Speaker 1: Welcome to Movie Crush, a production of I Heart Radio.
Speaker 1: Hey everybody, and welcome to Movie Crush. Charles W Chuck
Speaker 1: Bryant here on Friday for an interview, A Dish and
Speaker 1: you guys. I got to sit down with my old
Speaker 1: friend Wyatt Sinac. It's been a long time since White
Speaker 1: and I have seen each other. Actually we met boy
Speaker 1: many years ago and actually kind of remind why of
Speaker 1: this story. He's he was the first kind of famous
Speaker 1: entertainment person that I became pals with way back when
Speaker 1: when he shared stuff you should know with John Hodgman
Speaker 1: and said you might like is John when they were
Speaker 1: working on the Daily Show together, and John got in
Speaker 1: touch with Josh and I and said, let's all go
Speaker 1: to lunch next time he come to New York. We
Speaker 1: went to New York and Josh and I and uh,
Speaker 1: John and Whyatt all had lunch together. And it was
Speaker 1: a very big deal to us. And I told why
Speaker 1: It about this and what that meant to me. Um,
Speaker 1: kind of that that we felt like we had arrived
Speaker 1: a little bit. And UM, I don't think why It
Speaker 1: had any idea that that meant something to us. So
Speaker 1: it was kind of funny to talk about. But we've
Speaker 1: seen each other off on on over the years and
Speaker 1: done some pretty fun stuff together, but it's been a minute,
Speaker 1: so it was great to get why it in here.
Speaker 1: He was Originally he was one of the first guests
Speaker 1: I had on my last way back when, UM, but
Speaker 1: it was always hard to kind of track him down.
Speaker 1: But here we are, three years in, I finally get
Speaker 1: whyatt in here. We had a really long, great conversation
Speaker 1: about his awesome underseeing show on HBO Problem Areas and
Speaker 1: what he was trying to do there. We really got
Speaker 1: into it with Problem Areas. We talked a little bit
Speaker 1: about King of the Hill when he was a writer
Speaker 1: for that uh TV show, which was kind of cool
Speaker 1: because I somehow had never talked to White about King
Speaker 1: of the Hill. And we eventually got around to Blazing
Speaker 1: Saddles after an hour plus of great conversation. So Blazing
Speaker 1: Saddles was his pick one of the great comedies of
Speaker 1: all time, one of the great subversive comedies of all
Speaker 1: time as well, and we talk a lot about that
Speaker 1: in the role that it played back then and can
Speaker 1: still play today as far as subverting racism in some
Speaker 1: very fun and interesting ways. So it was a great conversation.
Speaker 1: I really enjoyed it. And here we go with the
Speaker 1: wonderful and charming and funny whyatts sanak on blazing saddles?
Speaker 1: How are you doing? I'm all right, yeah, I'm still
Speaker 1: getting used to this whole the world now exists on laptops.
Speaker 1: I said, things are about to be fine, right as
Speaker 1: your adjusting hopefully. I uh, yeah. I got the Johnson
Speaker 1: and Johnson vaccine, which, yeah, has been an interesting experience
Speaker 1: because the day I got it was the day that
Speaker 1: they recalled fifteen million doses because of the like batch problem,
Speaker 1: and then um, and then yesterday obviously there was the
Speaker 1: news of six people getting blood clots. So I really
Speaker 1: feel like, in terms of vaccines, I could have chosen.
Speaker 1: I'm really getting all the all the things that would
Speaker 1: have me worried. I'm they're getting front loaded, right, So yeah,
Speaker 1: let's get Did you have a choice, Actually I didn't.
Speaker 1: It was a strange thing in New York there, like
Speaker 1: there was just one day where the governor decided, on
Speaker 1: like a Tuesday, that he was going to open up
Speaker 1: the vaccine availability to anyone like thirty and older, and
Speaker 1: the week before it had been fifty and older. And
Speaker 1: as you know, I'm I'm thirty and a half and
Speaker 1: I so as soon as he made that announcement, I
Speaker 1: just happened to see it and I immediately called my
Speaker 1: local pharmacy and they were like, sure, come in on Friday,
Speaker 1: and uh so I was just like, I it wasn't
Speaker 1: even a thing of oh, let me go and check
Speaker 1: whatever the website. I was just like, no, just call
Speaker 1: the pharmacy and texted everybody I knew, like as though
Speaker 1: there were some sort of gold rush, and just like
Speaker 1: call your pharmus, say and so h yeah. So that
Speaker 1: was that was how I wound up doing it. But
Speaker 1: I thought I was going to get Maderna. That's what
Speaker 1: I got, yeah, And so it was a little disappointed.
Speaker 1: And when I got there, because everyone I know has
Speaker 1: gotten Maderna. And it seemed like even when I would
Speaker 1: go on social media and I see on Instagram everyone
Speaker 1: be posting photos of their vaccine cards like Maderna, and
Speaker 1: so Maderna seemed like, you know, it was the the
Speaker 1: jet kids of of of vaccines, like everyone's flying Jet
Speaker 1: Blue to Cancoon. Johnson and Johnson started to feel more
Speaker 1: and more like spirit airlines. Right, I think most of
Speaker 1: my friends got viser so far, and I'm kind of
Speaker 1: an outlier. Oh wow, that's interesting. So maybe it's just
Speaker 1: kind of where you are and what they've got in
Speaker 1: your area. I was gonna say, yeah, is that are
Speaker 1: those regional friends or is that across the country. I
Speaker 1: think most of my friends here in Atlanta got viser.
Speaker 1: I feel like, and and my wife family and I
Speaker 1: got MODERNA And I don't know anyone here that got
Speaker 1: Johnson and Johnson, so wow, who knows. Yeah, No, it's
Speaker 1: a it's a very it's an interesting it's an interesting thing,
Speaker 1: and it's I hope that it makes people more curious
Speaker 1: about like medicine and like science in general. But like
Speaker 1: I I just know for myself. I think when I
Speaker 1: was starting to feel a little bit of that like
Speaker 1: sort of fear of missing out that I somehow got
Speaker 1: the the you know, grocery store brand vaccine, I started
Speaker 1: looking up the different things on the CDC as far
Speaker 1: as like not even the efficacy of the vaccine, but
Speaker 1: just who it got tested on, how many people it
Speaker 1: tested on, and in some in some ways I start
Speaker 1: to feel a little more comfortable with the Johnson Johnson
Speaker 1: vaccine because even the demographics of people that they had
Speaker 1: done trials on was more diverse than than it was
Speaker 1: for Maderna and Fiser, and that I when we were
Speaker 1: making problem areas, we've done a thing about just the
Speaker 1: way medicines get tested and how there more often than
Speaker 1: not tested, primarily tested and engineered primarily for white men
Speaker 1: first and then everyone else. And so that's why you
Speaker 1: tend to see women continually have worse side effects for
Speaker 1: any medicine, because they're very rarely tested with them in mind. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I saw that episode. Well, thank you. Let's uh yeah,
Speaker 1: I can't I can't really repeat any stats to you
Speaker 1: because it's been a long time. But it was great, man,
Speaker 1: I mean that was on my us to talk about anyway,
Speaker 1: and uh, it was so good man, it was really great.
Speaker 1: I mean I love the I love the way it
Speaker 1: was styled, and just the the intro and the set
Speaker 1: and how you did that little animated pieces, and it
Speaker 1: just felt like like people from sort of our generation. Um,
Speaker 1: it felt it kind of was like what I always
Speaker 1: hoped a stuff you should know show was going to
Speaker 1: be like a sort of electric company for adults, and
Speaker 1: we you know, we missed the mark. But you nailed it. Man.
Speaker 1: I thought it was good how you how you jumped
Speaker 1: around between a lot of issues. But in that season one,
Speaker 1: you know, how you had the police thread and you
Speaker 1: handled that in a way that I just thought was
Speaker 1: so thoughtful and um reasonable, and it was the kind
Speaker 1: of thing I wanted people who needed to see that
Speaker 1: to see it, because I was like, here's a guy
Speaker 1: that's like I think could really get through with the
Speaker 1: way you were approaching it and um, you know how
Speaker 1: it is though, I mean, unfortunately the people that are
Speaker 1: watching you probably aren't the people that need to be
Speaker 1: seeing that in the first place. True, but you you
Speaker 1: never know. I mean, I feel like there's a there's
Speaker 1: the interesting thing, and I feel I I don't think
Speaker 1: that our show did it the best, but I feel
Speaker 1: like we maybe get credit for at least starting a
Speaker 1: conversation on it, or bringing not starting a conversation, but
Speaker 1: bringing a conversation to television. And that was the episode
Speaker 1: around police abolition. And it's interesting now is people have
Speaker 1: that conversation more and more. I think what I appreciated
Speaker 1: about the show was the idea that Okay, yeah, we
Speaker 1: can talk about these things, and maybe maybe most of
Speaker 1: the audience will be the echo chamber. But even in
Speaker 1: the echo chamber, they may not be aware of something
Speaker 1: like police abolition or aware of something like a civilian
Speaker 1: complaint review board. And if they're not, perhaps if they
Speaker 1: have that to add to their vocabulary, they can start saying, Hey,
Speaker 1: why doesn't our city have this thing, Why don't we
Speaker 1: have social workers that go out with police officers and
Speaker 1: partner and let's redefine safety as something like that that
Speaker 1: can go hand in hand um with actual like care
Speaker 1: and compassion approaches and so I so in that way,
Speaker 1: and then yeah, the hope outside the echo chamber was
Speaker 1: that you did have those people who were like, yeah,
Speaker 1: I'll be honest, I don't believe in anything you stand for,
Speaker 1: but you've made me think. And when we made the
Speaker 1: show are I the building that we made the show in,
Speaker 1: we were on the fifth floor, and on the fourth
Speaker 1: floor was actually the police union, the NYPDS, UH like
Speaker 1: the line Officers union, and so there was very little interaction.
Speaker 1: But like the head of the New York Police Union
Speaker 1: is really like a very fiery troll who just like
Speaker 1: goes on Fox News all the time and it's just
Speaker 1: really a ship ster um and I always was like,
Speaker 1: oh am I going to run into this guy on
Speaker 1: the elevator and never did. But one of the security
Speaker 1: guys who worked the building was like a longtime police officer,
Speaker 1: and he would sometimes stop me in the elevator where
Speaker 1: it was just like the two of us, and I'd
Speaker 1: be like, I watched your show and a part of
Speaker 1: me was just like, are you about to stop this
Speaker 1: elevator and hit me or you know, like hit me
Speaker 1: about the ease with a telephone book and he'd be like, yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, I didn't agree with all of it, but
Speaker 1: I like what you're doing and yeah, like you're making
Speaker 1: some good points there, and it was just kind of like, Okay, yeah,
Speaker 1: you're not the person that I would have expected to
Speaker 1: engage in this conversation. And I feel like you you
Speaker 1: you know, but I feel like I'm I'm maybe cracking
Speaker 1: through the the armor there a little bit. And totally, man,
Speaker 1: I mean you could tell that you just took such
Speaker 1: great care and it was so thoughtful and how you
Speaker 1: tried to source conversations with different kinds of people and
Speaker 1: it wasn't just the familiar talking points and let's hear
Speaker 1: only from kind of one side. Like you were. You
Speaker 1: were bringing in people and having like real conversations around it,
Speaker 1: and I think, I mean, that's the only way to
Speaker 1: do it if you're gonna make any headway. So I
Speaker 1: just loved it. And then beyond that, the policing stuff
Speaker 1: just you know, it was just you had stuff about
Speaker 1: you know, mosquitoes and space traveling and dogs eating chicken bones,
Speaker 1: and it was just I just love the variety of
Speaker 1: But all I thought it was great. How How was
Speaker 1: it working with HBO? Was that cool? Um? It was interesting,
Speaker 1: It was it was. I'm appreciative. But at the same time,
Speaker 1: when I look at the experience, we had to make
Speaker 1: so much with so little, and not just from like
Speaker 1: a budgetary standpoint, but the moment that production officially started,
Speaker 1: we I think started in September of I guess that
Speaker 1: would have been, and they were like, you are premiering
Speaker 1: April of and go and from from starting up from scratch, Yeah,
Speaker 1: from hiring. We had started slowly hiring some people in August,
Speaker 1: but we didn't have a full staff until sometime in September.
