01:00:40,040 --> 01:00:42,040
Speaker 2: Yeah. Absolutely, It's like, how do I realize what I'm

1289
01:00:42,040 --> 01:00:45,520
Speaker 2: doing is valuable and at the same time embrace my insignificance.

1290
01:00:46,200 --> 01:00:49,880
Speaker 2: And it's like, it sounds beautiful and it is possible.

1291
01:00:49,880 --> 01:00:52,800
Speaker 2: But I hear what you're saying there there's a level

1292
01:00:52,880 --> 01:00:57,400
Speaker 2: of focus and due diligence that's healthy. And then it's

1293
01:00:57,440 --> 01:01:01,080
Speaker 2: only as healthy when it's matched with detachment as opposed

1294
01:01:01,120 --> 01:01:04,240
Speaker 2: to when it's so addictive. And where we're going through

1295
01:01:04,480 --> 01:01:06,800
Speaker 2: our first set of TV and film projects right now

1296
01:01:06,800 --> 01:01:08,880
Speaker 2: that I've ever done in my life, and I have

1297
01:01:09,000 --> 01:01:12,640
Speaker 2: that same feeling because I can everything you're saying. I'm like, wow,

1298
01:01:12,720 --> 01:01:15,600
Speaker 2: Like I can so relate to it, because up until

1299
01:01:15,680 --> 01:01:19,280
Speaker 2: this point also a lot of what I've created has

1300
01:01:19,360 --> 01:01:21,760
Speaker 2: been fully like, it's never been funded by anyone else.

1301
01:01:21,800 --> 01:01:23,680
Speaker 2: We've never worked with a studio or a production company.

1302
01:01:23,680 --> 01:01:25,920
Speaker 2: It's all us, and so I have a lot of

1303
01:01:26,040 --> 01:01:28,400
Speaker 2: and as time has gone on, I've built more confidence

1304
01:01:28,760 --> 01:01:32,000
Speaker 2: and conviction in my intuition that I'm aware of what

1305
01:01:32,040 --> 01:01:35,880
Speaker 2: I believe will work and what won't. And I've sat

1306
01:01:35,920 --> 01:01:37,560
Speaker 2: with it for long enough, and I've done this for

1307
01:01:37,560 --> 01:01:39,360
Speaker 2: twenty years and all the rest of it. And then

1308
01:01:39,400 --> 01:01:41,080
Speaker 2: someone comes and given me a note that I'm like,

1309
01:01:42,280 --> 01:01:44,400
Speaker 2: I know that's not going to work, and then we

1310
01:01:44,520 --> 01:01:47,560
Speaker 2: incorporate in the pilot. We make the pilot, and then

1311
01:01:47,560 --> 01:01:49,720
Speaker 2: the only feedback we get from the audience and everyone

1312
01:01:49,840 --> 01:01:51,400
Speaker 2: is we didn't like that bit. And I'm like, I

1313
01:01:51,440 --> 01:01:53,200
Speaker 2: told you, like I knew it, And so then what

1314
01:01:53,240 --> 01:01:56,040
Speaker 2: do you do with that? Because it's such a human

1315
01:01:56,120 --> 01:01:57,160
Speaker 2: experience of.

1316
01:01:57,240 --> 01:02:01,640
Speaker 1: Well, it's always picking your collaborators. Yeah, everything my career changed,

1317
01:02:02,520 --> 01:02:04,640
Speaker 1: you know when I started working with the Universal Studios

1318
01:02:04,680 --> 01:02:10,200
Speaker 1: and Donna Langley because her and the executives there, Peter Kramer,

1319
01:02:10,400 --> 01:02:13,800
Speaker 1: Eric Byer's you know, they just got it, and so

1320
01:02:13,920 --> 01:02:16,640
Speaker 1: then most of that goes away. Yeah, because you have

1321
01:02:16,680 --> 01:02:19,480
Speaker 1: a good relationship, but also they get what you do

1322
01:02:19,600 --> 01:02:22,000
Speaker 1: and they understand your process. But I had a lot

1323
01:02:22,000 --> 01:02:24,840
Speaker 1: of relationships with people, you know, like with Freaks and

1324
01:02:24,840 --> 01:02:27,240
Speaker 1: Geeks where they told me like, we don't like the show.

1325
01:02:27,360 --> 01:02:29,320
Speaker 1: It was funny. There was a documentary about Freaks and

1326
01:02:29,360 --> 01:02:32,040
Speaker 1: Geeks and they interviewed one of the executives who canceled it,

1327
01:02:32,360 --> 01:02:34,360
Speaker 1: and you thought in the doc he would admit that

1328
01:02:34,400 --> 01:02:36,520
Speaker 1: he made a mistake, but he didn't. He was like

1329
01:02:36,560 --> 01:02:39,640
Speaker 1: kind of still proud of it. And so I think

1330
01:02:39,680 --> 01:02:42,760
Speaker 1: a big part of it is who should I collaborate with?

1331
01:02:42,840 --> 01:02:46,360
Speaker 1: How you know? Part of it is picking the person

1332
01:02:46,440 --> 01:02:49,640
Speaker 1: that you can have a healthy discourse with. And that's

1333
01:02:49,640 --> 01:02:52,280
Speaker 1: tricky because sometimes you don't know everybody. Yeah, only by

1334
01:02:52,320 --> 01:02:54,320
Speaker 1: going through it do you go, oh, I like that person,

1335
01:02:54,640 --> 01:02:56,760
Speaker 1: I'm gonna bring them the next one, or I need

1336
01:02:56,800 --> 01:02:57,880
Speaker 1: to run away from that person?

1337
01:03:15,080 --> 01:03:17,000
Speaker 2: How did you get better at doing that and making

1338
01:03:17,040 --> 01:03:20,000
Speaker 2: that process quicker? Is there ever a way to get

1339
01:03:20,040 --> 01:03:21,400
Speaker 2: better at knowing that earlier?

1340
01:03:22,080 --> 01:03:25,040
Speaker 1: No, you just have to like meet them and then

1341
01:03:25,440 --> 01:03:28,600
Speaker 1: treasure it. Yes, just go oh, okay, I'm going to

1342
01:03:28,680 --> 01:03:32,520
Speaker 1: stay here because and to value that because it really

1343
01:03:32,560 --> 01:03:35,760
Speaker 1: is a special thing when it works and people give

1344
01:03:35,800 --> 01:03:38,760
Speaker 1: good notes and they understand you and they're excited for

1345
01:03:38,800 --> 01:03:42,440
Speaker 1: you and they encourage you. So I try to remember

1346
01:03:42,440 --> 01:03:44,640
Speaker 1: there as those people and then go back to them

1347
01:03:44,680 --> 01:03:45,640
Speaker 1: as often as they'll have me.

1348
01:03:45,920 --> 01:03:49,919
Speaker 2: Yeah. If fear in doubt would disappear from your life

1349
01:03:50,000 --> 01:03:52,120
Speaker 2: and mind tomorrow, what would you do differently?

1350
01:03:52,880 --> 01:03:55,480
Speaker 1: I don't know. I mean what I would do differently is,

1351
01:03:56,840 --> 01:04:00,680
Speaker 1: you know, just probably be happier. Know so much about

1352
01:04:00,720 --> 01:04:03,320
Speaker 1: like work, but just like in life, I would like

1353
01:04:03,400 --> 01:04:06,680
Speaker 1: to have lightened up you know, a few years ago,

1354
01:04:06,800 --> 01:04:10,560
Speaker 1: I was just feeling terrible and then in my mind

1355
01:04:10,880 --> 01:04:15,919
Speaker 1: I just heard the phrase lighten up, and I thought

1356
01:04:15,920 --> 01:04:18,840
Speaker 1: to myself, Wow, you're in comedy and you're so heavy,

1357
01:04:19,600 --> 01:04:21,480
Speaker 1: Like you just really need to lighten up. Why do

1358
01:04:21,520 --> 01:04:26,520
Speaker 1: you look at everything in such intense terms? But that

1359
01:04:26,600 --> 01:04:29,200
Speaker 1: only works because you know, if I remind myself of it,

1360
01:04:29,600 --> 01:04:31,080
Speaker 1: I can lighten up. But what if I go like

1361
01:04:31,080 --> 01:04:32,640
Speaker 1: a year and go, oh, I forgot to say lighten

1362
01:04:32,720 --> 01:04:36,520
Speaker 1: up in the last year. I forgot. You know, I'm

1363
01:04:36,520 --> 01:04:38,160
Speaker 1: one of those who like I'll write all these things down,

1364
01:04:38,320 --> 01:04:41,360
Speaker 1: like I'll have like a piece of paper, and you know,

1365
01:04:41,400 --> 01:04:43,560
Speaker 1: one of the things I wrote write down a lot

1366
01:04:43,600 --> 01:04:47,280
Speaker 1: is just try to do better today, Like just look

1367
01:04:47,320 --> 01:04:50,360
Speaker 1: at today. Don't look at the long arc of it, Like, Okay,

1368
01:04:50,400 --> 01:04:51,919
Speaker 1: what am I going to do today? Will it be fun?

1369
01:04:52,000 --> 01:04:53,560
Speaker 1: Can I make it fun? And at the end of

1370
01:04:53,600 --> 01:04:55,440
Speaker 1: the day, go, that was a good day. And if

1371
01:04:55,440 --> 01:04:57,600
Speaker 1: I think about the next year, I'm usually in meltdown.

1372
01:04:59,560 --> 01:05:02,920
Speaker 2: Yeah, you're reminded me of this beautiful story where a

1373
01:05:03,000 --> 01:05:05,840
Speaker 2: student once asked the buddher what do you gain from meditation?

1374
01:05:06,600 --> 01:05:09,080
Speaker 2: And he says, I didn't gain anything, and then the

1375
01:05:09,120 --> 01:05:11,560
Speaker 2: student says, so, then why do you meditate, And the

1376
01:05:11,560 --> 01:05:14,480
Speaker 2: buddher says, well, I don't meditate because of what I gain.

1377
01:05:14,640 --> 01:05:17,280
Speaker 2: I meditate because of what I lose. I lose fear,

1378
01:05:17,760 --> 01:05:21,480
Speaker 2: his anxiety, his insecurity, I lose envy and ego. Yeah,

1379
01:05:21,680 --> 01:05:24,080
Speaker 2: and it's what you're saying. It's like, hey, if there

1380
01:05:24,120 --> 01:05:27,400
Speaker 2: was no fear and doubt anymore tomorrow, how do you feel?

1381
01:05:27,400 --> 01:05:29,880
Speaker 2: And you said happy. That's a beautiful answer actually, because

1382
01:05:29,920 --> 01:05:33,760
Speaker 2: it's not something that's blocked you from taking action, but

1383
01:05:33,960 --> 01:05:37,520
Speaker 2: those are emotions that make living and breathing a lot harder.

1384
01:05:37,600 --> 01:05:41,120
Speaker 1: Yeah, because your mind's just going, like I like to meditate,

1385
01:05:41,560 --> 01:05:44,120
Speaker 1: but I just don't do it enough. And every time

1386
01:05:44,160 --> 01:05:47,320
Speaker 1: I do it, I'm thrilled. After I'm like that totally worked.

1387
01:05:47,600 --> 01:05:50,160
Speaker 1: I feel better for the next five hours, and then

1388
01:05:50,200 --> 01:05:52,880
Speaker 1: I might go eleven days not to it again. And

1389
01:05:53,320 --> 01:05:55,040
Speaker 1: I always say, what is the part of my brain

1390
01:05:55,120 --> 01:05:59,440
Speaker 1: that's fighting doing it? Because clearly there's something resisting just

1391
01:05:59,560 --> 01:06:02,280
Speaker 1: being pre and quiet, and it doesn't make any sense

1392
01:06:02,320 --> 01:06:04,240
Speaker 1: now because I like it, yes, but there's a little

1393
01:06:04,280 --> 01:06:07,480
Speaker 1: part that's like, don't do it. Yeah, you know, I

1394
01:06:07,480 --> 01:06:09,280
Speaker 1: guess some people go you know, that's your ego, and

1395
01:06:09,320 --> 01:06:11,240
Speaker 1: your ego doesn't want to be destroyed, so it's trying

1396
01:06:11,280 --> 01:06:14,000
Speaker 1: to figure out a way and get you not doing that.

