Blank Check with Griffin & David - The Last Airbender with Seaton Smith

Episode Date: March 18, 2016

Seaton Smith (Mulaney, Late Night with Seth Meyers) joins Griffin and David to discuss 2010’s agonizing, unwatchable fantasy adventure, The Last Airbender. When adapting the the original animated series, why did M. Night try to incorporate ALL 20 episodes of the first season into one movie? How do the casting choices reflect negatively on the film? Was Last Airbender so terrible that the BC crew in this episode talks about basically anything else? Yes, yes it is. Together, they examine the artist’s quest and how to avoid making your ‘Last Airbender,’ this being the first film Griffin ever auditioned for, on set stories for Chris Rock’s Top Five and Seaton meeting Woody Allen.

I'm the last podcaster. No, I'm here too. Yeah, I know. But this is the new strategy where we just steamroll into it. I get the dumb fucking... The stupid thing over with. I get that over with, and then we say, Hi, I'm Griffin.

I'm David. David Sims. Griffin Newman. Griffin Newman. Blank check with Griffin and David. This is a podcast about directors. We're giving free reign. Blank checks to make whatever they want.

And the good and bad. Yeah. The ill that can come of that. This is a miniseries that is titled Pod Night Shamac bad. Yeah. The ill that can come of that. This is a miniseries that's titled Podknife Shamacast. Yep. Great title.

Great miniseries. Well, that is the title. I won't say how I feel about it. I had differing ideas. Yeah. No, sure. This is now the ninth film

by M. Night Shyamalan. It's a weird day because of daylight savings. Is this eight or nine? Agreed. I'm all for an all. This is his oh boy

eighth movie ninth movie I don't know. I think this is his ninth movie. Yep. Okay. This is his ninth film.

It was released in 2010. It was his first adaptation. Yep. He wrote it. He wrote it. He wrote it. He wrote it. Produced, directed.

Yeah because he does his classic M. Night Mic Drop right the second the movie fucking ends, written, directed, and produced by M. Night Shyamalan. It's his first 3D movie? Uh-huh. I think he copy-edited it, too. He copy-edited it. Absolutely. He line-edited.

This was his first Nickelodeon picture. That's true. That's true. Yeah. He's for the kids. It's Next Generation. He's smart. Yeah, and I'd say this is the first film of his that's like, well, no, because Wide Awake

was a children's film. Yeah, sure. Right. Wide Awake is a kid's film. This is his first kid's film since he became a big deal. Yeah. He makes a nasty horror movie that's rated R and he follows it with like a kid-friendly film.

The blood red R rating. Yeah. We have a guest in the studio today. We do. He's already said two things. Yeah. I don't like waiting. studio today. We do. He's already said two things. Yeah. I don't like waiting. He's eating a salad.

There's no repercussions to my actions. He's eating a salad. It's got corn in it. I'm trying to see. Yeah, man. I got protein to fuck up. I got some feta cheese. It looks like a, yeah, yeah.

Corn, chicken, spinach. Yeah, I go crazy. I'm like, yo, man, put that shit in there, man. I gotta eat it. It's a super food. He's got two cans of Coke. Yeah, well, you know what? I bought one can.

I reached in. There were two cans in there. What? I figured one of these poor UCB improvers needed it, but I was like, fuck it. They fucked up. They got to learn about the hardships of New York. Seton Smith is our guest today. Seton Smith.

Welcome, sir. The great comedian and actor and- Former coworker. Former coworker, life lessons teacher to the improvisers of New York City. Seton and I worked together on a sitcom that I was then fired from and then Seton continued to have that job and then the job no longer

existed. That's a succinct version of the story, right? That's pretty much how it worked. But we're good friends. We had a month of maybe less than a month, but we would sit together in a car and talk about our futures together. No, it was really a nice, nice time. It was a really nice time.

Well, I was really naive. I'm not sure how naive you were, but I was so fucking naive. I was pretty fucking naive. Miss Simi used to always look at me and go like, you're really naive. Like, even episode 12, she was like, I can't believe how naive you are. What don't I know? What the fuck am I missing? Everything. It's crazy yeah no there's a whole there's a whole you realize how uh small

you are really in the grand scheme of everything but we would definitely we'd sit in this park car outside our hotel and like what car is this it was seton's car i didn't have a car she's seeing what drive me oh yeah i would drive him sometimes unless you would get your driver yeah there was a pa who would drive me sometimes uh sam stefanak would drive me yeah yeah he's awesome yeah he's a good guy. He's actually a comic now. He's doing like... Really?

Yeah. I see that he draws a lot. He's a good artist. This is a podcast in which Seaton and I catch up with people. Yeah, just guys. I want to hear. We used to work with. You hear about Julian?

Crazy. Back on crack cocaine. Back on it. When we knew him, he was on it. He was on it. Then he got off. You heard that. Nice to hear. Yeah, right. I got to tell you the sad note. Act three. Keep that cocaine. Back on it When we knew him He was on it He was on it Then it got off That was that Nice to hear

Yeah right But I gotta tell you This is a sad note Act 3 Keep that cocaine I'm sorry Seton would drive me We'd drive to

Urban Outfitters Cause we were like Oh we got money For the first time Sure And we would just be like And you had time to kill right You're in LA

We had a lot of time to kill We had time to kill Yeah If you want a drug habit Let me tell you, Charlie Sheen, like, you know what I'm saying? Think about how functional that man, he did 24 episodes a season. He was a hard, yeah. Fucked up.

Yeah. So, that makes you imagine, like, how much you don't know is not fucked up. Right. No, it's amazing. Here's the thing, you know, people always go, like, oh, actors are overpaid, it's, like, you know, so stupid, so easy, whatever. I do think acting is tough. That hasn't been said. Being on a multi-camera sitcom is the

single easiest job in history. That's like the gig you want the most, right? It's insane. And if you have any experience doing live performance, it's like, all you need is just have the instincts to once a week be able to turn it on and just do it in front of a crowd. But the rest of the week, they're like, hey, these are

really loose rehearsals because we're going to change the entire script in an hour. Right, you're going to get thrown new pages every day. So just hold the thing in your hand.

