A Bit of Optimism - Insane Vacations with Mike Reiss

Episode Date: March 21, 2023

When you get one of the most successful comedy writers in television history to come on your podcast, naturally the first thing to talk about is...his trip in a homemade submarine to visit the ruins of the Titanic.You see, Mike Reiss isn't just the funniest guy in the room — he's also the most well-traveled.  He's been to Iran, the North Pole, North Korea, and everywhere in between.  Whether he's sharing travel anecdotes or writer's room memories from his 600+ episodes of The Simpsons, one thing is very clear: when Mike tells a story, things are going to get animated.  This is… A Bit of Optimism.For more on Mike and his work check out: His travel podcast "What Am I Doing Here with Mike Reiss": https://bleav.com/shows/what-am-i-doing-here-with-mike-reiss/ 

Mike Reese is one of the great comedy writers of our modern day. He's been on The Simpsons since the beginning. He worked on Carson. He worked on Alf back in the 80s. And he's worked on Despicable Me and many other movies, too. But some of his best material is when he talks about his own life and his vacations to places like North Korea and even visiting the Titanic. This is a bit of optimism.

Mike Rees, thanks for joining me on the podcast. You are famous to most people who will know you as one of the writers from the TV show, Alf. You'd be surprised. Actually, most people will probably more likely know you as being one of the original writers from The Simpsons. So most people, when they go on vacation, they want to do something exotic. They think Hawaii.

And if you're really adventurous, maybe Vietnam. But you, you and your wife, you decided we want to go on a vacation to see the Titanic. That's right. So what? How did you even pull that off? That's right. which is not a country and we've been to easter island which you think is 3 000 miles and in the middle of the sea and but it's considered chilly so those don't count as countries and we climbed by the kilometer and i think what's significant about all these things is you don't want to do any of them i don't enjoy any of this stuff none of it's my idea i have a wife who loves to travel

and i love my wife and if i want to spend a vacation with her i have to do it in north korea or libya or someplace like that i mean this is the ultimate expression of love. I think so. The fact that you go to all these places that you don't want to go to. So Denise decides, I'd like to go see the Titanic. Correct. And you said, huh? We had a friend from, lives outside of Seattle. And our friends know this is how we travel. This is the things we do. So he said, there's a guy in my neighborhood who builds submarines and takes them to dangerous places.

And when I saw this, I thought of you. And so I'll give his name. His name is Stockton Rush. Now, I mean. Great name. Right. If that's your name, you are born to be an adventurer and the guy yeah he was a gent pilot and a rocket scientist now he built subs because his name is stockton

rush oh for sure exactly that is the only qualification he's got but it's a good one he had no choice so he built this sub and the first place we went with him was off of staten island that was the first place we went with him was off of Staten Island. That was the first exotic Florida call, Staten Island. And he took us down to something called the Hudson Canyon. And these subs are about the size of a van. And the interior space is like an SUV with the seats ripped out. The guy's never heard of chairs.

SUV with the seats ripped out. The guy's never heard of chairs. So you just sit on the floor of the sub, and one side of it is a big window, like a washing machine. Then you go down, and you look out. And so we went down to Hudson Canyon. Hudson Canyon is like the Grand Canyon underwater off of Staten Island. We went 1,000 feet down, and then we came up. Wow. And then he goes, well,

congratulations. You're the first people to ever go into Hudson Canyon. It's like, what? You're testing yourself on us? I want to go where people have been before. So that was it. I am the Neil Armstrong, or the Buzz Aldrin of Hudson Canyon.

And again, I don't want to be i don't now he's decided he's going to go to see the titanic this the hudson canyon that was a thousand feet down the titanic is 25 times the two and a half miles wow how long did it take to go down 25 000 feet two and a half hours yeah it's two and a half miles of just dropping this is a funny thing if anyone's interested what these subs are like because it's like if you drove your car into the ocean i mean that's all it is they dump this the sub off the back of the boat and it just sinks and it just sinks for two and a half hours and there's nothing to see it just blackened and in fact here i mean you know i could have died on this adventure but instead i fell asleep i was so

