Speaker 1: Now really.
Speaker 2: Really no, really, Hi, I'm Jason Alexander.
Speaker 3: I'm here with my palent, Peter Tilden, and this is
Speaker 3: our little podcast called.
Speaker 2: Really No, Really, where we.
Speaker 3: Explore things that make us say really no, really really
Speaker 3: yes exactly all right?
Speaker 2: So if I made this sound, what would you think? Oh?
Speaker 2: What would you think? You make that sound all the time?
Speaker 2: You need to hear some next, you make that all
Speaker 2: the time? What do you make if you make that
Speaker 2: sound every day? Are here.
Speaker 3: And you take out the sound the soundtrack of every
Speaker 3: zombie movie?
Speaker 2: Is that sucking question mark? That the dentist? You know
Speaker 2: what else? I heard too? That's you just brought my
Speaker 2: grandfather back.
Speaker 3: So today we're gonna be talking about in essence, horror
Speaker 3: and zombies and a very popular show.
Speaker 2: But I really know, really of the day is I am?
Speaker 3: It was and continue to be a big fan of
Speaker 3: the Last of Us, the wonderful sci fi show on HBO.
Speaker 3: And in the show, the world or much of the
Speaker 3: world is suffering from a fictional brain infection that experts
Speaker 3: say is inspired by a very real set of fungi
Speaker 3: that can hijack their hosts and turn them into zombies.
Speaker 3: The infection is inspired by this reality cortyceps thing that exists, right,
Speaker 3: and particularly the story that I've heard and they talk
Speaker 3: about in the first episode of the Last of Us.
Speaker 3: It infects It's a parasitic thing that infects ants, and
Speaker 3: it sort of takes over their minds, It controls their bodies,
Speaker 3: and eventually it drives them to the top of trees
Speaker 3: where they cling on and it spores out of their head, which,
Speaker 3: by the way, disgusting, and the spores go everywhere and
Speaker 3: they are zombieans. And then in the Last of Us,
Speaker 3: the people who are infect by these spores become in
Speaker 3: essence zombified and made into crazy. And for reasons I
Speaker 3: don't understand, since this is all spore based.
Speaker 2: If they bite you, you get it. I don't know
Speaker 2: how to right, we'll find it makes no sense.
Speaker 1: Ard.
Speaker 3: We're going to find out how it makes when we
Speaker 3: found out the real thing, real thing, realation.
Speaker 2: And I need more stuff to worry about, right, so
Speaker 2: we go right.
Speaker 3: Now, I gotta worry that in my salad, I'm meeting
Speaker 3: a mushroom that's going to grow out of my head.
Speaker 2: And make me do things. Yeah, and by the way,
Speaker 2: we with in thousands spores every time you take a breath.
Speaker 2: You know it's correct a wrong sport gets in there.
Speaker 2: I know if a wrong sport gets in there, you're
Speaker 2: season two of Last of Us. Special guest. I heard
Speaker 2: season two is a soup. Somebody has a suit.
Speaker 3: By the way, I'm going to find out why Nick
Speaker 3: Offerman and not Jason Alexander. I'm going to find out
Speaker 3: because our guest today is none other than the show
Speaker 3: r Under the producer and director. Truly a remarkable man,
Speaker 3: mister Craig Mason, who, among other things, is is a writer,
Speaker 3: a producer, a director. Uh Chernobyl? Did you see Chernobyl
Speaker 3: the HBO series?
Speaker 2: A minute?
Speaker 3: Then I ran out and read the book and you
Speaker 3: know what, same ending. He's the he's co creating, his
Speaker 3: co writing, executive producing the Last of Us, this big,
Speaker 3: wonderful hit on HBO. He's won two prime Time Emmy Awards,
Speaker 3: but they're primetime, but they're the real Emmy Awards.
Speaker 2: Got the daytime. They separated the daytime show from like
Speaker 2: a virus, so I was in prime time. I didn't
Speaker 2: win an Emmy for that. They keep the daytime and
Speaker 2: nighttime separate so that they don't instruct each other.
Speaker 3: That's you might also know him for such comedy films
Speaker 3: A Scary Movie, three, Scary Movie, for Scary momentes seven, nine, twelve,
Speaker 3: and eleven, hang Over Part two, Hangover Part three.
Speaker 2: He's never the first guy. He's always in after you
Speaker 2: know what. We're not even two or three, So don't
Speaker 2: knock the guy.
Speaker 3: You know an identity theft most importantly went to Freehold
Speaker 3: High School, which is I almost if I had lived
Speaker 3: another couple.
Speaker 2: Of blocks, I might have gone to Freehold High School
Speaker 2: and fascinating.
Speaker 3: We would have been best fascinating thanks for bonded, and
Speaker 3: I might have been nick Offerman instead of nickoff.
Speaker 2: Oh, we already started. We're already starting with the hello
Speaker 2: to Craig Mason. Ladies and gentlemen, how are you, sir?
Speaker 1: I'm just bowled over by the introduction. It was the most.
Speaker 2: Beautiful you never hear one like that again.
Speaker 4: The prime numbered versions of Scary Movie. I got very excited.
Speaker 2: You've done amazing things. And and by the way, getting
Speaker 2: to the topic at hand, let's start with fun. Guy.
Speaker 2: You were such a huge fan of the game that
Speaker 2: you you went to them, and so I mean they
Speaker 2: were they were into you. Because of how into it
Speaker 2: you were, and but writing something to come from comedy
Speaker 2: to something serious and drama, it's based on this. I'm
Speaker 2: sure you had a ton of research, and I think
Speaker 2: I read that you had a fungus expert on staff
Speaker 2: at the show.
Speaker 4: Well, not on staff, but I certainly had quite a
Speaker 4: few discussions with more than more than a few micologists, right,
Speaker 4: So that's there, that's their.
Speaker 2: Own look at himnologists. That's what they don't know the terms.
Speaker 4: Just to make you, guys feel even dumber than you
Speaker 4: already felt.
Speaker 2: Oh you can you can't do.
Speaker 1: Yeah, let's see, I'm gonna try.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, but it is the funky are kind of
Speaker 4: amazing and and uh it's a it's a silly word
Speaker 4: and it makes us laugh. And yet also they're remarkable.
Speaker 4: And the more I talked with these folks, the more
Speaker 4: startled I was by the what they can achieve. I mean,
Speaker 4: of course, every single my collegist I spoke with also said,
Speaker 4: by the way, you know that this whole thing is
Speaker 4: not that's not real, like what happens in the last.
Speaker 2: Ones, I I cannot have.
Speaker 4: Well, it can't happen like that. That is not to
Speaker 4: say that fungi can't infect us and cause a lot
Speaker 4: of serious problems. So can they take us over completely
Speaker 4: and start growing out of our heads? It's unlikely. Can
Speaker 4: they infect us and cause both serious disease and death,
Speaker 4: no question? Can they infect us and also mess with
Speaker 4: our brains? Absolutely, And we knew that already because we
Speaker 4: have a lot of very famous drugs that are derived
Speaker 4: from fungi, including things like LSD and psilocybin and so forth.
