Rob Reiner

Welcome, welcome, welcome to Armchair Expert, Experts on Expert. I'm Dan Rather, and I'm joined by Lily Padman. Good morning time. We have a legend today as our expert, Rob Reiner.

He's an award-winning actor and filmmaker. Of course, as an actor, all in the family. We had. Yeah, classic.

Textbook, 70s, 80s TV. 70s, I guess. But as a director, he's directed like an impossible amount of incredibly seminal movies that everyone holds dear. This is Final Tap, the first documentary.

Stand by Me, When Harry Met Sally, The Princess. Oh my gosh. One of the greatest, most rewatchable movies of all time. He has a documentary out right now that was very, very good.

I watched it and loved it. I would watch it on my own even if he hadn't been a guest. It was God and Country about the rise in Christian nationalism. And we get to it right out of the gates with him.

But this is a very pro-Christian. This is an anti-Christian. This is an anti-Christian nationalist. Exactly.

So a big, big difference. And this is no way a takedown of Christianity. So. This is such a treat of an episode.

We get some really fun stories out of Rob. It's a very Hollywood episode in a fun, fun way. Very fun. Yeah.

Please enjoy Rob Reiner. He's an entrepreneur. He's an entrepreneur. He's an entrepreneur.

So we just started in here and there wasn't a door. And then once in a while you get hit by lightning. You've been hit by lightning a few times. Six or seven times.

Yeah. And then you get superstitious. I don't know why this works. It's working beyond all expectations.

Let's not tamper with anything. And even that building you saw that's almost done. That was being built to be the new studio. And this was going to get torn down.

And Monty was like, I don't think we should tamper with this. So you're going to stay here forever. Yeah, yeah. Do you have any of those superstitions over the years?

I've noticed that I have some OCD. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think everybody does. Yeah.

You do certain things in certain orders and you just get used to that. And then you think if I don't do that, something bad could happen. Absolutely. The shoe will drop.

And I also think if you endeavor on anything that has a low probability of you controlling the outcome, this is most present in athletes, right? You see these pictures and they've got like a 12-minute routine. All-Star Game. This is in Pittsburgh a few years ago.

And we're in the locker room before the game is starting. And there's Bill Mazeroski. He was a second baseman for the Pittsburgh Pirates. He hit a very famous home run in the 1960 World Series against the Yankees.

He was not a home run hitter. He was a singles hitter. But he got up in a critical situation and it won the World Series for the Pittsburgh Pirates. I come up to Bill Mazeroski and I said to him, I'm responsible for you hitting that home run in the 1960 World Series.

He says, really? Tell me how. I said, I was 13 years old. I was in high school.

And they let us listen to the World Series on the radio during gym class. And I was rooting for you guys because the Yankees always won. They won every year. And if you looked at that series, the games the Yankees won 14-2, 11-1.

When the Pirates won, 3-1, 2-0. It got down to the seventh game. I'm like this in gym class. I'm holding my knees with my hands in a curled up position.

And I'm rooting for the Pirates. And the Yankees pull out to a lead. And then all of a sudden, I get into this position. The Pirates start to come back.

They're coming back. They're coming back. They're coming back. And I said to my friend Bob Lowe, sitting next to me, Bob, get in this position.

If you get in this position, it's going to do it. He gets in the position. The Pirates still coming back. He starts to move.

I said, don't move. Get back in that position. I stayed in the position. Mazeroski hits the homer.

I tell him the story. And he says to me, thank God you didn't get out of that position. He says, no way do I hit that homer. That's the kind of superstition that you have.

I can relate so much. When I used to be super into basketball, what has happened on more than one occasion is, same thing. They're down. I go to the bathroom.

They hit two three-pointers in a row. And they're back. And then I sit down and I'm watching. And then I go to the bathroom a second time and they have another one.

I have sat in my bathroom listening to the games. Oh, no, you have to do that. There have been Super Bowl games. I was a big New York Giants football fan.

And there were times when I wouldn't let my wife back in the room. She could not come back in the room. Yeah, you got it. Did you have any kind of routines, though, that you...

Well, let me ask you this as a better question. You've done a bunch of different things. You've done a lot of writing. You've done a lot of acting.

You've done a lot of directing. Of those three, which one is prone to give you the most anxiety? Directing. And also the most pleasure and the most satisfaction.

Acting is fun, but you don't have the responsibility. I remember years ago, Ron Howard called me up and said there was a part in a movie that he thought I'd be good for. It was called Ed TV. It was with Woody Harrelson and Matthew McConaughey.

I said, okay, I'll do it. And he said, well, I'm going to send you the script. Don't you want to read the script? I said, no, no, I don't have to read the script.

I said, if it's Sphinx, it's not my fault. You don't have responsibility. For the director, you have responsibility for everything, but it is most satisfying. I bet you've had the experience I've had, too.

It's like I had just directed a movie and I had a very marginal role in another movie. And I'm sitting there and I'm watching the sun go down. I'm like, they're fucked. They're going to have to kick two of these scenes to God knows when next week.

And I wasn't scheduled. And I'm starting to think about all that stress and anxiety. And I was like, oh, not my problem. I did a part in a Woody Allen movie called Bullets Over Broadway and I show up on the set.

The first day was an outdoor scene at night at a cafe, an outdoor cafe down in the village. And I'm looking around and I'm seeing ooh, I don't know if there's enough light here right now. I said, unless they've invented a new film stock that I'm not aware of, it's not going to show up. But I'm not going to say anything.

I don't want to say anything. It's Woody Allen. It's Carlo DePaulo, you know, this great cinematographer. So I don't say anything.

I just do the scene. Then I get a call the next day at the hotel. We looked at the dailies. It's a radio show.

It's totally black. We can't see a thing. We've got to redo it. Oh my God.

If you were acting on a movie, it'd be so stressful for the director. I know you were there. Well, that's what I was going to ask. They know you're a great director.

And so I think they've been inclined to want to maybe include you more or they feel like they want to be respectful. Like, I know you understand how this works, but you're actually going like, oh, I love that. None of this is my problem. Yeah, but I'm also aware of the fact that they're the boss and I have been in their position.

I don't want to do anything that's going to cause them any more anxiety than they already have. And for me, it's fun because I get to see how other directors work. I did a part in Wolf of Wall Street, which Martin Scorsese was directing. I get to be around Martin Scorsese and he does it the way he does it.

I'm not going to tell him what to do. He's a great director. You just watch people and let them do what they want. And even ones that don't have as much experience, you say, I don't want to cause them grief.

I just want to be a team player. I want to do what they want me to do. Yeah, I don't want to lower their confidence. Now, to Scorsese, I've watched all those movies.

There is this weird magic that exists in all of them. How does it come about? I could care less if they cut me out of the movie. I would love to just see what does happen and has this most predictable outcome.

First of all, he's got an incredible eye and incredible composition and he knows how to use the camera better than just about anybody. Technically, he's one of the masters, right? He's absolutely brilliant. Then with the actors, he lets you go.

If you look at scenes from Raging Bull, there's the improvisation. It's not exactly scripted that way. And he lets you go if he knows you can do it. And I remember seeing that I did.

I was playing Leonardo DiCaprio's father in it and Jon Favreau, the director. He was playing the lawyer, Leo's lawyer in this thing. And Leo's character, Jordan Belfort, he was going to get arrested and sent to jail because of all the stock manipulations. And we're looking at his beautiful estate and there's his wife and the little daughter on a horse.

