Lord & Miller (filmmaking duo)

Welcome, welcome, welcome to Armchair Expert, Experts on Expert. I'm Dan Shenanders. I'm joined by Monica Mouse. Hi there.

Hey, me. I want you to have a mouse noise you do when we say, man, Monica Mouse. Oh, okay. I heard that.

Oh, good. Good timing, Wobby Wobby. We have two of our favorite, favorite, favorite creators today. Yeah.

Phil, Lord, and Chris Miller, popularly known as Lord & Miller. They are Academy Award-winning filmmakers. They directed Spider-Man into the Spider-Verse, which we love. The Lego movies, which were just so groundbreaking.

21 and 22 Jump Street, both hysterical. Last Man on Earth, one of my favorite shows of all time. And Clone High. They have a new show out right now on Apple Plus with maybe the best cast in television called The After Party.

It's really, really good. It's very cool. It's like a murder mystery show, and each episode is a different genre. Yeah.

You watched the whole thing last night, which you'll hear about in the fact check. Easter egg. Monica's not well. But she's okay.

But she's not well. Thoughts and prayers. I love you. Please enjoy Lord & Miller.

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Some trips really do feel better when you have the right space. Right out of the gate is what we need to address. Because generally we don't interview two people at a time. It gets confusing.

Yeah. In fact, it's very helpful that I'm Alan, she's female, just for the host's sake, right? If one of us didn't sound nerdy, it would be a lot easier. Nasal nerd voice.

I'm Phil Lord. And I'm Chris. That's what it sounds like. That's what we're like.

No, no. It's true. So we're going to try this. We're going to try to cement this for the listener.

Again, I don't ever have to ask guests to do this, but in this case we're going to have to ask this, so I need you to start and say your name. My name's Chris Miller, and I sound like this. Okay. And my name is Phil Lord, and I sound a lot like Chris Miller.

No, they're different. Also, I'm assuming we'll just announce our name before everything we say. I will say Chris. Yes, this is me.

And then Phil will say yes. Yeah. Well, this reminds me. So this wonderful guy I was in the roundings with, Guy Stevenson, very funny, bizarre sense of humor, obsessed with robots and gorillas and all this kind of stuff.

So he wrote a sketch, and it was Stephen Hawking's teaching astrophysics to a class of six other people who also had his condition. So everyone's got the same computer voice. Then someone says, can I go to the bathroom? Yes.

Who needs to go to the bathroom? Me. Who? The girl.

No, I don't. Class dismissed. Who's saying class? And it becomes like a mutiny.

And nobody can figure out who's talking. And they keep going, it was the girl. No, it wasn't. This is the girl.

It was. And you know. It probably couldn't fly today. I wonder.

I bet it could. Yeah. If something's genius, it transcends all the layers of no-knowness. And if it's nice.

It's kind of celebrating, yeah, that they might have had like a mutiny and their sense of humor. Yeah, right. And honestly, that if you have a disability, it could still be funny. And funny things still happen to you.

If it doesn't feel like you're punching down, I think it works. Right. Obviously, Stephen Hawking's, you're punching up minimally intellectually. That's for sure.

So guys, where do we start? Lorde Miller, I'm just going to start with my love for you guys. And it's a very sincere one. I hope it's gotten back to you at some point in your life.

You come up a lot on our show. Yeah. I love you guys. So my first experience was Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs.

How many years ago was that movie? It was 2009. Because I didn't have kids. I just was there.

I was going to blame it on my kids. But I just was there. I think the title got me, maybe. And I wasn't so into animated movies.

And I was like, this is revolutionary. I loved that movie more than you can imagine. I think it was the first time I saw your guys' name. And then, of course, I knew about Lego Movie, this and that.

But then you sucker punch us all with Last Man on Earth. Right, Toto? That's it. I always get confused.

I know, Last Man Standing. Oh, it's tough. To be Last Man. It's so different, but the names are too close.

I know. It's really true. Dermot Mulroney and McDermott. Ready to get them to change.

So I guess at that point when I was watching Last Man on Earth, I went from me liking you guys to, like, don't like these guys. They're too good at this. It seems effortless. It got negative.

Yeah, I did. I was so happy when everything went sideways on Star Wars. That's what I would do. And then it only got compounded when I directed a live-action movie and the studio liked it.

So they said, why don't you come over and take over this animated project? And I've never done it. And then I realized, it's so hard. Oh, my God, it's hard.

I was so bad at it. It was so hard. It was a year and a half of my life. And again, I went back to, these guys are incredible and impossible.

And then your guys' meet cute is really wonderful. So I think we should maybe start there. You guys were classmates. It's true.

We went to college together. Which college? It was Dartmouth College. I knew it was going to be a fancy one.

Fancy school for fancy people. Is that where Mindy Cameron is? It's true, fact. Yeah, I went into school in Boston.

Boston. Or in New Haven. Connecticut. Exactly.

Yeah, there's a lot of schools up there. They're sort of like the party version of the fancy school. I love that. Where are you originally from, Chris?

I'm from the Seattle area, like Stevens, Washington. Oh, wonderful. I'm very well versed in Seattle. Oh, yeah?

Dated a girl that was from there for nine years. Marysville, Everett, Talyla, Reservation, Wall of Sweet Onions. Oh, yeah. Come here.

I grew up on the same street as Chris Pratt. Oh, my goodness. I'm the second most famous Chris from Lake Stevens. That's not fair.

It's called Davies Road. There it is. Oh, my God. We had to ruin that for you.

I know, right? That's not nice. Let me make a sales pitch for you guys. Okay, Washington folks.

Rugged. Look at me. We're just trying to be. Yeah, and liberal.

Yeah. It was confusing for me being from Detroit. I went there and I was like, this guy's going to have a knife for me. He's got a big beer and a sweet truck.

And then he was like, we got to make marriage equal. He's really aggressive about it. Yeah. Yeah.

You can be both. Yeah. Yeah. I like it.

Were they in the aerospace industry? Were they in tech? My last name is Miller. My dad runs a lover mill.

Oh, yes. Like milkshakes and shingles. I went to visit the mill and they have a machine that scans the log and then does a bunch of math to decide the most efficient way to slice the log up based on to the moment prices. Like, oh, a 2x4 is worth a little more than I don't know what else there is.

Well, generally the longer, the more valuable. And what's expensive right now, guys? It is. Maybe you can hook us up.

We're doing a lot of projects. You want some shingles? I see that. You profiteer.

I'll tell you what, pocket. Right a little skim. Got to wet my beak a little. Yeah.

You saw this COVID thing coming and you started shopping for yachts. And then how about you, Phil? What area of the country are you from? I grew up in Seattle and Florida, Miami.

Oh, wow. Another mid-sized port city. By the way, we're all three of the same age as I live. And so your father was in aviation in the 80s in Miami.

True fact. What's my next question? Oh. Is that a way of asking, was he a drug mule?

