Speaker 1: Look out. It's only Films to be Buried With. Hello,
Speaker 1: and welcome to Films to be Buried With. My name
Speaker 1: is Brett Goldstein. I'm a comedian, an actor, a writer,
Speaker 1: a director, an icebreaker, and I love films as Resila
Speaker 1: as Land once said, religion engenders both inclusion and exclusion.
Speaker 1: It spawns as much conflict in society as it does cohesion.
Speaker 1: Religion divides people as much as the film Don't Look
Speaker 1: Up does. Yeah, fair play, I really enjoyed it. Every
Speaker 1: week I invite a special guests over. I tell them
Speaker 1: they've died. Then I get them to discuss their life
Speaker 1: through the films that meant the most of them. Previous
Speaker 1: guests include Barry Jenkins, Kevin Smith, Sharon Stone and even
Speaker 1: ped Clambele's. But this week it's the brilliant writer, actor,
Speaker 1: director and stand up mister Mike Babiglia. I think there's
Speaker 1: only a couple of tickets left for Films to be
Speaker 1: Buried With live at the south Bank Center on Saturday
Speaker 1: twelve off of February. Come along, bring a date, It's
Speaker 1: going to be a hot one. The last tickets are
Speaker 1: available at Southbank Centered, dot co, dot UK and plosive
Speaker 1: dot co dot UK. Thank you to everyone who has
Speaker 1: already bought tickets. Going to be very exciting. Nice to
Speaker 1: see you all there. Head over to the Patreon at
Speaker 1: patreon dot com Forward Slashback Goals scene where you're getting
Speaker 1: next to twenty minutes of chat with Mike. We go deep,
Speaker 1: we talk about beginnings and endings, you get a secret,
Speaker 1: You get the whole episode uncut and as a video.
Speaker 1: Check it out over at patreon dot com. Forward Slashback
Speaker 1: Goals teen Ted Lasso, as always, is available on Apple
Speaker 1: TV Plus both seasons. You can watch them all in Mango.
Speaker 1: You can find super Bowl and you can find Soulmates
Speaker 1: both on Amazon Prime Infarious Country. So go and watch
Speaker 1: them all now, but not right now. Listen to this
Speaker 1: and then watch You know you've got a lot of
Speaker 1: do You've all got busylos So. Mike Babiglia is one
Speaker 1: of the great stand ups. He's known for his storytelling shows.
Speaker 1: He has also made two stonecold classic films, Sleepwalk with
Speaker 1: Me and Don't Think Twice. I spend a lot of
Speaker 1: time on this episode talking at about the ins and
Speaker 1: outs of Don't Think Twice in particular. So if you've
Speaker 1: ever seen. Don't think twice. I highly recommend you watch
Speaker 1: it before listening to this one. It's a fucking great
Speaker 1: film anyway. Plus you'll enjoy this one all the more.
Speaker 1: Father seen it. We recorded this the other day on Zoom.
Speaker 1: This first time I met him. It was lovely to
Speaker 1: talk to him. It's a really good time. I think
Speaker 1: you're really gonna like this one. I loved it. So
Speaker 1: that is it for now. I very much hope you
Speaker 1: enjoy episode one hundred and eighty three of Films to
Speaker 1: be Buried With. Hello, and welcome to Films to be
Speaker 1: Buried With. It is me Brett Goldstein, and I am
Speaker 1: joined today by an actor, a writer, a producer, a podcaster,
Speaker 1: a director, and one of the greatest stand ups of
Speaker 1: all time. Please will you welcome to the show. We
Speaker 1: can't believe he's here, but he is here. He's un
Speaker 1: Zoom in person, but Una Zoom dies it in the world,
Speaker 1: right in front of us, right now, coming in here.
Speaker 1: It's the one, the only he's here, just one, not
Speaker 1: only please the show. It's the brilliant it's here he is. Yeah. Wow,
Speaker 1: what an amazing introduction that was so exciting. Welcome, Welcome,
Speaker 1: so pleased to have you. I'm a huge fan, very
Speaker 1: excited we're doing this. Hey, I got some things I
Speaker 1: want to ask you about. Can we get straight into Okay,
Speaker 1: First things first, I believe you've made at least two masterpieces.
Speaker 1: First things first, Sleepwalk with Me. Yeah, yeah, we want
Speaker 1: to talk about it. Well, here's the thing. There's a
Speaker 1: stand up show and then it was a film. Yes,
Speaker 1: that's right, and I think most people, including myself, do
Speaker 1: a stand up show. Possibly we're destorying it anything how
Speaker 1: to turn into a film, and everyone tries, and so
Speaker 1: many of these things don't work. And Sleepwalk with Me
Speaker 1: it's so simple and so brilliant, and I remember watching
Speaker 1: it and going, oh, yeah, that's how you do it.
Speaker 1: Like it's it's like it's like you solved the riding
Speaker 1: when the answer was so obvious. It's like, oh, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's how you do it. You just do it really
Speaker 1: fucking well and clear it. It's really good. Thanks man.
Speaker 1: You know I feel like, go ahead, Well, no, I'm
Speaker 1: curious if that was a very long process to decide
Speaker 1: to work out the film vision of that. You know,
Speaker 1: the story is clear, but the yeah tell me, well yeah,
Speaker 1: so I'd always wanted to make films. Part of the
Speaker 1: reason I like this podcast so much is that it's
Speaker 1: a cinephiles podcasts, and it's so in the weeds of
Speaker 1: like why we love film. And I had studied screenwriting
Speaker 1: in school, and of course, you know your your listeners
Speaker 1: are centiphiles too, so they sort of know that, like
Speaker 1: there's no real path to becoming a filmmaker. I mean,
Speaker 1: there's no application process. I mean I studied screenwriting, and
Speaker 1: then it's just like, I'm going to be a screenwriter.
Speaker 1: And then it's like, well, how how would you even
Speaker 1: do that? And and of course, like you know, everybody had,
Speaker 1: you know, there's the becoming a screenwriter and then there's
Speaker 1: the figuring out a path to becoming a screenwriter or
Speaker 1: a filmmaker in any way, shape or form. And those
Speaker 1: two things are like they're almost separate journeys in a way,
Speaker 1: figuring out how to crack that. So I was working
Speaker 1: at the door at the Washington DC Improv in college,
Speaker 1: and I was getting stage time whenever they would let
Speaker 1: me be on stage. I was bringing nachos, the tables
Speaker 1: and things, and then I realized, like, maybe I could
Speaker 1: be a stand up comedian, making a couple of hundred
Speaker 1: bucks a week driving my mom's station wagon around the
Speaker 1: country to sort of hell gigs that the character in
Speaker 1: the film goes to, you know, And and I thought, Okay,
Speaker 1: if I could do that, maybe that led at a
Speaker 1: job I would really enjoy, and so and so I
Speaker 1: did that, and then along the way, along the way,
Speaker 1: I sort of started to develop this show which was
Speaker 1: called Sleepwalk with Me, which eventually was adapted in the film.
Speaker 1: And it's all about my personal journey towards you know,
Speaker 1: this artistic journey of being honest on stage and being
Speaker 1: honest about who you are. And then it's also about
Speaker 1: my own struggles with sleepwalking, which is like a real
Speaker 1: disorder I had, and I really did jump through a
Speaker 1: second story window. And also, you know, it's just about
Speaker 1: this break up, this really hard breakup I had in
Speaker 1: my twenties. And so I developed it as a solo show,
Speaker 1: and I was doing it in clubs like like you know,
Speaker 1: the Comedy Store. You know, I'm trying to think of
Speaker 1: the London comps, the comps of of what I clubs
Speaker 1: in Britain. But but that's sort of where I was
Speaker 1: doing it because we don't have like the like Sleepwalk
Speaker 1: with Me the original show is is really akin to
Speaker 1: like in Edinburgh show. But I've never I've never played Edinburgh,
Speaker 1: you know, I've never done it. Um so I really
Speaker 1: want I've always wanted to go. I've always wanted to go,
Speaker 1: but it's just never whatever, it's never quite worked out
Speaker 1: or and so anyway, I was performing this at comedy
Speaker 1: clubs and it was this thing where where it wasn't
Speaker 1: called Sleepwalk with Me. But but then I was working
Speaker 1: with a director, this guy Seth Barris, who's a wonderful
Speaker 1: director I've worked with now for about sixteen years. And
Speaker 1: we mounted it with some producers off Broadway in two
Speaker 1: thousand and eight. And I've been doing comedy about eight years.
Speaker 1: I graduated from college in two thousand. So we ran
Speaker 1: off Broadway at the Bleaker Street Theater for about eight
Speaker 1: or nine months. And in the process of that, this
Speaker 1: company that makes independent films was one of the producers
Speaker 1: and they optioned it as a screenplay. And so I
Speaker 1: worked on it with Ira Glass and Seth Barrish and
Speaker 1: my brother Joe, and we did it as a screenplay.
Speaker 1: But then what happened was and this is I think
Speaker 1: what you're speaking to when you're saying, like you cracked
Speaker 1: the thing, which is how hard it is to make
Speaker 1: solo shows into movies, which is that we delivered it
Speaker 1: to the company that optioned it. They didn't they didn't
Speaker 1: like it. They were like, no, we're not going to
Speaker 1: make this. And I said, well, I think I'm just
Speaker 1: gonna try to wrangle a small amount of money together
Speaker 1: and then just directed on my own, because previous to
Speaker 1: that we were going out to big indie film directors
Speaker 1: and stuff like that, and people were attached and it
Speaker 1: was very like the Hollywood way kind of thing like.