Speaker 3: But Creig make you make a compelling scene and therefore
Speaker 3: point right at the beginning of the show where somebody says,
Speaker 3: why can't this I'm maybe paraphrasing, why can't this infect humans?
Speaker 3: And they said, because it can't exist at the temperature
Speaker 3: of over I think in ninety four degrees and our
Speaker 3: bodies are basically ninety eight point six. And somebody says, well,
Speaker 3: what if a climate event happened and these fung guy
Speaker 3: were able to adapt to warmer temperatures. And the guy
Speaker 3: gets very serious and says, that would be very bad
Speaker 3: for us.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 4: Basically yeah, he says, we lose. And the truth is
Speaker 4: that that is happening already.
Speaker 2: It's happening.
Speaker 4: Fungi are adapting, They are getting better at surviving higher temperatures,
Speaker 4: and we are seeing an increase in fungal infections, and
Speaker 4: fungal infections are very serious. And the theory of this
Speaker 4: show the science fiction proposition and says, Okay, if this happens,
Speaker 4: then bungie will take our brain's over and turn us
Speaker 4: into zombies. But the thing that's worse than that would
Speaker 4: be just death. And that is real, that's real. If
Speaker 4: fungi get much much better at infecting human beings, then
Speaker 4: yes they can cause death, and that I dare say
Speaker 4: it would be the worst outcome of them all.
Speaker 3: Well, I can only tell you from the one that's
Speaker 3: been on my big toe for two years.
Speaker 2: And I'm using everything.
Speaker 3: I'm using everything, the tea tree, the eucalypt is, the jubilea,
Speaker 3: the whole everything, And can I tell you.
Speaker 4: It sounds you're using everything that doesn't work. Basically, that's
Speaker 4: a great list of stuff that doesn't work.
Speaker 2: Doesn't work.
Speaker 1: Have you been to a medical doctor, I have good question.
Speaker 3: They turned me on to most of this stuff and
Speaker 3: they said, no. The only thing I haven't.
Speaker 2: Done seriously is apparently there's a pill.
Speaker 3: You can say, but the pill is not benign.
Speaker 2: So you know, I'm a little aware and what we
Speaker 2: will do.
Speaker 3: To you, Well, if you have you know, it affects
Speaker 3: your liver, it can affect it.
Speaker 2: You know, it's.
Speaker 4: With fighting fungi. Yeah, the medicines that we have are
Speaker 4: I'm not going to say they like chemotherapy, but they're
Speaker 4: kind of in that same world of, Hey, this thing
Speaker 4: is so hard to kill. In order to kill it,
Speaker 4: we're gonna have to kill also a bunch of you. Yeah,
Speaker 4: and that's why some fungal infections are almost impossible to treat.
Speaker 2: I'm curious with the show, even though it's a drama
Speaker 2: and it's based on something that we know can't happen,
Speaker 2: although the adjacent stuff can happen that we're talking about.
Speaker 2: It's always interesting what mail, what emails, what stuff have
Speaker 2: you gotten from people who were attached the show in
Speaker 2: a way you never anticipated because of that, maybe because
Speaker 2: of the funds that you went, wow, this came out
Speaker 2: of nowhere. I didn't realize that this affected people that way.
Speaker 1: Well we do.
Speaker 4: I mean, certainly people were impacted by the emotional storylines
Speaker 4: and the characters more than anything else, I think, But
Speaker 4: when it came to the science I did get quite
Speaker 4: a few emails from scientists who are just grateful that
Speaker 4: we depicted scientists in a way that wasn't I guess
Speaker 4: the role that they often fulfill is the jerk who
Speaker 4: thinks they know everything and is wrong until Bruce Willis
Speaker 4: comes and explains how it really works. And you know,
Speaker 4: we treat scientists, at least over here in my little world,
Speaker 4: with a lot of respect. And my feeling is that
Speaker 4: when scientists are scared, that's the scariest thing of it
Speaker 4: of all. I showed that insurable, and I showed it
Speaker 4: again in the Last of Us, not more than once,
Speaker 4: because I do believe that there are people who spend
Speaker 4: their lives studying these things and have no vested interest
Speaker 4: other than being honest. They don't get paid a lot,
Speaker 4: they're not trying to sell you anything. They're just telling
Speaker 4: you the truth. Yeah, and we like to do and
Speaker 4: we have this anti intellectual strain in our society that
Speaker 4: wants to question every scientists say and do because they're
Speaker 4: eggheads and they don't know they do they.
Speaker 2: Know being the people who know.
Speaker 3: Because Last of Us is a game based franchise in
Speaker 3: a very successful game.
Speaker 2: You know, I always hear the guys who are.
Speaker 3: Doing the Marvel films, there's a whole bunch of cooks
Speaker 3: in the kitchen going, well, you can't do that. That
Speaker 3: plays with the legacy of this and the mythology of that.
Speaker 3: How much of what you were able to do with
Speaker 3: the show was, Dick, Did you have those those you know,
Speaker 3: the sort of guardrails from the game company, or were
Speaker 3: you able to create out a whole cloth or you know?
Speaker 4: I was very free. I mean the nice thing is
Speaker 4: that the company so there is it's a big company.
Speaker 4: It's called Naughty Dog. They're the company that makes the game.
Speaker 4: Naughty Dog themselves are owned by Sony, which is a
Speaker 4: small Japanese business concern. And yet I had enormous freedom
Speaker 4: because I was working with Neil Druckman, who is the
Speaker 4: man at Naughty Dog who create the story for the
Speaker 4: Last of Us and runs the show over there and
Speaker 4: also made the Last of Us Part two. So when
Speaker 4: I came to Neil, I said, look this, I love
Speaker 4: this game, I love this story. My interest is not
Speaker 4: to change stuff just because I feel like changing things.
Speaker 4: The things that we need to change are really more
Speaker 4: about adaptation because we're moving from one medium to another,
Speaker 4: so we have opportunities. Like a simple example is in
Speaker 4: a video game, you are nailed to one person's perspective.
Speaker 4: That's the person you're playing. In the Last of Us,
Speaker 4: for the great majority of it, it's the character of
Speaker 4: Joel that means we can't just leave and go meet
Speaker 4: other characters who are separate from Joel and have and
Speaker 4: hear them talk. That obviously is a huge part of
Speaker 4: how narrative would function in television. So there are all
Speaker 4: these opportunities to do different things. But also, you know,
Speaker 4: there were times where I said, I'm going to want
Speaker 4: to do it almost exactly the way it was in
Speaker 4: the game, because there are these wonderfully cinematic moments, and
Speaker 4: Neil was the best possible partner. It was like working
Speaker 4: with a novelist who was excit I did about changing things. Yeah,
Speaker 4: sometimes I was the one who had to say, but
Speaker 4: I really actually just want to do it the way
Speaker 4: you did it before. And we had a great relationship
Speaker 4: in that regard, and I think, you know, the reaction
Speaker 4: from the fans was great by and large, and then
Speaker 4: all the people that saw it that hadn't played the game,
Speaker 4: I assume you guys would qualify. They were also pretty pleased,
Speaker 4: so I think we did a good job.
Speaker 2: They had no idea about the game.