I actually, what I'm really happy about, like, it's going to be nerdy for a second, it kind of not taught me how to act, it taught me how to have

acting habits, which is the thing you really find for auditioning. You just go like, all right, I know when I'm going to, how many times I need

to read a script or memorize shit. Right. I know how to prepare. Like, I got this nice habit because i knew i was the weakest or most inexperienced guy on the set i would wake up like three hours before and just i'll get high and just play and so i would come into the set just very just warmed up like i'm ready to act and they were like we don't even need that much energy you can just sit down all right i'm ready to act baby i'm ready to act shit I got nothing else to say

for 10 days yeah oh my god it was 10 days actually you know what I wasn't even smoking weed then I was drinking I actually gained

like I was drinking half a bottle a night it was bad I was uh I gained so much weight between day 1 to day 10 like the wardrobe woman I forgot her name

but she was really like annoyed with me like she was like because all her work was undone? Yeah, because literally the episode where I had to wear that green suit, the thighs ripped. They had to

go sew it in between. I didn't know I had a problem. In retrospect, I had a problem. That's a great way to find out you have a problem. Yeah, but they gotta undo your seams in between scenes? That was a lot of liquor. Because the liquor was cheap as fuck, too, because it was L.A. It's L.A.

Is it cheap in L.A.? I've barely ever been to L.A. See, I was buying like $50 bottles of Bullet here, $40 bottles of Bullet. Sure, right. And there it was like the same bottle was like $19. And so I was just like, yeah, all right. Well, it's time to get real. And I had no friends.

I was like sitting in the bottle, table. Yeah, and all this time. If I hadn't been fired, I'd be in there in the car with you's time to get real. And I had no friends. I was sitting in the bottle, table. Yeah, and all this time. If I hadn't been fired, I'd be in there in the car with you telling you to stop drinking. No, you were getting pussy. I remember you. You were getting quality pussy. Oh, we can't talk about that.

Let's talk about it. Oh, my bad. We may have hit the first topic Griffin actually doesn't want to talk about. The one thing he refuses to talk about. Oh, really? My bad. I don't want to talk about anything that makes me look cool. Yeah, in any way.

I'll say the most embarrassing. You had a new Asian girl every night. It was crazy. I was like, man, you got a fetish. That's a perfect segue into Last Airbender. Yeah, perfect segue. Right, right. So I, right, that is not true.

Come on, Griff, lean into it. Lean into it. No, but M.I. Chomlin should have had an Asian fetish for this film. That's what I'm saying. Yeah, yeah, yeah. We're joking about that I did, but he should have. He needed one. Wasn't Sokka and the girl white, though?

Oh, hella white. Yeah, that was weird. And the boy. Wasn't the boy white, too? People were pissed off about how white the people were. Pretty white movie. But you know which people aren't white? All the villains.

They're Indian. They all were from the Daily Show. I was going to say they're Indian, but they're not actually all Indian actors. That's the other offensive thing is they're all entirely different types of brown. Yeah, because it's like Cliff Curtis, he's like a Maori actor He's from New Zealand

Then Dev Patel is like Dev Patel is a British Indian Right And then Sean Taub is like He's like Iranian Right So it's right it's just sort of like I don't know You know over there

Yeah different people who are brown in a general sense But here's my question because I was reading about this Like they cast Dev Patel. Did we say the last Airbender? Oh, yeah, we're doing the last Airbender. We're talking about the last Airbender adaptation of Avatar. The last Airbender.

I saw the TV show. I'm the only one in the room who saw the TV show, right? I've seen it. Like, I've seen a few episodes, but I never did it. Yeah, I'm just going to say, just put my position,

I saw the TV show twice, like, from the first episode to the last because it was an awesome show. I mean, that's the main reason we have you in here today, you know? I've always wanted to have you as a guest on the podcast, but I needed an expert of the show. The show is a perfect piece of art. That's the stance we need here because David and I can explain why this movie is bad just on a movie level.

But I need you to explain to us why it's bad on an adaptation level. I don't know. It's a little, yeah. But about, I want to get, because I just saw, so Dev Patel plays Zuko, right? But he was cast late. And it was originally going to be Jesse McCartney. Correct. Who's a really white person. One of the whitest people.

Blonde, blue eyes, pretty Aryan, Hitler, cream pie. And I couldn't figure this out. Did they then recast the villains around him? They were like, oh, if Dev Patel's going to be this kid, then everyone else should be like racially similar i mean i don't even know how that is what i have gathered um i i will later in the episode i want to save this i know you hate it when i read stuff but i really think this is worth reading uh someone like two years ago right so this is like four years after the film was released who worked on the film anonymously in some position on the crew, posted on like an Avatar fan message board

and was like, you know what? It's been like four years. Paramount's not going to sue me. They're not making another movie. Right. Let me explain to you everything that went wrong on the set of this film. And the guy has this epic rant that explains a lot of it. Oh, please dig that up. I want to find

that original script. I want to see if his vision was that bad in the first place. The guy addresses a lot of it, and I have a few people I know who've worked on it, some little pieces and stuff like that, but let's try to, for at least 10 minutes, talk about the movie as a movie before we try to figure out what went wrong in a production standpoint. Absolutely.

So it's based on a Nickelodeon show that aired in like 05, something like like right in the mid 2000s. I think it started even earlier, right? Or something like that. I don't remember. 05 to 08. 05 to 08.

I remember computers were not as good then. That's all I remember. I remember I was illegally downloading it. It was in the early ages when like torrents were just a new thing. Yeah. You had to work to get each episode. Yeah, that was the frontier. I remember.

I lived in England. No, shit. No, I actually watched it the first time when when dvds were getting in the mail that's it oh yeah you had it on netflix was a new thing yeah you would you would be like watch it and you'd mail it back and be like all right come on come on waiting for the next three episodes yeah you only could watch four episodes at a time that's how i watched buffy oh god i remember yeah buffy the season five i watched that. Even though it was a horrible season with that fucking God. Whatever, keep going. I kind of like season five.

Whatever. Yeah, let's look. So the show was always, from my understanding, designed to be like finite. Like the guys came in and they were like, here's the whole story. It would take us like- It's like in books. Right. Right?