Speaker 1: And so I was like, I'm going to take this
Speaker 1: on my own. And the guy who is the producer
Speaker 1: and we're still friendly to this day, but he really
Speaker 1: was like you will fail. You know, He's like, this
Speaker 1: will fail. He's like, you don't understand, you don't understand
Speaker 1: what you're getting into, you don't know how to direct
Speaker 1: a movie, etc. And of course he's right, but the
Speaker 1: only way you learn how to direct a movie is
Speaker 1: by directing a movie. That's the that's the conundrum of
Speaker 1: directing movies or doing anything of that scope. Right, So,
Speaker 1: so we wrangled together like about a million dollars through
Speaker 1: different investors and things, and we made this movie Sleepwalk
Speaker 1: with Me, and I will say, like you're saying, like
Speaker 1: it worked, but like it didn't always work. Like we
Speaker 1: shot at and we got in the edit and we're like, well,
Speaker 1: this this doesn't work. And then there was a way
Speaker 1: in which, you know how in the in the movie
Speaker 1: I talked to the camera while I'm driving and I
Speaker 1: tell these monologues and I say, I'm gonna tell you
Speaker 1: a story and blah blah blah, I'm talking to camera.
Speaker 1: That was in the edit that we found that originally
Speaker 1: it was embedded in the film in these kind of
Speaker 1: like Ferris Bueller's Day Off kind of monologues where I
Speaker 1: would turn to camera mid scene and start monologuing to camera,
Speaker 1: and in the in the edit it was so campy,
Speaker 1: and we were just like, this doesn't work. What are
Speaker 1: we gonna do? I mean, I remember being in the
Speaker 1: edit with my editor Jeffrey Richmond, who's brilliant, and I
Speaker 1: was just like he and he went on he recently
Speaker 1: did Escape at Dennemora and like so many great things.
Speaker 1: But I was just like, jeff, what are we gonna do?
Speaker 1: This movie's a disaster, and Jeff is so he's a
Speaker 1: real calm person, and he goes, we're gonna turn it
Speaker 1: in when it's done. And one day Jeff and I
Speaker 1: had this idea of like, well, what if we did
Speaker 1: those monologues. What if we just did them from a
Speaker 1: car and we shot him real scrappy, you know, and
Speaker 1: so they don't look like the rest of the movie,
Speaker 1: so that there's a sense of like, there's this storytelling
Speaker 1: and then there's this in flashback. And so I went
Speaker 1: out with a camera operator and we just drove around
Speaker 1: Connecticut and New Jersey and we just shot these things
Speaker 1: fast and loose, and then we dropped them in and
Speaker 1: we're like, oh, this is cool. Now this feels this
Speaker 1: feels like something we're starting to get laughs. We're starting,
Speaker 1: you know, we're showing it to test audiences of ten people,
Speaker 1: and now they're laughing, and they didn't used to laugh
Speaker 1: early in the process. We're like, oh, no, nobody's laughing.
Speaker 1: Part of it and part of it. Part of the
Speaker 1: reason why I think they were laughing was that we
Speaker 1: changed the monologus from being in the present tense to
Speaker 1: the past tense. So, in other words, if you tell
Speaker 1: someone so you know, I'm jumping out a window. They're like,
Speaker 1: oh no, they're worried about you. But you say a
Speaker 1: few years ago I jumped through a window and they
Speaker 1: can see you're okay, they can laugh about it. It's
Speaker 1: like that old thing about like tragedy plus time. It's
Speaker 1: like they need to know you're okay. Yes, fascinating, Okay,
Speaker 1: I've got all right. I've got so many questions of
Speaker 1: that first question, Well to do with the film is?
Speaker 1: I mean, my experience in all these things is first
Speaker 1: cut of anything, but the first cut, the rough cut,
Speaker 1: the first cut. I've never seen one where I was like, oh,
Speaker 1: this is good, every single one of them. I've gone,
Speaker 1: I need to quit the business and try myself off
Speaker 1: a cliff. Every singful first cut of scene. Is that
Speaker 1: always your experience? Yeah, so I've I've made two features
Speaker 1: and a few short films. And the other one was
Speaker 1: don't Think twice, and both times would sleepwalk with me
Speaker 1: and don't Think twice. It was definitely jump off a cliff.
Speaker 1: Quit the business. Uh, your pack up and go home.
Speaker 1: Don't tell anybody this happened, you know, just like it's awful,
Speaker 1: it's amazing, isn't it. But I think that's true for everyone.
Speaker 1: I think I rarely hear people go I see I've
Speaker 1: seen the first cut. It's amazing. It's usually like, oh,
Speaker 1: it's fucked. No, it's no, I've I've I've almost never
Speaker 1: heard of first cuts doing well. My other question is,
Speaker 1: did I misunderstand your story? You were working at this
Speaker 1: comedy club. Yeah, you didn't want to be a stand
Speaker 1: up you were just working there any No, no, no,
Speaker 1: it was more like I got the job because I
Speaker 1: had won a contest in my college for my university
Speaker 1: for funniest person on campus. And and it was actually
Speaker 1: Nick Kroll was in the contest. That's actually how we
Speaker 1: met and became friends. What did you have to do
Speaker 1: in the contest stand up comedy? Yeah, okay, it wasn't
Speaker 1: my wacky wacky stepho in campus. No, No, we we
Speaker 1: both did stand up comedy for the first time. It
Speaker 1: was when me and Nick both did stand up for
Speaker 1: the first time. And then we became friends after that
Speaker 1: and did improv together for a few years. And uh
Speaker 1: so I won, and then one of the things that
Speaker 1: I won was the opportunity to perform at the Washington
Speaker 1: d C Improv and which was the comedy club in Washington.
Speaker 1: And because we went to Georgetown and I opened for
Speaker 1: Dave Chappelle. This is pre Dave Chappelle's show, and I mean,
Speaker 1: this is back when Half Baked, you know, era of
Speaker 1: Dave Chappelle, and it was it went, it went pretty well.
Speaker 1: And then I said to the club, like, can I
Speaker 1: do this all the time? I'd love to be an
Speaker 1: MC And they basically said, like everyone wants to be
Speaker 1: a comedian, you know, like it's there's no slots, we
Speaker 1: don't want you, but we'd like you. And you could
Speaker 1: you know, you could bring food to tables, and you
Speaker 1: could take tickets at the door, and you could watch
Speaker 1: shows for free. And so then I was able to
Speaker 1: watch Mitch Hedberg and you know, Margaret cho and Dave
Speaker 1: Chappelle and all these people who were the best. You know.
Speaker 1: It was just like the headliners of the country coming
Speaker 1: through every week. And so I was just watching very intently.
Speaker 1: And then I essentially I would fill in when someone
Speaker 1: didn't show up, I mean, and that was it it was.
Speaker 1: And then I would do open mics at another place
Speaker 1: at this at this motel, at this motel every Wednesday,
Speaker 1: called the Best Western in Virginia. I would do open
Speaker 1: mics and I would just bomb so hard. And then
Speaker 1: when I got out of college, I just drove around
Speaker 1: the country and tried to make it work. And then
Speaker 1: when when my comedy career got going to be okay,
Speaker 1: I had enough sort of like equity with audiences to
Speaker 1: be like, I want to put on a solo show.
Speaker 1: And that's sort of how it happened. And then since then,
Speaker 1: if people don't know my work, like, since then, I
Speaker 1: did a bunch of solo shows like My Girlfriend's Boyfriend,
Speaker 1: Thank God for Jokes, the new one, and then the
Speaker 1: new show is called The Old Man and the Pool,
Speaker 1: which I'm doing right now in Berkeley, California for three
Speaker 1: weeks and then and then I'm going to be in
Speaker 1: London at the Leicester Square in June. Right, So it's exciting. Well,
Speaker 1: i'd like to quickly talk about that and Think Twice,
Speaker 1: which I don't know if you've ever had me talk about,
Speaker 1: but I think it's is magnificent and I also think
Speaker 1: it is devastating. I think it's a devastating films. I
Speaker 1: think Twice. One of the things I'm fascinated by about
Speaker 1: it is. I think it kept his live comedy in
Speaker 1: a way that film almost never does. And I wonder
Speaker 1: what your secret was for that, and was that again,
Speaker 1: was that difficult thing to work out because I rarely
Speaker 1: think when you see stand up in films and stuff,
Speaker 1: it rarely connects in the way that it does in
Speaker 1: the room live. And I always think, I think it's
Speaker 1: because there's a lack of jeopardy, because you're not in
Speaker 1: the audience. There's a sort of there's a weird and
Speaker 1: often if the audience in the film are laughing in
Speaker 1: a way that you at home and are laughing, it disconnects,
Speaker 1: you know what I mean, Like they said, yeah, that's
Speaker 1: a huge I think that you're describing is a huge
Speaker 1: problem with performance films in general, and any kind of
Speaker 1: performance and to develop don't think twice. I had a
Speaker 1: series of like ten or fifteen readings in my living
Speaker 1: room with just like friends, comedians, filmmakers, etc. In New
Speaker 1: York and U and actually one of the most incisive
Speaker 1: criticisms that I got, you know, I would have friends
Speaker 1: read the parts and we do a little reading and
Speaker 1: then we'd eat pizza afterwards. It was it's just it's
Speaker 1: something I've done over the years with both of my films,
Speaker 1: and like, and actually Greta Gerwig read the lead and
Speaker 1: one of the readings and this is I think right
Speaker 1: around Frances huh, maybe right around that. Yeah, it's like fifteen.