I said, what are you doing? You don't want to throw this away. You've got a great life. And the lawyer, Favreau, was telling him, you make a deal, a plea deal, two years I can get you off.

And I said, listen to him. And this is what Leo says. I hear you. And that was the scene.

And then I said, I don't think you do. I don't hear you hearing me. You know, I felt like I was in a Scorsese movie. Because I'm saying that.

And I actually said, I feel like I'm in a Martin Scorsese movie. He said, all right, cut, cut. That's enough. That's enough out of you.

That's going to be more perfect. You actually had the experience where it's like it felt like you would hope it would feel. Yeah, I felt like I was in it. And then the scene where Jonah Hill, they're talking about the Spence account, they got $20,000 for dinner.

And he says, well, we ordered sides. Yeah. I said, what? $20,000 of sides?

I said, what do these sides do? They cure cancer? And he says, yes, these sides do. You know, it's a simple one.

Fun. Pretty wild. You and Favreau in one frame while Scorsese's directing. Do you also have this?

If I am on a set as an actor, I'm wondering why we're getting out of here. I want to know if we're moving. I have that sense that I'd like to go home at some point. And when I'm there as a director, I'm like, I wish this day were 55 hours.

You're making the same thing. The point of view is so different. And I'm so grateful to have had it simply because to your point, I think it's made me a lot easier with directors. Yes, it does.

I did a couple of movies with Michael Douglas. But what I love about working with him is that he had produced movies. So he knew what was at stake. So not only did he not cause any problems in that way, but he would often have ideas of how to skin the cat.

In other words, how to make the day. He said, wait a minute, what if we do this, that and the other? And it would be good creative ideas that you could get everything you needed within the day and not go over budget and all that stuff. It's like having an ally.

Yeah. When you were younger, were you singular set on any one of these? I'd imagine having the dad you had, you would have intuitively known that all were an option that you wouldn't have to pick per se. When I was very young, I didn't think about any of this stuff.

When I became a teenager, I started going with my dad to the Van Dyke show when I was off for the summer school. But when I was little, I didn't think about that. What were your fantasies? I love sports.

I thought, you know, wow, I'd love to play baseball. My dad told me this story. I don't really remember it, but he told me that when I was like eight years old, I came up to him and I said, I want to change my name. And he thought, oh boy, this poor kid, you know, he's like droning the shadow of his name.

The shadow of, you know, he has to live up to and all of that. And he said, well, what do you want to change your name to? And I said, Carl. Oh, Rob.

That's so sweet. I wanted to be like him. I just love to be like him. I wanted to be like him.

You had a great Stern interview, by the way. So much of it I have memorized. But you tell a bunch of different stories along that period. One of them mean your dad didn't see that you were really funny, but weirdly, Norman Lear happened to watch you interact with his own child.

Yeah. I was about eight years old. Norman had a daughter, Ellen. She was nine and we were in the beach house and I'm teaching how to play jacks.

For those of you may be too young. It's a game. You throw up a rubber ball. You pick up these metal things.

And I was teaching her, showing her how to play. I don't remember, but he said, boy, he was so funny explaining the rules to her. And he told my dad, he said, you know, your son, he's a funny kid. My dad's a that kid.

He's sullen. He sits in a corner. He's a mopey kid. Yeah.

Yeah. Melancholy. Yeah. So he was the first guy that said, okay, that kid's funny.

And then when you're going to the Van Dyke show, you are witnessing that this hill should you try to climb it is so hot. You said he's writing like 25 scripts a year, 20 to 25 scripts every year by himself. And I remember at age 13 or 14, they'd be down on the stage and they'd be staging stuff. And I wanted to be so much like him.

I snuck up to his office one time and I sat at his desk and I was all alone and there's scripts laid out and I'm looking at them and I'm thinking, I can't do this. You know, and I felt so bad. I mean, I was only 13, so I might expect to do it, but I thought I'll never be able to do what he does. Yeah.

It's quite intimidating. Yeah, it was, except I did grab Mary Tyler Moore by the ass. Oh, you did for a while. I was actually 14 years old and I'm not telling things out of school because Mary put it in her book and she told the story on the Letterman show.

So it wasn't like, I'm telling it, but I was 14 and she must have been 24, 25. She was gorgeous. And she wore these really tight capri pants. My hormones were raging like crazy.

For sure. And I just, I don't know, the devil or something. And I just went up and I just grabbed her tush, you know, you know, she went and told my father on me because he called me to the office. He said, uh, did you grab Mary Tyler Moore by the tush?

I said, yeah. He says, don't ever do that again. Now there's a great payoff to this. You have to know the Van Dyke show to know what the payoff is.

But if you know the Van Dyke show, she used to go Rob all the time with Rob Petrie played by Dick Tyndyke. So now they're doing a reunion show. And I've already now made some movies. I've directed, I've done all the family and stuff.

And I walk onto the set, they finished a scene. And I said to the camera, I said, keep rolling, keep rolling. And I walked out there and there's Mary. She's in an evening gown.

Dick is in a tuxedo. They had just come from some affair. And I go up to Mary and I said, Mary, I just want to apologize to you. I feel so bad that when I was a kid, I grabbed you by the tush and I just really feel bad about it.

But you know, I was young and you were so beautiful. Not that you're not beautiful now. I said, if I wouldn't get arrested for sexual harassment, I would do it now. She then bends over.

Part of that interaction for you was that she was on TV. There's something very abstract about her being a thing on TV and then her being in front of you. Confusing. Yeah, yeah.

We share this in common. We're both Bruins. Oh, you went to UCLA? I did.

I graduated in 2000. Were you in the theater arts program? Anthropology. Oh, anthropology.

Interesting. Yeah. What year did you... I was there 64, 65, 66, and part of 67.

So selfishly, I'm so curious what it was like then, because I obviously had an experience that was 23 years removed from that. Yeah, I was in the theater school. So the film school, Coppola had already done his master's. There was a lot of heavyweight people.

My friend, Phil Mishkin, who I wind up writing with, and we started an improv group together. He was getting his master's degree, MFA, and he was directing a play, El Camino Real. It's a Tennessee Williams play. And Jim Morrison was there at UCLA.

Attending UCLA? Yeah, and Ray Manzarek. They were both there at UCLA. And Jim auditioned for that, and he auditioned facing away from the director with his face, and he's just reading the book.

And Phil said, maybe you want to turn around and make a seat. Maybe you want to turn around. And then I remember one time I went to see the doors. They were playing at this club on Sunset Strip.

Halfway through the show, Jim Morrison just walks off. He just leaves. And I go backstage. I said to Ray, I said, Ray, what's the story here?

Well, he says, we finish the show a lot of times without Jim these days. Oh, wow. He used to perform also with his back turn to the audience, right? Yes, he did that a lot.

It was kind of his signature move. It was his Kramer entrance. So, between graduation and 69... I actually didn't graduate.

I left. What happened was, I started an improv group at UCLA. Myself, Larry Bishop, who's Joey Bishop's son, was in it, and Richard Dreyfuss. He was in a movie called Inserts.