Speaker 1: And then in that first season, for every for every
Speaker 1: policing story that we shot, we were only budgeted and
Speaker 1: calendared for two days for each shoot, and so when
Speaker 1: I think about the stories we were able to kind
Speaker 1: of like get into total two days of shooting, it's
Speaker 1: truly a testament to the hard work of everybody at
Speaker 1: the show. And also it's also this unfortunate thing that like, oh,
Speaker 1: we shouldn't have been locked into a like you have
Speaker 1: to premiere April at this time. Really should have given
Speaker 1: us the time as though we were making a documentary
Speaker 1: where it's like, Okay, take the time and take the
Speaker 1: resources to really get it right or get it to
Speaker 1: where you want it to be. Because is I think
Speaker 1: there are certain things when I think about the show,
Speaker 1: and especially that first season, there there were certain story
Speaker 1: things that I wanted to do, but because of the schedule,
Speaker 1: we never had the ability to do. And I think
Speaker 1: about some of those things now where I'm like, oh,
Speaker 1: part of the conversations that we're having right now, I
Speaker 1: wonder if those things would have added to some of
Speaker 1: those conversations, you know, in a better way. Like when
Speaker 1: I think again about like the abolition stuff and just
Speaker 1: the idea of like defunding the police, I remember I'd
Speaker 1: had this hope and thought that by the end of
Speaker 1: the season, I'd wanted to do this thing that by
Speaker 1: the end of the season we would actually start our
Speaker 1: own police force, because I'd start it to learn about
Speaker 1: how certain communities actually created their own police forces. And
Speaker 1: in New York, for example, UH, where we had our offices,
Speaker 1: there was a police force that was created specifically to
Speaker 1: serve that population, which was which is a population that's
Speaker 1: predominantly Asian and Asian American, and so they were able
Speaker 1: to kind of like through the NYPD, there's a way
Speaker 1: in which you can sort of create your own police
Speaker 1: force and you get your own police cars and your
Speaker 1: own officers, and so I and there are also in Brooklyn,
Speaker 1: I believe in the Hasidic community they have a similar thing.
Speaker 1: And so I was kind of I became fascinated with that,
Speaker 1: but thinking about it with this idea of like, well,
Speaker 1: could we do that at and then as a police force,
Speaker 1: could we then also get government funding to get one
Speaker 1: of those UH military m wrap vehicles because they're the
Speaker 1: I believe the I can't remember the exact name of it,
Speaker 1: but there's an office in d C that's whole focus
Speaker 1: is like the office of like Budgetary waste Management or
Speaker 1: it's like the o m B or the Office of
Speaker 1: Budgetary Management or something like that. They have a podcast,
Speaker 1: Um did they really do? But they did a whole
Speaker 1: thing about how they basically set themselves up to get uh,
Speaker 1: military grade equipment from these like horrible kind of like
Speaker 1: tax incentives and things that are created where you know,
Speaker 1: you ask why police departments get like SWAT get these
Speaker 1: huge like military vehicles, It's because they are incentivized through
Speaker 1: these deals that the federal government has given them. And
Speaker 1: so this Office of of Budget Management had done that
Speaker 1: to expose it, and they were like, I think they
Speaker 1: got like a rocket launcher and they and so I
Speaker 1: was like, oh, could we do that? Could we start?
Speaker 1: But in my head I was like, could we start
Speaker 1: our own police force? Could we get an M wrap?
Speaker 1: And then in redefining what policing could be, the idea was,
Speaker 1: could we paint the M wrap into something that seemed
Speaker 1: not aggressive and then it rather than fill it with
Speaker 1: police officers, fill it with social workers, fill it with
Speaker 1: and basically have it as like a mobile kind of
Speaker 1: like emergency response unit. And so if you do need
Speaker 1: the person who has to physically subdue somebody, that person
Speaker 1: is in the car too, but there are just as
Speaker 1: many social workers, mental health experts, you know, they're all
Speaker 1: these like even like E M T s and it's
Speaker 1: and so it's basically like a voltron of like risks
Speaker 1: of response that you could then be like, this is
Speaker 1: what our police force looks like. It's this big vehicle,
Speaker 1: but in it it's like, Okay, we got the call,
Speaker 1: like there's someone in mental distress, and you can be like, okay, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, Rick, you're gonna sit this one out. We
Speaker 1: don't need cops on this one. We're gonna go. We're
Speaker 1: gonna go with Dr Johansen here, who's gonna just kind
Speaker 1: of talk to do some talk therapy. Do you know
Speaker 1: Dave Hill the comedian. Yes, have you seen the stuff
Speaker 1: he's painting where he's taking like Dave, you know, really
Speaker 1: talented at everything, but he's he's now taking like axes
Speaker 1: and stuff and he paints he's really beautiful flowers and
Speaker 1: sunflowers and stuff all over him in these cool patterns
Speaker 1: and it's really gorgeous. And the stormtrooper helmets and axes
Speaker 1: and hatchets and stuff like you could get Dave to
Speaker 1: paint it up with all these beautiful sunflowers. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: just then send the team in exactly and then people
Speaker 1: are like, oh, what's that weird, what's that weird pretty
Speaker 1: tank doing. It's like, no, it's just here to help.
Speaker 1: It's you know, even instead of having cops do those
Speaker 1: weird like viral videos where they shoot baskets with kids
Speaker 1: or whatever right right in the truck, you can also
Speaker 1: just have like some you know, some stuffy, some stuffy
Speaker 1: looking professor type. Their whole thing is like they come
Speaker 1: out and they have a top hat or they you know,
Speaker 1: have a hoop skirt on, and then they go and
Speaker 1: they you know, do some sweet sweet moves on a
Speaker 1: basketball court and they go viral and there a city
Speaker 1: employee and they go viral that way. Oh man, that
Speaker 1: would have been great. Yeah. I could see HBO getting
Speaker 1: down with that too. I'm surprised they didn't. Well, I
Speaker 1: think again, it was the it was the amount of
Speaker 1: time I think we I wished. I wished when we
Speaker 1: had the show that we had that the network maybe
Speaker 1: had a little more faith in us as opposed to
Speaker 1: I think they I feel as though they didn't necessarily
Speaker 1: trust what this show was and what it was going
Speaker 1: to be, and perhaps also didn't trust me, and so
Speaker 1: I think they were very skittish about everything, and I
Speaker 1: think in their head they were like, well, we'll lock
Speaker 1: you to the schedule and thereby like you have to
Speaker 1: deliver something, which the irony being there are plenty of
Speaker 1: people on that network who signed really lucrative deals to
Speaker 1: make things that have never been made, and it's like, oh,
Speaker 1: wait a minute, you paid that person tens of millions
Speaker 1: of dollars to deliver something for you and they never
Speaker 1: did it right, and you're not paying me anywhere near that.
Speaker 1: But I'm the I'm the one who is seen as
Speaker 1: the risk. Yeah. That's a shame too, because usually, and
Speaker 1: I've even heard this with HBO that like, if it's
Speaker 1: a smaller show that they won't give much money to,
Speaker 1: they'll at least leave you alone, you know, And and
Speaker 1: they do that. I think it depends on, you know,
Speaker 1: the executives that you have and the relationship you have
Speaker 1: with those executives, and so I think in that regard, um, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I know people who have great relationships with executives, and
Speaker 1: I know on the West Coast they are really good
Speaker 1: about I just kind of like trusting the creative voices
Speaker 1: and giving them the space and ultimately, you know, you
Speaker 1: do have to earn those things. And I think it
Speaker 1: at at the point at which I had gotten to HBO,
Speaker 1: I had hoped and would have liked to have believed
Speaker 1: that I had earned that at that point, that I
Speaker 1: had made enough stuff that had done well or had
Speaker 1: you know, had had a good critical reception, that I
Speaker 1: had at least earned the respect to kind of like, okay,
Speaker 1: give let's give space to actually make the best thing
Speaker 1: as opposed to trying to, uh you know, kind of
Speaker 1: put as many constraints on this thing, uh and see
Speaker 1: see if they can see if they can spin it
Speaker 1: into something. With season two any different season two. The
Speaker 1: main difference in season to you was when it came
Speaker 1: to shooting all of the education stories. We had four
Speaker 1: days instead of two days. We're able to get a
Speaker 1: couple more days. The challenge, the schedule was still the same.
Speaker 1: We're still kind of locked into a schedule, the challenge
Speaker 1: with both policing and with education as subjects. And this
Speaker 1: again is something where I feel like, unfortunately we were
Speaker 1: kind of between a rock and a hard place them
Speaker 1: It's one thing to say, Okay, I want to I
Speaker 1: want to go talk to people about police brutality. There
Speaker 1: are people who will talk to you about that. If
Speaker 1: you want to talk to people about like the failings
Speaker 1: of a school, their parents and students who will talk
Speaker 1: to you about that. Where you come up against roadblocks
Speaker 1: with police departments and schools and they are incredibly skittish,
Speaker 1: they are they're incredibly guarded, and two crack through that.
Speaker 1: It takes a lot of time and it really impacted
Speaker 1: our abilities to tell stories because we would have situations
Speaker 1: in both seasons we had it where we had situations
Speaker 1: where there were police departments and school districts that had
Speaker 1: agreed to sit down with us. We booked flights and
Speaker 1: then they said no, never mind. Wow. Disappointing it is,
Speaker 1: and it's unfortunate because the stories we wanted to tell,
Speaker 1: we're stories where it was like, these are about these
Speaker 1: kind of partnerships and relationships that exist with communities and
Speaker 1: these institutions and right to not be a part of
Speaker 1: that conversation and to be that guarded about it to us,
Speaker 1: like I get, okay, not everybody wants to be on camera,
Speaker 1: but to be that guarded kind of places puts a
Speaker 1: window to what these communities must feel that like, okay,
Speaker 1: even the things that you're supposed to technically be proud
Speaker 1: of in terms of the work you're doing, because it
Speaker 1: wasn't like we were going to the police department or
Speaker 1: the school that was like oh, this is the school
Speaker 1: that you know just beats children, or this is the
Speaker 1: you weren't Michael Moore walking in there. No, And with
Speaker 1: all these places, they were places where it was a
Speaker 1: thing of like, Okay, this school district has you know,
Speaker 1: a program that's actually speaking to something that is supposed
Speaker 1: to be you know, whether it's like an alternative to
Speaker 1: criminalizing student. It's like, oh, okay, yeah, we want to
Speaker 1: talk about that. We want to talk about the work
Speaker 1: you're doing. It's like, oh no, we don't want to
Speaker 1: talk about it. Or police departments, you know, I remember
Speaker 1: there was one police department in Cincinnati that the work
Speaker 1: that they were doing was one that was much more
Speaker 1: of a public private partnership where the community worked with
Speaker 1: the police to create programs and things to help kind
Speaker 1: of like curb crime in their neighborhoods. And so, you know,
Speaker 1: one of the things was the community was saying like, oh,
Speaker 1: there's this park that there's often a lot of crime
Speaker 1: in this park and the park is overrun with trash
Speaker 1: and there's no lawn maintenance and there are all these trees.
Speaker 1: Maybe we could clean up the park. And that's what
Speaker 1: they did, and it was like oh okay, yeah, and
Speaker 1: then they saw crime statistics went down and it was
Speaker 1: like oh right, okay, and that and when and with
Speaker 1: that story, we got to Cincinnati and the Cincinnati Police
Speaker 1: Department we landed and they decided once we got there
Speaker 1: they didn't want to talk to us. And it was
Speaker 1: like why, Like, this is what you like, this is
Speaker 1: what you're doing, and it may not be perfect, but
Speaker 1: it seems like if you're as proud of it as
Speaker 1: you claim to be, then talk about it. And the
Speaker 1: irony being that I think uh Vice had done a
Speaker 1: piece earlier that year with that same police department where
Speaker 1: the police department was showing off more of the kind
Speaker 1: of like more of the aggressive things they were doing.
Speaker 1: Then it was weird where it's like, oh, you'll show
Speaker 1: off the things that you think make you look like,
Speaker 1: you know, a tough guy. Yeah, but those are the
Speaker 1: things that keep getting you into trouble. Yeah, it's so weird.