Speaker 1: I don't know, it's like twenty fifteen. She said to me,
Speaker 1: I have no notes, she said to me privately, she goes,
Speaker 1: I have no notes. She goes, I would say if
Speaker 1: the performance scenes work, the movie will work, and if
Speaker 1: the performance scenes do not work, the film will not work. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And so she's like, She's like, you really need to
Speaker 1: like zero in on that. And so I spent like
Speaker 1: a lot of time with my cinematographer Joe Anderson, just
Speaker 1: sort of staring at performance films. And so we had
Speaker 1: this theory that it's not that novel of a concept,
Speaker 1: but we had this feeling that if we shot a
Speaker 1: majority of the film on sticks, you know, on tripods,
Speaker 1: and then we shot the performance stuff handheld, there would
Speaker 1: be a liveliness to the performance in sort of almost
Speaker 1: like in like a sports film or something. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And like we found that whenever we were watching comedy
Speaker 1: performance it was always from the perspective of the audience
Speaker 1: but theater and stand up you can't capture what's in
Speaker 1: a room really, and so you can't capture theater, for example,
Speaker 1: from an audience shot. You just can't do it. There's
Speaker 1: something about it that never quite translates. So we thought
Speaker 1: if the camera was handheld on steadycam, and it was
Speaker 1: it was acting as one of the performers in the
Speaker 1: improv then as an audience member, we would feel like
Speaker 1: we were in the scenes with the improvisers and that
Speaker 1: we were improvising and that these were our friends. And
Speaker 1: so that was the goal. And even the camera operator
Speaker 1: was this guy Mike Fuchs and as an excellent camera operator,
Speaker 1: and we would we all we spent so much time
Speaker 1: on the choreography of those shots because we would do
Speaker 1: some scenes that were written to be improvised, and then
Speaker 1: we would do some scenes that were improvised. And the
Speaker 1: key thing is that the audience members were a mixture
Speaker 1: of paid extras which you have to do for the
Speaker 1: for the guild, right. But then it was also my
Speaker 1: comedy fans who I reached out to on Facebook and said,
Speaker 1: would you be willing to come here for like six
Speaker 1: hours and why and be a fly on the wall.
Speaker 1: To some stuff that's funny and some stuff that's not
Speaker 1: funny and it just is boring. So like a lot
Speaker 1: of those audience members are real audience members really laughing
Speaker 1: at stuff Keegan Michael Key and Gillian Jacobs and Chris
Speaker 1: gather is doing. Because that's the other thing is like
Speaker 1: there's you know, often the extras or the background actors
Speaker 1: for performance scenes are people who have just been there
Speaker 1: for ten hours and nothing's funny to them anymore. And
Speaker 1: so that that was that was a big part of it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think it may be easis, the connecting the with
Speaker 1: the camera movement from the states to the audience that
Speaker 1: the laugh is genuine, the laugh is spontaneous, and you
Speaker 1: capture it in camera without cutting from performance to here's
Speaker 1: the laugh. Maybe it's a bit of that. Anyway, It
Speaker 1: really was definitely that was definitely the goal. And I
Speaker 1: really appreciate it. I mean, it's it's such a it's
Speaker 1: such a small film, it's such a small budget film.
Speaker 1: It's so meaningful to me when people connect with it. Oh,
Speaker 1: I forgot I have a question because I had Gillian
Speaker 1: Jacobs on this podcast and I asked her this and
Speaker 1: she said, oh, I have no idea, and I said,
Speaker 1: I'd ask you, and I just remembered there's a shot.
Speaker 1: I know it's a very low budget film. There's a
Speaker 1: shot when they're in the card together. I think it's
Speaker 1: after the funeral, and there's a hot air balloon in
Speaker 1: the background of this shot. Oh yeah, that's a lucky
Speaker 1: accident or you you paid for a higher balloon to
Speaker 1: appear in the background. Can you imagine how much that
Speaker 1: would cost? It would be like forty thousand dollars on
Speaker 1: the budget. No, it was definitely one of those things,
Speaker 1: one of those happy accidents where we got in the
Speaker 1: abit where like we gotta get that in. It's amazing.
Speaker 1: It really looks like Deliverate. It's so perfect. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: think it's one of those things where it's funny because
Speaker 1: I've never I've actually never talked about this in an
Speaker 1: interview before, but it's it's it's a movie that your
Speaker 1: your audience members would know, probably more commonly than than
Speaker 1: American audience members. Is like the Steve Coogan Michael Winterbottom film.
Speaker 1: The Trip was a big inspiration for Dogs because when
Speaker 1: I watched The Trip, I was like, oh, this is
Speaker 1: a beautiful trick that they're pulling off here, which is
Speaker 1: to say, they clearly have a dramatic story that is
Speaker 1: the engine that makes us care about these two characters.
Speaker 1: Then and clearly there's a script. But then within that
Speaker 1: script they're able to play in such a way that
Speaker 1: we believe they're real people and we and we're invested,
Speaker 1: Like I wanted don't think twice and sometimes it tricks people.
Speaker 1: I wanted to feel like, is this the documentary is
Speaker 1: are these real people? Like the other one is Once,
Speaker 1: Like the movie Once was like that for me where
Speaker 1: you just afterwards you want to just go google it
Speaker 1: and be like what the fuck? Like is this real?
Speaker 1: What is happening? Yeah? And the last thing, because I
Speaker 1: don't want to waste steal your time talking about some
Speaker 1: of you know, you're literally talking about the thing that
Speaker 1: I'm so passionate about this movie partly because I feel
Speaker 1: like with Keegan, Michael Key and Gillian Jacobs and Chris
Speaker 1: Gather and Joanna all these people, it's it's it's such
Speaker 1: a group effort that you ever have a project like
Speaker 1: this where you work on it and you don't feel
Speaker 1: bad talking about it because the other people are so good. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that like you're admiring of like the whole everybody. Oh,
Speaker 1: I'm literally in scenes in Ted Last say where I go,
Speaker 1: you're so good in the middle. I understand that you
Speaker 1: yourself in the film. If no one has seen the
Speaker 1: film by it, I will say in the intro, you
Speaker 1: know what's the film before you listen to this, because
Speaker 1: I just think it's so good and it's one of
Speaker 1: the best films about comedy I've ever seen. It's really devastating.
Speaker 1: It's devastating in the same way inside Llewellyn Davis is
Speaker 1: it's got that similar like fuck is this which one is? Me?
Speaker 1: Is this me? And I? This is? It's just me? Yeah.
Speaker 1: And the character that you play, I'm interested in that
Speaker 1: as well, because you play listen, they're all you care about,
Speaker 1: all in them, they're all they'll feel real. But I
Speaker 1: guess your character is the least sympathetic. Is that is,
Speaker 1: you know, is the person with the most negative activities
Speaker 1: going on? I suppose of all the of all the characters.
Speaker 1: And I again, I'm interested that you cast yourself in
Speaker 1: that that you did that, like it's just very cool,
Speaker 1: but like, was there a particular reason for that for
Speaker 1: you to play that yeah, I mean certainly, like and
Speaker 1: it's certainly like a handful of people who I've known
Speaker 1: over the years where it's like this, if people don't
Speaker 1: know the movie, it's like a character who's like a
Speaker 1: womanizer and he sleeps with there's students, improv students and
Speaker 1: all this stuff, and and he's talented, but he's not
Speaker 1: gonna make it the way the Keegan's character is gonna
Speaker 1: make it. And it's tough because because he mentored Keegan's
Speaker 1: character and you really like feel for him, but he's
Speaker 1: kind of a jerk, but he's pretty loyal also, you know,
Speaker 1: like he's like he's yeah, and it's that thing that
Speaker 1: you're looking at him down you're too old to be
Speaker 1: doing this. But at the same time, it's also working
Speaker 1: every time, you know, every time a woman's going home
Speaker 1: with him and thinking, oh no, but then you're going
Speaker 1: but she season to go home with him like this,
Speaker 1: this kind of childishness that he has is there's a
Speaker 1: part of it that's very sad, but it's what like
Speaker 1: the reason it's not stopping is no one stopping it. No, yeah, no,
Speaker 1: it's it's still working as at this level, you know, no,
Speaker 1: I mean it's it's it's a totally real I mean,
Speaker 1: I I'm not a full upright citizen's brigade like improv
Speaker 1: Like I didn't live the improv existence that like, for example,
Speaker 1: Chris Gathered and Tammy Sager, who are in the movie,
Speaker 1: lived like that. They did the sort of full on,
Speaker 1: you know, improvised seven days a week, you know, did
Speaker 1: ask Cat at UCB Theater all this stuff. I did
Speaker 1: it for like a couple of years, and then I
Speaker 1: went this route of stand up. But I've part of
Speaker 1: the impetus for making the film was that every now
Speaker 1: and then I would improvise, and I would do this
Speaker 1: thing called Mike Berbiglia's dream and it would be like
Speaker 1: my dreamcast. I would be like, I'd ask like Ellie Kemper,
Speaker 1: Chris Gethard, Aidy Bryant, like all these people who are
Speaker 1: these heavy hitters to just come improvise with me. And
Speaker 1: one night I did it and my wife Jen goes,
Speaker 1: she goes, it's so interesting that like everyone is so
Speaker 1: good at this thing, this skill that is so it's
Speaker 1: impossible to sort of monetize. It's not commercial, it's not
Speaker 1: like you know, and she's like, and it's so weird
Speaker 1: because like, you know, that person is like, you know,
Speaker 1: Ellie Kemper, for example, is like a wild international superstar,
Speaker 1: and that other person, like Conra Ratliff who's in the movie,
Speaker 1: for example, is like is not that you know? And
Speaker 1: it's very far in the other end of this, and
Speaker 1: it's like that must be weird. And I said, and
Speaker 1: I was like, not only is it weird, I was like,
Speaker 1: it's a movie. I was like, that's a movie that
Speaker 1: should be a movie because there's this way in which
Speaker 1: there's a hard lesson I experienced in my life and
Speaker 1: I think a lot of artists do, which is like
Speaker 1: there's a certain point in art where you realize like
Speaker 1: it's a group, it's a team sport acting and comedy
Speaker 1: and creation, but ultimately it's not everybody gets the same thing.