Yeah, did he smuggle? Did he ever get approached to smuggle? I am sure people that worked for him could have been involved in that. But not my dear old dad, sweet, sweet Wally Lord, is too circumspect, would never do such a thing.

In fact, he probably hurt the business because he found out. So one of the businesses was a repair shop and they did a bunch of work for UPS at Manchester huge fleet of planes. But the reason they had this account was because we were bribing them. And then he found out that they were being bribed.

And he was like, we got to stop that. And they're like, great, we're going to go down the street to the other guy. So he walked away from an enormous contract. Too ethical.

Too ethical. Unlike the Millers over here. Absolutely. Clear-cutting America.

Yeah. But it was everywhere. There were like three drug dealers on my street. Yeah.

They were like different. Like, don't go play with like Danny's kids. Yeah. Well, I think what was originally making the headlines when we were younger were salacious, the black widow, gunning down people in front of the shopping center.

But now that there's more and more docs coming out, you realize like every time Dick and Harry was involved in it in some way, there's a couple great ones. Yeah, the Billy Corbin ones. Cooking Cowboys. Love the Cooking Cowboys ones.

But even more playful is that bad sport series on Netflix. Have you guys watched that? Oh, it's great. It's incredible.

It's by the guys who did Wild Wild Country. Oh, I love Wild Wild Country. So there was this guy. He's a hillbilly from Appalachia.

Moves down to Florida when he's like 13. He's an outcast. He gets a job contracting. They ask, can you get weed?

I know guys at school. Now he builds this into a thing. I'm going to cut to the chase. He'd always want to be a race car driver.

He ends up with a fucking full-blown ocean-going tanker. He buys. And it's loaded with like 150 tons of marijuana or shipments. Hundreds of millions of dollars.

Just a good old nice guy. Starts racing. He's a natural. He wins the SECA his first year.

He raced in the 8500. He was rookie of the year. It's the cutest, most lovable story. And there's always weed, no coke.

And you realize, oh, there's also tons of people like that. Right. Yeah. That's amazing that we'd made his way into his dream.

Yes. Well, we've been to Vancouver a few times for work. And the thing that I thought was remarkable was that there would be people in like a fleece pullover. And then they would get into like a Lamborghini.

And I was like, oh, right. This is another mid-sized port city with an illicit drug trade underlying all of its industry. Well, I think it's in Coking Cowboys where they're saying that the average Federal Reserve cash holdings at any given time, there's like 20 of them throughout the country, was somewhere on the order of like 40 to 50 million in cash. And that the Florida Federal Reserve always had like $6 to $7 billion.

It was like preposterous. And the economy was booming when the whole country was hitting the skids. It just touched everything. Were you aware of it?

No, not at all. Other than that Miami Vice was on the air and like would shoot in like a house in the neighborhood. And that was like the coolest thing that could happen is Miami Vice would shoot in a neighborhood. Hell yeah.

Or like they shot in like my friend's house. Oh my God. And it just blew everybody's minds. Was Sonny there?

Crockett? Was he in the city? Sonny Crockett was there. Michael Thomas was there.

It just was like we were all routing around like with our little Toys R Us skateboards watching the whole thing go down. So you didn't see any kind of violence or anything related to it? Nothing like that. It's just that you realize like, oh, anyone who had a bank account, anyone who took out a loan from a local bank was touching the money.

Yeah. And that like, oh, my friend, he had that uncle that would just like show up with like a bunch of just fans. Like, you know, like an entire truck with a whole gouse of fans. Okay.

You'd be like, all right, so that was not right. And then I had a classmate in high school who like disappeared. And then he didn't show up to the first day of school. And then his dad was on the news.

Oh, my gosh. Like, oh, he's part of the Medellin drug cartel. Oh, my. He would have loved it.

So it was all there. You just didn't realize until like it would like pop up. Yeah. And again, maybe more of these documentaries will be like, we'll find out your teacher or.

Or Phil. Phil. I watched a documentary and I'm like, I was the whole time. I thought I was just like JV cross country.

Why do I have to wear a backpack while I'm running? I can tell Phil that that's not a joke, that JV cross country. Yeah, I wasn't good enough to be varsity cross country. You both have your own column in the school newspaper.

We just had our own comic strip. Comic strip. Yeah, we drew comic strips in the school paper. But independently.

Independently, Chris took over for Jake Tapper. That's right. You guys. You've already said so many names.

Yeah, Chris Pratt. Dropping names. Jake Tapper. You dropped many names.

Yeah, but they picked it up. We picked it up, but they dropped it. So do you guys know Jake? I know he interviewed me my senior year because he was working for the newspaper somewhere, but he also worked for the Alumni Magazine.

And he interviewed me for the Alumni Magazine. And that's what I met him for the first time. Okay. But he was the outgoing cartoonist the year before.

What's more likely to get you in there? A clever concept or like the execution of the artwork? I would say the artwork for mine was way less sophisticated than the artwork for Phil's. It was all about the joke for me.

But Chris was excellent at being able to think of an idea and execute it in 45 minutes at like midnight right before the deadline, which is why his strip appeared daily and mine appeared inconsistently weekly. You're a perfectionist. Yes, but also very messy. And they weren't very funny, as I recall.

They just were like elaborate. Okay. So I was like trying to be Windsor McKay or some shit, and Chris was just being funny and cute and good. And then how do you guys cross paths?

So we met freshman week. A friend of ours was like, oh, I know someone just as weird as you and like made a match. Oh, wow. But we really didn't become friends until I accidentally lit Phil's girlfriend's hair on fire.

Okay. Oh, my. She was playing a game called Jewel Box, which was like Tetris, and I was playing a game called Let's See How Close I Can Get This Lighter to Heather's Hair Without Her Noticing. And I won, and her oily hair caught fire terribly.

Oh, no. It smelled terrible. She was okay. She didn't really notice.

Yes, I just got blue on her head. And so Chris and I locked eyes over him putting the hair out, and she's like, what's up, guys? Why are you playing with the hair? And we both made a decision not to say anything.

Oh, my God. And what's that smell? Burnt hair smells terrible, and it smelled terrible for quite a while. I think precipitated the ultimate breakup.

There you go. It was a factor. Sure. Well, oily hair also doesn't sound all that appealing.

That was fun. Oh, you love the oil. It's so smooth. Natural.

It's so good. Almost wet. Nice shine. I don't mind an oily hair.

There's a line. That's right. There's a limit. There's a line.

Like bedhead, it looks sexy. Right. Matted down like a wet rat, it's a bummer. When you guys start working together.

Because the part of your story that I read seems just frankly suspicious. And I'm being serious. Which version did you read? Okay, I read a version where Michael Eisner came across your guys' thing.

This is true. It also involves Jake Tapper. It's a very article that Jake Tapper wrote. This is like the most story of like privilege.

Rename the show Privilege Mountain. Privilege Peak. Again, it's not a replicable situation for anybody. Sure.