Like it's like book one, book two. Yeah. Like there are the seasons, right? Exactly, yeah. And it was like three seasons, right? Three seasons. Yeah. It was like water, fire, earth.

And they were like, here's the whole deal. This is how much time we need to tell this whole epic tale. And Nickelodeon was like, thumbs up. Like anime. It's inspired by anime. It's not Japanese, but it's like in the same style. That's serial style. Yeah, both from an art perspective and from a storytelling perspective,

it was definitely very influenced by sort of like old Eastern mythic storytelling. Right. And it was just really much the show was following the day-to-day of a god trying to figure out how to be a god. Right. And his friends and their own epic arcs and stuff. It was awesome. So I'm going to make you repeat this thing that you said right before we started recording. Oh, sure.

Well, the problem, okay, is that there's two philosophies when it comes to making a movie versus a TV show. Where TV shows tell you the day-to-day things. Right. Movies are stories that you tell your grandkids about. So the protagonist, hopefully if they live, they would tell their grandkids about this movie. But they wouldn't tell their grandkids about the TV show. Like Seinfeld tells George about his day. Right. It's the guys you see at the end of the day for drinks.

And you just say like, hey, you want to hear something kind of crazy that happened. Yeah, what happened to you today? While in Rocky VI, he's walking around the tables telling people, yo, let me tell you some shit I did in the first movie. It was crazy. Yeah, because it was fucking Rocky. It was fine. It was a great movie. You're like, oh, yeah, no, I know that story.

That's that movie that's great. Yeah, it was a fucking great movie. Tell me the movie again, champ. That's the fucking, so, and that's the movie with Avatar. He tried to make a day-to-day story into one big, long, epic shit. So it's really like holding you hostage at a fucking party.

There's way too much happening in this movie. Wait, because... Can you tell me? Because that's... What I don't know is how much of the show did he put in this movie?

The whole thing. It's the whole thing? The whole thing. Because I was like, did he just do, like, the first season? No. He didn't know.

He did, like, he did the first whole season, yes. Like, the first... Jesus Christ. It's like 20 episodes. That boat scene, we know he escapes the boat. In the TV show, that took two hours to get there. And in the movie, he got

there in 15 minutes. And so it was like you couldn't really get the scope of this village being destroyed, this big great king kid who's suffering. Yeah. Like the relationships never really... No, none of the relationships were... There's so many fucking characters in it. But here's the thing that really no none of the relationships it doesn't no because there's so many fucking characters but here's the thing

here's the thing that really was important the relationships weren't that deep in the show because the tone of the show was like a kid story

there once was a kid who dot dot problem in this movie they're not going with that tone they're almost going like going like almost Christopher Nolan

like what would happen in the real world except we don't have the budget for the real world so let's just bring some green screen in some green screen yeah

and just shoot it like it's a fucking ABC family TV show well let's say okay so like the first I have not seen many episodes of the cartoon show but I did

I've seen a few I've seen the first few I saw the first couple and I just like wanted to watch more and I was like this is a whole thing and I need to

set some time aside to do this yeah and I never got around to it I mean yeah it's a few hours I mean because it's half hour so I really suggest it yeah no I never got around to it. I mean, yeah, it's a few hours. I mean, because it's half hours, so I really suggest it. Yeah, no, I'm gonna do it.

It's worth the binge. I've been told by many people. I also want to paper over the memory of this movie, like, with, like, the actual good show. I'd love to scrub this out of my brain, and I also, while watching this a bunch of times, I had this thing thought of, like, oh, this would be great if it was cool. Yeah. You know, like, while watching the movie, like,

oh, I hate this, but I'd love it if it was good. Yeah, no, I mean, that's what the show would do. It's all based on these fun principles and they learn, they're all stupid. In the Miss movie, it was like, they accepted shit way too much. Way too fast. They find him in like an ice ball under the,

and like two seconds later, they're like, we gotta, this is our best friend now and we gotta help him out, like no matter what he wants. And he's their best friend. And he has a yak, and they don't talk about it. They don't talk about his flying yak at all in this movie. Barely.

Remember when they got the flying yak, he escaped the boat, and he was like, all right, I got to go find this temple. And they were like, we'll go with you. And he was like, nah. He was like, no, we're going with you. And he's like, all right, sure. I'm like, what kind of fucking avatar are you, nigga? And then, remember when they finally got to the temple? She was like, by the way, what's your name?

What the fuck were you doing the whole flying trip? That whole time? Took you that long to find out? They were on a yak, right, for like six, seven hours. They could have. They didn't talk about nothing? Had a conversation. Just sat there in silence?

This is absurd. Yeah, I was just like, this doesn't even make sense. But that's the problem, right? He's squishing it. He's squishing it. And it's not even a long movie. It's like a hundred minutes long. Yeah, no, that movie should have been like Harry Potter in there.

It should have been like seven movies. Right. If that, even if that, like, there was nothing really to bring to it. The TV show kind of did it all. Like, you really are just going to try to do a bigger epic version of the TV show, and that requires way too much money. I mean, the cartoon really went crazy. Well, I know we're trying to talk about the movie itself,

but it's just so fucking stupid. More interesting to talk about the things surrounding the movie than actually go through. We usually try to go through the plot of the film, but it's like. I'm angry about the $4. I'm angry. You did4. Like, I really... I'm angry. You did HD? I did...

I did Amazon HD. I just did them on TV because I wanted to do something else while I was doing it. Of course. And then at first, the first 15 minutes,

I wrote down funny lines and then after that, I was like, this is gross. Yeah, exercise in futility. Yeah, I'd rather watch a Trump rally. So I told you guys

this right before we started recording, but this was like the first movie I auditioned for I like dropped out of college and came to New York and Seaton and I have the same agent but it was at the time he was an assistant at an agency and I had like

met with him at a diner and I was like I want to drop out of college and he was like okay I want to figure out what it's like to have a client let's like try this together and this was like I I believe it was literally the day after I flew back here to New York where I grew up, and it was, like, okay, we have an audition scheduled for you the next day. Wow.

