Danny McBride

Welcome, welcome, welcome to armchair expert. I'm Dax Shepard. I'm joined by Emmy nominated by Monica Padman. I'm here.

And we are about to talk to him. I don't even know if he's ever been nominated for Emmy, but most certainly he's going to get nominated for an Emmy for his new show. He should. Yeah.

You've already heard of talk about it. The Righteous Gemstones. We're so pumped about it. It's the funniest show I've seen in years.

So good. Tasty. You probably guessed it already. Our guest is Daniel McBride, AKA Danny McBride, certainly falling in love with him and eastbound and down by his principles by Noble Express, alien covenant for a dramatic turn in the foot fist way, one of the best independent movies I've ever seen.

Look, we're just stone cold obsessed with Danny. That's right. And what a guy. I got to say what I was intimidated by him.

You were. I really wanted him to like me. I am so old. Old trope of mine.

He was so nice, though. Pretty much the nicest person that's come through here. Oh, you know what I'm going to do? I'm going to put him.

This is new info because I haven't I haven't put anyone on the soul spectrum in a while. Danny's absolutely a nine on the soul spectrum. Oh, wow. Yeah.

You know, so he's in the realm of the Bill Murray's and Richard Pryor's on the soul spectrum. I get that. I mean, how comfortable was he and his in who was looked luxurious? Okay, enough of our opinion.

Let's let you hear Danny McBride. This podcast is brought to you by Swarespace. I feel like spring always does this thing where you realize you've been thinking about something for a long time. And suddenly it feels like, okay, maybe I actually do something with it.

Totally. It's less pressure, but more like readiness. Yeah, like you've been sitting on an idea or a project or even just a perspective you care about. And now you're like, maybe this deserves to exist somewhere outside of my own head.

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And when you're ready to launch, use offer code DAX to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain. Wabi Wabi, ABR always be recording. Oh, beautiful. Danny, first of all, it's worth it.

I've seen the thing that someone's promoting for whatever reason, but I watched your thing last night and it's fucking phenomenal. I've been talking all day about it. I never. I'm thinking of all jealous.

So we haven't seen it yet. The Righteous Gemstone. I watched episodes one and two last night and it is flawless. It's my favorite thing you've done so well directed.

It's crazy. We're going to get into all that. But I think there's a through line for why you would even make that show in your whole life story. So normally I would save your project for the end of the thing, but I feel like it's going to be very relevant for.

OK. Yes. So this show, you wrote it and directed it. Mm hmm.

It's about a mega church. I mean, it is gorgeous. The fucking helicopter shots with the three AMGs and following them on the fucking roads and just every the sets, it's beautiful in a nutshell. It's a big megachurch of your dad, John Goodman is the patriarch.

The head of the deal. Yep. Had honcho. And then you and your brother are kind of, I guess, vying for his second.

The story of the gemstones is basically, you know, John Goodman's character Eli, then Amy Lee, who you will meet deeper in the series, who is put by Jennifer Nettles, a country music singer. And yeah, they were this like dynamic Christian televangelist duo. She's passed on and dad's kind of lost. And he's like looking to his children to maybe fill the void, but it's all in vain because the children have no.

Yeah. Do not have the tools to step up into the position. Yeah, the apples fell real, real far from the tree. Who plays the other.

Edie Patterson, who was in Vice Principal, she plays Judy. And she instantly just loved working with her on Vice Principal. She the first day she came on the set, she just had me cracking up. And her role was only supposed to be something pretty small.

And I ended up kind of adjusting the whole show a little bit of like incorporating her into the show more. And she's just awesome. She's so funny. And when Vice Principal is over, I want it to try to do something else with her.

You know, a lot of times I feel like when you get comedic men and women in something together, it's always like a romantic thing. It's like, and it just felt like I was boring. So even after Vice Principal's, we're like, we need to be like siblings and something so we can beat the shit out of each other. And it's not about whether we're going to like be in love with each other or not.

You know, we can just go toe to toe. And so we had that idea. And then as I started kind of developing this, it sort of like made sense to fit her in that way. And then your brother is Adam Devine.

Adam Devine, who's really fantastic. I'm trying to think of the word he jumbles and I was so horrible. Yeah. Yeah.

I was wondering if that was like an accident that you kept in or I still don't know. It's the only time he did it, but I had to keep it. Chris and I watched it like four times in a row. We kept hitting 10 seconds.

Wow. Yeah. He's trying to say Marvel. But if you want to try to say his mind or something, it's hysterical.

But it's also it has the gravity of succession. Do you watch succession? I don't watch it by YouTube because they're going to be our lead in. Oh my God.

That'll be perfect. It's Monica and I's favorite show. Love it. Love it.

It's up there. We're looking so forward to it coming back. But it definitely has a succession vibe. That's awesome.

All these shitty children kind of, you know, trying to get a love it. Yeah. That's where we're at in the world, right? Just like what's shitty and we have to figure out how not to be shitty.

Yeah. And then there's three shows that you've created, Eastbound and Down and then Vice Rinsables and then Now This. To me, the thing that I'm attracted to is it seems like you are just inherently interested in exposing kind of like people that are on a pedestal or celebrated or loved and then just kind of showing that they two are pieces of shit or scumbag. It's like maybe an inherent interest in just maybe hypocrisy.

Would you say that you're drawn to that? I definitely am. I'm drawn to things where like people use their job to kind of define who they are and they think that there's certain values that obviously they would have if they have this job and then seeing that no, they don't have any of these values. You know, that was kind of the riff on Eastbound was sort of the idea that you've seen that story before of like small town boy goes off to the big city, makes it big and comes back a hero and in our version it's like no, he comes back a villain.

He's like, yeah, this experience fucked him up. And even with Vice Rinsables as the same kind of thing, as you've seen this kind of classic story of a buddy comedy where like two unlikely people joined together to go like do something together and they bond and become better people. And so we wanted to kind of just take that and just make them do something totally malicious and evil and you're just like, well, I don't know if I want these guys to like achieve what they're trying to do. Yeah.

Eastbound and Down. I felt like I was going to like it immediately because it's a reference to smoking in the band it right Eastbound and down headed up and trucking. Did you love smoking in the band as a kid? I did.

I love smoking the band. And then when we were making that show, I was like, you know, Kenny Powers, he basically thinks that he's Bert Reynolds like in a Bert Reynolds movie. Like so all the way he approaches women, people around him, he thinks he's Bert Reynolds. And so when I was talking to Adam McKay, who was one of the executive producers, I remember trying to come up with what the name of the show was going to be.

And I was like, it needs to feel like this is a Bert Reynolds movie. Like he's pounding down or something. He was just like, that's just should be what it is. Well, can it be that?

Are we allowed to call it the lyrics from a song from another movie? Do we get a Jerry read on the phone and see what's happening with him? Well, you were born in Georgia, but you moved to Virginia. I was born in Georgia and then I lived in California for a real little bit of time.

My dad was a guard in the prison in Lompoke there. And so we lived on the prison reservation there for, I guess about three years and then he got transferred to the Federal Bureau of Prison. So we moved to DC and then that's what brought me to Virginia and I grew up in Virginia then. Okay.

And you're saying your dad is it your dad or your stepdad? That's my dad. Mom and dad got divorced though? They got divorced when I was in about sixth grade.

Sixth grade. What's dad's demeanor when he comes home from a day at Longpoke? Yeah, I could barely remember. I mean, like I have such small memories of living on that prison reservation.

What's crazy is that I went to a wedding there near Lompoke a few years ago. And I was kind of like, I was like talking to my wife, I wonder if I could find where this house was. And I used like Google Earth and was just trying to, like, because I remembered my walk from the bus stop. And so I like found where the bus stop was and then started kind of like trying to use my mind to go back and I ended up finding the exact house and all these houses look the same on the prison reservation.

Or they were built like some post-World War II kind of. Yeah, exactly. They're all just kind of the same. I mean, my only real like strong memory from there is I remember like specifically one night sleeping and then an air horn like an air siren going off.

There had been a prison break that someone had escaped and like my dad is getting up loading a fucking gun and we are all like being put into the master bedroom and locked the door and I like look out the window and he just like jumps into a pickup truck with a bunch of my friends, dads who are all armed just going off to go find the prisoner. You're kind of human. Wow. Were you just excited by it or were you scared or you're like, oh something great.

I don't think I realized like what all it really was until we kind of got out of there and then I kind of look back on it. I was like, that's crazy. That was what his job was and that we were living here raising children in the shadow of a prison. Like if you move across the country, I'm assuming half of your kids, right?

Like I want to give them kind of a nice real childhood. The last place you go is like a shadow of a. Yeah, Rikers Island of houseboat just moored right off. But to bring folks up to speed about my personal journey with you is that you were in foot this way.

I loved it. I thought it was the greatest thing ever. And then you and I were up first the same movie. Land of the Lost Land of the Lost Land of the Lost.

Oh, where we really? That's insane. We were up for that movie and I met with the director and it was one of those rare ones where I'm like, I think I'm getting this. Like this guy and I really see I die.

And then you got it and I did not. You're welcome, by the way. Well, it is funny. You live and long enough.

All the stuff you had to have and what you got and how shook up all never what you think. But I transitioned from a fan to just jealous of you. And then I saw you on Sam Jones off camera and it's one of my favorite interviews I've ever watched in my life. And then I got your email from somebody and I sent you an email just kind of owning.