1397
01:06:14,240 --> 01:06:18,040
Speaker 2: Yeah. Absolutely. Earlier that's reminding me of before we start taping,

1398
01:06:18,160 --> 01:06:22,560
Speaker 2: you said something to me. You said, it's surprising of

1399
01:06:22,600 --> 01:06:25,560
Speaker 2: the things were not addicted to, and then I asked

1400
01:06:25,600 --> 01:06:27,680
Speaker 2: you if you ever did drugs. And the reason for

1401
01:06:27,760 --> 01:06:29,800
Speaker 2: my question was, I feel like there are so many

1402
01:06:29,840 --> 01:06:33,840
Speaker 2: people today who feel their creativity is dependent on something

1403
01:06:33,880 --> 01:06:37,120
Speaker 2: about creation or whatever it may be. Your life, as

1404
01:06:37,120 --> 01:06:39,080
Speaker 2: you explained it to me before we start taping, was

1405
01:06:39,120 --> 01:06:41,240
Speaker 2: not like that, and they were scared away from drugs.

1406
01:06:41,240 --> 01:06:42,120
Speaker 2: And you can share that.

1407
01:06:42,160 --> 01:06:45,720
Speaker 1: Well, my grandfather produced the first Janish Joplin album, Big

1408
01:06:45,760 --> 01:06:49,640
Speaker 1: Brother in the Holding Company, and so my entire childhood

1409
01:06:49,680 --> 01:06:52,840
Speaker 1: they always talked about the fact that she was the

1410
01:06:52,880 --> 01:06:56,040
Speaker 1: best thing who ever lived, and she took drugs and died.

1411
01:06:56,840 --> 01:06:59,120
Speaker 1: In fact, that's why it's in Freaks and geekshen Joe

1412
01:06:59,160 --> 01:07:02,480
Speaker 1: Flaherty says, what I happen to Janna Japlin, She's dead? Yeah,

1413
01:07:02,560 --> 01:07:05,560
Speaker 1: it was because that was this mantra and so all

1414
01:07:05,640 --> 01:07:08,880
Speaker 1: that really really scared me. And then the few times

1415
01:07:08,920 --> 01:07:12,360
Speaker 1: I did it when I was young. Usually I would

1416
01:07:12,400 --> 01:07:15,320
Speaker 1: just get paranoid or I never had like the great

1417
01:07:15,800 --> 01:07:18,440
Speaker 1: experiences that would make me go, let's do more of this.

1418
01:07:18,520 --> 01:07:20,760
Speaker 1: There was one moment where I did try to buy

1419
01:07:20,800 --> 01:07:23,480
Speaker 1: some pot and my brother found out who's older than me,

1420
01:07:24,120 --> 01:07:26,240
Speaker 1: and told the guy not to sell it to me.

1421
01:07:26,520 --> 01:07:29,600
Speaker 1: But I always think if my brother didn't tell that guy,

1422
01:07:29,720 --> 01:07:32,000
Speaker 1: you better not sell pot to my brother, maybe I

1423
01:07:32,000 --> 01:07:34,440
Speaker 1: would have found the you know, the part of me

1424
01:07:34,480 --> 01:07:35,120
Speaker 1: that loves it.

1425
01:07:35,240 --> 01:07:35,479
Speaker 2: Yeah.

1426
01:07:35,800 --> 01:07:37,800
Speaker 1: So I got a good long run of that. I

1427
01:07:37,840 --> 01:07:40,320
Speaker 1: never loved drinking. I would always get tired and fall asleep.

1428
01:07:40,720 --> 01:07:43,919
Speaker 1: I think it's just my chemistry doesn't get that kick

1429
01:07:43,920 --> 01:07:45,640
Speaker 1: out of it where I like, I know people who

1430
01:07:45,920 --> 01:07:48,680
Speaker 1: who will say, oh, I wrote that entire series you

1431
01:07:48,760 --> 01:07:53,080
Speaker 1: love High, And I'm like, I literally can't write one joke.

1432
01:07:54,000 --> 01:07:56,240
Speaker 1: Like the second I'm high, I'm just like, let's just

1433
01:07:56,280 --> 01:07:59,360
Speaker 1: watch you know, great British bakeoff. You know, like I'm

1434
01:07:59,400 --> 01:08:04,240
Speaker 1: not in cree creative mode, you know. So, but thank

1435
01:08:04,280 --> 01:08:06,240
Speaker 1: god it because that's just a random thing. Because I

1436
01:08:06,240 --> 01:08:09,480
Speaker 1: think if I loved it, it would have been a

1437
01:08:10,280 --> 01:08:13,320
Speaker 1: real problem. But I was very aware that I wanted

1438
01:08:13,360 --> 01:08:15,800
Speaker 1: to succeed, and I thought, that's not going to help me.

1439
01:08:16,200 --> 01:08:18,920
Speaker 2: Yeah, you know. Yeah, you've said you've read a lot

1440
01:08:18,920 --> 01:08:20,680
Speaker 2: of self help books. I was wondering if you had

1441
01:08:20,720 --> 01:08:23,040
Speaker 2: to pick three that have really had an impact on

1442
01:08:23,080 --> 01:08:25,320
Speaker 2: your life and a lesson you've learned from each, what

1443
01:08:25,320 --> 01:08:25,800
Speaker 2: would they be.

1444
01:08:26,120 --> 01:08:28,080
Speaker 1: I mean, the three that I go back to all

1445
01:08:28,120 --> 01:08:34,000
Speaker 1: the time. One is called The Untethered Soul by Michael Singer,

1446
01:08:35,560 --> 01:08:40,160
Speaker 1: and I'm always going back to that book. Although there's

1447
01:08:40,200 --> 01:08:42,719
Speaker 1: tons of YouTube videos of him talking, they're all great,

1448
01:08:43,200 --> 01:08:46,120
Speaker 1: and with anything really good, usually they're saying the same thing,

1449
01:08:46,200 --> 01:08:49,160
Speaker 1: just in a different way. So it's one idea and

1450
01:08:49,200 --> 01:08:53,599
Speaker 1: it's just kind of rewritten to find another way to

1451
01:08:53,920 --> 01:08:56,439
Speaker 1: get you to soak it in. And his thing is

1452
01:08:56,479 --> 01:08:59,559
Speaker 1: that he feels like people these energy blocks, and you know,

1453
01:08:59,560 --> 01:09:02,800
Speaker 1: something happen happens to you, you know, like say someone

1454
01:09:02,840 --> 01:09:04,840
Speaker 1: punching the face of a party, and so then you think,

1455
01:09:04,840 --> 01:09:06,200
Speaker 1: all right, I guess I'm the guy who doesn't go

1456
01:09:06,240 --> 01:09:08,160
Speaker 1: to parties, and that by the time you get older,

1457
01:09:08,200 --> 01:09:09,400
Speaker 1: you have one hundred of these or you have a

1458
01:09:09,439 --> 01:09:12,080
Speaker 1: thousand of these, and everything that you do is avoiding

1459
01:09:12,240 --> 01:09:15,759
Speaker 1: certain things, certain types of people you didn't get along

1460
01:09:15,800 --> 01:09:19,000
Speaker 1: with once and so I guess he described it as

1461
01:09:19,040 --> 01:09:21,519
Speaker 1: like it's like if you had a thorn and instead

1462
01:09:21,560 --> 01:09:23,599
Speaker 1: of pulling it out, you put it like a metal

1463
01:09:23,600 --> 01:09:25,560
Speaker 1: thing around it, and then you realize you needed a

1464
01:09:25,600 --> 01:09:27,280
Speaker 1: bigger metal thing, and then you could go to the

1465
01:09:27,320 --> 01:09:30,240
Speaker 1: party and you couldn't let anyone bump into it, as

1466
01:09:30,280 --> 01:09:34,600
Speaker 1: opposed to just taking it out and to just like

1467
01:09:34,760 --> 01:09:37,559
Speaker 1: live with the pain of it and to let the energy,

1468
01:09:37,640 --> 01:09:41,040
Speaker 1: whatever that experience was, move through your body and see it.

1469
01:09:41,080 --> 01:09:44,719
Speaker 1: And I find that's really helpful. And those books are great.

1470
01:09:44,800 --> 01:09:45,320
Speaker 2: That's great.

1471
01:09:46,880 --> 01:09:51,680
Speaker 1: I always read Pima Chodron books, just all of them.

1472
01:09:51,720 --> 01:09:55,840
Speaker 1: When things fall apart, start where you are. And I

1473
01:09:55,840 --> 01:10:00,800
Speaker 1: think she writes better than almost anybody about Buddhism. And

1474
01:10:01,160 --> 01:10:06,640
Speaker 1: she talks about Tondlin meditation, and I guess there's a

1475
01:10:06,680 --> 01:10:12,160
Speaker 1: lot of slogans, but the thing she mentions is that

1476
01:10:14,200 --> 01:10:16,280
Speaker 1: she does a type of meditation where you try to

1477
01:10:16,360 --> 01:10:23,200
Speaker 1: breathe in someone else's problem and then breathe so you

1478
01:10:23,240 --> 01:10:25,840
Speaker 1: take it in, and then you try to send out

1479
01:10:26,760 --> 01:10:29,360
Speaker 1: like fresh clean air, like you breathe in there like

1480
01:10:29,840 --> 01:10:34,080
Speaker 1: dirty muck and take it on and then give them

1481
01:10:34,320 --> 01:10:40,160
Speaker 1: clear fresh freshness, right, and then you might run, Okay,

1482
01:10:40,160 --> 01:10:42,040
Speaker 1: I'm gonna do that for the person I hate. Now,

1483
01:10:42,040 --> 01:10:45,600
Speaker 1: I'm gonna do it for myself. I'll do it for

1484
01:10:45,680 --> 01:10:47,479
Speaker 1: my friends, and I'll do it for all my enemies,

1485
01:10:47,520 --> 01:10:50,000
Speaker 1: and I'll do it for everyone in the world. And

1486
01:10:50,160 --> 01:10:53,640
Speaker 1: that's a beautiful piece of meditation that really changes your

1487
01:10:53,720 --> 01:10:56,960
Speaker 1: chemistry when you do it, because you're always trying to

1488
01:10:57,000 --> 01:11:00,840
Speaker 1: fix help yourself, so like a pure giving meditation just

1489
01:11:00,960 --> 01:11:05,880
Speaker 1: changes everything absolutely. And then the third one. There are

1490
01:11:05,880 --> 01:11:09,320
Speaker 1: these books by this guy named John Wellwood and their

1491
01:11:09,439 --> 01:11:14,960
Speaker 1: relationship books. They they're just some of the best written

1492
01:11:15,040 --> 01:11:20,640
Speaker 1: relationship books. But he basically talks about how in your relationships,

1493
01:11:21,160 --> 01:11:26,320
Speaker 1: they're meant to bring everything to the surface and confront

1494
01:11:26,360 --> 01:11:28,960
Speaker 1: you with it. So in your relationship and your marriage,

1495
01:11:29,640 --> 01:11:32,679
Speaker 1: it's all gonna come up, and you have to look

1496
01:11:32,680 --> 01:11:35,320
Speaker 1: at that as a sacred thing that you both help

1497
01:11:35,360 --> 01:11:38,120
Speaker 1: each other with what comes up. And it's not like

1498
01:11:38,200 --> 01:11:39,840
Speaker 1: I'm so mad at you for telling me that I

1499
01:11:39,920 --> 01:11:43,040
Speaker 1: do this, but really the relationship is that we're in

1500
01:11:43,080 --> 01:11:45,320
Speaker 1: this together and that these things are going to keep

1501
01:11:45,560 --> 01:11:48,519
Speaker 1: bubbling up and can we figure out how to address

1502
01:11:48,560 --> 01:11:51,280
Speaker 1: them and address them in a positive way. There's another

1503
01:11:51,320 --> 01:11:55,519
Speaker 1: guy named Harvill Hendrix, who had books about this where

1504
01:11:55,600 --> 01:11:59,800
Speaker 1: it really was to embrace it when it comes up

1505
01:12:00,400 --> 01:12:02,240
Speaker 1: and not be annoyed, Like, yeah, no, this is the

1506
01:12:02,240 --> 01:12:04,479
Speaker 1: whole point of the relationship, is that you're going to

1507
01:12:04,520 --> 01:12:05,639
Speaker 1: tell me how annoying I am.

1508
01:12:05,800 --> 01:12:09,559
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, No, those are beautiful recommendations. And I hadn't

1509
01:12:09,600 --> 01:12:11,600
Speaker 2: heard of The Last World Wood, so I'll have to

1510
01:12:11,960 --> 01:12:14,640
Speaker 2: go and grab a couple of copies of that. But no, no,

1511
01:12:14,680 --> 01:12:17,920
Speaker 2: beautiful examples and beautiful lessons so deep and profound. When

1512
01:12:17,920 --> 01:12:20,719
Speaker 2: did your fascination with that work start?

1513
01:12:20,800 --> 01:12:20,880
Speaker 1: Like?

1514
01:12:20,920 --> 01:12:24,200
Speaker 2: When did that begin? With all of this reading and writing,

1515
01:12:24,280 --> 01:12:27,120
Speaker 2: I mean it sounds like you're voracious reader. On the

1516
01:12:27,120 --> 01:12:28,880
Speaker 2: other side too, you.