But that article about me had made its way to the Walt Disney Company and into the hands of Michael Eisner. But how? See, this is the part. One of his kids we didn't know was a different time than us had gone to Dartmouth.

And because of that, they would send him mail in the hopes that someday he would donate money to the college, which he never did. Yeah. And so because of that, I guess he was flipping through a thing on that story goes on the jet and stops the article. Send it to someone who sent it to someone who sent it to someone who called him.

That was the meat of the article. The title of the article is The Next Dr. Seuss? Question mark.

Because Dr. Seuss had gone to Dartmouth. Also, just a name drop yet again. Wow.

We really have a high tenor. Oh, Privilege Town. Also, what a big swing. I know.

The answer was no. Next Einstein? Next Walt Disney? Emphatic no.

had a picture of Chris holding like a pencil and they comped in the cartoon character the wonder squirrel his character from his comic script okay it had some distortions that's right i interned at ilm one summer while they're making the star wars prequels and it said that i had designed the dinosaurs for the new star wars i was like this is wrong for like four reasons not to impugn the journalistic integrity of mr tapper no we can't he learned yeah yeah yeah anyway got to some lower level person who ended up calling me in my off-campus apartment they said oh would you like to fly out to los angeles for a meeting and i said i can't i have midterms no sure and then i said my buddy phil and i are moving out to hollywood you made two huge mistakes can i bring my friend and also let me save you some money and i'll just fly myself out for the meeting i will send you our vhs tapes of our films and meet you in the summertime how about this i imagine the window of his interest in me is huge i'm sure he'll be thinking about this article for months so let's just count on him still being interested in one year how's that sound gang it was crazy i feel like they hung up like they're playing hard to get i guess they didn't have other offers i don't know what's going on could have worked to your advantage it ended up working we moved to los angeles and we go into that meeting which was rescheduled for like you know three months later at least yeah it could have been five months anyway it was a very short meeting and the guy was just like i like to film we love for you to work here this is eisner no no this is barry blumberg at that time the head of walt disney television animation it was like a game of telephone like eisner gave it to charles hirschhorn gave it to dean valentine by the time he gets to barry it's like these are eisner's boys oh my god wow that could go either way it was a five minute meeting and we got hired to make up saturday morning cartoons and our classmates who all you know got hired by investment banks and together took down the world financial system they were all making the same money as us in their like first crazy year of interning or whatever and we felt really lucky because they were like working 100 hour weeks we were like drawing cartoons in our underpants yeah this is like mandy moore's story like there's some impossibilities yeah i guess this is a relief i don't know anything about michael eisner we still have not ever met him oh okay well good i won't even be risking y'all's friendship oh uncle mikey yeah like the many more one but to be honest when i hear like oh michael eisner was combing through a fucking colleges to look for it doesn't sound right well it's because eric eisner went there the development office at dartmouth was always trying to get money yeah i mean it makes sense now but this is not too far off of like some of the weinstein stories like i don't believe it walt disney company calling me i saw your picture and i think i'll fly you out eisner's lawyer is calling i know again i don't know that's where my we're not making any accusations no no but i'm delighted to hear it and now it's okay he made no effort to meet us once we were hired so is the first thing you guys do clone hi there that was the first thing that we ever did that got made really i relate to it in so many ways because for most people now there's others there's like quentin tarantino it's like comes out and he's brilliant but then for most of us boy is it a learning curve the amount of failures if you just learn of you guys because of lego movie you would really not have the full story and i just think it's always a great i don't say messages i'm not trying to educate anyone but just what perseverance is what fucking up and learning from it is what is taking advice from other people like what that whole experience you just had a ton of it is what i like overnight success is which is like seven years of work our first movie we started making it in 2006 it was like nine years after moving here making cloudy and that was a movie we started directing a year after we had gotten fired from it as writers oh weird the first you write the script they can you and they bring in another writer or writers which happens a lot happens a lot and then they fire them and then they come back to you now here we go this is where there's a lesson in here a lot of people are like look yeah we were right you come back and start working out again right right they've had fired then the directors as well and so we said we'll come back but we have to be the actual creative authors of it and we had no like this and it's like we were anybody but they're like you know what we'll take a flyer on these guys it was like literally every three months they could fire us along the process there's a conversation at some point somewhere where someone says let's fucking bring back see what happens give them three months and there's never like an official green light because they can just keep spending a little more money they told us they greenlit the movie four times right and my favorite one was when they called us and said good news they feel like they would have lost more money on the movie if they don't finish it than if they do so you're 100 green light right what i thought we were making this thing it's a true vote of confidence it has the point of return congratulations also clone high cali my best friend loved clone high great taste your friend cali i always like cali she does have great taste what an iconic well then clone high was made and then it was thrown away right yeah it blew up pretty badly the concept is clones of famous historical figures that go to high school together so it was like jfk and leopatra and joan of arc unfortunately gandhi and they blink in and we were really worried that the kennedy stuff was going to be in poor taste they're like peach pit on that show was called the grassy knoll oh okay there's a lot of assassination comedy yeah and so we're like man the democratic party is probably going to shut us down and then it was instead our gandhi character the concept was that he was worried about living up to the original gandhi so he's like fuck i'm gonna go the other way sure and so there was an article about it in india that said that gandhi wore an earring and ate junk food and there was a hunger strike for real hunger for real hunger strike 150 politicians in the lobby of the mtv india offices gandhi's grandson also he was part of it the day that happens tom freston then the head of viacom happens to be visiting the offices and they said we'll revoke your broadcasting license in india unless you pick the show off the air oh my god they're like a billion people or a low-rated animated comedy what should we do how long did the strike go on i think once they said we'll take the show off the air they all went home i guess what i'm wondering was that like an afternoon the hunger strike only lasted like daytime okay so it's more of a fast yeah yeah but i think that was like the modi crew yeah that's like the proto-nationalist proto-modi yeah it's fun to say oh boy that's what i love about indians though that's not a good part yeah i love it so spicy we do have conviction very assertive good i like it so that kills the show yes but it comes back 20 years later now we're making a second and third season of the show that's gonna come on hbo max with gandhi or without that's a great question you'll have to find out no you guys played it safe for this time it's one of the shah's what is uh uh iran uh what's his name the kids are gonna love it that's so exciting are you a little bit like yeah fuck you guys now we get to come back and do our original show because we're really famous really revered now and fuck you india i'm gonna guess you guys don't have that because you couldn't have that and have sustained and gone through other hurdles do you hold on a grudge like that chip on our shoulders like a motivating one okay yeah but very few grudges i think florida secretary of state katherine harris okay let's get her out in ether yeah what's your b-word that's the whole gorg bush thing oh okay i'm still mad about that chads hanging chads yeah this is some timely stuff 80s drug cartel stuff and fucking hanging chads you're a privileged mother that's what we're talking about way upon the peak of privileged for gather to talk about their improbable rise but very predictable rise so is the turning point the success of cloudy where like things are changing pretty dramatically we worked on a string of sitcoms for seven plus years most of which were canceled immediately and then the one time we were on a show that wasn't gonna be canceled that we enjoyed which was i met your mother we left it's gonna be like love the hours are good our friends are running it it's gonna eventually be valued at a billion dollars let's get out of here at the time was it just always a very flexible north star or was there something you guys were certain you wanted to be doing but then you're like well we'll do this in the meantime what was the priority list for you guys creatively in terms of like