Speaker 1: It's such a closed I mean, skittish is the tamest
Speaker 1: way to say it. It's um trying to break through too.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's it's just so such a closed system
Speaker 1: I imagine, I mean, would you do once you got there,
Speaker 1: once you were there and you were denied, just try
Speaker 1: and find a story. So we talked to everybody else involved,
Speaker 1: although the cops did tell some people not to talk
Speaker 1: to us, so it wasn't even that they had They
Speaker 1: were like, you know, we're not going to talk. They
Speaker 1: tried to convince community members not to talk to us,
Speaker 1: and a couple of community members didn't talk to us
Speaker 1: as a result, and I think uninvited us from an
Speaker 1: event they were doing. So it was it was tough
Speaker 1: and and so but we talked to everyone else that
Speaker 1: we could with the story, and and there was a
Speaker 1: a community meeting that the police were going to be at,
Speaker 1: and so we went to that and figured we'd film
Speaker 1: that and if possible, try to just see if we
Speaker 1: could get the chief of police to chat with us
Speaker 1: on camera for a moment. But it all also became
Speaker 1: part of the story where it was just like, what
Speaker 1: does it say when these cops are this like afraid
Speaker 1: to talk about what it is that they do like
Speaker 1: that's a problem and so um so yeah, so it
Speaker 1: it I think added to the story in this kind
Speaker 1: of uh in a roundabout way, but it I feel
Speaker 1: like it would have been nice to have gotten the
Speaker 1: the entire story. And I think with that one, ultimately
Speaker 1: we also had to go back and get one interview
Speaker 1: with a police officer, a retired police officer. I think
Speaker 1: the best we were able to do as far as
Speaker 1: getting any cop on the record was to get a
Speaker 1: retired cop. So, um yeah, who could talk about Cincinnati
Speaker 1: and the history of policing and Cincinnati. Um, but yeah,
Speaker 1: it's really it's a very unfortunate thing. And I think
Speaker 1: you see it now even with like the way that
Speaker 1: policing and that kind of like that blue line exists
Speaker 1: where you know, you see even the events of the
Speaker 1: last week. Oftentimes retired police officers have less of a
Speaker 1: problem saying like hey, that's not good police work. And
Speaker 1: yet the police officers who are still working and are
Speaker 1: still walking a beat are just like closed miles and
Speaker 1: it's kind of like, well, yeah, it's never gonna change
Speaker 1: if you all just immediately rather than call out bullshit,
Speaker 1: you all just immediately kind of like huddle together and
Speaker 1: rally behind the person who clearly did something wrong. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and it's it's I mean, that's one of the most
Speaker 1: frustrating parts because if you want your image changed, like
Speaker 1: you could actively be a part of that without selling
Speaker 1: out or whatever, like you could you know, like they
Speaker 1: don't want their image to be that, but they won't
Speaker 1: do anything to let their image not be that. Right,
Speaker 1: And it's and that's what's so strange is that weird,
Speaker 1: that weird thing. And I think again when I think
Speaker 1: about what I had been thinking about with problem area,
Speaker 1: is as far as like that the sort of dream
Speaker 1: idea of like, well, what if we made our own
Speaker 1: police force? Within that, some of that too was looking
Speaker 1: at there was an episode that we didn't do that
Speaker 1: I've been fast needed with the story about police uniforms
Speaker 1: and just how you know that idea that the clothes
Speaker 1: make a person and that there in the past there
Speaker 1: were police departments that decided to quote unquote soften their
Speaker 1: images and they started switching their uniforms to things that
Speaker 1: were a little more professional looking. Where there was one,
Speaker 1: I believe in California where the police officers war like
Speaker 1: blazers and instead of having like a hard badge. The
Speaker 1: badge was like a patch on their on their jackets
Speaker 1: and little things. The story and it's all anecdotal, but
Speaker 1: the story goes that when they did that, there became
Speaker 1: a little bit of a shift of the types of
Speaker 1: people who were signing up for the police academy, and
Speaker 1: it was people who like had more of a kind
Speaker 1: of like social work background, or was people who were
Speaker 1: coming out of like the seminary and and so. And
Speaker 1: it's all anecdotal, but they it may have been who
Speaker 1: the department was trying to recruit. It may have been like, oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: I like, I like an outfit with a snappy blazer um.
Speaker 1: But then apparently they they dropped it after a while.
Speaker 1: It seemed to be successful for a while, and then
Speaker 1: I guess they dropped it after a while because there
Speaker 1: were complaints of police brutality, but it was different. It
Speaker 1: was brutality against police officers because people didn't feel threatened
Speaker 1: by these guys who had like I think they even
Speaker 1: had like pocket protectors like it, like they had pens
Speaker 1: and ships. So I think it was oh, they they
Speaker 1: became too the the image got like, no, that's a
Speaker 1: teacher and I can go fight a teacher. I have
Speaker 1: no idea if that's if, if if those what the
Speaker 1: correlation as far as those instances of police brutality, as
Speaker 1: you know, it's also without knowing what those stories are,
Speaker 1: it's hard to say that, you know, is police brutality
Speaker 1: Just like I tried to arrest somebody and they kicked me,
Speaker 1: like yeah, versus like no, we were walking the beat
Speaker 1: and then these kids started throwing eggs at us. Uh
Speaker 1: so yeah, but it but it I I found myself
Speaker 1: thinking about, you know, as we have a conversation around
Speaker 1: policing in this country, and it's the same conversation I
Speaker 1: think around something like education and also around something like
Speaker 1: healthcare and housing. We have only loosely defined what we
Speaker 1: want these things to be. And because they're loose defined,
Speaker 1: it then winds up being the responsibility of the person
Speaker 1: who is in charge of that institution to define it,
Speaker 1: and they get to define what it is. And so
Speaker 1: that's why it then becomes that much easier for a
Speaker 1: police department to prioritize militarization over actual like crime prevention,
Speaker 1: which we know isn't something that happens through policing. It's
Speaker 1: something that happens through putting those resources elsewhere into social
Speaker 1: services that can actually help people to get a better education,
Speaker 1: to get quality education, to get quality housing, to get
Speaker 1: quality employment. And so it's like, oh yeah, if you're
Speaker 1: getting to define it, you're never going to define something
Speaker 1: in a way that says, oh, you know what, maybe
Speaker 1: I am getting too much money and that money should
Speaker 1: go elsewhere. And so I think with all these things,
Speaker 1: you know, you see it. I think even in this
Speaker 1: moment where we talk about health care, we've allowed private
Speaker 1: healthcare companies to define what health care should be, and
Speaker 1: there is no with all of these things. We have
Speaker 1: these umbrella terms, but we don't have umbrella definitions that are, Okay,
Speaker 1: you know what, policing should only be this, and it
Speaker 1: should and this is. This is the minimum of what
Speaker 1: policing should be, and this is the maximum of what
Speaker 1: policing should be. And in the same way, we have
Speaker 1: no minimum for what we expect education to be. We
Speaker 1: like or a maximum, but definitely we have we've we
Speaker 1: have no definition of like this is this is what
Speaker 1: the base level of educational access every kid should have.
Speaker 1: There's no definition, and so that's why it's so easy
Speaker 1: to find a school where textbooks are decades out of date,
Speaker 1: they have no resources too higher or retain teachers, and
Speaker 1: schools are crumbling because we haven't said, like, oh, you
Speaker 1: know what, every school should have structural updates every five
Speaker 1: years and that should just be a locked in thing,
Speaker 1: and every three years their textbooks need to be updated,
Speaker 1: they need to be replaced. It's just automatic. Yeah, And
Speaker 1: instead what we do is we say, well, the students
Speaker 1: need to learn X, Y Z, like they need to
Speaker 1: prove this level of reading comprehension by this age, or
Speaker 1: we cut funding to this school, but we don't say, well,
Speaker 1: wait a minute, if that school doesn't have enough teachers
Speaker 1: and yeah, and when we talk about like things like
Speaker 1: classroom size, again we know like classrooms should probably be
Speaker 1: twelve kids maximum, and yeah, we say like, well, this
Speaker 1: school in this neighborhood, they don't have the funding, so
Speaker 1: thirty kids are going to be in a classroom. Tough shit.
Speaker 1: And it's just like, no, there should be a minimum.
Speaker 1: And the moment your classroom goes over whatever fifteen kids,
Speaker 1: it's like, Okay, that school needs more money, and that's
Speaker 1: what we gotta do, and we just gotta pump more
Speaker 1: money into that school so that they can make a
Speaker 1: new class for that group of kids. And but we
Speaker 1: don't define these things, and we just say like, oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: a bad school is like you know, it's a bad school,
Speaker 1: and but we don't say, like, right, but what is
Speaker 1: the floor for what every school should be? So yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: and and parents, uh, just know what the bad schools
Speaker 1: are so you can do everything you can to try
Speaker 1: and get your kid to a different one. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: mean yeah in New York, you see that here because
Speaker 1: there's all of what they call like the high performing schools,
Speaker 1: and there's you know, all of this competition to get
Speaker 1: into these schools. And on the one hand, I feel
Speaker 1: like the city looks at that and they wear it
Speaker 1: as a badge of honor, of like, look at how
Speaker 1: many parents compete to get their kids into these schools
Speaker 1: and how many kids are competing every year to get
Speaker 1: into these schools. When to me, what it says is like,
Speaker 1: what does it say about the rest of your schools
Speaker 1: that people are so desperate to get out of those
Speaker 1: to just get into these handful of schools. Yeah? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean I was a public school kid. My parents
Speaker 1: were both public school teachers. So this is like a
Speaker 1: situation I've been intimately involved with my whole life just
Speaker 1: through their eyes. Uh, interesting stuff. And you know what,
Speaker 1: everyone listening. The Problem Areas is still on HBO Max,
Speaker 1: So if you didn't get a chance to see it,
Speaker 1: please do. It's very funny. I mean we're talking about
Speaker 1: all this like sort of heavy stuff, but it's also
Speaker 1: a very funny show. I feel like we're having a
Speaker 1: fun conversation about it. Of course, I don't know if
Speaker 1: you want to talk about it or not. We don't
Speaker 1: have to. But I did see what happened with John
Speaker 1: Stewart coming out with his show The Problem, and uh,
Speaker 1: before I even saw what what you tweeted out, I
Speaker 1: was just like, right, like, seriously, that's that's the title
Speaker 1: of it. Yeah, well, in the title and at least
Speaker 1: by the description. The description is that it seems like
Speaker 1: it's a show that is going to each season focus
Speaker 1: on one issue. Right. Sounds familiar. So yeah, it sounds
Speaker 1: really familiar. And yeah, I tweeted something about it, and
Speaker 1: I found it curious. I mean, I think what also
Speaker 1: to me struck me about it was that, uh, the
Speaker 1: executive who bought my show and who was the one
Speaker 1: who was you know, like, oh, I love this idea
Speaker 1: of looking at one topic over the course of a season.
Speaker 1: And you know, I think was the person who could
Speaker 1: you know, held my show's life in his hands, could
Speaker 1: use to renew my show or not? He when my
Speaker 1: show was up for renewal left HBO went to Apple
Speaker 1: and is the exact over this show. And so I think,
Speaker 1: to me, that's what that's what feels a little fishy
Speaker 1: about it all, is that like, a wait a minute,
Speaker 1: the guy who bought my show also bought this show,
Speaker 1: and I think was the person who held a deciding
Speaker 1: vote on the life of my show, right, and then
Speaker 1: you know, just opted not to vote and left left
Speaker 1: the network. And then basically it's like, you know what,
Speaker 1: you know what a good idea for a show is
Speaker 1: a show that spends a season looking at one issue.
Speaker 1: Uh yeah, I like that, and I should I should
Speaker 1: get a guy to host that show. Oh you know what,
Speaker 1: I'll get John and we gotta come up with a
Speaker 1: title for it. Right. That was where it was so egregious.
Speaker 1: It's like, are you kidding me? Yeah, it's just disappointing.
Speaker 1: And but also, and but you had that one great
Speaker 1: clip from your show where uh said, go ahead and
Speaker 1: quoted exactly because I don't want to just paraphrasees. Sure,
Speaker 1: there was a clip that we had had in the
Speaker 1: show and it was based off of this guy that
Speaker 1: I had interviewed. Had he had talked about policing and
Speaker 1: he made a really uh just a really great statement
Speaker 1: about how you have to you know, he basically made
Speaker 1: like a really good statement about policing and just like
Speaker 1: what the expectations for police officers should be. And he
Speaker 1: was a he was a young black man, And so
Speaker 1: I cut back to studio where I was and I said, wow,
Speaker 1: you know, what he said was really deep. But if
Speaker 1: there's one thing I've learned from being on television, if
Speaker 1: you want people to take something that a black person
Speaker 1: says seriously, you really need to have a white guy
Speaker 1: say basically the same thing right after. And I mean
Speaker 1: it was so perfect. At least you had had that
Speaker 1: at your disposed, you know. Yeah. No, the one thing
Speaker 1: that I'm I'm grateful for that HBO probably isn't, is
Speaker 1: that I was able to hold on to the masters
Speaker 1: right my show and I have a very rudimentary understanding
Speaker 1: of Eye movie. Right. Oh that's great, man, Um, before
Speaker 1: we get into blazing settles, I did want to talk
Speaker 1: about one more part of your career because I know
Speaker 1: and this is something I've never talked to you about.
Speaker 1: Like we've we've hung out like a number of times
Speaker 1: over the years, and for some reason, I never talked
Speaker 1: to you about King of the Hill and your years
Speaker 1: writing for King of the Hill, and I would just
Speaker 1: love to know a little bit about what that was like,
Speaker 1: because it's just such a beloved show and I know
Speaker 1: a lot of our listeners love it. Sure, it was
Speaker 1: a really it was an interesting experience because I think
Speaker 1: one it was my first job in television as like
Speaker 1: a writer. It was was it? Really? Yeah? I Mean
Speaker 1: I'd had like jobs where I was a p A
Speaker 1: and stuff, but this was like my first, like a fish, Okay,
Speaker 1: you're you know, you're a TV writer. And I for me,
Speaker 1: I grew up in Texas and I grew up not
Speaker 1: too far from uh where Mike Judge went to college.
Speaker 1: And it's something that Mike and I have talked about
Speaker 1: where I when I was a kid, we would ride
Speaker 1: our bikes over to his college campus. And my friends
Speaker 1: and I at the time were you know, really big
Speaker 1: into like g I Joe and army stuff, and so
Speaker 1: we would always like get our like little camouflage outfits
Speaker 1: and we tramped through there was like a little creek
Speaker 1: that went into like a sewer, and we kind of
Speaker 1: trumped through there at the edge of campus. Or we'd
Speaker 1: run around the campus on the weekends with water guns
Speaker 1: and do like our you know, little army ship. And
Speaker 1: so it it was funny to think about the idea
Speaker 1: you that he was he may have been in school
Speaker 1: around the same time we were these idiot kids running
Speaker 1: around and just how like bizarre that that is to
Speaker 1: think about, like, how are you know just that we
Speaker 1: sort of walked the same the same grounds at different
Speaker 1: times and had different experiences with it. And so in
Speaker 1: that way, for me working there, there was a strange
Speaker 1: sense of like, this show feels incredibly familiar to me
Speaker 1: because a lot of the references and things were things
Speaker 1: that I saw. I saw versions of that. There was
Speaker 1: the first episode when I started what season was that
Speaker 1: I came in in season seven, and so my first
Speaker 1: day on the job, they were doing an animatic screening.