1517
01:12:28,800 --> 01:12:32,120
Speaker 1: Know, my parents never talked about religion ever, not positive,

1518
01:12:32,120 --> 01:12:35,240
Speaker 1: not negative. They didn't talk about it, and so even

1519
01:12:35,320 --> 01:12:40,000
Speaker 1: though you know they're very nice people with good values,

1520
01:12:40,600 --> 01:12:43,400
Speaker 1: there wasn't a system. So I think I really had

1521
01:12:43,439 --> 01:12:46,759
Speaker 1: a hole there in an existential dread from the idea

1522
01:12:46,800 --> 01:12:50,320
Speaker 1: that there was no structure to the universe or how

1523
01:12:50,320 --> 01:12:53,240
Speaker 1: I should think about the meaning of life. And when

1524
01:12:53,240 --> 01:12:57,080
Speaker 1: I met Gary Shandling, he would recommend these Buddhist books

1525
01:12:57,080 --> 01:13:00,000
Speaker 1: to me, like feather on a fan or turning problem

1526
01:13:00,160 --> 01:13:03,479
Speaker 1: into happiness. Ye, drating problems into happiness. Had This was

1527
01:13:03,520 --> 01:13:06,040
Speaker 1: based on the idea that anytime anything bad happens, you're

1528
01:13:06,080 --> 01:13:09,200
Speaker 1: supposed to be happy because it's giving you an opportunity

1529
01:13:09,200 --> 01:13:11,160
Speaker 1: to work on something. Oh, I could work on patience

1530
01:13:11,240 --> 01:13:13,839
Speaker 1: or fortitude or or something. I had never heard anything

1531
01:13:13,920 --> 01:13:16,960
Speaker 1: like that in my whole life. That's what you're supposed

1532
01:13:16,960 --> 01:13:21,160
Speaker 1: to do. Like, wait, problems are good. I never ever

1533
01:13:21,320 --> 01:13:25,160
Speaker 1: had heard that, And so I became interested in those

1534
01:13:25,760 --> 01:13:31,120
Speaker 1: those books, and then probably somebody it's almost like mental hoarding,

1535
01:13:31,280 --> 01:13:33,519
Speaker 1: Like I would just buy so many self help books,

1536
01:13:33,520 --> 01:13:36,040
Speaker 1: and I think sometimes it's hurt me because it's just

1537
01:13:36,080 --> 01:13:38,880
Speaker 1: too much, and then I just drown in it. Like, oh,

1538
01:13:38,920 --> 01:13:43,200
Speaker 1: I'm supposed to not want anything, but I'm also supposed

1539
01:13:43,240 --> 01:13:45,320
Speaker 1: to list what I want so I can manifest it.

1540
01:13:45,360 --> 01:13:48,280
Speaker 1: You know. I'm supposed to be here now but don't

1541
01:13:48,280 --> 01:13:51,040
Speaker 1: live in the future. But I have to plan for it,

1542
01:13:51,280 --> 01:13:53,280
Speaker 1: you know, Like, and I just started passing out.

1543
01:13:54,920 --> 01:13:57,519
Speaker 2: I love it me too. I get that. It's yeah,

1544
01:13:57,560 --> 01:14:00,120
Speaker 2: you've got to be selective and focused on what you

1545
01:14:00,160 --> 01:14:02,880
Speaker 2: pick up. I feel like there's always been this. I

1546
01:14:02,920 --> 01:14:05,360
Speaker 2: don't know whether it's a myth or it feels like

1547
01:14:05,400 --> 01:14:07,320
Speaker 2: something people have said for a long time, and therefore

1548
01:14:07,360 --> 01:14:09,599
Speaker 2: we feel it's true, And I guess you're the right

1549
01:14:09,640 --> 01:14:13,000
Speaker 2: person to ask. But comedy is often or humor has

1550
01:14:13,040 --> 01:14:16,160
Speaker 2: often been seen as hiding something or carrying a certain

1551
01:14:16,240 --> 01:14:19,240
Speaker 2: weight behind it, gain behind it, or a coping mechanism.

1552
01:14:20,000 --> 01:14:23,040
Speaker 2: Is that true and what is it for you?

1553
01:14:23,120 --> 01:14:25,559
Speaker 1: Over the years, what I realized is a lot of

1554
01:14:25,600 --> 01:14:28,439
Speaker 1: times what I'm writing is I'm trying to figure my

1555
01:14:28,560 --> 01:14:31,640
Speaker 1: own thinking out, Like what am I thinking about this?

1556
01:14:31,720 --> 01:14:36,759
Speaker 1: I'm just trying to explore myself, maybe a struggle, maybe

1557
01:14:36,800 --> 01:14:41,559
Speaker 1: a question. So I would you know, some people say,

1558
01:14:41,600 --> 01:14:43,439
Speaker 1: you know, you write the movie to figure out why

1559
01:14:43,520 --> 01:14:46,479
Speaker 1: you write the movie, and you're not even sure what

1560
01:14:47,000 --> 01:14:51,040
Speaker 1: you're working on. So, you know, in my career, I've

1561
01:14:51,080 --> 01:14:54,519
Speaker 1: been a person who's worked on projects about high school

1562
01:14:54,520 --> 01:14:58,080
Speaker 1: and about college, and about getting somebody pregnant, and about

1563
01:14:58,520 --> 01:15:01,880
Speaker 1: maintaining relationship, about getting sick, and about you know. So

1564
01:15:01,960 --> 01:15:05,360
Speaker 1: I feel like I hit these major life turning points

1565
01:15:05,760 --> 01:15:09,040
Speaker 1: because I feel like, oh, I really need to work

1566
01:15:09,120 --> 01:15:12,559
Speaker 1: this through, But when I'm doing it, I'm not conscious

1567
01:15:12,600 --> 01:15:15,400
Speaker 1: of that. Yeah, And then maybe later I'll go, oh,

1568
01:15:15,479 --> 01:15:21,120
Speaker 1: I must have been thinking about these issues like friendship

1569
01:15:21,479 --> 01:15:23,800
Speaker 1: and the value of your work. When we were doing

1570
01:15:23,880 --> 01:15:27,320
Speaker 1: funny People, you know, my mom had been sick, and

1571
01:15:27,600 --> 01:15:29,400
Speaker 1: I noticed that when she thought she was going to

1572
01:15:29,400 --> 01:15:33,599
Speaker 1: get better, she was happier than when which she thought

1573
01:15:33,640 --> 01:15:36,280
Speaker 1: she was going to die. When she had cancer, she

1574
01:15:36,400 --> 01:15:40,400
Speaker 1: was always happier than when she thought the medicine was

1575
01:15:40,400 --> 01:15:42,080
Speaker 1: working and she was going to get better all her

1576
01:15:42,120 --> 01:15:45,320
Speaker 1: neuroses would come back. But when she thought she had

1577
01:15:45,320 --> 01:15:48,160
Speaker 1: no hope, she kind of dropped everything and became this

1578
01:15:48,320 --> 01:15:53,799
Speaker 1: very much more serene person. And so I thought, oh,

1579
01:15:54,160 --> 01:15:55,760
Speaker 1: so I started writing a movie. You know, it's an

1580
01:15:55,760 --> 01:15:59,080
Speaker 1: Adam Sandler movie about him having an experience like that.

1581
01:15:59,320 --> 01:16:02,360
Speaker 1: But at the time I realize that's what I had done. Yeah,

1582
01:16:02,439 --> 01:16:05,040
Speaker 1: it took like a while for me to go, oh,

1583
01:16:05,120 --> 01:16:08,120
Speaker 1: this movie isn't about me and comedy. This is about

1584
01:16:08,600 --> 01:16:11,320
Speaker 1: my mom, and you know what she went through.

1585
01:16:12,040 --> 01:16:15,280
Speaker 2: So you'd say that comedy heals pain, not hides it.

1586
01:16:15,840 --> 01:16:19,719
Speaker 1: Well, it certainly is a road to understanding yourself. Sometimes

1587
01:16:19,760 --> 01:16:22,200
Speaker 1: when I'm working with a writer, if I'm overseeing a writer,

1588
01:16:22,600 --> 01:16:23,960
Speaker 1: you know, I'll say, I feel like a lot of

1589
01:16:23,960 --> 01:16:27,680
Speaker 1: these movies are about a problem, usually an emotional problem,

1590
01:16:28,240 --> 01:16:30,720
Speaker 1: and then you think what would have to happen to

1591
01:16:30,760 --> 01:16:35,559
Speaker 1: the character for them to hit bottom enough to make

1592
01:16:35,600 --> 01:16:38,080
Speaker 1: a change, Because in life, usually you make a change

1593
01:16:38,120 --> 01:16:40,640
Speaker 1: of something happens, usually something that's not great, and so

1594
01:16:40,680 --> 01:16:43,840
Speaker 1: in a movie there's usually some sort of bottom. Even

1595
01:16:43,840 --> 01:16:48,639
Speaker 1: in the silliest movies, someone crashes. And then I always say,

1596
01:16:48,680 --> 01:16:51,080
Speaker 1: and what would health look like? So if they figured

1597
01:16:51,120 --> 01:16:53,040
Speaker 1: it out and at the end they were doing better,

1598
01:16:53,040 --> 01:16:54,000
Speaker 1: what would better look like?

1599
01:16:55,280 --> 01:16:58,000
Speaker 2: I like that, And I guess do you feel after

1600
01:16:58,040 --> 01:17:01,160
Speaker 2: you've made something that you feel better like you when

1601
01:17:01,200 --> 01:17:02,040
Speaker 2: you do have that reflection?

1602
01:17:02,280 --> 01:17:04,280
Speaker 1: Yeah? Yeah, sometimes you know, at the end of it,

1603
01:17:04,600 --> 01:17:06,000
Speaker 1: I have a good feeling. You know. When I worked

1604
01:17:06,000 --> 01:17:09,360
Speaker 1: with Pete Davidson the King of Saten Island, we talked

1605
01:17:09,400 --> 01:17:13,080
Speaker 1: a lot about sacrifice because I was thinking, oh, I've

1606
01:17:13,120 --> 01:17:16,479
Speaker 1: never worked on a movie that's about being there for

1607
01:17:16,520 --> 01:17:19,519
Speaker 1: other people. Most of the movies are about, you know,

1608
01:17:19,720 --> 01:17:23,559
Speaker 1: emotional situations and people having meltdowns and fighting with other

1609
01:17:23,600 --> 01:17:25,400
Speaker 1: people and just trying to make their lives work. I've

1610
01:17:25,439 --> 01:17:27,120
Speaker 1: never made a movie about people who are willing to

1611
01:17:27,160 --> 01:17:30,600
Speaker 1: risk their lives for other people. And I think, you know,

1612
01:17:30,640 --> 01:17:34,360
Speaker 1: we all felt a great responsibility to show you know,

1613
01:17:34,400 --> 01:17:37,080
Speaker 1: the lives of first responders and to be respectful and

1614
01:17:37,120 --> 01:17:39,479
Speaker 1: to show the challenges of that for families, and so,

1615
01:17:39,680 --> 01:17:42,120
Speaker 1: you know, when it came out really well, I was

1616
01:17:42,200 --> 01:17:44,880
Speaker 1: especially proud of it because I wanted to do right

1617
01:17:44,920 --> 01:17:45,799
Speaker 1: by all those people.

1618
01:17:46,160 --> 01:17:50,200
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's beautiful. That feels like a really nice Like

1619
01:17:50,280 --> 01:17:52,400
Speaker 2: three sixty.

1620
01:17:52,040 --> 01:17:54,519
Speaker 1: We met all those you know, the firefighters, and a

1621
01:17:54,520 --> 01:17:55,880
Speaker 1: lot of them lost a lot of people in nine

1622
01:17:55,920 --> 01:17:58,439
Speaker 1: to eleven, and we knew like how sacred this space

1623
01:17:58,600 --> 01:18:00,559
Speaker 1: was that we we were t talking about.

1624
01:18:00,680 --> 01:18:03,479
Speaker 2: Yeah, your movies have made people laugh, made people happy,

1625
01:18:03,640 --> 01:18:07,559
Speaker 2: made people you know, have great memories around them. Like

1626
01:18:07,840 --> 01:18:09,400
Speaker 2: would you say, are you happy?