And Inserts was kind of an indie movie where Dreyfuss played a wunderkind director who was down on his luck like Orson Welles, and he was doing these softcore porn movies. And my mother and father went to see the movie, and my mother turned to my father and said, Carl, I don't want Robbie playing with Ricky anymore. I guess that's a testament to how believable he wasn't moving. Anyway, it was an improv group called The Session.

We rehearsed it in the basement of Royce Hall until the cops found us. They kicked us out. But then what happened was, we got auditions. We got our own theater up on Sunset.

So, I was already doing what I wanted to do. So, I left school. Did you have any writing directing aspirations at that point? Well, that's what I did.

I directed the show. I directed, and I was in it. That's what I always wanted to do from the get-go. Right.

Funny you would say that, not to be self-indulgent, but I was in The Groundlings. I was making tons of video bits. That was my favorite. That was before YouTube, and before people made that.

And I was like, oh, this is very stimulating. It's funny how it's always been there, but you don't know it's always been there. I was 19 when I started that, but I also directed a play. It was Roxbury Playhouse or something in Beverly Hills, and Dreyfuss was in that too.

I did a production of No Exit. My father came backstage and saw that. It was the first time I ever got a real compliment from him. I was 19.

He looked me in the eye and he said, that was good, no bullshit. That was a cool thing, because he said, whatever you want to do, you're going to be okay. So, I always wanted to direct. You have many layers of these moments with Dad.

There's stepping stones, right? There's never the complete one. There's that you pitch a joke at 16 that they like. That's a moment for you.

That was a moment. He sees you at 19. And he says that. We have this fantasy, right?

That one magic thing will be said, but it is a long one. Yeah, and it doesn't work that way. And people always ask me, did he give you advice? There was never a moment where he sat me down and said, son, you just watched the way people live their lives and how they behave.

That's the advice you're getting. He modeled the advice. Yeah, he modeled it. But it's not intentional.

It's just who he is. And I was lucky enough to have him and Norman Lear as role models. As models. And I could say, okay, this is the way you conduct yourself and live your life.

It's almost chicken or the egg. You were so impressed by your dad, so maybe that made you more interested in directing and acting. Or were you impressed by him because of his prowess of that? I was around it.

I saw him doing it. The people that came to the house, Mel Brooks and Norman Lear and Larry Gilbert. I mean, it was funny people. So I think I was around that.