Speaker 3: I think I heard you say somewhere that one of
Speaker 3: the challenges was when you're playing the game. Certainly, my
Speaker 3: son Noah knows the game very very well, and he
Speaker 3: liked the show very very much and echoed something that
Speaker 3: I think you said, which was, when you play the
Speaker 3: game the zombies, fighting the zombies is ninety percent of
Speaker 3: the thing you're doing, but in the show it is
Speaker 3: actually a very small percentage of what's going on. And
Speaker 3: was that a conscious decision to do that to yes, Yeah, yes.
Speaker 4: It was well because gameplay is the first time you
Speaker 4: encounter these infected people running around. It's very scary and
Speaker 4: it's very intense. But when you die, you get sent
Speaker 4: back to the beginning of that section, right, That's not
Speaker 4: how it works in TV. When you die. You did
Speaker 4: so right off the bat. The way we treated violence
Speaker 4: and the permanence of injury. Even the fact that Joel
Speaker 4: punches a man in episode one and we see his
Speaker 4: knuckles battered and bruised in episode two in and of itself,
Speaker 4: is slightly revolutionary, but we treated we wanted to really
Speaker 4: deal with violence as something that was far more permanent
Speaker 4: and far more impactful. And we also knew that because
Speaker 4: of the nature of gameplay, because you can go back
Speaker 4: and start that section over again if you fail. The infected,
Speaker 4: the zombies, the bad guys become more of a puzzle
Speaker 4: to solve than a visceral experience that is about that
Speaker 4: is reflecting relation and character. So we wanted all of
Speaker 4: our action moments to reflect relationship and character. We wanted
Speaker 4: those action moments to change the way the relationships between
Speaker 4: the characters functioned and have lasting impact. So there were
Speaker 4: far fewer of them in the show than in the game.
Speaker 4: That's not to say that we might not ramp it
Speaker 4: up for season two, because we also learned some interesting
Speaker 4: things about how to better deliver that experience. It's a
Speaker 4: tricky thing when you're doing anything for the first time.
Speaker 4: I mean, the first season of any show is fascinating
Speaker 4: to watch. It's you can see everybody slowly moving towards
Speaker 4: what that very comfortable shape and experience will eventually be.
Speaker 4: I think we got there kind of quickly, but yeah,
Speaker 4: we learned some interesting lessons. That's not to say that
Speaker 4: we're going to drown people in action for season two either.
Speaker 4: But yeah, it was pretty intentional.
Speaker 2: So you're doing a thing about an epidemic during an epidemic.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that was weird.
Speaker 2: That must have been really bizarre. You're wearing masks, you're
Speaker 2: spreading illnesses, people are testing positive every day. Why you're
Speaker 2: doing a show strange about people who have an infection.
Speaker 4: And are doing well, Because ultimately, it wasn't a show
Speaker 4: about having an infection and die, you know, that's the
Speaker 4: thing it was. It was a show that had infections
Speaker 4: in it, and it had dying in it. But you know,
Speaker 4: I remember saying to Neil, the thing is, even if
Speaker 4: COVID had never happened, we would all still be getting infections,
Speaker 4: and regardless of that, also dying. So death and taxes
Speaker 4: and the story ultimately is about love. And my feeling
Speaker 4: was as long as we acknowledged in the beginning of
Speaker 4: the series that we were aware as filmmakers that COVID
Speaker 4: occurred in our sneaky way, then I think we would
Speaker 4: be okay. And so in the very first scene of
Speaker 4: the series, it takes place in the late nineteen sixties
Speaker 4: or early seventies, I can't remember the exact year, and
Speaker 4: it's basically a Dick Cavit show, and there's a scientist saying,
Speaker 4: oh no, no viruses. I mean, yeah, they kill people and
Speaker 4: they're bad, but there's actually something worse, which is our
Speaker 4: way of saying, we know we're coming, we're doing We're
Speaker 4: not drafting off of COVID, we're not exploiting COVID to
Speaker 4: make you feel scared. We're here to tell you there's
Speaker 4: something worse than that. And from there things took off.
Speaker 2: Can you confront this? I looked this at this, and
Speaker 2: I saw it and I said, is this really right? That?
Speaker 2: The show, first of all, was the largest television doctor
Speaker 2: in Canadian history and generated about two hundred million in
Speaker 2: revenue for Alberta, but sources suggest the budget was between
Speaker 2: ten million and fifteen million, and bigger than the budget
Speaker 2: exceeded the first five seasons of Game Thrones. As far
Speaker 2: as budget, I thought, WHOA.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, well things have gotten more expensive. I mean,
Speaker 4: it's true, people, it's funny. People forget the first few
Speaker 4: seasons of Game of Thrones. It wasn't yet Game of Thrones, right,
Speaker 4: and so in I think it's the very first season
Speaker 4: they're supposed to be this massive battle and instead Peter
Speaker 4: Dinklic gets bunked on the head and falls, goes unconscious
Speaker 4: and wakes up and they're like, it happened, It was crazy.
Speaker 4: Oh my god, you should have been there. Anyway, we won.
Speaker 4: So all this stuff happens off screen because they didn't
Speaker 4: have money for it, and the budget eventually got up
Speaker 4: and up and up. Things have changed, obviously in the
Speaker 4: way we make television, and a lot of it is
Speaker 4: kind of in this weird feedback loop that's caused some
Speaker 4: of the problems in our business and it's why there strikes.
Speaker 4: But it was a huge bet, a huge financial bet
Speaker 4: by HBO.
Speaker 1: It was a bet on me. It was a bet
Speaker 1: on the material, and I was aware of that every day.
Speaker 4: And it's a very strange thing to on the one
Speaker 4: hand think, oh my god, I cannot believe they're trusting
Speaker 4: me with all this money, and then one minute later go,
Speaker 4: why won't they give me more money? I need more money,
Speaker 4: and you because of the scale of what we're trying
Speaker 4: to deliver it ultimately they supported us completely. I mean,
Speaker 4: they just went all in on this, and I was very,
Speaker 4: very grateful that it paid off.
Speaker 3: Well I'm sure they are too, because it's it's it's
Speaker 3: a brilliant show. You you made your bones in comedy,
Speaker 3: and I think you said to me when we when
Speaker 3: we met that you know your aspirations were all about
Speaker 3: being a comedy writer. And you know, arguably some of
Speaker 3: your biggest projects have I mean, between this and Chernobyl,
Speaker 3: they're they're devastating. Promise, Why the Switch? How the switch?
Speaker 3: Do you enjoy the switch? Do you miss working on
Speaker 3: the funny stuff?
Speaker 2: How did it all well?
Speaker 1: This? I think?
Speaker 4: Well, first of all, I'm sure there are quite a
Speaker 4: few critics who are like, finally, he's no longer trying.
Speaker 4: But I I always I loved comedy. I loved the
Speaker 4: difficulty factor, especially in movies.
Speaker 1: It's really difficult. In movies.
Speaker 4: You're going to gather a bunch of people in a room,
Speaker 4: there is no laugh track, they can't go anywhere, and
Speaker 4: they're all together and they have to laugh out loud
Speaker 4: a lot. It's really hard to do. And when it
Speaker 4: works there it's the closest you can get to feeling
Speaker 4: like a rock star in our business as a writer,
Speaker 4: because it's there's this thing happening in a crowd. It's remarkable.