1627
01:18:09,720 --> 01:18:14,640
Speaker 1: Am I Happy's that's the right question. I mean, I

1628
01:18:14,640 --> 01:18:17,879
Speaker 1: think I'm always trying to figure out how to be happy,

1629
01:18:19,000 --> 01:18:21,840
Speaker 1: and I think I ebb and flow. I think I

1630
01:18:21,840 --> 01:18:24,559
Speaker 1: have periods where I get like really lost and caught

1631
01:18:24,600 --> 01:18:27,280
Speaker 1: up in my head and in things, and then every

1632
01:18:27,320 --> 01:18:28,640
Speaker 1: once in a while, like it clears up for a

1633
01:18:28,640 --> 01:18:31,920
Speaker 1: little while and I'm like, oh, yeah, I feel good

1634
01:18:31,960 --> 01:18:35,160
Speaker 1: about how everything is and what's going on. I feel

1635
01:18:35,200 --> 01:18:38,800
Speaker 1: in between tragedy, you know, like like oh, this is

1636
01:18:38,800 --> 01:18:41,519
Speaker 1: a good period. But then sometimes I just lose it

1637
01:18:41,600 --> 01:18:44,559
Speaker 1: like I lose touch with the thing that makes me

1638
01:18:44,680 --> 01:18:48,080
Speaker 1: feel like I understand where I am in the universe

1639
01:18:48,640 --> 01:18:51,360
Speaker 1: because sometimes, you know, especially now as everyone's talking about

1640
01:18:52,479 --> 01:18:55,160
Speaker 1: computers and everything changing and the world is changing where

1641
01:18:55,160 --> 01:18:58,439
Speaker 1: we're like, is something happening right now? I can really

1642
01:18:59,000 --> 01:19:04,400
Speaker 1: get through own and just obsess on it all day along,

1643
01:19:04,479 --> 01:19:06,840
Speaker 1: like what's the point of all of this? What are

1644
01:19:06,840 --> 01:19:10,280
Speaker 1: we doing? You know? To just like it's almost like

1645
01:19:10,400 --> 01:19:15,479
Speaker 1: feeling really happy and loose in my mind sometimes feels

1646
01:19:15,560 --> 01:19:18,920
Speaker 1: like I'm not doing what I should be doing to

1647
01:19:19,080 --> 01:19:23,240
Speaker 1: make something positive happen, and that's not really fair on myself,

1648
01:19:25,240 --> 01:19:28,160
Speaker 1: but it is the feeling like I can't just be

1649
01:19:28,240 --> 01:19:31,479
Speaker 1: like we because like, look, have you seen what happens today?

1650
01:19:31,720 --> 01:19:34,000
Speaker 1: Like what are we supposed to do about this? And

1651
01:19:34,080 --> 01:19:37,720
Speaker 1: it's you know, like a deep kind of guilt that

1652
01:19:38,040 --> 01:19:42,600
Speaker 1: is again some sort of fight or flight response and

1653
01:19:42,840 --> 01:19:47,880
Speaker 1: a childhood thing too, like you know, just stay on

1654
01:19:47,920 --> 01:19:51,160
Speaker 1: top of things, you know, don't don't let anything slip

1655
01:19:51,200 --> 01:19:54,800
Speaker 1: by you as a survival strategy. So like actually being

1656
01:19:54,840 --> 01:19:58,679
Speaker 1: happy sometimes feels like a violation of my survival strategy. Wow,

1657
01:19:58,680 --> 01:20:00,639
Speaker 1: And that's a big thing to like, can I let

1658
01:20:00,680 --> 01:20:03,519
Speaker 1: go of that, and sometimes I can and then sometimes

1659
01:20:03,560 --> 01:20:04,320
Speaker 1: I totally can.

1660
01:20:04,520 --> 01:20:07,320
Speaker 2: Yeah, And it's so interesting. How thank you for going there,

1661
01:20:07,360 --> 01:20:10,160
Speaker 2: because it's so interesting how those things that make you

1662
01:20:10,200 --> 01:20:13,040
Speaker 2: successful and make you organize, it makes you good, great

1663
01:20:13,040 --> 01:20:16,360
Speaker 2: at what you do. Everything comes as this double ed

1664
01:20:16,360 --> 01:20:19,640
Speaker 2: sort of stopping you from having an experience. And then

1665
01:20:19,680 --> 01:20:21,479
Speaker 2: at the same time, there's a beauty to how you feel,

1666
01:20:21,479 --> 01:20:24,320
Speaker 2: because it's wonderful that you feel a sense of responsibility

1667
01:20:24,400 --> 01:20:27,679
Speaker 2: and empathy and compassion because those are all good things

1668
01:20:27,680 --> 01:20:29,800
Speaker 2: you want to feel. At the same time, you don't

1669
01:20:29,800 --> 01:20:33,360
Speaker 2: want to steal your joy, and so it's such a Yeah,

1670
01:20:33,400 --> 01:20:37,040
Speaker 2: it's interesting living in that, in that landscape. And as

1671
01:20:37,040 --> 01:20:40,120
Speaker 2: I was listening to you, I was thinking that I

1672
01:20:40,160 --> 01:20:45,559
Speaker 2: think happiness is never not being lost. It's knowing that

1673
01:20:45,600 --> 01:20:48,519
Speaker 2: you've been lost and found multiple times. And so that

1674
01:20:48,560 --> 01:20:51,360
Speaker 2: ebb and flow that you spoke about, it's almost like

1675
01:20:51,439 --> 01:20:54,519
Speaker 2: knowing that, oh, I've been lost before. Yeah, And there's

1676
01:20:54,560 --> 01:20:56,519
Speaker 2: there's joy in that, and there's happiness in that, and

1677
01:20:56,560 --> 01:20:59,800
Speaker 2: that this is the journey back and forth. But I

1678
01:20:59,800 --> 01:21:03,400
Speaker 2: love that what you're saying about needing a overarching structure

1679
01:21:03,439 --> 01:21:07,240
Speaker 2: and a overarching almost believe you have you ever discovered anything,

1680
01:21:07,240 --> 01:21:09,960
Speaker 2: read anything that that feels that way, that started to

1681
01:21:10,080 --> 01:21:13,160
Speaker 2: kind of scratch that itch or well or is it something.

1682
01:21:12,920 --> 01:21:15,080
Speaker 1: You seek well, kind of like the meditation thing that

1683
01:21:15,120 --> 01:21:17,960
Speaker 1: you're talking about, you have this idea of returning when

1684
01:21:17,960 --> 01:21:21,160
Speaker 1: you're lost. It is the experience of meditation, like you're

1685
01:21:21,280 --> 01:21:23,320
Speaker 1: you're trying to not think, and then suddenly you realize, oh,

1686
01:21:23,320 --> 01:21:26,640
Speaker 1: I've been thinking for twelve minutes in my meditation, and

1687
01:21:26,680 --> 01:21:29,200
Speaker 1: you're not supposed to beat yourself up about it. You're

1688
01:21:29,200 --> 01:21:34,559
Speaker 1: supposed to celebrate that you realize to return to your

1689
01:21:34,960 --> 01:21:39,000
Speaker 1: empty mind again, and that every time you return it's good.

1690
01:21:39,520 --> 01:21:41,559
Speaker 1: And even if you only let's say, in twenty minutes

1691
01:21:41,560 --> 01:21:46,679
Speaker 1: of meditation, you were running stuff for two giant hunks

1692
01:21:46,880 --> 01:21:49,000
Speaker 1: and you only got back twice, that you should celebrate

1693
01:21:49,040 --> 01:21:53,519
Speaker 1: it as the greatest success. That that is a way

1694
01:21:53,560 --> 01:21:55,640
Speaker 1: to look at all of life, like, you know, like

1695
01:21:55,720 --> 01:21:58,479
Speaker 1: life is suffering. It we soldier on right, and it's

1696
01:21:58,479 --> 01:22:00,519
Speaker 1: just it's it's a it's a mix, and it's always

1697
01:22:00,520 --> 01:22:02,040
Speaker 1: going to be a mix. It's always going to be

1698
01:22:02,680 --> 01:22:05,880
Speaker 1: up or down, up and down. But I've never really

1699
01:22:05,960 --> 01:22:09,960
Speaker 1: gotten the exact way to kind of keep returning to

1700
01:22:10,040 --> 01:22:13,920
Speaker 1: something that feels good. But I did do ayahuasca a

1701
01:22:13,960 --> 01:22:16,840
Speaker 1: couple of years ago, and it was a really it

1702
01:22:16,880 --> 01:22:18,960
Speaker 1: was a wild experience, and most of it was about

1703
01:22:19,000 --> 01:22:21,040
Speaker 1: like trying to let go, because I really felt like

1704
01:22:21,080 --> 01:22:24,280
Speaker 1: I was like not letting go, not just being open,

1705
01:22:24,360 --> 01:22:27,400
Speaker 1: like that's my issue. And and then at the end,

1706
01:22:28,040 --> 01:22:33,960
Speaker 1: after this you know, long experience, you know, you're like

1707
01:22:35,160 --> 01:22:37,920
Speaker 1: you're vomiting, you're you know, you're, you're you know, you're

1708
01:22:37,960 --> 01:22:40,679
Speaker 1: you've gone through it. I don't recommend this to anyone,

1709
01:22:40,680 --> 01:22:43,120
Speaker 1: by the way, because it's crazy, and I feel like

1710
01:22:43,479 --> 01:22:46,000
Speaker 1: I don't know if it's safe for people, you know,

1711
01:22:46,000 --> 01:22:48,480
Speaker 1: So it's not anything you can say to do. But

1712
01:22:48,120 --> 01:22:50,760
Speaker 1: the but the end of it, like I had this

1713
01:22:50,840 --> 01:22:53,560
Speaker 1: like image of Jesus, which is weird because I'm Jewish

1714
01:22:53,800 --> 01:22:55,439
Speaker 1: and so it's not like the thing that I would

1715
01:22:55,439 --> 01:22:57,479
Speaker 1: think of and something I see Jesus on the cross

1716
01:22:58,200 --> 01:23:01,160
Speaker 1: at the end of this like eight hour trip, and

1717
01:23:01,280 --> 01:23:03,080
Speaker 1: in my head, I'm like, oh, I get what that is.

1718
01:23:03,720 --> 01:23:07,000
Speaker 1: It's He's there for us and we should be there

1719
01:23:07,000 --> 01:23:10,880
Speaker 1: for each other. And the whole idea of it just

1720
01:23:10,920 --> 01:23:13,280
Speaker 1: like landed with me and I thought, oh, I guess

1721
01:23:13,280 --> 01:23:16,080
Speaker 1: that's it. It's just like being there for other people.

1722
01:23:16,800 --> 01:23:19,040
Speaker 1: And that's the one thing that I try to go

1723
01:23:19,120 --> 01:23:19,439
Speaker 1: back to.

1724
01:23:19,600 --> 01:23:22,000
Speaker 2: Wow, that's beautiful. Where did you go to do ayahuasca?

1725
01:23:22,920 --> 01:23:24,280
Speaker 1: I did it in the state of California.

1726
01:23:24,360 --> 01:23:29,000
Speaker 2: Oh okay, I'm pretty sure it's illegal, but.

1727
01:23:30,000 --> 01:23:32,839
Speaker 1: It definitely was, you know, for me, very meaningful.

1728
01:23:33,080 --> 01:23:33,920
Speaker 2: Did you ever do it again?

1729
01:23:35,080 --> 01:23:36,880
Speaker 1: I had done it one time before, but I got

1730
01:23:36,880 --> 01:23:40,720
Speaker 1: really scared and took very little, and which is a

1731
01:23:40,800 --> 01:23:44,120
Speaker 1: mistake because if you take very little, you're not having

1732
01:23:44,120 --> 01:23:47,679
Speaker 1: the experience. But the shaman is because the shaman takes

1733
01:23:47,680 --> 01:23:50,439
Speaker 1: the ayahuasca also, that's part of it. So then suddenly

1734
01:23:50,479 --> 01:23:53,360
Speaker 1: like I'm not high and the shaman singing to me

1735
01:23:53,439 --> 01:23:55,960
Speaker 1: for eight hours and I'm not really even feeling anything,

1736
01:23:56,040 --> 01:23:57,720
Speaker 1: so then he just got to watch someone dance and

1737
01:23:57,720 --> 01:24:01,799
Speaker 1: sing with a drum. Went back again that I committed

1738
01:24:02,560 --> 01:24:03,360
Speaker 1: to doing the whole thing.

1739
01:24:03,479 --> 01:24:06,400
Speaker 2: Yeah, wow, wow, I mean that. I mean, that's a

1740
01:24:06,400 --> 01:24:09,000
Speaker 2: pretty special experience to see Jesus and to have that

1741
01:24:09,040 --> 01:24:11,920
Speaker 2: as a take home. Yeah, that's pretty powerful.

1742
01:24:12,000 --> 01:24:13,880
Speaker 1: Yeah, No, it really was, and I tried to take

1743
01:24:13,920 --> 01:24:16,840
Speaker 1: it seriously and hold on to it. And the funny

1744
01:24:16,840 --> 01:24:20,679
Speaker 1: thing was that after ayahuasca for about six eight months.