And that seemed... fun people always ask me what was it like at your house and i say well i thought it was normal until i went to my friend's house it wasn't so funny it's a little funnier here well it's a two-sided coin because on one hand you're exposed to all this greatness which is informative and helpful and at the same time you start in the tiny pond you're not the kid who goes and sees another shitty band and goes well fuck they're up on stage i can be up on stage right so it's really two-sided because i also imagine as you're like defining your identity and you're trying to build muster your confidence and the people you're comparing yourself to in the living room your father becomes a father figure to steve martin yes and if you look at the people that were the writers and the performers on your show shows and caesar's hour which is where my dad got his art it was a satire show everything that you ever laughed at in the second half of the 20th century was probably generated by one of those people this was mel brooks it was woody allen it was neil simon it was all these brilliant people and these are the people i saw and it's hard to live up to so when i at 16 came up with an idea for a joke for them it was like wow they took it they went on the sullivan show with it or wow that was a big deal for me they created a paradigm that we still live in basically they wrote the original format and blueprint for all yes i mean everybody talks about now saturday night lives been around since 1975 it's been around forever but show shows that was the i mean yes there was commedia before that and there was punch and judy shows and stuff but for television that was the first time anybody did satire and really took off on political things or mostly they did on social things and art of the day yeah after college you start writing on this mother's brother show again that was before my time but i am around people non-stop that too was very informative for a whole generation well yeah i mean we were cutting edge like crazy i mean after i did my own improv group i got into another improv group called the committee the committee was out of san francisco was an offshoot of second city and they came and did a production in los angeles and i was asked to come and be part of the company and i was part of that company for a while and tom smothers came one day and he plucked me and carl gottlieb who was one of the writers on jaws they were actually doing a summer show it was for glenn campbell it was called the summer brother smother show and glenn campbell hosted it and we were hired as writers but then you're around these great writers and you're on this cutting edge and listen i didn't know i was an idiot i was like 21 when i started working there and you know it was the 60s and there was a civil rights movement there was a war in vietnam going on there was a women's movement all these things were happening and tommy wanted to be cutting edge and he was and we as young people saying come on i couldn't understand why he didn't get this sketch on or that sketch i didn't realize the pain that he went through with the censors and with the network people but we did some amazing things we had the pete sieger anti-war thing we did religious stuff we did all kinds of things and did you feel like because you were participating in that aspect of it that you were participating or did you have some sense that you should have been at more rallies or been more involved no because we were always a politically active group but we felt we were doing what we could do to call out the wrongness of the war in vietnam and all those racial inequalities that we were trying to get across on the show yeah so 1971 all the family comes along and i'm curious at that stage what was your fantasy of what that thing might be and then the reality of it and how much dissonance was between those two things people that don't know it was the number one show in america for five years straight and i've always said it's odd because you couldn't take anything there's no dvr tivo so if you wanted to watch the show you had to watch it when it was on that was the only time so here we were a country of maybe at the time 200 million and 40 to 45 million people every week watch the show so you had this communal shared experience one of our people and people were talking about all the issues that we got into now you've got a country of 335 or whatever if you get 10 million that's a smash it's a smash and they don't all watch it at the same time i can't tell you how many dinner parties i've been i'm sure you have to where you start to talk about a show that you're watching and they say don't tell me i'm only on season one i don't know so you can't talk about any show oh yeah yeah game of thrones i didn't say that part but when we came on we thought this is too hit for the room had norman had a lot of success before that forgive my ignorance well he had some he wrote he was a writer for jerry lewis for many years and he had some shows that he worked on this was the big thing though he wasn't a larry david yet no not yet but he did you know he was partnered with bud york and they found these two projects they were both british shows one was steptoe and son which became sanford and son and the other was till death us do part which became all in the family i had no idea those were first yeah they acquired the rights to that and they did american versions they feel so american both yeah yeah but we had no idea we thought this isn't going to succeed nobody's ever done anything close to what we were doing then and cbs put a disclaimer when it first came on they said the views expressed on this show are not the views of it basically saying you want to watch the show fine but we don't know how it got on we don't want to have anything to do with it take your complaints elsewhere yeah we too don't want it on the show but you're coming out of an era where husband and wife slept in separate beds on TV right there's a completely different landscape before that show arrived in the first episode there was a toilet flush which was the first ever because nobody went to the bathroom on sitcoms oh my god but it's true the actors that played in sitcoms in those days didn't have assholes so they didn't have to go to the bathroom that's right that's a little known fact the assholes were not adopted had a whole thing about hey come on they have to go to the bathroom what are they going to do yeah the assholes wanted representation they did so we've talked to a few people that have been in the situation but generally people ramp up a little bit they were third on the call sheet in a movie and four people said hi to them that month i have to imagine if ever there was a light switch that happened in someone's career in life i mean what a fucking light switch it was weird because i had done a number of shows i had been on that girl and gomer pile and andy griffith and hey landlord and all these shows but like you say guy number five and then this comes on and the first 13 weeks nobody really watched that much so it wasn't a big deal then they played the first 13 again so we won 26 weeks in a row and after that period you know you couldn't go anywhere it might have been the first where they call it yeah yeah water cooler probably was provocative people talked about it and everybody discussed what happened on all the family last night what did you see do you think part of the premise was a bit of a cake and eat it too which is if you were conservative you'd watch it you were delighted and if you were super liberal watch it you were delighted that's true and i think that's why it was successful because people tuned in to see archie's point of view the bigot or mike's point of view the liberal and normally had said this i mentioned this a number of times but he said that one of his favorite plays was major barber which was by george bernard shaw and george bernard shaw was a liberal but if you didn't know he was a liberal and you went to that play you would say that the hawk and the dove positions were equally presented and he'd leave discussing and that's what normal wanted to do with all the family yeah who was were you reading the paper and you say like oh my god so many such and such people were stabbed this year he goes would you rather they was pushed out of windows i can't remember the archie bunker would you rather they was pushed out of windows like as a little kid i remember these lines that's funny stay tuned for more armchair expert if you dare how did you respond to the immediate loss of anonymity and did it give you any compassion or understanding for an experience perhaps your father had had or people in your life had had well the lucky thing is that my father because of doing this is your show was famous i saw how people would come up to him so it wasn't so alien to me and i saw how he handled it always very gracious to people so i thought okay that's part of what you do so it wasn't that big of a shock although i must say there was a moment where gene and sally and i were at the airport and we walked into one of the restaurants at the airport and the whole place stood up and cheered wow that was a weird feeling that everybody in that place stood up okay so to your point 45 million people are watching that i was on a show that 5 million people watched on mtv they were all my age and again i hadn't done anything i was on the show and i was in every episode and so on a hugely reduced scale i was at a fuddruckers and i have the very very visceral memory of going so many tables are staring at me i no longer can watch i'm going to be watched and that felt very claustrophobic and i had a very panicked feeling of like well i hadn't anticipated this in fact the great joy of my life was watching yeah you get recognized people are seeing they come up to you want an autograph you go back to your home your life and then time goes by and you go out in public again you forget that you're somebody that they know right because you're just you so you just walk out there and then you go oh yes you're on that guy that they know so that's a weird thing for me every time it is and that was the thing that caused the panic attack is that i have lost control of the decision like the horses are out of the barn right i can't choose to be famous when it's fun right and then not when i feel awkward that i'm eating solo at a fat burger in austin texas and they're thinking that guy's a loser i thought he's on those kind of right but then i'll add something that's even grosser to admit that show was 20 plus years ago the experience has infected my memory in a way that i now i actually don't remember not being that way in some bizarre way i feel like i've always been it's interesting you say that because i was having lunch one day with warren baity this was many years ago but he said to me you know i've been famous longer than i've been a person i thought wow what a statement but that means he's had to be this person that's a famous person yeah it also means being famous is contradictory to being a person that's an interesting framing of it those are two different things yes and in so many ways they are because the fact of the matter is nobody is anything other than a person but if you do something that causes fame because johnny carson would said this he was from nebraska and he'd go back to his home town and they would say to him do you feel like you've changed he said i haven't changed the people around me change they change in the way they behave around me i'm the same guy but now they're acting differently around me and by the way both things are true the thing i'm more interested now is acknowledging clearly i've changed how could i not i react to things my world has changed you might be more guarded i find myself a little bit more guarded than i used to be but as i get older you don't get recognized as much but it's always weird to me that somebody still will come up to me at the airport or whatever and say something you know oh yeah i'm that guy again of course of course when the show ends do you have i'll give my own experience i was on a show for six years and both things were true i never wanted it to end because it was the most wonderful family and i'm a factory worker at heart i love going to the same place and then also i was very excited for it to end to see what was next and i was very scared for it to end where were you at as it was ending i had always wanted to direct did you direct any of those episodes no because i'm in them you can't direct because it's done a different day yeah you can't watch playback no but i i wrote on four of the episodes with my partner phil michigan so i got to do that and i hung around the writer's room a lot but since i wanted to always direct after the first two years i was like oh no i'm gonna be doing this for the rest of my life by season four i made a piece with myself and i said okay you're gonna be doing this for a while let's go to it was time to leave it was good and i was ready to become a director but then they don't want you to be that because you've now established this character and they throw a lot of money at me and sally struthers to keep doing those characters and i'm saying no i don't want to