You didn't need to know this, but I needed to say this. Like I went from being a huge fan to being very jealous of you and then discovering I love you and I should have always loved you. And I just wanted to own it and it came at a time this interview and what was really crystal clear about you in that interview was you seemingly at least you might be a good bullshitter are doing this for the right reason. The reason I would hope to always be doing these things which is like you love hanging out with your friends and being creative and you prioritize that and I was so blown away by it.

And I just found it incredibly inspirational. All that to say in that interview when I was watching you from the outside I was always like is he a redneck or is he someone that grew up with rednecks and has the same love and obsession with them that I did growing up if I would have thought like oh you're going to make a career for yourself by like playing a character with a mullet it would have been like the last thing I would have ever imagined. But it really did just kind of come from you know Jody Hill David Green myself we all grew up in Southern towns and we're all guys who like went off to art school. Right.

So we were always sort of spectators in Southern culture and never really feeling like we were 100 percent you know especially me I moved to the South when I was I guess in second grade. So it's like I'm friends with kids who like their parents have the thickest Southern accents and my mom's from Philadelphia and you know my dad. You're a Yankee. Yeah and so it's like you know I appreciate the Southern culture big time and I like being a part of it I think it's like a nice community.

But at the same time I had perspective on it because I was a little bit of an outsider to it. So you know some of these characters are all just basically people I feel like I grew up around as you probably watch that were five years older than you. Exactly. Holding court and stuff.

Yeah like I don't know my town again I wasn't southern it was in Michigan but a great many of the people that lived there had all migrated up from Kentucky and so there was a I've yet to observe it elsewhere just a hyper masculinity. Oh yeah. That was just like either you or that or you or nobody. Yeah it's totally interesting because I then arrived here and I think for people here in Hollywood I'm the closest version of that they know most people in California too they're looking at you the same way like oh he's that guy but you were an artistic kid right.

I was and like you know people ask me like do you get upset if people think that you're Kenny Powers or this and I guess to me it just I don't have that much of an ego when it comes to it so I don't really care how people see me or not but I kind of honestly take it as like a compliment the idea that the character feels so realized that they assume that it does not be a performance. Yeah you're right that's the ultimate compliment. I would have assumed you were pursuing acting like that. I mean you're so funny you're just so so funny.

I was like oh that guy's always been a comedian that's what he's done and then in an interview I found out no you went to film school to be a filmmaker right. Yep yep and we the art school we went to you know it's a state school in North Carolina so there's different concentrations there's like you go there to be a modern dance or you go there to design sets to be an actor to do film to do music and for whatever reason at the time the dean at the time of the did not want the drama students like mixing with the film students he thought that they would like ruin their craft or what they were trying to teach. Oh so then we were sort of forced to just like put each other in each other's movies so then I would just start acting just because I could like memorize lines better than my other friends. Right that's right.

I was basically it. You knew how to stand on the dotted line. Yeah. I can kind of like look at the bottom of my head of mark without looking down.

Yeah you were saying your first kind of acting was doing a favor for David Green. Yeah he had an actor drop out of all the real girls. David Green you know he was a year ahead of me in film school he lived next door to me in the dorms and so he was one of the first guys I met at school the arts and I just instantly thought he was awesome I liked what the weird shit he was making I just thought that he was unique and he had this vision and I kind of like wanted to just like follow in his footsteps there because I liked what he was doing there and right after he graduated he brought this little tiny movie George Washington he came back to school to Winston Salem and we shot that movie like the day after I graduated from college which did like in 14 days and then you know we're all everybody's trying to figure out what they're going to do with their lives like I'm moving to Los Angeles with my girlfriend and my buddies and we're trying to figure it out and then meanwhile like David's being interviewed by Charlie Rose all the sudden and he's like you know like listen as one of the top 10 movies of that year by like Roger Ebert and so it was kind of cool to have somebody that you knew and had seen where they come from like find the success and I think it kind of like motivated everybody like oh this is actually possible yeah it's achievable but you did move to LA and then you were coming out here primarily to be a writer is that we want to be that's what I was trying to do I was trying to write I was trying to figure out how to direct and you know it just became clear I was like you know the directing thing is not gonna happen because there's other people who've actually directed things and that's who people are gonna hire to do stuff so I was like I just probably better to spend my time trying to write because I can go wait tables at the crocodile cafe oh my god in Santa Monica though in Burbank the less cool crocodile because when my mom would visit me in Santa Monica that was my big meal out you know you want to go to crocodile cafe while I'm visiting all I do those roles in tortilla super really good I would have to prep those all the time but uh-huh you know when I was like doing that stuff I could come home and it was like you know I'd make myself right or do stuff and it kind of felt like writing was something to that it could be undeniable like if you write something and it works and you're able to get into somebody's hands that that was like probably the most realistic way of trying to find a niche into things you know. Well you were also at some point in this you were a camera operator yeah I was so you know I moved out here and I was waiting tables I ended up getting a job at the Holiday Inn in Burbank they hired me as the night manager and so I was like that would mean that I was like the manager of like the restaurant and the karaoke bar and the crystal view lounge on the roof of the Holiday Inn but it was at night times like nobody was ever there.

You're telling me that place wasn't thriving. The karaoke bar was a scene but nothing else really was really was stopping in but I would just sit there and just write all night long like there was nothing going on so I would just sit in this back office of this closed-down kitchen and just spend all my time writing and then like you know I'd come into work the next day and the manager and the next day I was like why is all the printer paper gone? Fuck you. So I'd do an operating a camera.

So I had a buddy who worked at this post production company in the valley and they did a lot of work I mean this isn't even a job anymore because like technology is like aced it out but it was this thing called motion control but we would use it in regards to like still photographs so it's like that Ken Burns effect of you put a still photograph down and it like you zoom into the face of the settler you know and it kind of doesn't it plane out a couple of things to like the background gets separated. Yeah exactly and so you know he was doing this for history channel behind the music all that so I got a job doing that for a while we got to actually work on some cool shit doing it we got to work with us Stacey Peralto on that dog town in Z-Boys. Yeah that was cool. That was pretty awesome but it was basically just sitting around all day long looking at still photographs coming in and just like pushing in and pushing out on them for a few years.

What would you do would you do would you have like some macro lens and you would focus just on some aspect and it would blur out everything else? Yeah well I feel like we pioneered this effect because there was only like three people in the country that were even doing this it's like it was such a rare thing and then somebody invented a plug-in in the app that just has it in there. Put us on business but we would even like cock the pictures up sideways so there'd be like some like depth and you could like rack between people and then we had our bosses looking at us like yes these guys are innovators. I don't make too big a deal out of it but I will not forget the first time I saw that in a fucking documentary I was like what's happening here they shot this with two cameras it's 3D I don't even have the glasses on I felt like it was a title paradigm chef I was into it.

It was interesting and even at the time I kind of felt like I'd been out and I laid that point for like maybe three or four years and I kind of felt like you know what this is a steady gig if it doesn't go any further than this it could be worse you know I could still be at the Crocodile Cafe and so I felt a little like hypnotized into this line. Maybe this is it I'll have benefits I'll have health insurance and then David called about all the real girls and wanted to see if I was there I'm like man I just got a steady job. And so but I woke me up from my haze and I like quit the job and like went down there to go do that. I just got to wake me up and was like man you know what I came out here for a purpose I need to not just settle for something I need to kind of be uncomfortable until I get to where I really want to be.

I'm not an optimist or are you pessimistic. I think I'm pretty optimistic when it comes I kind of felt like when I got out to LA I was like I didn't feel like the competition was stiff I felt like it was a matter of just being able to persevere because I felt like a lot of people were like we're not really putting their all into it I would see people complaining about not getting where they want but at the same time they weren't really working on it they would like sign up for a class and improv class and think that it should all just happen or you know what I mean. It didn't look like people around me were really working hard on I was like I can do this I can stick this out I just have to figure out how to get a job that doesn't want to kill myself in the meantime. Right.