Speaker 4: So I got really addicted to that, and I loved it.
Speaker 4: But as I got older, I started to feel a
Speaker 4: little bit like I was kind of just being asked
Speaker 4: to replicate a process and to do the same thing
Speaker 4: over and over, because it's a very outcome oriented gig
Speaker 4: get laughs. And also I was getting older, and I
Speaker 4: think it's natural to start to disconnect from the churning
Speaker 4: center of culture, you know, because I remember being in
Speaker 4: my twenties and you know, working with David Zucker and
Speaker 4: and thinking, you know, I would occasionally like to say, David,
Speaker 4: I'm sure that was once funny in the Lyndon Johnson administration,
Speaker 4: Wow it is not now, and here is why, and
Speaker 4: and and then David in his like, oh yes, yes,
Speaker 4: of course, yes, of course. And now I'm the age
Speaker 4: that he was when I met him, and I don't
Speaker 4: want to be I never want to be the person
Speaker 4: going I don't understand why are they Why wouldn't they
Speaker 4: see this as funny anymore? And I wanted to try
Speaker 4: new things. I was always interested in these other aspects.
Speaker 4: I just I always said, like writing feature comedy is
Speaker 4: like being a left handed pitcher in the major leagues.
Speaker 4: You might want to be something else, but they don't care.
Speaker 4: They need you to pitch out of the bullpen to
Speaker 4: face the left if they just don't have enough of
Speaker 4: you to let you do anything else. So it was
Speaker 4: it was a I guess, a big swing on my
Speaker 4: part to try and see if I could do it,
Speaker 4: and I by dori it.
Speaker 1: I just love working like that.
Speaker 4: And I still you know, there's still bits of comedy
Speaker 4: and moments, but there's no Yeah. I mean, look, you
Speaker 4: guys know the brutal pressure of not only not flopping
Speaker 4: but actually getting that like kind of roll series of
Speaker 4: laughs is is.
Speaker 1: The hardest thing to do in our business. And I
Speaker 1: just maintained.
Speaker 4: That every award should only be won by a comedy.
Speaker 1: Comedies.
Speaker 2: It gets no it gets no respect. So was your
Speaker 2: next level? Is your next level combining comedy in a
Speaker 2: chernobyl like they did life that they did Life of Stalin,
Speaker 2: where they took that which is a serious thing and
Speaker 2: made it completely So I figured you would.
Speaker 1: I mean that movie is called the Death of Stuff.
Speaker 1: The Life of Style would just be too lovely.
Speaker 2: You can keep it in right, I've got a lot
Speaker 2: on my mind.
Speaker 4: Okay, I hear you get it, By the way, I
Speaker 4: don't I don't know what you have in your you
Speaker 4: got time, I can give it to you.
Speaker 2: But that's hard to do. That must be even harder
Speaker 2: to do, right.
Speaker 1: Well, I mean so.
Speaker 4: Mister Ryan Ucci is sort of like amazing at that
Speaker 4: walking that weird tonal line. There are people who just
Speaker 4: invent their own tones, and like Larry David's one of
Speaker 4: them where you're like, who does that? And I'm sure
Speaker 4: you know the first time. I actually I feel like
Speaker 4: I know this. The first time that he was like,
Speaker 4: this is what I want to do, people were like, no,
Speaker 4: nobody does.
Speaker 1: That's not a thing anyone does. We don't do that.
Speaker 4: And then he defined this space that he does. I
Speaker 4: think I'm probably a little too conventional to define my
Speaker 4: own weird comedy drama hybrid.
Speaker 1: I'm at this point now, I'm just it's funny.
Speaker 4: It's also television, like the ability to spread out narratively
Speaker 4: is such a joy, like when you're writing a movie.
Speaker 4: I mean, on page three, I'm already wedding that I'm
Speaker 4: running out of space. Television, we did a good job
Speaker 4: telling the story and it's so funny. I forgot first
Speaker 4: episode watching him with my life and that punch that
Speaker 4: you said and the hand being damaged. I said to
Speaker 4: my wife, I think this is the first show you watched, Stevens.
Speaker 4: All these guys get hit with a computer. You hit
Speaker 4: me with a computer. I'm in the hospital for seven months.
Speaker 4: Nobody in these shows, realistically, they get knocked down.
Speaker 2: They got you knocked me down. First of all, I'm
Speaker 2: not getting up for a while. Second of all, I'm
Speaker 2: shocked that you knocked me down. And third of all,
Speaker 2: have you ever punched the guy? I have? I punched
Speaker 2: the guy once. It hurts and my hand had glass.
Speaker 2: It was the worst I remember. That stood out, not
Speaker 2: that the rest of the series didn't stand out, but
Speaker 2: I said, these guys are taking a little bit of
Speaker 2: time to look at stuff and take moments because that's repercussion.
Speaker 2: That's reality. That's it's not heightened reality. They're doing kind
Speaker 2: of a different reality. So what else is going to
Speaker 2: fault in that area where they're can respond in a
Speaker 2: much more naturalistic way and what happens? Yeah, it was
Speaker 2: really really you're talking about reality.
Speaker 3: Can we talk for a minute, because you're going to
Speaker 3: be our resident expert about the whole zombie thing, because
Speaker 3: Peter and I have we have questions we have not
Speaker 3: necessarily your zombies, but zombies zombie in general. And I
Speaker 3: started to talk to Kirkman about this when I did
Speaker 3: Talking Dead. So there's a horde of zombies, a horde,
Speaker 3: a thousand of them, and they descend on one guy.
Speaker 3: Only six of them are eating anything because the others
Speaker 3: can't get right.
Speaker 2: And then they move on.
Speaker 3: But the ones that ate don't seem any better off
Speaker 3: than the ones that didn't. They're still disintegrating, they're still
Speaker 3: rotting their arms. Just a wait, eat, don't eat, doesn't
Speaker 3: seem to matter point.
Speaker 1: But it's almost like they're mindless zombies.
Speaker 2: Yes, yes, yes.
Speaker 4: They yes, zombies tend to be highly irrational, even more
Speaker 4: irrational than we are. It's whatever drives them. I mean,
Speaker 4: in our case, we're implying that they are trying to
Speaker 4: spread an infection, but even in the spread of infection,
Speaker 4: they're not they're not experts at it. Sometimes they go
Speaker 4: too far and they just end up killing the person
Speaker 4: because it's a very blunt tool. I mean, fungi or smart,
Speaker 4: but they're not that smart. And I have no idea
Speaker 4: what's going on with supernatural zombies. I'm not I don't
Speaker 4: understand and the virus zombies similarly like just cough on everybody?
Speaker 2: Why not? Why what's the bid? And also, okay, why
Speaker 2: don't they have a thing that comes out of their eyes?
Speaker 5: You did the kiss? You did the kiss? That was
Speaker 5: so good, that was really good. So what was going
Speaker 5: on there? So the idea is in the game, it's
Speaker 5: spread by sports, and we were gonna we were gonna
Speaker 5: do that. But the thing is it works in the game.