And it was this. Maybe two days later, but it was, like, the first thing. And my sister had watched the cartoon show. My sister's younger. And so I, like, bought the DVD of the first volume that was just like the first three episodes or whatever watch that with her i was auditioning to play soka soka is the brother yes yeah the jackson rathbone right plays him now in the cartoon show that character is funny he's like the comic relief right he's like the sort of bumbling cod right the best character

in the show because I'm sorry the best ever show because each season he actually grows he starts off as this weak funny character and then the last episode

he grows into this man who like leads a fucking army it's really like a beautiful thing to watch sure

like if I was going to do the movie I'm sorry go ahead the advantage of a TV show you can build an

arc you know yeah you can develop someone tell a whole story about their life if you're doing sort of broad unsubtle story time what we were saying is like it's a kid show and it's mythical and it's sort of like you know broad strokes and whatever but if you're going

slowly like that you can still build up emotional connections to the characters whereas if the characters are this broad and like 17 things are happening per minute it's just white noise um but but so at the time when I at least when I auditioned and I had like three pages to read because the script was under lock and key. This is what I knew, right? I watched the thing. I was like, okay, this guy's the funny guy. I can stand here and say funny stuff.

The audition sides I had were mostly him making jokes about what was going on. Not in like a wisecracking way but like he was the character who called out the reality so the audience could relate to this crazy world and being like what's that flying dog thing right like jokes like that right and it was like okay so that's like the tone of the thing i guess this and that and i just watched the cartoon i was like this seems pretty connective the first 15

minutes of this movie are like direct translation of the first 15 minutes of the first episode in a way where i knew he was trying to adapt the whole first season, and I was like, there's no way you're going to catch up with this, because you're going like- Well, so it's the thing where he was writing on a sign, and the letters were big, and then he had to start making the letters really small. Yeah, then he had to start making the letters smaller to fit them all in. You know what? It's interesting.

I think it shows you how much of a genius Christopher Nolan is, and that he understood you take the elements and not the actual story. Because I'm thinking about when he did this whole last three Batman movies, he didn't just take one comic and just transcribe it. He had to combine 15 different stories. I'm like, yeah, that's a male symphony. This is a different medium, and if you're going to make it work, you got to adapt it and change the story and not just try to do the same thing.

But when I was auditioning, what they were saying was, the plan was they were going to make three movies. The plan at the onset. And they said that out loud. You know, Shyamalan keeps talking about he's going to make a second one. But the original plan was, and this was two years before the movie came out, so I think it stopped and started a few times between when I auditioned and when it actually came out.

Yeah. Their plan was they were going to make it Lord of the Rings style, and they were going to shoot three movies at the same time. Like, they were going to commit whole hog to the big picture. Right. And he had, like, I don't know if he had written all three scripts, but he had it blocked out of, like, how he was adapting all three movies. Ooh, I can see that.

That makes sense. It's a horrible idea, but it makes sense. Right. Lord of the Rings was the one case where that worked, but it's crazy that it worked. Yeah. And the whole thing there was they saved money making those movies because they made all three at the same time. If the first one had bombed, they would have gone bankrupt as a company.

But once they worked, because they were able to build these sets and then keep them for two years and have all the actors under one contract, they like saved money. So this movie costs $150 million. Right. The original plan was to make three at once for $250 million and release them like one a year. Um,

and then I think everyone sort of got cold feet about it. Sure. They were a little freaked out about it. I think there was this whole thing of like, you know, once you're at that kind of budget, you can't just be making a movie for kids. You have to make something that like grownups and teenagers want to see too.

And that whole Christopher Nolan tone thing, I think came in with them being like, we got to make it seem more badass. So like teenagers don't. Dark Knight comes out. Oh, wait around when they're making this. Yeah.

And they don't want to like it. Like you have Nickelodeon stamped on the thing. And a lot of cynical 17-year-olds are going to be like, I want to fucking watch a Nickelodeon movie. Even less 17-year-olds, but like 26-year-olds. What's your audition story? Or do you not have an audition story? It was just that when I auditioned, the character was funny. Oh, sure.

Did you meet Knight? I didn't. No, no, no. Okay, but so the opening 15 minutes of this film. We should just note they cast Jackson Rathbun, who's like 28. Yeah. He's supposed to be like a teenager. Yeah, that was really wrong.

Yeah. It was like. Yeah. And he's like the ninth lead from Twilight. Like, that's all he is. He's Jasper. Yeah. No, the reason I brought up the audition thing was A, that they were trying to make all three

at the same time, and B, that the script seemed fundamentally different at the time I auditioned. Yeah. So, like, a lot of shit changed, you know? But, like, when I auditioned, I a lot of shit changed. But when I auditioned I was like, oh this seems like that cartoon show. This seems like the right sort of idea. First 15 minutes are just the first episode.

Done almost minute for minute. They're in the water village. The ice town. This is the one section of the movie that I think actually looks kind of epic and expensive. Yeah. Yeah.

They're like in this crazy ice environment. It doesn't look CGI. It looks like they really flew them to some place and dropped them off in the middle of nowhere. Yeah. No, it was a waste of time, but it was there. We were there. Isn't the prettiest part of the movie? It looks like a movie.

Yeah, they shot in Greenland. Yeah. And then guess where they shot after that? Philadelphia. Yep. All of M. Night's movies are shot in Philadelphia. M. Night's obsessed with Philadelphia. This is the first of films that isn't set in Philadelphia. Well, he wants to be Woody Allen-y.

Yeah. I mean, every director wants to have their things, right? I mean, like, I don't know. Now that I'm in the system and then out of the system again, like, I had this whole, when I was a filmmaker in college, I had this perception of filmmakers as these holy creatures. And now that I work in the system, I'm like, it just seems, I can't talk shit.

Hold on, I got to get work one day. These are just people trying not to get fired. Yeah, they're just human beings. They're all human beings. That's the thing. It's just like, they're just, yeah. But I mean, I also think like, yeah, you're right. I want to see what happened how these things fucked up

because you're right most people are capable of making a shit he knows how to tell a story so it almost goes like he told a story a few times so he knows how to tell a story so something else

had to have gone yeah maybe it was the scale of it he's never worked on this scale before right should I just read this fucking thing I found

oh Jesus let's just do that because I want to know what happened and then I can react off that because I really I was late happened. And then I can react off that because I really, I was late to this podcast because of how bad

this movie was. I was passive aggressive. I was like, man, fuck this mother fucker. Wasting my whole Sunday doing drugs. So this was the company story, right?