So you go do that movie and then how quick after that is foot for sway. So I think that was 2003 was that movie. So then it was kind of like oh this maybe this is what I want to do and I came back to Los Angeles and I was like you know what I'm going to move back to I move back and forth between like Virginia and North Carolina and Los Angeles like multiple times I'm done with here I'm going to go home and try to write I just constantly was I think it was because I was just failing and I was trying to fail on my own terms and not like I own the failing yeah and after all the real girls yeah I was like you know I need to focus on the writing I need to get out of Los Angeles I'm gonna go live in my parents house for a bit and I won't have to work as hard and I can spend all my time writing came back to Los Angeles after we shot that and then I met who is my wife now I met her like the first like week I came back to LA and I was only planning to be in LA for like a month I was just gonna come back here and basically pack my shit up and put it all into a storage unit and drive across country I met my who's my wife and I met her and we just instantly hit it off and I was like where do you meet I've just met at like I lived in this apartment complex on like Fairfax and Santa Monica right around there and we just looked like the karate kids apartment complex is a shittle and she knew somebody that like lived in the apartment completely random just bumped into her and yeah I was like fuck I just met this girl and now I'm like moving back to Virginia and I didn't really know what to do and so I asked her if she went to drive cross country with me this was like only like four weeks into dating so why don't we just like this could be the grand send off we'll go on this trip and then we can say goodbye to each other and we just had this like incredible cross-country experience I mean like eating mushrooms and Utah together and going down New Orleans and just had this amazing time and then forgot where you were even going yeah I spent all the fucking money I just got to on the trip I was you know I said goodbye to her at the airport and that was supposed to be our like goodbye and then both of us were like not ready for it so then I found myself just like broke at my parents house and there was really I couldn't go back to Los Angeles not because I didn't even have any money for like like a security deposit or even gas or anything so she was sort of the beacon I was like you know what I need to knuckle in I'll get a job here I'll save up money and then I'll do some writing and I'll come back out there and so I ended up like living at my parents house for like about like eight months and I was bartending she's not when I met her she worked with like deaf and blind students at LA City College she was just kind of like what helps students with special needs yeah and I just liked that I liked meeting somebody that didn't like have any interest in what this industry was I thought it was like refreshing out here yeah I went the other direction but yeah you went in but she seems pretty cool yeah but yeah I got a job bartending at night and then I was like substitute teaching in the daytime and that was kind of like where the idea for Eastbound and down kind of came from is like I was I was there subbing and then like felt like I had to like weirdly explain myself to these high school kids that I had real dreams and visions and I wasn't like gonna be around here long that sort of like nothing better than like worrying that these kids understand like I have a bigger mission just so you pieces of shit now I don't belong here so let's get into it everyone open your book is exactly it that was really where Kenny Powers came from was just that idea that I thought that I was like somehow better living on my parents couch but yeah I moved back to Los Angeles then had my money move back in got a job with a better motion control company real money and then Jody Hill was like you know I want to go make this movie in North Carolina would you want to do this and I was like yeah let's definitely do it is that because is he from there just as he all gone to school there he he's from she's from Concord North Carolina he actually when he was in high school like he started a Taekwondo studio in Concord yeah because he genuinely loved he genuinely was into it yeah Jody was like bullied when he was young and so he like he got into like Taekwondo and martial arts yeah we're talking to Seth Rogen about the fact that he was a real avid martial arts student it's pretty awesome I was like where do you think your confidence comes from I think karate it's not the answer I was expecting it weirdly does I used to make bad grades and elementary school like I didn't pay attention or anything was my problem and I started martial arts and I was like in fifth grade and then all of a sudden like my grades turned around overnight I was like fidgeting with my balls and I was able to like calm and milk getting you genuinely had studied it too I studied it for three years and I liked it I thought it was cool but then what happened to me is I like I got good at it and my like sensei saw like promising me so he moved me up to the advanced class and I was like 12 years old and I was just getting my fucking ass beat by a 16 year old 17 year old that I ended up just quitting I just didn't like it anymore now did you originally get into it because you liked martial arts movies or were you fearful of the guys around you I don't know what it was I think it was just from probably from movies like growing up in the 80s like ninjas were like the coolest thing you could be absolutely I had a bunch of throwing stars and so I thought somehow that like taking martial arts ish and rukorati at the parks of rec would teach me how to master these throwing stars yeah I had homemade nam chucks that I made like a doll I cut in half and put like a fucking plant hook and and I would be fucking really getting into it and one would just fly off and like go through the drywall and I'd explain to my mom and I know these I wasn't really allowed to have a knife so I was like fashioning all these kitchen knives into my own collection of knives and stuff my son does the same thing like he doesn't even watch I mean culturally obviously like ninjas don't have the power they used to have but like you know my son's the same way I mean like from when he was super little he was always turning things into weapons all the time yeah I don't know what it is bad genetics for us yeah so you do flick this way you know I know this guy there's a bunch of them in my town and you guys must have made that in my short shoot I would imagine yeah I think it was like maybe 16 or 17 days and where did they get the money for it Jody him and his brother and his dad like basically put it on credit cards oh wow yeah and I think we made the whole thing for like 70 grand and then we shot on film was shot on 16 yeah and then when it got into sundance like we had to finish the movie so then the movies budget like blew up to like $400,000 to like get it rushed and get it into the festival and everything but it was wild I mean honestly to this day it's still I think my favorite thing that I've ever done like that feeling of us just doing it ourselves and like when it was over with like how excited we were like we partied our asses off her like the next like 18 hours we like wrapped it like I think like 7 a.m. and we were like up partying you know we never stopped drinking until like the next day I guess we should get into the edit room at some point but we did it you go to Sundance with that and just even like submitting it you have a feeling when you wrap it right which is like oh my god we did this we shot every word on the page and we went to all the locations and we did it and then there's of course you go through the second phase of editing and then maybe your perspective shifts a bit but you could sense could you feel like oh we did something great cool I couldn't tell like it was one of those things like even just seeing me and it was kind of a little bit like well this doesn't seem like a real movie I'm in it and and you know it was like even what that movie is it's not like it's kind of similar to what we do now where like it doesn't hold to the standards of the genre like weirdly too dark in places yeah yeah other times it's silly so there was like a tone thing that I was like you know are people gonna get this you know going to that art school we were friends with a bunch of musicians like that was like for the other guys we'd hang out with all the time where he's like a very talented group of musicians like Ben Best who created Eastbound with us he was a musician and Scott Joey Stevens who still does all of our scores and soundtracks now and we just basically turned to those guys and like help us make sense of this tone we need like a fucking soundtrack that rocks and like lets people know when it's okay to laugh and when it's okay to like feel real emotion so we can kind of cue the audience into knowing that we're in on these tonal shifts yeah and so those guys like really I think helped bring it together and then we've like that's just been our recipe for everything is that we really like zero in on what the music is because I think the music just really helps no matter what it is it's twice principles or even in gemstones helps you just like the audience know that like this tonal shift is not an accident we're you're on for something here yeah I think the first time I became aware that watching movies was like how Scorsese would use that like you have this great rock as fun rolling song while someone's getting their ass kicked and you're like oh good I'm allowed to enjoy this this music is telling me I can enjoy exactly but you know and I'll do this several times while we talk and I am in no way implying I'm making the same level of shit you are but I'll just I have made shit and I will say I to have a sense of humor that I think because I grew up around a lot of violence and I was fucking blackout drunk for years I think that stuff's really funny because I've lived through it but then you start showing it