do that i want to do something else is that why the show ended carol wanted to end the show initially carol said this is enough and then when we did this final episode where they have mike and gloria moved to california he then said well maybe we did some more he wanted to do more so i think they did two more years of archie bunker's place or something like that oh you just said something that cute you learn it i lost it i lost it it'll come back it'll be a week from now but it'll come back can i have your phone yeah here's the thing you're way younger than me but trust me i know what i want to say it's going to get worse it's accelerating i can feel it already as it's time i know what i want to say was that you maybe more than any other i don't know who matches it but meathead you said if i lived to win a nobel peace prize they would say the headline would be meathead wins nobel i still get that i still get it i mean that wins okay so the show ends in 79 you don't do spinal tap to 84 what happens in those five years well we shot spinal tap at the end of 82 came out in 84 but from 78 till 82 i did a special on television called the tv show which was satire of just a guy sitting in a chair flipping the channels and we cut little bits and pieces of every show telethons half hours drama and they're all parodies one of the things we did was a parody of a show called midnight special which was a late night rock and roll show and it was hosted by wolfman jack and i played wolfman jack and that was the first time spinal tap ever appeared chris harry and michael we created this thing they were doing a song called rock and roll nightmare and russ kunkle played the drums who was jackson brown's drummer and linda ronstadt drummer we have a band and they started improvising in characters these british rockers and we just didn't think much of it then harry and i said hey we can make something out of a rock and roll tour we had an idea called roadie it was all about road managers behind the scenes then a picture called roadie came out which was a meatloaf and i said okay forget that meanwhile chris and michael had done this little sketch about two rockers who run into each other in a hotel or something and they remember vaguely that they used to play in a band together really funny characters so we came back together and decided okay let's see if we can do something together and the idea was to do a fake documentary i got out studio to fund a script but then we realized we can't write this thing because it has to be improvised it has to feel like it's really happening so i went to the guy and we had sixty thousand dollars i said give me the money and i'll make some of the movie for you backstage some performance bits some interviews and i added some money on my own the boys we all had and we made like 20 minutes and then we couldn't sell it anywhere nobody wanted it it went on for years we would get close and then they said no no no and they would scrap it and then one day they were making a movie at afco embassy called take this job and shove it oh yes and robert hayes who had been an airplane was going to star in this thing and they were looking for a director and this agent who wasn't my agent he had seen this 20 minute thing floating around town he suggested me to the executive her name is lindsey duran at afco embassy and she said well what does he direct it he hasn't directed it well here's this 20 minute thing maybe take a look at she looked at and she said well forget this take this job and shove it what about this let's do this i said i don't have any money i don't have anything she said well i think i can convince the head of the studio to distribute it and maybe that'll help you find some money which it did and i found some money i went to put it together they were ready to go and then jerry perencio and norman lear bought afco embassy and they scrapped every project that they had including this and i went to alan horn who's a dear friend and alan and i and andy shimon and martin shaven we started castle rock together years later alan later became the president of disney who's like a brother he's a great guy so alan says i'm sorry we can't do this i said alan please let me talk to norman please so they get a meeting and there's jerry perencio norman lear and alan and a couple of other people from the company and i'm making this insane pitch about how this you've got it it's going to be the thing and i'm screaming like this and i leave and what i'm told after i left is norman turned to everybody and said who's going to tell him he can't do it so let me do it well now this is where you enter my life basically because when it comes out i am nine years old my brother loves it we're now in an era we're approaching vhs we're approaching cable maybe on tv it's on did you did you understand it i totally did but it was the kind of get it the only thing i compared to was watching raising arizona where i was like why is this movie so different than everything i've seen what are the mechanics of what's happening well very few people did get it well this i loved learning i would have never guessed this but well first of all you're inventing a genre in the mockumentary the improv movie is not a thing you're doing a lot of firsts yeah we did we improvise the whole movie and people said i can't believe your first movie you do it as an improv i said to me that's the easy part it's a scripted movie where where's the camera go and this was easier for me and you had hired a real documentary that made some rock films yes peter smokeler who shot a bunch of rock and roll films including the horrible altamont rolling stones somebody died but we're making the movie and he says to me at one point i don't understand what's funny about this i said this is what they do i said yeah but it's a little we're twisting it a little bit and then we screened it in dallas that was the first place nobody got it they didn't understand what the hell was going on people come up to me why would you make a movie about a band that nobody ever heard of because it was real one that's so bad do something about the beatles or the rolling stones or something and i don't mean to be disparaging to anyone but i will say similarly my wife just did this netflix show a few years ago that was called like the woman in the house across the street from the woman in the window it's clearly a parody of all these psychological right long girls and it's preposterous there's a 20 minute set piece where she fights a six-year-old and people will come up to her and go i really like that thing that twists and i'm like some significant percentage doesn't see that this is a parody you don't want to be disrespectful especially when they liked it on its own merits but i'll tell you like it's funny you ask did i get it at first you don't it's dead real i don't know these people i'm young the rock stars i'm seeing are old i don't know who they are it's the cocoon right i'm getting trapped in the cocoon on stage where all of a sudden i start going like well this couldn't possibly be what happened right this is clearly stupid as hell and then it kind of took off for me and then it's one of these things that you just watch over and over we're talking about doing the sequel now and we go to new orleans at the end of the month we start shooting in march oh you are doing this yeah oh my god this is such wonderful news a lot of sequels are bad ideas but aging rock stars well we have an idea for years people said do another one we never had a good idea but now i think we have an idea and one of the things is they are old there's no getting around it they are old and we'll see what happens i think it'll be good we have some good people in it fun you then go on to direct stand by me i mean i want to get to your new movie but i just want to touch down on a couple of these there's only a few people that want to run like this there's just one after another that's just memorable it's in the canon but stand by me of course i'm probably most curious because as a young man i just was so drawn to river phoenix well you were right around that yes you came out in 86 yes i'm like 11 years old i'm the age of the kids absolutely and not only that i'm wrestling with the thing i imagine the way you describe yourself as a young boy which is like i have all these emotions and they're unacceptable i don't know where to put them but i know i can't have them on the playground i can't have them when talking to a friend what am i fucking going to do with these yeah there's a great moment in the movie where they're walking on the tracks and gordy turns to chris chambers played by river phoenix and he says do you think i'm weird and river says yeah but so what everybody's weird and it's that feeling that you're talking about which is something's happening in your body and you don't know what it is and you feel odd and out of it and if anyone sees it i'm going to be excommunicated which is like my greatest fear yeah it's the outcast story and it's incredible i have of course as you have i've been around a few actors one example would be heath ledger where i came to know him a little bit and obviously he was so exceptionally talented but that was obvious since just being around him there was a depth and weight he was carrying around that was palpable you could sense it made me insanely compassionate towards him even when things were going well i just could acknowledge i don't have as much weight on my shoulders i can feel it and i just am curious if there's anything about that experience with river where you just felt like this is a very special human being well yeah because he had a very strange kind of background upbringing his father had struggles with alcohol and they lived out of a vw microbus like they were hippies they were members of communes culty things the whole family was i mean walking phoenix i don't remember his name but there was river there was sky there was summer there was leaf i think he was leaf oh then yeah you know i used to make the joke all the time because i was introduced to two people and there's a really say this is sky and this is oxygen so i said well then you're 80 percent of her but they were all from that world i would be totally guessing but my hunch is the stability of that experience must have been very appealing you must have sensed that and you had to have some compulsion to rescue well yeah i mean but the weird thing about it was that the film came out and did very well and then a couple years later river must have been 17 at the time and we hung out at a hotel in new york i could tell he was using yeah and it was not good and i thought he's going off the rails here and then when i was doing that wolf wall street and leonardo caprio told me that he saw river that night before he was at the viper room and he said it was a strange thing to see a guy go in that direction and then the horrible thing of him dying because when i saw him i thought this could be another james dean here i mean he's like this kind of talented guy and i said to leo i said you know when i first saw you the first couple of things this boy's life and what's eating gilbert great i thought oh my god this guy has got insane talent i hope that he has some kind of stable background and he said yes even though his mother and father got divorced they were stable with him and he was okay and he didn't get into drugs or he's off the rails and you try to talk to the mother and you can't really and then this happens to him and you look at the film now in the film he disappears out of the film he's the only one that dies it's a bizarre shadowing well we don't know yeah i know it's just a weird thing to look at the film now i guess all that's just to say that we are in a business where you get to interact with some very special artists it often comes with quite a bit of weight and it can be heartbreaking and then so special and you just got to be grateful for the time you got to see what you do and i saw this kid there's a scene there at the campfire and he has to tell a story about how he was accused of stealing the milk money even though the teacher had taken the milk money and the first couple times we did it he didn't get to it and i just took him aside i said i want you to think about the time in your life when an adult let you down just think about that and you only had to go back to that morning i said i don't want to you don't have to tell me what it is just do and the take that you see in the movie is right after that princess bride have you ever met seth green the actor i have but only briefly okay i hope this will be yet another feather in your cap but i went to his wedding his wedding was at skywalker ranch he's the nerdiest of all nerds in the most beautiful way they say i do and they literally go now please join us in the theater we went from i do directly into a movie theater and watch the princess bride no that's so amazing that is his soul his religion we've got stories about people building their weddings around princess bride where they have on their wedding rings it says as you wish yeah so i just thought oh this is the most special thing it was so fun and then we went to the reception but the very first order of businesses we've all watched this