Right. M. Night's daughter was a fan of the show. Yeah, right, right, right. She watched it together. She watched it as the character for Halloween. He watched it, and he was like, this is really interesting. He was at a weird point in his career.

He had sort of, like, fallen into this rut. Made a bunch of shit. And he made it weirder. Right, and he made it weirder. But he saw it, and he felt like, this is how he tells it. He had this sense of, like, this could be, like, a Lord of the Rings style like epic mythology franchise thing and went to Paramount went to Nickelodeon and the show was successful but it wasn't like Spongebob where like transcended generations and it was so clear that it entered the public psyche

where it was like huge name brand thing it was a show with a very committed audience but you're also dealing with like a lot of kids who might grow out of it and then the adults are like, whatever, right? So he goes to Paramount and he's like, I want to make three movies $250 million. And there was a lot

of back and forth where they were like, this is a big risk. You're coming off of two big flops. The one before that was successful, but everyone hated it.

Like, you know, so there's all this sort of finagling and then he casts four white actors. Mm-hmm. Then Jesse McCartney drops out because of scheduling conflicts with a concert tour.

And he casts Dev Patel, and Slumdog had, like, just come out. Right. Like, he was the guy. And then they recast everyone else. I don't know if they'd cast the other parts, but they recast the rest of the Fire Tribe all around him. So they all looked like him, which then creates like, and once again, looked like him. Not people of his ethnic

background, but just people who vaguely looked like him. There's not a lot of Indians working and acting, so that was their handicap. Yeah. Then this is the first movie he's an Indian-American. The first movie he's made with Indians, basically, since his debut. Since his debut, which he was the lead in.

Which was like a student film, basically. It's called Praying with Anger, and it's M. Night Shyamalan going to India to try to reconnect with a sense of his father. I remember reading about that. Was it good? Nope. No, no. But, you know, it's better than this movie. You know what?

Who was the editor on Sixth Sense? Because I bet you he has a good-ass editor who quit. You know what I mean? Because, you Sixth Sense? Because I bet you he has a good-ass editor who quit. You know what I mean? Because, you know, Steven Spielberg. Remember Jaws wasn't good, and the editor came in there, that chick came in there and cleaned it up? Maybe he has a good clean-up hitter. Something happened.

Okay, so this is from a Last Airbender message board, like a fan message board. And the guy writes, production wrapped five years ago, so I don't think Paramount's going to care. They know it bombed. Right? Because he was hinting at the fact that it's stories from the set. And they were like, come on, tell me. He's like so I don't think Paramount's gonna care. They know it bombed, right? Because he was like hinting at the fact that it's stories from the set. And they were like, come on, tell me. It's like, I don't know, confidentiality. Sure, okay.

What it came down to was M. Night really was the only one who knew the show and what he was doing. The first draft of the screenplay, gorgeous. Hence, Breike giving him the okay, who I guess was whoever greenlit it at the studio. The producers were actually in charge of at least 80% of production casting not so much they clearly never bothered

to watch the show nor had the ghost writer who did the final screenplay oh shit damn he doesn't have a lot of clout at this point right like they're giving him a big big budget and his last couple movies are flops oh fuck it took it away from nikola nicola whatever her name is who who plays um katana yeah well she's the daughter of like a really rich person right was hired because from Nicola, Nicola, whatever her name is, who plays Katana. Yeah, well, she's the daughter of like a really rich person, right?

Was hired because she's the daughter of someone one of the producers owed a favor to as Hollywood loves its nepotism. Her father is like

a billionaire, right? Yeah, he's like a financier. I was reading about her. It's funny because Shyamalan said like, I cast her because

I've never seen a young actor this good since Haley Joel Osment. Like, I had to have her in my movie. His quote was, he did a lot of press for this movie too. He didn't like, I guess I fucked it up.

I got to back off. He was front and center doing kids' choice awards, getting slimed. He was fucking doing it. But he said in interviews, he was like, when I saw her audition, I said, I can't make this movie without this actor. I refuse to make it unless I can cast this person. She's the only choice, and the only time I ever said that otherwise was Haley Joel Osment. Now, I think nepotism in Hollywood is kind of like a bullshit often, because it's a money-driven

industry, and people don't care if your dad is whoever if you're not going to make the money. And there are a ton of unsuccessful actors who are the children of huge movie stars who have middling careers that I think are testaments to that. Right. I'm going to disagree with a little thing of I don't think it's a money driven industry. I disagree. I think it's a love driven industry. Chris Rock said it best in a sense. He said, and I love this quote, he was like, this isn't a real business. Like if you put in your if you make double the that you put into the movie, that's not a real profit. Your shoes cost $4 to make.

They charge you $84. That's a real profit. This is a job of love. That's true. We are, I mean, this is, now I'm adding to the point. Yeah. We're jesters. We're still court jesters.

We're just overpaid court jesters. But we're really still only dancing the 1% because they're the only ones that can afford to make these movies. And, yes, I mean, the middle class of the world, they get to give money to us a little bit, but I mean, we're not appealing to them. We're appealing to them. And some of these movies don't make any money, like such as The Last Airbender.

That's why, yeah, what do you think? Yeah, that billionaire daughter's in there for a reason. She's in there for a reason. That's the point I want to correct, is like everyone who does it at the level that we do it does it because we love it because otherwise we do anything else that's easier and has a clear path to success right absolutely we love it and we're also broken people who don't know how to do anything else we're fucked at this point right but like at an executive level those people just want

to make money like the people who are putting the stamp down and going yes m night you can make this you can't make this. In the sense that they want to make money for the company because their job is to not get fired. Absolutely. And there's crazy turnout. I agree on that. I just don't understand how they feel that way. I'm wondering where it comes from.

I know where it comes from. Oh, it's insane. It's just like weird how- The fear. And then it just like metastasized into like being your entire raison d'etre. Yeah. And being an artist now, I realize how much if you man, if you make decisions based off fear, how much it fucks up your art every time. Oh, yeah.