to like an audience and you realize like oh my personal like scarier stuff I that I find funny is a little too much for people we get that all the time like people will constantly talk to us about like when you think you've gone too far and I'm just like I don't even think about any of this stuff being far at all like I feel like it just seems yeah and the testing part can get a little like it checks your compass a little bit 100 percent you know honestly the testing part is what kind of made me like shift my priorities once I started to finally get into this industry and figure out what I want to put my time in when we had to get like I mean I think foot-fist way I don't know why they even tested it but they tested it and scored like a 36 it was like a bomb and uh and then I realized I was like man there's nothing we make that's going to survive this testing process because we're intentionally trying to put people off with some of these things and so that that's going to be reflected in these scores and it's always going to equal the same thing that none of this shit's going to score well studio is going to lose interest in it they're not going to like they're not betting on it yeah and then we're going to have a fart come out and then everyone will be less inclined to do it with us next time yeah well it's interesting is you we now live in a niche model but you you didn't when you first had opportunities it was very much still like no no it's got to be as broadly appealing the sponsor but now it's all about niche you know like flea bag I like you've you seen flea bag yeah it's great fucking phenomenal there's no way that appeals to everyone but the people are appeals to it's like I'm now that's my religion that show yep and it's awesome that that's the environment now but again it's rough yeah I feel like it's tv I feel like with movies so much has become about what those numbers are on the first weekend yeah that it's just like that's the story that's the narrative where with television I feel like it's more about people finding shows we're sharing it with their friends and it feels like a more organic way to like discover something I think yeah the days of like these movies would just hang out for three four months and they'd be dang momentum over the years like that just doesn't now it happened just to make you feel feel good about not getting landed lost me conquering you for that role I remember when that would like you know I had a blast on that movie and it was just an interesting thing to kind of see like oh I mean I don't really know what's up I mean I thought that people would like this but people hate this and uh but the most like a moment in the world and so like and you can sense that before the movie's coming out like okay the the initial feedback is there's not many people wanting to do pieces on the cast and uh and you can kind of feel it and we were up in New York getting ready to do press for it and the movie was coming out like in two days and I was like in a hotel room with Will Ferrell and Jimmy Miller Jimmy Miller was like yeah this is the time that you just like hold on your family like focus on what's important like oh this is gonna go well this weekend and so I was like you know what I was gonna go down to Virginia and just like hang out with my friends no one down there gives a shit about movies and I'll just let this weekend go past so I like caught up with some buddies and like we went out of this boat and we're out in the middle of fucking nowhere I mean like it's some like redneck dump bar that you can only get to a buy boat and we're out there and we're having looking at the trades or anything watching to see how the movie's gonna do and these like two rednecks come up to us and they like recognize me and they're like oh yeah you're in that movie man y'all are getting your ass kicked this weekend and like Saturday at noon I'm like fuck these guys know about box office mojo two dudes who had drove a fan boat up to the bar they're just catching alligators I mean even worse I saw you got a C-mon sinus score so it's only gonna do it two time multiple at best it's exactly right but that was like a weird turning point for me where I'm like man if these guys are paying attention to the box office it's like you know if that's the judgment success this is over for anybody who wants to make anything left of center oh I noticed it like I've been watching 60 minutes since I was a kid at my grandparents house and I started noticing when they would do like they have little breaks in 60 minutes where they give you a little sports update like in the second act and then they'll give you a little financial update right like what the Dow did that week and they started including box office results and I was like oh this is so crazy why does it sound 60 minutes and it did become like almost a sports preoccupation yeah well because you think about it's like stocks make sense because people could be watching that can actually benefit from a stock going ever down but with that it's just like people really care how much money Warner Brothers makes this weekend and how it's kind of odd yeah it is strange stay tuned for more armchair expert if you dare but once foot this way came out you then went to Sundance and then of course it was like it was definitely a movie that comedians watched you know so I'm assuming I don't know this part of the story but I assume Will and Adam kind of discovered it and they kind of yeah like you know so like we got into Sundance and we're all like over the moon we couldn't really believe that that had happened and it was like oh this is crazy you know we're gonna get to go to Sundance so the whole crew that made the movie we rented like one house in Park City there was like in and of being like 30 people standing like a two bedroom house like everyone was sick for like four months after that spread some appetite to see you but you know we went there and it was just that I feel like this is how just things are in general with careers is like you always kind of imagine and get excited about the possibilities and it's always below that is what happens and so you know we're going there wondering like if there's a fucking bidding war what if this and what if that yeah and then we go in the very first screening we have it's like a midnight screening can't sleep I can't you know I can't eat anything I was so nervous whole theaters packed there's a line outside how this is pretty awesome the movie starts in like 10 minutes into the movie half the theater just gets up and walks out of the movie oh my god what's going on and I was like man is it that bad and it turned out I guess the movie that it's screen right before I think it was like the science of sleep or something it was like a bidding war for it so it's all the executives were like getting up and getting into this but it was like oh it's like feeling and then it's like we didn't get an offer on the movie while we were there so we kind of like went to Sundance with this like champion spirit and we kind of like left like well we got we got parkas from from experience even the two-room condo you run and you're like oh that'll get paid for yeah I was moving yeah going around you're leaving debt probably 20 bucks from anyone who used to tell but we you know so we went back to our lives based and I'm like well okay you know we'll see what happens yeah and then it just it just after Sundance it started just getting passed around and then we suddenly got this phone call yeah that animal in will we're interested in it and then suddenly like out of nowhere we're just sitting down a meeting with guys that I was like watching on TV like the week before yeah like sitting down asking what we want to do did you have favorites at that time or you even drawn to comedy we were looking at what we were doing was like what Scorsese and Altman and these guys are doing so we weren't even really like we're trying to get into the comedy game right but then it was like all these comedy guys that we admired were all like into it and so then it just you know we started to just follow that path of like this is how this weird thing we did is going to translate into more opportunities right and when you were writing on the first iteration in LA what were you writing were you writing dramas or all over the place like I was like writing like horror sci-fi like all over the place it wasn't specifically you know anything comedic did you have a writing hero that was like when I went I think Pulp Fiction came out my senior year of high school right for him going into film school so it was like at that time it was like you know you're studying him and Kevin Smith and what's his name it burns and then even Billy Bob Thornton it just made a sling blade and so it was all of these like simple concepts that worked and they were dialogue driven yeah and I saw Paul fiction I was like hold on a second like there's something here I can relate to there's something I've not related to the movies I've seen before but there's something here that no way would I think I was quinting you know but I was like just that dialogue that that being the in road to it I was like that seems achievable in some way a hundred percent and even just the idea of like who quinting Tarantino was the idea that like that comes out and then suddenly you're like oh he wrote true romance and he did punch-ups on Crimson Tide yes I bet that's his whole horse the horse thing right the white and black horses that's true but you know they're born black there's something with the big turn of that yeah I went down the same nerd hole with him so I know the first thing I remember was like oh god he'd you hear the dude from foot-fish way is in Tropic Thunder was that like the first big once those guys once will and Adam picked that up like we met Jod we met Seth we started meeting all those guys then I met Lord Michaels and I got in the lonely island guys I got cast in like basically in 2006 my whole life just changed that we went to Sundance wasn't sure what was gonna happen to Sundance and then all of a sudden I got offered Hot Rod's first like real movie first paycheck on location in Vancouver.