Speaker 5: In reality, spores are heard to film their heart to
Speaker 5: make look real. And also, I feel like if it's
Speaker 5: spread in the air, who's making it out?
Speaker 1: You can't fight the air.
Speaker 4: So we were looking at this other thing that that
Speaker 4: when a fungus like Cordyceps infects an ant, it starts
Speaker 4: to move through the ant circulatory system with this fiber.
Speaker 4: These they form fibers called my celium, and that's this,
Speaker 4: these fungal strands, And we like the idea that that
Speaker 4: for whatever reason, this brand of Cortyceps would would need
Speaker 4: to get its strand into you as opposed to a spore, right,
Speaker 4: so it's a slightly more advanced, you know, structure. And
Speaker 4: then the thought was they're gonna get this into you however,
Speaker 4: they can if you're running away, if you're fighting, they're
Speaker 4: gonna get violent. But if you just stand there, maybe
Speaker 4: they take their time. Maybe it's not violent. They don't
Speaker 4: need to rip you apart. In fact, the more people
Speaker 4: they rip apart, the fewer people are going to be
Speaker 4: successfully in fact, because a bunch of them are going
Speaker 4: to die. But I mean, listen, the the zombie like
Speaker 4: Game of Thrones, my ending, this is what I wanted for.
Speaker 1: The end of Game of Thrones. I wanted the Night
Speaker 1: King to win.
Speaker 4: Everybody gets turned into a white a zombie, right, everyone,
Speaker 4: And when the last living person is turned into zombie,
Speaker 4: they all look at each other and kind of go.
Speaker 1: Oh, and then they just stand there.
Speaker 4: And that's the last thirty minutes is just them kind
Speaker 4: of shuffling, sadly, going we won.
Speaker 1: Sure, Yeah, what's the point.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm so glad he was not the showrunner on
Speaker 2: Game of Standing. Thirty minutes of Standing, my original pittis fascinating.
Speaker 3: That's that's worse than the kid in the wheelchair becoming
Speaker 3: the guy.
Speaker 2: That's worse. Thirty minutes. I would have watched that. If
Speaker 2: people would have watched come Back on You, it would
Speaker 2: call friends, they can believe this. The numbers would have
Speaker 2: gone up. I don't believe John watching zombies go if
Speaker 2: you have to the Cohonies to do it. But you
Speaker 2: know what, He's exactly right, because I would have been
Speaker 2: I've never stick everything starting live tweeting. It would have
Speaker 2: been I can't believe it still standing real and a
Speaker 2: couple of zombie struggling, a couple of zombies doing what
Speaker 2: this is?
Speaker 4: It are at NYU the next day. The brilliance of
Speaker 4: this end.
Speaker 2: I'm in the longer it lasts, It's like the longer last.
Speaker 2: It's like a joke that keeps going and going, like
Speaker 2: a good of godfig joke. Do you laugh, then you
Speaker 2: don't laugh, then you can't believe he's still going, and
Speaker 2: then you laugh again, and you get angry, and then
Speaker 2: you get angry. I mean, he just this is I
Speaker 2: didn't realize that break now I just got his narrowing.
Speaker 3: The only way would work is if the last line
Speaker 3: of the episode was one of the white stands the
Speaker 3: other and goes, well you want to get coffee?
Speaker 2: Yes, that would have been should we get a coffee?
Speaker 2: I don't have a stomach. I don't have a stomach smug.
Speaker 4: Should hear like somebody that's lost the ability to use
Speaker 4: language still struggle to form the words.
Speaker 1: So do you want to get coffee?
Speaker 2: There you go, cup of shoe? I see another daytime,
Speaker 2: Emmy coming my way. But that's the other thing. The
Speaker 2: other thing that zombies and movies and stories that bothers me.
Speaker 2: Where are the kids? You should see thousands of zombie kids.
Speaker 2: You don't see. Where is all the body parts and
Speaker 2: the bones? Where the maggots and the flies? You need
Speaker 2: a circulatory system to move your leg Yeah, you would
Speaker 2: do rigamort if that ain't happen. And the animals, where
Speaker 2: are all the animals? The animals? It's like, really, come on,
Speaker 2: you're absolutely are there any other sport animals? And I
Speaker 2: don't see? We know.
Speaker 4: We decided that this particular brand was human Longus was
Speaker 4: human only and only worked with human brains. Otherwise you
Speaker 4: were going to have just the biggest problem you'd be
Speaker 4: dealing with is just courtyceps deer constantly running at you.
Speaker 4: It's like, oh no, not strong, it's not strong drama.
Speaker 4: But we did show We showed kids and people and
Speaker 4: they're alive. That's the other thing is that are are
Speaker 4: in fa to people are they're sick, but they're alive,
Speaker 4: so we don't deal with, you know the fact that
Speaker 4: death means that your body is gonna fall apart within days.
Speaker 4: That's the only part of like Walking Dead where I'm like,
Speaker 4: they're all bloated and gross. So there's decomposition in yes, somehow.
Speaker 2: Yeah, somehow, he's smells. I didn't go the ears didn't wait,
Speaker 2: here's how are your ears? Come on? Come on, you
Speaker 2: know you're smelling? What just those muscles? Yeah? Thank you?
Speaker 3: And he's and their show is tricky because they got
Speaker 3: they got the slow clickers in the fast you know.
Speaker 2: I like that.
Speaker 3: I like the slow zombies myself because I was I
Speaker 3: remember in Night of the Living Dead when they're interviewing
Speaker 3: the sheriff, and the sheriff I was surrounded by six
Speaker 3: or seven of these things. Would I be in trouble?
Speaker 3: He goes, Oh, no, they're dead, they're all messed up.
Speaker 3: You just get you get something, hit them in the head,
Speaker 3: Just whack them in the head.
Speaker 2: You'll be fine. I like those kind of zombies.
Speaker 3: You're you're fast clickers, like I don't like, we got
Speaker 3: we gotta blend the others.
Speaker 2: My grandmother could go off a brisk walk, it would
Speaker 2: still be Let me ask you something you realize in
Speaker 2: the world today, divided as we are, and it's fragment.
Speaker 2: We are sign for seventeen to twenty million people watching
Speaker 2: the finale, so nobody's nobody. What do I have to
Speaker 2: Jerry see to Larry King? You right now?
Speaker 1: These were the network days.
Speaker 2: I think we had sixteen yeah, right, yeah.
Speaker 1: But the point is super Bowl numbers.
Speaker 2: Super Bowl numbers, we don't have that anymore. And I
Speaker 2: started thinking, being infected, like the COVID infection is one
Speaker 2: of the last levels of real community we have left,
Speaker 2: which is really weird to shared experience.
Speaker 4: Well, you know what, I'll tell you what's interesting, And
Speaker 4: we did not expect this. By last count, something like
Speaker 4: forty six million people have watched the first episode of
Speaker 4: the Last of Us. So it's it's it's not it's
Speaker 4: not you know, signfold, it's never going to be.
Speaker 3: No one's that's huge.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but it was.
Speaker 4: That's the part that was really startling to us because
Speaker 4: we were kind of expecting that we would have to
Speaker 4: come up with interesting metaphors for a large community, and
Speaker 4: we actually got a large community, which is scary because
Speaker 4: you know to an extent as somebody that does it.