Speaker 1: And I sort of grappled with I mean, the thing
Speaker 1: I relate to about my character Miles is feeling jealousy
Speaker 1: over the years of like different people who like exploded,
Speaker 1: you know, and just being like, oh, man, I guess
Speaker 1: you know, and of course I but then I also
Speaker 1: relate to Keegan's character because I've gotten things that are crazy.
Speaker 1: And I was on Letterman when I was in my
Speaker 1: twenties and so I had like this bit, you know,
Speaker 1: like these exciting things. And then I relate to Gillian's
Speaker 1: character probably the most because there's like a part of
Speaker 1: me that's like an eternal optimist about art, which is like,
Speaker 1: we don't have to sell out. We can just do
Speaker 1: what we do and forever we're just gonna keep doing it,
Speaker 1: you know. And so like her scenes really break my
Speaker 1: heart the most because that's who I feel like I
Speaker 1: am deep down. It's really something that's your license on it.
Speaker 1: But but to your point of like why to pick
Speaker 1: that that character. So like my friend Jorma Tacone, who's
Speaker 1: a filmmaker who made He's into Lonely Island. He made
Speaker 1: a pop pop star, never stopped, never stopping mcgruber. He's
Speaker 1: made a bunch of stuff. But he was at the readings.
Speaker 1: He was at the readings and he was like at
Speaker 1: my apartment and he was like, uh, you gotta play
Speaker 1: And it's Keegan's part Jack. He's like, you got to
Speaker 1: play Jack, And I go, no, Man, it's gotta be
Speaker 1: somebody who would get on SNL Like it's gotta be realistic,
Speaker 1: it's gotta be someone who's so good at improv and
Speaker 1: sketch comedy that you, without a shadow of a doubt,
Speaker 1: you go, yep, he would be on SNL and you
Speaker 1: know Keegan hosted SNL in the spring. It's like, yeah,
Speaker 1: the guy on Key and Peel would be cast. Wow,
Speaker 1: well that's it's fascinating. Have you had people from that
Speaker 1: world from UCB and stuff come to you and guy
Speaker 1: fuck you? Yeah? Yeah. It's funny because Jamila Jamal was
Speaker 1: telling me that I know she's been on the show, right, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I heard her on that. Yes, yes, so she um
Speaker 1: she loves dumping twice And she was like, you have
Speaker 1: very polarizing responses in the improv community about the Yeah,
Speaker 1: well of course you know you're calling out a thing. Yeah,
Speaker 1: because because it's it's very very truthful. It's so good. Shit, Mike,
Speaker 1: Oh no, oh no, I've forgotten to tell you something.
Speaker 1: Do you know what's really embarrassing is I like i'd
Speaker 1: always bring like a little notebook so that I can
Speaker 1: make notes if I need to. We're gonn need to
Speaker 1: cut in a thing like that, And I always make
Speaker 1: a note and I've just written you know, I don't
Speaker 1: think twice and I've looked back a page and there's
Speaker 1: something I should have told you, probably at the beginning,
Speaker 1: and I forgot to tell you. And when I say,
Speaker 1: you're gonna be like you probably should give me a
Speaker 1: bit body, I'll just say it and then we'll deal
Speaker 1: with the recussions. I can handle anything. I think I
Speaker 1: can handle any anything, anything at all. Yeah, nothing that
Speaker 1: would sort of you go, ah see that was a
Speaker 1: bit much. Yeah, I think in a podcast format, I'm
Speaker 1: open to any possibility. You've died, You're dead probably, Are
Speaker 1: you okay with that? No, I'm gonna I'm okay with it. Okay,
Speaker 1: I can, I can upset, I can accept it. Now
Speaker 1: that I'm in it, I'm comfortable feeling it. You've been
Speaker 1: dead half now, so I suppose you're used to do do it. Now.
Speaker 1: How did you die? Well, Um, I died from a
Speaker 1: coconut falling on my head straight straight, so they bright, Yeah,
Speaker 1: crust head. I talk about this. I actually actually talk
Speaker 1: about this in my new show The Old Man in
Speaker 1: the Pool because it's all about death immortality and I
Speaker 1: and I and I did a lot of research on
Speaker 1: how people die. And I found out that hundreds of
Speaker 1: people a year on average die from a coconut falling
Speaker 1: on their head, and and and um, wow, my joke.
Speaker 1: My joke of course is, um, do you eat the coconut,
Speaker 1: because because it's right, it's it's right, that's how you die.
Speaker 1: But the coconuts next to the so hit by coconut? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I was hit by coconut? Wit were you well? I
Speaker 1: was on Um, I was on vacation in Hawaii and
Speaker 1: with my family, and um, they you know, did they
Speaker 1: see they saw it? Yeah? Yeah, did they? They took
Speaker 1: a photo. They thought it was funny. They took photos,
Speaker 1: and then when they realized that I had no pulse,
Speaker 1: it became abundantly clear that it was not as funny
Speaker 1: it as they had originally thought. Do you worry about death?
Speaker 1: I mean you've written the house about it. Yeah. I
Speaker 1: think about it all the time. Yeah. Has that always
Speaker 1: been the case? Where is this more recently? I think
Speaker 1: there's something about I'm forty three years old. I think
Speaker 1: there's something about middle age where you get on you know,
Speaker 1: the expression. I don't know if this is a British
Speaker 1: expression either, but it's like over the hill, that's a
Speaker 1: that's a universal right, which is an expression I never
Speaker 1: really understood until I got on the hill, you know
Speaker 1: what I mean, And I'm looking around and I'm going, oh,
Speaker 1: there's natural causes. You know, they're not close, but they're
Speaker 1: coming yea and yeah no. I think about a lot,
Speaker 1: especially when you have a child, like I have a
Speaker 1: six and a half year old child. And that's what
Speaker 1: my whole last show, The Knew One was about having
Speaker 1: a child. And when you have a child, you start
Speaker 1: to see, Like for me, like, I'm an anxious person,
Speaker 1: so I always see like, what's next, what's next, what's next,
Speaker 1: what's next? And in a way that's uncomfortable, and then
Speaker 1: I start to see it for my own child. And
Speaker 1: then if you start to just do what's next, what's
Speaker 1: next for a child, you're out of the picture at
Speaker 1: a certain point. Yeah, yeah, wow, what's next? What's next?
Speaker 1: With next? Kaget to the head? Yeah, go get into
Speaker 1: the head? Yeah? Oh good? Do you think something happens
Speaker 1: after each Do you think that's enough to life? What
Speaker 1: do you think on that? I don't. I don't think
Speaker 1: there's any way to know. I don't have a specific
Speaker 1: religion or belief system, but I'm I'm open to whatever that.
Speaker 1: You know, what, whatever might inferral. Do you have a
Speaker 1: preferred idea? The theory's nothing about I don't. I think
Speaker 1: it's probably best that I go into the ground. My ashes,
Speaker 1: my ashes, I don't think. I don't believe in embombment.
Speaker 1: I don't believe in any of that stuff. You know.
Speaker 1: I have a joke in the show where I go,
Speaker 1: if we're gonna win bomb people, why not go all
Speaker 1: the way and do taxidermy, Like, oh, it's sad that
Speaker 1: it's sad that Rajieve died, but he's catching that football,
Speaker 1: you know what I mean? And yeah, I like to
Speaker 1: I like to think that my body would be of
Speaker 1: use to the earth in some way. Yeah, well, I
Speaker 1: got news for you, big. There's a heaven. Everyone there
Speaker 1: has been embalmed. So it's weird that you turned off.
Speaker 1: They were like, well, how do we doesn't really have it?
Speaker 1: So they've been raised human show. Oh no, they put
Speaker 1: it in a passage terrible talk about a bad bounce.
Speaker 1: What's your favorite thing, because heaven's filled with it? Oh,
Speaker 1: my favorite thing is pizza. Listen, Heaven is made of pizza.