working in features i think we felt like careers are long we got a job in tv let's see if we can get any good at this and that thing will work itself out whereas we had a lot of friends who were writing screenplays in the middle of the night and stuff for the first few years we didn't really do that the first screenplay we ever wrote was cloudy which is why probably we got fired there's also a great story in here i don't know how you feel about it in retrospect but amy pascal we've made a bunch of movies with amy she was the president of sony the head of the studio she was part of the north korean hats where she'd like talk shitty about some people she wrote some emails that were not all positive i've read a lot of emails in hollywood they don't really make the top 1000 our emails are in that well they are congratulations what did they say there's some embarrassing things oh tell us speaking ill of some people chris is much more circumspect somebody was like phil if you ran the circus like what's your advice about how this division of the company could be run better oh well and i rolled it nicely put it on paper signed it i literally listed people i thought of that it was super smart oh by the way i would have started that email with finally yes in my mind i'm always like they're gonna ask me eventually you don't have to write an email if you just tell me no i want this in writing in perpetuity but yeah so she didn't like the early animatic of cloudy because it was just a lot of jokes and no emotional story and we were like what do you want and she slammed the table said i want a story and then she's thrown out of the room i know right and then she had us work with this woman lindsey duran who's the greatest she used to run united artists and she has this business as a script whisperer and she secretly goes and gives people advice how cool on movies and television she worked on everything you ever liked she worked on ferris bueller's day off never seen it go away she produced dead again you made that sense and sensibility oh wow she has a romantic player yeah you can do it all spinal tap this likes sense and sensibility basically a gun oh yes so she's like a person who makes pretty good movies amazing and so she helped us make the story into something that was actually an emotional story that made sense and you cared about the characters and what was happening at first we thought we were too cool for school we didn't want to be sincere because it was too vulnerable and so we had to learn how to open up our hearts and be sincere and try to also be funny at the same time it made the comedy better let's start by saying we're all funny because we felt like we were gonna get murdered by the jock and the football team and so the last thing you're thinking is like no i developed this to defend myself against that i'm not gonna be sincere no if i do that i get hurt yes it's the end of this whole thing you just bought are you a late bloomer because you're now tall and strapping you know it's weird i trigger in so many people that i am the dude who shoved you i instinctually feared you when we met i skateboarded i snowboarded all my friends were artists i did not like jocks but i was like a very trauma kid fucked up all my friends were fucked up i was an outcast you saw minding the gap what one is that great documentary it's about a skate crew and the director is amazing just started shooting them they were like 14 then he shot footage for like seven years and as they grew the more he learned about his crew the more he realized they were all victims of abusive households yeah and that's how they found each other but they didn't know it's a great film i have to see that well because i just watched the tony hawk documentary it was just made by sam jones called the wheels fall off i haven't seen it he's a great filmmaker it's incredible and it's that like none of us that got drawn to that scene had a dad practicing anything with us because everyone else had a leg up so if i want to play soccer it's like their dads have been kicking the ball with him but at skateboard we all started knowing what the fuck to do it wasn't embraced by the elite of my school so you had a shot you're all learning that and no one had a leg up i brought a very specific type of kid together the people that are often intimidated by dax he's often intimidated by like we had mike i always reference that i'm sure yeah oh right right oh he's intimidated well yeah we had a meeting with him two days ago oh you did we did brook 99 together many moons ago oh that's not the issue for me not only is he smart he's a good person i know he's so good i hate him he's too good he's smart and good come on i literally was five minutes and i'm like i need to be a better person i need to read more i'm not smart enough who am i kidding we love mike it's true in that process though a lot of people the head of the studio says where's the fucking story and then you spend the next 10 weeks convincing your agent they don't understand why we're brilliant you don't meet with the person you learn nothing from her the whisperer and just nothing ever happens right so i guess my question is if being a team has been maybe helpful in those moments 100 we first had to learn how to work together and how to be open to each other's ideas because you know we both are doing we're getting pretty good at it turning a corner i thought just this morning it's hard it's really hard to share credit to share identity oh i see it this way and i see it this way like who wins this debate and then you have to find another way or understand where the other person's coming from and it's like being married without the fun part exactly have you ever done couples therapy we've talked about it talked about it but we're two i mean as a miller we all do this sort of thing i think my guess for that is you're afraid you'll break the house of cards that we're built upon that whatever you would fix is the fuel in the engine that makes you guys maybe there's that my mother is a therapist a cuban therapist and she says you know some things shouldn't be examined oh wow she's like some things if it works it's fine yeah maybe you don't want to go into the hood but for sure when you have a meeting like that immediately you bristle and be like just know what she's talking about this is good but maybe we should consider what she's like so who generally has that role is the flip-flop we swap it i would say mostly chris he's the less hot-headed sometimes i get unless he gets hot headed and then i immediately swap roles and i'm wonderful you want me to be a great guy just piss this guy off so it's a flip-flopping good combat cop okay instinctive good combat cop but you learn that the way out of loggerheads is you generate a new third thing that neither one of you would think of and you learn to value the conversation and know that the conversation is the engine that's the creative entity not me and not chris right and it helps you not have this sort of o2 or theory where it's like everything that comes out of my brain is brilliant you're always kind of like i'm thinking i want to make this thing that phil is going to like because then it's going to be great and if phil likes then he can build on it and make it better make my life better and then you can open it up to the entire crew and then other people can bring their ideas and you don't have to be like well it didn't come from me so i'm not interested you can be like that's a great idea this is going to be great and it's going to make all of us look great so the downside in my opinion is like neither one of you will ever get full credit and that's a bummer we all kind of full credit human nature come out that way kind of piggy piggy i am real piggy yeah no that's true right the upside of it is this is what i always say i'm so grateful to be married to christen because whatever i do is not very impressive and that's so fucking healthy for me i think the fact that neither you can take too much credit probably is very good for you just long-term for sure people don't hold you up as a singular genius who is a vessel for ideas from god right yeah i don't know if that's a healthy way to imagine creative people that's just a person and they get ideas and they're able to write them down and they're pretty good you also mitigate the risk of the very very common downfall of a talented director which is the first movie they make they had to appease a lot of people above them you start in this process where you're gonna get a lot of notes you have to receive them because you have no success and then you have a hit and the next time you don't have to compromise as much and that one works but a third movie no one can check you and most people can't handle that so i think the fact that you check each other all the time even when it gets elevated has to be beneficial a hundred percent because i think we are the toughest critics on our own stuff and we are ruthless on it and i think comes from anxiety and being scared of making something that nobody likes but you need friction you know that's part of it you can't fly without there being like tooth to the atmosphere right there has to be something that pushes against your ideas and it's that conversation that makes it good so a lot of times for us that's just watching the movie and imagining what an audience is going to experience i'm so glad you just referenced the dynamics of lift yeah that's right here's a physics lesson here for all of us i really like it i was watching the wu-tang clan documentary i don't know if either of you've seen that i wasn't even a wu-tang fan per se i know how much people love them so i wanted to watch it i'm watching and the coolest thing that they did was they bring all these guys that are the wu-tang clan into the theater and they just start spitting rhymes to each other they come up with right and they're older all the success in the world and they pull like method man aside and they're like what's going on he's like