Speaker 4: Now you feel the weight of all those eyeballs, right
Speaker 4: for season two where you didn't season one.
Speaker 1: Who else, maybe no one.
Speaker 4: Will watch, it doesn't matter, So that that was pretty
Speaker 4: pretty remarkable. But we do have You're absolutely right, A,
Speaker 4: there's a shared language around epidemic and isolation from each other.
Speaker 4: There are things we've learned. I mean, who knew that
Speaker 4: toilet paper would be the thing? I didn't know, you know,
Speaker 4: toilet paper. So now we've learned things about what happens
Speaker 4: when the world ends. The very first thing we do
Speaker 4: is panic about wiping our asses. Then apparently we go
Speaker 4: to the next thing, which is food.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, it is the I don't mean this the
Speaker 3: way it sounds, because I know, you know, you're a
Speaker 3: member of every guild that's on strike.
Speaker 2: This is at this point, yep.
Speaker 3: It's a huge disruption into everybody's lives and certainly the
Speaker 3: lives of our colleagues. But to the extent that it
Speaker 3: affects your show, how devastating is it right now?
Speaker 2: Well?
Speaker 1: Not.
Speaker 4: We had kind of an interesting circumstance for planned for
Speaker 4: the second season where we needed to start shooting not
Speaker 4: right away, in part because well A, it took a
Speaker 4: long time to make the show and to put it
Speaker 4: through post production. We don't finished post production before the
Speaker 4: show airs. We finished it in the middle of the run,
Speaker 4: so the last episodes, the VFX and the sound were
Speaker 4: happening kind of while the show was running. But we
Speaker 4: also there's certain weather requirements we have because we shoot
Speaker 4: across seasons. We want real spring, we want real winter.
Speaker 4: So the way our schedule has sort of been laid
Speaker 4: out and lined up, I'll tell you if it if
Speaker 4: the strike should end real soon, I think we get
Speaker 4: to stay on track. Who knows if it will. If
Speaker 4: it goes much longer, then we're going to have to
Speaker 4: push it. Yeah, I mean we're right up against it right.
Speaker 2: What are you hearing? By the way, you know you
Speaker 2: were You're in the board of directors of the writers go
Speaker 2: for a while many years. Are you hearing this? It
Speaker 2: seems so. What seems so daunting, Greg is the focus
Speaker 2: is content and ownership of content and trying to figure
Speaker 2: out if if AI is going to be pulling from
Speaker 2: scripts that exist, and how do people get credit and
Speaker 2: what are they going to do with actors and making
Speaker 2: them AI and again shows are being produced really differently,
Speaker 2: very very differently than they were in the past. I mean,
Speaker 2: I was a story editor years ago when I came
Speaker 2: out here and probably wouldn't get paid what I got
Speaker 2: then now, and there'll probably only be eight episodes. And
Speaker 2: then on top of that, all the below the line
Speaker 2: people are dying right now, all the craft services people,
Speaker 2: all the wardrobe people, all those people whose jobs depend
Speaker 2: on production. Are you hearing anything or do you hear
Speaker 2: are daunting this is or have they figured out a
Speaker 2: way to address it well?
Speaker 4: In terms of the impact the strike has had on everyone, Yeah,
Speaker 4: it's been brutal. And if it weren't so necessary, I
Speaker 4: think we would have done anything we could to avoid it.
Speaker 4: I think we did do everything we could to avoid it.
Speaker 4: It does take a terrible toll, especially on below the
Speaker 4: line folks we think about all the time who have
Speaker 4: had especially here in southern California. They've had such a
Speaker 4: bad run of it for so long because the production
Speaker 4: just doesn't happen here the way it used to. And yeah,
Speaker 4: everyone is suffering, and the great majority of the Writers
Speaker 4: Guild and the great majority of the screen actors Guild,
Speaker 4: Dash AFTRA are not wealthy. They are either middle class
Speaker 4: or they're just kind of breaking into the business trying
Speaker 4: to get something going, and the way that they have
Speaker 4: all been treated is pretty awful. And this is I
Speaker 4: think something the companies are only finally now at day
Speaker 4: one oh whatever, is starting to understand that this is
Speaker 4: weirdly the circuit break of our business, that there are whatever,
Speaker 4: maybe two hundred people in the writer's skill that the
Speaker 4: companies are like, we'll give you millions to do stuff,
Speaker 4: but if they mistreat everybody else, this is how everybody
Speaker 4: else gets them by saying, hey, you know what, we vote.
Speaker 1: This is a democracy in the guild.
Speaker 4: We vote, and we're voting to go on strike because
Speaker 4: you can't just ignore us. And I support the strike.
Speaker 4: I think it was absolutely necessary to do. I don't
Speaker 4: like strikes at all. Who does. But this time with
Speaker 4: the amount of stuff that had a changed recently, like
Speaker 4: AI's very recent for us to be concerned about, and
Speaker 4: then the stuff that it was just legacy stuff that
Speaker 4: had been kind of swept under the rug. COVID was
Speaker 4: sort of like, h we can't go on strike in
Speaker 4: the middle of COVID and all that it finally caught
Speaker 4: up with everybody. This had to happen, and you know,
Speaker 4: all I know is this strike won't stop until they
Speaker 4: take care of these issues in a significant way. We're
Speaker 4: not going to get everything we asked for. If we did,
Speaker 4: we didn't ask for enough. But I think we're gonna
Speaker 4: get a lot of it the stuff we need.
Speaker 3: Speaking of that on a very serious note, what does
Speaker 3: nickol Ferman have that I don't have?
Speaker 2: What's going on? This coming? Forgot answer?
Speaker 1: I don't want to go over.
Speaker 2: But he prepared.
Speaker 1: A podcast I don't know. He does not need, but
Speaker 1: he does some lovely woodworking.
Speaker 2: Yes, I think he's gonna make me a canoe. You
Speaker 2: can't do that my luck.
Speaker 3: He's gonna call me and go we got a party
Speaker 3: on the show. I'm gonna go up there and he's
Speaker 3: gonna wrap me in clicker makeup and I'm gonna be.
Speaker 2: Assist. I'm gonna be sitting in a.
Speaker 4: You'll find out when the call she says you have
Speaker 4: to get there at three three.
Speaker 2: Yeas right, because of the makeup. We congratulations, that's what
Speaker 2: a what an accomplishment today's world where I just said,
Speaker 2: we don't have shared experiences that's a pretty big shared experience,
Speaker 2: and it resonated. And like I said, everybody can who
Speaker 2: the zombie and the virus and the spores and an
Speaker 2: infection because we've all it could be us. And do
Speaker 2: you are you one of those Gus just said year
Speaker 2: three and we're out, We're done. I know how many
Speaker 2: years is going to go. I know where I want
Speaker 2: to do, and I I we'll tell you.
Speaker 4: I won't tell you the year, but but I will
Speaker 4: say that, yes, there is an end. We have a
Speaker 4: built in ending. I don't know how to write narrative
Speaker 4: that has no end. I don't I admire it. I
Speaker 4: just don't know how to do it. I need to
Speaker 4: know what the end is.