Speaker 1: Um and for those who don't know what an animatic
Speaker 1: screening is, look it up. I'm not going to teach.
Speaker 1: You know, it's basically before the but before an episode
Speaker 1: is fully animated, they do the audio track to rough animation,
Speaker 1: and so you see the shots, but you don't see
Speaker 1: full animation. Um, and so you get to kind of
Speaker 1: like see it half alive and you rewrite some things,
Speaker 1: you talk about different shots. And so my first day
Speaker 1: they were having an animal attic for this episode called
Speaker 1: New Cowboy on the Block. And I remember the show
Speaker 1: runners were on vacation when I started, and Greg Daniels
Speaker 1: was in the office and so he was overseeing this
Speaker 1: animal attic screening. And the writer for the episode was
Speaker 1: a writer named Dean Young and Greg, who I didn't
Speaker 1: know very well. You know, I just started and Greg
Speaker 1: was like, why don't you come into this antimatic And
Speaker 1: I was like okay, And I watched the animatic and
Speaker 1: the episode was this episode where h and Dallas Cowboy,
Speaker 1: a guy who played one year for the Dallas Cowboys
Speaker 1: Special Teams had moved onto the Block and as a
Speaker 1: result was seen as a god. And so I had
Speaker 1: that same thing happened when I was a kid. There
Speaker 1: was a special teams player who played one season with
Speaker 1: the Cowboys. He played one season with the Bears and
Speaker 1: one season with the Cowboys, and he moved in, he
Speaker 1: moved onto our street, and he was like a god
Speaker 1: to the name, and it was like he didn't like,
Speaker 1: I don't know that he ever you know, I don't
Speaker 1: know that he ever saw any serious playing time. I mean,
Speaker 1: you know, two years of football and he was out
Speaker 1: and uh. But he was considered like this god on
Speaker 1: the street and people were like, oh my god, there's
Speaker 1: a cowboy Dallas. Cowboy lives on our street. And you know,
Speaker 1: people puff their chests out in this way where it
Speaker 1: was like we like, this wasn't like a wealthy street
Speaker 1: by any means, but all of a sudden, everyone thought,
Speaker 1: like our property values just went up. And so there
Speaker 1: was this real sense of like, oh, yeah, this like
Speaker 1: this show. I can relate a lot to what this
Speaker 1: show is talking about, despite the fact that, like, these
Speaker 1: characters don't look like me or my family. These a
Speaker 1: lot of these stories I I feel a connection to.
Speaker 1: And so I think there was something for me that
Speaker 1: was really I I really connected with um and and
Speaker 1: it was a big fan of Mike, and so it
Speaker 1: was like really great. Mike at the time lived in Austin,
Speaker 1: and so he wasn't a part of the day to day. Um.
Speaker 1: But every summer we would take a writer's trip to Austin,
Speaker 1: and that was really cool because it was an opportunity
Speaker 1: to get to spend a little time with Mike. And
Speaker 1: for a lot of the writers, they weren't from Texas.
Speaker 1: There were a handful of us. There was me, there
Speaker 1: was a writer, Christie Stratton, um and another I think
Speaker 1: Jim do Trieve was from Texas as well, or definitely
Speaker 1: went to school in Texas. Um. Yeah, Jim was from Texas.
Speaker 1: Uh So, yeah, there was just a handful when I
Speaker 1: was there that were from Texas. Oh, and then there
Speaker 1: was a guy jb was also from Texas. And so
Speaker 1: there was just a handful of like writers who grew
Speaker 1: up or spent considerable time in Texas. And so for
Speaker 1: the other writers, it became this opportunity where we'd all
Speaker 1: go down there and obviously, you know, we'd eat well
Speaker 1: and drink well, but also go on little field trips
Speaker 1: and so people it was it was kind of great.
Speaker 1: And I don't know if other shows do this, but
Speaker 1: you know, the like different writers would find different things
Speaker 1: to do, Like some writers would go to like a
Speaker 1: church singles group really and yeah, and they would just
Speaker 1: do it and it was all with the idea that
Speaker 1: like they wanted to just do research and look for
Speaker 1: stories and yeah, and it was it really was like
Speaker 1: a weirdly journalistic approach to it where I remember there
Speaker 1: was an episode. There's an episode that I I had
Speaker 1: pitched that got written after I left, and it was
Speaker 1: it was. It was one of those things where as
Speaker 1: much as I there was a lot that I got
Speaker 1: from the show, and then there was also some terrible
Speaker 1: ship that I dealt with at the show, uh, which
Speaker 1: constantly being reminded that I was the only black writer
Speaker 1: and that I was only there because the network had
Speaker 1: created a diversity initiative. My salary wasn't part of the
Speaker 1: show's budget. It was something it was something that Fox
Speaker 1: would pay for to encourage shows to hire people of color.
Speaker 1: And I was constantly reminded of that by my boss
Speaker 1: um and so uh, and I think he was reminding
Speaker 1: me of it in a way he thought it was
Speaker 1: a good thing, and to me, it's like, no, you're
Speaker 1: telling me I'm not like everybody else. And so but
Speaker 1: in when I left the year I left, one of
Speaker 1: the things I had become fascinated with was roller derby,
Speaker 1: and there was a big roller derby scene that had
Speaker 1: popped up in Texas and an Austin specifically, and I
Speaker 1: had had this idea that lu Anne uh joined a
Speaker 1: roller derby team and that potentially Peggy might want to
Speaker 1: join too, because it fits right into Peggy's wheelhouse of
Speaker 1: like everything she would want to do. That either she
Speaker 1: joins or she decides she wants to be a coach
Speaker 1: and becomes an incredibly aggressive roller derby coach. Um. But
Speaker 1: I but I had become fascinated with it, and I
Speaker 1: was like, oh, you know, there's roller derby and we
Speaker 1: should go check it out. And so uh that year,
Speaker 1: I remember they didn't want me to do that episode.
Speaker 1: I pitched it, and I think they initially weren't into
Speaker 1: it and then got into it and another and then
Speaker 1: they gave it to another writer to to write and
Speaker 1: I was kind of like, oh, that's I was really
Speaker 1: excited about that. And so but I'm glad. I'm still
Speaker 1: glad that they made the episode, um, and glad that
Speaker 1: the story found the found a life somewhere. Was it
Speaker 1: a good episode or were you kind of like, I
Speaker 1: don't remember. I think when I left the show. Admittedly
Speaker 1: I left the show, and I as much as I
Speaker 1: loved the show, it, I left because I wanted to
Speaker 1: do other things. But I also left because I didn't
Speaker 1: feel particularly comfortable there and uh and so I think
Speaker 1: when I left, there was a little bit of me
Speaker 1: that it became tough to watch the show afterwards, and
Speaker 1: uh and so I didn't really watch I recently, NPR
Speaker 1: pop Culture Happy Hour had done an episode recently where
Speaker 1: they talked about King of the Hill and they were
Speaker 1: just kind of they had a guest on our journalist
Speaker 1: named Sir Riah McDonald and they were all talking about
Speaker 1: King of the Hill and they were talking about how
Speaker 1: they felt the characters would have voted, and it was
Speaker 1: an interesting conversation to hear some fans talk about it,
Speaker 1: and I was kind of I just started thinking about it,
Speaker 1: and so I was like, you know what I I
Speaker 1: this is the story I would pitch, and so, you know,
Speaker 1: with the knowledge of the characters I had I pitched.
Speaker 1: I just basically went on Twitter and I was like,
Speaker 1: this is what I think would happen. And I just
Speaker 1: kind of went and I laid out my pitch for
Speaker 1: a King of the Hill episode. Obviously Mike has final say,
Speaker 1: but I was like, this is what I think it
Speaker 1: would look like. And it's you know, Hank is somewhere
Speaker 1: between a you know, he's a conservative, he's somewhere between
Speaker 1: a conservative and a libertarian and uh, and so he
Speaker 1: may feel like he has to vote his party. And
Speaker 1: I think the way I kind of laid it out
Speaker 1: is like he's a little torn. He's not crazy about it,
Speaker 1: but he's he's a little torn. I have to read
Speaker 1: the tweets again, but basic, basically he gets. The episode
Speaker 1: starts with him catching coronavirus from Bill, who was asymptomatic
Speaker 1: but just got Hank sick. And so Hank is in
Speaker 1: the garage where he has to now stay for you know,
Speaker 1: until he's until he's safe again. And while in the garage,
Speaker 1: he sees Bobby acting really rude, and Bobby is saying like, oh,
Speaker 1: he's acting like Trump and that he sees Trump as
Speaker 1: the comedian in chief and that you know, like, oh yeah,
Speaker 1: people like Trump does all these terrible things, and he
Speaker 1: says they're a joke, and like, you know, he says
Speaker 1: he's kidding, and so Bobby is sort of emulating this behavior,
Speaker 1: and upon seeing that, Uh, it gets to a point
Speaker 1: where Bobby does something that that offends Connie and his
Speaker 1: offense the Connie and Uh, Hank sees that, and he's like,
Speaker 1: you know what, screw this, I'm not going to vote.
Speaker 1: Like I like, I don't want to vote for this party,
Speaker 1: and I don't like the idea of a politician being
Speaker 1: a comedian. I still don't forgive Nixon for going on
Speaker 1: laughing like um. But he's like, I can't, I can't
Speaker 1: do it. And then one night in the garage, he
Speaker 1: has a fever dream where he's visited by h Ann
Speaker 1: Richards and and Richards reminds him that, like I was
Speaker 1: governor of Texas and I was a Democrat, and like,
Speaker 1: it's not always about party there, you know, there are
Speaker 1: people across party lines who do things that are the
Speaker 1: in the best interest of the people. And so that's
Speaker 1: what ultimately convinces Hank and he decides to vote for Biden,
Speaker 1: but he won't tell anyone except Bobby, who he swears
Speaker 1: to secrecy. Uh, you know, Bobby start he has to
Speaker 1: at some point teach Bobby that, like what Trump is
Speaker 1: doing is in comedy, and you shouldn't expect your politicians
Speaker 1: to be comedians. You should expect them to be the
Speaker 1: people who enact what you as as the public want.
Speaker 1: Bobby sees that, you know, he apologized to Connie. Uh.
Speaker 1: Peggy and Lewin have a storyline where while all this
Speaker 1: is going on, because it's in the middle of a pandemic,
Speaker 1: they head to the megalo mart where they're going to
Speaker 1: they're trying to load up on toilet paper like everybody else.
Speaker 1: But when they get there, they see that there's a
Speaker 1: strike happening. Because all the people at the megalo mart
Speaker 1: are like, hey, we are we deserve a raise, like
Speaker 1: we're you know, front facing in the you know, are
Speaker 1: at risk and people are getting sick who work here
Speaker 1: and very much echoing what's going on what was going
Speaker 1: on with like Whole Foods workers and Amazon workers, where
Speaker 1: it's like, oh, yeah, all these people are getting sick
Speaker 1: and they don't have healthcare. And so Peggy and Lunn
Speaker 1: see this and then wind up getting involved in the strike.
Speaker 1: And Peggy, you know, Peggy sees herself as the norma
Speaker 1: ray for this group. Whether they see it is another story,
Speaker 1: but Peggy has kind of like gone, you know, full
Speaker 1: full on board. And so even in at the moment
Speaker 1: when Hank has decided he's not going to vote, like
Speaker 1: Peggy gets very upset and it's like you have to vote,
Speaker 1: like this is you know, uh like because she sees
Speaker 1: herself now is this labor organizer? And uh. And so
Speaker 1: that's so that was kind of like the episode. And
Speaker 1: then I and then I kind of talked about how
Speaker 1: the other guys would have voted, and I said, well,
Speaker 1: you know, Dale's off the grid, so or as off
Speaker 1: the grid as a guy who's owns a house that
Speaker 1: is in his wife, is in his wife's name and
Speaker 1: paid for by his wife. Um, he's but he wouldn't vote. Uh.
Speaker 1: And then Boom Howard. I think I wrote out Boom
Speaker 1: Howard's vote in his voice where he was just kind
Speaker 1: of like, uh, you know, talking about Bengal bad knees man,
Speaker 1: talking about football man, talking about you know, Bengal legalize
Speaker 1: it man, um. And so he's voting for anybody who
Speaker 1: will legalize marijuana. Uh. And then I said that Bill
Speaker 1: would get arrested as part of the January six insurrection
Speaker 1: only because he had been catfished there for love by
Speaker 1: Dale and that Dale had cat fished him with some
Speaker 1: woman who had been involved in Q and On. And
Speaker 1: you know, Bill is not really paying attention to what
Speaker 1: Q and on is. He's just kind of like this
Speaker 1: lady loves me and like she's you know, and she
Speaker 1: told me to meet her in Washington, d C. And so, dude,
Speaker 1: I want to see that episode. Thank you. Yeah, a
Speaker 1: fair number of people wanted to also. They echoed that,
Speaker 1: and what wound up being funny. I I tweeted all that,
Speaker 1: and then it was actually a very sweet thing. I
Speaker 1: I also tweeted an image that the animators had drawn.