all i want to do still i'm just trying to impress so-and-so and they each had a guy in the crew who they always still want to impress i was like that is the purest best form of creative fuel and so it sounds like you have that like you don't fail to go oh that's right that's the best and I have a little fill on my shoulder when I'm writing a scene that still has a little crisp and it's both like it's like oh he's gonna think this is done like I'm cheating here and I'm trying to like whistle past the graveyard and not let anybody see that this is fundamentally broken and he's gonna bust me on this and I know that like I'm writing this 10 page scene that should be one page he's gonna bust me on that you bring up something though and my wife doesn't have it as much Monica has it a lot she and I are always doing this you know if you're an actor you see shit happen in a movie and you're like he wants to get out he's not in the wire these are the little things you pick up similarly as a writer I'm watching something and I'm like I'm just gonna give a fuck they're like you know what this is not up someone had to flag this and they're like fuck it and it drives me insane do you guys have a hard time with that yeah and I'd say that the people we collaborate with the best are people who will do it for free and that they look at something they flag it we work with some really great people that are on a mixing stage right now doing something and something happened when we thought we were done and then they said oh you know what somebody came in here and they flagged something for us on their off day and we drove in and fixed it and that's like up and down the crew they care so much about the stuff that it doesn't matter and that's how we are I care so much about it being good yeah it is a delicate balance so you want the people to have enough ownership over the movie you're all making together that they come another day off or that they fix it out of the goodness of their heart right and also you can't have everyone making their own movie because everyone also has their own movie in their head it's your job you know as the head of the ship to point everybody what success looks like and you're like stuff in this direction is what we're going for and if you have an idea that you think will be in this direction over here but not over there then it's going to make it into the movie and that's when people will go home and be like I had this idea and I just want to work it out myself and I brought it in what do you think and you go like that's amazing you know nine times that's great let's do it we're like that's great but it doesn't quite fit for what we're doing for this thing it's awesome but it's not going to work for this okay so on that topic who's it most heartbreaking to give the bad news to actors, writers, animators production design who do you have the hardest time going like that is so funny but is it actors yes that's the hardest part because we're trying to please them so much and also if their creativity feels diminished then they like lose whatever that thing is that makes it awesome it's so precarious an early lesson remember when we asked Rob Riddle who's the most amazing guy like just take it down a tiny bit and then he did a take and it was boring and then the next take we were like I will never say that to you again go for it read your heart and your life and everything and I'm sorry I ever said that and I think if you have an attitude of we're going to try it this way we're going to try it that way we won't have options in the edit because we're two of us if we have a disagreement about how the scene should be or how something should be we have multiple takes we'll be like okay let's do it this way and then let's do it that way and as long as everybody knows that we're going to try a bunch of stuff and it's not about what they're doing it's just about having options in the edit room I feel like actors get a lot more comfortable being like oh we're going to play around and if they really trust that you're not going to pick the bad take that's the biggest thing for an actor they have to feel like I can fail in a take and I'm not going to be afraid that it's going to show up on screen and make me look you're not going to hang anyone out that's the part of your career that gets easier is that you have the product to make people feel safe so if you've seen all your movies and no one looks like an idiot at least no going in line okay take David Russell you can't find a bad performance in any movie he's ever made you might have seen an actor and they were horrendous and you think they can't act and you're like oh my god and it works or it doesn't you laugh or you don't you scream or you don't I think part of that is feeling uncomfortable and tension and then the release of that tension yeah I try to explain to my little girls because they're 7 and 9 and it's like what's comedy and I say well I think in the purest form right it's just when the unexpected happens and so they're supposed to climb the staircase normally but boy god they're falling down and they're you know that's not how it's supposed to work especially if they're grown up put a shoe on your head shoes up on your head look at your feet well also kids are trying to figure stuff out all the time so their whole life is about like does the shoe go on your head so when you play with that it's really satisfying it is like you're worried about that too so much do you guys have comedy directing heroes no man I mean the Coen's always been up there for us Hal Ashby oh sure we just showed this movie The Landlord at the Cinematech I haven't seen that it's his like first movie I really recommend it he was an editor right Academy Award winning editor he did Harold and Mod which was a movie that Bill and I bonded over greatest movie as a kid won an anthem for the outcast right oh my god I saw it when I was way too young me too my dad would watch it my dad told me and my sister it was even younger to watch it I saw Scarface in the theater with my grandpa and we're the same age oh yeah wow that's great what did you think oh my god when they cut the guy with a chainsaw in the bathroom I was just like oh my god that's the world we live in like people get cut up yeah were you scared terrified it changed my world view I think it really did you were like look at how happy this guy is he's rich he should get rich true I need guns I need to get rich yeah I think I'm just like I better get fit like because you never know when someone's coming in the window it's dangerous yeah that's so true but actually one of the things he does I love is if there's a plane going overhead during a take he just rolls and he just puts it in the movie or like as an editor like the scene's over and then one person leaves and you're with the other person and they like open the fridge and pour a glass of orange juice and take a sip and then he gets the scene and you're like why do we do that it's just weird and the other thing he'll do is in Harold Mahat there's a long conversation that is continuous and across a sentence he changes locations and they continue the thought in a new place and it's amazing so like the story's on track the emotions are huge and somehow I can still be really loose with the form what attracted us to that type of stuff is like doing something new and trying something different and always like trying to push the boundaries of what has been done and what can be done and what people think of a film if you're just doing something that feels like oh this is a good version of one of these things that we've seen on our times where it's very boring but if it's a thing that hasn't been done before it gets very exciting for us we are attracted to novel stuff absolutely novel unexpected double mean so you ran the room for Last Man on Earth no we produced it and directed it that's like the mind of Will Forte we came up with the idea together he's a brilliant genius and very very very particular and that show is so him he might be my favorite comedian he's so goddamn authentic it's insane how do you assist somebody in doing that so Forte we've known since he was a writer on 70's show yeah he was on 70's show he was writing and we met him he did a bit at the Aspen Comedy Festival where he and this guy Mike Schwartz all they did was say the words ain't no party like an Otis Day party because an Otis Day party don't quit for 10 minutes he was at the Groundlings and we would see him there he was doing wild sketches just repeating an idea or a word and often at the end of the show in case people decided to leave they could just walk out and they wouldn't miss anybody on the sketches and so we loved him so much we were friends and we were like oh you should be the lead of our only chance to have our own television show Clone High so we cast him and got his side card to me his specialty is he does abstract comedy but from a deep place of emotional need all of his characters have to get the spelling the word right yes Tim Calhoun wants to be the president so bad right like MacGruber wants to be MacGyver so bad so it's both it's like high abstract art comedy and it's like deep emotional acting we just saw ourselves as like the midwives of that show we pitched him the idea that we had knocking around about a feature where we were like if there was an apocalypse we would be so bad at it and then he went away and came back with the best pitch I've ever seen for a television show and he just went through the episodes like I'm alone and then I pray for a woman and I meet her and then we get married and you know it's a big compromise and then I meet another person and it's like January Jones so it's immediately like an emotional dilemma for a super selfish person to go through oh my god I want to rewatch it and so our thing was like oh I think we can bring out the thing that we love about Will it was such a perfect pairing we had him on like five minutes after they announced they weren't doing another season