movie together i've had a million a million princess bride stories but one of the best was two stories one was nora efron and nick belleggi took us to this restaurant in york an italian restaurant and it was known that john gotti the mobster every thursday would come in and sure enough at eight o'clock in walks john gotti with like six wise guys around him and i look over there and i don't really want to pay too much attention don't look at me you know we finish eating go outside and there's a big limousine park outside with a guy that looks like luca brazzi from the godfather standing right in front of him and he looks me in the eye and he says you kill my father prepare to die and i almost i almost went on the sidewalk because i thought he said i love that movie the princess bride oh that's epic i think there's one thing i just want to point out because again we already talked about the kind of steps in your life but stand by me for you was very formative it was a moment where you actually said okay i am my own man yeah i'm not in a shadow right and it's true because people have asked me all the time what's your favorite movie of the movie made and they always say you know they're like all your children you love them all the same even the rotten ones you know but this one meant the most to me because it was the first time i ever did anything that was so far field from anything my father would have done the spinal tap even though he probably wouldn't have satirized heavy metal he certainly was in the world of satire and the sure thing was a romantic comedy for young people this was the first time that was something really reflective of my personality it had humor in it but it also had some melancholy and nostalgia and so i thought this is really the kind of thing i want to do and then the fact that it became successful it validated yeah okay okay i can i can relax a little bit and then just great shit just starts flying when harry met sally which is so incredible what i was shocked with in hearing you talk on stern is just how many of these movies the lead was the ninth choice not maybe because of your doing but maybe because of studio pressure or whatever else i love hearing these stories it's true for every director yeah i've had conversations with steven spielberg about he didn't get his first choice on number of movies that's so crazy that always happens you know they're not available they don't like to strip whatever the reasons are but then i always say that when the movie starts and the cameras start to roll now they don't have cameras rolling but they put the chip into the whatever they start there'll be somebody in front of the camera and then what's even crazier is this thing happens where that's who you got and then on the back side of it you're like i can't imagine that it would have been anybody i want to read a list of people like he had to go to tom hanks michael keaton albert brooks richard drive us all these people for one harry met sally and of course in my mind this movie only works as billy christelle it works with billy because he can play the edgy part but he's sweet it has a mixture and he's great and i didn't go right away to billy because he was like my closest friend at the time and i thought oh man what if this doesn't work it's a complication you might not want when you already have so much on your plate yeah but then i'm so unbelievably happy that he did it because not only is he great in the movie but he gives you treebies you get little gifts i'll have what she's having that's a line that billy wrote and that's his mom though as well that's my mom that's your mom yeah someone's mom and then scorsese has his mom in the goodfellas right the last speech in the film where billy runs into see megan says when you realize you want to spend the rest of your life with somebody you want the rest of your life to start as soon as possible yeah and that's what billy wrote that stuff all these movies you read i mean it's like it's impossible they've also stood the test of time when harry matali's still a huge movie yeah you're not even born yet or you're just born what year were you born well yeah when harry matali came out in 89 you're two years old but it was one year old but it's carried through now would you intentionally pursue projects that were mirroring what was going on in your real life because i know misery for you was one of these moments where the lead character again james khan who's like the 15th choice as well yeah this is a writer who's been defined by something who wants to escape it and no one will let him to the degree that they'll break his anger right and that's what i wanted i didn't want to be a sitcom actor for the rest of life i wanted to direct so i did relate to that character i don't i try to find my way into a movie i can't be a traffic cop i have to have some kind of emotional connection you got to anchor it yeah somehow all these questions you're gonna do when you're directing it's like it's 51 to 49 you don't know but you need to tether what draws you to something you feel connected yes exactly that makes your decision for you you ultimately go what would i which is helpful and then of course just a few good men you told one story about this that i think is incredible at the table read of a few good men nicholson does it nearly identical to how he does it yeah he came to play as they say he sat down and he had all these great actors young actors kevin bacon and demi moore and tom cruise and when he starts to do the table read and it's full out performance it sends a signal to everybody else we're here to do this thing it brought everybody's game up i always likened him to somebody like magic johnson because they know that if the other people are doing their best it's going to make him look better he's definitely out there to make everything better talk about some lines and scenes and performances that just get completely stamped into our shared consciousness you can't handle the truth yeah yeah people who don't even know where it's from know it here's my favorite thing of all that is i'll have what she's having and you killed my father whatever the things are you know from the spinal tap this goes to 11 the anthem today because when he first tesla came out he showed me he said look the radio goes to 11 because he loved oh my god i did not know that oh yeah yeah for any spinal tap freak like me i was like oh this is fucking incredible this thing made its way into a real product so the thing that gets me more than anything is i did this film called the bucket list which was jack nicholson and morgan freeman and they're both guys who was dying from cancer right dying from cancer and they're going to do all these experiences they have a bucket list everybody thinks that that's a term that's been around for a million years it was made up for the film that is crazy i saw a movie but in my head it was just a ubiquitous but no i only have one thing like that which is people will go are you punking me that's like in the vernacular i get punked yeah it wasn't a thing yeah it wasn't a thing until it was so funny and everybody says well it's on my bucket list yeah okay we're off of your incredible movies by god literally just thank you those are like some of my favorite experiences in life sitting watching those movies we're both obsessed with russia i think yeah i had a website during the 2016 election it was called the committee to investigate russia when we had heard that the russians were playing in the 2016 election we found out that they were yeah and trump was fine with that and so that was the beginning of a real string of corruption that he started and continues to this day have you watched any of the front lines on him because they are among my very favorite docs i've ever seen in my life in particular there's like a three hour one about how he came to power i mean putin how he came to power yeah he was a functionary pgb guy he was yeltsin's right hand man and yeltsin brought him in because he had been the right hand man of the saint petersburg governor right and the long history in russia is every time these guys step down from power they get tried on embezzlement and they all end up dying in prison and putin masterminded an exit of this saint petersburg governor he got him out of the country they faked a medical episode they put him on a plane and yeltsin said i want to step down i don't want to run prison i need this guy i'll just add it because it's so fascinating but that yeltsin very much wants to be able to hand over the power to putin and so he funds this huge campaign to raise the awareness of putin and it's getting nowhere because it has no personality it's not working and then lo and behold mysteriously three apartment buildings get destroyed and blown up by quote the kremeans i don't know what we call the cheshanians and later revealed some of the armaments didn't go off in a fourth apartment building and they were all discovered to be russian armaments so they blow up these three buildings with their own civilians and then he puts putin in charge of the invasion of kremea and then all a sudden the people want him to be president what you couldn't write an origins for a bad guy i know and yeltsin was struggling with alcohol and he was a mess and later came to regret this and had spoke out about some of the anti-democratic things and if you look at what happened in the 2016 election it didn't take very much to swing it because all it took was three cities milwaukee detroit and philadelphia and the aggregate of those three cities were 79 000 votes and all you had to do is suppress the black vote in those three cities which they did and then you flip and all of a sudden even though hillary has three million more votes she loses yeah and that's what i'm afraid of now yes and that's what your new documentary is about god and country okay i think the most important thing that we say up front is that this movie is not anti-christian oh no it's the opposite it's pro-christian it's very pro-christian it is included many many trusted outspoken members and leaders of christianity that was important because my name being associated with it first of all i'm jewish second of all i'm a hollywood libtard yeah that's right so we wanted to make sure that this movie which is about christian nationalism in no way diminishes christianity and so we have the most respected conservative devout christian leaders talking about not only the danger that christian nationalism poses to the country but to christianity itself that this is not a religious movement it's a political movement and it is basically destroying christianity in that it completely negates the teachings of jesus yeah so quickly i think people have heard the term white nationalists everyone's pretty clear about that those are people that would like to see an america that is just white it's their birthright to be here right no one else's christian nationalism is by and large white it's over 90 white people and that element of racism that you're talking about is fair as we'll find out it's foundational to the formation of the christian but what i didn't really know and i think i'm up on this stuff is that christian nationalists are people who believe truly that this should be a christian nation we should have biblical laws like i'm talking if you think sharia law is bad this is sharia law but this is anti-gay no marriage this is anti-abortion this is anti-books this is anti-secular education this is a dramatic draconian approach yeah they don't believe in separation of church and state they will tell you that there is no separation of church and state in the constitution well the words separation of church and state are not per se in the constitution but the idea of separating church and state is mentioned three times in the constitution in fact it's so fully articulated that we use the term separation of church and state to just condense what is written in there that's exactly right and the reason for that is the founders of the country many of whom came from europe and were running away from religious persecution wanted to make sure that the country would not have a religion that you could pray however you wanted and it's in the bill of rights that there's no test for a religion into holding public office all that was very intentionally done so much so that the first words in the constitution are we the people which is revolution revolution it had never been done it's always been it's all divine they were saying we the people will govern ourselves self-rule and so they don't believe in that they don't believe in separation they'll tell you there is no separation and they believe that we should be living toward whatever their ideas are the rules of god but it certainly isn't jesus's teaching because nowhere do i see jesus saying take up arms and kill somebody who doesn't believe what you believe stay tuned for more armchair expert if you dare Okay, so it starts, I think, on the surface, people, myself included, would have assumed that this got organized in the wake of Roe v. Wade, but there's an interesting history that actually predates Roe v. Wade, and the kernel of this movement really gets started with the beginning of desegregating schools.