SAG member. SAG member. The whole audience. Yeah sure everything was changing.

And I was still so broke at the time that I was like you know winner the paychecks coming in for this movie I still like I'm an overdraft I can't fucking pay for this hotel rooms you know like actually I'll back up for one sec right before we did foot-fish way I was finally able to quit the motion control because David Green he had sold the script to Sam Jones you got hired to do this story about this motocross racer Bubba Stewart right and so David pulled me on to like write it with him and so that was like my first taste of like any sort of paycheck at all and I remember the check was supposed to come like right before Christmas or like commencement check you know it was writing stuff it's like you can wait for like a year to pay it or something but I was like so broke that I was like I need this money I quit my fucking job I got ahead of this thing and I can remember the check came like the day before I was supposed to leave to go home to Virginia for Christmas I had no money for Christmas presents for anybody I knew and I had already spent half of this money and so I get the check and I go to the bank to go cash it and they're like yeah this is gonna be like a 15 day charge if you never had more than like 200 dollars in a bank account we're not gonna fucking like cash this check for 200 000 dollars right and I'm like what do you mean why do I get this fucking money I you know 15 days from now what and they're like you need to go to the bank that it was written from so like me and my wife like we went to Beverly Hills and like we go in there I need this money in cash you know and they uh they fucking give us it in cash we literally put it in a brown paper bag and we rob the place and then I like get back in the car and we were like so like looking at the money like oh my god this is fucking insane and we drive back to Washington Mutual on Fairfax facts and I'm like there motherfucker take that cash so you need dolomites yes you got take these cheap motherfuckers and wipe your ass with them but not all of them I need that but the majority just use the ones to wipe your ass and please put the 50s in my account when you went back to your hometown having just had that fucking paper sack full of cash are you just like at the bar buying everyone drink I mean are you not a presire yeah this is never gonna end yeah it's like wow you can burn through 200 grand a lot quicker but we uh as like you know so after I got hot rod while I was shooting hot rod uh Seth Rogan and those guys cast me and drill bit Taylor which was like another comedy and then right as I got that I got cast in heartbreak kid so it was like suddenly you know going from no movies at all to three movies back to back productions were having to negotiate when I was out of one movie and when I could get into the next one and you know and it was just this like whirlwind for these like six months of like bouncing between these three movies and I met Ben Stiller on the heartbreak kid and yeah while we were shooting he just told me he's like hey I'm doing this we trophic thunder and there's this role would you be interested in this and he gave me this script and it was like you know I was a fan of his directing to I always loved the cable guy I thought it was awesome yeah me too and I love reality and I thought that Tropic Thunder just to me seemed like this is exactly the kind of movie I love like I love that it's violent I like this rated R and it's a lot of movies now all of a sudden it goes from holy crap I can't believe I'm working to oh geez I probably need to guide this in some direction did you have any notion at that time of like I mean I guess you were so protected because everything you did you were with huge stars who yeah it's like if they were covered by no one's like blaming it on me right or were you thinking about that yet you know what after that first year I started thinking about it because I was just at this point I was just I couldn't believe I was even getting the opportunity to do something was kind of crazy the idea of getting a paycheck to do something like this but as we started doing eastbound down and we got we sold the pilot of eastbound down that same year as well and then as we kind of like got back into like zeroing in with Jodi and we're writing this it kind of like just reminded me of like I want to do my own thing here and I need to make sure I don't like ruin all this goodwill just like appearing in other people's stuff yeah like blowing all my material out yeah when I'm like trying to do my shit it's like people have already seen all the moves and it's over you know yeah totally I'm wondering would you have set up eastbound like two years later when we got into it after just from doing foot-fist way I just saw the writing on the wall with movies I really did I was like I had convinced Jodi that we should try to sell a TV show he didn't see what the upside of it was at that time and I'm like I'm telling you man like the way that this movie stuff is going I didn't know there was anything with this testing like our shit's never gonna work here it will never work we actively I feel like are trying to isolate people sometimes when we make stuff and I'm like that's not the recipe for success you know I mean I would watch it even with I'd see guys like Seth Rogen and those guys are so incredible with being able to navigate that testing process like they use that shit as a tool like they're able to like go in and they're not offended when the audience doesn't respond to a joke they're able to like use all that stuff constructively and like create something that works and for us we were like too precious we couldn't survive that process we would like get that criticism and instead of using it and bettering it we would like double down and be like this fucking easy to do what they're talking about I'm gonna let that be played four seconds long yeah we just had we had the wrong attitude for it and I think I saw the right before we shot the foot-fist way was like when Ricky Drex is the office came out too as a comedy goes like just sitting down and watching that all in one I was like man this thing has affected me more than anything I've seen in theaters lately like this is pretty incredible and I loved how small it was and that you could sit down and and watch it in kind of like one long weekend yeah to me I was like this is what we need to do like our comedy would work like this yeah you're really lucky that you recognize that early on and it's so true I was driving home I was like what's the last movie I fucking loved in the movie theater and I can name you 15 shows I've watched in the last 18 months that like it was my whole life for that week and I fucking love it I can't wait for another thing and it's just crazy how it shifted it is me personally I way preferred television now in general yeah I mean there's so many things competing for you that I just find like even the best movies that come out it's like people talk about them for like a week yeah yeah then it's just kind of over with it's sad yeah so what's your wife's name my wife's name is Gia I wrote that down Gia but I think I was confused that it would be Gia yeah that's what everyone like even when I first started dating her I always like would just kind of like mumble her name so I'm like I know it's not Gia yeah yeah that's what I would do I was with a gal for nine years seven of those just abject failure and then started making movies and money and I started getting to basically realize my dream I had for so many years it was not easy on our relationship all of a sudden I had money I was very bad at sharing it in a way that didn't make her feel guilty like I bought her shit but I reminded her I bought her shit or like I'd complain about a bill I paid and she'd be like what the fuck's wrong with you like last year you made $6,000 this year you're making hundreds of thousands you're offended by the CBK bill I just was not good at it I also think our whole relationship people definitely remembered her more than me she was way better looking at me and smarter and then all of a sudden you know people remember me everywhere we go and just it was a hard transition was yours easy or did it have challenges you don't have a few little challenges but you know I mean part of their thing that was also about me and Gia is like we just never fight I mean we're one of those like annoying couples are just like you are big fights are like you know do you want the comforter uh no I don't want the comforter like are you sure look do you want the comforter just put the comforter on so don't ask me if I have the comforter it's like yeah that's the extent of our fight so even just doing this stuff it's like Gia's an artist she's like a painter and a photographer and a chef and she understands this sort of lifestyle and she's self-sufficient she can kind of like do her own thing the logistics of the career are such that you're going away to shoot Tropic Thunder I don't know where we at Philippines or something and Kawai oh and Kawai okay so she either has to come right if you guys want to be together or I don't know your guys are all flying back anyways I could see where it'd be I would feel like well shit now I'm just kind of a little attached to this freight train and I'm gonna go over something and I'm just going wherever this guy's career takes us yeah 100 percent I mean I always felt that for like she would come with me on a lot of those early movies everything was happening so fast that we were just kind of like bouncing around we live together but yeah there was never any close calls of like we're not gonna do this anymore or anything it was it's been harder since we've had kids because then she can't like these getting these movies would be like an adventure it'd be like her and I would get to go to some other country or some other place to live and have some kind of cool experience and then once I had kids it was like she couldn't just come with me and so then like I would find myself even on the coolest movie being in some weird purgatory where I'm like yeah I feel a little weird about like going out but I'm also just bored and you know you know it was more not like yourself enjoy it yeah exactly exactly I felt that pretty hardcore on Alien when we did that in Australia and it was kind of like a little bit of a turning point for me because I'm like I don't know if I can do this as a career it's like this is kind of crazy to be gone from my kids and my wife for like four months it's like yeah so much changes and that was like part of what influenced me to like get down to Charleston I'm like you know what we can like work down there every time I've ever shot anything we've always had to go back to shoot it somewhere else like we never they're never giving us enough money to shoot things in LA so we always are having to find like attacks and send them yeah and David Green and myself were like well you know that was just part of the reason like let's just go try to work somewhere where we don't have to like uproot our whole lives and like miss out on so much of what's happening with our kids and yeah yeah yeah Alien was pretty tough because that's like a dream job to work with Ridley Scott on a franchise like that and I found myself like loving the working experience and then just like but having to do like a ton of soul searching about what I was doing yeah right because you're like uh it's a it's a great privilege to get as many things as you dreamt of so I recognize it's such an enormous gift to be able to find out that maybe your dream and life isn't as important as you thought you're pretty much right it's odd yeah were you a huge fan of that oh yeah I mean yeah I mean that was insane I mean like you know you were great in that oh thanks a lot because you know it's it's fun when you go like see a comedian take that swing you're like okay how's it gonna go is he gonna be the one who ruins the whole movie yeah totally there's always that risk you know you said say and then like I was just like man I just I want to be in the zone I'm not trying to bump the tone of this thing I got to figure out how to like fit into this and then like really like yeah we cast James Franco as Catherine Watterson's husband who dies at the beginning I'm like fuck my first scenes on this thing I have to be with Franco it's like it's gonna be so hard to shake the idea that I'm just like one of the crew members yeah but you're waiting for one you to pull the joint out of something yeah and then you also write just probably a voice in your head I don't know if like my favorite comedians that have transitioned into drama is like Bill Murray's the high watermark where he doesn't pretend he's not doesn't like try to you know knock down everything interesting about himself or quirk of his he like embraces still who he is he pulls it off and so I would imagine part of you was going like no I still got to be Danny like I gotta find some some level that's the right level 100 percent it's like I would often think about how filmmakers the choices they make in longevity but with actors because I didn't have any interest in doing it I never thought about some sort of road map of like well how do you do it and give my wife her uncle is Cheech Marin no yeah and so like I explained to the mushrooms in Utah yeah exactly you know I met him at like we were even dating on me him at like Thanksgiving or Easter with their family and then as I started finding success like talking to him he like told me this thing he's like yeah you know enjoy it make the right choices he's like comedians have about seven movies that's about what you get and I start I'm like I never thought about that and then I started kind of thinking about the guys like I'm like I guess that is about what it is you know like you get about seven movies and then people have kind of seen what you do and they're ready for somebody new but when you kind of started looking at it that way I was like well how about the guys who had more than seven like what do they do you know and even just somebody like John Goodman who's in gemstones it's like you look at him and it's like man it's a pretty insane career that's one of the best and the idea that he's been in so many funny things and then he can be in the Coen brothers and even he was in TV when TV wasn't cool I mean he was able to go from Roseanne and then still be in Iraq and Fobia and like all these other summer blockbusters