just bored there's nothing to do and i fell asleep and we hit bottom. And again, we don't know where we are. You know, we started off right over the Titanic, but there's underwater currents and we're drifting. And we had this sense we're 500 yards away from the Titanic. It's the biggest thing in the world, but we can't find it. You know, it's like two city blocks away. And so we're cruising around the bottom of the ocean looking for the titanic and just to make things exciting there was a hurricane coming oh my at sea level so our time was very limited and by the time we got down to the bottom we had like 40 minutes to find the Titanic, look at it,

and then get back up before a hurricane came in. So we're just nosing around looking for the thing, and then, oh, there it is. We see the Titanic, and our time was on short. We just got the greatest hits. I mean, I didn't like this because we weren't exploring. We were like tourists. It's like, oh, there's where Leo DiCaprio

stood and there's the anchor and here's the funnel that fell over you know we got like three great photographs and then had to go back up so that was it I saw the Titanic in hindsight even though you didn't want to go I mean it was amazing

wasn't it it's like you and James Cameron. Like, those are the only people who've seen the Titanic. That's it. You know, it was funny, because we had all these experts on the boat, and I was so hopeful. I go, am I the first Jew to visit the Titanic?

And there was a French expert on board. He goes, no, that was Francis Lindemann. He went three years ago. So it's like, I'm not even the first Jew. And there was a Mexican guy on board. He goes, am I the first Mexican? Yes, you are. So I am, and I can state this categorically, I am the first ALF rider to visit the Titanic.

So you also casually mentioned just a moment ago and i it i caught it oh yeah you went that you went to north korea yeah these i guess are the two things that really impress people are uh well i mean yeah a for most of us it's not even on our list right b even if it was we wouldn't even know where to begin or how to go and it's not in the realm of reality so you walk me through this denise decides because i know it wasn't you yeah i'd like to know yes well you know it was funny it was even i woke up one morning i was up early and i see we get an email from some travel agent because we're on everybody's list and it said running tours to north korea and i saw the email and i deleted it and then i deleted it from trash and uh because i didn't want denise

to see it but then they wrote to her separately so she saw it and we're going and the story is north korea is closed to everybody, right? Except they do a thing called the mass games. They do this thing every year called the mass games. And it's like the Olympics opening ceremony with no Olympics behind it. Because they don't believe in Olympics because Olympics are competition and we're communists. We don't compete. We all work together

but they still stage this amazing spectacular that they are so proud of they let the world in for three weeks you are allowed in now they vet everybody who comes in and so to get in you know i'm filling out the forms and they said don't say you're a writer. They don't want writers coming in. And they don't like Jews. And, you know, they've never seen a Jew, but they hear bad things. So I had to say I was a Catholic publicist to get into North Korea. And we hear back from them. And the other scary thing is North Korea kidnaps visiting talent.

I mean, yeah. So, you know this story. They'll have a film festival. They'll welcome these world directors and then keep them there and force them to make movies for the regime. You know, North Korea is not scary enough. I might get kidnapped and forced to make propaganda cartoons, I guess, or do the North Korean version of Al's. I say I'm a Catholic publicist, and we hear back, no, you're not. They said, we went to China to Google you, because you can't, there's no Google in North Korea. We we went to china to google you and we found

out what you do and we know your career and you're still welcome to come which to me means you're not worth kidnapping which so that was what did that do for your ego? So we went to North Korea. It's an extraordinarily managed tour. And anyone who goes to North Korea gets the exact same tour. There were 14 people in our group. We had seven full-time minders. There is one hotel in the national capital, Pyongongyang and it's a big high-rise hotel surrounded by a moat it literally has a boat so you go into the hotel at night

they pull up the drawbridge there is no escaping your hotel and so the 14 people in our group were just like us. They were just very jaded world travelers. There was one guy in the group who's the most traveled man on earth. And you think, wow, this is Stockton Rush. It's some diplomat or some debonair man. And he was just a schlub. He was like a math teacher from Brooklyn, but he happens to be the man who's been everywhere. So you've got seven handlers staying in the Tower of Pyongyang. Right. Surrounded by a moat. Surrounded by a moat.

And it's a three-day tour, and I got to say, if you can ignore the human suffering around you, it's a great trip. It's a great trip. It's a real, I mean, they really put together a terrific tour. You go visit different monuments. North Korea is just crazy with, you know, gigantic Stalinist monuments. And you go visit these things and you take a river cruise and you have a lantern festival.