Speaker 1: There was an l A Times article about the show
Speaker 1: when I was working there, and they had had the
Speaker 1: animators draw the writing staff and so we were all
Speaker 1: drawn in that style in the writer's room, and so
Speaker 1: I kind of tweeted out my you know, this was
Speaker 1: the episode in response to that pop culture happy our episode,
Speaker 1: and I tweeted all out, and then at the end
Speaker 1: of it had put this illustration, Uh, in part because
Speaker 1: I think as people were reading it, I don't know
Speaker 1: that people realized that I had worked for the show,
Speaker 1: and they were just like, oh, wow, like you you
Speaker 1: seem to know a lot about this show, and it
Speaker 1: was like and so I tweeted that and it was
Speaker 1: something that was very sweet. Was one of the writers.
Speaker 1: Uh had seen it, and he had responded his his
Speaker 1: name is kid Boss, and he had responded that both
Speaker 1: a sense of like of you know, fond memories, but
Speaker 1: also in looking at the the image, a sense of
Speaker 1: embarrassment at the fact that it was this sea of
Speaker 1: white guys and a couple of white women and me
Speaker 1: and Uh and Uh. And in his tweet, Uh said,
Speaker 1: uh he he it was. It was a very funny
Speaker 1: thing where I'm paraphrasing, but he was like, if this image,
Speaker 1: if there were a song to go with this image,
Speaker 1: and he linked to the song white Room. It was like, yeah,
Speaker 1: you're not wrong, and you know what, that song will
Speaker 1: follow me to a few more places. Oh man, that's great.
Speaker 1: You were my first sort of entertainment celebrity friend. Did
Speaker 1: you know that you and John? I didn't know that.
Speaker 1: Well wait, was it me and John or just me?
Speaker 1: Well I meet you guys both on the same day.
Speaker 1: I know you don't remember this stuff because people only
Speaker 1: remember like meeting people that are more important than they are.
Speaker 1: Was it? It was the quiz was before that that
Speaker 1: that is what we wrote you into. It was, Uh,
Speaker 1: John got in touch with us, Josh and I about
Speaker 1: Jesus probably like eleven years ago, and said, my friend
Speaker 1: Wyatt Sinak uh told me about stuff you should know
Speaker 1: and said I would really like it and to give
Speaker 1: it a listen. And so I'm reaching I love I
Speaker 1: love it, and I'm reaching out to you guys. I
Speaker 1: let's see if you want to have lunch next time
Speaker 1: you come to New York. And Josh and I were
Speaker 1: just like, oh my god, did you see that? Like
Speaker 1: White Sinek is listening to us and John Hodgens listening
Speaker 1: to us, and uh we met for lunch at Shopson's,
Speaker 1: you me and Josh and John, and that was our
Speaker 1: first like meeting with someone in the entertainment. Like we
Speaker 1: were just very removed and still kind of our to
Speaker 1: be honest, but very removed from all of that and
Speaker 1: in our little room recording our show and just it
Speaker 1: was a big deal. Man. It meant a lot to
Speaker 1: us that y'all listened and y'all reached out and uh
Speaker 1: took us to lunch, and uh so sort of twelve
Speaker 1: eleven years later, I just wanted to say thanks. So
Speaker 1: it was a big deal to us, and it sort
Speaker 1: of felt like, you know, we had arrived in a
Speaker 1: certain way for two guys who sort of accidentally fell
Speaker 1: into this career as a non professional you know, broadcasters
Speaker 1: and comedian types. And it was a big deal. And
Speaker 1: and so much fruit has been born from the relationship
Speaker 1: with John two of him introducing me to people. You
Speaker 1: know how John is, He's just such a connector. And uh,
Speaker 1: but you were, you were the conduit man, so and
Speaker 1: and and I'm not surprised you don't remember, but it
Speaker 1: was a big deal. No, not that you say it.
Speaker 1: I remember us going to shops and I like, that
Speaker 1: was you. I think that's the I've only been the
Speaker 1: shops since maybe or that iteration of shops s AND's.
Speaker 1: I think i'd only been to it. That might have
Speaker 1: been my first time there. Maybe I went one other
Speaker 1: time and then I've since been to the new iteration
Speaker 1: of it. But yeah, so, uh no, I mean one,
Speaker 1: I enjoyed listening to the podcast so much, and I
Speaker 1: really became this a weird little evangelist for it, where
Speaker 1: I was like, oh my god, you should listen to
Speaker 1: this episode that listen to them talk about zombies like
Speaker 1: this is so fascinating. Well that was huge, man, it
Speaker 1: was a big deal. And so it's to meet you guys.
Speaker 1: I think I was enamored with what you all were
Speaker 1: doing and how you know, you talked about my show,
Speaker 1: But I feel like when I listened to your show,
Speaker 1: what was great was that you were taking all of
Speaker 1: these ideas that I people kind of like no more
Speaker 1: as concept and digging into them in ways that we're
Speaker 1: thoughtful and approachable to a listener, where yeah, it became
Speaker 1: a really enjoyable thing to consume, whether you're in a
Speaker 1: car driving and listening, or you're on the train and
Speaker 1: you got your headphones on, or you're just sitting in
Speaker 1: your apartment and you want to be entertained, and it
Speaker 1: I I feel like it it was that the the
Speaker 1: interplay between both of you was always very fun and engaging,
Speaker 1: and it felt like it felt like you were sitting
Speaker 1: and eaves dropping in on a wonderful conversation that you
Speaker 1: would walk away from it and be able to go
Speaker 1: someplace else and be like, hey, do you want to
Speaker 1: know something I just like And you kind of walk
Speaker 1: away looking like a genius and it was just like, yeah,
Speaker 1: I know all this information. It's like, where did you
Speaker 1: get it? I just overheard these two chaps having a
Speaker 1: lovely conversation about it. Well, thanks man Um, and you
Speaker 1: were as a result, you were one of the first
Speaker 1: people I wanted to get on movie Crush, and I
Speaker 1: tried to a few years ago, and I bugged you
Speaker 1: a little bit, and I think it was just not
Speaker 1: the right time, And looking back, it might have been
Speaker 1: when you are probably making problem areas, so it was
Speaker 1: probably terrible timing. But I'm glad to finally get you on. Uh.
Speaker 1: And when you pick Blazing Saddles, I was really excited
Speaker 1: because this was a very big movie for me, especially
Speaker 1: in college with me and my friends. We I mean,
Speaker 1: I don't keep count of how many times I've seen
Speaker 1: specific movies, but this one is up there along with
Speaker 1: Spinal Tap as far as comedies go, um seeing them,
Speaker 1: and you know the Christopher Guest all of his stuff.
Speaker 1: Really seeing movies probably dozens of times, and uh, I
Speaker 1: remember seeing it, believe it or not. This is the
Speaker 1: first movie I saw in the theater. When I was three,
Speaker 1: my parents took me to a drive in a Blazing
Speaker 1: Saddles and it's one of my first memories in life
Speaker 1: is and I only remember a couple of things. I
Speaker 1: remember Cleveland Little when he first rode into town with
Speaker 1: that sweet, badass suede outfit. Yeah, the Gucci outfit in
Speaker 1: that cool horse. And I remember Mango punching out the horse.
Speaker 1: And those are only two things I remember from being
Speaker 1: like three and a half years old or whatever when
Speaker 1: this movie came out. But um, what I mean, let's
Speaker 1: get into it. Man, what what does this mean movie
Speaker 1: to you? It's a lot, It's it's it's an interesting
Speaker 1: movie because I feel like it's one of those movies
Speaker 1: that I like in rewatching it. I've watched a bunch myself,
Speaker 1: and I rewatched it in anticipation for our conversation, And
Speaker 1: there's a part of it where you watch it and
Speaker 1: it's just like the storyline is almost secondary or tertiary
Speaker 1: two all of these just ridiculous scenes. But also it plays,
Speaker 1: it plays a role in it. And I think one
Speaker 1: thing I've always appreciated about the film is when you
Speaker 1: watch it, there is there's a real like there's a
Speaker 1: real difficulty level to doing a movie like that. That
Speaker 1: and I think, I think if you were to look
Speaker 1: at probably reviews of that time, people would say, like
Speaker 1: the plots thin Ye. What's interesting is like you're setting
Speaker 1: things up that you're calling back later throughout the movie.
Speaker 1: You're weaving things in, You're making choices where you have
Speaker 1: like you know, the executioner that's outside of Headley Lamar's office,
Speaker 1: where it's like you've got a medieval style executioner Middle Ages. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and like what a weird like what a weird thought
Speaker 1: process of like this has nothing to do with the
Speaker 1: overall story, but we want to do this joke, and
Speaker 1: so we have to justify like this joke somehow where
Speaker 1: you have a plot thing happening and then you just
Speaker 1: hear a noise, like and then it's just like the
Speaker 1: noise is really just to go and tell this one
Speaker 1: executioner joke, which isn't a cheap joke. You've still got
Speaker 1: to get a set and do all these things, and
Speaker 1: it's like you've got that joke and then it's almost
Speaker 1: a throwaway, but it like shows up a little bit later.
Speaker 1: But the idea that like, when I think about crafting
Speaker 1: a movie like that, like the idea that something that
Speaker 1: seems like a throwaway you then justify later when you
Speaker 1: have to. Like it comes back towards the end of
Speaker 1: the movie again when there's another execution happening, and I
Speaker 1: think the part of me that knows how these things
Speaker 1: get made, it's like, oh, however many days this shoot was.
Speaker 1: That's a set and you had to you had to
Speaker 1: get that set for a certain number of days, and
Speaker 1: you've got to justify using that set, and like and
Speaker 1: just how like, I don't know, there's just something about
Speaker 1: it that feels like, oh, the there's an execution that's
Speaker 1: that's going on there that's like so weirdly thoughtful, where
Speaker 1: everything is connected and also seems so unconnected at the
Speaker 1: same time. And I just remember watching it and thinking like,
Speaker 1: this movie seems so like wonderful in its zaney nous
Speaker 1: and but also so intelligent in how it's in how
Speaker 1: it seems chaotic. And I always thought like, oh, one
Speaker 1: day I would love to make my own version of
Speaker 1: a Blazing Saddles, Like that's always been the thing of like, Oh,
Speaker 1: when I think of a satire, I think of that movie.
Speaker 1: And when I think of Cleveland Little and just the
Speaker 1: role he's playing as well, where it's like he's taking
Speaker 1: he's basically Bugs Bunny but doing something that and and
Speaker 1: I'd be curious if like this was the thought process
Speaker 1: when they were crafting it. But you know, so many
Speaker 1: of those old cartoon characters, whether it's Bugs Bunny or
Speaker 1: Mickey Mouse, their origins are in minstrelsy and the you know,
Speaker 1: the white gloves are part of that kind of like
Speaker 1: minstrel uh, that minstrel wardrobe. And that's interesting and that's
Speaker 1: where they that's where a lot of it comes from,
Speaker 1: the roots of it, are taking a lot of those
Speaker 1: minstrel shows and those characters, those characterizations and just putting
Speaker 1: them into animals. And so that's and that's oftentimes you
Speaker 1: would see when the characters wind up like in black
Speaker 1: face from time to time it's a little bit of
Speaker 1: a nod to that. But the gloves were that's a
Speaker 1: holdover from that. And yeah, and so there's something that's
Speaker 1: interesting about then, like, oh, now you have cleve on
Speaker 1: little basically taking and at one point even going as
Speaker 1: far as doing like a Bugs Bunny bit where and
Speaker 1: taking all of that and now actually taking something that
Speaker 1: has its origins and minstrelsy where you had white people
Speaker 1: in black face and now you've sort of taken some
Speaker 1: of those movements and the and the characterizations and you
Speaker 1: put them into animals, and then you've built something out
Speaker 1: of that. And then here is a black person taking
Speaker 1: all of that and using that to point at and
Speaker 1: make fun of racism in in this world. And so
Speaker 1: there was something about it that I was that I
Speaker 1: found like very subversive, whether intentionally or unintentionally, about his
Speaker 1: performance and what was going on there. And so I think,
Speaker 1: to me it was both like, oh, here's this really
Speaker 1: funny movie, but also one where when I think about
Speaker 1: things like representation, it is one where it is, you know,
Speaker 1: in a nineteen seventies way, trying to be representative and
Speaker 1: talk about racism and even talk about sexism, but you know,
Speaker 1: doing it in a way that I think today probably
Speaker 1: feels antiquated. But you know, forty over forty five years ago,
Speaker 1: I think to look at it through that lens, it's like,
Speaker 1: holy fuck, Like what like, like you're really doing something
Speaker 1: and doing it in a way where you're using comedy
Speaker 1: to do it. I was, yeah, it's it's It's always
Speaker 1: meant a lot to me in that regard. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: mean what struck me today it was how quickly it
Speaker 1: subverts that the racist thing right out of the gate.
Speaker 1: Like the very first scene is on the railroad, when um,
Speaker 1: what's the guy's name? I love him? He was in
Speaker 1: the fletched movie, Slim Pickens. No, he's great to Burton
Speaker 1: Gilliam when he's he's trying to get them to sing,
Speaker 1: singing and seeing the good old slave song, and it
Speaker 1: subverts it right away. Cleveland Little exerts his power and
Speaker 1: start singing. You know, some get their kicks from Champagne.