Speaker 1: The wolves made pizza chairs and made of pizza. Again,
Speaker 1: this was the right decision, but you're sitting on pizza.
Speaker 1: It's not as greasy. It doesn't like stick to you,
Speaker 1: and it doesn't burn you. It's just the right temperature.
Speaker 1: But you can eat the chairs, you can eat the
Speaker 1: you go to bed. Your pillow is a slice, big, deep, deep,
Speaker 1: diey slice, and you can eat it as you as
Speaker 1: you nap. I love it and you can't get it
Speaker 1: doesn't affect you in it. You don't get full. You
Speaker 1: don't you know. It's it's really good. And everyone in
Speaker 1: this heaven they're obsessed with you, mostly because you're the
Speaker 1: only one who turned up his ash. But they alway
Speaker 1: said that they want to know about your life. They
Speaker 1: want to know about your life through film. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: the first thing they ask you is, what is the
Speaker 1: first film you remember seeing? Mike the Big Lea. So
Speaker 1: the first one I remember seeing is um the movie Breaking.
Speaker 1: I don't know if you ever saw this one, but
Speaker 1: it's a nineteen eighty four film about breakdancing, competitive sort
Speaker 1: of competitive breakdancing. Oh amazing, and there was. It actually
Speaker 1: has probably the best name of a sequel that's ever
Speaker 1: been which is Breaking to Electric Bugaloo. I'm so sorry.
Speaker 1: I know exactly what you're talking about I thought you
Speaker 1: were saying separate words break in I thought it was
Speaker 1: like a skype movie breaking breaking, yes, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: And it was. It's all about breakdancing. And the reason
Speaker 1: I remember it so well is that I was like
Speaker 1: six years old and my brother and sisters and I,
Speaker 1: who were older than me, took me to the theater.
Speaker 1: Were the only people in the theater, and we started
Speaker 1: breakdancing in the theater while we were watching it in
Speaker 1: the in the aisles and on the rug between the
Speaker 1: screen and the seats, and it was pure joy, pure joy.
Speaker 1: That's so nice but lovely. Story references to how much
Speaker 1: he did today. So my brother is about five years
Speaker 1: older than me. My oldest sisters eleven years older than me,
Speaker 1: so they were like teenagers and yeah, yeah yeah, And
Speaker 1: did you were like what a place? You don't say,
Speaker 1: that's a big, amazing No. I've always loved yeah, And
Speaker 1: I've always loved, you know, ever since then, I've always
Speaker 1: loved seeing films in the theater. Like I it's an
Speaker 1: extraordinary it's an extraordinary experience. I think, I mean it is.
Speaker 1: Watch him. What is the film that made you cry
Speaker 1: the most? You would cry? You seem to me someone
Speaker 1: who might not base guy of crying. Yeah, no, I
Speaker 1: I've cried, and I this is a film I read.
Speaker 1: There's two films by James Brooks that I revisit quite
Speaker 1: a bit, Terms of Endearment and Broadcast News, right, And
Speaker 1: those are films that I cry about. Uh, you know,
Speaker 1: whenever you know either of them, whenever I watch them,
Speaker 1: I think, because I think James Brooks does this extraordinarily well,
Speaker 1: is that he makes comedies that have dramatic turns in
Speaker 1: them that you would only expect to be in dramatic
Speaker 1: quote unquote dramatic genre movies. Yeah. It was actually lucky
Speaker 1: enough to meet James Brooks once and I said to him,
Speaker 1: I go, I go, you know, people think I'm kind
Speaker 1: of nuts because sometimes they'll ask me what's my favorite comedy,
Speaker 1: and I'll say Terms of Endearment and he said, he goes,
Speaker 1: he goes. It's interesting that you said that because we
Speaker 1: edited it as a comedy, like we were we were
Speaker 1: showing it for audiences, we were finding the laughs, we
Speaker 1: were cutting it at the moment that felt right for
Speaker 1: the laugh, and so like in some ways, like it's
Speaker 1: this for me. The more that you can an audience
Speaker 1: can lead you into laughing and then make the left
Speaker 1: turn into something that's why, you know, deeply emotional. It
Speaker 1: really for me, it really gets me. Well that's what
Speaker 1: you do, it's what you do in your status says
Speaker 1: and I think at that look, I've talked about this before,
Speaker 1: but I think I think it is the best way
Speaker 1: to If people laugh, they're letting down the defense, right,
Speaker 1: that's what that's what love to his laugh is a
Speaker 1: is a a wool coming down. And if then you guys,
Speaker 1: oh and he's a serious thing, that much more open
Speaker 1: to it. Yeah, do you cry in real life? Cry it? Yeah?
Speaker 1: Sometimes I use film to cry because I think that
Speaker 1: there's a lot of tension in me that's not being
Speaker 1: released and so it you know, it's sometimes it takes
Speaker 1: a film to get me to cry. I'm you know,
Speaker 1: like I feel like I had it recently. Actually, like
Speaker 1: a more recent example would be like like Spotlight was
Speaker 1: really intense for me because I was raised. I have
Speaker 1: an old joke where I said I was an altar
Speaker 1: boy as a kid, and the answers, no, I wasn't.
Speaker 1: And I think it's because they knew I was a talker.
Speaker 1: But like I was literally an altar boy in Massachusetts
Speaker 1: where that film takes place, like like in the era
Speaker 1: that it took place. And so when I was watching
Speaker 1: that film, I was watching a screener of it with
Speaker 1: my wife Jen in our living room, and I actually
Speaker 1: was crying so hard I had to stop the movie.
Speaker 1: I had to pause it because I couldn't even see
Speaker 1: the movie. I couldn't see through the tears. Not because
Speaker 1: I was abused, but because it sort of dawned on
Speaker 1: me that that people who I knew must have been
Speaker 1: m It's amazing that film, and weirdly, and it's it's
Speaker 1: a very unemotional film as in it it's very it's
Speaker 1: very well handled. It isn't it isn't melodramatic. It's very
Speaker 1: what's the word restrained? Yeah, Tom McCarthy, Tom McCarthy directed.
Speaker 1: It's great. Yeah, it's amazingly powerful. That the thing that
Speaker 1: blows your mind is just a list is at the
Speaker 1: end is hell on the list? Guys, just a list
Speaker 1: of names. You're like, oh my gosh, yeah a list, yeah, yeah, gosh,
Speaker 1: might the Big Year. What's the film that scared you
Speaker 1: the most? Do you like being scared? I don't actually
Speaker 1: avoid movies that are scary, but I and maybe this
Speaker 1: is why UM ever see this movie Cloak and Dagger.
Speaker 1: It's like a it's like a I actually looked it
Speaker 1: up because I was like, I was like, what is
Speaker 1: the leaven? The log line for this movie it's a
Speaker 1: young It's nineteen eighty four. A young boy and his
Speaker 1: imaginary friend end up on the run while in possession
Speaker 1: of a top secret spy gadget. It's like an action
Speaker 1: adventure movie where essentially like I don't know if there's
Speaker 1: like a murderer or someone to do a crime, and
Speaker 1: all they know about the character is that he has
Speaker 1: like he's missing fingers. He's like he has two fingers
Speaker 1: or something. And there's these characters I think, as an
Speaker 1: old man, old woman, who you trust? This is this
Speaker 1: is from memory. I haven't seen a long time, so
Speaker 1: this might be wrong. It was like these characters is
Speaker 1: like almost like grandparent type characters that you trust. And
Speaker 1: there's a moment where the grandfather reveals that he has
Speaker 1: like two fingers or and you're like, oh my god,
Speaker 1: the character I trusted. And of course, you know, I
Speaker 1: was like like eight years old, and so I'd never
Speaker 1: I'd never enter reacted with that kind of a plot
Speaker 1: twist before. And so it's that thing where the first
Speaker 1: time where someone pulls like a certain type of cinematic
Speaker 1: magic trick on you and you're like so scared. I know, yeah,
Speaker 1: I trusted you. Do you have a theory on this.
Speaker 1: I don't know if you know this, but I have
Speaker 1: so many comedians on this show, and I would say
Speaker 1: it is wildely imbalanced the amount of comedians who like horror.
Speaker 1: I would say, far more comedians come on this show
Speaker 1: and say, oh no, I don't like being scared. I
Speaker 1: don't like horror. There are some that love it, but
Speaker 1: I would say, I don't know the exact stats. Let's
Speaker 1: say seventy of comedians do not want to be scared discuss.
Speaker 1: I don't know why that is, but it's true of me.
Speaker 1: I think that's part of the reason why Jordan Peel's
Speaker 1: get Out was so effective was that it's kind of
Speaker 1: a mix of like horror, satire, comedy. It's sort of
Speaker 1: hybrids all of these things, and that's like a genre
Speaker 1: I can get down with. But like when it's just
Speaker 1: sort of relentless, like Gore and all this stuff, I'm like,
Speaker 1: I can't. I just can't do it. I just can't
Speaker 1: do it. I don't know what is the film that
Speaker 1: most people don't like. The critics did not like it.