The food is fantastic my favorite part they they took us to an indoor circus it's just in the theater that clearly had just been doing like death of a salesman because on stage it's just this 1950s living room set but all these circus performers come out, and they do their acts. And then, this is my favorite part, a bear, an actual grizzly bear comes out with an upright vacuum cleaner and vacuums the carpet. That's the closer. The bear is vacuuming this apartment, and I'm looking going, it's doing a pretty good job, you know?

But anyway, the whole point is we're there to see the mass games. And we go see this show. It is literally the most spectacular thing you've ever seen. 50,000 people on the floor of this arena. It's an outdoor stadium. And, you know, they're doing Vegas-style numbers. There's nothing propagandistic about it. They're all in sailor costumes. And then 10,000 people leave the field as 10,000 more come on. They're in hula hoops, and they're doing hula hoops. And meanwhile, in the background across the stadium on the other side is 10,000 kids with

cars doing those card shows where the whole stadium holds up a card and makes a big picture of the countryside or a tractor or something like that. And that went nonstop at the same time. So you watch the show. It's amazing. It's 90 minutes to the second. It was only when we're leaving the arena, we see it's pouring rain. The spectators are covered, but all those people who just put on the greatest show in the world did it in pouring rain. Wow. That was it. That's my trip to Korea.

So do you actually see, I mean, I i have to ask do you actually see the human suffering because pyongyang is pretty sterile isn't it it is nice well again it looks great it's got an arc de triomphe right in the middle of it it's got they filled it with infrastructure there's 10 lane highways everywhere but nobody has a car so in fact our bus driver would just drive down the highway zigzagging from left to right just having fun because he add the highway to himself yeah so they got that they live in high rises but nobody has electricity so it goes dark at night the whole city it's a weird mix. They have a subway system that's built in the Stalinist way, and Stalin built these subways with chandeliers and fine art on the walls, and they've got that too.

So the suffering, yes, you would say, just people were thin. They were really thin, and one day we took a ride to the country to see the military and so and you saw people just trudging trudging down the roads again thin people and you didn't know where they were going but you knew oh they they're walking a long way to get something they need yeah yeah so there is that but i'll tell you one other funny thing. One day, they just set us loose in a park,

and they have this giant public park in Pyongyang that's as lovely as any public park you've been to. And people were having fun. They were having picnics. They don't just sit there being miserable all the time. And we saw a bunch of older women in kimonos drunk out of their mind. And they were having so much fun, and they're dancing to traditional music.

And my wife is filming them. And then I get pulled into the dance. I'm dancing with old North Korean women who are drunk. And that's where a guard comes up and covers the camera. And it's like dude you shouldn't cover this this is people having fun in north korea were you allowed to take pictures of anything you wanted or was it very controlled it was very controlled it was very managed and it is funny we have no good photos from that trip so you have to maybe maybe

i'm making it all up and i never went to north korea it's like a little lunar landing i should probably shouldn't talk about a lunar landing because denise will probably plan it oh yes oh is that another thing she wants to do does she want to put you one of the virgins or the one of the rockets that all of these guys are doing like she hasn't said this and i don't know if you know'll bet I've told you the story. In 2018, Mars was as close to the Earth as it's ever going to get. Yeah. And so they didn't somewhat, oh, some billionaire had this idea. Let's send a probe just to go out, fly around Mars, and come back.

And we'll send someone to take pictures. And if you know my wife, she's the woman for the job. She takes more photos than most security cameras. So they said that it was going to be a $5 billion mission. And they wanted to send a middle-aged childless couple into space to photograph Mars. And it was a middle-aged childless couple because if they died, who cares, right? And that was their thinking. And they go,

oh, a couple, an old couple, we'll get a look. So we volunteer. We'll go to Mars. And it was just going to be 500 days in a capsule, me and Denise. And we applied and we got Neilil degrasse tyson to endorse us

