I'm going to ask myself some questions. Rain, what's going on? What's going on these days?
Cuz here's what I'm about to say. Are you ready? Here it goes. I'm going to say this now. Sit down. Fasten your seat belt. Here's the deal. It was front page like Rainn Wilson. The Office was racist. Giant clickbait kind of thing.
Clickbaited and I clicked.
Feel the rain on your pod. Rainn Wilson tomorrow. That's a song. Rainn Wilson. Rainn. I'm doing the police.
Oh, don't let it rain. I actually made a pun when our guest Rainn Wilson, who was a blast, came into the studio. I can't remember. I said let it rain or I don't know. He's heard it all. You know, we tried to give him some curveballs, but he's heard it all.
So, we had him in studio, which is rare. We have a couple coming up in studio. We had fun with Rainn. Good dude. We talked about Dwight's haircut on The Office.
And a lot of Office stuff, how that got made and what the rocket ship that he got on with that.
Yeah, we and his career, where he came from, you know, it's really an interesting story. It always is. Always is different. We didn't focus on The Office. That was actually we sort of came swung back to that. But he's got a lot of different things to talk about. We won't spoil it. We had a great film.
Code 3 coming out in theaters and then it'll be in movies now. I believe it's in movies now. It's a movie now and it'll be in theaters when it's a movie then.
So, Code 3, Rainn Wilson. And here he is.
This is no pressure. You can eat. You can do whatever. Not going to eat on a podcast. We have no plans. No ideas.
Yeah. No plan, huh? Oh, wow.
Is that what they said? No plan. NBC Dwight spin-off axed. Let's start with that one.
Well, yeah, because it was axed.
Well, they... Oh, there was a planned one. It was a backdoor pilot. We'll get into it. It's delicious.
Oh, good. Can we bury anybody? Young Seahawks fans. You got any Warren Littlefield stuff or do you know Warren Littlefield?
No, I don't know. I don't think I ever met.
Was he before... he was gone? Yeah, he was gone at that point. He wooed me to do the Letterman thing and gave me a poster of the Capitol Records Meet the Beatles. He got it signed.
Mhm. You weren't ready for that this fast. Uh wow.
Rainn is stunned now. I met with Brandon Tartikoff who was before him. Do you remember Brandon? It could have been Tartikoff. I think it was Tartikoff, but it could have been Tartikoff.
We had Jeff Zucker was our... he left and then there was the other guy and I can't remember his name, but he had red hair and he helped produce Six Feet Under. So, I should know his name. Did anybody kind of get out in front of The Office once it became a smash and kind of like, well, you know, it was my idea and I...
There was a guy Kevin Reilly who's still out there and he was the champion. And he, I mean, he single-handedly kept our show on the air when no one believed in it. I don't know why, but he just, he's the one who like squirreled away some money for, oh, we'll do five or six episodes here and we'll do two or three and I got your money for one more script and like...
He was like doing the wheeling and...
No, because they're studio executives.
I know. I was hoping because he's like the hero in the...
Yeah. Do you know how this works?
Kevin Reilly worked at Brillstein forever. Is that true?
Yeah. Yeah. He's an... He worked on managers for a while and then he was an executive.
These managers become executives, right? It's very... like Brad Grey.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's a story.
That is exactly... Oh, you have some stories there. You lit up like a little Christmas tree.
Too many stories. Go ahead.
Too many stories. No, he was my manager.
Yeah. It was just the... in a general sense. Go ahead. Once the person who's representing you also becomes a producer on the show then there's just an intrinsic conflict of interest. It's like the fox saying I could guard the hen house. I mean, come on, man, you're not going to eat them, are you? But the idea is that they're going to also represent your best interests and produce...
Right, there's just like, you can... I'll give... do I give this money to the client or I give it to myself? I'm the... you know, it's a little tricky. Let's put it that way.
We can go deep into that.
What was that smoothie that you were eating there? Cuz that looks like...
Thanks. It's our... the lawn mower threw up. We might as well plug it. Sponsored by Barf. It's just a green drink of ground vegetables.
No, it's good. It's not as good. Do you read ads on your podcast?
Uh, I do read ads on your sponsor. Our biggest sponsor for Soul Boom is this wonderful nonprofit called Fetzer.
We don't have that. I think... and they've been amazing cuz like the conversations that we're having about like spirituality and mental health and kind of making the world a better place and blah blah blah like that's their whole thing and they're like, they found Soul Boom and they're like, oh my god, this is... we love, we want to support this and...
There's no product. They're just this nonprofit family foundation. Where did they get the money to pay you from?
From a dead rich guy who set up a foundation. You sure he's dead? He used to own the Detroit Tigers. I think his name is Fetzer, like Wally Fetzer or I don't know.
Sounds... we have a lot of for-profits that are investing. They put ads on, right? MeUndies. Let me guess.
Oh, MeUndies. I don't think we have... We've done Quip. We've done that.
Yeah, we've done Quip. Like... we have 5-Hour Energy.
Uh, 6-Hour Energy's coming out.
7 and a half hour energy.
Yeah. All right, that's kind of hush hush. I have no energy.com does donations. There's one called wake me the f*** up.
Yeah, our production company for this is Fly by the Seat of Our Pants.
You guys should get sponsored by Supercuts cuz you both need haircuts.
No, I agree. Can I tell you my problem?
Yes, please. I don't have great hair. I'm not going to say I don't. And I...
You have a full luxury hair. There's a lot of backstory to this whole thing. This is two-day hair. Don't tell anyone. But I've moved to Northern Central California. The woman who cuts my hair is very good, Chris Rios, lives down here, so I go periods of time where I don't get a haircut. But I agree with your premise that we both need haircuts. David, celebrities, they're just like us. They have hair problems. You should have a hair product called Who Stopped the Rain and it should be just some sort of hair product.
I don't know if you should. Is this a comedy podcast?
I don't know. I don't know.
I have a question for you.
Look at the camera when you say that.
He's going straight to the lens. Never. That's genius.
The old Office move. He did it and it works.
He did Office. That's... I'm going to ask myself some questions. Rainn. Um, what's going on? What's going on these days? Well, I'm promoting this new movie, Code 3, that no one is going to see, but eventually they'll watch it on streaming and um...
What was it like being in The Office?
We will get... We're getting into that. We're just... This is just...
Why don't we hit a little Code 3?
Yeah, let's hit some Code 3. No, but I like to do it up front.
Is this your handwriting?
I think in bubbles. Are you more... I need just little... I can picture that page in my head, you know? That's why I... There's a lot of good questions on you.
I know. And maybe we should... we'll get to one. Maybe you should ask one.
Let's... Where's my camera? I would love to hear more about Chris Rios. Your hair. You remember my...
That's great. And when you get down from Central California down to see Chris Rios for your haircut, do you usually fly or drive or how does that work? Located in Beverly Hills vertical? I drive and I drive by where you live, which will stay on the school. It's Ventura County. I say that it's a vast county. Yeah. But I drive by and I do honk and I yell, 'Who'll Stop the Rain?' And I've never heard a response.
When you run The Office...
I have some hard-hitting questions. Have you met Steve Carell? His net worth at this point, ballpark.
And he would hate that question.
Cuz he's very Midwestern. Yes. Very sweet. But can we talk about Code 3 for just a minute? I want to get it in and then get it.
Let's get... We'll get in and out of Code 3.
But let's do a quick Code 3.
Code 3. Yes. Code 3 is the greatest movie ever made. Um, it actually is a quite good movie and we've got 97% on Rotten Tomatoes right now from the audiences.
I have that total from all... 97%. We've got 3% for this podcast.
Yeah. Yeah. But it's about 24 hours from hell in the life of these burnt-out paramedics. It's very funny. Lil Rel Howery co-stars. It's kind of looking at the underbelly of like the American healthcare system, but it's also a lot of fun and kind of a popcorn fun movie. And um, yeah, I'm really happy with it.
I kind of like that. It's essentially, it's kind of like The Pit. Like it's all just like really condensed. One last... It's my last shift and it's this newcomer played by Amy Carrero. It's her first shift and they kind of dovetail and uh...
Driving around LA in the middle of the night and answering some crazy calls and trying to figure out the meaning of life along the way.
Can I tell you a true, true, quick 30-second story about a paramedic? And I wonder if this kind of sensibility is in your movie. So he's a paramedic and he said him and his partner, they would go to these scenes where someone's lost a... you know, it's horrific and then when they would leave for themselves they would put on Queen's song Another One Bites the Dust just to alleviate the stress for whatever reason. Another One Bites the Dust, you know, I don't... so is there stuff like that? How do paramedics deal with that in your movie, the heaviness of it, the stress of it and the intensity?
Well, that's what I really learned doing this movie was like this population and we got to hang out with them, train with them. We did a ride-along in South Central with the fire department. Like they're so colossally burned out. So much is asked of them. They're so underpaid you can't even believe it.
Like literally, what they make? Like...
They're literally making somewhere like in the $20, $25 an hour ultimately. Um, and it's like kind of Starbucks rate essentially.
And they go into dangerous situations, too.
Absolutely. All the time. Yeah. They get shot at, they get vomited on, they get needle sticks, they get blood. I mean, and you know, they're going into some really dangerous neighborhoods and patients get mad at them, doctors get mad at them, cops get mad at them.
They're under... I mean, these are real American heroes. But going to Another One Bites the Dust, they have a gallows humor, man. They have a dark, dark humor which you've got to have to survive.
Well, it must be so heavy, intense, and traumatic just to be on that and you're watching it every day and people in pain. Also, a lot of people fight back and they're getting punched by drunk people and it's like I see them on cop shows like, 'Oh, these guys have got the roughest job.' They really do. But it sounds fun. I mean, it just sounds like a fun thing to do. 24 hours or whatever, a tight amount of time, your last day, her first day, and Lil Rel is very funny. And that's just something I haven't seen a lot. So, that's a good area.
Yeah. Yeah. Audiences are really digging it when you know.
Staying on your... I've heard, I've heard, I read some things. You're great in the movie is what I read. I haven't seen the movie, but...
You know how to do this. I... You know, I do good acting.
Yeah. That's... You got that.
Do you... you were in this one of my old favorites, Galaxy Quest? Was that your first thing?
That was my very first movie.
Galaxy Quest was really funny. I don't know if everyone understands how funny that was. You saw it.
You got to be in that and did you read it and said this thing's funny? You could tell right away.
This is crazy cuz I did nothing but theater in New York for like 10 years and I came out to LA in 1999 and for some reason I got cast in two movies in the same summer. Galaxy Quest and Almost Famous. Those were my first two movies. Two of like the greatest movies ever made. I had small roles in them, but I was like, 'Oh my god, I'm set. I'm going to be a movie star.' And I promptly like didn't work for a year and a half. So...
And what did you do when you weren't working for an hour and a half? Did you just had enough money saved, scrambled, get on a couch? How poor were you?
You know, you know, I was so... You know what I did?
I'm so glad you asked that question because my friend was teaching acting classes in Hollywood at like the world's worst acting studio and it was all acting students from like all over the world. People don't know this in Hollywood like people come from Sweden and Korea and Mongolia and you know Pakistan to go be actors like on American TV shows. They have very thick accents. God bless them. Yeah. And but they take acting classes and so I taught acting at literally Hollywood and Vine in a studio and they would hand out... I didn't get to choose the scenes. They would do scenes from American TV shows to foreign students. So, I remember directing this scene. I'm not even making this up. I'm not even making this up. I directed a scene from Cagney and Lacey starring a Japanese woman.
Playing Cagney and Lacey. I'm not going to do the Japanese accent, but you can do the Swedish accent. We can imagine that. But yeah, she was like...
'Why is the Swedish not offensive?'
Yeah, cuz northern Europeans, I don't know. That's one of my works. Do the Japanese one. I'm Norwegian. I get to make fun of Scandinavians. But she was like, 'Oh, oh, Cagney, you embarrassed me in front of the whole department.' And you know, Lacey, she's so mad at me. I don't know what to do. And then the other person responds and then trying to keep a straight face to give them like...
But they're trying... what's your intention? They're trying so hard.