1745
01:24:21,000 --> 01:24:23,880
Speaker 1: I would wake up and it was as if my

1746
01:24:24,040 --> 01:24:29,240
Speaker 1: mind had been working on problems all night, and when

1747
01:24:29,280 --> 01:24:31,960
Speaker 1: I woke up, it was like telling me what it

1748
01:24:32,000 --> 01:24:34,679
Speaker 1: had figured out. And so I would just like wake

1749
01:24:34,800 --> 01:24:37,720
Speaker 1: up to these like messages, and so I'd be like

1750
01:24:37,760 --> 01:24:39,479
Speaker 1: a sleep and then I would get up and in

1751
01:24:39,520 --> 01:24:42,200
Speaker 1: my head I would hear, you're not doing any of

1752
01:24:42,200 --> 01:24:43,680
Speaker 1: the things that you ask Leslie to do.

1753
01:24:43,960 --> 01:24:47,800
Speaker 2: Oh oh, you know things like that.

1754
01:24:47,880 --> 01:24:49,599
Speaker 1: You know, like you know, you know, all that matter

1755
01:24:49,640 --> 01:24:51,320
Speaker 1: is is love or you know, whatever it was. But

1756
01:24:51,400 --> 01:24:52,800
Speaker 1: like it was different every day.

1757
01:24:52,960 --> 01:24:53,439
Speaker 2: Wow.

1758
01:24:53,520 --> 01:24:55,600
Speaker 1: And it really felt like I was stepping into a

1759
01:24:55,640 --> 01:24:57,879
Speaker 1: conversation you know that was happening.

1760
01:24:58,200 --> 01:25:01,280
Speaker 2: Wow. And then then a final and then you realize

1761
01:25:01,280 --> 01:25:05,879
Speaker 2: there was just Leslie so whistering my hand. That's amazing.

1762
01:25:06,240 --> 01:25:10,840
Speaker 2: What you've been married for twenty eight years, twenty seven

1763
01:25:10,920 --> 01:25:14,599
Speaker 2: you've been married for twenty seven years. What's the secret

1764
01:25:14,600 --> 01:25:17,479
Speaker 2: to a twenty seven year marriage that looks happy and

1765
01:25:17,920 --> 01:25:19,240
Speaker 2: fulfilling and wonderful?

1766
01:25:19,640 --> 01:25:22,800
Speaker 1: Uh? Married, Leslie? Man, that's the that's the main thing.

1767
01:25:23,080 --> 01:25:24,800
Speaker 1: I mean, it's you know, it's it's a lot of work,

1768
01:25:24,840 --> 01:25:27,120
Speaker 1: and you do realize that, you know, so much of

1769
01:25:27,160 --> 01:25:30,719
Speaker 1: it is like the courage to be honest about what's happening,

1770
01:25:30,800 --> 01:25:33,479
Speaker 1: what you're feeling, what you're going through, and you know,

1771
01:25:33,560 --> 01:25:35,840
Speaker 1: to really be there for each other. But we really

1772
01:25:36,000 --> 01:25:38,400
Speaker 1: enjoy each other, you know, like, you know, we love

1773
01:25:38,439 --> 01:25:40,880
Speaker 1: each other, but we're also I think, kind of engaged

1774
01:25:40,920 --> 01:25:44,280
Speaker 1: and amused, and we're creative together, and we love our kids,

1775
01:25:44,320 --> 01:25:45,880
Speaker 1: and I think that we have a really you know,

1776
01:25:46,120 --> 01:25:49,280
Speaker 1: nice relationship you know, with them. But at the same time,

1777
01:25:49,360 --> 01:25:52,280
Speaker 1: it's like the work of you know, what's coming up?

1778
01:25:52,439 --> 01:25:54,599
Speaker 1: You know, you know what what am I struggling with?

1779
01:25:54,760 --> 01:25:57,120
Speaker 1: You know what? How do we make life work? You know,

1780
01:25:57,479 --> 01:26:00,559
Speaker 1: our kids moved out and it's like, all right, what's

1781
01:26:00,600 --> 01:26:05,200
Speaker 1: life now? And you're just in this very beautiful partnership

1782
01:26:05,640 --> 01:26:07,400
Speaker 1: to you know, make the best of this life.

1783
01:26:07,680 --> 01:26:13,840
Speaker 2: Yeah, how is that curiosity that musing, that amusement stayed? Like,

1784
01:26:13,920 --> 01:26:16,880
Speaker 2: what what does it being that you've practiced to keep

1785
01:26:16,920 --> 01:26:17,400
Speaker 2: that alive?

1786
01:26:18,120 --> 01:26:21,479
Speaker 1: I think it's it's just her. I don't think, you know,

1787
01:26:21,520 --> 01:26:23,840
Speaker 1: I don't think it's there's like work there, you know.

1788
01:26:23,880 --> 01:26:26,640
Speaker 1: I think like in life, you can get distracted and

1789
01:26:26,680 --> 01:26:29,520
Speaker 1: you can get kind of pulled into things and consumed

1790
01:26:29,520 --> 01:26:32,160
Speaker 1: and off track. But it's really about kind of getting

1791
01:26:32,720 --> 01:26:35,519
Speaker 1: centered and present, which you know is hard if you're

1792
01:26:35,520 --> 01:26:38,719
Speaker 1: a hyper vigilant person and you're just worried about everything

1793
01:26:38,720 --> 01:26:40,599
Speaker 1: being good, you know, to kind of clear it all

1794
01:26:40,640 --> 01:26:43,360
Speaker 1: away and be there. I mean that's like the you know,

1795
01:26:43,400 --> 01:26:45,559
Speaker 1: the work of a lifetime to figure out how to

1796
01:26:45,920 --> 01:26:47,559
Speaker 1: clear it all away and just be there.

1797
01:26:48,000 --> 01:26:49,920
Speaker 2: Were there moments where you felt you were moving at

1798
01:26:49,920 --> 01:26:55,200
Speaker 2: different paces in Korea's work life, family, and to find

1799
01:26:55,200 --> 01:26:56,280
Speaker 2: a way to stay connected.

1800
01:26:56,560 --> 01:26:59,400
Speaker 1: I mean, I think like we always you know, supported

1801
01:26:59,760 --> 01:27:04,200
Speaker 1: what we were doing in work creatively. I think that

1802
01:27:04,280 --> 01:27:07,080
Speaker 1: we realize that, you know, we're not always going to

1803
01:27:07,120 --> 01:27:10,479
Speaker 1: work together, but when we do something really special happens

1804
01:27:10,479 --> 01:27:12,600
Speaker 1: and we get to a deep place and you know,

1805
01:27:12,640 --> 01:27:14,880
Speaker 1: it's very like funny and real and people feel it.

1806
01:27:15,280 --> 01:27:17,759
Speaker 1: But we're talking about things that are that are meaningful,

1807
01:27:17,800 --> 01:27:20,360
Speaker 1: and she's so funny and creative and comes up with

1808
01:27:20,400 --> 01:27:23,400
Speaker 1: these amazing ideas. So it's a real collaboration when we

1809
01:27:23,479 --> 01:27:25,519
Speaker 1: decide to do that kind of work together. And then

1810
01:27:25,520 --> 01:27:28,280
Speaker 1: we're always supportive on you know, if I'm doing a project,

1811
01:27:28,360 --> 01:27:31,479
Speaker 1: you know she's you know, watching cuts and giving me notes.

1812
01:27:31,520 --> 01:27:33,519
Speaker 1: Like we try to just like wow, help each other.

1813
01:27:33,680 --> 01:27:34,559
Speaker 1: You know, do a good job.

1814
01:27:34,800 --> 01:27:37,559
Speaker 2: Yeah, Yeah, she's she's fantastic. I mean yeah, whenever you

1815
01:27:37,600 --> 01:27:39,880
Speaker 2: guys work together, I feel like you're spot on. It

1816
01:27:40,000 --> 01:27:42,880
Speaker 2: is magic, and and that that must be just such

1817
01:27:42,920 --> 01:27:46,200
Speaker 2: a bonus because there's you obviously have this loving relationship

1818
01:27:46,280 --> 01:27:49,240
Speaker 2: at home, You're having this great relationship at work. Yeah,

1819
01:27:49,280 --> 01:27:52,960
Speaker 2: and to hear that it's her and that there's not

1820
01:27:53,080 --> 01:27:57,599
Speaker 2: necessarily a work behind it sounds I mean, it sounds wonderful.

1821
01:27:57,760 --> 01:28:00,160
Speaker 1: So yeah, I mean it's terrifying also because you you

1822
01:28:00,160 --> 01:28:03,639
Speaker 1: put yourself out there and so if you go, Okay,

1823
01:28:03,680 --> 01:28:06,040
Speaker 1: we're going to make a movie as a family and

1824
01:28:06,080 --> 01:28:09,800
Speaker 1: the kids too, on some level it's crazy because it's like, well,

1825
01:28:09,800 --> 01:28:13,439
Speaker 1: if this goes bad, this is a worldwide humiliation. So

1826
01:28:13,520 --> 01:28:15,840
Speaker 1: I would really feel the pressure, you know, as the

1827
01:28:15,840 --> 01:28:20,479
Speaker 1: captain of it to not make anyone, you know, look

1828
01:28:20,640 --> 01:28:22,960
Speaker 1: terrible or you know. And but I also think it

1829
01:28:23,000 --> 01:28:25,360
Speaker 1: made it better because I just cared at such a

1830
01:28:25,400 --> 01:28:29,000
Speaker 1: high level. They obviously cared and and did an amazing job.

1831
01:28:29,000 --> 01:28:32,680
Speaker 1: But I think it really like focuses you and then

1832
01:28:32,720 --> 01:28:35,400
Speaker 1: you're having kind of an amazing conversation about what do

1833
01:28:35,400 --> 01:28:38,680
Speaker 1: we want to say, you know, about life, about relationships,

1834
01:28:38,680 --> 01:28:42,639
Speaker 1: about marriage, about kids, and so you know for years

1835
01:28:42,640 --> 01:28:45,840
Speaker 1: we have common purpose and I think that was you

1836
01:28:45,880 --> 01:28:50,040
Speaker 1: know the best part about it was really all of

1837
01:28:50,120 --> 01:28:52,639
Speaker 1: us as a family moving towards the same goal.

1838
01:28:52,920 --> 01:28:55,800
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's so special. I love seeing that. I know

1839
01:28:55,840 --> 01:28:58,600
Speaker 2: you were recently, you know, just seeing your daughter and

1840
01:28:59,040 --> 01:29:01,599
Speaker 2: have her mone both of them have their moments. It's

1841
01:29:01,640 --> 01:29:04,280
Speaker 2: like it must be so fulfilling. What do you think

1842
01:29:04,360 --> 01:29:06,680
Speaker 2: was the most important lesson you taught your children when

1843
01:29:06,720 --> 01:29:08,519
Speaker 2: they were young that you see the mirroring today.