I said how are you and he was like I'm just so relieved because it's too much he was going to die he was going to hurt him we were so happy but he didn't have to do another season I'm like oh Will can be healthy again and then like three months later you're like look at this person he's healthy unrecognizable I'll never get this show back on my hair oh my god I hope this isn't offensive I don't think it is it's meant to be a compliment when you walked in I had never seen you guys I imagine you'd be much older no because you've done so much and you've worked with so many people and you've just been around in an ether that I imagine you'd be like in your 60s I got the strings put in they work this is Lego hair but their names don't help in that right old man names Lord and Miller sounds like a gentleman's department store yeah Lord and Taylor but also like we might get a spoke suit mate we have a haberdasher on the side and Phil is like a guy you play racquetball with that's true Phil is that your Cuban mother like he's going to be American oh Felipe yeah the name works well in both well it's beautiful in at least one language Philip is lovely it's got one L it's very elegant but you know what I mean like they come up all the time on the show it just feels like they're institutions yeah okay now I need to go to it's an enormous paradigm shatter Lego I don't know how one thinks of that I mean just visually now you take it for granted because we've all seen 25 of them and we know all about it in their TV shows and it's a given that that would be a way to anime it's already that far away from it that it seems like it's a given it's really unimaginable it's a crazy breakthrough-y idea and I want to know how it came about you just mean like the idea of like a stop motion Lego approach so there's a movie called The Magic Portal which I think is the first quote unquote brick film from like the 80s yeah it's like 79 or something and it's real stop motion and it's proper stop motion it's somebody in their basement and there's all these really groovy effects in it I think it took like somebody in Australia like two years to make it's like half an hour family life was great yeah exactly a lot of time on my hands and it's the first person to really make a movie that way and so when we got approached to work on it we thought well this is just a giant commercial for a big company and sold it so that's why we want to do it we said no at first well you guys had just left the Taco Bell movie yeah exactly if I remember correctly we're working hard on this Bill Fittas and Cheese movie it's more about that Chihuahua spokesperson but we said well we got an idea for it but we'll write it but we won't direct it but they're like well if you did do it like one of these brick films that people make in their basement and it looked like it was stop motion where everything was made of like even the smoke and the water and everything that would be cool I don't think they would let us do that but it would be the only way make it not be embarrassing and so then we said okay we'll direct it but only if you let it do it this way and they did it was Warner Brothers they were worried because you know movies need acting and you need to empathize with the characters and these characters have like cylinder heads they can't even clap because their arms don't go that way they've got claw hands but then you just lean into it in these amazing ways our whole thing was like the limitations are part of the pleasure of watching seeing the cleverness of how people solve problems just how do I get this character to clap so they just like twist their ribs and we play like sound effects with them clapping and it works and how do I get them to just pick something up just the problem solving and race but they're also like great little tools for creativity that everybody has in their house what if you made a movie that felt like the way a kid makes a movie in their head can it feel DIY and it's this big movie from Warner Brothers but it looks like you know like somebody animated by hand at home and we were very insistent if this feels like it came from a company it is going to fail if it came from the Lego group or from Warner Brothers it's going to have a stink on it and people are going to hate it but you also were clever in the casting this gets done well occasionally which is like you have a tone you see the risk that this tone runs and then you counter program it with who you put in it it's like having a series where they could be saccharine but you have the comedians be serious or vice versa you know you put fucking De Niro in Meet the Parents you know like there's ways to be artful about how you're going to address potential problems by who you cast so like the cast is so edgy it's like all the greatest comedians and they're going to lend their cumulative edge to this thing that could potentially seem too goofy and bright and without motion absolutely you wanted to feel like it was part of like the alt comedy scene yes yes yes yes and you want to be like I can't believe they let them get away with doing this at the time it was wild to have Chris Pratt be the star of a movie he never started anything he was like a sixth banana on Parks and Rec yeah he owes you guys everything for sure stay tuned for more I'm your expert if you dare occasionally I'll watch something and it's so good that I'm jealous in a way that makes me want to go do something all the time yeah so like what's something recently I was really excited by the crazy filmmaking that the Daniels did and everything everywhere all at once it is bonkers it is like so ridiculous it's nuts but it's like very innovative filmmaking I thought I think it's worth checking out I can't wait to see it it happens to me with Danny McBride so first of all I'm just jealous of Danny McBride who's worse him or Mike Scher I can't tell him I'll tell you why because he's happy as a motherfucker I watch his stuff and I go oh my god I want to make righteous gentlemen I'll get that feeling you know I know and he's coming from a place of warmth and kindness and like understanding of people's frailty even though he's always playing an asshole he's one of the lead voices in Mitchell's vs. the Machines and so we went down to South Carolina to record him and so the first record we all went down and did together and he was so gracious and took us and he's got like a set up where he takes a golf cart from his house at this incredible restaurant and the little island he's the mayor of the whole place and I was like what are you doing you guys all moved here you maniacs and he's like here's the thing what if all the music only came from two cities it only came from like LA and New York there would be no Memphis Blues there would be no like New Orleans jazz there would be no Afro-Cuban music there would be nothing and so why do movies or TV shows have to come from one or two places we get to make it here not only are we training the next wave of people who wouldn't have had this chance right that local crew that are like getting lit up and somebody great is going to come out of that if they haven't already right the pile of that show that's like Scorsese it's insane yes they're doing an incredible lot and then it has the gestalt and voice of the place in which it's made and it makes it its own thing and I have thought about that just about every day since he said what a great analogy because if I had to sum it up I'd say that his shows are like albums they feel analog I can feel the rhythm he's got nasty taste in music I just love all the music selection yeah and he's happy and he's happy and they're having fun it's like a fun cycle when you get like professional jealousy right I remember watching season 2 of Fleabag and going like god damn Phoebe you're so good I hate her too you asked about the grudges yes Catherine Harris former Secretary of State of Florida Phoebe Waller-Briggs Danny McBride Mike Schur she's a great person also and by like this cycle of like I'll never be able to do something that is this well observed and is like innovative in all these ways a couple days of just hating myself and then coming back and be like no I'm going to do something and it just motivates to like I don't want to do something that's been done a hundred times before I just want to do something you want to give this some of the experience that you have when you're watching coming back you're like whoa okay now you guys have the very best taste in comedians period outside the fact that you've never hired me but let's just let that slide maybe the second best taste but the after party they put some bucks behind the P&A like I want to say Super Bowl is the first time I saw a fucking commercial I wish that would be great oh it was a playoff game oh yes a playoff game it was like the last playoff game yeah that's a pricey old ad right there there you go you've assembled every one of my favorite like third on the call sheet actors of the last 10 years we had only worked with a couple of them but they were all people we've been fans of and wanted to work with and that ad is very specifically designed just to show you remember this person you know her remember him you might not know everyone's name but you know that face and that face and that face and you want them to be together but also it feels like kind of what you did with Lego which is like it feels all like it's like if you're in the scene then it's like I know all those people you feel like you're in the club right it's like not everybody is a household name but everybody steals the show of the thing that they came from yes where do we even start Ike Barinholtz very very very funny so sweet I repeated it joke he told us on here, probably more than any other joke I've heard in the last decade, which is his writing partner is not Jewish, and he is Jewish. And he says it all the time, and he pitched me, and he'll go, you know, Mike lost his great-great-grandfather in the Holocaust. Fell off a guard tower.