he's just somebody we know from college so neil endorsed us and we made it past the first cut you know that was it we were we were headed for mars in a again an suv for 500 days and the only thing that scared me was i knew we were gonna have to be trained medically so they were gonna have to teach denise how to take out my appendix in space if that came up and right i don't really love her cutting my hair so that would be a challenge but but that was it we were gung-ho we were going to go into space and hopefully come back from space and then the whole mission collapsed this billionaire put up a billion dollars and nobody came up with the other five billion are you still writing tv at all oh yes i still work at the simpsons i got i consult at the show a day a week and that's a pleasure and in fact because of covid you know i used to i live in new york

and i used to fly to la every wednesday to work at the simpsons and i would work a day and then i get on a red eye and fly back to new york or north korea or austral Australia or wherever we were going or Mars. But with COVID, the show has gone on to Zoom. We've been working on Zoom for two and a half years, which means I can still keep my phony baloney job, but I don't have to fly to L.A. That's amazing. This has completely untethered us.

So we've been traveling nonstop once the world opened up. And every week on a Wednesday, I'll log into Zoom work at the Simpsons and they go, where are you now? And I'll go, I'm in Peru. I'm in Tanzania. And that's it. I have now zoomed into work at the Simpsons from every continent of the world. That's fabulous. Yeah. We have these wonderful little claims to fame, of which I know some, not all. Yeah.

But the Minions. The Minions, yeah. There's this wonderful story of the first Minions movie, not the actual Minions. What was the actual movie called? Despicable Me. Despicable Me, right. There's this wonderful story, I recall, of Me. Despicable Me, right. There's this wonderful story I recall of the first Despicable Me,

where I think they asked you to consult on the script. Right. And you kept getting confused between, it kept saying Minion 1, Minion 2. You kept getting confused which one was which. So that was it. And I'm working on the script and I grew the Steve Carell character.

It is all just going, boys, today we're going to do the boys, even to dress the minions, you know, that way, as a group. And I decided, well, let's pretend they're distinct. Now, I couldn't tell them apart. I mean, they just look like new print. They're just little

and yellow, and they all look exactly the same. But I said, what if he addresses them all individually? And let's give them, even though they're so weird, let's give them really boring white guy names. And I was doing this on the sly at the Simpsons. And I look around. I go, well, here's a bunch of boring white guys, the Simpsons writers. So I just named them.

I just had them go, Bob, Stuart, Kevin, Phil, Jack, Al. We've had a great time together. He's so normal. And it's just Simpsons writers. And it was no big deal at the time, except when they started spinning off the Minions to give them their own movies. And then you would see posters everywhere. Here's Kevin. This is Stuart. Bob's on a big adventure. And I go, oh, these are just my friends from The Simpsons.

So it wasn't supposed to stick. It was you just mucking about. It was just really a joke. I think I did twice in the original script and the name stuck and then the names became characters. I love that. So a cartoon of yellow people, the writers are now immortalized in the cartoon of yellow nut people. One of the three main minions, the guys who carry the minions franchise, one of them is kevin and he's named after simpsons writer kevin currit who has passed away so this is his legacy he lives on he lives on as a minion i know i know that simpsons fans who are maybe listening would be

mad at me for not asking a couple of oh of course i'm sorry and i'm sorry to everyone i had to put up with this yeah i know i like the north korea stories do you have a favorite episode you know uh and i'm sure it's a question you get asked a lot so you've got a lot of time to think about the answer right there's a funny thing which is the show's been on now we're in we're writing our 35th year of the show it's insane it's insane it is really crazy you know i grew up in a factory town and uh people worked in a factory or they worked for an insurance company and there were people there whose dads worked for the same company for 35 years and i go wow that's the life I want. And I got it in TV. I'm just one of these career lifers at The Simpsons. So I've been there for 35 years, except for two years in the middle

I'd missed. There's two years I just walked away from TV. I thought I'd never do it again. And those were the two years I could go home and watch The Simpsons and not know what was coming out. And I go, I not only went, wow, this is a great show. I got to go, gee, it's so much better without me. So those are the two years I really love. And I think it's like season six and seven of the show are absolutely fantastic. And it actually does. There's an episode called itchy and scratchy

and poochy which is the fans favorite episode it's unbelievable that there's some consensus out of 700 episodes they love this show and of course i had nothing to do with it so that one i really like of the ones i've worked on and you know i ran the show for a couple of years there's a the monorail episode fans will know the monorail episode it was written by conan o'brien it's directed by rich moore who went on to win an oscar for the movie zootopia so some real future talent there and it just came out great and it was one of those shows where it wasn't working all the way through till right at the end. It all came together.