You never make anything good. We go, oh, maybe we shouldn't. When you start saying that, just give up because you're done. It's not going to be good. Whatever you do, it's not going to be good. And I've been saying the last couple weeks on the podcast,

there's this turning point that I think happens like late in the water, but definitely is in effect with the happening. We're like, M. Night used to be the guy who makes scary movies. And then he becomes the guy whose movies seem scared. Like, he seems terrified

by the choices he's making. This movie seems a little scary. Very uncertain, you know? I agree with that. Her father... You gotta stop doing things right. You gotta do things just bold. Go ahead.

We just gotta fucking instincts, you know? Because that's like, whatever got you where you were in the first place was whatever innate instincts you have rather than like, you know, didactically thinking through it. There's a reason why

crazy people are successful in this business because they look at fear differently than the rest of us. Yeah. They see fear and go, hee, hee, hee, and giggle.

Yeah, let's do it. Yeah, look at all that fear. I think he's like that a little bit. I think so too, yeah. You have to be to be like, give me 250 million bucks, I'll make you three movies. Like, this is going to work out. This is a miserable fucking life. But to that point, be like, give me $250 million. I'll make you three movies. Like, this is going to work out.

This is a miserable fucking life. But to that point, when you're asking for $250 million and the head of Paramount's like, hey, this guy's got a lot of money. His daughter wants to be in the movie. Yeah. You want to make it work? Let's make it work. Some kind of handshake deal.

I mean, they said it was a favor, but it also might have been some sort of thing where like he pitched him the budget or whatever. Finish your thing. Okay. Finish your thing. Well, I want to make one point too. Who gives a fuck? I really honestly,

I'm on his side. Especially if they're good. Whatever. I mean, she's not good, but nobody's good. Literally, what's so important? Artistically, sure, but fuck it,

we're all going to die. Here's the point they're getting to. Oh, agreed, 100%. We're all going to die. I agreed, Steve. We are all going to die. She's still around, that actress. It's not like she just vanished.

She's on Bates Motel and stuff. She was the young female lead in Transformers Age of Extinction, who the guy has to argue he's able to fuck because of Romeo and Juliet. Have you seen that movie? No, I only saw one of the Transformers. It's the fourth one. Is it good? No, it's not good.

She plays Mark Wahlberg's daughter, and he finds out she has a boyfriend. Oh, God. Can I just sidebar with this quickly? Please. Transformers Age of Extinction. Why are you rushing through this podcast? Where do you got to go? Because I know how long these podcasts can take.

I like sidebars, too. Transformers Age of Extinction, right? Mark Wahlberg was supposed to have had this daughter when he was in high school, which is not correct because she's 20 and Mark Wahlberg's like 47, right? Right. But the idea is prom night. and Mark Wahlberg's like 47, right? But the idea is prom night. Before prom night,

his high school girlfriend was pregnant with this girl, Nicola Peltz, and died in labor. Man, I forgot about all this. Yeah, right. And so Mark Wahlberg doesn't allow her to have a boyfriend. Single dad doesn't let her have a boyfriend.

Because he's like, if you have a boyfriend, you're going to die before your prom night. And also he's an inventor. He's an inventor, of course. He's a Texan inventor played by Mark Wahlberg. He's an insane person.

Who's supposed to be like 34 years old within the reality of the film, right? And he doesn't want his daughter to date anybody because then he's afraid she'll die before prom night. Wow. And then he finds out that she has a secret boyfriend when the robots start attacking and he comes to rescue her

and then they all up in a car together. And he's like, wait a second, how old are you? And he's like, I'm 24. And he's like, fuck it second, how old are you? And he's like, I'm 24. And he's like, fucking Romeo and Juliet. Oh no, he doesn't say Romeo and Juliet. He goes, fucking illegal, I'm gonna have you arrested. You're fucking my daughter, she's underage. And the guy opens up his wallet and takes out a

laminated card with the laws, the Romeo and Juliet laws that state that even if a person is underage, if they are consenting and the other person is within five years of their age it's legal. Ew.

And Michael Bay has like a fucking 15 second close up of fine legalese like print on a laminated card saying like this is why it's okay

for this guy to fuck this 17 year old. That's gross. So that's where her career is at now. Yeah. She's that character. You said why does it matter?

Nicola was hired because she's the daughter of someone one of the producers. Nepotism. Her audition date was subpar at best. In having to cast her, they had to cast a guy who could pass as her brother. Hence, Jackson. Oh, I see. Okay. So because she was the first piece, the cast started becoming whiter because they had

to cast around her. No, but they also cast this little kid because he had a like martial arts video that he like sent in yeah but he's totally white right his audition was actually pretty funny he's a funny guy clearly had seen the show too bad the producers felt the movie didn't have time for intentional humor and cut all of that out of the script noel was the only one who was honestly openly auditioned was chosen based on talent he just need extra help acting because with a lot

of it being green screened he was talking to air a lot of the time. That's the kid who plays Ong. He plays the main character and he was basically cast because he could do

all these martial arts. He had a shaved head. And he shaved his head and he drew an arrow on it and he did a video. That's how you get a fucking role. That's how you get a role.

That's how you get a role. You fucking dressed apart. Leave no imagination. Give a fuck. He did it. Some lesson actors. Dude's super Caucasian but kind of he's got a funny face. He's got a funny face. I don't know how else He did it. Lesson actors. Dude's super Caucasian, but kind of...

He's got a funny face. He's got a funny face. I don't know how else to put it. He's one of those actors who in 1940 they would have cast to play every different ethnicity. He has these cheeks. He has these sort of chubby cheeks. I don't know how to describe him. He is sort of funny looking.

If you recall, they initially signed on Jesse McCartney as Zuko. Why? Because otherwise the lead actor roster would be starring two unknown kids you've never heard of and that guy who played a minor character in Twilight. So Jesse McCartney was supposed to be the name in the cast. And someone with a brain realized, wait a minute, this show is kind of anime-esque and we're hiring

a bunch of white kids, so what do they do? It took them that long to get that in, okay, go ahead. They'd already announced he'd been cast and everything. Because they couldn't can Niccolo without someone being really ticked, Jesse willingly bowed out and went with another project offered at the time, which I think might have been a movie I was in with him. Even still. Don't you want to say that sentence one day, huh?