What a joke. That's a very Ike joke. Ike was so valuable, in part because he is such a patient, good person on a show like that, where everybody's great. There are days when, like, in a ten-person scene, you wait.

And then it's the end of the day, and we're rushing. And love you so much, Ike. We've got three takes. Yeah.

Maybe two to get all your shit in a close-up. We're all working next Sunday. And he had, like, three or four things ready to rock that all belonged in the show, so you couldn't decide which one. It was a great thing about that cast, was that every single one of them was, like, hyphenate.

They all had, like, made their own stuff, written things, produced things, directed things, whatever. Yeah. They all were great improvisers, and had lots of great ideas. They're all really smart, and so they could all bring so much to every scene.

And when they would add things, or had ideas for things, it wasn't the type of thing where it's like, this is never going to make a difference. Yeah, it was a story. It was a murder mystery, and... You can't improvise that.

The clockwork of it has to be very precise. You're hiding information, and you're dealing out information very intentionally. And they all could understand what was going to work or not work for the whole thing, because they had been on the other side of it, creatively. They knew the lanes.

Like, I, obviously, graded this sort of thing. Like, find a lane that this is going to be good stuff that can make it into the show. Yeah, that's on story, that's relevant, that's not a non-sequitur. But so great, it's that, like, every single one of these people cracks everybody up on the set.

It was a really joyous experience making that show, because it just got 12 of the funniest people, and any one of them could be the star of their own show, and they're all together, like, cracking each other up. It almost neutralizes things, right? Because egos and personalities, they're tricky on sets. But have you ever been on one of those shows where it just escalated?

A friend of ours was trying to make a movie, and one of the people was, like, once a generation star. The other one was also a huge star, and the older big star was, like, two hours late. So the slightly younger big star was, like, I'm going to be three hours late. And they just kept topping each other.

Oh, there's so many great stories. I've gotten to sets, and I'm like, like, where's my trailer? And I was like, oh, that's a big, nice trailer, blah, blah, blah. And then I get there the next day, and I'm like, oh, there's two really nice trailers.

Someone obviously went up the flagpole. And then, like, three weeks later, there's a third really nice trailer. And you're thinking, like, am I supposed to call someone and say, like, where's the hotline for more trailers? I like to spread my legs.

On that show, because we're shooting during the pandemic pre-vaccine, it was the first time anybody had left their house. Wow. And so nobody went to their trailer. Everyone just hang out.

And so I was like, I can be around another human being that isn't my family, and this is amazing for me. It was like going to camp or something. It was really fun. I would guess this is the best part of your guys' success.

The obvious thing would be like, oh, they can probably get the stuff made they want to make. That's really nice. Everyone wants to be able to do that. But in truth, I'd imagine the fact that you guys can pretty much play with anyone you want to play with, and that you get to be behind the monitors watching people you're just fans of that you've collected.

I have to imagine that's the very best part of having lots of success. The most exciting thing is watching someone you like and admire get an idea spontaneously, and it's captured. And you're like, the feeling I have is relief. Because I'm like, oh, God, we got something.

We got a nibble. We have a thing. And now if we get a couple of these things a day, then we'll have a whole darn movie or a whole great TV show. Happened yesterday.

There was a reshoot for a movie that we're producing. Additional photography. Just like a quick pick-up. It was a four-week quick pick-up.

Just a six-week pick-up. A Marvel pick-up. And it was like, everyone was grouchy. It was like a 14-hour day.

And then the cameras were all, and these three boys just started yelling at each other in the funniest way, and everything was okay. It's the wind and the sounds. It's like, oh, right, if all this stuff goes right, you get to see people do something that you've never seen or heard. That's it.

That's it. And it is great that they trust that you're not going to pick the bad takes, and you're going to protect them, and then they're comfortable trying stuff out, and that's where you get the best stuff. Yeah. And it's a compliment to you.

It is. To be trusted by people who are scared is a really beautiful thing. Yeah, you're very exposed as an actor, and it's out of your control, and that's terrifying. It's a weird job, and creative people, and anxious people, and socially anxious people correlate very strongly.

Yeah. So now you're putting someone who really cares. Like, literally, the reason they're a good actor is they have a lot of mirror neurons. Yeah.

They're really good at picking up what other people think and feel. Spidey senses through the roof, yeah. So now it's like, okay, now there's 50 people looking at me, and all I can hear is my brain screaming about whether they like me or not. Yeah.

And I'm supposed to ignore that, and pretend to be a doctor or something. And one of the best things we ever did was before doing 21 Jump Street, we took an acting class. Oh, no shit. And it was terrible.

We belong behind the camera. Behind the camera. As James Caan once told me. Oh.

He was the voice in Clyde, because he was the dad. Too funny James Caan stories. He's really great in the movie, but he was disappointed that he wasn't, I want to be like an alligator or something. And so he was like a little miffed that he didn't get to do more silly stuff.

Yeah, he wanted to do some silly stuff, and he wanted someone to be with him, so I read with him, and he was like, you should stay behind the camera. So quick, do the next thing. Then he did a scene with his son, Flint, played by Bill Hader. Opposite energies.

Very opposite energies. We had them, I think, over ISDN. They were in different cities, but doing the scene at the same time, over a microphone. And they did a take, and you know, in a microphone, people get really quiet now.