Speaker 1: And it's just immediately it sets the tone for this
Speaker 1: movie of what's going to happen, which is Cleveland Little
Speaker 1: is is probably the smartest guy in the movie. At
Speaker 1: least he and Jim probably are are equals. And these
Speaker 1: guys are all idiots, and we're gonna and we're gonna
Speaker 1: show that right out of the gate. And then those
Speaker 1: guys start singing the Camptown Lady and dancing around like
Speaker 1: a much morons. And then and that just set that
Speaker 1: just sets the tone right away, and you know what
Speaker 1: kind of and you know, so much of this was
Speaker 1: probably lost on me when I was certainly when I
Speaker 1: was three, but when I was nineteen and in college
Speaker 1: It's a movie that the more you watch it over
Speaker 1: the years that not only do you find new jokes
Speaker 1: somehow you still find new jokes, but you really get
Speaker 1: the subversion of the whole thing more and more as
Speaker 1: it ages. I think, yeah, No, I think it's it's
Speaker 1: an interesting one to watch in that way, And I
Speaker 1: think to what you're talking about, I think of another
Speaker 1: There's another thing I think about, especially with Cleveland Little's character,
Speaker 1: where I think about the story of Brear Rabbit, which
Speaker 1: was a story that I was always fascinated with as
Speaker 1: a kid, and it was, you know, that idea of
Speaker 1: it's the trickster and Cleveland Little was the trickster, and
Speaker 1: the trickster. You know, brear Rabbit comes from African folklore
Speaker 1: and the stories of like a Nanti the spider who
Speaker 1: was the trickster, and originally breat Rabbit stories were stories
Speaker 1: that enslaved people told each other, and brear Rabbit was
Speaker 1: the embodiment of the enslaved person who got one over
Speaker 1: on either the overseer brear Fox or the plantation master
Speaker 1: brear Bear. And so there's something that I think even
Speaker 1: in that when I think about, like Cleveland Little's character,
Speaker 1: it falls in that same line of like Tricksters where
Speaker 1: I think of a Nazi the spider brear Rabbit and
Speaker 1: totally I never really thought about that and that, but
Speaker 1: that moment in particular where it's like, you want me
Speaker 1: to do this thing, so I'll pretend to be dumb
Speaker 1: so I get you to do the thing, and it
Speaker 1: was just like, oh yeah, there's some thing that's so
Speaker 1: brilliant about Oh yeah, I'll let you show yourself how
Speaker 1: stupid you are. And I just thought it was really
Speaker 1: such a smart movie and how it did those things,
Speaker 1: and even I think about, you know, you mentioned that
Speaker 1: like Barton Jim are kind of the two smartest people
Speaker 1: in the room, and then I feel like Madeline Kahn's
Speaker 1: character kind of gets there that like she starts off
Speaker 1: as like she she starts off as a smart person,
Speaker 1: but one who is willing to kind of be Upawn
Speaker 1: in this in Hedley's game, and then at some point
Speaker 1: besides oh no, I don't want to be a part
Speaker 1: of any of this, and I think, you know, she
Speaker 1: kind of becomes this third character. Like the movie ends
Speaker 1: with Barton Jim kind of writing off in the distance,
Speaker 1: and I think if it were to be rewritten today,
Speaker 1: I feel like there would probably be a little more
Speaker 1: to Madeleine Khan's journey where you know she where she
Speaker 1: also joins them at the end, well, she probably wants to.
Speaker 1: I mean that was one of the funniest parts of
Speaker 1: the whole her whole sequences. You know, she sent into
Speaker 1: to romance him and leave him, and none of that
Speaker 1: ever makes sense. It's such a thin sort of premise anyway,
Speaker 1: and and she's just kind of cooled and cold and
Speaker 1: cool to him. But you know, then she sleeps with
Speaker 1: him overnight and she's just like she's fallen for him.
Speaker 1: She's like she doesn't want him to leave, she's trying
Speaker 1: to keep him there, and she completely turns against Edley Lamar. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's like an interesting sort of like the radical the
Speaker 1: radicalization of certain people in this movie where it's like
Speaker 1: you think about her because by the end, yeah, she's like, uh,
Speaker 1: singing to the Nazis to get the stuff fighting, and
Speaker 1: so it's like she's kind of been radicalized. Mongo has
Speaker 1: been rad ecalized because he has he's never untreated as
Speaker 1: nice and so there is this weird like wave of
Speaker 1: like people seeing oh wait a minute, there's maybe a
Speaker 1: different way to do this, and even by the end
Speaker 1: they've radicalized the whole town where it's like Okay, yeah,
Speaker 1: you like you see that we can work together and
Speaker 1: to do this, like it's it's you know, it's a
Speaker 1: very sort of uh, building blocks kind of thing, but
Speaker 1: it is that thing of like, how are we going
Speaker 1: to build a fake town in overnight? And it's like, well,
Speaker 1: I got all the Chinese rail road workers and enslaved
Speaker 1: black people to come and they're and they're gonna help.
Speaker 1: And the townspeople were like uh, and then it's like
Speaker 1: they're gonna help and they're gonna save you. But to
Speaker 1: do this, you're also going to have to give up
Speaker 1: being racists and and give them some land and give
Speaker 1: them some land. And there's something that's interesting in this,
Speaker 1: like in that conversation that's like it's almost so rudimentary
Speaker 1: and how simple it is, but it is that thing
Speaker 1: of like, yeah, that's that's the core of what it is,
Speaker 1: is like we're never gonna stop this unless we all
Speaker 1: work together. But in working together, it also means that
Speaker 1: like everyone's going to have to get like their fair
Speaker 1: share when it's all over, and it's it's almost like
Speaker 1: it's almost this weird, beautiful message in an in a
Speaker 1: movie that also has a scene that is just three
Speaker 1: minutes of people farting NonStop. Right, Yeah, the scene when
Speaker 1: you were talking about the trickster thing. I think that
Speaker 1: is so evident in the And you know that the
Speaker 1: setup of the movie is very it's all very funny.
Speaker 1: I mean, joke for joke per minute. It may be
Speaker 1: one of the funniest movies ever made. And the first
Speaker 1: thirty minutes is certainly funny. But the h I feel
Speaker 1: like it really heats up when Bart finally comes to
Speaker 1: town and the town welcomes him with a big ceremony
Speaker 1: and um he the beraar rabbit thing is most evident
Speaker 1: in the scene where he takes himself hostage. You know
Speaker 1: they all pull the guns on. I mean, he immediately
Speaker 1: is like, well, here's what I have to do. I
Speaker 1: have to go into this sort of uh, typical you know,
Speaker 1: typical black man mode that they will recognize and uh
Speaker 1: they can identify with that, because like that's the only
Speaker 1: thing they're gonna recognize and identify with. And uh and
Speaker 1: then you know, he plays it so perfectly. Cleveland Little
Speaker 1: is so great in this, and when he finally gets
Speaker 1: behind closed doors in the office, he's like, you're baby,
Speaker 1: you are so talented and they are so dumb. I
Speaker 1: mean they say that a few times. Gene Hackman calls
Speaker 1: him morons. He calls them dumb. I Harvey Corman is
Speaker 1: the other sort of smart one because he knows. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: what I say, Gene Hackman. Yeah, that would have been
Speaker 1: interesting cast. You know, John Wayne was originally they sent
Speaker 1: that to John Wayne. That doesn't seem like it would
Speaker 1: be the same movie. It doesn't, and especially considering now
Speaker 1: you know what we know about John Wayne's politics right
Speaker 1: at the time, even and it was he apparently liked
Speaker 1: the script a lot. They said he thought it was
Speaker 1: too blue and he there's he just there's no way
Speaker 1: he got the There's no way he got it. Not
Speaker 1: that seems so bizarre. I doubt if he understood it.
Speaker 1: I cannot imagine him in that role. No, because because
Speaker 1: Gene Wilder and uh and Cleveland Little were such a
Speaker 1: great team. And I know, and I'm sure you know
Speaker 1: that Richard Pryor, one of the writers, was gonna play
Speaker 1: Jim as well. But we're going to play bart And
Speaker 1: they didn't do it. I mean, I've heard a few
Speaker 1: different excuses on why they didn't do that, but I mean,
Speaker 1: I love Cleveland Little, but I totally could have seen
Speaker 1: Richard Young, Richard Pryor in this movie. I could have.
Speaker 1: But it's interesting because there's a part of me that
Speaker 1: m it would have been interesting to see Prior and
Speaker 1: Wilder just given the then real they would kind of
Speaker 1: create a comedy duo as But I feel like there's
Speaker 1: also something about Cleveland Little that I feel like, I
Speaker 1: he wasn't somebody that I thought of as a comedic
Speaker 1: actor in that way, and he's he has this kind
Speaker 1: of leading man quality that like I could see him
Speaker 1: playing a superspy or you know, see him playing like
Speaker 1: a lawyers someone, someone with real gravitas, and it's interesting
Speaker 1: to then see him bring that into this role that
Speaker 1: is comic. But also I think he he leans on
Speaker 1: his serious acting as well in a way that I
Speaker 1: don't know if it makes it and it makes it
Speaker 1: funnier than if Prior would have done it, But I
Speaker 1: think it just makes it more interesting to me in
Speaker 1: a way, and in the same way that I think
Speaker 1: of like Jeffrey Wright, to me is one of the
Speaker 1: funniest actors when given comedic things, but is such a
Speaker 1: great just actor in general. But there are moments where
Speaker 1: there was something I saw him do and it was
Speaker 1: just like a short video that I think was for
Speaker 1: like the New York Times or something like that, where
Speaker 1: he's he's in an airplane and he's narrating it and
Speaker 1: he's just sitting on an airplane, and his ability as
Speaker 1: an actor is just like, Oh, he's such a great
Speaker 1: serious actor. And then there are these moments for him
Speaker 1: to be funny, and I think it's almost because it's
Speaker 1: because you forget that he's funny. It hits you like
Speaker 1: this gut punch in a way that's like, oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: this is I expect Richard prior to be funny, So
Speaker 1: I think I would anticipate any scene he walks into
Speaker 1: that he's gonna be funny, and I'm almost I'm almost
Speaker 1: more shocked when he's serious. And when I think about
Speaker 1: like a movie like Jojo Dancer, like you're almost you're
Speaker 1: more impressed at him being serious in those moments. And
Speaker 1: in the same way someone who is a really great
Speaker 1: serious and stage actor, to see them be funny, it's
Speaker 1: a it hits you in this different way, and and
Speaker 1: not every serious actor can pull off comedy in the
Speaker 1: same way that not every comedian can pull off serious stuff. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: for sure. It also hit me today watching the Townspeople
Speaker 1: and just how much it sort of echoes what we've
Speaker 1: seen during the Trump years of these people that are
Speaker 1: determined to act against their own self interests just to
Speaker 1: hang on to racism and just to be able to
Speaker 1: say the N word to somebody. And it's that that
Speaker 1: grievance politics that we've seen so much of lately. It's like,
Speaker 1: but you're acting against yourself interests politically, and like like,
Speaker 1: do you understand what you're doing? And they don't care
Speaker 1: as long as that as long as they can say
Speaker 1: bad things about people, like that's what matters more. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and that it's it is. It's a very it is
Speaker 1: a very good kind of like uh analogous thing that
Speaker 1: think about with the Trump era. Yeah, it's funny because
Speaker 1: as you say that, Yeah, there's a lot of it
Speaker 1: where it does feel like I think about the one uh,
Speaker 1: the one woman who brings brings them some dinner that
Speaker 1: comes to Bart and Jim and yeah, like earlier in
Speaker 1: the movie had yelled at Barton called him a nigger,
Speaker 1: and then later shows like shows up at the jail
Speaker 1: and brings him a pie, and it's like, I'm sorry
Speaker 1: about that from before, and also here's this pie, and
Speaker 1: thank you. But then also, don't tell anybody about this.
Speaker 1: And it's that it's that weird. It's the weird identity
Speaker 1: politics that I feel like exist. We often think about
Speaker 1: identity politics extending to like anyone who has, you know,
Speaker 1: who doesn't fit what we consider the sort of the
Speaker 1: conservative American pie norm whatever. But I feel like there's
Speaker 1: the identity politics that exist of the people who, like
Speaker 1: you said, vote against their own interests or feel they
Speaker 1: have to live up to some to some version of
Speaker 1: what a like white person from the South or a
Speaker 1: rural area supposed to be. And I think about there's UH.
Speaker 1: There's a filmmaker. Her name's Elvira Lynde and she made
Speaker 1: this She made this show for Vice and it was
Speaker 1: an interesting show. It was a show about these two
Speaker 1: trans Brooklyn nights who decide to take a cross country
Speaker 1: trip together and one of one of the people in
Speaker 1: the UH in the story, and I'm trying to remember
Speaker 1: their names. I feel like one's name one. One person
Speaker 1: was named Twizz. I think it was like Twizz and Tuck.