Speaker 1: It is not acclaimed, but you love it. Well. It's
Speaker 1: funny because I referenced this earlier and it's not that
Speaker 1: people didn't like it, but I think it was overlooked,
Speaker 1: which is and my friend Jorma Tacone's movie pop Star
Speaker 1: Never Stopped, Never Stopping, it was overlooked. It was one
Speaker 1: of those movies where when I saw it, and I
Speaker 1: have a cameo in it, but I'm like, when I
Speaker 1: saw it in the theater, I don't think I've ever
Speaker 1: laughed that hard in the movie theater. It's if people
Speaker 1: don't know it. It's like a movie where Andy Samberg
Speaker 1: basically play is kind of like a Justin Bieber style
Speaker 1: pop star, like an international pop star, but they basically
Speaker 1: take it in this kind of like every scene is
Speaker 1: almost like to the level of like a only island
Speaker 1: like sketch, and but then it's but it's causal and
Speaker 1: it moves, and it like has great songs and they're catchy,
Speaker 1: and like I just I just think that movie should
Speaker 1: be like in the cannon of great comedies. I agree.
Speaker 1: I remember being surprised that, yeah, it felt like this
Speaker 1: is gonna be fucking huge, this film, and then and
Speaker 1: then it was I've belt it's great. Yeah, that's a
Speaker 1: good shout. What is on the other side of things?
Speaker 1: A film that you used to love, you loved it,
Speaker 1: but you voiced it recently and you go, oh, no,
Speaker 1: I don't like this anymore for whatever reason that might
Speaker 1: be my particular Well, this is um, here's my record.
Speaker 1: Here's my advice to any couples, married couples or romantic
Speaker 1: couples is, don't force your significant other to watch a
Speaker 1: movie that you have not seen since your childhood and
Speaker 1: don't remember that well and preface it with the phrase,
Speaker 1: this is who I am. I watched what my wife
Speaker 1: and I watched the film Top Gun, and I had forgotten.
Speaker 1: It is a homoerotic fighters jet film with uh no
Speaker 1: plot to speak of, nor steaks, uh nor humor, nor
Speaker 1: I mean really anything. I mean, this film just simply
Speaker 1: does not hold up. And there's a scene where there's
Speaker 1: a scene where they're playing beach volleyball and they're like
Speaker 1: shirtless and oiled up. It's like Tom Cruise, Val Kilmer
Speaker 1: all these other guys and they're oiled up, and you know,
Speaker 1: and and and and playing you know, and and and
Speaker 1: my wife Jen looks at me, she goes, is this
Speaker 1: the movie? That's who you are? And uh? And I
Speaker 1: just had to be like, yeah, this is who I am.
Speaker 1: That's yeah. That one does not hold up. And which
Speaker 1: one of you? Yeah? Exactly exactly, Yeah, which what are you?
Speaker 1: I'm the guy who spills as coffee as they just
Speaker 1: apply by, I think Kenny McGinnis, I know, that's funny.
Speaker 1: Did you finish the film where we like we did
Speaker 1: we didn't make it? No, that's really funny. What is
Speaker 1: the film that means the most to you? Not necessarily
Speaker 1: the film itself is any good, but the experience you
Speaker 1: had around seeing the film would always make it special
Speaker 1: to you. Mister Mike Pick. Yeah, there's a couple. One
Speaker 1: of them is like Senected in New York. Senected in
Speaker 1: New York is so special to me. One of the
Speaker 1: other time creates it is, right, Yeah, it is, yes,
Speaker 1: So like I think part of it is my wife
Speaker 1: and I have a romance, a romance with film together.
Speaker 1: We have sort of like We love going to the
Speaker 1: theater seeing films together. And I think one of the
Speaker 1: most uforic experiences is when you see something with a
Speaker 1: partner that is far out and it invents its own
Speaker 1: language and you both get it at the same time
Speaker 1: in the same way. Yeah, And so like a few
Speaker 1: a few films over the years we've had that with
Speaker 1: where like do you remember Margaret? Do you ever see Margaret?
Speaker 1: Is like that, It's like three hours long. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's like totally strange, but it was beautiful and really
Speaker 1: well done. And Senected in New York is just like
Speaker 1: one of those movies where the filmmaker is so committed
Speaker 1: to taking everything you hold to be true and they
Speaker 1: split it apart one by one such that sort of
Speaker 1: you can't love the film like that. You have to
Speaker 1: hate the film, but you hate it in a way
Speaker 1: that you love it and it's so strange. I mean,
Speaker 1: what are your feelings about about Senectity. I mean, I
Speaker 1: think it's it's amazing. It's amazing, and it makes sense
Speaker 1: to me on it. It's so in the same way
Speaker 1: like I really love Magnolia senect I believe that what
Speaker 1: happened in Big Magnolia the legend I believe is that
Speaker 1: Pete Anderson had made Boogie Nights and it was a
Speaker 1: big hit, and I think it was Francis for Coppola.
Speaker 1: Someone said to him, you have this one window where
Speaker 1: the film you make next make they will make anything
Speaker 1: you want to make next. So if you want to,
Speaker 1: if you've got this weird thing, this long thing, this
Speaker 1: mad thing, that's the film you should do next. And
Speaker 1: he made Magnolia, which I think is and SENECTI in
Speaker 1: New York has that similar feeling of like this is
Speaker 1: the one, Like this is he's going all in and
Speaker 1: it's a huge gamble because you think Charlie Carfman was
Speaker 1: able to do it because of the Jim Carrey movie. Yes,
Speaker 1: I think, I think because I think because of that.
Speaker 1: I mean, I don't, I don't know, but Sunshine, I'm sorry, Sunshine. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but it feels like he's gone, this is the one.
Speaker 1: And it's so ambitious and there's no way it's It
Speaker 1: is not the most accessible film. I totally understand people
Speaker 1: go and fuck this. Yeah, it's it's like hard, it's hard.
Speaker 1: It also has a kind of logic to it that's
Speaker 1: that completely makes sense to me. And and it's all
Speaker 1: the things we talked about with Don't Think Twice and
Speaker 1: Inside the End of Days, it's about it's about death,
Speaker 1: and it's about not living your life, and it's about
Speaker 1: making something in about the never letting go of it
Speaker 1: and what is it for him? And yet there's also
Speaker 1: like really funny stuff. That women's house is on fire
Speaker 1: the whole time she goes to this estate agent takes
Speaker 1: around the houses. He said, do you have any questions?
Speaker 1: As he says, I'm slightly worried about the fire, and
Speaker 1: it just but it sort of makes sense you yes, yes, uh.
Speaker 1: And this this the world is sort of apocalyptic just
Speaker 1: in the background of shots. And this play that's getting
Speaker 1: bigger and bigger and it's been going on for seventeen
Speaker 1: years and we're still not finished. It's just brilliant. It's brilliant. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And then his other movie is so good to the
Speaker 1: animated movie on Amalisa. Yeah, I love that samee. It's
Speaker 1: similarly like completely shouldn't work Nomlisa, Like I don't know,
Speaker 1: it's like a very unlikable protagonist. Yeah, it's animated. It's
Speaker 1: very dramatic animated movie like it's it's also got one
Speaker 1: of the best sex scenes of all time and one
Speaker 1: of the most realistic old Oh my gosh, yes, it's
Speaker 1: amazing that stops sincerely having a kind of awkward first set. Yeah,
Speaker 1: incredible bit of work. Wow. Yeah. Charlie Carfin Charlie Carflin's him.
Speaker 1: His movies are incredible, I think, yeah. And there's just
Speaker 1: so many layers going on in that film, and I
Speaker 1: don't think, like I say, I can totally get people
Speaker 1: going like, oh, this is not for me, but I go,
Speaker 1: this is a proper like work of art. He's gone,
Speaker 1: this is the fucking thing. And it's that arguably, it's everything.
Speaker 1: This is a film about living, dying, fear of dying,
Speaker 1: fear of life, up, making stuff. What is it for love?
Speaker 1: Relating everything, It's all this giant, fucking beast of a film.
Speaker 1: Yeah it yeah, same, Okay, what is the film that
Speaker 1: you must relate to? My perticly, I think Sideways. Great answer, great,
Speaker 1: great answer. Tell me my wife and I often quote
Speaker 1: a line from Sideways, and it's Thomas Hayden Church's character
Speaker 1: says to Paul Giomonti's character, he goes miles you understand
Speaker 1: literature and movies and wine, but you don't understand my plight,
Speaker 1: and I feel like it is. It is one of
Speaker 1: the best pieces of art I've ever seen about the
Speaker 1: universal feeling of feeling misunderstood because this character, Thomas Hayden
Speaker 1: Church character, I don't relate to him. I don't relate
Speaker 1: to the Paul Giomadi character. I don't relate to either
Speaker 1: of them really, but I understand that this time, this
Speaker 1: Thomas Hayden Church character feels shame because he just doesn't
Speaker 1: feel understood. And I think it's it's capturing this thing
Speaker 1: that like it's Alexander Payne, who's movies I love, And
Speaker 1: I think Alexander Paine is often really good at capturing
Speaker 1: a thing that people aren't really making movies about. Absolutely,
Speaker 1: but yeah, which is like a it's like a small thing.