So he was doing it real quiet. He said, you know, you guys are across the yard from one another. It's just 30, 40 feet. So if you could project your voice on me, okay, okay, okay.

You haven't animated this, right? No, no, no. We started, but I think it's wrong. Go ahead.

Link, come over here. I don't want to yell. Oh, my God. Oh, my God.

Wow. Jimmy Conn's one of my very favorite actors of all time. He is amazing. He is probably my favorite movie of all time.

Such a great movie. Michael Mann's first film, yeah. And best. He had a scene in that movie.

At the diner. At the diner. It's, I think, four setups. It's 10 minutes long.

It starts with, literally, he just, like, yanked her out of a car. And she's so fucking pissed. They hate each other. The coffee's bad.

And at the end of the scene, she agrees to marry him. Yes. It's one of the best written scenes. Does not make any sense at all.

And we did the scene in our acting class. No. No. It was one of the scenes that we sort of learned from and tried to, like, break down every move.

And the reason you realize how vulnerable you are as an actor and how, if someone gives you a note that feels like it's getting to you personally, you're like, oh, they don't like me as a person. Very thin line between the product and you. I'm so glad you guys did that. And it was like, oh, I've been doing this all wrong.

It was really eye-opening to put yourself in those shoes. I think a lot of people who watch actors or, like, watch movies are like, I could do that. You probably could do it in your living room. Right.

With nobody watching you, with no direction, like, knowing how to hit your mark. You just did it perfect and you figured out that the light was two feet to the wrong way and now you have a shadow on your face. So throw that out. That's acting.

Not being able to, like, just emote. And you get tired. Physically. Yes.

Because you're, like, concentrating so much. That was one thing I don't think I understood. I was like, why are they so tired? They say words.

They say words and then they take, like, a 40-minute break. We do voices on clone high, so, like, we'll sometimes have to be behind a microphone, which is, like, four straight hours of creativity and concentrating and being anxious. And I, like, can't put two words together. So it's exhausting.

Like, think a lot about basketball players. They can be awesome for seven minutes and then they need a break. It's about confidence. You know, if you're, like, miss, you just need to watch something go in and then you get better.

Jordan, if he doesn't make that shot in North Carolina, we don't know if he's Jordan. So we have tickets where we get to watch Ty Lue, the coach of the Clippers, like, do his thing and be an awesome coach. And the thing that's so remarkable about him is he's relentlessly positive. And it's not that he's not mad or annoyed.

He has the best, like, ugh, stinky cheese face in the league. But then the minute he gets in the huddle, he's like, these are the affirmative, positive things you're going to do. These are the points we've already put on the board. It's all positive.

That's great, yeah. Yeah, we interviewed Pete Carroll and he was very much that way. Yeah, he's very positive. And it was encouraging.

I don't know, do you guys have this, like, I'll hear a story about Enri too. Well, for many stories. And I'll go, yeah, I'll probably never be a great director because I just can't do it. I can't make Birdman.

You have to do it within your personality. That guy, he's got, like, cool, like, salt and pepper flowing lops, right? And, like, a cool beard. He can yell at you and be like, okay, man, yeah, I will do that.

If this was the Crusades, he could march me wherever he wanted me to go. We look like virgins. We can't do that. You're actually hot as fuck.

You know that. Many times I've been thinking, people must have told you you look like Heath Ledger. I've gone through some stages. There was a Heath Ledger stage.

There was a Fred Savage. Yeah, sure. And then about a five-year Emile Hirsch in the film Milk. Specifically in Milk.

Only in Milk. Yeah, yeah, yeah. This comparison does not apply outside the confines of Milk. I'm seeing a lot of Heath Ledger.

I got that the other day. It came back. Yeah, you're so good looking. It's distracting.

Distracts me every day, guys. How do you do it? I don't know. Oh, and people hate when I say people look like each other.

This is a new company. I'm sorry. I think maybe one or three people said that. I feel like if someone said I look like Heath Ledger, I wouldn't be sad about it.

All right. Thank you. I have a friend. Should I help him?

He'll love it. My friend, Kevin Zegers. He was there about it as a kid. He's a great actor.

Really, really fucking good actor. There was at least a period where he looked a lot like Zac Efron. And he actually said to me, he's like, oh, I look like Zac Efron. And I go, oh, boo.

Fuck you. How? I'm so sad for you. Oh, what a bummer.

You look like Zac Efron. Must be tough. Hard life. Okay, so, given that you guys can work with who you want to.

Will you hire us? Yeah. Let's do it. I think especially for us, like, who knows way too well how much the sausage is made.

We do get that. Also, Severance. Have you guys watched Severance? Watch Severance.

Yeah, we love it. The Lumen building is Bell Labs in New Jersey, which was where basically every invention was made. Yes. And now it's like an office park with, you know, like a mall with restaurants in it.

Oh, really? Yeah. And I went there because my wife is from New Jersey. I was there over the holidays.

Her uncle is Michael Eisner. Yeah, right. I was so mad at him. My wife, Katie Eisner.

That would be amazing. But no, we met some friends at a bar in the Bell Labs building. I was like, why hasn't no one ever shot something in here? This place is amazing.

The design of it is incredible. I was like, we've got to think of something to set here. And then, like, a couple months later, I watched the first episode of Severance. I was like, all right.

They did it. They did it. They did it. They did it.

Yeah. Anyway, point is, Apple TV Plus, where also the After Party is, they're freaking killing it, guys. There we go. Good bedfellows.

It is tricky. I imagine when you guys signed up to do After Party on Apple Plus. You're still trying to figure out, like, which one of the people had deals at? This weird name?

I won't say that weird name. And you're like, you're hoping they have something that pops and that you're not going to put this thing into the fucking ether. Yeah. I mean, that's the fear.

Obviously, you're like, is this a real place to make things? Yeah. But they were the place that seemed to get it the most. It's an ambitious show, you know, because every episode is told in a different film style, right?

So one's a musical, one's a thriller, and one's an action thing. And so you have to be able to do a proper car chase and fistfight and dance number. There's an animated one and all that stuff. It's expensive.

Yeah. It's not like just like a regular show where you're like, oh, we built a set and we can just say some stuff. Yeah. Every episode is like a little movie, and they were the ones who really understood that to do it right required to take it seriously.

It seemed like the best place because, you know, doing it somewhere else, and they were like, oh, I'll try it. And you have to like do a half-assed version of a car chase that would have been a bummer. Yeah. I feel nice when something's been curated for me, and I go like, oh, somebody who's really smart, picked specific things.

That's like a great luxury. It's not a junk drawer. It's not like, here's everything. You decide.

Yeah, you're right. You don't get fatigued just going through the offerings. You're like, what does this thing have for me today? Yeah.

My friend Callie works for Netflix. It's great. They have a lot of great stuff, too. Thank you.