Speaker 3: So yes, we have everybody, everybody standing around going, well,
Speaker 3: he's going to He's not going to do.
Speaker 2: You have to read between the laws, between the lines.
Speaker 3: Thank you so much, sir, God bless you. And by
Speaker 3: the way, no small thing. Congratulations on creating a show
Speaker 3: that is a phenomena in this day and age when
Speaker 3: when it's very hard to do that. To get forty
Speaker 3: six million people to watch anything.
Speaker 1: It is.
Speaker 2: Fascinating, fascinating. What do you million people watched that? Wow?
Speaker 1: Wow?
Speaker 2: I'm sorry. I didn't know I got the numbers wrong
Speaker 2: in this sorry stuff. Yeah. Sorry. By the way, just
Speaker 2: to freak everybody out, Warman temperatures in the Arctic are
Speaker 2: thawing the region's permafrost, a frozen layer of soil beneath
Speaker 2: the ground, potentially stirring viruses that we we have no
Speaker 2: no immunity too. And also that's my next series that
Speaker 2: by the way, that wouldn't be a bad series, right
Speaker 2: to do that. It's permafrost. Yeah, permafrost heroes. I mean, well,
Speaker 2: but they did that with a horror movie, the thing
Speaker 2: where they buried under the absolutely. But they've brought back now,
Speaker 2: they've brought back the viruses from hundreds of thousands of
Speaker 2: years ago that their testing. This is a whole area
Speaker 2: that makes me nervous. But I laughed at you because
Speaker 2: we were talking yesterday about the zombie thing. Zombies cracked
Speaker 2: me up because part of the appeal of zombie it
Speaker 2: could be us, it could be any one of us,
Speaker 2: and you can be a hero. But it's also the zombie.
Speaker 2: It's like it typifies your death. I get up, I
Speaker 2: have cereal, I do my work, I come home. Yeah,
Speaker 2: that's kind of right, it's that monotony of zombie. And
Speaker 2: also when I was looking at the appeal of zombies,
Speaker 2: the other part is in a zombie apocalypse, you don't
Speaker 2: have stuff. Everything is gone. It's a simpler life. You're
Speaker 2: not you're not doing with a lot of stuff. The survivors, right,
Speaker 2: I can't the survivors who has given up stuff. Sure,
Speaker 2: it's much simplistically. Yeah, you just have to worry about me.
Speaker 2: Good day, I didn't get eaten. You just have to
Speaker 2: make it. You just have to make it to the store.
Speaker 2: Would you ever? Honest?
Speaker 3: So this was something when I was watching Walking Dead,
Speaker 3: This was a question I had all the time because
Speaker 3: their lives are so miserable. They're constantly scared, they're running.
Speaker 3: The humans are despicable. The zombies are out to eat you.
Speaker 3: It's a zombie apocalypse. For the real thing you want
Speaker 3: to be a survivor running around in that is.
Speaker 2: That you know you say this to you, it's really weird.
Speaker 2: Do you say that? Because I love zombie I love harmony.
Speaker 3: This is the same thing as people go, you know,
Speaker 3: I want to be able to survive the doom. Thank guys,
Speaker 3: I want to be able to survive the nuclear attack? Really,
Speaker 3: what's that world?
Speaker 2: So God saying that I can't be because that's a
Speaker 2: really interesting thing you ask. I love harmon. I've always
Speaker 2: loved the horror movie since I'm a kid. And we'll
Speaker 2: talk about a in the minute, because there's a horror
Speaker 2: paradox about where we like horror movies. But anytime I'm
Speaker 2: watching Walking Dead or something like that, that comes up
Speaker 2: in my head right and I go, I think, I
Speaker 2: just throw myself in there and get the hell of
Speaker 2: it with what do I want to do this every day?
Speaker 2: Try and find something to eat and yell at this
Speaker 2: guy and and have them against the fence, and I
Speaker 2: know other people we go, I would do everything I
Speaker 2: can to live as long as guy. Now, I would
Speaker 2: protect my family. But that said, my sense of you
Speaker 2: your face is like I wouldn't. No. I mean, that's
Speaker 2: that's certainly a reason.
Speaker 3: But I also look, I'm thinking about if it happened tomorrow,
Speaker 3: am I the go to.
Speaker 2: To protect my family? I think my family's gonna wind
Speaker 2: up having to protect me? Okay, are you the guy
Speaker 2: that like dad's walking a little slow? I would like
Speaker 2: to also think that I'm the guy that goes all right,
Speaker 2: don't look back. I'm going to distract them. Run. Am
Speaker 2: I that guy? I think I'd like to be that guy,
Speaker 2: But I think i'd be the guy going I'm that guy.
Speaker 3: If I strap on a suicide fest. I don't want
Speaker 3: to my way out. I don't want like nine people.
Speaker 3: I don't want to be. I don't want to be
Speaker 3: the buffet table for now.
Speaker 2: Okay, the other thing I asked you if I can
Speaker 2: take out fifty of them. The other thing is it
Speaker 2: doesn't make sense. We went through a litany of dumb
Speaker 2: zombies stuf right, Yeah, Like the thing's been deteriorating for
Speaker 2: eight eight months now, and yet it has superhuman strength.
Speaker 2: But boy can wrestling All of a sudden it's got
Speaker 2: superhuman strength. And I'm going to how are you to
Speaker 2: have barely here? Look at you? How are you figure
Speaker 2: out how to get up a curb? How are you?
Speaker 2: How are you possibly doing this? But but this the
Speaker 2: thing that drives me crazy. But the stuff is so
Speaker 2: you can put on blood and whatever and walk among
Speaker 2: and they don't know that's a walking dead. But that's okay,
Speaker 2: walking you're there. Wouldn't that be in your well?
Speaker 3: That's the other thing that was my thing I talked
Speaker 3: to you about un Walking Dead. They shoot them in
Speaker 3: the head, the head explodes, They blow them up, they
Speaker 3: kill them. They got the zombie MoU zombie is like
Speaker 3: dry humping them and they stab it in the eye
Speaker 3: and things are dripping into their eyes, dripping into their mouth.
Speaker 3: They're covered and think the only way if a gouy,
Speaker 3: If a zombie bites you, you're infected. But if he
Speaker 3: basically secretes into your mouth, prints and spit, I don't understand.
Speaker 2: Well, but that's the other thing.
Speaker 3: You got rotting corpses everywhere in this apocalyptic world.
Speaker 2: The amount of to get the zombies with diphtheria. You know,
Speaker 2: I'm gonna rub rub a zombie on your head and
Speaker 2: go to them all for daddy. Oh my god.
Speaker 3: In episode two of The Walking Dead, they realize if
Speaker 3: you shmear zombie guts on you, you're invisible to the zombies.
Speaker 3: I would put on a zombie unitard and live my life.
Speaker 2: And half found a turkey form and a right. So
Speaker 2: the horror paradox is interesting why we like horror. The
Speaker 2: horror paradox, even though you intellectually understand that it's a movie,
Speaker 2: it still gives you that fight and fight syndrome thing,
Speaker 2: so that you come out energized. So if you're in
Speaker 2: a date later and that lasts for a while, so
Speaker 2: there's that excitement to that. There's also that where we
Speaker 2: pass an accident, we want to look, I want to see.