And they're trying so hard and they want to be discovered and they've come to Hollywood to follow their dream of being an actor and that this second-rate studio, this...
That was what I was doing to pay the bills after I had done Galaxy Quest.
You have crossed so many lines today I'm worried about you.
I don't know, is that a Norwegian or Swedish...
That was good. That was like Swedish Chef. Swedish Chef. It's a little bit Arnold is sneaking in there.
Every time I do a European, Arnold slips.
Arnold just covers all of... Arnold slips into a lot of things.
Yeah. Let's look at a clip.
Let me tell you where's... Let me tell you. Let me tell you. He always asks. He always... That's his... He's like Trump in that way. Let me tell you something. I'm going to tell you something. But first, let me ask you to let me tell you something because I want you to let me tell you something.
I ask you something that I'll tell you.
Yeah. And I tell you and then I ask you again if I can tell you something.
You guys, this is a front row seat to watch Dana Carvey do impressions. I'm 3 and a half feet away from him. This is a joy. I'm so tingly with happiness right now. My god.
That's so flattering. And you're right to the camera. I love that you're on your podcast. I love it.
Can you push in a little bit?
Is this the training from The Office?
You can push in and post, right?
Yeah, we'll take care of you.
Oh, you can get right up in here.
Oh, no. But they download it in 1080p. Why do you think this mic is covering my neck? I'm not a fool. All my age is here. Because I'm Irish, Norwegian, and Scottish. Grew up in California. Do the math.
Let me tell you something. I'm going to tell you what this... If you listen to me now, and listen to me good.
You mean now, believe me later. Let me tell you something.
Cuz here's what I'm about to say. Are you ready? Here it goes. I'm going to say this. Sit down. Fasten your seat belt. Here's the deal.
Here's a good trick. When Arnold, I don't do really Arnold, but when they would ask him about anything personal, he would answer his own answers because he's on camera, so they can't use. They go, 'Now, what happened with that mate?' He goes, 'This movie is action-packed.' And then they go, 'What?' And they go, he's only giving quotes they can use about the movie. So, he just never answers.
No, the truth of Arnold and which my brother and I have three brothers, we have this catchphrase with each other like what would Arnold do because he can't go negative. He literally can't go negative a bit like Trump not to get in that, they can't, you know, it's always promoting always. So you had a movie The Last Action Hero that didn't do too well. He's on NBC Today or something, Matt Lauer or whatever. So you had trouble. Now the truth is the people are loving the movie and all over the world the people enjoy. Yeah, but the box office. Yeah, everybody loves it and it's doing very well and all these things and this and that. So anyway, that's my Arnold section.
No, it's a good way to promote because...
Well, it's funny. I kind of... I still haven't learned my lesson. Um, I did a podcast in New York just a week or two ago and the guy was very just smart, wonderful, nuanced conversation. He's like, 'Could you make The Office in today's, you know, kind of more PC landscape?' And I talked about it in a very kind of nuanced fashion like, well, that's a tough one. You know, we had some episodes where, you know, we've got lead characters that are clueless, right? They can be racist, they can be sexist and you know, there's the episode where we marked on the Asian women to like tell them apart. There's stuff like that that's really like pushing the envelope. But that's where there's a great source of comedy, blah blah blah. It was front page like Rainn Wilson. The Office was racist, exclamation point. Giant clickbait kind of thing.
Clickbaited and I clicked.
Then he texted me about it like... I said this f***ing guy. We can't have one.
What is that about? What? I said cancel, cancel it.
I go cancel somebody involved. I don't know who but let's start canceling.
But whenever I talk about anything like that because we're sort of a neutral podcast. We're just trying to be friendly and make money. Yeah. Um, so, you know, the nuancing is not a big money-making gig. Let's face it.
Let's not let the viewers know.
Yeah. No, it's not at all.
Where does he get those shoes?
Uh, it does well. But my point is, the nuance of stuff, you strangle yourself into nuance and you feel like you almost said nothing and then somebody somewhere pulls it out. It happens all the time. There was another one I did a couple years back where I talked about like, you know, I went through some really unhappy times on the set of The Office because of like, you know, I wanted to do more movies and I was just, I thought that I should have more opportunities and I was, you know, complaining a lot and I wish I hadn't have been in that space and it was like Rainn Wilson miserable on the set of The Office.
The Office, who's this? I could have written a better one. But the producers like the Trump and the Seahawks hat, they're going to do the same thing for your clips. And it's...
Listen everyone, I was not miserable on the set of The Office. I had some struggles with early fame and mental health. And guess what? The Office could kind of push a lot of buttons around race and sexism and issues in a way that would be trickier today, could still be done, and that I don't think The Office is racist and I was happy as a clam on the set of The Office. Thank you and good night.
I'm going to podcast. Here's that headline. He still hates the... He still... Rainn Wilson tried to dodge a question on Fly on the Wall, but he was called out by...
I tell you, when I worked on Just Shoot Me, oh my god, a couple people remember. Thank you. When I worked on a sitcom and ER was going on around the same time, someone quit ER and was making so much money and no one could believe it. It was one of...
Yes. And everyone's like, 'How could you?' And she's like, 'I'm in a studio 24 hours a day cuz it's like a never-ending movie those shows.' So she gets like a month and a half off in the summer and then they go right back in. It's memorizing lines all day. ER has got to be the hardest. Memorize, memorize.
You have to memorize all that medical jargon.
Yeah. And you got to go, 'Hey, put the squeeze. Got Ringer's lactate over here. So that, lactate 10 cc's of Ringer's lactate.' That was an emergency, that show. So anyway, she quit and I kind of go, she may regret it later down the line, but I get she needs a f***ing breather. There's no mental days back then. There's no taking a break. It's just like grind, grind, grind. And the money means nothing. She's not even spending it. She never sees it. It's just work, work. So maybe there's times on shows when you do get like when there's so many mouths to feed on The Office. Sometimes you have light shows. I remember... well, all of us, let's say, when SNL, you'd have one sketch that week, sometimes none. It's just a weird vibe in your head of like, am I going to get fired? Am I doing enough? Can I keep up with these people? Shouldn't I thought I was funny in this? Could they put me? And that's just constantly. It might be like that on your set, too.
Every set, probably. But did anyone ever distort that with you like David Spade's ungrateful? No. Any of that? They will. They will now, said that they will now.
And David Spade miserable on the set of SNL.
But you... I think everyone is... but you came before, you didn't get to see Dana cuz you were 2007. When... wait, when did you host?
Um, I... 2007 or 8, something like that.
Like three times. Sorry. You and I together could be in the Five-Timers Club. Um, I did host in 2010. That was the last time or 11 with you. You didn't get a wig and...
I did not. Yeah. Billy Hader, you know, Billy Hader was there. Will Hader... um...
I got to see Dana in action though because I was... I got on when he was on already, then I got on.
But you're right about those impressions. Every time Dana goes out there was a score... characters people say... Church Lady...
Is you number one? Rainy, rainy, rain time. Unhappy with The Office are we? Too racist to continue. Shut up.
What do you think? More to teeny tiny. That thing was exhausting to do in Kentucky.
But um, I had one. So I had a botched bypass in 1997. So but I never had a heart attack. Everyone gets quiet.
How was your heart attack?
Look at me now. You know it's a big difference. Are you okay? That's what I say every 10 seconds. Hold on. Yes. Um, so as far as...
So then I'm doing a movie. So it got... scars. Uh, it's very faint. I like to... I'm sexy with it. It never bothered me. So anyway, my heart's really good. My resting pulse is 40 whatever. So, but I was doing a goofy movie and the tabloids were... they go the tabloids are here and they think you're too exhausted. You can't do the movie. It's like three years later. So, I said, 'Well, let me call him. Let's call him.' So, I said, 'Okay.' So, I call a National Enquirer guy and I go, 'I never had any heart problems. It was just a stent that needed to be... you know, and I'm totally fine and I just had one bypass.' So, next day, National Enquirer, Dana Carvey has five open heart surgeries and hates The Office.
Hates The Office. Well, at the end, I didn't want to say I don't know why, says Rainn Wilson.
Yeah. And I don't know why in those days that was such... that's amazing that it would just be a bold-faced lie, just a lie.
And then you're like, do you go to court, you know, that kind of thing. No, there was one time when I went to like, you know how the... did you guys ever do press in Canada and they have the MuchMusic, it's their version of MTV and I did some festival and introduced some bands and did some interviews and stuff and then... the... what was it... not NSYNC, Boyz II Men or something. One of those boy bands, Backstreet Boys was there, I think. And then there was a gossip site that said like Rainn Wilson had altercation with Backstreet Boys or something. Like I never even met them. And my publicist called this site and was like... and he's like, 'I just needed a headline. I need something.'
That's so great. The honesty of that. I need to waste your money.
Yeah. Anytime, anytime. One time my mom got called and she goes, 'Oh, they were wondering who you were dating.' And I go, 'Mom, it was the National Enquirer.' She goes, 'No, it was American Media. It was a reporter.' And I go, 'That's who owns the National.' But they say that's a good slippery way to get it by calling my mom in Arizona for anything about anything that would happen in your life. And then I go, 'Mom, just realize I just don't do it.' But they get your phone number. It's all so creepy.
Here's one. Maybe we can get a trend on this.
What... what is there any question that hasn't been asked of you yet around The Office? Cuz I wouldn't even know where to start. I assume you've done so many interviews. Is there something we don't know? I need a banger.
We need a f***ing banger.
You need... The future of this podcast is resting on...
You said it was... No, we make a lot of money. I'm telling you, but could always make more. Go ahead. No. Um...
I really... I can't... That's a great question and I don't have an answer.
The question I had, but I know you've been asked this a million times. The Dwight hair.
I stole it from Mackenzie Crook who played Gareth on the British Office. Oh, because I read an article that he went to like a... like the f***hole barber shop in like... in Slough where it was set and like got like the least flattering haircut for his hair.
It was probably the best hair in comic television.
And I just lifted that from him. I'm like, let's design the worst possible haircut for me. I was not thinking about wearing that haircut for nine seasons of 200 episodes and... but the... cuz I have an enormous forehead.
And so it's just revealing it like it's these little curtains, you know? It's like a little Broadway set like you could do Oklahoma, perform it here with finger puppets. And uh...
That's a good... Yeah. Was there ever an episode where the girls were scheming to get you a new haircut? That would have been a good pitch. That would have been up.
Did you ever refer to... Daniel used to work with us. Was that referred to? Do you remember that? Huh? Greg Daniels when he was on SNL.
He was a writer with Conan and...
I remember him and Conan coming right out of Harvard. They look like Room 12. Do you remember any sketches that they might have wrote that you were in that did... a George Will? George Will.
George Will the conservative commentator.
That's back when SNL was smart. Cuz now it's like Fart Police, you know what I mean?
Is that a movie now? Did they do a spin-off?
I asked my friends there. They're already fart... Why don't you guys do Tucker Carlson, Senator John Kennedy? They don't even do Bobby Kennedy. That's the Trump people. But there's a lot of people to do, but they're just like, we're not really into that anymore. I don't know. I mean, we do John Kennedy because we just think he's Senator John Kennedy.
Who was the writer that would always have the political stuff at the top of the show?
I... those were the two twin that I worked with with George B on political stuff. It was Downey.
And they would always lead with it. Even if it wasn't... they knew it wasn't going to be the most popular sketch, they would just come out.
Downey hated the idea of playing to the Yahoos. Woo. Not laughing, but and Franken was really into politics. So that all informed itself into it and I wanted to just go, nah, got that. So the three of us together it worked.
Yeah. They make the cake together.
But SNL, you know, I don't want to be a grumpy old cast member. It's not the way it used to be. So there's a lot of great people that are funny and they do great sketches. I mean, so but is it the same? No, it has to evolve. It has to evolve.
Some come out as stars, some are not enough and eventually leave. And it's just such a...
Well, what's your hot take on it?
Yeah. Go on SNL. I need a hot take.
I don't have a hot take on The Office or... I don't have any hot take. I'm out of hot takes.
I really am. Rainn Wilson is out of hot takes on...