Speaker 1: I think is the name of it, if if somebody
Speaker 1: wanted to go look it up. I think it's called
Speaker 1: Twiz and Tuck. I think it's Twizz is from a
Speaker 1: very rural area and decides to go meet up with
Speaker 1: the guy that took them to prom when they were
Speaker 1: still presenting as as female. And so they go to
Speaker 1: this incredibly rural place and they meet this guy and
Speaker 1: you know, he looks like he could be one of
Speaker 1: the like a cousin of the Duck dynasty guys like uh,
Speaker 1: you know, beards not as long, but he's got the
Speaker 1: camo baseball cap that's that's curled, and he's wearing sunglasses.
Speaker 1: And they meet this guy and his family and the
Speaker 1: guy is a little throne now seeing you know, a
Speaker 1: male version of his prom date. And they talk and stuff.
Speaker 1: But then you discover in this conversation and I'm talking
Speaker 1: the the guy has kids and one of his kids
Speaker 1: is gender nonconforming, and they're supportive, and it's and it's
Speaker 1: like and it's such a strange thing where it's kind
Speaker 1: of like and yet and I'm sure there are people
Speaker 1: in this community who are supportive of this kid, and
Speaker 1: yet this community may have voted overwhelmingly against that kid's
Speaker 1: interests despite the fact that they've seen that kid in
Speaker 1: school plays and you know, at church or wherever, and
Speaker 1: they embrace the kid. And it's that weird thing of
Speaker 1: like the identity politics of well, I still have to
Speaker 1: come off as this like conservative that can't like actually say, well,
Speaker 1: hold on a minute. Maybe it doesn't make sense for
Speaker 1: us to be closed minded and these and maybe this
Speaker 1: touches our doorstep a little closer than we realize those things.
Speaker 1: I mean, it kind of goes back to it goes
Speaker 1: back to my King of the Hill episode, my fan
Speaker 1: fition episode of hay Thank feeling like he has to
Speaker 1: vote party over everything else. And but it is that
Speaker 1: it's but it was funny when I think about that
Speaker 1: scene emblazing saddles. It's very much that to to your point,
Speaker 1: there are so many of those people who have who
Speaker 1: voted for Trump and said like, oh, you know, build
Speaker 1: a wall, and uh, you know, we don't want gay
Speaker 1: people to have rights, and and yet probably have people
Speaker 1: in their lives who are immigrants who they may or
Speaker 1: may not know their documentation like some may be documented,
Speaker 1: some may be undocumented or in their lives and they're like,
Speaker 1: well that person is different, right, Well that's what you
Speaker 1: hear a lot is but like you know, they're they're
Speaker 1: an undocumented Mexican. But like, man, they're really good on
Speaker 1: the job with us, and you know, really good coworker. Yeah.
Speaker 1: It's like, well, you don't have to caveat any of that, no,
Speaker 1: and you just say, he's a really good coworker. He's
Speaker 1: a really good coworker. And also, if he's such a
Speaker 1: good coworker, shouldn't he have the same rights as the
Speaker 1: rest of his co workers and shouldn't have access to
Speaker 1: the same rights and privileges. And if he's a good
Speaker 1: if he's such a good worker, couldn't you then agree
Speaker 1: that probably the vast majority of people in the same
Speaker 1: situation as him are good people and good workers and
Speaker 1: deserving of those same rights, rather than he's the outlier. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Uh.
Speaker 1: I love. I mean you mentioned the scene earlier with
Speaker 1: the old lady in the pie um. I love how
Speaker 1: he handles her and how he handles everybody in the
Speaker 1: town with just such a plum Like right after the
Speaker 1: scene where they basically are where he gets welcome to
Speaker 1: town and they all pull their guns on him. He
Speaker 1: hoodwinks him, goes in the office, and it shows him
Speaker 1: the next day on the job, he's just sort of
Speaker 1: whistling and he's putting up his wanted signs, and you
Speaker 1: know when the lady comes, she comes back, she leaves
Speaker 1: the pie and then comes back and says, of course
Speaker 1: you'll have the good judgment to not tell anyone we talked.
Speaker 1: And he's like, oh, yes, of course, man, Like he's
Speaker 1: just such an affable guy to everybody. And and Jim
Speaker 1: wakes up in that jail celle a cell and immediately
Speaker 1: realizes that, like this is a friend for him, like
Speaker 1: their pals. Right out of the gate. The first thing
Speaker 1: Bart does before he goes out on on the job
Speaker 1: is gets stoned, which, like I remember that scene a
Speaker 1: hundred times of them smoking the joint, but it never
Speaker 1: really occurred to me that, like that's before he goes
Speaker 1: out on his first day sort of walking the town.
Speaker 1: He's like, I'm just gonna smoke this joint and then
Speaker 1: just kind of walk around in a good mood. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's I mean, it's interesting even that, I mean there's
Speaker 1: something that's there's there's there's an interesting comment that's being
Speaker 1: made about the criminal justice system and yeah, in general,
Speaker 1: like the carce Rol system that we have where yeah,
Speaker 1: into Bart, Jim isn't isn't irredeemable and neither is Mango,
Speaker 1: and it's you know, they both can have they both
Speaker 1: can find redemption if they're willing to do the work
Speaker 1: and like Mango just pawn in Game of Life. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Mango and exactly, And that's the thing and Mango, that's
Speaker 1: I feel like that line breaks me every time, but
Speaker 1: it is it's it's uh, but there's something that's interesting
Speaker 1: about Yeah, perhaps if more cops smoked a joint before
Speaker 1: they walked to beat, they might they might approach things
Speaker 1: from more of a de escalation, uh situation, or just
Speaker 1: like oh right, maybe maybe my job isn't even get
Speaker 1: involved in half of these things and that like oh right, yeah,
Speaker 1: we don't have to imprison people like yeah, Jim is
Speaker 1: like Jim's crime is that Jim was drunk, and it's like, right, yeah,
Speaker 1: the drunk tank, Yeah, that's maybe not a crime. Maybe
Speaker 1: that's maybe let me get to get to know this
Speaker 1: guy and understand and even in that conversation, he's like,
Speaker 1: you don't eat and you're just gonna drink, right, that's
Speaker 1: a quick way to die. And just that idea that like, oh,
Speaker 1: the concern, Like that's like like their friendship is forged
Speaker 1: in a place of concern, totally care. And that's what
Speaker 1: also makes it so like beautiful and you see like
Speaker 1: a real like even by the end where it's like, okay,
Speaker 1: well what are we gonna do? Well, whatever we do,
Speaker 1: why don't we go together and venture? Man? I love
Speaker 1: the ending. I mean, that's so great that he took
Speaker 1: him along where you go in Nowhere special. I always
Speaker 1: wanted to go there, and then you know they ride
Speaker 1: their horses in and getting that cattle back. No. I
Speaker 1: feel like that's what's also so great about that movie,
Speaker 1: is like they take everything and then subvert it and
Speaker 1: it's just okay, they're riding off in the sunset, but
Speaker 1: then they get in the Cadillac and then they zoom
Speaker 1: out and you see where they are in context of
Speaker 1: like it's a back lot and like all those things.
Speaker 1: And I think something that I really appreciate about the film.
Speaker 1: Something I really appreciate about the film that um, I
Speaker 1: feel like you don't see as much in comedy today
Speaker 1: comedy movies is mel Brooks really uses the camera as
Speaker 1: a comedian as well. And I feel like so often
Speaker 1: when you watch a comedy film, it's all shot in
Speaker 1: sort of shot reverse shot close ups, and it's people
Speaker 1: feeding lines off camera where it's you know, I think
Speaker 1: a lot of people, I think a lot of people
Speaker 1: saw what Adam McKay did with Anchorman, and they focused
Speaker 1: purely on and the sort of improvised alt takes on
Speaker 1: things and carried that but didn't take into account Oh no,
Speaker 1: Adam McKay also tried to build shots where you saw
Speaker 1: you had wide shots where there were jokes, and I
Speaker 1: think mel Brooks does that, and it's and and so
Speaker 1: I think, yeah, one thing that I feel like a
Speaker 1: lot of comedies they don't, I don't see as much.
Speaker 1: They tend to just focus on those kind of like, Okay,
Speaker 1: the cameras on, the cameras on Wyatt, and he sets
Speaker 1: up Chuck for a joke, and now Chuck has a
Speaker 1: witty come back. But also the director then says, okay,
Speaker 1: now say this, and Chuck says the next thing, and
Speaker 1: then the next thing, and you'll say fifteen different versions
Speaker 1: of a joke, and then they'll take it into the
Speaker 1: edit and it's like, Okay, whatever the funniest one is.
Speaker 1: And a lot of calm any filmmaking today, I think,
Speaker 1: relies on that without often doing the other thing that
Speaker 1: I feel like Blazing Saddles does really well, which is
Speaker 1: choreographing a comedic moment, right, yeah, yeah, And and obviously
Speaker 1: I mean they had I think four other right, mel
Speaker 1: Brooks and Richard Pryor and I think three other writers.
Speaker 1: And I remember hearing stories from mel Brooks saying how
Speaker 1: writing this movie was the most funny had in his career.
Speaker 1: In that writer's room, he said, all they did was laugh,
Speaker 1: And he said that Richard was just invaluable because he
Speaker 1: was their sort of barometer on what they could say
Speaker 1: and what they couldn't say as far as, you know,
Speaker 1: sort of racially upsetting things. And Richard probably was like,
Speaker 1: you gotta say that stuff, man, He's like, because those
Speaker 1: people would have said that stuff, and if you don't,
Speaker 1: it's just it's phony. And so he sort of gave
Speaker 1: them permission to go where they went, I think. But
Speaker 1: apparently prior didn't write much of that stuff. He wrote
Speaker 1: a bunch of the Mango scenes and some like I
Speaker 1: think with people here that Richard Pryor wrote this, they
Speaker 1: would think like, oh, well, he wrote all the black
Speaker 1: jokes because that was just the way it had to be.
Speaker 1: And apparently that just wasn't the case. Yeah. I remember
Speaker 1: reading that he really loved the character of Mango, and
Speaker 1: I think Mongo just Upawn in the Game of Life
Speaker 1: is like that's his verbatim, and um, yeah, I feel
Speaker 1: like I had watched a documentary where they talked about
Speaker 1: him doing that, and you know, I think Prior was
Speaker 1: very coked up at the time, and so I think
Speaker 1: because I know that one story was that Warner Brothers
Speaker 1: said they couldn't ensure him because of his coke habinot. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I heard that too, and there are a couple of
Speaker 1: movie UH studios that I didn't want to ensure him
Speaker 1: because of cocaine. But but I could see him. I
Speaker 1: feel like in some documentary or a book that I
Speaker 1: read that talked about his experience there, it seemed like
Speaker 1: he was acting out a lot of things, and Uh
Speaker 1: may have been kind of like playing different parts, right,
Speaker 1: improvising I think probably like improvising with mel Brooks where
Speaker 1: you have two performers who are also writing. Uh, and
Speaker 1: so I could imagine, yeah that just that interplay was
Speaker 1: probably had to be a lot of fun for them.
Speaker 1: Um yeah, that's uh, it's I feel like that version
Speaker 1: of writing can be. It's really fun, especially if you've
Speaker 1: got someone who can record all of it and be
Speaker 1: the person at the keyboard to be like, Okay, yes,
Speaker 1: all right, I'll put that in and then the magic
Speaker 1: is happening. Yeah, and then we'll find a way to
Speaker 1: make all this makes sense. Uh. And then I mean
Speaker 1: there's just so many good dumb jokes. I mean it's
Speaker 1: a movie that's uh, it's relentless in its dedication to
Speaker 1: the joke. Whether and so many great like I'm a
Speaker 1: big fan of dumb jokes and wordplay and whether it's
Speaker 1: Higgins from Magnum p I saying, you know, we want
Speaker 1: to extend to you a Laurel and Hardy handshake, Like
Speaker 1: that's just such a good old school sort of busch
Speaker 1: Belt comedy that you know, Like that's just like mel
Speaker 1: Brooks signature stuff and so much of the Governor stuff
Speaker 1: that you know, mel Brooks is the governor. So much
Speaker 1: of that stuff was just great dumb jokes one after
Speaker 1: the other. Yeah, no, I uh, And you may know this,
Speaker 1: but I I was. I was looking up something about
Speaker 1: the movie and his name Lopato Maine. Do you know
Speaker 1: this where that name comes from? No, Lpato Maine is
Speaker 1: apparently the name of a French performer. And I don't
Speaker 1: remember what what era this French performer was around, but
Speaker 1: their whole thing was that they were a performer that
Speaker 1: would just get on stage and fart, and so they
Speaker 1: were just a perscaremative, which feels very much like h Brand. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Well he has another good line too that I never
Speaker 1: noticed when um, I think it's when they had the
Speaker 1: little below paddles. Is that what they're called with the
Speaker 1: rubber band in the ball and we're talking about kind
Speaker 1: of swindling the Native Americans out of their land, and
Speaker 1: mel Brooks says something about, you know, we gotta get busy, gentlemen,
Speaker 1: we gotta protect our phony bologny jobs. And I never
Speaker 1: really noticed that line until today. And that's such a
Speaker 1: great subversive line just about government and like, you know,
Speaker 1: these sort of white dudes in charge, we're protect our
Speaker 1: phony blogny jobs. So great. Yeah, uh, I'm trying to.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's so easy just to let's say your
Speaker 1: favorite lines over and over. Just the relationship between Jim
Speaker 1: and Bart. It was just so great right out of
Speaker 1: the gate. Uh you know, since you were my guests
Speaker 1: and I'm your host, what are your pleasures? What do
Speaker 1: you like to do? Oh? I don't know, play chess?