1844
01:29:08,880 --> 01:29:10,720
Speaker 1: Leslie and I tried to tell Iris and Maud that

1845
01:29:10,840 --> 01:29:13,840
Speaker 1: the most important thing is, you know, to care about

1846
01:29:13,840 --> 01:29:15,400
Speaker 1: the work and be passionate about it and to be

1847
01:29:16,240 --> 01:29:19,519
Speaker 1: proud of what you're saying in it, and that all

1848
01:29:19,560 --> 01:29:23,240
Speaker 1: that matters is that. And then you shouldn't take any

1849
01:29:23,280 --> 01:29:26,920
Speaker 1: work just for your career. You shouldn't, you know, try

1850
01:29:26,920 --> 01:29:30,000
Speaker 1: to figure out how to get successful. That it'll always

1851
01:29:30,040 --> 01:29:32,560
Speaker 1: come because you have something to say. It's something that

1852
01:29:32,560 --> 01:29:34,800
Speaker 1: that you want to express, that you're that you feel

1853
01:29:34,800 --> 01:29:38,080
Speaker 1: good about. And we talked a lot about just having

1854
01:29:38,120 --> 01:29:41,200
Speaker 1: the courage to take the risk because it is scary,

1855
01:29:41,400 --> 01:29:44,679
Speaker 1: you know, making things and you do have to gird

1856
01:29:44,720 --> 01:29:48,879
Speaker 1: yourself for rejection, and you know, careers which have highs

1857
01:29:48,680 --> 01:29:52,280
Speaker 1: and lows, and so in a way, you know, you're saying,

1858
01:29:52,880 --> 01:29:55,880
Speaker 1: you know you can handle this, like yeah, let's you know,

1859
01:29:56,479 --> 01:29:58,439
Speaker 1: or maybe you don't want to do this, which we

1860
01:29:58,479 --> 01:30:01,200
Speaker 1: also said to them many times, like if this isn't

1861
01:30:01,240 --> 01:30:04,439
Speaker 1: fun for you, because it's it is hard. It's hard

1862
01:30:04,479 --> 01:30:07,439
Speaker 1: on the people have a creative life, because you know,

1863
01:30:07,479 --> 01:30:09,840
Speaker 1: you can go through periods where you're like, no one

1864
01:30:09,960 --> 01:30:14,320
Speaker 1: understands me anymore, and then suddenly it's better again, and uh,

1865
01:30:14,880 --> 01:30:18,920
Speaker 1: it's it's uh, it's like being an adrenaline junkie in

1866
01:30:18,960 --> 01:30:20,280
Speaker 1: a way, and you don't you don't want them to

1867
01:30:20,439 --> 01:30:22,439
Speaker 1: experience in that way. You want them to be proud

1868
01:30:22,520 --> 01:30:26,080
Speaker 1: of what they're contributing. But it's hard to explain that

1869
01:30:26,080 --> 01:30:27,479
Speaker 1: the kids, like, you know, it's all about you're making

1870
01:30:27,479 --> 01:30:30,640
Speaker 1: a contribution, like what you know, because it took me

1871
01:30:30,720 --> 01:30:33,240
Speaker 1: decades to realize, like you know, everyone's al someone walk

1872
01:30:33,280 --> 01:30:35,479
Speaker 1: up to me and tell me they like something that

1873
01:30:35,560 --> 01:30:37,960
Speaker 1: I did or it made them laugh. It's easy to

1874
01:30:38,000 --> 01:30:41,479
Speaker 1: not take that in, but when you do and go, oh,

1875
01:30:41,520 --> 01:30:43,360
Speaker 1: that is the only reason why I did it, because

1876
01:30:43,400 --> 01:30:46,639
Speaker 1: this person I bumped into has watched it eleven times. Yeah,

1877
01:30:46,760 --> 01:30:49,320
Speaker 1: and it's the thing they turned to that makes them happy.

1878
01:30:49,560 --> 01:30:51,280
Speaker 1: Like that's actually the only reason to.

1879
01:30:51,160 --> 01:31:11,479
Speaker 2: Do it, absolutely and to be able to eat. How

1880
01:31:11,520 --> 01:31:13,599
Speaker 2: do you try and let people down lightly when you're

1881
01:31:13,640 --> 01:31:15,920
Speaker 2: rejecting them? I imagine people am pitching you crazy? How

1882
01:31:16,560 --> 01:31:19,280
Speaker 2: all the time? What have you learned you've told us

1883
01:31:19,280 --> 01:31:22,439
Speaker 2: about how you deal with rejection? What about when you

1884
01:31:22,520 --> 01:31:24,200
Speaker 2: were rejecting other people's ideas?

1885
01:31:24,439 --> 01:31:28,479
Speaker 1: I think, you know, being direct with people and also

1886
01:31:28,520 --> 01:31:31,360
Speaker 1: trying to be constructive with people, you know. I remember

1887
01:31:31,560 --> 01:31:34,960
Speaker 1: working for James Brooks on this cartoon The Critic, and

1888
01:31:35,160 --> 01:31:38,960
Speaker 1: when he would listen to people's pitches for stories, he

1889
01:31:38,960 --> 01:31:41,439
Speaker 1: always gave them a lot of time, and even when

1890
01:31:41,439 --> 01:31:43,720
Speaker 1: the idea was terrible, he would kick it around from

1891
01:31:43,720 --> 01:31:46,320
Speaker 1: all these angles to see if the room would find

1892
01:31:46,360 --> 01:31:49,800
Speaker 1: something in it, like maybe it would lead to some

1893
01:31:49,960 --> 01:31:54,120
Speaker 1: other inspiration. And that really had a big effect on me,

1894
01:31:54,160 --> 01:31:55,960
Speaker 1: because someone would pitch something and I would think, this

1895
01:31:56,120 --> 01:31:59,080
Speaker 1: is the worst idea. We go on to another idea

1896
01:31:59,200 --> 01:32:01,400
Speaker 1: and he would go, what if this and what if that?

1897
01:32:01,600 --> 01:32:05,960
Speaker 1: And he never seems annoyed, He seems fascinated by the thought,

1898
01:32:06,080 --> 01:32:08,280
Speaker 1: and like could it work. If he did this, does

1899
01:32:08,320 --> 01:32:11,000
Speaker 1: she have to be of that? And I think when

1900
01:32:11,040 --> 01:32:12,960
Speaker 1: you do that to people, even when you say, you know,

1901
01:32:12,960 --> 01:32:15,519
Speaker 1: I don't want to make your movie, but you give them,

1902
01:32:15,680 --> 01:32:18,360
Speaker 1: you know, the time to say, here's why I'm not

1903
01:32:18,439 --> 01:32:22,400
Speaker 1: passionate about it. Here's what's interesting about it. Because the

1904
01:32:22,439 --> 01:32:25,519
Speaker 1: truth is, you know, I've turned down things that became

1905
01:32:25,560 --> 01:32:28,720
Speaker 1: big hits, and that's happened to me. It doesn't mean

1906
01:32:28,760 --> 01:32:32,360
Speaker 1: I'm right. It just means that I don't connect to it. Yes,

1907
01:32:32,479 --> 01:32:33,320
Speaker 1: you know, someone else might.

1908
01:32:33,439 --> 01:32:34,960
Speaker 2: What was one of the ones that got away that

1909
01:32:36,400 --> 01:32:38,280
Speaker 2: you may not have loved but went on to do

1910
01:32:38,360 --> 01:32:38,840
Speaker 2: something great?

1911
01:32:39,040 --> 01:32:40,320
Speaker 1: I don't know. I can't think of when off the

1912
01:32:40,360 --> 01:32:43,479
Speaker 1: top of my head. You know. Usually usually it's because

1913
01:32:43,479 --> 01:32:46,080
Speaker 1: I don't move fast enough. Someone sent me a script

1914
01:32:46,120 --> 01:32:47,840
Speaker 1: and it took me too many days to read it,

1915
01:32:47,880 --> 01:32:49,360
Speaker 1: and then they sayld it to somebody else.

1916
01:32:49,640 --> 01:32:53,320
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, that's yeah. But I like what you said

1917
01:32:53,360 --> 01:32:57,000
Speaker 2: that it's not about because it's not about whether it's

1918
01:32:57,000 --> 01:32:59,519
Speaker 2: successful or not. It's about whether it's meaningful to you

1919
01:32:59,640 --> 01:33:04,120
Speaker 2: or not. That is such a great metric because if

1920
01:33:04,120 --> 01:33:05,920
Speaker 2: it becomes about what's successful mean, there's gonna be a

1921
01:33:05,920 --> 01:33:07,599
Speaker 2: million things that's successful, and you're going to miss out

1922
01:33:07,600 --> 01:33:09,640
Speaker 2: on all of them because there's so many things that

1923
01:33:09,640 --> 01:33:12,920
Speaker 2: are successful every year. But if it's meaningful to you,

1924
01:33:12,920 --> 01:33:14,800
Speaker 2: you want to be involved. And I think that's such

1925
01:33:14,840 --> 01:33:17,280
Speaker 2: a great lesson I find when I speak to anyone

1926
01:33:17,280 --> 01:33:20,960
Speaker 2: who's creative. You know, we had Rick Rubin in here

1927
01:33:21,000 --> 01:33:23,120
Speaker 2: and it was talking about music in that way. When

1928
01:33:23,120 --> 01:33:24,960
Speaker 2: I'm talking to you, I'm like, I feel like I'm

1929
01:33:25,040 --> 01:33:29,960
Speaker 2: understanding comedy in a different way because this isn't just

1930
01:33:30,400 --> 01:33:33,080
Speaker 2: it's never been as simple as oh yeah, we're just

1931
01:33:33,160 --> 01:33:35,400
Speaker 2: trying to make that person laugh. It's like there's there's

1932
01:33:35,439 --> 01:33:39,280
Speaker 2: so much more. There's just so much more deep intention

1933
01:33:40,320 --> 01:33:42,360
Speaker 2: behind what you're creating and how you're doing it.

1934
01:33:42,479 --> 01:33:46,120
Speaker 1: Well. I love Rick Rubin's book. Yeah, And you know,

1935
01:33:46,240 --> 01:33:48,760
Speaker 1: years ago Gary Schanling said to me, you should get

1936
01:33:48,760 --> 01:33:52,160
Speaker 1: to know Rick Rubin. I think, I don't know. I

1937
01:33:52,160 --> 01:33:55,200
Speaker 1: think there'd be something there. And so I got to

1938
01:33:55,280 --> 01:33:58,080
Speaker 1: know Rick and he would show me music and I

1939
01:33:58,160 --> 01:34:00,519
Speaker 1: put some music from the band the Avid Brothers and

1940
01:34:00,560 --> 01:34:02,800
Speaker 1: this is forty that he had played for me. And

1941
01:34:02,840 --> 01:34:04,760
Speaker 1: then one day he said, they're about to do a

1942
01:34:04,800 --> 01:34:07,040
Speaker 1: new record with me. You might want to do a

1943
01:34:07,080 --> 01:34:13,920
Speaker 1: documentary or something, and I thought, well, maybe I should

1944
01:34:13,960 --> 01:34:16,880
Speaker 1: do it because Gary said, you know, Gary was my

1945
01:34:17,040 --> 01:34:19,920
Speaker 1: mentor and and I'm going to follow that. I'm going

1946
01:34:19,960 --> 01:34:22,000
Speaker 1: to follow it through as if it's like a message

1947
01:34:22,000 --> 01:34:25,719
Speaker 1: from Gary. And then we followed me. My friend Michael

1948
01:34:25,720 --> 01:34:28,400
Speaker 1: won Figulio followed David Brothers around for a couple of

1949
01:34:28,479 --> 01:34:31,759
Speaker 1: years and made this movie called May at Last about

1950
01:34:31,800 --> 01:34:34,479
Speaker 1: them making a record with Rick. And it was about

1951
01:34:34,479 --> 01:34:41,040
Speaker 1: two these two guys who who are just good guys,

1952
01:34:41,360 --> 01:34:42,720
Speaker 1: and it was so funny. Thing is we were making

1953
01:34:42,720 --> 01:34:45,320
Speaker 1: this documentary and we're like, where's the drama because it's

1954
01:34:45,360 --> 01:34:48,000
Speaker 1: like two good guys making music and working with Rick

1955
01:34:48,880 --> 01:34:52,240
Speaker 1: and and we realized, well, that's the point of the movie.

1956
01:34:52,280 --> 01:34:54,800
Speaker 1: It's almost like a meditation on creativity and that like

1957
01:34:54,880 --> 01:34:58,160
Speaker 1: some people aren't assholes, some people are kind of great.

1958
01:34:58,640 --> 01:35:00,559
Speaker 1: And we thought, oh, that's kind of beautiful thing if

1959
01:35:00,600 --> 01:35:02,720
Speaker 1: you could figure out how to make this like uh,

1960
01:35:02,960 --> 01:35:06,080
Speaker 1: you know, fascinating about a band being good to each other.

1961
01:35:06,760 --> 01:35:09,240
Speaker 1: And so I always think about about wreck.

1962
01:35:09,360 --> 01:35:11,760
Speaker 2: That's so funny. I didn't know that I loved where

1963
01:35:11,760 --> 01:35:13,600
Speaker 2: he said that. You two obviously Gary being one of

1964
01:35:13,680 --> 01:35:18,240
Speaker 2: your mentors, how important of mentors being in your life gigantic.

1965
01:35:18,280 --> 01:35:21,559
Speaker 1: I mean the entire, the entire thing. When I look back,

1966
01:35:21,800 --> 01:35:24,920
Speaker 1: I'm so grateful, you know that. You know, I bumped

1967
01:35:24,920 --> 01:35:26,680
Speaker 1: into Gary at a comedy club and he asked me

1968
01:35:26,720 --> 01:35:28,840
Speaker 1: to write jokes for him for the Grammys, and then

1969
01:35:29,120 --> 01:35:31,639
Speaker 1: hired me at the Larry Sanders Show. Then he asked

1970
01:35:31,680 --> 01:35:34,040
Speaker 1: me to co run it the last year, and then

1971
01:35:34,040 --> 01:35:36,639
Speaker 1: he asked me to direct it. I never directed before,

1972
01:35:37,120 --> 01:35:38,799
Speaker 1: and you know, so he was like a real angel

1973
01:35:39,240 --> 01:35:42,080
Speaker 1: who just believed in me and kept giving me opportunities.