I went on a podcast the other day that just came out... takes... I had my hottest hot take was that the DMV is actually really good at their job and it's actually a really successful institution that monitors like 200 million drivers licenses, license tests, boats and like, oh boohoo I had to wait 52 minutes in line.
Yeah. Guess what, f***, 200 million people. They're cycling through there and everything is kept track of addresses, driver's licenses, numbers, you know, boat things, bad photo, like it works like clockwork. It is. It should be... that's going to be my next movie. Code DMV.
We had a small injury. Um, all right. I got... having respect for these governmentions.
That's too hot of a take. We can't loving the DMV.
You have a good license. You don't have thoughts. You don't have thoughts.
Thoughts on the DMV? Um...
You want to disagree? You want to push back? I don't want to fight.
Firing Line right now. Meet the Press. Let's go.
I'll get canceled. My takes in the DMV.
You got to bring a lot of stuff. Have you renewed a license recently at the DMV?
Yeah. Mhm. Did you just go once and it got renewed or did you have to go back a second time because you didn't have proof of your address?
I had to like retake my motorcycle written test or something like that and it went great. I barely passed but I did pass and it was an hour and 20 minutes of my day. And...
Do I want... I want to get the temperature on what you're saying here. Would you ever go to a California Department of Motor Vehicles just to kind of hang out?
Okay. I have a question. Okay. Another follow-up. There's a million questions. Banger. What's the difference between a real ID and your license? Go.
It has a picture of a bear on it and you can get on an airplane and that's what we need.
You can get on an airplane with it.
I know. But is it good or bad? What is it better than a license? Is it different? Is there some reason... is it just they want you to go in again?
I think you have to show some stuff that proves that you're really an American citizen.
Is that why my camera has a 3D dick pic on the back.
The guy who helped me at the DMV, that was his name. Dickpick. I don't understand. Spelled C.
Kim Kardashian went and took... got to take her picture 22 times.
She took her driver's license photo. How do you know that?
Because it was on that episode. They went there with a guy.
Oh, it was a... And then they said and she didn't like her picture and she brought a ring light.
Oh, yeah. So, um, we have a guy. The guy that got me in the back, too.
We have a concierge guy who got...
You have a concierge DMV guy?
You diva of little f***. Look at you. Damn DMV and standing the f***... Oh, no. I have to take some photos.
No, but I have to. It takes a full minute.
Cut. So, cut to us after the podcast. Rainn's like, 'How would I... How do you think this podcast... How is this going so far?'
They're carrying the ring light.
One of my favorites. I like Barely Controlled Mayhem. I... because this is fun for me.
You have some good questions down on there.
Well, we haven't hit them yet, but they're there.
Well, we should talk about Soul Boom, your podcast, the name of it.
I don't have to plug my stuff. That's okay. I like...
Soul Boom is a podcast that I do.
Well, you have a huge... Don't listen to him. Don't listen to him. Cut here. Cut back here.
Soul Boom. Danny, you're not allowed to get off.
It's never happened. But we never had a guy from The Office who knows to play to the lens.
Uh, Soul Boom is a podcast that I do that's about spirituality, mental health, philosophy, metaphysics, but it's also funny and we laugh a lot and have some great conversations and it's going great and people like it and it's fun and I love it. So, this is kind of this other side of your personality of spirituality, investigatory, all about it, how it can heal the world.
I'm going to cut to the chase. I want to hear... I'm a colossal f***. I had a lot of mental health problems. I have a lot of addiction problems and I needed spirituality to kind of save my ass. And so, I like to talk about it and read about it and think about it. Period. That's just it.
There's no... simple. Julia Cameron says, 'I come to spirituality not out of virtue but out of necessity.' So for me it's like it's tools that help me in my life because otherwise I tend to be very miserable and self-destructive.
Billions of people because what better topic or question is there... how did we get here and what are we doing here?
What is our purpose and how did we get here? So that never goes away. So that leads you to, I'm so tiny and I will be dead for a trillion years.
Or infinity. So I don't mind talking about astrophysics. How the hell have I been here before? Am I reincarnated? There's a lot of things.
Is there... how does that work? What happens when we die? Do we have a soul?
All that. Have you had a supernatural experience? I mean, have you seen, have you felt the other side or felt the presence of a goat or anything like that?
A goat. I... People say goat all the time.
I saw Michael Jordan at a restaurant.
Have you slept with a goat? That's my question.
I have f***ed a goat. Yes. And you know, I'm not...
Sleep is a little more PG for our podcast.
I'm sorry. Made love on camera.
Made love. He doesn't know camera.
Why? You don't know your lenses.
We don't. We have four f***ing cameras. This is for real.
The most... we passed away about 5 years ago and there were a lot of profound things that came up for me in that. And when I was preparing his body for burial and we washed the body and wrapped it in a shroud and I realized like, oh, these are just corporeal vessels that carry our essence.
This was not him. This was just a shell.
A shell. Exactly. A meat suit. A meat suit. A flesh tuxedo. That's a little... I like shell better.
Yeah, totally. We're just our... I like meat suit better. Okay. Two against one as long as it fits, right?
Yeah. Um, and... but there's nothing there. You just see a person, you're like... I have a dialogue with my father that I feel is very strong. And I know that sounds like woo-woo and crazy, but I really... and it's not like I hear him going, 'Rainn, pick up your socks' or something like that. Like, but I definitely like... there's some conversations, presence, and sometimes like the other day I was kind of making coffee in our little coffee nook and I was like, he's here with me. Like I just... I don't know what it... I was just like, he's like here with me. And so, you know, was there a vision or something like that? Not exactly, but a lot of intuition. So, we were very close. We had a very deep connected relationship. So, I think that's nice. It also helps cope after these things happen. Yeah. And who knows, man. Who knows?
Rainn Wilson hates The Office and speaks to his dead ghost father. Ghost Dad, Bill Cosby. You ever see that one?
Dana Carvey canceled for doing Cosby in person.
You can't even do an impression.
Oh, in 20... Did you see Ghost Dad? It's pretty good.
I remember Ghost. I don't know if I saw... Is that Bill Cosby?
Bill Cosby in the 60s. His albums were just like, 'Oh my god.' Everybody was in awe of Fat Albert stuff like that.
I don't even know what happened, but everyone stopped hanging out with him. I don't even remember what happened.
Everyone just kind of dropped him.
I did a bit in 2016. I can't do now. Believe. Go ahead. Please do.
You see the lady and she get the pills and...
Yeah. Don't do it. It's just mumbling because...
This guy's on The Office. He knows offensive stuff. It's good.
Did you guys like The Office? Just be honest.
Yes. And I will... I went to a taping of Just Shoot Me.
Cuz Enrico Colantoni was in Galaxy Quest.
Oh, he was... I went in and all I remember is like I was so hungry. I hadn't eaten and I thought there would be like more food. And there wasn't like... they didn't bring the... I had to like ask him to get me some food. He had a security guard like get me some food.
And they used to give like one pizza for everybody and they hid it like...
a bunch of Wolverines because they don't feed them for they keep you there for 4 hours.
I was starving. But it was very funny to watch. I was very impressed. You guys were just so deaf and yeah, it was a really great.
He was the phones of that show.
I did like The Office and I will say the funny thing is how some of these things were a little rough around the edges. Some of these jokes were a little controversial today but today it still kills. So it does make sense. Everyone still loves it. So you go.
Could I make an observation?
If Steve Carell was Michael Scott, yeah, Steve, his character is so clueless and saying such crazy stuff. Isn't it satire as opposed to offensive? Isn't it just making fun of clueless people who say and do offensive things?
But Ricky Gervais is so brilliant at that. And that was the setup. Like if you have the most clueless, unself-conscious person who's only going to kind of speak before they think at the center of a show, you can get away with everyone as long as you cut to the reactions of everyone going rolling their eyes. Then he can say the most offensive known to man. It's a brilliant comic setup.
Yeah. I'll do a Stanley reaction. Ready?
That's good. That's not bad. That's good.
Okay. Someone says something racist and foul. Who is that person?
Oh, that you know you can use glasses as a kind of a thing. That's ridiculous.
Here's me on The Office. You say something too sexual. Okay. That's at my desk and I look at the camera.
Is that as Stanley or as David Spade?
Okay. But I'm playing like just some hot guy or something. Yeah.
Just some hot guy. Here's me watching The Office and I see that it's an episode about Dwight.
Wow. That's how you welcome me to your show.
That was me doing a non joke. Of course I love you.
Here's me a read through and it's Dwight Heavy.
The um. All right. What else?
But yeah, I love The Office. The tension of it, you know, it was revolutionary and I don't think any other series for the last 25 years has retained its popularity like The Office.
Yeah, because I think that when we were finishing the show, Steve had left, our ratings were in decline, you know, frankly the show got worse in his last couple of seasons. There were still some great episodes and still better than most everything else on TV but you know, you lose one of the great comic geniuses of all time. It's going to take a hit.
And then after it ended, when was that, 2014, 15 or something like that? There was a couple years there. No one was thinking about The Office and the streaming brought it back. And there's something about it that's so evergreen. I don't know what it is. It's fluorescent lights, cubicles.
It just kind of Men's Wearhouse style suits. Like it just doesn't feel dated at all.
Some other stuff and it just feels like, wow, that looks like 1994 right there on my TV set.
And a great show, you always feel like no other actor could play every single part.
That's good. Yeah. There's like no one could have played Dwight except you. Steve Carell, his part, you know, it's just like that's what great shows are. You can't imagine anyone else.
Yeah. You can't imagine Seinfeld with any other different lead.
I beg to differ. Sorry, that's Seinfeld. That's Seinfeld. It's very. That was Seinfeld.
I do Seinfeld as a serial killer. That's the only I think I'm going to get down in your own spine and just get up like that. You know that that gear he's got where he goes, I think I could maybe do this and what are these people doing? Then he goes up there. We love Jerry. He's brilliant.
Have you looked at a Pop-Tart?
That just sounds like the beginning of something.
It is pretty good. He invented the what's the deal with kind of set of jokes.
What's the deal with the DMV? Like what's the deal with this glass? Is this glass half full or half empty? What's the deal with that?
No. All well written though. He's got so many such.
Could I do my one I've done before but it's Jerry's new, it's an LP. It's an album.
Jerry Seinfeld does comedy live album. It's just a picture of Jerry like this and the title is Paper Clips. Why?
Exactly. I like that. Paper Clips. Why?
I got nothing? I don't feel like we got to any of those questions.
How many other guests, how many other shows are you doing today?
No, we're doing two today. We.
Was she at the same time as you were on Housewives?
Okay. Were you ever the pool boy?
I never was the pool boy.
Did you ever see her out and about at Emmy parties?
Yes, we bumped into each other. Sure. We bumped uglies.
I love that because I watch.
Teri's really nice and a really good actor. I think I did a reading in New York theater with her too. She's very good.
Yeah. I got a Golden Globe or something for that.
I love that you love Star Trek and Kung Fu.
I watch Star Trek Next Gen now. You know, I'm re-watching episodes.
Oh, how is that? Is it holding up like re-watching it on?
Well, could you watch all this stuff? That's.
What's your favorite season of that show? Like, could you skip season one? Go because it gets better.
I think it did get better. But I think Brent Spiner is brilliant in that character. And I think Patrick Stewart, the gravitas he brings.
Mr. Data, American Show, number one, is so.
And it's also it's a morality play. You want to be Patrick Stewart's character. You want to be Captain Picard. He's just got this moral compass. It's really kind of a cat and mouse game and they're trying to help a civilization evolve. It's very feel-good. It's not a lot of these shows are so toxic now and dark that you just.
Well, you know, there was an interesting thing about the next generation which is Roddenberry thought that at that point in time in humanity's evolution, there would no longer be disagreements between people.
And so if you notice on next gen, you know, we're doing the best we can, Captain. Give it more. Like the original series, they're like they're butting heads a lot.
We got no more power, Captain.
Oh my god, this is so delicious.
But the next generation, they didn't argue like that. You never heard him saying like, 'Number one, make it so.' And like, 'Captain, we're not going to.'
No, you're right. They're really on the same frequency.