That's exactly right. In 1954, you had Brown v. the Board of Education, which said that we have to make the schools desegregated. We have to make sure that blacks and whites can go to the same school.

Well, that wasn't liked very much by a certain group of people, so they decided to make these religious schools and not allow black people to come to their schools, and that became the galvanizing issue for the beginnings of this white Christian nationalist movement. Problem they had is it's really ugly to say we're going to base a movement on racism. It wasn't going to work even in 1954. Well, that was the thing.

They resisted it. It's an extension of the Civil War that was fought over blacks not being allowed to be free, and so all of a sudden, in 1972-73, Roe v. Wade comes along, and they went, ah, here's something we can build a movement on, and they used that, and they built this movement, and it's gotten incredibly powerful. It's very well-funded.

It is not the majority of Christians. The vast, vast majority of Christians don't like this and don't believe in this, but as you know, any political movement, if you can get 25-30% of a country, particularly with a system that we have here in America, the Electoral College, only have to pick off five or six states, and you can win an election, even though you may lose a popular vote by 10 million votes. They control 70% of that Senate outcome. That's right.

It's enormously lopsided, and it's inherently anti-democratic, in a sense. When the founders formed the country, they gave two senators to every state, and that's okay, but the Constitution's been amended many, many times, and it's time to amend the Constitution and have the Electoral College done away with and have a popular vote. Whoever gets the most votes wins. Yeah, we have the technology to do that.

It's plausible. Yeah, but the problem you have in order to do that is very difficult, because you have to get two-thirds majority in the House, two-thirds majority in the Senate, and then it has to be passed by simple majorities in three-fourths of the state legislatures. That's a big, heavy lift, because Republicans, the way they are now, they know that if you change that system and let the best man win, best woman, whoever gets the most votes, they'll never win an election, based on the ideology that they have. It also ignores the demographics of 1776.

I don't know the numbers, but I know that far more people lived in rural areas than lived in cities, and so it really ignores this enormous migration of where the actual citizens live. Yeah, we've got, let's say, Maine or Vermont. Vermont, they've got a million people. Rhode Island, Montana, they've got a million.

Two senators. California, 40-some-odd million. Two senators. Yeah.

It's kind of crazy. So I grew up, obviously, post this movement coalescing around Roe v. Wade. Obviously, Jerry Falwell is a big figurehead in this movement.

Right. So I grew up in an era where evangelicals were outspokenly against abortion, but I was shocked to learn the documentary. When Roe v. Wade, that was a very split thing, even among evangelicals back then.

Well, evangelicals, there's no mention of abortion in the Bible, and the people who believe that religion should be practiced freely don't feel that you should impose your ideas on other people. You can make the arguments if you want, but you should not use religion as a way of imposing your will. And so most evangelicals, they may believe, and they have heartfelt beliefs that you should not have abortion, and you have to respect that. I respect that.

But they're saying, don't impose that will on somebody else. That's the distinction, is that although they still were dramatically majority pro-life, they didn't believe at that time that that should be the rule of law. Right. One of the experts you have in the documentary says, I personally held this position until I represented a 10 or 12-year-old girl who had been raped by her uncle and was carrying a baby, and she said I had to really confront what this really is in some cases.

That's right. So this movement gets more and more fervent and more violent by nature. It's really fascinating to watch you show the progression of the sermons and this very popular notion in Christian nationalists of Jesus as a warrior. Yeah.

They really home in on Revelations. You're showing the covers of these books in the doc, and it looks like a spinal tap crate. There's like a ripped Jesus, and he's out hell-bent for blood. Yeah, the muscular Jesus.

And it's explained perfectly by Russell Moore, who's the editor of Christianity Today, one of the most respected people in that field. He says, Jesus believed you fight with the gospel. You don't fight with weapons and guns. You fight by convincing people.

Congress is the virtue. That's how you fight, not killing people. Right. Now, I guess I wouldn't have made this connection until I saw this movie.

When I looked at the Capitol riots, I looked at the people that were attending. My first thought was like, what's binding this group together? I can't figure out. There's so many different signs.

You know, don't tread on me. You got this over here. What I was kind of missing is how many Jesus saved signs, how many crosses were being held. And I didn't know this part, that all of that was preceded the day before by the Jericho marches of January 15th.

You know about those? I don't. That's really what this film is about, is that the Capitol Six riots or insurrection was fully organized by these Christian nationalists, and that there was steps to this. And the Jericho marches, which was recreating the storm of Jericho where the walls fell, they would have been advertised and promoted, and this was all part of the same thing.

They got on buses. They got Roger Stone preaching at that thing. All the piety of Jesus. I didn't know that connection.

My assumption was they were mostly Christians, but not that they were Christian nationalists first. Yes. And we're not saying that all the rioters of January 6th were Christian nationalists, but they formed the nucleus and the foundation for what happened on January 6th. I mean, you had Alex Jones out there screaming about God is on our side.

We're going to war. We're going to go to battle. And you see the amount of people that were at the January 5th Jericho march. It's a lot of people.

It's clear to me that certainly a good deal of those people hung around for January 6th. And you see them praying on the floor of the Senate. Yes. He's controlling quotes in the name of Jesus and speaker of the house where he sits or she sits.

There's a bullhorn and he's leading a prayer. I don't feel like people talked about this much. Well, I think the problem is there was a January 6th committee that looked into all of this. But if they had talked about Christian nationalism, first of all, it's a term that not a lot of people understand.

They think if you're saying that you're bashing Christianity in some way. And I think that the January 6th committee understood that, that if they put that there was a fervent fight from Christian nationalism, then it would have made people not listen. It would have further perpetuated their own narrative that Christianity is under attack. Under attack.

Exactly. And you know, all the people that spoke there and all the witnesses, they're all Republicans. And they consciously did that. But they left out this part of it.

And I think it was right to do it because we have to spend an hour and a half in this film explaining to people what Christian nationalism is and why it's a danger, not only to the country, but to Christianity. Yeah. It's very comforting to hear so many of the leaders in the Christian world be so outspokenly against this. And a lot of people are starting to understand that now.