And, you know, that's the one we show at Phil Vestibules, and it just plays great from start to finish. That's a great lesson, right? Which is it's not working, it's not working. This creative product is not working, and it all comes together at the end. Creative products are different than engineering products. You don't reverse engineer a creative product. What is it about Simpsons as a creative product that works? Because there's been plenty of beloved characters with very talented writers that just could not

survive for 35 years. It's the creative product started to break down. What is it about this creative process you think that's given it such remarkable longevity? We all thought, oh, what is special about us? And why have we run so long? And then one day it hit me, gee, if The Simpsons wasn't on the air, the longest running show on TV would be South Park. And if South Park went off the air, it would be Family Guy. And then suddenly you see the pattern, which is animation goes forever. And you look at Mickey Mouse, there's nothing appealing about Mickey Mouse, but he's been around for 95 years. He's still liable.

And suddenly you realize, oh, this is why other shows go off the air is it's the actors the actors get tired the actors get bored that's the only reason cheers is not on tv and it's 40 bit year was ted dance and said i'm sick of this i've done or seinfeld seinfeld goes i'm sick of playing jerry seinfeld that's it you know of course people would still be watching seinfeld they got yeah so it's just it's almost always just the actors you have actors you have actors have been around forever yeah but they you know they work their schedule they work uh and our actors work 44 hours a year that's how they do 22 episodes over the course of a year they work 44 hours they each get about nine million dollars a year and i did the map on that i think it's they make about $40 a second doing the show

and they're half the budget of our show, just our six actors have been there since the very start and no one begrudges them that, they're really nice people, they appreciate this great hand life as Delta but they're so

talented the way any character comes into the simpsons is we write a joke with you know sort of a generic character like janitor and then we get to a table read where they all come together and if things are going well they come up with this funny voice that fits that joke that makes us laugh. And then our animators hear that voice, hear the line and draw what they think that guy would look like. And then it comes back to us where, you know,

three months later we watch it in animation. And if that makes us laugh, we go, Oh, we like this guy. We'll keep bringing them back. And that's all outside of the main simpsons characters almost everyone else on the show and we have 200 characters on the show they

all started out that way one generic line generally you know they don't even have a name they're just called you know man grocery store snooty clerk they all come about that way and they grow organically. And you talk about a creative enterprise, how the show works. It's that there are people at every step of the way who just make it better. Everyone's pulling in the same direction. But we write the best script we can and we work and rewrite. Every script is rewritten from top to bottom eight full times eight wow page one

rewrites between wow initial script and going on the air so we do all the writing we can but then we have these really brilliant actors who bring them to light and then we have great designers create the characters and brilliant directors who bring those characters to life. And it just gets better at every stage. I so love that, that each creative discipline is allowed to direct where the creative could go. You said the writers write the jokes, then the actors give voices to those characters and those jokes, and then the animators try and bring that voice to life, and the directors figure out how it all comes together.

I mean, how wonderful a process that is. I can't think of any other industry, you know, because usually the way most things work is there's some sort of creative genius at the beginning, and other people sort of are beholden to that creative genius, and the creative genius directs everything and sort of makes everything happen or not happen. But so rare is this kind of collaboration.

People would be surprised. I think they don't understand how generally collaborative network TV is. That just, almost all of it is done, on sitcoms at least, all the writing is done by a group, by a writer's

group. Someone will write the script and a show like Big Bang Theory, and you script. And a show like Big Bang Theory, and you can't be more successful than Big Bang Theory, they don't even start with the script. It's just a bunch of people in the room throwing it out and crafting this thing together as a group. I wonder if we could do something like that in the business world, where you just put a bunch of people in a room and just, all we know is we have to produce a thing, but we don't know what the thing is yet. I wonder if that's repeatable. It sounds like it's pretty, pretty remarkable family that's been built there over the years. I mean, you've all known each other for, I mean,

at least the, you know, the old guard and the actors, you've all known each other for, you know, three decades. Three decades. And even the show runner is my college roommate. So we're going on, decades and even the showrunner is my college roommate so we're going on like 40 45 years together it's very amicable and in fact you know i wrote a book i wrote a memoir of my 30 years at the simpsons and i to be candid one reason i wrote this book was to get fired i just said all right i'm gonna you know i'll do this book i won't ask anyone and they'll fire me and finally i could put my life but the book just turned out to be a love letter to the simpsons and yeah it came out and uh the only complaint i ever got was from an israeli book critic he called out where is the dirt there must dirt. And it was only then I realized, oh, yeah, there's no dirt.