Speaker 1: It's like it's like he's not making a movie about
Speaker 1: a war, he's making a movie about like sometimes we
Speaker 1: feel misunderstood. Yeah, yeah, yeah, sometimes things as set yeah,
Speaker 1: and then but don't Think twice. It's then that's of
Speaker 1: course why I make the movies that I make. It's like,
Speaker 1: don't think twice is about a really simple idea. Sometimes
Speaker 1: it doesn't work out. Sometimes your little improv group dream
Speaker 1: doesn't work out? What monster? What a monster? Well, you
Speaker 1: know Ira Glass, who produced Don't Think Twice and is
Speaker 1: the host, hosting producer of This American Life, etc. That
Speaker 1: was the reason he signed on to produce Don't Think Twice.
Speaker 1: Is that precise thing is He was like, I don't
Speaker 1: think there's enough movies about failure. Yeah, here we go,
Speaker 1: here we go. What's the sexiest fail we say? It's
Speaker 1: so hard to say because I think sex is one
Speaker 1: of those things that in films done poorly so often, right, like,
Speaker 1: and I think the reason is that you can't really
Speaker 1: film people having sex, and so like I agree to disagreement. No, no,
Speaker 1: we should break that open. But like for like, let
Speaker 1: me just say, I'll say my thesis and then we
Speaker 1: can break it open. But like, if you want to,
Speaker 1: if you want to show someone skydiving, you can show
Speaker 1: someone skydiving. You can have them skydive. You can film
Speaker 1: pieces of that and cut it together with sex. It's like,
Speaker 1: I don't know, like the closest I've seen to it
Speaker 1: feeling like sex in my memory is Blue Valentine. Oh okay, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: where where I'm like, oh god, it's so awkward and
Speaker 1: it's so like unattractive. But like, this is the great
Speaker 1: trick of movies. When I think they do it well,
Speaker 1: is it's Ryan Gosling and Michelle Williams, the most attractive
Speaker 1: people on the face of the earth, and they're all
Speaker 1: dressed down. You know. It's like, that's the great trick
Speaker 1: of movies, is like, let's dress these attractive people to
Speaker 1: look like us, and then people are watching, they're like,
Speaker 1: they're just like me. They're nothing like you. They are
Speaker 1: not you look nothing like these people. They're really really
Speaker 1: really really really fit. They're just wearing Yeah, yeah, they're
Speaker 1: just wearing denim. Way, so why are you saying you can't.
Speaker 1: I mean, look, you're right. There have been instances of
Speaker 1: people having sex, like in that one movie they had sex,
Speaker 1: like Chloe Savigner and like Brown Bunny had sex, right,
Speaker 1: I think, yeah, yeah, And there's at Rylan's film called
Speaker 1: Adultery or something. Oh, really it's happened. This happened. It's
Speaker 1: done nine songs that really happening. Really, yeah, yeah, it happens.
Speaker 1: I don't know if it's I think it's against the
Speaker 1: guild rules, but I think it well, don't you think
Speaker 1: wouldn't you guess? I don't know. I don't know, I
Speaker 1: would guess. But you know what's funny is this This
Speaker 1: is maybe controversial pick because it's so mainstream. I thought,
Speaker 1: like I thought Jerry McGuire did a pretty good job
Speaker 1: of feeling like like sex romance that's happening, similarly, like
Speaker 1: to like impossibly attractive people who are dressed down to
Speaker 1: be like they're just like us, they're nothing like you.
Speaker 1: That's a nice sense that it doesn't come up in
Speaker 1: that category. There's a subcategory. I don't know where you're
Speaker 1: going to go with this or if you're even comfortable
Speaker 1: with it. Troubling bion is worrying. Why dones a filmy
Speaker 1: found I think this is I had to look this
Speaker 1: up to see what how inappropriate or appropriate this was.
Speaker 1: I think this was for me it was Beetlejuice. This
Speaker 1: is nineteen eighty eight. So just to be clear, I
Speaker 1: was ten years old and when Oona Ryder I think
Speaker 1: was fifteen, like sixteen, seventeen, I don't know. She was
Speaker 1: a teen tw teenage, so she's older than me when
Speaker 1: I saw the film, So I think I'm okay. I
Speaker 1: haven't recently watched it and been rat but but like
Speaker 1: I just remember having like sort of like adolescent sort
Speaker 1: of like this is sexy kind of thing. But I
Speaker 1: don't even I don't remember the film. It's a great film.
Speaker 1: Did they have sex? No, No, I don't think so. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but it has like Abe has like a vibe to
Speaker 1: it that's sort of like, I don't know, it has
Speaker 1: an exciting vibe to it, like it feels like, I
Speaker 1: don't know, it feels like they're even if there isn't sex,
Speaker 1: and it feels like there could be sex in it
Speaker 1: maybe one way. Yeah, yeah, yeah, Okay, that's good. What
Speaker 1: is it objectively the greatest film? Since obviously there's no
Speaker 1: such thing as objective the objective greatest hope, I'm just
Speaker 1: gonna throw in a non sequitor. No one will think
Speaker 1: is the best movie of all time, but I will
Speaker 1: just make a case for it, which is Children of Men.
Speaker 1: You can have it, sir, you can have Children of Men.
Speaker 1: It is it could absolutely objectively be one of the greatest.
Speaker 1: The reason why I think that is is that it
Speaker 1: is a I think it's a brilliant example of practical
Speaker 1: camera work and stunts that are not cgi but achieve
Speaker 1: the magic of film at its best, to achieve a
Speaker 1: high concept in service of real old characters going through
Speaker 1: realistic but insane circumstances. Yeah. The sequence in the car,
Speaker 1: yeahs in the car is one of the greatest things
Speaker 1: I've ever seen in film. Yeah, the motor, the motor,
Speaker 1: the motorcycle thing, and it's all real. And there's a
Speaker 1: video that you can watch on YouTube of the creation.
Speaker 1: But behind the scenes of making that scene, it is unbelievable. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Anything that's not real is the Ping Pong Book. And
Speaker 1: you're like, that's the bit that's not real. Oh right, right,
Speaker 1: him spitting the ping Pongo and believe it says Yeah,
Speaker 1: but you're like, all the things that are not real,
Speaker 1: it was only the Ping Pong Book. Incredible. I just
Speaker 1: think like Children of Men is. I mean, look, it's
Speaker 1: it's not an underrated film. People get it's a great film.
Speaker 1: But I don't think sometimes people grasp with those types
Speaker 1: of genres like sci fi sort of dystopian future type films.
Speaker 1: I think they get put into a genre like that's
Speaker 1: that genre. But actually, to me, that movie transcends genre
Speaker 1: and it's funny. Michael Caine is funny in that movie. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's funny, it's weird. Uh, it's about being alive and
Speaker 1: why we even want to be alive. It's about refugees,
Speaker 1: it's about the future and where the future could go.
Speaker 1: And it's like and it has it has a tinge
Speaker 1: of hope at the end, which is very hard to
Speaker 1: pull off. Yeah, me to get down so you can
Speaker 1: have it at ten points, I say, that's the best
Speaker 1: time you've got and all. And also any of any
Speaker 1: of Chaplain's films, because I think he's the greatest movie
Speaker 1: start all time. Love. I love that any of his films, literally,
Speaker 1: any of his films, he will never I believe he
Speaker 1: will never be matched as a performer. And here's here's
Speaker 1: why I think he'll never be matched. I don't think
Speaker 1: that ethically we could create another Charlie Chaplain because he
Speaker 1: was basically like a like a child actor who was
Speaker 1: like traveling the country, like you might know this better
Speaker 1: than me, but like with his parents, they were like traveling,
Speaker 1: like it was like circus vaudeville kind of thing. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and he was like performing when he was like five,
Speaker 1: I think, yeah. And then like I mean, he's kind
Speaker 1: of like the Tiger Woods of movies. Well, and he
Speaker 1: does the stuff he does. You know, the end of
Speaker 1: City Lights is all the things we talk about. It
Speaker 1: is so moving, it's such a funny film, and then
Speaker 1: the end it's just this beautiful. It's just you're right,
Speaker 1: the man's good. Yeah. What is the film that you
Speaker 1: could or have? What's the most Ivan Ivan? Again? So
Speaker 1: I watched a lot of no bomback films repeatedly, like
Speaker 1: I've watched Squid, Squid in the Whale repeatedly, film, I've
Speaker 1: watched Francis Ha repeatedly, Right, I will. I like the
Speaker 1: repetition of movies that have a blend of like lovely cinematography, humor, music,
Speaker 1: and dramatic tension. So so like, for example, like It's
Speaker 1: My Wife and I like always quote this line and
Speaker 1: Squid in the Whale where if I don't know if
Speaker 1: you know the film, but it's like it's yeah, it's
Speaker 1: like they're they're in these two characters, Laura Lenny's character
Speaker 1: and Jeff Daniel's character in the middle of a divorce,
Speaker 1: and the tension is so palpable between them, and the
Speaker 1: kids always quote things that the parents say, which is
Speaker 1: a reflection on I mean, it's almost making me choke
Speaker 1: up talking about it because it's so My parents aren't divorced,
Speaker 1: but it's like so upsetting to me. Yeah, but there's
Speaker 1: there's this thing where the Jeff Daniels character says, you know,
Speaker 1: we're moving to such and such a neighborhood and it's
Speaker 1: the filet of the neighborhood. And it's such an overcompensation.