Speaker 1: Screw let's let's play chess. And then what's a dazzling
Speaker 1: urban nite like you doing in a rustic setting like this.
Speaker 1: There's just so many great lines, really is and then
Speaker 1: everything madelon Con does, like how she I mean, just
Speaker 1: one of my favorite comedians of all time on screen,
Speaker 1: and how she came up with that, I mean, it's
Speaker 1: a ridiculous German accent, and then that sort of speech
Speaker 1: impediment that she had just to throw that on top
Speaker 1: of it is such a fun, weird choice, I think, yeah,
Speaker 1: and that everyone went with it. Where then later there's
Speaker 1: a letter that's right that same like accent with the
Speaker 1: sort of Barbara Walters kind of Uh yeah, it's saying
Speaker 1: a cross between Bbara Walters uh and and German and
Speaker 1: uh yeah, no it's it's it was great. It's funny
Speaker 1: watching her. I I found myself. She I've seen. I've
Speaker 1: definitely seen like a lot of movies that she's done.
Speaker 1: But like, I think about her and I think about
Speaker 1: Kate McKinnon in a similar way as far as their
Speaker 1: ability to kind of like take a character and both
Speaker 1: make it ridiculous, but also you can tell that they're
Speaker 1: fully enjoying the ridiculousness of it. Yeah, they're having a
Speaker 1: good time. Yeah, And that just translates in this way
Speaker 1: that's like they're both in it and not in it
Speaker 1: at the same time, like winking at it while they're
Speaker 1: doing it, and uh, yeah, it's uh yeah, she's she's great. Uh.
Speaker 1: And then there was another one of the subversive lines
Speaker 1: that I've never really noticed before was after Candy Gram
Speaker 1: from Mango. After he outsmarts Mango with the candy Gram
Speaker 1: and he comes back and it's the next day, and
Speaker 1: and Mongo is tied up in Gene Wilders telling him
Speaker 1: how great that was, and he goes, yeah, the hardest
Speaker 1: part was inventing the candy gram, he said, he said,
Speaker 1: but I know I'm not going to get credit for that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I never noticed that line before. Yeah, it's so great.
Speaker 1: It really was. No, that was a very funny. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's there are just so many yeah things that kind
Speaker 1: of it's it's the perfect movie that like demands second
Speaker 1: and third watch because there's so many things that happened
Speaker 1: here that like you catch and then you missed the
Speaker 1: thing that happens right underneath. Yeah. Did you know the
Speaker 1: HBO Max had a it's not on there now, but
Speaker 1: they ran it last summer and had a had a
Speaker 1: lady on at the beginning um talking about putting it
Speaker 1: into the proper perspective as a like a disclaimer, almost
Speaker 1: putting it in cultural perspective of today. And it was
Speaker 1: just like a two minute thing that this lady did.
Speaker 1: Apparently they did the same thing with Gone with the Wind.
Speaker 1: I think it might have been the same lady. And
Speaker 1: I went to look for it today and of course
Speaker 1: they it wouldn't even on HBO Max anymore. But I
Speaker 1: think that's a really interesting thing to do, uh, because
Speaker 1: you know, this is one of those movies where half
Speaker 1: the people will say like, oh, you couldn't make that
Speaker 1: movie today, And the conversation around that is interesting to
Speaker 1: me because what I learned online from talking to movie
Speaker 1: crushers about this is to some people you can't make
Speaker 1: that movie today means they're almost sad because you can't
Speaker 1: say awful things anymore. And when I say you couldn't
Speaker 1: make that movie today, I don't mean it that way
Speaker 1: at all. I mean this kind of comedy and satire
Speaker 1: is so hard to you successfully, and the conversation around
Speaker 1: that stuff today has so little nuanced that That's why
Speaker 1: I think it would be hard to make today. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean I think it would be difficult, but I
Speaker 1: still think you could do it. It's just I think
Speaker 1: you'd have to pay more things off, Like there's definitely
Speaker 1: towards the end, like like I think I feel like
Speaker 1: in the movie, the movie really tried to tell a
Speaker 1: black and white story, but then also had Native Americans,
Speaker 1: gay people, women, Asian Asians, Jews, Germans, everybody. And I
Speaker 1: think what's tough is that the the sort of cruelty
Speaker 1: that's enacted on some of those groups, there's never a
Speaker 1: there's never a moment to really sit with it. Like
Speaker 1: the first thing in the movie, you know, a Chinese railroad,
Speaker 1: a Chinese rail road worker collapses and is just kind
Speaker 1: of met with a slur and the very first thing
Speaker 1: that happens, Yeah, and there's never like there's it just
Speaker 1: kind of is there and goes away, and I think
Speaker 1: like that's the thing that like, oh, yeah, you can't
Speaker 1: get away with that anymore, like you've got you've gotta
Speaker 1: have some comment or something about that, or even at
Speaker 1: the end of the film, it's very much you know,
Speaker 1: these dancers are being played as very flamboyantly gay, and
Speaker 1: it feels like, Okay, you're making fun of a a
Speaker 1: caricature of someone. Yeah, was funny at that time because
Speaker 1: for the people who actually lived in that reality, many
Speaker 1: of them couldn't feel comfortable or safe being vocal about
Speaker 1: who they were. And so I feel like it's those
Speaker 1: things where it's like, okay, yeah, those those are the
Speaker 1: areas that really are like, yeah, you can't do those things.
Speaker 1: They pay off the Bart stuff because he he wins
Speaker 1: in the end, and he wins everyone over and he
Speaker 1: is the smartest guy. But yeah, I know what you're saying.
Speaker 1: Although that that in sequence does have one of the
Speaker 1: funnier parts to me when uh, one of the big
Speaker 1: cowboy guys goes to beat up on one of the
Speaker 1: gay dancers and they kind of go behind the wall
Speaker 1: and then two seconds later they come on the other
Speaker 1: side of the wall and the guy's got his arm
Speaker 1: around him and he goes, well, you know, I'm parked
Speaker 1: over by the commissary. Yeah, And I feel like in
Speaker 1: on some level that was maybe their their attempt to
Speaker 1: comment on on that, but it's yeah, I feel like
Speaker 1: there's you know, if you were going to make that
Speaker 1: movie again, I think you want a room where, if
Speaker 1: you're still going to do those scenes, you want that
Speaker 1: representation in the room to to sort of figure out
Speaker 1: and craft the best way to make those comments so
Speaker 1: that it's not so that no one can walk away
Speaker 1: thinking it's okay to just make an anti Asian slur
Speaker 1: all right and then leave it there. Yeah, and that
Speaker 1: that's somehow funny, or that it's okay to uh say
Speaker 1: something homophobic, and and that you can just kind of
Speaker 1: like that there's no consequence for that. And so in
Speaker 1: those ways, I feel like, uh, yeah, that's the part
Speaker 1: of it where it's like, oh, you can't do that anymore.
Speaker 1: But it is interesting the way that these things get
Speaker 1: explored and shared, And yeah, I don't know. I feel
Speaker 1: like the Disney cartoons when they when they were on DVD,
Speaker 1: Leonard Malton would do a disclaimer at the at the
Speaker 1: beginning of the DVDs, where I think it was a
Speaker 1: very similar thing where it's like, some of what you're
Speaker 1: about to see is old, you know, old stereotypes that uh,
Speaker 1: you know aren't don't fly today. And it's weird because
Speaker 1: I feel like with kids things, I have a different
Speaker 1: feeling about it with kids things. And I saw this
Speaker 1: and I I tweeted about it, but I'm not I
Speaker 1: don't have enough of a Twitter following that like things
Speaker 1: really go viral in that way. But I tweeted because
Speaker 1: I had watched when the pandemic started, I watched old
Speaker 1: episodes of Scooby Doo and there are some very racist
Speaker 1: things in Scooby Doo that are just throwaway jokes, and
Speaker 1: in rewatching it, I found myself thinking, at the very
Speaker 1: least with Scooby Doo or with those old cartoons. And
Speaker 1: I don't think they put a disclaimer on Scooby Doo,
Speaker 1: but it did feel like, you know, it wouldn't be
Speaker 1: that hard for that company to just animate a new
Speaker 1: a new bridge to get out to like to either
Speaker 1: cut that out of it and replace it with new,
Speaker 1: Like you could very easily cut audio and it's easy
Speaker 1: enough to like make animation kind of match that style. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's just the beauty of animation. You can change it
Speaker 1: later that. I feel like you could update something like
Speaker 1: Scooby Doo where it's purely children's entertainment, but it's also
Speaker 1: that thing that a parent is like, oh, I watched
Speaker 1: this and I want to watch it with my kid,
Speaker 1: and you know, and it's like, oh, yeah, you could
Speaker 1: maybe do that rather than make that moment for a
Speaker 1: kid for a kid in the parent if they're watching
Speaker 1: it together, hopefully they're watching it together that parent didn't
Speaker 1: just park the kid in front of it. And it's like,
Speaker 1: and now Scooby and Shaggy are in Chinatown dressed in
Speaker 1: like clothes like or something. They're like turn of century
Speaker 1: clothes and they're doing like buck teeth and accents, and
Speaker 1: it's like, yeah, you don't need that, And you could
Speaker 1: very easily just animate a new twenty seconds and take
Speaker 1: some audio and like it's not like it's not like
Speaker 1: those storylines where that fucking strong to begin with, So
Speaker 1: you're probably not going out the sanctity of of Scooby Doo. Yeah, Like,
Speaker 1: I feel like I feel like it would be easy
Speaker 1: to do that, Like, I feel like Tom and Jerry did.
Speaker 1: I didn't. I remember they did something where they just
Speaker 1: revoiced the the black woman who lived in the house
Speaker 1: or he worked in the house, and I felt like
Speaker 1: that didn't work. I feel like what you wanted is like, no,
Speaker 1: just reanimate a new scene where it's like the same,
Speaker 1: like you know, it's whatever. It's someone saying like Tom,
Speaker 1: I'm leaving you in charge and whatever. Because it's also
Speaker 1: the like everything about this character is like even the
Speaker 1: visual of this character, you're evoking something, and so by
Speaker 1: changing the voice, it's not like not enough, it's you're
Speaker 1: still taking that kind of mammy character and you're just saying, oh,
Speaker 1: now she can sound like she's, uh, you know a
Speaker 1: lawyer from Atlanta, right who still dresses like a mammy. Alright,
Speaker 1: why listen, man, I know you gotta run. I think
Speaker 1: we did blazing settles justice. I'd like to think we did.
Speaker 1: And I appreciate you coming on and being so genness
Speaker 1: with your time. Man, it's good to see. It's been
Speaker 1: a while. It's been a while. It's good to see
Speaker 1: you too. Your beard has grown much since I last year.
Speaker 1: It's kind of ridiculous. I'll next time I get to
Speaker 1: New York, I'll hit you up. Maybe we can have
Speaker 1: a drink or something. I would love that. And the
Speaker 1: next time I get to Atlanta, maybe we can go
Speaker 1: to Fox Brothers. Oh, totally, man, anytime I'm ready. Yeah,
Speaker 1: or what's the other there's there's another place. I went
Speaker 1: to a gun show. Yeah, gun show is good. Uh.
Speaker 1: I'm thinking it closed down because the pandemic. That was
Speaker 1: actually the last restaurant I went to for my my
Speaker 1: birthday March last year. So oh, well, happy belated birthday,
Speaker 1: thanks man. Yeah this year, well, happy belated birthday to
Speaker 1: belated birthdays. Yeah, all right, thanks buddy, thank you. Take
Speaker 1: care all right, everybody. I hope you enjoyed that as
Speaker 1: much as I did. This one was supersized. Why. It's
Speaker 1: a great guy. He's always got a lot to say,
Speaker 1: and he's always really interesting to have a conversation with.
Speaker 1: I Uh. I usually have these conversations with Wyatt sitting
Speaker 1: at a bar um sometimes just the two of us,
Speaker 1: which is really nice, but this time it was over zoomed. Unfortunately.
Speaker 1: I can't wait to get to New York and maybe
Speaker 1: see him again, because, like I said, in the show.
Speaker 1: It's been a while since I've seen seen one of
Speaker 1: my old pals, so big thanks to Wyatt. I hope
Speaker 1: he did blazing saddles justice. I hope you guys got
Speaker 1: a lot out of his conversation about his career and
Speaker 1: especially with problem areas. Like I said, you can still
Speaker 1: watch it on HBO Max. It's a really really good show.
Speaker 1: And uh, if you missed it the first time around,
Speaker 1: I encourage you to go out and check it out now.
Speaker 1: Problem is on HBO Max. So thanks for listening, everyone,
Speaker 1: and we'll see you next week. Movie Crash is produced
Speaker 1: and written by Charles Bryant and Meel Brown, edited and
Speaker 1: engineered by Seth Nicholas Johnson, and scored by Noel Brown
Speaker 1: here in our home studio at punksty Market, Atlanta, Georgia.
Speaker 1: For I Heart Radio. For more podcasts for my Heart Radio,
Speaker 1: visit the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever
Speaker 1: you listen to your favorite shows.