Speaker 2: We're trying to make sense of stuff, and it's a
Speaker 2: survival instinct to see what's going on there, what's going
Speaker 2: on there? So it's a fascinating phenomenal.
Speaker 3: You know, there are so many genres of horror, and
Speaker 3: my cousin Jonathan Penner has a wonderful lecture that he
Speaker 3: does about why we are attracted, most of us to
Speaker 3: the different genres of horror, Like when you see things
Speaker 3: like body modification, it's because that's one of our great
Speaker 3: fears about what if I lost a leg, body was changed,
Speaker 3: what if I had what if I was sick? What
Speaker 3: if in the fly? What if my fingernails were setting?
Speaker 3: And it has to do with your own sense of
Speaker 3: aging and mortality, and you confront that the stranger danger
Speaker 3: thing of what you know, what what would I do
Speaker 3: in this fleet?
Speaker 2: Can I trust this person next to me?
Speaker 1: Do it?
Speaker 2: Should I distress? Horror is cathartic in many ways big time.
Speaker 2: We can play out so we can't do in real life. Absolutely.
Speaker 2: The funny thing is you move to the undead and
Speaker 2: you move the vampire, which is a whole different thing.
Speaker 2: Zombies are a group group. Vampires are solo. They don't
Speaker 2: rely on anybody. They don't need stick. It's just my teeth.
Speaker 2: The only thing about a vampire that bothers me is
Speaker 2: the cape because you're never fitting in with the cape.
Speaker 2: Well you're doing dragu Doku. But then I then I
Speaker 2: realized they can't see how it looking in a cape
Speaker 2: because they can't see the imagine the mirror. So that
Speaker 2: cape looks great, that's.
Speaker 3: Why, but they can't that's why they keep wearing the cape.
Speaker 3: The cape is great, but I don't see them in
Speaker 3: the cape look like a schmuck. And the they just
Speaker 3: they can never they can never do. But that's the
Speaker 3: same thing with on what we do in the shadows.
Speaker 3: The mean he felt to think a line in what
Speaker 3: we do in the shower. She's standing the vampire.
Speaker 2: She's on the roof with the vampire, and they're getting
Speaker 2: ready to turn into bats, right, and he looks at
Speaker 2: her and she's getting naked. He goes, what are you doing?
Speaker 2: She goes taking off for clothes so I can turn.
Speaker 2: But how do we have closed at the other end?
Speaker 2: And he looked at her and went, we don't discuss that,
Speaker 2: so you know what.
Speaker 3: But here's the other thing about zombies though that now
Speaker 3: seriously to bring it into the real world, this notion
Speaker 3: of we are kind of living in a zombie culture
Speaker 3: right now, because in a way, and I don't mean
Speaker 3: to present this comedically, but in a way, we are
Speaker 3: so divided with each other that half of us think
Speaker 3: the other half is essentially brain dead, that they don't
Speaker 3: get it. They're inhuman, they don't feel what we feel,
Speaker 3: they don't think the way we think, and we vilify them,
Speaker 3: and in many ways some of them go, I want
Speaker 3: them dead.
Speaker 2: You know, I got to get rid of them.
Speaker 3: The only way to get the way to bring the
Speaker 3: world back is to get rid of them. There's something
Speaker 3: about I almost feel like we have been infected.
Speaker 2: You got Google time to wrap things ups? Yes, David,
Speaker 2: what did we forget? What do we need to know?
Speaker 1: Yeah?
Speaker 6: Well, it was really embarrassing guys on the last of us.
Speaker 6: They don't have zombies. You kept saying the zombies flickers.
Speaker 2: They call them clickers.
Speaker 7: They're called the infected, and they never it was it
Speaker 7: was a thing on set, even when they were producing it.
Speaker 7: You were not allowed to call them zombies.
Speaker 2: Now, wow, you know what, let's throw the whole thing is.
Speaker 2: I don't want to appear stupid. That's a lot of
Speaker 2: throwing out, Laurie, it's a lot of deleting you're going
Speaker 2: to be doing. You're absolutely right. They don't call them zombies. God,
Speaker 2: I feel so horrible. There not not Okay, that's.
Speaker 6: Really all I got.
Speaker 7: I we had some some origins of of zombies and vampires.
Speaker 6: I don't know if we want to get into that,
Speaker 6: but the.
Speaker 7: Nod absolutely not, not nowhere even near. That's that's actually
Speaker 7: one of the interesting things. The vampire legend has actually
Speaker 7: been around for over a thousand years, but it was
Speaker 7: located in a very small.
Speaker 6: Area of what's now Bulgaria. It was a Slavic legend.
Speaker 1: Okay.
Speaker 7: The vampire actually loosely translated means ghost monster, and the
Speaker 7: original vampires were absolutely nothing.
Speaker 6: Like what we understand as a vampire. There was no blood.
Speaker 7: Sucking, there was no capes, there was no turning into
Speaker 7: a bat.
Speaker 1: They were actually more.
Speaker 6: Like a ghost instead of the blood thing.
Speaker 7: There were more bringers of plague, in disease and destruction.
Speaker 7: That's more where they came from.
Speaker 2: It is amazing that as far as back this dozen
Speaker 2: years that we had to develop stories. They frightened us,
Speaker 2: and that assigned a reason for things to happen. There's
Speaker 2: always a higher source. There's always an entity that we
Speaker 2: don't understand it. We got to make it something, We
Speaker 2: got to give it a hot.
Speaker 3: Also, you know, it's I hate when these great old
Speaker 3: legends and these great stories they get monkeyed with. So
Speaker 3: it used to be you hold up a crucifix, the
Speaker 3: vampire can't look at it. Now I've seen movies where
Speaker 3: they go f you and they turn it into flame.
Speaker 3: Then that you steak in the heart, they're dead. Now
Speaker 3: it has to be a certain wood from the land
Speaker 3: that they came from, and you go, hey, you know,
Speaker 3: the kids need.
Speaker 2: More exciting the kids need more exciting stories. And then
Speaker 2: holding up a crucifix in a little bit of water, okay,
Speaker 2: doesn't work. Doesn't work.
Speaker 3: Here's the final thing I'm going to ask you. Are
Speaker 3: you ready You're gonna eat mushrooms.
Speaker 2: I love mushrooms. We just turn the whole thing. Could
Speaker 2: right now, any moment, a moment the mushroom. You go
Speaker 2: out in the wood. Did you just need any mush
Speaker 2: I don't need anything from the woods? An idiot, right?
Speaker 2: You don't pick you don't pick anything up in the woods.
Speaker 2: I'm be an idiot. I eat from the woods. No,
Speaker 2: you don't even going. It's nice for being with us.
Speaker 2: Go in the woods? What do you no? You don't
Speaker 2: go in the in the woods. You don't go in
Speaker 2: the woods. You don't know me, I don't know you
Speaker 2: see you next time? Woods?
Speaker 1: Now, really really No.
Speaker 6: Thank you Craig Mason for coming on to discuss all
Speaker 6: the crazy real life.
Speaker 7: Fungie out there, and of course your award winning Last
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