yeah he then again he was up he this was what I was wondering when I was watching it last night do you get wait before you even ask this was I'll forget on Tropic Thunder. Nick Nolte were you like give me Nick Nolte let me let me talk to him about 48 hours what was happening at his prime were you interested in that a hundred percent you know I spent almost all my time with that movie with Nick Nolte because he and I were in all the scenes together and the way that movie worked is it you know it was long we were in Kauai for like three and a half months or something it was crazy and the way that worked is to be such a fast-moving machine there were so many parts like every single day you were on call they never told you if you were really gonna work or not because like if there was weather whatever they would change things but in Kauai like the only place you get cell phone reception is basically at the hotel like if you want to go do anything there's not really reception out there so you had these like long periods of time where you're basically just like stuck in a hotel room where everyone else is on vacation having fun you know it's kind of like waiting to see if you're gonna have to go into work and walk through the back of a scene yeah and so Nick was staying in the same hotel I was and we were on the same schedule so as the movie went on it would be like my phone rang like have you heard from him and I'm like no I was like do you want to go snorkeling he was he was awesome like and he would he had so many crazy stories oh he must have passed he had this one story that I thought was so fucking funny he was telling about like back in the day he was in the 70s sometime and he was at this party and Casa Vettis was there and he like really wanted to like introduce himself to him but he was just too nervous to do it so he like you know okay I'll take a shot then I'll go introduce myself and takes two takes three takes four and gets into it and then he gets too drunk to go introduce himself and he never goes and introduces him so then like years later he's like at another party in Casa Vettis is there and he's like all right I'm gonna go finally introduce myself so he goes up to him and tells him you know it's been one of my biggest regrets that we were at this party and I never introduced myself it gets phase like what are you talking about we like fuck a party till the side I was back here in motorcycle for half the night oh man that's the bad so when my first movie Bert Reynolds was in and he was my all-time favorite and so every day at lunch I was the annoying I was like 28 I think on that movie I could knock on his fucking door of his trailer it all called me with him telling me a story about he and Hal need him a roommate since Anamonica and Hal came home one day from from some job and he comes in he's like Bert you gotta take me to the hospital I broke my back and Bert's like I don't think you broke your back you don't think you'd be able to walk or whatever he's like just take me to the fucking hospital so he takes me to the hospital in Santa Monica they put him in the little gown and everything they give him a x-ray and they conclude yes he has broken his back and he's got some fluid in his lung and so I guess Hal was flirting with the nurse they're gonna have to take fluid out of Hal need him's lung so the doctor's gonna put a needle in his back and then he's asked the nurse to hold his legs in case he collapses and the doctor puts the needle in his back into his lung and Hal need him completely shits himself in the hospital gown while the nurse is holding his legs oh god I was like of all the places I thought this story was going he's like laying all these like little bread crumbs about his flirt with the nurse and the doctors getting annoyed I'm like okay this is gonna be like Hal's gonna ask her out at the end of this story and the doctors gonna say we're having an affair no Hal's shit on a nervous story with Bert Reynolds and the roost sitting on the fucking little bed how lucky are we to him to get these nuggets of all the movies you did this is the end I thought that was one of the scenes where I was like oh they fucking turned him loose and he just delivered something that couldn't be written that's just the greatest I mean all the jerk and often throwing all that stuff is there is there a high point as far as all those movies you did in that stretch you know that movie felt like that was the end of that chapter in a way you know it's like they don't really like make those movies as much anymore and and so in some ways I mean I don't think we knew it at the time but it did it felt like it was the end of that chapter when I kind of look back on it like that was sort of that period of those films when you know it's like when I first was getting going it was like it wasn't uncommon for like a rated R movie for a studio to spend like sixty seventy million dollars on one you know and then like by the end of that decade you're lucky if they'll spend like five million dollars so it was just this period where they were letting people just do wild shit and rated R shit and you know it's just not the same anymore you know yeah yeah then it kind of turned right after that right yeah stay tuned for more armchair expert if you dare that's something about you that you were invited into all these comedy circles there's little camps and you kind of just migrated back and forth between all of them and did you feel lucky about that yeah I felt completely lucky and just kind of like just grateful I mean just grateful to be able to be invited into that and to be able to participate and be able to give him the platform to say fucking wild shit and to be crazy and you know I love those guys I love Seth and Evan and that whole crew I mean I had a blast working with them and all that stuff Pineapple Express is the end I mean because it's the beginning of the career you like look at it and assume like every job it's like this yeah yeah and then you kind of realize how rare that was and how special that was to be a part of something like that and then I've been on some level while it's all happening you're like I love this I'm grateful I also want to be doing this like I want to be Seth and Evan I want to be doing my thing yes you're already doing e-spound throughout all that right you know it would be like in between e-spound David would go do movies Jody would go direct commercials or work on other stuff so the acting was sort of my thing I could go do in between the times and I've got to work with my buddies and then doing it and showing up in other people's camps or other directors it was also just like educational it's like you're coming out of these different camps and seeing how everybody works and borrowing things that seem like the apical what we're doing and just what I do with Jody and David it's also one of the things like that stuff was like never planned out like we didn't plan out like we're gonna continue to make TV shows with us three making them it's just been this sort of organic thing that like we're gonna spend the next 14 years at HBO yeah exactly it just kind of like it just keeps happening and none of us are tired of it and we stay busy enough with other things that it's almost just like a treat it's fresh air to be able to step into the ring together and get to just fuck around and laugh like we used to when we were in college and yeah and just trip out on the fact that we're still able to do it that's the actual thing that people should be super jealous of and that's the thing that delivers tenfold right the ability to choose who you're working with and who you're spending your life with and who you're sharing all this stuff with is like one of the most unique yeah that's it gifts of this whole thing so you do four seasons of e-spound it down and while you're doing it do you get like itchy like oh I like this thing but it's making me realize I want to do this thing like it's 100% you also start getting in your head about you know like I said earlier like I didn't really care if people thought I was Kenny Powers or not but I didn't want to make that like effect what sort of opportunities I had you know yes so I would start getting in my head as an actor something I'm not really prepared to like look at myself as an actor so I'm in deep water and that I don't really know how to navigate and I'm just trying to notice I'm like all these roles I'm being offered I never have sleeves in any of them like he starts zeroing in on these like trays of like fuck what is this why can I why can't any of my fucking characters have long-sleeved shirts I always have fucking cut off denim and I like it becomes like I need to not show up as like the best friend that wears jean shorts I need to like put that chapter behind me and so what specifically when you went into vice principles this is my chance to do xy or z with that it was the idea of you know we really like to use bound but what would happen with these bound is you know you would do a season there'd be so much time in between seasons as well that like you go off and do another movie or something and then you would come back for the season and it would take such a long time to kind of get your head back into the characters and doing it again and then even as the seasons went on instead of coming up with like what the best idea is you're just trying to come up with what you haven't done before it was making the writing harder so we were ready just to kind of start brand new and do something different we weren't ready to kind of like settle into the show that we wanted to like seriously commit to the next like decade of our lives or anything we wanted to just do something different and so we went into HBO and the talent cleanser exactly and that's what vice principles was like we pitched it with an end and we gave them the whole entire thing and like this is all that the show is just these 18 episodes that's it we were being now entirely written we wrote them all before we shot and so we entered that process like with the whole thing you know yeah that's cool and it was helpful for the actors everybody knew where it was going what was going on we make adjustments as we shot but yeah it was kind of cool to go in and try something totally different we really took all this pressure off of us because we were following up eastbound there was this idea of like we were thinking a little too much in our heads of like well is this gonna be too much like Kenny Powers or is this character gonna be is this Stevie is it you know we're we're just like once again instead of like writing what was true we're sitting here trying to just like make sure it's not certain things yeah we just like use that as a way of like motivating ourselves cleaning the palette and just like creating this other world with these other characters and it relieves some of that soft more slump pressure I think eastbound's definitely episodic like I don't need to see episode four to enjoy episode seven right and for people who don't know what episodic and cereal is like friends is episodic each episode the title of it's the thing they're gonna handle that day and then serialize this fucking in house of cards like you got to see every episode so to me it seems like it's been inching towards and the righteous gemstone seems very very serialized very serialized yeah that's a hard show to drop into in the middle I think but that's kind of what's exciting about it I guess is that it all comes back around to that idea of feeling a little lost in the world of features about being able to get that material through the idea that suddenly you have like five hours to tell a story yeah I don't know like you can be way more unexpected people aren't going to see every beat coming because you're following some three act 90 minute structure you can really start going out there and getting even crazier with what you're doing yeah but it's a little more intimidating isn't it as a writer because I'm sure you're watching all these shows I am where it's like holy shit it added up to that and the fucking planet that there that was amazing did you bring some outsider in that had some experience with a really good serial did you add anyone to the mixer no just kind of like that's kind of always been my strong students like structure like it's a part of writing that I've always liked the most like really figuring out how something lays out it's almost like just creating a mixtape and like figuring out like where all the ups and downs are gonna be how you're gonna bring it back around at the end yeah I've always liked that and so I think that's why I've been into writing for TV is that you look at those episodes and you just like to me I just I see like a weird beautiful mine Venn diagram I'm just like trying to connect all these guys the boarding cards what do you I use index cards usually is what I do is I'll just like beat things out but then we'll start writing and we'll beat out the index cards enough to give us confidence that like it's heading somewhere and then we'll just start writing and then just do it and then it completely changes with every episode you write so you like identify potential runners and stuff exactly or pay general arcs for characters or what you kind of want to build to who's gonna be the bad guy who's gonna like have some redemption you know just like these general ideas yeah and then as you kind of start writing it they start to reveal which ones work and which ones don't and then the other pattern that seems to be emerging is that visually or spending more time on it visually is that accurate yeah for sure like with this I feel like part of the scope of the show was like need it to make the world feel real 100 you know like I wanted these guys to feel like they really like they're good at being televangelists and they really do have real success and I just thought it would make the comedy of the stuff that they were doing just see that much crazier that they like have this gigantic audience and I didn't want it to be like they're the most successful televangelist family and then we shoot it on some shitty stage in the community theater that doesn't really look like it has scope you know oh god it's I think it's everything it's like yeah I think godfather if they're at a pizzeria the whole time making falling shots versus you go to that house and like tahoe and you're like oh these this is like old money yeah this is the real thing yeah yeah and then in the scope of your show is