So, the ideas had to be deeper. And yeah, I thought there was an episode, do you remember the episode where they were playing a video game and it was kind of like a.
What's that little serpent game going around? And they would get a.
It planted like a thing in their brain to give them a dopamine hit every time. And they were all like playing this video game and they were all getting these dopamine hits, but it was actually an alien invading like their brain. And it precaged the word. It precaged like video games, our dopamine dumping devices that we keep in our pockets with endless video games and porn and YouTube clips and yeah, excited when you talk about it.
I'm getting pre-dopamine.
I drink, I eat a cereal called Dopaminis. Little mini dopamine hits. And I go.
Dopaminis. They're delicious. We should see if we can get it. We should get. Let's start doing fake sponsors.
Can I stay for the Teri Hatcher?
Can I just, I'll just sit back there. We.
I love listening to you guys.
She's going to be good because.
Let me tell you something.
She hosted it when I was there. So my best guest.
But I'm going to leave you guys, but I got a million things going today.
I have a new podcast. This is our first episode. We're just going to start. It's called Rain and Me and.
You're filming the second one. I'm leaving and then you.
We're launching a new podcast. Rain and Me.
David and obviously it rain on the wall.
There's so many you could do. Let it rain. There's so many.
I got teased mercilessly. I really. And plus it didn't help that.
Kind of a nerd and a dick at the same time. So.
It was not a good. No, I was very sweet, but I was very nerdy and I had the name Rain and I had a giant head.
And that was a toxic combination.
George Segal told me, 'You have to have a giant head to be a movie star.' Cuz he had a giant head and he goes.
George Segal? And he goes, 'You.' Sorry.
I go, 'Oh, I don't have a tiny headed movie star.' It has to be.
Well, Mickey Rooney was huge.
I think it looks circular.
Oh, yeah. What's the African Queen guy? What's that?
But you're right. Like who has a tiny head? Who has a tiny head?
Andy Griffith looked like he had a big one.
Maybe they just had little shoulders and little bodies. I don't know. It's an optical illusion. I don't think my head's very large at all. I've got a tiny head.
Tiny head. But I've got tiny. I got to go. But.
He's got to go. You've got to get on the 405.
Thanks. Look at this picture.
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Fly on the Walls presented by Odyssey and executive produced by Dana Carvey and David Spade, Heather Santoro and Greg Holtzman, Mattie Sprung Kaiser, and Leah Reese Dennis of Odyssey. Our senior producer is Greg Holtzman, and the show is produced and edited by Phil Sweet Tech. Booking by Cultivated Entertainment. Special thanks to Patrick Fogerty, Evan Cox, Mora Curran, Melissa Wester, Hillary Shuff, Eric Donnelly, Colin Gainner, Shan Cherry, Kurt Kourtney, and Lauren Vieira. Reach out with us any questions be asked and answered on the show. You can email us at
[email protected]. That's audacy.com.
Russia has a great national anthem.
And that's the only good thing over there.
And NATO got a little aggressive. No, I'm kidding.
I was at the Russian Improv once and there was a tough, I was co-headlining.
Yeah. Yeah. You had a Spade Stroganov special. You know, I will say this. When.
Who are we talking about?
When I, and I know the Russia's been in the news lately and I won't say why, but.
The, without getting into it, give us a hint.
When I did, now, my first update bit was Yakov Smirnoff.
It just sounds like some illicit sexual activity. What happened later in the shower? Yakov Smirnoff yanked off. And so Yakov was like in Russia everything's crazy. You know, remember that? He was a Russian comedian from the 1980s and everything was I do not understand faucet.
Yeah. He goes, 'What comes out of faucet? Water come in Russia. Bullets like does it? But no one we take bath every once a year. America shower all the time. What's up with that? Now give me a dollar. I'm a comedian.'
It's so true. By the way, Dana, my rubles are really. I have so many rubles I invest in. It's so dumb. You bought rubles.
Oh yeah. I thought they were the next big thing.
Don't play the market. Come on, man.
So Yakov, that's a crypto choice.
So Yakov Smirnoff was a Russian comedian and that reminds me of John.
No, I have to tell you, I did SNL and my first thing was like Big Beard and I was on with Dennis Miller on Update and I was like this. In Russia, and then me and Dennis were going back and forth. I was doing stupid jokes and he's like, 'Hey, hey, it's not really, it's not like that anymore, you know.' And I'm like, 'But in Russia, like it's all my hook of my whole life and it's going.'
Did you have a funny name as like a Russian comedian?
Oh, you were doing Yakov Smirnoff. Okay, got it. Now.
And people understood because I did open and go, 'I'm Yakov.'
Yeah, you say it. I am Yakov. It depends how far you want to go with Russian accent.
I don't really do accents or anything. And so I just did the most stock version and then I get off and it does okay. And then they go into the meeting after dress and to see what's on the air show. So it's at 11 at night you're finding out if you're on and Dennis is the first one out and he goes, 'Hey Budley, you can take off the beard.' Cuz I'm sitting there in my whole Yakov outfit waiting to see if I got it. I'm like this. Because it's your whole life and you walk into the room at like 10:45 and you see which cards were part of the outline of the practice show and then the ones who've been placed off the main area. So if you see Yakov Smirnoff over to the right then you sulk. The cast member who's cut just.
It would have been nicer if Dennis just ran out and started stabbing me. That's exactly the pain.
Cuz I would look in and I go, 'Okay, Church Lady, cold opening, Wayne's World.' Well, I'm just telling you, let me finish all. I was scraping my update piece. Wasn't even over to the side. It was like way over here. Franken put it way over here now.
All right. Judd Apatow is on the show.
And Judd is an old stand-up buddy from the Valley before SNL. I knew him.
Yes. From, born and raised in Northridge, I believe. I just made that up.
But he's from the Valley.
I'm going to tell you a lot.
We used to hang out a little bit. Do stand-up out there.
He has an interesting voice. I've never tried to do it, but for this intro, I'm going to try Judd Apatow, ladies and gentlemen.
I know. No, that's Fozzie Bear.
Look, this is inside baseball for an impressionist. I normally when I start, I suck.
And then give me time and I will master it.
Yeah, but that was Apatower.
I'd have to see his special right before I came in here.
Anyway, Judd Apatow is a brilliant director. He's directed a lot of great movies. 40-Year-Old Virgin.
I don't want to judge Apatow. All right, here he is. Judd Apatow.
Judd's got the most to go over. Not the most in SNL. That's a little wispy. But Judd's got so much and so much in comedy that it's.
Can we go back to, go back? We just lead and lead into this because.
Confidence. Okay. This is why I think of you. I think of, here's how I think of dysfunctional comedians. Yes. Wounded, upset, dramatic, dysfunctional, make the wrong decisions. Or as Leno would say, never stop. They do stop. They whine. There. You know, when I think of someone like you or Sandler, it's just full speed ahead. I mean, did you in those early days? I mean, how did you, like we remember when I hosted the 15th annual comedians show?
I told you the young comedian.
You might not have heard of it. It was a catering.
Well, that was a big deal because that was the show we all wanted to get on. To me, that was like getting on the Tonight Show, the HBO Young Comedian special. Everyone broke off of that. You were on it. I went to the taping and saw you and Schneider do it and Dennis Miller hosted it.
And in the crowd was David Bowie.
And that seemed like the most pressurized situation to do a set with David Bowie in the corner looking like Starman. It was a really exciting night in Santa Monica at this little theater that is now a bookstore.
And Drake Sather had an incredible set that he was.
On your set. Yeah. Yeah. Mine.
And Drake was great. Yeah.
And then I auditioned for it in New York at Stand Up New York. Jon Stewart was also auditioning for it. I brought all my friends from high school.
Jon Stewart murdered so hard. Gets the show. I go on after him.
You couldn't bomb worse in front of all of my friends.
And you stack the crowd of it.
I stacked the crowd and even my friends were like, I don't know where to laugh.
Well, how did they feel? Well, how did you deal with afterwards and the faces that go, 'That was good,' where they changed the review mid-word.
There was nothing. There was no way for even them to fake that that went.
How long did that affect you? Like a week or.
I could wake up in the middle of the night right now and be like, 'Oh, well that was a big deal.' That was. There was nothing really going on and it was HBO.
And the Tonight Show and I tried to get on the Young Comedians every year and I kept barely missing it. And I was a young comedian and they go, 'Oh, we gave it to Richard Belzer this year.' I'm like, 'Well, isn't he 80?' Well, didn't we have, we had Janine Garofalo on the 15th annual?
Oh, that was yours. Ray Romano.
He was the one who stole it. And even when we were shooting these like interstitial interviews, I don't even know if they used much of it. We all went, 'Oh my god, Ray Romano is going to be a star.' Like he found himself. Yeah. In that moment.
Nick is Regis. I don't do, I don't, he really wanted me to. Anyway.
Wait. If that's so many, this, I know we're going to talk about so many things. I love the young comedians because the lineups are interesting and the interstitials were interesting because they go HBO said just talk to the camera for a minute about whatever and that was looking back. It really showed you had no direction on ours.
So what do you remember what you even did?
I don't remember. I just remember watching Ray do his and he was eating an apple while talking and just was already a master. And I just thought, oh, this is another level of how you do it.
Of it. And I thought I had a pretty mediocre set. And I made a very big mistake in doing the set, which is I had never been on HBO. I'd only been on like Comic Strip Live and Evening at the Improv where you're never allowed to curse. And I said, I'm going to curse, right? Why not show them?
And then if you watch my act, I think I just added everywhere just to be edgy. And none of them were punchlines out of the word. And then when they would air it on Comedy Central reruns, they have to bleep all the curses. So it's just a very.
I always tell young comedians, save the. Don't just go, 'I went to the store.' It has to be a punchline. And if you're Jerry Seinfeld, you'll fight the line for a year to get the out.
It's hard to follow a dirty comic also. And now Jon Stewart, last question. Do you look at the lineup and are you worried about following Jon Stewart or he kind of blindsided you?
Total blindside. I don't think I knew his act that much back then because that was 1992.
So I wasn't on the East Coast much, so I didn't know what was happening. And I don't remember who else was.
Was on that night. But then I got it the next year. And Andy Kindler was on that and Janine Garofalo and Bill Bellamy.
Bill Bellamy. Yeah. And that was.
Like the week we started doing the Ben Stiller Show. So I had to go to Arizona for.
And shoot it and then come back and we started, you know, shooting.
How did you know Ben at that point?
I met Ben online at Elvis Costello Unplugged.
Online or in line? That's a.
You were physically in line.
I was in line. Online and then Dana Gould was there and he had met Ben and he introduced me to Ben and then we were chatting and.
He very quickly mentioned that HBO wanted him to do a sketch show.
And I was like, 'Oh, we should get together and kick that around.' And we did like a day or two later and then sold it like a week later and everyone thought we knew each other for years and we literally had just met the week before and then HBO sold it to Fox. What were your credentials at that point that he would say, 'Okay, you're good enough to do this.'
I, you know, I had just like stealth credentials that seemed better than they were. So, I would help people write their acts and then they would throw me a co-producer credit. So, I did that for Jim Carrey and Roseanne and I did a special which was a funny special with Dennis Miller. It was the pregame show for Paul Simon live in Central Park.
All these funny shows. Wait.
And so he did a half hour where they showed clips of Paul Simon before. And so I wrote, you know, the pregame show with him.
When you write with Dennis, basically you're transcribing because he's so funny and you're just organizing.
Apatow got some lines for me. Well, my favorite joke I wrote for him was we're about to start the show where Paul Simon.
Along with his, with 27, along with.
He goes, 'Coming up next is Paul Simon and the 27 musicians it took to replace Art.'
That's a great line. That's very Tennessee.
Coming up next, 27, Paul Simon and the 27 musicians it took to replace Art. Okay. But I, he used to do that too. Same with.
Whispered to his friend, he means Scarf Uncle.
See it's the jaw everything. Carson's the jaw. That's the jaw. 99% of impressions are jaw-based.
Well Dennis, so I did that with Dennis and so that made it appear. So I had a bunch of those credits. I did like three Tom Arnold specials that were like kind of like reality comedy.