35 years, and there were maybe two bad weeks in 35 years where people were not getting along, and that's in the book. But mostly, it shouldn't be a surprise. Oh, gee, why does the Simpsons keep running? Because it's nice. It's a nice place to work. People like to go there every day. They like to see each other. You're making a case, you know, I mean, it's a microcosm of what a good corporate culture is

supposed to be, which is if you have shared values and if you had shared cause, you know, as you said, all of these people, the writers and the actors and the animators were all coming together for common cause, that if you all get along and share values and have common cause, it should work. Like, yes, There actually is no great mystery to this. It's the same as friends. When friends get along, good things happen, nice things happen because we just like each other. I've been on TV shows where one guy that just doesn't get along, he can be a great writer, but if he doesn't get along with the group, everything comes grinding to a halt. It's unbelievable how quickly just one malcontent can shut down a whole show and end progress and have people not really want to come to work anymore.

It's true. In business, they call it the no asshole rule. Oh, okay. So we can say asshole on this podcast. Okay. You can even say more than that. You can say asshole on this podcast. Okay. You can even say more than that. You can say it twice. No, let me, because I'll tell you a very famous Simpsons story,

which is we had this wonderful writer at the show, so talented, that everybody thought he was an asshole. And so the bosses call him in for a meeting. They said, gee, we love the work you're doing, but people think you're an asshole, and we'll have to let you go unless you can stop being an asshole and he said let me think about it and he went home and he came back the next day and he said well i discussed it with my wife and she agreed i can't stop being an asshole so he got fired for that he got fired i love the fact that he said let me think about it

yeah you know he's true to himself and uh i mean only an asshole would think to themselves let me think about whether i want to stop being an asshole we let a couple of people go over the years because of that almost all of them have gone on to fabulous things. Giant careers, including this guy, who I'm a huge fan. I never thought he was an asshole. There was a period where everybody was a little precious. They thought of the Simpsons, and they weren't quite getting a launch. And the shows, it was interesting in that the shows stayed funny. In fact, they were really funny during this time, but they got a little meaner. There was a little more cruelty in the show. There was a little more savagery in the shows.

And that was it. I think it just kind of percolated up into the show. Mike, I could talk to you forever. I love your stories. Thank you so much for coming on. The one thing that I sort of walk away from this, which is a how to have a successful marriage. Yeah, I've learned that how to have a successful relationship, which is all the crazy ideas your partner can come up with. Just just say yes. Yes. That is my motto. I mean, you have a joie de vivre and a love of life that I think is contagious. And you make me want to take more adventures even if I don't come up with them. And just the way you've approached your career, you know, it really is. I think there's a lot to transfer.

I really want to do this experiment. We just put a bunch of smart, fun, talented people in a room and say, all right, you have to come up with something. I don't care what it is. I'll see you in a week. I think it would work. I think they're corporate people, and I think probably startups where they go, we need friction, and friction generates ideas,

and we need conflict. And I always say the only two good things ever created by friction are fire and babies. And on that note, thanks for coming thank you this is so much fun i can't shut up you'll see when you're my age i can't stop talking it's so embarrassing i've always said there's no such thing as weaknesses or strengths there's just characteristics and attributes and the goal is to put yourself in a place where those things are strong. And broadcast is a good place for people who don't stop talking.

I've made a career out of it too. Not so good at like family dinners. Mike, thanks so much. Please give Denise a big hug for me. I sure will. I'll talk to you real soon. If you enjoyed this podcast and would like to hear more, I sure will. I'll talk to you real soon. where you can get access to more than 35 Undemand classes about leadership, culture, purpose, and more. Until then, take care of yourself.

Take care of each other.