like huge those houses all in North Carolina or something it was all in Charleston South Carolina yeah oh it is yeah so we shot all around there and the church the mega church it's the coliseum in north charleston that's where we built that church and it was really funny because we were in the when we were in production you know we had to push all of that stuff at the mega church to the very end of the season because the ice hockey team is like playing in there and then it was like the ice hockey team like made the playoffs and if they suddenly we further our production would be fucked up so we weren't rooting against the local hockey team probably something you told hb I like there's no worry the the hockey team is the hockey team in South Carolina nobody here plays hockey yeah and they kicked ass that season now I remember reading I guess this was probably like 10-12 years ago that the charlotte hornets arena had been sold to some evangelist you remember that I kind of had a sound familiar they had 20 some thousand people attending that service on Sundays and I was that's kind of when I started getting fascinated with it and then finding out like all these dudes have private jets some of these like we looked up Joel Olstein or something what was it Rob he's doing 45,000 yeah yeah 45,000 parishioners a week are coming through that's absolutely insane it's crazy I mean it is if the guys who can do it I mean it's an insane business model it's like a hundred million dollar kind of tax free tax free god bless and you grew up Baptist I did I grew up going to a Baptist church my parents were both like really involved in the church my mom did puppet ministry she like would minister to the children with puppets and so I watched all of that stuff like for years I was like we always at the church and I never like going when I was a kid I would like pretend like I was sleeping as the family got up for churches like hoping that they would have forgotten about me and that like it would be too late for me to get a shower and get dressed and leave it let me say home but that never worked one time is it safe for me to assume you're not a practitioner of any religion our like adventure with religion was like you know we went hardcore I mean like we were there all the time my parents were so involved in it and then my parents got divorced when I was in sixth grade and my dad kind of ran out on us and suddenly it was like here's my mom who works in a department store at the mall she's got two kids we're living in an apartment and you're thinking like you know maybe this church that we've donated all this time to will be supportive and instead they the people they're like basically like turned their back on my mom and I'm making our shameder for getting a divorce and so you know I was little I was in sixth grade when this happened but I can remember like seeing my mom and like knowing how much the church meant to her and now she just didn't even feel like she could enter the church and so for a few months she still would drop me and my sister off at church on Sundays to go and we did it and then after a few months it's like what are we doing like why are we going into this place every Sunday like it's not you know it's done and then we just never went back and that was kind of the end of it and I remember distinctly having like mixed feelings about that even at that age where I dreaded going to church I hate it sitting in those sermons for an hour not being able to do anything and having to just sit there and listen just like through all pictures and so uncomfortable but then that feeling that you would have when it was over and just knowing that like yes the whole day's ahead and then there was like when we stopped going I had this weird like I kind of missed it like I kind of missed being forced to do something I didn't want to do for an hour and I and when I could suddenly just sleep in on Sunday mornings Sundays like that afternoon Sunday wasn't quite as special anymore yeah it's like we as a species have this kind of implicit desire to repent like you want to go somewhere and then be like yeah I suffered and now I can stop hating myself I'm cheating the shit out of myself I did it now I'm good for two days yeah yeah there's some aspect of that that I did like about it now the thing I wanted to do years ago was do you remember the power team did you ever oh yeah they would like rip telephone books and have fun books and have fun they'd hand cut Monica the power team would go like fire up churches they were like a basically a touring road group and they were all these muscle men they would handcuff each other together and they couldn't get out and then they would recite some scripture and then they fucking guy would jump up and kick the other guy in the chest and they would break the handcuffs in like the power of the Lord was obvious and present and I even as an eight-year-old I was like I'm not seeing the connection yeah Lord this is a good day and a phone book and half and then even better is these guys most of them were ex well they claimed ex-steroid cocaine abusers and they give their whole life story as a testimony to like look how good life is now that I found the Lord and they would be like I was doing 14 ounces of cocaine a week and they would get they'd get a little too dark to the church groups yeah and then they would fucking like one of the ways they demonstrate the power of the Lord is they just break chairs over each other's back and none of it makes sense and I I desperately wanted to do a show about being a power team member and like still being gagged up and shit but funny enough when I had that idea I was with Jimmy Miller for like I don't know a year maybe he was my manager and I was like I love it but he's like I don't religion I don't know good luck you know like selling something about religion still dicey and you feel like it's like they're just really I guess there was big love but certainly there had to be talks like are they allowed to tackle this you know who knows what happened I mean people get outraged or anything so I mean I'm not fearful of people like being outraged but there's a part of me where you know I kind of understand in some ways why there is an outcry sometimes in Hollywood tackles religion and as I was like watching anything I could have like well who else has tried to tackle space here I think they make the mistake of like they like make a joke out of what people believe in yeah and I feel like that is just like kind of obnoxious and it's like that would piss me off if it's like somebody doesn't understand where I come from what I believe it's like the value it's adding to my life yeah I think that that is wrong to do so I think what this show is like we don't we're not trying to say anything about what you should believe in what you shouldn't believe in we're not trying to comment on the Bible we're commenting on these like hypocrites who are basically fronting this operation and like basing all their their value on like these morals and these ideals but then not adhering to any of them themselves you know yes that's very obvious right when you start watching is the validity of the Bible or God or that version of it's not on trial at all it's just these people that have clearly manipulated these this text exactly yeah and I totally agree it's like I am an atheist but I have zero interest in trying to prove to someone that they don't believe the right thing I'm like if someone's happy doing x y or z I'm super happy that's why I believe to yeah you know what I'm curious about is just the town that I live in like I love Charleston I really love being a part of that community it's called the holy city you know there's oh it is yeah like there's downtown there's no buildings taller than the church steeples like you go outside and there's like churches like every mile you know on the radio station it's like every other station's a religious station religion is a big part in the lives of people there so I am curious of all still be able to like go to restaurants yeah the show comes out I was trying to for moments of the show I'm like I just imagine right now that I am super that is my that my book and I believe in all that and I'm watching it I still definitely think you're allowing those people to feel in on the joke that they're not at all being made from which they're not it's not like you're painting to the audience and going like look at these idiots gobbling up this bullshit it's never really about that yeah and that was important to do I mean you know my mom is still religious I have like my my sister's religious my aunt is a minister in Atlanta so like a lot of my family is still very much involved with the church and so they were always in the back of my head not that they all like what I do anyway right but the idea was like you know I understand them they all have wicked senses of humor and they believe what they believe I want to make something that they would even understand where this is coming I almost think it could be more funny for them yeah I think so too they would identify I think that there's more truth there than the people would think yeah it's absolutely incredible I can't wait to consume all of it so you move down there we said that I mean again you got your own desires to go do that and then obviously it was motivated by kids and stuff but what's your anonymity level down there man you'd be really surprised it's been like absolutely incredible I will say really yeah it's been amazing because you know when you first get there I think people are just genuinely excited that you're there that's your part of the community and I think and then after you've been there for a few months then like people feel a little bit of ownership over you in the sense that like they don't want people to like their perspective yeah I find that all the time that's nice and the people have just been awesome to tell you that there's just been such a cool place to live and I was really I wasn't you know everything was going fine for me out here I have a lot of friends here the weather's great but I just found myself that like when I wasn't working I really didn't know what the fuck to do with myself and once kids were getting involved it just became so much like harder to figure out like how to just have an existence it's like well we can go to Griffith Park together and right we can arrange a play date with someone who lives 40 minutes away from here everything just became so scheduled and kind of like we were just bending over backwards to kind of find some kind of normality and then I got there and it's just been so grounded and normal and fun and I can walk out our front door and get on bikes and just like cruise down the road my son's seven my daughter's four and it's like it's just awesome and then you know I also feel like it puts in perspective of the career too like when I was here I would drive on the road I would see billboards and it would make me stressed out about like fuck it's been a while since I've been on one of those I need to get to work you know and then there you kind of realize like none of this shit really matters that much it's like we get really in our heads about it and it's important to do your best at what you want to do but you don't need to eat sleep out of it yeah like even when you make something that doesn't work it's like no one here's keeping tally of that these people are just living their lives and working if you never worked again it would be very fucking impressive as it should be yeah you know like I don't know it's good to keep that perspective make sure you not feel beat yourself up so much about the stuff that doesn't work and the stuff that does and is the four-year-old I have a four-year-old daughter and it's getting outrageously fun right now because her fucking personality is like oh yeah yep is she funny she's so funny she's the funniest I mean like they just got in last night here they flew in separately from me excited to come early and so my wife and my son and my daughter got here they were here for like two minutes I had like 12 hours of presser so I just got home they entered my wife left something downstairs in the car so she had to go down there and within like two minutes my daughter like pissed on the couch and my son took like a football side shit in the toilet and clogged it and I just try like oh it's so good to see you guys yeah thanks for reminding me of my primary purpose media we're just cleaning up after you guys well Danny wait wait I went out to say one thing I thought maybe we're gonna bring it up when you run Sam Jones one thing that we talked about a lot after because we both loved that episode was you were talking about reviews and how reviews are kind of bullshit and you kind of delineated comedy versus drama in a really I thought like profound way but it's math and comedy so specific because you have to like write a joke then we'll pay off three scenes later and everyone thinks you're just kind of looking in the mirror and doing funny faces and it's so not that it's not I feel like it is the hardest of all to do because I mean if you sit in a theater when people watching a drama no one's reacting you're not assuming that the movie's not working you're just like oh these people you know they're feeling it and you're in a comedy and it's like if you're in there for five six seven eight minutes and nobody's laughing it just makes the whole thing it's low like the failure yeah yeah you're in a ditch you got to climb out of yeah also there's no tricks in comedy I can put the perfect song with the right push in and blah blah blah and make the emotion happen with these other devices this work but I mean it's funny even just doing press it's like doing press for Halloween or Alien or this they just don't give comedy any respect at all they know like those things are so easy doing a press dunker for something that's not a comedy it's like they work harder on the questions they have more respect for what it is and then with comedy you feel like a lot of time you're coming with those reporters and they're like disgusted by you just like oh yeah you know you can fake a drama you just really can't fake a comedy it's not gonna happen all right I adore you I sure hope you'll come back and talk about this has been awesome all right good luck everyone watches the righteous gemstone I can't we're watching more of it tonight it's so fucking good all right bye and now my favorite part of the show the fact check with my