It gave the appearance that I was a producer but really I wasn't producing.
Would you, were you actively in a very healthy way unafraid, had an inner confidence and sort of self-promoting in a normal way like a sense I can do this or were you like Ben, so did you ever have, where were your insecurities?
You just fought through them, huh?
I just. Well, I mean I've talked about this before but it's interesting to talk about with David.
This podcast is huge. Believe me, no one's heard it before. This is global. But you know, David lived down the street.
When I lived with Sandler.
Rob Schneider lived across the street.
Drake Sather lived close by.
Drake Sather lived close by. I was writing jokes for Jim Carrey who lived over the hill and that was right as In Living Color was starting. And I.
Jim Carrey was like Apple stock. You got in way early on that one.
Exactly. Like the Tesla stock I thought I shouldn't buy because he was stolen on show.
iPod Carrey, you know, just like they don't got nothing. And I definitely had that sneaking suspicion. Oh, I'm not as good at this.
Career of these guys on seeing guys that are better than you and then just surpassing them basically.
Well, I just thought this isn't my move in the way that it's their move. I mean, when I remember, David, when you came to town with your leather jacket fresh from.
Arizona, surfer. You were just like with Sharon Stone in the Police Academy movie.
There's a new guy in town and I wasn't even in at the Improv. I would go to the Valley Improv and wait to see if someone didn't show up and then I would do that spot.
The manager, Joe Drew, was always cool. And you, I literally remember the day that you came to town and it was like.
Oh Jesus Christ. You could feel like, oh, this guy's going to do great and he looks great.
He's got an attitude. And then Schneider came from San Francisco.
He's doing the gym teacher bit.
Hey, set your clocks back.
Yeah, he's doing that bit and then Sandler was doing Elvis in the refrigerator and everyone seems to be reinventing it.
Ridiculous. Oh, yeah. Cuz you're like, 'This kind of isn't what we saw.' When I used to look at that Improv chalkboard, it used to be, it would say like, 'This is dating me, but it would be like Leno, Paul Reiser, Jeff Altman.'
Yeah. Seinfeld and you're like it was such a like.
First ballot Hall of Famers you go Jesus.
And but you didn't really realize it then just everyone was good, you know.
And then but they all kind of were around the same age, same look so that I got in 60% because I looked, you know, 17 and I had blonde.
You always had kind of confidence or you were faking it. I met you, you were like 21 and I was like, 'This guy seems like he's got it all together.' Now he was completely wrong but then he passed out at Jack in the Box from hypoglycemia.
Did you ever in high school say Jack off in the box? And that was the big joke for the guys in the Volkswagen.
And you go, 'I could go national with this joke.'
Jack off in the box. Hey, wait a minute. It's called Jack in the Box. Hey, that's a sexual.
Come on, Judd. What about.
When we, were you there when I passed out at Taco Bell?
Well, I was, I didn't see it, but it was this thing where like.
No one saw it. Suddenly, David has this thing where if he doesn't eat, he's going to go unconscious in public spaces. And then it happened in Saturday Night Live, right? Where they had to like wheel you out on a stretcher Saturday Night Live.
That was pretty much every other week at, you know, 17.
We were meeting to play tennis. I think Adam, I think everyone's supposed to play tennis. And then I stopped by Del Taco, what everyone does before they do activities. And then I think it was a combo. I was waiting in line and I hadn't eaten and I started to feel and maybe there was a dog tooth in my burrito. Something about it was like this isn't working. And then I go, I think I just laid down on the floor in Taco Bell. No friends, nothing. No one helping me. And I'm like, 'Oh, Sandler's not even famous. Not yet. That's not going to help me.' And.
You knew he was going to be famous.
Now I know he would have sent a chopper.
Well, you were delicate. That's when we found out you were delicate.
You hang out with you and your eyes get real big and you go, 'I got to go. I got to go.' Just got here.
Let's go back to Judd for one second.
I like exploring hypoglycemia in an adult. That's page one.
But anyway, so that was, you know, the environment as a fan of comedy, always a giant fan of it. I was smart enough to, you know, to meet someone like Norm Macdonald and go like, 'This is another level of this.' But I could sit. I used to write jokes for Roseanne with Norm. Like we both got hired to write her act together and John Riggi and me and Norm. I remember going to Roseanne's house and we would sit there with legal pads with Roseanne and.
You know, and she would say like, 'I want to do a bit about how it's better to suck than to kiss ass because at least when you suck it's like a deal. I'll suck your and then you'll give me something. When you kiss ass you're doing it with the hope that you'll get something.' And she would like she'd tell us some like theory she had and we would like write it down and try to turn it into a.
And so Norm was the mirror in a way and like just trying to please.
It's funny to see Norm in that scenario.
Yeah. Yeah. You got good feedback going. Yeah, there's something there.
How about that joke? You were smart because you were like noticing early on if you didn't think, which you did, make it as a comedian but early on you go, you were like it was Bitcoin producer credits.
They were like worth so much you didn't know it and then later they just start paying off in reruns and.
Well you guys never wanted to help other people.
That's what it was that everyone wanted to be, everyone wanted to be a star. It just hit me. I'm like, 'Wait, was Planet Dana from day one?' Day one.
Sharp elbows, follow that.
Yeah, but you're never going to write like jokes for other people for money. I had no money and I was really afraid of being broke. So, I thought no one seems to want to help anyone. And if people were like, 'Oh yeah, they'll give you 50 bucks a joke or a couple hundred bucks to sit with them for a few hours.' So, I did that with George Wallace and Taylor Negron.
Great. You know, with that, you're solely right. Going back to dysfunctional comedians, and if they meet a guy like you who's smart and funny, all disciplined and is going to kind of tease out the best of them. So, David actually wrote jokes for me for a short period of time. Remember the grumpy old man joke you wrote?
It was, 'I'm like, in my day, we didn't have latex condoms. Let's see. We would take a bare skin and wrap it around our privates and tie it off with a bungee cord and we use the same one over and over again. And that's the way it was. We liked it.' But for a very brief time before.
No, I think it was cuz SNL, I talked to SW cuz you were coming on and I was saying, do you remember the sketch I wrote for Julia Sweeney cuz we had talked to her and we started talking and I go, 'I wrote the sketch for her' and she was surprised because I wasn't in it.
And he goes, 'Yeah, well you're a writer.' And I go, 'Oh, that's right.' Because we are so selfish that at the end of the day, my job was to write. So was Sandler. So, you're not supposed to really write for yourself there. And so I wrote for someone else and then I guess cuz Dennis would ask me for update jokes. If I wrote for Grumpy Old Man, I thought that was such a funny hook. If I could throw some in, fine.
You know, you've got great guys all around you. Like if I had a rewrite table is magic for a comedian who's written all their own stuff and knows how hard it is and you have your few hits, you repeat them over and over again. And then someone like Bonnie and Terry Turner or David or Robert Smigel hands you something. I'm like, cuz I had written a sketch and I left it when early on in SNL. I left it and Robert said, 'Can I take a look at it?' I'm like, 'Okay, who's this guy?' Right. I thought I'd already got it. And I came in, it was like gold. I'm like, 'Oh my god, it's so much better.' The.
So, it really makes sense how comedians would gravitate toward you.
Well, Sandler, you know, was really smart. And that's what he did because I remember first of all, I remember when he went to audition for the show. He flies to Chicago. At the time, his act is all just like mumbling. So.
And the Wilt Chamberlain bit.
And he was hilarious, but still hit and miss in the clubs.
Like, we loved it. We would sit in the back and just love it. But I remember going to gigs with him where it did not go well. It was not a consistent situation. We all knew he would make it big.
The last time it did not go well for Sandler.
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I remember going with him to San Diego to the San Diego Improv and telling Dave Becky, who ran it at the time, 'Oh, you got to let Sandler headline like on a Monday.' And Sandler bombed so bad for an hour and put his back against the wall and just ran it.
And so when he left to do the audition, I thought, I mean, what does Adam do? I mean, he doesn't do characters. I mean, what is he going to bring to the show? And then he gets it and suddenly like he's gone and I'm in this shitty apartment living under a stripper in the valley and he doesn't bring his clothes, his ID. I literally have his ID and his driver's license from when he left. I have no idea. Back then you couldn't do it. Like he took nothing with him. I literally dynamite on the plane back then.
You can do anything back then.
I forgot what this was leading into. Okay. So gets there and he's trying to get on the show.
And his strategy was to write for you. So he would write you an amazing sketch with someone, usually someone like Smigel like in his head. So he'd write like whatever I think he was part of maybe the Pepper sketch.
And Smigel probably got on that too.
And the other one was the one where you're the host who keeps making out with the people walking in the restaurant. That was.
Yeah, that was when I was still on SNL. The other one was hosting, but Sandler, Schneider went in that.
Elantry was a hit. Was that Kirstie Alley was a host?
Or was it the other one was like you lack of the juice? That was Smigel and Sandler. But yeah, Elantry was the one where I had Victoria's legs up in the air and Smigel tried to say don't do that and I'm like that was one of the biggest, that I was just writing a physical gag.
Sandler would give himself like one joke in it, but a good joke.
And that's how he tried to get himself exposed, which is to let other people like you murder, but give himself a key thing where I think he came out in his underwear at the end of the.
He was ripped fit, man. He like as Don't You Forget About Me, Dimacho, man.
But I always found him funny and charming and he did have a few months of connecting with the audience. Opera Man, it was so abstract. Do that and I just loved it, the silliness of it but when he hooked they went with him. I don't think Franken loved it at all. Let's get back to you so you.
I remember him telling me about Franken and not liking it. He would like tell me that cuz I would always be like, 'How's it going?' cuz I was, you know, this was my dream to get in.
So when Sandler got in there like, 'Oh my god someone got in, they're going to pull me in at some point.' And we would all be on the phone with Adam trying to think of ideas for him and Schneider.
I don't remember you calling asking for anything. But I remember talking to Schneider.
I was crying in my office, passed out. Sensitive naked man was one of them. That was Schneider.
He was trying to figure out, you know, how do you get on the show? How do I get my personality through? And I remember he said that one day he knocked on Lorne's door and Franken's in there. He says he's in his underwear. He put a hammer in his butt. Like he was holding a hammer in his butt.
No, this is Sandler. And then he just like knocked on the door, opened the door and went like, 'It's hammer time.' And then they did not look amused at all and then he walked away like he was just trying to find a way.
That's just a ballsy, that's very. Who would that.
Like New York guy and like upper going to Orso and Franken and then guy walking with his butt. But it was the, and not the changing of the guard, but it was like a bunch of guys going, 'Can we try all this kind of stuff?'
I was a little different. Adam was different that way. And so it just was a new way, I don't know, of thinking. But you were right along our lines. So I get on with Rob, Sandler gets on. I don't think he knew Farley and Rock back then, but So then you are very close to the show in that respect. And then you like it too. Do you and you eventually start writing. You write, you have, you been brought in as a guest writer?
Well, I would talk to Adam on the phone all the time. I think in the early years he was talking to Hurley who wasn't on the show at that point and we were all just trying to help load him up. So, I remember.
I remember like working on the Denise show sketch.
Yeah, that was a big one.
With him. And I remember the other one I kicked around with him was the first cheap Halloween costumes. The crazy spoon head.
I like that. That was cool.
And that was one of the first times he really went full Adam where.
Yeah. That was total connected. Yeah.
And then I one day I said to Adam, 'Can I give you a sketch and just hand it in? Don't touch it. I just want to know if I was good enough.'
Oh, just like don't even touch it. Just right into the read-through file.
I don't remember what the sketch was about at all, but it was a Dennis Quaid sketch and it went on really early in the show and they did it on, it was like a dinner table sketch argument of some sort and it got on like in a key place and I think did reasonably well and I thought, 'Okay, I can do this.' But then.
I never could get the job there. Like I had the packet and I never got hired.
Did you ever have a meeting one-on-one with Lorne?
As close as I got was one day Adam called me and he said, 'Hey, you know what? I had your packet and David Downey after months was holding your packet and talking to me and Schneider and he was asking about me and I was telling him that he should hire you and Schneider said, 'I don't think he's ready. Shut the up.'