1974
01:35:42,439 --> 01:35:44,000
Speaker 1: And now I look back and go, wow, those are

1975
01:35:44,080 --> 01:35:47,000
Speaker 1: giant opportunities. I didn't know anything he really taught me.

1976
01:35:47,720 --> 01:35:49,240
Speaker 2: And how do you explain those? How do you make

1977
01:35:49,280 --> 01:35:51,960
Speaker 2: sense of that now when you reflect on those huge

1978
01:35:51,960 --> 01:35:55,000
Speaker 2: moments that he gave you when you were learning the roads?

1979
01:35:55,280 --> 01:35:57,479
Speaker 1: I mean, I remember, like he you know, he wanted

1980
01:35:57,520 --> 01:35:59,519
Speaker 1: to hang out when when I was young and writing

1981
01:35:59,600 --> 01:36:03,520
Speaker 1: jokes for him, and he was living with Linda Dussat,

1982
01:36:03,560 --> 01:36:05,840
Speaker 1: and I would go over there and I just eat

1983
01:36:05,840 --> 01:36:08,960
Speaker 1: with them sometimes and watch TV. And he was beginning

1984
01:36:09,000 --> 01:36:10,920
Speaker 1: to develop the Larry Sanders Show, and he would show

1985
01:36:10,920 --> 01:36:14,000
Speaker 1: me all auditions and scripts and I remember thinking why

1986
01:36:14,120 --> 01:36:17,040
Speaker 1: is he doing this? You know, like it was hard

1987
01:36:17,080 --> 01:36:19,639
Speaker 1: for me to go, oh, he's just a good guy,

1988
01:36:20,280 --> 01:36:23,719
Speaker 1: Like this is so weird because he's like the most talented,

1989
01:36:23,760 --> 01:36:27,439
Speaker 1: funny guy in the world and he likes having me around.

1990
01:36:27,600 --> 01:36:30,960
Speaker 1: And then later in life, I thought, you know, he

1991
01:36:31,040 --> 01:36:33,360
Speaker 1: never had kids, but I feel like that was like

1992
01:36:33,400 --> 01:36:35,720
Speaker 1: his way of doing it. It was like through me

1993
01:36:36,320 --> 01:36:41,840
Speaker 1: that it was like an experiment in fatherhood. And I

1994
01:36:41,880 --> 01:36:44,479
Speaker 1: think that, you know, when he was a kid, his

1995
01:36:44,560 --> 01:36:48,960
Speaker 1: brother died when he was little, and his parents never

1996
01:36:49,000 --> 01:36:53,760
Speaker 1: really talked about the brother and it was discouraged that

1997
01:36:53,800 --> 01:36:55,439
Speaker 1: they just kind of moved on in a very kind

1998
01:36:55,439 --> 01:36:59,880
Speaker 1: of early nineteen sixties way, and it really hurt Gary

1999
01:37:00,160 --> 01:37:03,960
Speaker 1: and it made him very sensitive in a lot of

2000
01:37:03,960 --> 01:37:09,200
Speaker 1: ways after that. And I thought that he was nice

2001
01:37:09,240 --> 01:37:11,920
Speaker 1: to me in the way he wished his parents were

2002
01:37:11,960 --> 01:37:14,479
Speaker 1: to him. That's what I thought he was doing. Wow.

2003
01:37:15,479 --> 01:37:17,599
Speaker 2: Wow, So in one sense, you were able to give

2004
01:37:17,640 --> 01:37:18,240
Speaker 2: him a gift too.

2005
01:37:18,960 --> 01:37:20,599
Speaker 1: Yeah, Like I think he was trying to prove it

2006
01:37:20,640 --> 01:37:25,000
Speaker 1: was possible to be purely giving like that.

2007
01:37:25,640 --> 01:37:25,840
Speaker 2: Yeah.

2008
01:37:25,920 --> 01:37:27,479
Speaker 1: I never knew it at the time. I just thought, Oh,

2009
01:37:27,479 --> 01:37:31,439
Speaker 1: Gary's a great Friend's so sweet. But then later other

2010
01:37:31,479 --> 01:37:34,000
Speaker 1: people would tell me like, oh, Gary, you know felt

2011
01:37:34,080 --> 01:37:38,439
Speaker 1: very paternal with you, and I thought, oh yeah, because

2012
01:37:38,680 --> 01:37:41,080
Speaker 1: I went through all my emails after he died from him,

2013
01:37:42,240 --> 01:37:46,559
Speaker 1: and every email where I asked him for something he

2014
01:37:46,600 --> 01:37:49,920
Speaker 1: said yes for like ten years. I just like scrolled

2015
01:37:49,920 --> 01:37:51,840
Speaker 1: through and I'm like, he said yes every single time.

2016
01:37:52,160 --> 01:37:53,960
Speaker 1: And other people would be like, he says no to me,

2017
01:37:54,000 --> 01:37:57,519
Speaker 1: to everything, and I just started crying. It was just

2018
01:37:57,560 --> 01:38:01,639
Speaker 1: such a beautiful thing to scroll through, like someone just

2019
01:38:02,400 --> 01:38:07,360
Speaker 1: consistently just being there and so beautiful and asking for

2020
01:38:07,560 --> 01:38:10,439
Speaker 1: not that much in return, you know, other than to

2021
01:38:10,520 --> 01:38:12,080
Speaker 1: not screw up the Larry Sanders show.

2022
01:38:13,720 --> 01:38:16,040
Speaker 2: That's FRUI. What's beautiful is You've done that for so

2023
01:38:16,040 --> 01:38:18,200
Speaker 2: many others too. I feel like that seems to just

2024
01:38:18,240 --> 01:38:19,000
Speaker 2: something you live on.

2025
01:38:19,439 --> 01:38:21,839
Speaker 1: Yeah. And it's the fun part too. I mean it's

2026
01:38:22,439 --> 01:38:24,160
Speaker 1: you know, I like to do it. A lot of

2027
01:38:24,160 --> 01:38:27,200
Speaker 1: it is from Gary, but also it's really fun to

2028
01:38:27,240 --> 01:38:32,680
Speaker 1: work with somebody who is very inspired and needs some

2029
01:38:33,280 --> 01:38:37,800
Speaker 1: help understanding what they're doing. Yeah, but you know they're

2030
01:38:37,800 --> 01:38:40,320
Speaker 1: doing something amazing and you can help them, and you go, oh, yeah,

2031
01:38:40,439 --> 01:38:42,320
Speaker 1: just I could give them some of the wisdom that

2032
01:38:42,360 --> 01:38:44,679
Speaker 1: I learned over the years, and this person can actually

2033
01:38:45,000 --> 01:38:48,559
Speaker 1: pull off the thing that they're trying to do, like

2034
01:38:48,600 --> 01:38:50,760
Speaker 1: they're good enough without me. But I can make this

2035
01:38:50,840 --> 01:38:52,880
Speaker 1: way easier if I say, watch out for this, watch

2036
01:38:52,920 --> 01:38:53,320
Speaker 1: out for that.

2037
01:38:53,520 --> 01:38:57,400
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's beautiful, Judd. It has been amazing learning from you.

2038
01:38:57,439 --> 01:39:00,759
Speaker 2: I feel like I've gained so much wisdom about whether

2039
01:39:00,800 --> 01:39:04,479
Speaker 2: it's the comedy industry, whether it's about resilience, whether it's

2040
01:39:04,520 --> 01:39:07,240
Speaker 2: about breaking through barriers, believing in yourself even when you

2041
01:39:07,280 --> 01:39:10,920
Speaker 2: don't all the way through to just how much work

2042
01:39:10,960 --> 01:39:13,840
Speaker 2: that you've done. We end every on purpose interview. The

2043
01:39:13,840 --> 01:39:16,360
Speaker 2: final five he's questioned have to be answered in one

2044
01:39:16,479 --> 01:39:19,479
Speaker 2: sentence backay, although I break that rule often, So okay,

2045
01:39:19,560 --> 01:39:22,000
Speaker 2: well we'll see how well we do. But chud apataw,

2046
01:39:22,080 --> 01:39:24,680
Speaker 2: these are your final five. The first question is what

2047
01:39:24,760 --> 01:39:27,200
Speaker 2: is the best advice you've ever heard or received?

2048
01:39:28,120 --> 01:39:32,320
Speaker 1: Don't live in here, live in here. Ram Das said

2049
01:39:32,320 --> 01:39:34,840
Speaker 1: that to me when I interviewed him for his podcast

2050
01:39:35,680 --> 01:39:37,840
Speaker 1: he Goes Here, Bad, Here Good.

2051
01:39:39,000 --> 01:39:40,360
Speaker 2: Tell me about your interview with him.

2052
01:39:40,960 --> 01:39:44,599
Speaker 1: It asked me to interview him and it was over

2053
01:39:44,720 --> 01:39:48,080
Speaker 1: zoom and in the middle of it, Gary Shannling. I

2054
01:39:48,120 --> 01:39:50,519
Speaker 1: invited Gary Shandling to sit in, and halfway through he

2055
01:39:50,600 --> 01:39:53,080
Speaker 1: showed up at the two of us. We're just trying

2056
01:39:53,080 --> 01:39:56,479
Speaker 1: to make him laugh saying dumb jokes. You know, you're like,

2057
01:39:56,800 --> 01:39:59,559
Speaker 1: are you mad at Eckhart Toole because you're like the

2058
01:39:59,720 --> 01:40:02,839
Speaker 1: be your now guy and he's he's the now guy.

2059
01:40:03,800 --> 01:40:07,439
Speaker 1: And he was just laughing. But he also said, you know,

2060
01:40:09,160 --> 01:40:12,600
Speaker 1: I am loving awareness. And you know, he said a

2061
01:40:12,600 --> 01:40:15,839
Speaker 1: lot of things that were really reducible at that anytime

2062
01:40:15,840 --> 01:40:18,600
Speaker 1: I think about them, you know, deeply affect me. And

2063
01:40:18,640 --> 01:40:20,360
Speaker 1: the other thing I noticed about it, I have a

2064
01:40:20,400 --> 01:40:23,800
Speaker 1: photograph of of me and Gary. You know, it's like

2065
01:40:23,840 --> 01:40:26,960
Speaker 1: a still of our side of the zoom and in

2066
01:40:26,560 --> 01:40:31,080
Speaker 1: the in the photograph, Gary looks purely happy, and I thought,

2067
01:40:31,080 --> 01:40:34,120
Speaker 1: I don't know if I've ever seen Gary look happy

2068
01:40:34,120 --> 01:40:36,599
Speaker 1: and serene like how he looked when he was talking

2069
01:40:36,600 --> 01:40:37,360
Speaker 1: to Rondas.

2070
01:40:37,479 --> 01:40:41,040
Speaker 2: Oh that's beautiful. I love that. Question Number two, what

2071
01:40:41,160 --> 01:40:43,360
Speaker 2: is the worst advice you've ever heard or received?

2072
01:40:43,520 --> 01:40:45,040
Speaker 1: Stop crying and I'll give you or I'll give you

2073
01:40:45,080 --> 01:40:49,360
Speaker 1: a reason to cry. That was like a parental thing

2074
01:40:49,360 --> 01:40:53,439
Speaker 1: when I was a kid. But someone said to me,

2075
01:40:53,640 --> 01:40:55,200
Speaker 1: and they meant it in the best possible way, But

2076
01:40:55,240 --> 01:40:57,640
Speaker 1: I probably took it the wrong way. They said, you know,

2077
01:40:57,840 --> 01:41:01,519
Speaker 1: when you're doing your TV pilot and they give you notes,

2078
01:41:02,360 --> 01:41:05,519
Speaker 1: if the note is wrong, don't do it because if

2079
01:41:05,560 --> 01:41:08,880
Speaker 1: you screw up your show, they won't say, you know what,

2080
01:41:09,000 --> 01:41:11,120
Speaker 1: let's make your show anyway, because I gave you that

2081
01:41:11,160 --> 01:41:15,519
Speaker 1: bad note. But I took it like to really fight

2082
01:41:16,120 --> 01:41:19,040
Speaker 1: and I would just like refuse to take certain notes

2083
01:41:19,280 --> 01:41:21,880
Speaker 1: out of self protection. I took it too seriously. I

2084
01:41:21,880 --> 01:41:24,280
Speaker 1: didn't realize that there's a real give and take and

2085
01:41:24,360 --> 01:41:26,360
Speaker 1: you have to respect the people that you're working with.

2086
01:41:26,680 --> 01:41:27,160
Speaker 2: Ye and.