Yeah. Might have been a movie with him, I don't remember. No, because I was working with him and he was like, yeah, I wish I could have done it, it was a great script, but, you know, just recording my new album, and I was like, but then why are you here working on an indie where you don't have your own dressing room? Beware the Gonzo was a high school movie.

I gotta learn how to bullshit better. I'd be telling you truthful shit. Yeah, I can't believe he kept that up even on the set of Beware the Gonzo. Wow. Look, I'm not accusing a lot. I don't know. Timeline might have been wrong. Whatever. Even still, they needed... They needed another name that couldn't be another white kid, Def Patel. This guy

misidentifies just given Oscar winning performance which he wasn't even nominated for. So in the Cyon, getting him, they had to match the rest of the Fire Nation which is why it turned

to Heroic White Kids versus Evil Brown People. And then it was horribly budgeted. The opening, All Nice and Pretty in Greenland cost big bucks. And then they realized with a story about people

manipulating elements that couldn't believably be done in camera with practical effects. They had to rebudget and give most of the money to ILM for post-production. Wow. So they like while shooting realized we don't have the money to shoot the things we want to shoot because we have to allocate

that money for later. Every set is crazy. It's all green screen but it's like you gotta be in like an ice temple. You gotta be in a fire boat. Everything's like Yeah but we've been doing movies long enough. We could fake that and You could plan fucking student film people can make a fucking ice temple look. But you gotta

plan. You gotta plan ahead. You can't fucking be in the middle of a set and go, oh shit. You go from the beautiful SWT, which I guess is where they were in Greenland, to everything looking dingy because everything else was shot in Pennsylvania. The Fire Nation Royal Palace and old high school in Philadelphia.

That's crazy. They like converted this high school and put fucking green screens up to like then later on add pillars. You barely see it. I know. It's just some pillars. Right. Parts of the Earth Kingdom, Redding, Pennsylvania.

Everything that was not the NWT was some sets built in front of a giant green screen, old empty aircraft hangar, the outskirts of Philadelphia. ILM was rushed despite most of the movie being left up to them. You had novice directors hired by producers to oversee that process. That's how come the pebble dance happened. Sadly, I don't even know what that's referencing. The pebble dance? Yeah. Isn't that the bit in The Earth Nation where they're

kind of like lobbing pebbles at each other? Oh yeah. I don't know. Sadly at that point M. Night was just tired of arguing with the overheads gave up and collected his paycheck. If you look at the movie's premiere in red carpet footage, you can tell his excitement and happiness is fake. Bright had a little say in the film, despite being listed as executive producers. That

title... Is that supposed to be Kathleen Kennedy? Is that what they mean by bright? I don't know. No, that's like the people, the avatar people. Oh, gotcha. The creators of the show. Yes, cool. That title was a fancy way of saying they created the show, and it was based on this and that. The actual producers who were Kathy Kennedy and Frank Marshall

didn't know what they were dealing with or only interested in Quick Buck. Breitk and M. Night gave up on the film for the same reasons other people working on the film were paying to deal with. They were going to themselves only want the final product

as quickly as possible and the money would presumably make them. And then the last sentence is at least they hired good caterers. The food was great on that set. And that's important. You put some good food on a set, you can tolerate a lot of bullshit. So that's really depressing.

It is. It's a sad story. It's like super, super depressing. It's not surprising. It's not surprising. It sounds like he really did want to do it and probably had. Look, the guy says first script was gorgeous. I don't know if it was gorgeous.

I bet you it was. I know having read the first two pages of the fucking script. It was more faithful. It was a little better. It felt fundamentally like a film that would be fun to watch. The producer just says, you know what? This movie doesn't need humor. What kind of a decision is that to make?

Okay, so I went back and read some Vulture interviews with him from the time of the release of the film. Because I was like, they're saying he was defeated by the time he was promoting. Is that true? And they said, talk about the difference in tone. And he went, well, the show is really like slapstick. Like it has a lot of broad comedy in it. And I felt like that's more for kids and it wouldn't work within this context. But it feels like to me,

they hired the DP who shot Lord of the Rings for this. Right. This is coming off the Christopher Nolan boom of like, everything's got to be gritty and realistic and literally dark. They also had this plan to do like, here's a big epic story in advance. We could do three films. Fuck it. Let's do one at a time. But the plan is still, this movie is kind of one

third of a story. And it even starts with like, there's the opening title and then it says, Book One, Water. And if you haven't watched the cartoon show, you're like, Book One? What are you talking? It's paid full ticket price for a movie. I'm only getting one book? What are you talking about? But I think... But that's a movie. I'm only getting one book? What are you talking about? But I think...

But that's Lord of the Rings-y. I think once they put that money into it, they got scared and they were like, we have to make sure this is as not kiddy-ish as possible so that it doesn't just appeal to Nickelodeon fans. So in doing that, they were like, let's take anything that's fun out of this movie. You know?

But the movie's not violent. No. It's not like anything crazy happens, right? Like, because they can't go, it's a PG movie. It's rated PG. Mm-hmm. So, like, I mean,

they say Asif Manvi dies at the end. Someone says, like, he died. And I'm like, he got, like, hit with, like, a water jet. He's in a water bubble. Like, is he dead? I didn't get that one. I don't fucking remember.

You gave up on this movie. Oh, my God, yeah. Because I remember, I remember the cartoon. I kept going up. Like, I just go, I don't know, I. I remember the cartoon and I kept going, like I just go, I don't know, I just,

the angles and the cameras was like, you're not even trying. It seemed like they weren't even trying to make a good shot. I mean, he blocks every single fight

the exact same way. Yeah, like the novice director thing makes sense and I was like, oh yeah, he's probably the executive. Like when I hear

George Lucas talk about making Star Wars, he said he's felt more like an executive more than a director because he was just a lot of deliating. Like yeah, you direct that, talk about making Star Wars, he said he's felt more like an executive more than a director. Yeah. Because he was just a lot of deliating. Like, yeah, you direct that.