He did. Yeah. And so I was like, 'What?'
They shovel writers in. It's a tryout.
But then I was like thinking about it. And of course at the time it was very annoying. And then I thought later almost every good thing that's happened in my life is a result of those four words.
What? Like just not getting in there was why I met Stiller and did the Ben Stiller Show. I could literally blame everything in my life to Rob Schneider saying he's not ready. Meeting my wife, my children, like none of it would exist.
If I went in at that time.
But later on, Roseanne hosted and I was writing jokes for her. So, I wrote her monologue and I guest wrote that week, which is mainly the monologue. And that was really fun. That's always weird because it's not weird, but sometimes they bring guests. I think Martin Lawrence was the first one to do when I was there and he brought some guys and I was like, 'Oh, okay.' It's almost saying you guys are bad.
But it's more just like a trust issue cuz now I would love to have someone that wrote well for me around just to be cuz you're so alone and to go, 'Is this any good?' cuz you might think it's good and they go, 'Why would you do that?' And I go, 'Well no one's around to ask.' It's literally 85 people against you and they're on your team, but you don't know and you're scared and they might be trying to talk you into something.
It's hard to go back when you're lucky enough to have hit characters and you know, and every time it's like in the 90s when I would guest host, you'll do Bush, you know, do Junior and then it was like you'll do Church Lady and it's like 2012.
I'm getting close to her age at least.
All my characters are old. I'm still younger than Church Lady. News flash kids.
Hey, Adam Sandler is listening right now. How you doing, buddy?
He is breaking the fourth wall.
He didn't repeat characters when he hosted.
Which was pretty, I think that is sort of par for the course of.
The Opera Man. Maybe what did he do when he came back? I think that may be the only.
Infomercial that crushed. He did the Farley song.
The Italian vacation sketch.
And my daughter loved that to me. I.
Well, I haven't been able to float this theory out, but since we're on Adam for a second, 2019, the year of Sandler.
I never seen anyone break show business that hard.
Because first of all, his special was kind of supernatural because my favorite word.
Because of shooting so many times and being so relaxed and so playful.
Yeah, Uncut Gems. Then he hosts Saturday Night Live and he destroys. So those three kind of broke.
And he won like the Indie Spirit Award.
And he gave a speech that if anyone out there wants to Google something that is as funny as anything can be. Adam giving a speech to all the snobby independent film people where they cheer him like he is their favorite person has always been and then he attacks them in the most hysterical way. It was a perfect speech. It just sort of was full circle because back in the day I remember Sandler just casually would say to me, 'They hate me, Carvey.' You know, the critics thought he was, they didn't get him and now since it's turned it's kind of interesting to see an arc of a career. I have two part back to Judd is.
Judd is a, I had actually heard you were offered head writer at one point but that maybe that's not true.
I, there was some sniffing around.
Yes. Maybe it was, was it too late in the game? You had too much going on?
Well, at the time I was about to make a movie and I felt bad about bailing on the movie. That was one thing. And then I was also probably nervous about what I could accomplish at the show.
You know what, what can you really do to the show? Because it's so locked in. It's locked in in how it's made. And I wasn't sure I had something that I could bring to it unless I could really change it and it shouldn't be changed. Look what's happened since then. I mean, it's just gone on and just gotten better and greater and it did everything it should do. And so, it just didn't feel like it informs me right now just because I was on it and it's still on in this huge franchise. You know, I get to ride that wave.
But I'm just curious, did you have wilderness years at all after Ben Stiller? Do you have a couple years where you lost your confidence, nothing's going on, or was it pretty much then you got with Garry Shandling and that whole ride or was there times?
Well, we could talk about your Garry Shandling experience because I'm really curious about that and how it informed you as a filmmaker.
Question. Well, I was bouncing back and forth to a lot of projects that weren't necessarily connecting in a mass success way, but I like them. So I got to make a movie with Steven Brill, which still was in Heavyweights, a Disney movie. You know, it cost 10 million, it made 20, so it didn't sink my career, right? And we loved it but it wasn't considered successful in any way and weirdly now people really like it.
And then The Larry Sanders Show, we loved it but it got cancelled. Won the Emmy for best show for, yeah, for writing and so that was exciting but depressing. And then I did Sanders for a bunch of years and that was for me like, oh, I need to learn how to do this and if I'm here with Garry I'll learn how to write and that is I think what happened is just watching.
Were you with the show when I came on? Because I can't, Garry asked me to come on before it had gotten on television. Yeah, and I was doing the host thing and I so remember that moment. Because you did the Smiggle sketch where you did an impression of Garry.
And it was hilarious, but not necessarily something that Garry would enjoy because it was a lot of whining. What was the impression?
Well, it was hard with Garry and when he asked me to do it, I said, 'You want me to?' Because he wanted me to come in and do the impression to him. He goes, 'Oh, yeah. I love it.' I think it's kind of like, you know, Leno goes like this sometimes. Yeah. But almost never talks like that. Garry and every comedian has their hook to signal the audience that I'm having a great time and this is really funny. So I noticed that Garry would talk like this, but then when something was really funny, he would go into this pitch and I told my dog that he shouldn't pee on the carpet like that. So he wouldn't go to that gear all the time. Once in a while he just go up here. It's like he's having a party in his brain. It was a great move. So I just did that and I had teeth and it was grotesque.
But so anyway, and so Garry, I mean, it was really almost the definition of Garry, wanting it to make more fun of him than... No, that he's offended on some level by it because it just goes right to the heart of maybe whatever he might think is the cliché way of looking at him or like he's just too boiled down, right, to everybody.
Yeah. So he's whiny guy or whatever. So, I mean, he's not mad about it, but he's like not loving it. And then you call him at some point and say, 'Hey, I didn't write that. Smiggle wrote it. I hope you don't feel bad.' And then Garry's response was, 'Well, let's just do an episode about it.'
And then he had the writers write the episode where you guest host and you keep doing an impression of him on the show and how annoyed he is at you. And that was like the meta version of Garry, you know? He has his girlfriend at the time, Linda.
Do an episode where she's in Playboy magazine. Suddenly, we're shooting with Hugh Hefner. And then on the set, Hugh Hefner asks Linda to be in Playboy magazine. And now Garry in real life has to deal with the fact that his girlfriend is going to be naked in Playboy magazine. And then the next thing you know, we're all at the Playboy Mansion at a cocktail party where they have big pictures of her naked, right? Oh, look at, oh, wow, in the middle and Garry's got to be there suffer through it and that's what would keep happening with every person. Do you remember the Hervey Villiches was on that episode? The Deep Plane, Deep Plane, you know, and he didn't know it was a fake talk show because it hadn't aired yet. But anyway, that was funny.
Here's the thing that I find very, very interesting. First time like I've been really bad in the two movies that I did. Um, because 125 takes, 300 rehearsals, and you know, and it'll come to the way you do films. But Garry, we get on the set there's that was pre-digital. So there's three guys with 16 millimeter. So they're covering me, covering Garry, covering the two of them. And Garry's going, 'I'll say this, you say something like that.' Never experienced anything like that. So when I watch it, I go, wow, actually looks like I'm really acting. So that was also a genius part. I mean, he spawned a world, an industry.
Well, because you have to be loose. He liked going deep emotionally. It's a little bit cringe comedy, which I think people picked up on. Curb is a little bit like Ricky Gervais, you know, and so you know, when you got, what was the first film that you directed?
I directed The 40-Year-Old Virgin was the first and we would do table reads to try to crack it and Garry would always come. He was so nice and he would pitch the fix. So I said to Garry, 'What do I do about masturbation?' Because wouldn't he just masturbate all the time, right? He's a virgin. He's 40. And so we're in a room with like Adam McKay and all these great writers and Seth and we're trying to go what would he do and how do you not talk about that? How do you keep it Steve Carelli so it's not cringey with him because of his liability? And then Garry just goes, 'Maybe we just see his preparations for masturbating.' And then Garry pitches out he puts out his favorite bathrobe. He takes a shower. He puts out his tissues and his creams and then we put on like Lionel Richie 'Hello' underneath it. And that was the scene. And Garry would do that all the time. He would tell you the great joke and the emotion, you know, because he did say to me once, I think the show, I think that movie is about people who love each other. It's about love and it's about when your friends are just trying to get laid, but you're looking for love.
Yeah. And that was his genius.
To balance pathos and comedy.
Like other geniuses. Chaplin. So when you, I just hear things about the way you direct and I don't know if you did it on that one, but you kind of, you're running a lot because you're on digital. So you're running long, long takes which you couldn't do with 30 back then.
Not back then, but I don't know when you started that.
And you're kind of like tilting people out of their preconceived choices by sort of yelling out things. 'Do it like this. Do it like that.' When did that start? Because that seems great for comedians who can improvise.
Well, it started with Stiller at the Ben Stiller Show.
Oh, you were doing it then?
Yeah. Because Ben, you know, a lot of times we'd just be shooting a single of Ben doing like a Tony Robbins impression and we would have a script, but then Ben would just talk for like another 20 minutes off the top of his head and you just run it on film. And we would just run it on film and then sometimes Ben would play this agent character and he would be pitching bad career advice to people like Run-DMC or something like that, but he would get afraid to say it to their face. So he would do a soft version and then he would tell them they were wrapped for the day and then he would redo his single with harsher jokes and then we would just riff and play what else we could do. And then when we started doing movies, we thought, 'Oh, you could do that in a scene. You could do that in the middle of a scene even for emotional stuff, not just jokes.' And we did that with David on Knocked Up where we just kept it loose and it's not always punchline driven.
Well, I would say that for anybody when you're discovering it, like sometimes when you think of a stand-up bit, the best you do it is the first time you do it and then you try to get back to that.
But when you're discovering something, the camera's rolling and you're doing it for the first time, it just a lot of times gets a lot of pop. I think that's what Brando was always trying to do by hiding notes and oranges on the ceiling so he just would experience it. So that's all I got, David.
Yeah. And I think some of the best philosophy, some of the best stuff I've seen just as a viewer on set is like Will Ferrell on set just doing a run of alternate lines.
I was going to ask you that about someone who and probably Will Ferrell would be one of them where you're sort of watching greatness in a sense.
You know, and I was envious that he would get these long takes to do to show that, you know, it seems like so much fun. I mean, the one I always think about, one was 'milk was a bad choice.' You know, 'I'm in a glass case of emotion' in Anchorman. That scene is just him and Adam for maybe it's just 15 minutes. They know they need one line and they get to go 15 minutes to get that one magic moment just to going crazy. Adam's yelling out stuff. Will's improvising. They've written a bunch of stuff beforehand. There was one where I think it was that Rudd punches Will in the face in Anchorman 2 and they just wanted to get funny reactions from Ron Burgundy getting punched in the face and Adam yells out, 'After he hits you. He hit you so hard you speak in foreign language after he hits you,' you know, and then it turned into, 'After he hits you. He hit you so hard you're now five years old.' And Will would just go on run after run.
Yeah, one of that movie pops. I always see that, you know, at the end as many of those. There's never too many for me.
Uh, just to show that. And I always try to get Adam to do outtakes because, you know, like on Grown Ups, it's all funny people. Like, come on. We're all fucking around the whole time. I'm sure there's something in there funny. There better be.
Just, and you know, because we do the same thing. It's like, what are we doing this thing? And we would even huddle up in between takes and I'm a hoarder. So, like I actually feel bad if I don't find a way to get those alternate jokes out somewhere on the, I mean it used to be on the Blu-ray and we would do, we used to call them Lineramas and just make five-minute reels of the alternate stuff because if I'm like, when I worked with Adam on Funny People, if he's riffing I actually think it's gold and the fact they would just go in the toilet I find unbearable.
I agree. We may have lost minutes from our wraparounds. Right, Greg? Not to compare your feature film.
This is just a basic question I'd ask someone to do. What people, the film that you were producer, directed, you had a vision of it that was most realized.