There are even people in the film, Robert Jeffers, if he's gung ho Christian nationalist, I've read some things where he's starting to back away and say, maybe I didn't think this through it because they want abortion to be overturned. And that's the thing that they feel they achieve. But what are we doing now to people? And how far have we gotten away from the true teachings of Jesus?

Well, and you also acknowledge that because their story about Trump was he was the chosen one. Right. You have so much news footage of these people right in public saying he's the chosen one. And so if the chosen one doesn't win the election, clearly God wanted him to.

There has to be a conspiracy. You have no other choice. If God's backing this candidate, then what choice do you have but to believe? It's like they painted themselves into a corner.

That's right. And it also gives you permission to do anything if you're doing it in God's name. What's interesting is this movement has been around for a long time. It's grown.

It's gotten more powerful. It's more well-funded. But it all of a sudden had a mouthpiece. He's pandering like a motherfucker.

Yeah, because he knows at this point it's his ticket to get out of prison, get out of jail free card. I mean, that's what he's looking to do. So it's been amplified by his voice. And he's more than happy to keep saying, I'm the chosen one.

I'm your reputation. Why do they just believe it when he holds the Bible upside down and when he's like saying the craziest stuff in just his history? Why are they so susceptible to believe it just because he says it? Because he's saying out loud, Christianity is under attack and needs to be saved.

I'm a true believer. He is playing to the audience. Yes. And I'm going to be the one who's going to make this a white Christian nation.

I'm going to shut the borders down. I'm going to have a Muslim ban. I'm going to make sure that there's a wall. All of those things are to feed that.

But think about this for a second. The guy wins the Iowa primary, wins in handling. And the next day he goes to a trial where he was found that he had raped a woman. This is the person that these Christian nationalists are all in favor of.

A guy who raped somebody. Yeah. Weirdly, the doc did answer a question because let me just say, I don't think the right's crazy. I don't think the right's bad.

I don't hold that. I don't either. Nationalism is a different thing. I totally agree with you, but I was genuinely perplexed how people were buying into the stolen vote narrative.

You have Republican governors saying, no, there's been no fraud. You have the makers of the machine going, here's the data. So what was missing for me was answered by this, which is if God picked Trump, that's how I can overlook all this stuff. Because I was not, I'm like, well, how are they perpetuating this belief?

Right. And it's amplified by the fact that you have some very spineless Republican elected officials who know. They know it's not so. It wasn't Tucker Carlson's tax.

They know. They know. They all fucking know. But they feel this is their ticket to maintain power.

And they'll stay with them. The funding for this is a billion dollars. There's a billion dollars on the table to fund this. Well, more.

They just gave this guy, Leonard Leo, he got a billion six. The money is there. But you have to tip your hat to this group because they're explicit about it. They're not hiding it.

Yes. Because all you need to do is get that guy in the White House. And then he starts firing all the civil servants, putting in political loyalists. And then there you have it.

Yeah. Well, it's a really, really well-made documentary. I loved watching it so much. Well, it's going to be in theaters February 16th.

And then we have a smile tap too coming. Oh, that's so exciting. That's a wild one. We can get excited.

What a discovery today. All right. The last thing I want to end on is I'm listening to many interviews of you last night laying in bed. I'm sorry.

I know. I enjoyed every moment of it. And my wife's walking back and forth throughout the bedroom. And at some point she goes, why are you having Kimmel on again?

You just had him on. And all of a sudden I went, oh, my God, that is your voice. You mean I sound like Kimmel? Yes.

Well, my Kimmel sounds like you. You're older. Wow. I've got to listen to Kimmel a little bit more.

It's pretty crazy. I was curious if you ever had gotten that prior to this. No. This is the first Kimmel reference.

And I'm going to now start, you know, comparing contracts. You should be calling people and saying, this is Jimmy Kimmel. Just make a mess of his life. I think that's what you should do.

Well, Rob, it's an incredible pleasure to meet you. This is so fun. You're a great interviewee. Thank you.

So prolific and an icon. I know you know it. Stay tuned for the fact check so you can hear all the facts that were wrong. Hello.

Hello. Stormy night. It's raining. It's 1 p.m., but it would appear to be 8 p.m.

right now, likewise. It's dark. It's a dark and stormy night. That's what I was trying to do.

And it's rainy as hell. There's a new blouse. I got a new blouse. Anything you want to tell me about it?

It's very cozy. Okay, great. And I love it. Well, sure.

I went shopping. Okay. When? On Saturday.

I did a quick shop. I just had to stop in. Was it after you brought steaks? It was before I brought steaks.

It was? Yes. So you were already the owner of this garment at that point? Was it?

I seemed different. Well, I would have expected you to have a little more spring in your step. I know. Okay.

Knowing that that was in the trunk. Well, yeah. I've been having a little bit of a tough time. Mentally.

Yeah, mentally. Yeah, you've been blue. Uh-huh. And I think, for the most part, it's...

I mean, there are things that have contributed, but also, I think so much of it is just truly hormonal. Right. But rough. Like, worse than a normal, like, PMS or something.

Mm-hmm. I've been combating that a little bit, and... When you're trying true tools. It's shopping.

Okay. But I was trying not to, because I know what that's all about. Right. But then I was driving by it.

Okay. And you thought, we've got to do it. Yeah, I had to do it. And so, I did a little...

Well, that must mean you were out on the streets early. Yeah, because I had my witch at 10. Okay. Oh, yeah, and that's...

That's in Beverly Hills. It's rough. It's rough for you. It would be like if I had a dentist next to a crack house 20 years ago.

It's not a great look. You need to probably find a witch somewhere with no shopping. I'll always find shops. You're right.

But yeah, I stopped in. It did help. Yeah. For like 15 minutes.

Oh, only 15. I can tell you. And then cut it out. Yeah, I can tell you.

I just can't show that publicly. I got you. I got you. I got you.

So anyway, so that was that. And then I brought some steaks over to your house. They were delicious. My father-in-law cooked them up.

He travels with his meat thermometer, which I got to tip my hat to him for doing that. You're serious about barbecuing when you travel with a meat thermometer. Yeah, big time. They were delicious.

He cooked them to absolute perfection. I cook them differently. I like how I do it. But his are different.

And it's great. He's more of a medium heat. And he gets that center at the perfect temp. I like to blast it, time it.

Oh, okay. And then wrap it in tinfoil so it does some more cooking while it's off the grill. Oh, and where'd you learn that technique? I read about it online, I think.

Nice. Yeah. Do you have a chef? Like I do?

Google, yeah. Go to Google. You know, when you type in a question, it brings up a box. You're not even sure where it's from.

Yes, that's my whole fact check. I bet. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Just whatever that box is.

Like, how long should you cook a ribeye to be medium? Now, the tricky part is, is these ribeyes fluctuate so much in how thick they are. Right. But now I've done enough of them.

But that's why the meat-a-mouse, that's the whole point of it, right? Right, but I won't use it. Oh! He got me one for Christmas.

It's like, and it was a thing I kept hiding from him. And then finally I just said to him, like, I haven't used it. Oh, wow. And I'm not going to.

Oh, my God. I have to be honest with him. It was not easy for me to deliver that news. It's a hill you want to die on, huh?

Well, just, I don't want to do it. Wow, I use one all the time. You do? And I love it.

And it's a wireless one that goes to your phone? No, no, no, no. You mean you just slide it in when everything's done? Well, to check if it's done.