Speaker 1: That's so sad for this man to say, that's that
Speaker 1: where they're living is the filet of the neighborhood. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's just the use of language is so absurd and
Speaker 1: believe but believable. And then his son repeats it and
Speaker 1: he goes, you know, dad says, it's the flat of
Speaker 1: the neighborhood. And you're just like, oh, just like the
Speaker 1: the repetition by the child of the sad thing that
Speaker 1: the sad dad said, you're repeating the sad things. Don't
Speaker 1: repeat the sad thing. Just judge the sad things silently
Speaker 1: and then let it go. But no, it's worse than that.
Speaker 1: They just keep it. So Janet I always say, you know,
Speaker 1: we'll talk about our apartment, will go it's the flay
Speaker 1: of the neighborhood. Like that's great, let's not dwell in this.
Speaker 1: But what's the worst film you've ever seen? I won't
Speaker 1: name one, good man, I won't name one, but I
Speaker 1: will I'll describe a type of movie that I despise.
Speaker 1: People know what this is, they understand what this is
Speaker 1: when they see it, I hope, the type of movie
Speaker 1: where it feels like it is engineered by a studio
Speaker 1: and it has no director to speak of, no writer
Speaker 1: to speak of. It's just about sort of a nebulous concept,
Speaker 1: for example, a holiday, and it has a bunch of stars,
Speaker 1: and then it's called the holiday name and you just
Speaker 1: go why you're wired about your birthday? Birthday? Birthday? Boy? Yes, exactly, OK.
Speaker 1: And it's like and it's like, I just feel like,
Speaker 1: why are you doing this? Why are it like we
Speaker 1: go home spend don't don't work in the movie business. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's too hard to make make money. Don't don't you about.
Speaker 1: I hate those movies, I really because I think they
Speaker 1: give movies a bad name. Yeah, yeah, you can, I
Speaker 1: agree completely. You in comedy, you're very funny. What's laugh device?
Speaker 1: The movie that made me laugh most recently is Money
Speaker 1: Pits Tom Hanks film Love Money Pit, Love Money Pit,
Speaker 1: Money Pit, is, yeah, magnificent funny fit is It captures
Speaker 1: a thing about about being in a relationship and trying
Speaker 1: and failing to fix something together and having this eternal
Speaker 1: optimism that it will work even though it won't work,
Speaker 1: and it fails again and again again. My wife I
Speaker 1: was we rewatched it recently because I watched as a
Speaker 1: kid when it came out, probably the eighties, and then
Speaker 1: we rewatched it recently and I was crying, laughing such
Speaker 1: that Jen pulled out a phone and videoed me crying
Speaker 1: laughing at the same time, just because you'd never seen
Speaker 1: me laugh like that before. I loved that, loved that.
Speaker 1: It's a great film. Mike, were big lat You've been
Speaker 1: more of a pleasure than even I expected expected you
Speaker 1: to be a big pleasure. However, when you were on
Speaker 1: Hollo with your family, You're in Hawaii and you were
Speaker 1: on the beach and you'd been goofing around quiet. Let's
Speaker 1: be honest, you'd been goofing and they were like Daddy's funny.
Speaker 1: Everyone was having fun. And you walked by a tree
Speaker 1: you actually went to urinate is where you were heading
Speaker 1: towards the trees, and you a coconut fell up the
Speaker 1: tree and hit you in the head and killed you instantly,
Speaker 1: and your family laughed so hard. Daddy's done a bit.
Speaker 1: He's done a bit of a coconut. And then you
Speaker 1: didn't get up, and they were like, his commitment to
Speaker 1: bits is legendary. And then they went for dinner. You
Speaker 1: didn't join them, and then they went for breakfast. They
Speaker 1: slept and they're like, he's really committed to this bit.
Speaker 1: And the next morning they came back and then they
Speaker 1: were like, oh shit. And I was walking around with
Speaker 1: the coffin, you know what I'm like, and I was like,
Speaker 1: what have you seen, Mike, And they said, yeah, I
Speaker 1: think he was doing bits, coconut bits. And I go
Speaker 1: down to the beach. You've been pecked to death as
Speaker 1: well by pelicans, which I didn't even know we're in Hawaii,
Speaker 1: but they were there. Pelicans are easing you. Your family. Listen, listen,
Speaker 1: I'll take care of this. I get your body and
Speaker 1: there's fucking bits of bird, there's bits of palm tree,
Speaker 1: there's bits of coconut. By the way, it smells delicious,
Speaker 1: very love the smell. Anyway, I get your your wife,
Speaker 1: I get Jeannoisy. Can you help me just chop up
Speaker 1: the body and I give her a machette and we
Speaker 1: start chopping you up into bits so we can fit
Speaker 1: you in the coffee, get all the bits in that.
Speaker 1: She was very happy to do it. By the way
Speaker 1: we put you in the coffee. It's absolutely full in
Speaker 1: the coffin. It's rammed. There's only enough room in this
Speaker 1: coffin for me to slide one DVD into the side
Speaker 1: with you to take across to the other side. And
Speaker 1: on the other side. It's night every night, one night,
Speaker 1: it's one night. Which film are you taking? Decided that
Speaker 1: the people of heaven missed them big there. I thought
Speaker 1: about this quite a bit, and I think it's um
Speaker 1: because I don't know precisely what heaven will be and
Speaker 1: what the people in Heaven's context will be for being there.
Speaker 1: I thought, okay, what's a movie that is just about
Speaker 1: being alive and that you do not need to understand
Speaker 1: the location and context of these people to relate to
Speaker 1: the feelings of the people. The thing I thought it
Speaker 1: was a what's eating Gilbert Grape? Great idea? Do you
Speaker 1: do you remember it? Yeah? Do you remember it? So? So,
Speaker 1: What's eating Gilbert Grape? Is this sort of quaint film
Speaker 1: from I think the nineteen nineties where Johnny Depp and
Speaker 1: I think Juliette Lewis play like they play romantic opposites,
Speaker 1: and it's you know, it's about like a family that
Speaker 1: comes through town and they strike up some friendships, and
Speaker 1: it's and the mother is sort of morbidly obese, and
Speaker 1: and it's very human. I think that the reason I
Speaker 1: thought of it is I have nothing in common with
Speaker 1: any of the characters. I don't know what it's like
Speaker 1: to live in the middle of nowhere and you know,
Speaker 1: travel with a t in a trailer and with your family.
Speaker 1: I don't know what it's like for my mother to
Speaker 1: have this extremely serious health condition, etc. And yet I
Speaker 1: found myself just crying and crying through this movie and
Speaker 1: completely relating to the human experience of it. And I thought,
Speaker 1: that's a good that's a good movie to explain what
Speaker 1: being alive is like. You're very very good, mister, Thank you,
Speaker 1: thank you very much for doing this. Is is there
Speaker 1: anything you would tell people to look out for to
Speaker 1: what's Oh gosh, so the old man in the pool
Speaker 1: I'm going to bring to the Leicester Square Theater in June.
Speaker 1: I did the last show there, it's called The New One,
Speaker 1: and um it's on it was on Broadway and then
Speaker 1: it was um it's on Netflix. Now it's on you know,
Speaker 1: and then my especial before that, it is called Thank
Speaker 1: God for Jokes. I think I did that at the
Speaker 1: Leicser Square too. Actually, yeah, I like that place a lot.
Speaker 1: Actually I love that. I mean the last time I
Speaker 1: was there, I was I was trading off spots with
Speaker 1: like Stewart Lee, who's incredible, and like, you know, he
Speaker 1: was doing a different time slot than me, and he's great,
Speaker 1: and I just love I love British comics. I love
Speaker 1: Daniel Kittson, you know, I love Jimmy Carr, like I
Speaker 1: I Sarah Milliken, uh Nish Kumar, Ashley b like these
Speaker 1: are people who, like I really admire and I want
Speaker 1: to I want to visit all parts of Britain with
Speaker 1: more regularity because I whenever I'm there, I enjoy it
Speaker 1: so much. So that's all i'd say about that. If
Speaker 1: you if you want to come to the show, come
Speaker 1: see it. I'm gonna give him. I'm gonna give it
Speaker 1: my all, and I'm very proud of the show. This
Speaker 1: is very exciting, but the big thing. You've been wonderful.
Speaker 1: Thank you for your time for doing this. I appreciate you,
Speaker 1: and I hope you have a wonderful death. Good night.
Speaker 1: Thank you. So that was episode one hundred and eighty three.
Speaker 1: Head over to patreon dot com Forward slash break Old
Speaker 1: Scene for the extra twenty minutes of chat, secrets and
Speaker 1: videos with Mike. Go to Apple Podcast, give us a
Speaker 1: five star rating and write about the film that means
Speaker 1: the most to you and why I don't care what
Speaker 1: you think of the podcast. I care about the films
Speaker 1: you love. It's very much appreciated and it helps everything else.
Speaker 1: Thank you, Thank you for listening. Thank you so much
Speaker 1: to Mike for doing the show. Thanks for previous Piven
Speaker 1: the distraction Pieces of Network. Thanks to Buddy Peace for
Speaker 1: producing it, Thanks to ACAS for hosting it. Thanks to
Speaker 1: Adam Richardson for the graphics. At least allow him for
Speaker 1: the photography. Come to me next week for another brilliant guest.
Speaker 1: But in the meantime, that is it for now. So
Speaker 1: have a lovely week and please, more than ever, be
Speaker 1: excellent to each other. That was Uncrats Across Uncross