Um, I mean, I do think that I did in The King of Staten Island. I mean, there's Pete Davidson with Pete that I do think like, for what was difficult about it. Yes. You know, can you tell a fictional version of his story and what he's been through and make it funny but make you really feel it? Uh, like that tone for me, which maybe is a little more of a Hal Ashby tone, which I'm always trying to figure out. The fact that that movie works I'm really proud of because it's balancing like grief and pain but still trying to figure out how to make people like Pete.
And Bill Murray, do you reference in your mind?
I always think about The Last Detail because in... 'This ain't no horses...' which seen the movie. 'I am the goddamn... I am the...' we, that's a reference with my friends and with my sons. 'We are the fucking shore patrol, fucking...'
Yeah. I mean that energy.
Yeah. Where like that's a pretty long shot with no edits and it just the whole movie feels so real. It feels like a documentary and I'm always trying to figure out can you do that with hard comedy and have that aliveness.
Interesting. Yeah. Good. Coming Home. Did he do that too or he did Home?
Coming Home was crazy and amazing stuff in Coming Home where they're at meetings with veterans talking about their problems and he did a lot of it with real people and improvised it and some of it is remarkable and very moving. So, I always think about him and I think about Paul Reiser in Diner because he made up most of his stuff and they threw him into it and he created a character.
It's so good when you don't know for sure what you're going to say or they say, you know, I get on some of these things. Even in sitcoms, they go, 'Uh, uh, all right, let's do another one and just Spade. This time, Dealer's Choice, whatever you want.' Yeah. And then you have 5 seconds while they walk back to the camera and say 'rolling' and then you go, uh, and then you just try something. But it's like in movies too. Just do one. Let's do one for you.
And then sometimes they will keep rolling. Maybe you do that and sometimes they do one at a time. Uh, I don't mind keep rolling and sometimes there's a guy there like there's some movies usually on Adam's we have Schmuck or Steve K or someone that sits by Video Village. It's a tough job. It's grueling.
Yeah. To just to be pitching extra jokes. I did that with Paula Pell on a bunch of movies. I mean, from Saturday Night Live, she's remarkable at the onset.
And you get some to have her on this podcast.
We hear her name for sure.
She gets, uh, Speaking of SNL, what would be your dream team?
This is a tough question. You know, I think I'd like to think of the what might have been team. I like that. You know, like people that didn't get to full fruition in that space, you know, the Gilbert Gottfried, uh, Robert Downey Jr., um, uh...
Robert Downey was almost a blessing in disguise that he left. Same kind of thing with you and Shine.
He was '84 or '85, one year, right?
Um, you know, who else was really funny? I mean, Terry Sweeney was so funny on the show. Michaela Watkins, you know, people that were there for a year like Koechner, you know, Jenny Slate who were so good and uh, I mean Stiller was there for like four episodes. Bob Odenkirk was there for a few seasons but never really could get on as a performer. So I always think about people who are amazing that...
Put together an A-team kickass SNL.
Conan and Bob were writers with us and um, they were feature players. Yeah, they're writer feature players. And I didn't even know it for probably two years because they did...
I was told, you know, don't, you know, like Shoemaker or Marcy or someone says, don't write yourself in right away. You know, you were here for a job and I was like lucky to be there, but didn't, like you were saying earlier, writing for other people. Not that I didn't want to really, I just didn't know how to. I only barely knew how to write for my own persona, whatever that was. And so I'm trying to think for Dana or think for you know whoever else. So that was hard. And then you get, um, I don't even know what I'm talking about. I just forgot in the middle.
That's all right. That's okay. I'll cover for you. So Conan...
Oh yeah. But those guys should have been on and they were and then when I heard their feature play I go 'you're not on' and they would once in a blue moon write something and it wouldn't get on or just give themselves three lines and I was like wow this they're just getting shut out. So...
But what do you think the difference was? Because certainly I know that when you and Rob and Dave, uh, I mean you and Rob and Sandler got there, you were intent on getting on. It wasn't like well maybe I'll be a writer and hopefully I get on. I mean there was real energy like I am here to become a star of the show.
Yeah, Adam for sure from day one he had such confidence. I was more embarrassed to do it and they were doing it. And Rob was doing it a lot and I was like it's all that is it fair and then he got Copy Machine on which wasn't even, I was getting them saying don't do an update piece this week, you know you're here to write for people put that person as instead of you and I'm like all right I don't want to get fired and Schneider just had balls so did Adam they put shit in put shit in and warmed out.
I remember going to Schneider to Jerry's Deli after the Copy Machine hit and he was as big a star as there is. I mean it was just one of those catch a moment and it was hilarious. I mean, I also love the uh...
Making you put your, you put your weed in there.
Oh, that was a big one, too. Put your weed in there.
Put your weed in there. And so, like Schneider was the first one who really broke on the show.
What was the sketch that broke you that where you thought...
I haven't broken yet. Um, a little thing I like to call Receptionist.
It was either that one or Bye Bye.
Bye Bye. More overnight where I flew the next day and I heard it every day for at least 10 years. Like every flight for sure. Every flight.
Just like always Iraqi Pete everywhere.
Iraqi Pete was kind of an incredible swing to have that kind of moment that didn't work. It was like during the Gulf War and it was just funny I think it was in and in Adam's defense I don't think he wrote I think it was Frank and going 'I beat and we could have some clown like Sandler come out in a speedo or something' and you know it was like okay I was one time humiliated because I was not on for probably like 10 shows and then I just you know people in Arizona are like 'you're not even on you're fucking obviously bombing' which is kind of true and I was like no what I was. And then uh one day after I passed out, I was like walking down the hallway after my morning. And then I should have faked it more during read through just to get Lorne to go, 'Oh, someone carry him out and give him a sketch.' So, uh I go, 'Sketch? What do you need a sketch?'
You were, were you? I don't remember you being that precarious, but...
No, I wasn't. But anyway, I'm sort of repainting.
You all toured with me. Sandler toured with me. You toured with me opening for Dana. It was great.
John Stewart opened for me. Dave Chappelle, that was good shows.
Yeah, I knew. Yeah, you could tell right away.
By the way, Dana had no trouble following me. I would go on and I would do pretty bad. I was going in that special in those days. And then he walk push me in the wall.
If we're to be honest, Dana is still way better than all of you by far. Like it's not even a question, right?
I wonder. Is this going to be recorded? This is the...
I've watched it all. I mean, you guys all killed it. Dana, it's other level stuff. Beatles explaining technology. It doesn't get funnier than that.
Well, you know, the thing about Judd, you know, he's a filmmaker. He makes a lot of pictures, but you go in the cinema, you know, with the popcorn, whatever. They look up, everybody's happy, laugh, laugh, laugh, and then a little bit of a tear. They want to see it again a week later. Sorry. I love being a Beatle.
I would never follow it. That's like if you go, we're going to do this show and these people are going on a... That was my one move. Once I got there after failure before and after, but I have a great blessed life. When I got there after a little bit of time, I thought, damn, I'm a fish in water now. I'm like this really fits what I do. The clubs was even tough sometimes because I had no jokes. Yeah. I literally had not one punchline. It was all rhythms before you got to know. But when I got there, oh, they want characters, impressions, and catchphrases. Yeah, I got that.
I remember seeing you before you got SNL and uh, and that was a great small club that's now a strip club and I remember seeing George Carlin perform there. Great. But I'll tell you I mean watching you reduce like a person to what the impression was was always amazing like what is your take on it? But the Biden that you do when I saw you do Biden on maybe was on Conan or something and I thought, 'Oh my god, Dana quietly has a better Biden than everybody.'
Come on. Here's a deal. Let's get real. And guess what? Guess what? We did those things as America. We're going to do better. We're going to do better. I like the yelling Biden now. And then the whisper. We know how to reduce the deficits of people. Come on, folks. Number one, what the guy said. Number two, the two-part. Number three, you know the drill. It's not rocket science. Come on. We could do better. We'll do it. Come on. He's, I'm still learning him.
What about when Kamala Harris was in this, I just saw a clip of her and she starts, she always has a nervous laugh. She's like the Joker. She's like they're bombing Ukraine. She's like, she's like you wouldn't get it.
Well, I just wonder what it'd be like to be married to her because she's very attractive and she's so cheerful. Be like, 'Hey, Kamala, we're going to have breakfast.' I mean, it seems like a really nice wine.
Nervous laughing is troubling.
It is a deeply troubling thing.
Oh, wait. Let me go. I'm skimming down here. Come on. Shh. Everybody shut up. Let's get some questions. This one's funny. 2007 Entertainment Weekly did the smartest people in Hollywood. And guess what? Judd got number one. What the fuck?
I think I beat Will Smith that year.
I'm sure you beat, well, you beat everybody, but you beat everyone in Hollywood. This is unbelievable.
You're going really deep in research that because that's the kind of thing that happens and you go, 'God, I wish people talked about it more.' Like, no one talks about that in 2007.
Well, it seems like you're like, we had it with Ben Stiller, too, where we looked at his IMDb and it's like Ben, you're kind of like, whoa. And you have kind of the same thing like, oh, he's there, he's producing, he's directing. It's like the resume is so big.
I had to take a nap after I read it.
I have a question. Just point.
No, I have a question not about Judd. This will be great.
Okay. Judd, your daughter Maude, who you might not know this, she's on a show called Euphoria.
Yes, I've seen, I've seen a few.
Euphoria is a, it's a Showtime or...
Every time I watch it, I think I know Spade's watching it around.
I am. I watch one and I was horrified, Judd. I haven't seen that many naked wieners since my fraternity hazing. I was watching it and I was like, what? This is what they're watching. What happened to Laverne and Shirley? And where is the simpler time? I think it's all changed but first of all huge deal that Maude, I saw her on that and I saw um...
And Iris was in The Bubble which comes out April 1st on...
The Bubble. Yeah, The Bubble is my attempt to do something during the pandemic.
So what point of the pandemic did it hit you and when did you start shooting it? Because the pandemic, you would even be allowed to shoot it.
Well, now I look back and I think it's almost like a nervous breakdown to want to make something during it because the pandemic started in March.
And by a year from there, I was almost done filming the movie.
And so you got it going that fast.
Yeah. It was a very, I think maybe I had a manic episode.
Were you leading with the protocols then, greenlight film sets and actual bubbles? Yeah, you were inventing it as you went along in a way, right?
We were making a movie about making a movie in the bubble while making fun of the protocols but also doing the protocols and making fun of the need to make a movie due to your ego or your madness like that. No one needs a movie. There's something more important happening and we're mocking people who feel it's necessary while actually doing it. The whole thing is very hypocritical.
Can we make sure we edit that out and put it on Instagram because that's the most meta, that's like hyper meta.
Like we have a fake COVID supervisor in the movie who gives terrible advice and then does, he's a real COVID adviser. I mean the real COVID adviser is giving the same speech five minutes before the fake one is shot for the movie. You say, 'Look at this clown that we're making fun of.' And then you go, 'Well, let's bring out the real guy who's exactly the same.' And we're all wearing masks. And then the actors are like chewing their masks in the scene and not wearing them on their ears. And we're making fun of how no one's wearing the mask. And so the whole experience was strange that way. But it started because I was really getting stir crazy and I was walking on the beach lot with my friend Brent Forrester who wrote for The Simpsons and The Office. And one day we were like, we should just think of stuff. Like we're walking for hours every day. Wasted thinking and walking. Yeah. So we started talking about the NBA bubble and that started making us laugh like all those guys are stuck in that hotel. What is that like in that hotel? And then I thought, oh, this is almost like a Christopher Guest movie.
You know, where all the actors are stuck in a hotel trying to make a movie and having a nervous breakdown and then they're making a flying dinosaur action movie and they think it's important they're not tuned into what's happening and they're having nervous breakdowns and having sex with each other and doing drugs and...
How was it received when you, who'd you pitch it to and how did they receive it? Especially all the CGI and all the big stuff and...
I mean I told Netflix and Ted Sarandos our best friend. I told Scott Stuber and he certainly got the joke and said let's go do it and I said I'll write a script but I'll need to be rewriting all through it because it happened very fast and I hired people that I thought could change on their feet.
You had uh, who's the young lady that was in uh, Borat's last movie?