2087
01:41:28,680 --> 01:41:31,320
Speaker 1: Later on I realized, like if the people who are

2088
01:41:31,360 --> 01:41:34,600
Speaker 1: trying to help you, if they think you think they're idiots,

2089
01:41:35,160 --> 01:41:37,800
Speaker 1: they'll try to destroy you. You know that there's a

2090
01:41:37,840 --> 01:41:40,840
Speaker 1: lot of ego involved in this exchange, you know, for

2091
01:41:40,960 --> 01:41:43,320
Speaker 1: people when they kind of take a risk to tell

2092
01:41:43,360 --> 01:41:45,280
Speaker 1: you what they think of your thing, and that you

2093
01:41:45,320 --> 01:41:48,519
Speaker 1: have to be very respectful to their you know, their

2094
01:41:48,560 --> 01:41:52,519
Speaker 1: mindset and their ego in the same way I'm so sensitive.

2095
01:41:53,479 --> 01:41:58,840
Speaker 2: Well, that's that's profound. Question number three, What makes a

2096
01:41:58,880 --> 01:41:59,519
Speaker 2: good friend?

2097
01:42:00,439 --> 01:42:04,080
Speaker 1: It's funny because I was talking to David Milts, was

2098
01:42:04,120 --> 01:42:10,360
Speaker 1: one of my mentors, and he was talking about he

2099
01:42:10,439 --> 01:42:12,720
Speaker 1: had a friend when he was a kid growing up,

2100
01:42:14,000 --> 01:42:17,519
Speaker 1: and he said we would just laugh so much. They

2101
01:42:17,520 --> 01:42:22,280
Speaker 1: were like twelve and they would crack up. And he said,

2102
01:42:22,360 --> 01:42:25,400
Speaker 1: you know that way you behave with your friends where

2103
01:42:25,680 --> 01:42:28,519
Speaker 1: you never ever have to think about what you're going

2104
01:42:28,560 --> 01:42:30,800
Speaker 1: to say to them, because you just know they're going

2105
01:42:30,840 --> 01:42:33,240
Speaker 1: to get it. You know they're okay with it, and

2106
01:42:33,320 --> 01:42:38,920
Speaker 1: so you're in this crazy, joyful flow. And then he said,

2107
01:42:39,240 --> 01:42:43,439
Speaker 1: that's what I think writing should feel like, and that's

2108
01:42:43,479 --> 01:42:45,639
Speaker 1: how I think you're friendship it at its best.

2109
01:42:45,920 --> 01:42:46,080
Speaker 2: Yea.

2110
01:42:46,280 --> 01:42:52,320
Speaker 1: You know, is that feeling of total relaxation, confidence, hilarity, connection.

2111
01:42:52,880 --> 01:42:55,160
Speaker 2: Yeah, well said I love that you have so many

2112
01:42:55,200 --> 01:42:58,080
Speaker 2: great friends in the industry outside and it's beautiful to

2113
01:42:58,080 --> 01:43:00,840
Speaker 2: hear that. And that's I can agree more. I feel

2114
01:43:00,840 --> 01:43:02,479
Speaker 2: like I'm around my best friends when I don't have

2115
01:43:02,520 --> 01:43:05,680
Speaker 2: to filter anything. Yeah, and we can hash it out

2116
01:43:05,760 --> 01:43:09,000
Speaker 2: if we have to, but yeah, there's no filter. Question

2117
01:43:09,080 --> 01:43:12,760
Speaker 2: number four, what's something that you used to value that

2118
01:43:12,840 --> 01:43:13,879
Speaker 2: you don't value anymore.

2119
01:43:15,479 --> 01:43:19,400
Speaker 1: Well, I'm a hoarder, so I've always saved everything, like

2120
01:43:19,479 --> 01:43:23,640
Speaker 1: I've really saved everything. The book, it's five hundred and

2121
01:43:23,680 --> 01:43:27,000
Speaker 1: seventy pages of scanning of my like childhood autographs.

2122
01:43:27,040 --> 01:43:28,320
Speaker 2: My it's amazing.

2123
01:43:27,960 --> 01:43:30,880
Speaker 1: James Garner and Jack Klugman autographs, like I saved things

2124
01:43:30,880 --> 01:43:34,559
Speaker 1: when I was ten, like I was the Smithsonian and

2125
01:43:35,439 --> 01:43:36,960
Speaker 1: you know, you know the thing. We're like, oh, there's

2126
01:43:36,960 --> 01:43:38,960
Speaker 1: an art about you in a magazine and instead of

2127
01:43:38,960 --> 01:43:40,960
Speaker 1: getting one company, you get twenty and then you put

2128
01:43:41,040 --> 01:43:42,599
Speaker 1: them in a box and you can't throw it out,

2129
01:43:42,640 --> 01:43:46,400
Speaker 1: like you literally can't throw it out. And when I

2130
01:43:46,439 --> 01:43:50,439
Speaker 1: put this book together, I thought, I need to let

2131
01:43:50,520 --> 01:43:57,760
Speaker 1: go of this stuff because it's it's mentally unhealthy. And

2132
01:43:57,840 --> 01:44:00,760
Speaker 1: also if I could let go of it, I could

2133
01:44:00,760 --> 01:44:03,559
Speaker 1: probably connect more to the spirit of all of it.

2134
01:44:04,479 --> 01:44:08,160
Speaker 1: I shouldn't need to, you know, hold on to you know.

2135
01:44:08,560 --> 01:44:09,280
Speaker 2: I'm glad you did.

2136
01:44:09,439 --> 01:44:11,000
Speaker 1: Yeah. So I scanned it all and put it all

2137
01:44:11,000 --> 01:44:13,080
Speaker 1: in the book. So now I should throw out like

2138
01:44:13,479 --> 01:44:17,800
Speaker 1: seven storage spaces worth of crap, but I haven't yet.

2139
01:44:17,800 --> 01:44:20,679
Speaker 1: But I'm really working towards like not needing it anymore.

2140
01:44:21,240 --> 01:44:24,040
Speaker 2: That's great. I'm glad you didn't. I thought it was remarkable.

2141
01:44:24,040 --> 01:44:27,719
Speaker 2: I mean, the amount of stuff you've saved and scanned

2142
01:44:27,760 --> 01:44:31,320
Speaker 2: and shared the book, it's unbelievable. I wish, yeah, I

2143
01:44:31,360 --> 01:44:34,919
Speaker 2: wish everyone was able to tell their story that visually. Yeah,

2144
01:44:35,000 --> 01:44:37,800
Speaker 2: because that's what takes you back to that time. It's

2145
01:44:37,840 --> 01:44:40,519
Speaker 2: it's it's so hard to do it through imagination, and

2146
01:44:40,640 --> 01:44:42,400
Speaker 2: you saving all of this means we don't have to

2147
01:44:42,439 --> 01:44:43,040
Speaker 2: so well.

2148
01:44:43,080 --> 01:44:45,880
Speaker 1: I you know, I thought, I want, I want to

2149
01:44:45,920 --> 01:44:48,040
Speaker 1: go through all my stuff. I scanned everything and then

2150
01:44:48,040 --> 01:44:50,519
Speaker 1: I had like four hundred thousand photos. So I spent

2151
01:44:50,600 --> 01:44:53,360
Speaker 1: a year laying the whole book out with no writing,

2152
01:44:54,040 --> 01:44:56,400
Speaker 1: and then I took about six eight months and I

2153
01:44:56,439 --> 01:44:59,120
Speaker 1: tried to do the book with a lot of like

2154
01:44:59,200 --> 01:45:02,479
Speaker 1: little essays and captions so that it felt like I

2155
01:45:02,600 --> 01:45:03,880
Speaker 1: was explaining the book to you.

2156
01:45:04,040 --> 01:45:04,240
Speaker 2: Yes.

2157
01:45:04,320 --> 01:45:06,519
Speaker 1: Yeah, So if you open any page, me going, oh,

2158
01:45:06,600 --> 01:45:09,720
Speaker 1: let me tell you what that is. And I think

2159
01:45:09,720 --> 01:45:11,800
Speaker 1: it's a fun read because of that, because you could

2160
01:45:11,800 --> 01:45:13,880
Speaker 1: open to any page totally. And I also have all

2161
01:45:13,880 --> 01:45:16,120
Speaker 1: the projects that failed and explained what they were and

2162
01:45:16,160 --> 01:45:18,960
Speaker 1: why they failed. It's not just a success things.

2163
01:45:19,080 --> 01:45:21,040
Speaker 2: No, absolutely no. I think that was the best part

2164
01:45:21,040 --> 01:45:23,439
Speaker 2: about it. It's so real. Even today, You've shared so

2165
01:45:23,479 --> 01:45:27,960
Speaker 2: many things that I feel are not the highlights. There's

2166
01:45:28,000 --> 01:45:30,800
Speaker 2: so much. Fifth and final question we asked this every

2167
01:45:30,800 --> 01:45:32,840
Speaker 2: guest has ever been on the show if you could

2168
01:45:32,840 --> 01:45:35,439
Speaker 2: create one law that everyone in the world had to follow,

2169
01:45:35,640 --> 01:45:36,240
Speaker 2: what would it be?

2170
01:45:37,040 --> 01:45:38,920
Speaker 1: The thing that you know, it's such like a corny

2171
01:45:38,960 --> 01:45:42,800
Speaker 1: bumper sticker, but every time I hear it, I think, Wow,

2172
01:45:42,840 --> 01:45:46,080
Speaker 1: if people really live this, it would be meaningful, which is,

2173
01:45:47,080 --> 01:45:48,720
Speaker 1: you know, you don't know what anyone is going through.

2174
01:45:48,760 --> 01:45:51,799
Speaker 1: Be kind. And I did this documentary about mel Brooks

2175
01:45:51,800 --> 01:45:53,920
Speaker 1: for HBO that's going to be on in January. And

2176
01:45:54,120 --> 01:45:55,679
Speaker 1: you know, he's ninety nine years old. So I said,

2177
01:45:55,680 --> 01:45:57,080
Speaker 1: you know, what do you tell you know, you're like

2178
01:45:57,680 --> 01:46:01,599
Speaker 1: your grandkids. What advice do you take from you know this,

2179
01:46:01,880 --> 01:46:04,719
Speaker 1: you know, century on Earth? And he said, be kind?

2180
01:46:05,920 --> 01:46:07,080
Speaker 1: And I think that's it.

2181
01:46:07,400 --> 01:46:11,040
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, said chat Out at the books called Comedy Nerd.

2182
01:46:11,120 --> 01:46:12,920
Speaker 2: We're going to put the link in the description to

2183
01:46:12,960 --> 01:46:16,440
Speaker 2: go and grab your copy. I want you all to

2184
01:46:16,479 --> 01:46:19,599
Speaker 2: clip on TikTok and Instagram the pieces that really resonated

2185
01:46:19,640 --> 01:46:22,080
Speaker 2: with you, that connected with you, the stories that you're

2186
01:46:22,080 --> 01:46:25,200
Speaker 2: going to remember and share again. I learned so many

2187
01:46:25,320 --> 01:46:27,760
Speaker 2: nuggets of wisdom from Juds today, and Judd, I'm so

2188
01:46:27,800 --> 01:46:30,960
Speaker 2: grateful that you not only lived your life, shared it

2189
01:46:31,120 --> 01:46:33,719
Speaker 2: in this beautiful visual way with all of us and

2190
01:46:33,840 --> 01:46:35,280
Speaker 2: I hope I get to spend a lot more time

2191
01:46:35,280 --> 01:46:37,439
Speaker 2: with you because this was too much fun. So thank

2192
01:46:37,479 --> 01:46:39,479
Speaker 2: you so much, thank you, so grateful to you and

2193
01:46:39,840 --> 01:46:40,800
Speaker 2: really appreciate it.

2194
01:46:41,200 --> 01:46:41,519
Speaker 1: Thank you.

2195
01:46:42,240 --> 01:46:44,920
Speaker 2: If this is the year that you're trying to get creative,

2196
01:46:45,000 --> 01:46:47,559
Speaker 2: you're trying to build more, I need you to listen

2197
01:46:47,600 --> 01:46:50,559
Speaker 2: to this episode with Rick Rubin on how to break

2198
01:46:50,560 --> 01:46:54,759
Speaker 2: into your most creative self, how to use unconventional methods

2199
01:46:54,800 --> 01:46:58,639
Speaker 2: that lead to success, and the secret to genuinely loving

2200
01:46:58,640 --> 01:47:02,000
Speaker 2: what you do, trying to find your passion and your lane.

2201
01:47:02,600 --> 01:47:04,680
Speaker 2: Rick Rubin's episode is the one for you.

2202
01:47:05,160 --> 01:47:07,560
Speaker 1: Just because I like it, that doesn't give it any value,

2203
01:47:07,720 --> 01:47:10,120
Speaker 1: Like as an artist, if you like it, that's all

2204
01:47:10,200 --> 01:47:13,800
Speaker 1: of the value. That's the success comes when you say

2205
01:47:14,200 --> 01:47:16,360
Speaker 1: I like this enough for other people to see it.