soulmate Monica Padman do you hear that is that your nicotine spray yeah you got some three days off dip girl wow i'm on the spray now okay well in a couple episodes oh right here when you learn about it yes yes we're a lot of order more importantly i would like to welcome everyone to one of our first moonlight fact checks we all work today at a long day and here we are after nightfall in the attic and I like it the windows are open you might hear some crickets or some grass fireflies super a lot of helicopters some hot rods a couple their bikes do you think fireflies make noise no i don't think they do the sound of their light turning on and off tiny sounds of their light turning down and up do you think it sounds like a light switch tiny or like in a movie when a light bulb comes on it's like yeah it's like that okay yeah okay great i'll tell you here's peeled i'll tell you who's here a lot of those fireflies is nanny mcbride oh my god heaven home of the lightning bug that's right what were you going firefly i guess you can go either way you go lightning bug or firefly yeah i think i know if it's regional i said lightning bug what did you say i guess i said firefly because that's what came out naturally sure i was very natural very organic do you like your spray hmm i do like my spray really do you feel like it gives you the same whatever you know what it does is it prevents me from being agitated but no it doesn't give me the same kick in the ass that a big lip full of the haggand did but again what about the mints was it the same as the mints well the mints you know fuck on my skin so i can't take those i like them it's more because they're dissolving for 20 minutes so my assumption is oh i'm getting nicotine the whole 20 minutes the gum i don't know where to put the gum i start chewing it i'm like is the nicotine gone after a minute you know what you piece like a hubba yes in the flavor can be gone well i don't want to talk to spare jolly well look all gums you run out of flavor quick all of them hubba ba ba tried-ins bubble-ishous oral b no or gel no what's one with the oh we orbit orbit thank you thank you and i are kind of partial to bubble gum flavor yeah that's nice i kind of want to try it oh pink flavor oh this you can you want try it no i'm scared of it little high-risk to try for the first time i've never had nicotine in my life ever i don't think so i've never smoked a cigarette what about when you drank out of my spit cup sorry i did not do that you did that i drank out your spit cup not a trigger warning still a trigger warning actually way grosser because we don't get into it i didn't care i have one in there mmm there's where it's well you know everyone knows if you have a spit cup what the contents are did you know rob i didn't know that's wrong i don't see it's incorrect yeah real-time i guess i'll try it on a low risk moment yeah somewhere where you know you can if necessary lie down and take five oh that makes me scared i don't recommend it it's not like no i don't i'll tell you what i can remember having my first cigarette on my buddy j-robs driveway yeah i had him in junior high but i think i was really inhaling but in intense grade i bang back i'm i'm a red and i was like oh this is i'm feel that good and then 20 minutes later i want another one uh and then it starts feeling good because you want it yeah the actual feeling itself is not good it's not it's wrong with everybody it's not a great buzz it's not a quality buzz okay but all the buzzes i promote this is low on the list and the one you're most addicted to yeah yeah anyway fireflies fireflies south carolina daniel is so cool yeah he's ultra cool i want him to be my friend oh what about your boyfriend i mean i know he's married but in a world where he's not married and he doesn't have kids it's hard for me to do that yeah i'm not gonna try to put you in that position thanks i would date him i'll tell you that right now yeah he's so chill huh yeah he was cool we love him huh yeah we're kind of like obsessed with the fun we think he's the fawns yeah i just want him to like like like us and call us and text us and put us in his cool you know i do you know i did the most embarrassing thing i hesitate to admit it on here what well i was finishing up righteous gemstones uh-huh and what i didn't talk about in this episode which i was so pissed about is the music is so great and i'm really obsessed with music and movies i think it's such maybe the most important thing for me so i was finishing up the righteous gemstones and here's what i did this is so embarrassing oh my god i'm so nervous i emailed him again okay yeah yeah yeah and i said hey you know hey bro hey cool guy uh fucking love the music wait wait to this turn you're gonna be you're gonna have chills i go and get the music so good blah blah blah i mean uh and i said go into like what you know what i like about it is it's stanky it's fucking stanky it's like dirty and i said it would pair well with cocaine and whiskey and then i said and i owned it i said i'm embarrassed to say this but i really want you to see hit and run because the music just the music i want you to see that we have the same musical taste i really need him to think we have something in common isn't that isn't that so i hit send and i i immediately if i could have hit delete it's taken away why don't they have that button by the way that's crazy that they don't in 2019 well they do a gmail if you go on the on the browser unsend it has undo for a little bit you might have to activate it though oh i don't look at that i can see what this though would be a tricky slope for some people that i could see people spending their whole lives writing and deleting email that's true because all of us get a little pang of you know we're begging someone to watch something we made yeah that's relatable right yeah yeah yeah yeah so they can see that i have cool musical taste but people can relate to wanting other people to like you and doing some extreme things to get people's approval yeah did he respond he did super super cool yeah man i'll check that out i mean didn't even ignore it i was like he's he's always gonna read it and he's gonna ignore it because well how do you even respond to that cool dude i'll check out your movie i really want to say like just get the soundtrack okay it's still that's even weirder i don't even know if this soundtrack is available i don't know if my movie has a soundtrack or what sure it does and i don't want you to be embarrassed okay i don't like him when you're embarrassed but no no but i don't want you to be embarrassed and it's okay it's okay he liked you i don't know though did he i don't well okay here's i want him of course he liked me fine but i want him to connect on a deeper level where he's like oh we have the same stanky rhythm i know we like that naughty music i know i know but he wanted to just find it organically but i'm afraid he's not going to why would he ever take the time to watch that movie i know he might not he might not ever do it yeah i don't expect him to at all no i mean well now oh now he's probably like oh god i got to watch it and i got a email and back back wait hittin run is an incredible movie so if he watches it he'll like it and the music is fantastic which i didn't write the music so it's not even like you know what i don't even know what i'm bragging about i'm not even bragging i really just want to know we have the same taste but that's the pro okay yes and i'll just be honest that's the problem you're not bragging but it is bragging it's like up against the line it could come off braggy yeah yeah he's been very gracious with me so far because i've had a few emails and i need to just stop now i gotta wait to say one more and say i'm not gonna send him one no longer be i'm not gonna do any more emails i'm not gonna initiate any more communication with you i'll take your lead i'm gonna download the unsend button this makes me like him even more that he was gracious yeah my unsolicited request that he found with me on music it's cute it's cute you want him to like you say that i really do i do i don't even i don't even ask him to be in his shit i mean i would love you i would love to but i just want to you know sit on the porch with him maybe start dipping again no okay i'm sorry i'm over it you know just just just relax in uh in in charleston hi did you hear me panicking saying charleston i always want to say charlotte uh chr i get that and then where was the white nationalist demonstration charlotte ville charlotte charlotte's ville charlotte's ville so those three together give me tremendous anxiety that is a lot to balance for more than one reason obviously well definitely the charlotte's ville situation yeah okay so you know what i have a boy i'm gonna put him in karate oh because you've heard a couple good stories now yeah all these cool people did karate maybe that's not that they end up cool uncomfortable in their own skin yes that's kind of the things that those two seth and he have in common it's right do we figure it out i think we just cracked the coat they're selling themselves as like a self-defense program that should not be what they're advertising you want to be chill in your own exoskeleton confident chilis vlogs hilarious hilarious yeah yeah do karate actually they are both gracious set is also really really generous yeah it's no wonder their friends and work together yeah makes sense okay so land of the lost mm-hmm and he said no one liked it but you found some people that liked it sixty eight point eight million mean the budget was a hundred oops uh it's not great yeah i mean look still kind of a lot nowadays absolutely again any movie i've been on the poster of did not make sixty six million so that's a good number yeah but again i think it was will ferrule i'd had like i don't know nine twenty million dollars in a row yeah something in that that underperforming for him sure that's probably become the greatest bar is high that's true there's nowhere to go but down i feel so bad for the people on the top i do well no depends i can feel bad for some of their stuff oh yeah yeah absolutely but they do have a lot of money and i'm doing great i feel all all kinds of bad stuff for him but maybe just not a ton of sadness over career hiccups that's fair just career yeah yeah i mean i want him to win but don't get me wrong i want real fair to win every time he's up to bat i wanted to hit a grand slam sure but if he doesn't hit a grand slam who big that's true yeah stakes are not all that high no sure feels like it to him though yeah of course so i thought it was interesting because he said that they thought this fit way they thought they were like kind of making like a score say zero in all men film or something yeah i've never seen it oh you haven't i've seen parts and clips and you'll love it definitely worth owning on iTunes okay i will anyway i just thought that was interesting because you just don't know what your thing is sometimes you don't you often try to make something one thing and then it goes through your filter and it becomes its own thing yeah i like that i think it's cool i'm the download it so crimson tide quintantarantino wrote some of that did i did a punch up i think yeah he rewrote some of the dialogue and his main contribution yeah was the silver surfer speech oh okay do you know what that is hit me with it okay show me the whole thing well how long is it kind of long all right let's hear it no it's okay i won't but it's about silver surfer i don't know what that is silver surfer that's like that's a cartoon character oh okay so i guess two people were in a fight and then the officer brought one of the other guys in jean Hackman probably brought in Denzel washington okay and then he's scolding him about the fight but then they're also talking about silver surfer it does sound very tarantino yes and then there was a whole thing we touched on in the episode there was this whole thing about it got racial between the two of them yeah i didn't see that yeah so jean Hackman basically says do you know of these horses they're the greatest horses in the world blah blah blah and they're all white yeah and Denzel says yeah i do know those horses you know they're born black also very tarantino very tarantino racial uh-huh yeah honey hoo so he said his wife's uncle is chich maren that's chich and chong chich and chong chich and chong yeah up in smoke i didn't know who was talking about until i thought about it i thought about it i was like oh clearly chich and chong but i was like chich maren i don't know what that is ah and of course you know what chich and chong is but you i can't imagine you've ever seen it chich and the whole movie is about weed and they even like they drive a van i think in one of the films that's entirely made of marijuana wow yeah it's you know before it was way before way back yeah so i think it's the original key stoner comedy yeah so you said you thought the charlotte horn it's arena charlotte call back so it's not a vangelist group it wasn't charlotte it was the heuston rockets oh okay and became lakewood church which is joel austin's also it's austin's it's not old steam no come on i typed that in and that was wrong but i also thought it was joel austin yeah fuck that sounds wrong i know that's what it is joel austin all the way go rockets so he you said like you thought he had 45 000 parishioners a week and a hundred million dollars whatever so he is seen by over seven million viewers weekly wow and over 20 million monthly in over a hundred countries wow yeah wow he is crushing he's the pastor of lakewood church the former home of the nba houston rockets mmm crazy right did you get a net worth on this turkey no i guess i got to hide it all i don't think they can yeah it's all text shared well they're probably not saying how much they're keeping right i got a hundred eleven high on the hog that's my guess i would guess so without any kind of paper trailer facts yeah says 40 to 60 million that sounds like to me yeah it sounds real like this house is worth 10.5 million oh yeah definitely more than that and yeah unless he's a spend thrift he could be like me yeah spend a lot of money easy come easy go yeah in one pocket out the other that's all that was it yeah well i'm gonna do the chicken dance on main street oh you're that's gonna be your thing huh yeah okay great and every episode now by doing the chicken dance on main street parl was a kitty but now he's a full grown cat all right love you love you