Maria Bakalova is in it and Karen Gillan and Keegan-Michael Key and Leslie and Iris and Arman is in it. She's good. She's incredible. Yeah. She plays the head of the studio. So every time she checks in to see how it's going, she's on safari or she's skiing and she's just around the world. She's one of the rich people that like sort of is skipping the whole quarantine. Exactly. And so um, but we didn't have any cases the entire shoot.
We just, you know, because it was only two sets. It was a green screen sound stage and the hotel.
When did the vax come in, by the way? When during the filming or when did the vaccine emerge? Were you already filming or did you have two shots and a booster?
I never got vaccinated because I was in England and I couldn't get it in England. But around February in the middle of the shoot, you people would walk up to you and say, 'I got a call that I can get a vaccination at 10 tomorrow, so I'm not coming in.' And that's how it works in England. You have an appointment and you just go. It could be like the cinematographer is like, 'Yeah, I'm not here tomorrow.' And then slowly the crew...
And then I'm going to feel like shit for a while.
Brits are like that. I'm not going to get the, I'll get the job tomorrow for the best. I'll just do it as long as you guys, as long as he smiles. He's giving us so much joy.
Is Lennon different than Paul?
Lennon is very, very cryptic down here. How is it Paul? It's great. You know we're having a good time down here. How are you? I don't know. You know, just looking around, whatever. I don't want to do anymore.
I like that. You don't mind one where he talks to Paul. How would Paul explain TikTok to John?
It's very short little clippy things, you know, where people put something on funny and they dance around. Takes about 10 seconds. And if you do it, you're a star all over the world. We did Abbey Road. We did the White Album. What's going on? But you know, it's like Kanye West. Who's that? He's sort of a talky singer. He's a bit maybe crazy. I don't know. Who was he? Did he have a woman? He had a woman named Kim Kardashian for a while. What did she do? Oh, you know, she take pictures of her bottom. You know, how did she take pictures of her bottom? Well, with a little, you know, have a little television camera in your pocket called an iPhone. When she happened to go working, she took her bottom out and she took a picture of it doing the whole bit. What's so special about her bottom? It's not a normal bottom. It's a bottom 2.0. It's like God made a fanny and attached a person as an afterthought. The whole family's doing the old show in the bathtub taking pictures. One man got so frustrated he became a woman.
That's all I got. We don't have to keep it in here, but I like to entertain the entertainer.
I'm here just for that. One of the great things I watched in the last few years pre-pandemic was you and Bill Hader and Melany at Largo doing an unproduced sketch which was uh, Casey Kasem and his son who don't get along. What was the premise of it?
Yeah. They don't get along as a narrative. We all did it first. Yeah. Yes. And it completely bombed on Saturday Night Live. Like dead silence and then we just got revenge at Largo by doing the exact same. 'Son, you're a waste of space. You don't really do much with your life at all, do you?' 'Dad, I know you're right about that.' You know, it's that kind of thing back and forth. Laid there at SNL, killed in front of 300 people.
But I remember that dinner and I remember that we were, the check came and we were looking around. Who took it? We checked celebrity net worth and...
Did I pay or did it pay? I, you paid but I almost always, so I was kind of...
I have a picture of us from that night. Let's look at the clip.
Yeah, let's put that on Instagram.
I maybe it was, it should have been. It was a pretty solid Thursday. This might be kind of awkward, but I'd like to do another long McCartney.
All right. I'd like to do the last 15 minutes of my special. The other thing I did want to mention because I do have to promote something is I put out this book for charity. I had the first book, Sick in the Head, and the money goes to 826, which is a charity that gives free tutoring to kids. Like kids could just walk in this place and they get free tutors. We give free books to kids.
We pay a lot of money for that.
Tutor is a tutor. And when I was doing SNL, she would tutor kids downtown, underprivileged kids, my wife Paula.
Yeah. And that's how, in the hell do you know how to teach someone English? Because she went to a good Catholic school. I mean, could you teach English to a kid, a 5-year-old, a 3-year-old? I mean, build the grammar and know what a dangling participle is. I barely got my kids through anything schoolwise. Uh, and there were many, many tutors involved. So, this book pays for these centers, we give all the money away. And so, the new book, Sicker in the Head,
has like, you know, Sacha Baron Cohen and Nathan Fielder and Whoopi Goldberg and Letterman. And so, what's the general narrative of it? The narrative of it is that during the pandemic, I realized that everyone was home and available to do this. Yeah. So all these people that I thought wouldn't normally do an interview with me had no excuse to say no because I knew they were home.
And so I called, you know, Lin-Manuel Miranda and Letterman and people like that that might normally be too busy and...
Yeah. And also it was kind of an emotional interview because everyone was really thinking about their lives at the time. So the book...
Could I make an observation? Yeah. During the pandemic, uh, I did the sourdough, I did the puzzles, I did Scrabble, watched a lot of movies.
You made a movie and wrote a book.
Should I see? Should I talk to a therapist? I mean, I did. I think I had two years to do something.
Yeah. I realized that because I'm promoting the book, the movie, and then in May, me and my friend Michael Bonfiglio made a two-part George Carlin documentary for HBO. So, I thought maybe I had a nervous breakdown for two straight years and work was the way to deal with it, I guess, because at the time it didn't feel like I was working that much, but probably.
But you were busy. You seem to be just always shooting. Yeah. And to stop in your tracks on a dime. Like one day we were working that show Lights Out and they go just go in for the weekend and we're going to have a no audience on Monday, which we thought was weird. And then it even that fast by Monday.
Don't come back in. You know, we have a two-week lockdown and we're in the third year of our two-week lockdown. So, and I used to listen to all of your interviews with the cast of Tiger King.
Because you got everybody. I know. It was so weird. And you got that reporter who had all his tapes burned. That was an incredible interview with that guy. He was like, 'This stuff actually isn't funny. They're really just torturing and killing all these animals.' And he was the only one who really told the truth.
You don't even know. I did a deep dive. I was the Wolf Blitzer. I remember the Tiger King interviews. It was just sort of papers. I just hit him up on Instagram. Some of these people, we just found them and said, 'Do you want to do it?' And they go, 'It was mostly because of Joe Dirt.'
Yeah. Oh, because you were...
They all like Joe Dirt. Yeah. So they go, 'Oh, I'm one of them and I'm not going to go after him.' And I didn't really, I let them tell their story.
Shelter is huge in sort of the whatever you call that part of the country. The world red. The world.
Well, I'm in your house. Something paid off.
Well, you know, because I have seven Joe Dirt posters on the way to the podcast. So, the Tiger King himself loves Joe Dirt.
I, that's what I've heard. Yeah. Yeah. But uh, I never really chased after trying to play him because it was kind of like Joe Dirt and it didn't seem that fun or appealing, but it was so fun to watch it during then and be a part of it all and it was such a, it was like the first big thing during the break.
Have you seen the new one? I mean, one just came out with Kate McKinnon and...
I haven't seen it. I don't know. I haven't seen it yet. I want to see it. I, yeah, it's fascinating. But I actually really enjoyed those interviews because you went deep with everyone. So we watched this thing which always felt watered down. When I watched it, I always thought this is so much worse than this. And then you would get real conversations with people where they laid it out. So I implore everyone to go down that. That's a good YouTube well to watch.
Yeah. They were nice. I'm like, when that tiger chewed off your arm, did you feel like were you allowed to take a lunch break after?
She went back to work after that.
She did. She went back. That was interesting. I was like you. Yeah.
It's interesting how things become such cultural phenomenon. So like a wildfire like Squid Game after that. Yeah. Talking about Netflix now. Just like boom. Everyone has to see it. Everyone talks about it. A frenzy. And then...
Can I ask you a question? Yeah. Yes. Because I'm so fascinated by George Carlin. When did you do a documentary? Okay. Bubble. When's Bubble come out? The Bubble.
April 1. The book is out now.
The book you can buy now. And then the documentary about George Carlin,
May like 2015. What did you take away from that? What did you discover about George Carlin that you might not have known? What was your sense after doing a deep dive on him?
I didn't really know that much about him because he never mentioned his family in his act. He had no jokes about his wife or his daughter.
And so I thought, well, how, I don't know him.
How could I even tell this story?
Well, he was a guy that grew up in New York. He, his dad used to, you know, beat up his older brother and there's a lot of alcoholism and the mom ran away with the kids and moved to upstate New York in the 50s. Uh, and maybe even the late 40s and then she had to raise him alone and then he loved like radio and Danny Kaye and got into everything through that. But the fascinating part is, you know, he had a very corny career in the beginning. Very hippie weather, very variety show for a while. And then at some point, like Richard Pryor, he just became himself and grew a beard and long hair and got very edgy. Then he kind of ran out of gas and got soft again. Had a heart attack and talked about his stuff and those bits were great, but also very soft. And then he saw Kinison. And this is the thing we learned.
Was Kinison the hook? That he saw Kinison and he said I'm not gonna be soft compared to him.
And then he went for the rest of his life he just out...
You're all diseased is...
Are you talking about post like the seven words? That was pretty 90s. He went really, still funny, at least You're All Diseased really funny, really dark but also the reason why we made it was because if you go online whenever anything happens in the news George Carlin trends and so people putting up clips of his bits about America or about Big Pharma, you know, abortion or corporate America controlling politics and you realize unlike most people whose acts age out and they don't really work anymore, no one listens to Lenny Bruce anymore, his stuff gets better and he kind of predicted everything that's happening.
Yeah, I saw him at 14. You know, we used to listen to albums Steve Martin and everyone and then George Carlin was in the mix and I was like, this guy's fucking funny. Never, no aspiration to be a comedian.
It was too high up too good. It was just more like kids like comedy, you know. Here's an example of a line or just hitting it like everyone's into the children. We got to save the children. We love the children. You know what I say? Fuck the children. Fuck the children. You go in a classroom, there's one winner and a whole lot of losers. I mean, it was just so politically incorrect.
Yeah. Check it out. You're All Diseased. RCA. Maybe another line in that is like, uh, have you ever noticed that everyone who's against abortion is someone you wouldn't want to fuck. You know, these fucking, these stinky fucking in their fucking tank tops. Let's get them in a field, put them on a pistol, and shoot him in the fucking head. You would say that stuff like that. I'm loosely paraphrasing.
He went hard. And in the documentary, everyone debates, did he go too dark? And oh, was it, did it get to like just an angry guy as opposed to angry guy being funny?
I mean, and some people love it and there are people in the documentary, comedians, some who say they like it and some people say I think he lost it for...
He passed away. He, I mean, he had a heart attack.
He had a lot of heart problems and I think he did a lot of cocaine for a long time. It feels like maybe he had some sort of OCD or attention issues that led to the fact that he would do a lot of cocaine and not hang out with people. He would just write. He loved to write. He loved words and he would listen to music. But there were a lot of years where he was doing that. I mean, we have audio of him talking into tape recorders in the middle of three-day binges by himself. That's pretty scary. People would sometimes go up to him and go, 'Any advice?' He would just say, 'Write everything down.' That was it.
Because he was a master of word for word.
Yeah. He didn't like riff on stage. He didn't play on stage. He was poetic.
It was like he wrote like a show and had to memorize it. When I saw him, he would just sit before the show just trying to memorize it and do it perfectly. And if someone yelled something out, he was not cool with it. He wanted to keep going. His lists, his hooks, big shoes, little shoes, brown shoes, black shoes, boy shoes, girls shoes, shoes, everyone needs shoes, tall shoes, boots, you know, and he would make these crazy lists and he's in his 70s, had a couple strokes and he's just like so articulate and a hernia, you know, and a what is it? A hernia and a...
Oh, I know. I know the thing that you're talking about.
Should be called a himnia.
Well, what we saw was that there was a period where people got bored of him for a little while. And so on Second City TV, Rick Moranis would do this brutally mean impression where he would say things like that and do like, you know, 'George Carlin starring in Death of a Salesman' and they would just make fun of him. And there was a moment where Cheech from Cheech and Chong said, uh, 'George Carlin's over. All he talks about is things like peas,' you know, eating your peas. And then that really bothered him and it made him redouble his effort. So where most of them came in, he just went hard and said, 'Okay, now I got to show you all.'