You direct that. I think he'd always been hands-on because his films weren't really effects-y. You know, they're very practical and they're actor-based. You know, even the horror films are like, the horror comes from the angle of the camera, the shadow of the person. It's things that you can deal with that are tangible on set. Right. And this, I think, was a lot of delegating with special effects teams and second unit

directors and these huge productions. Also, if you're fucking two weeks into filming and they're like, oh, M. Night, we just realized we can't use these six locations you wanted. Like, we were gonna fly from Greenland to, like, New Zealand or whatever and film there, and now we have to use a fucking... Where do we use it? He goes,

I don't know, I know a good high school in Philadelphia. We could film there. You know, I think the guy's just losing his mind while he's filming it. Trying not to have a breakdown. And like you say, they had to get it out and at a certain point, it was like, okay, alright. Woody Allen's a fucking genius. He knows

Well, he knows not to make the last air band. Yeah, he just knows how to just go like, nah, I'm not gonna make those big ass movies. Stop stressing me out. Give me a few dollars. Leave me alone. Right, right. You know what I heard the coolest thing about him? That he figures out where he wants to have vacation the next summer and that's where he shoots his movies.

I love that. You know what's another thing Woody Allen does? I know Woody Allen's a very controversial figure, but inarguably he has never made The Last Airbender. Yeah. You know, like you can't argue with that. And it's a long career of not making The Last Airbender. He had many chances to make The Airbender. He makes like you can't argue and it's a long career it's a long career he had many chances to make the airbender yeah he makes the movie a year yeah um like with that kind of odds almost anyone would make the last airbender but he knows like actors want to work with him all actors who work with him agree to do it for scale so his budgets are small and he's able to get like

eight big actors and then he goes to foreign financers and he's like i got eight big actors and they're like great we'll give you the money he picks the place where he wants a vacation he always has a script ready to go so he can start as soon as the last one finishes he also really smartly this is a thing that other people don't do he fucking budgets in from the beginning like three weeks of reshoots huh i didn't know that because he's like i do not trust myself to not fuck this up the first time. Yeah, yeah. And so there are tons of times where he's, Purple Rose of Cairo,

was originally supposed to be Michael Keaton playing the Jeff Daniels part. Michael Keaton, one of my absolute favorite actors of all time. He was coming off this heat. Everyone wanted Michael Keaton. Cast him in the role. And then it was like, this guy's way too modern. This movie takes place in the Great Depression. Michael Keaton's Cast him in the role. And then it was like, this guy's way too modern. This movie takes place in the Great Depression. Michael Keaton's innately a modern guy.

And it wasn't working for him. So he was like, I'm sorry. Three weeks of footage cut out, and he had the budget to start over the movie from scratch and cast Jeff Daniels. And similarly, there was a thing with Diane Wiest, Bullets Over Broadway, where the first three weeks, the performance wasn't working. And she was like, I think I don't know this character.

I can't do this. You should just fire me and hire someone else. And he's like, what if we just start it over? And you just come up with a different take. Start it over. She wins the fucking Oscar. Wow. Got it.

But M. Night was on a moving train that he couldn't like stop. And he couldn't steer in a different direction. I think money, yeah think money destroys art. I think even in comedy, once you start doing arenas, it's not funny anymore. Once you start doing big budgets, a big budget comedy is gross. Well, you're just trying to manage too many things. Yeah. I'm sorry.

I'm just thinking about my own career now. I had to leave this fucking conversation for the movie. I was like, how can this affect me? How can I learn? But yeah, no, there is that thing where it's like, okay, Nickelodeon has their own opinions. Yeah. conversation for the movie i was like how can this affect me how can i learn but uh but yeah no there is that thing where it's like okay nickelodeon has their own like opinions yeah paramount has their own opinions they want to have a lord of the rings they weren't doing that well at the time m night's trying to do this own thing for his career he's got kenny marshall who

did like fucking indiana jones and jurassic park and they're coming and being like this could be another big franchise for us and there were all these expectations of like when you're saying not just like, oh, we hope we can make sequels of this one does well. But this is part one of a three part story. And this movie does not really function unless we make the other two parts. And everyone's so worried the whole time that I think like all risk goes out of the proposition because it's like we just got to fucking protect our dollar. And I even think think can I find this quote so the movie's an hour and a half right yeah hour 48 hour 40 yeah

but 10 minutes of credits I clocked this yeah it's actually 10 minutes of credits and with a lot of effects they do like a lot of like bending over the credits not a bending but

the cartoon show is what? I mean, it's like a, how many episodes is the first season? It's fucking long. 13 or 26, one of those kind of numbers. Right, so it's like multiple hours. Yeah, 22 per episode? Yeah, like eight hours or something like that.

Yeah, at least. And there's a lot of story there. And he decided to, like, you know, rather than, you're already going to have to condense it a lot to make one film. He makes it into an hour and a half film. It's already Seven Samurai on the good side. It's already going to be three and a half. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Which, like, you know, Roger Ebert always famously said, no good movie is too short and no bad movie is, no good movie's too short and no bad movie's... No good movie's too long and no bad movie's too short. Okay. Like, there are people who are like, oh, I don't want to fucking watch a three-hour movie, but that movie's great. You want to watch a three-hour movie.

Interstellar, I watched twice day one. That shit was... You saw it twice day one? I saw it on the plane. I'm right there with you. And then I landed. You landed, you got yourself to a movie theater. No, I landed, I got my girlfriend.

I was like, my house is great. I have a great TV. So I was like, girlfriend, we're. I was like, my house is great. I have a great TV. So I was like, girlfriend, we're downloading this. We're watching this right now. And we watch it. And it was just as good, if not better, the second time. Absolutely. That movie moves.

I love Interstellar. Love Interstellar. That and Million Dollar Baby moves. It's like that whenever, like the... I agree with what you're saying completely. Yeah, it doesn't matter how long a movie is. Right. It just needs to get you into it.

It needs to have the right energy. Yeah. Top five had that same editing, even though it's a shorter movie. But I like bleeding. You know, where like the sound, first you hear the sound, then they cut. It's always like, what's going on? You know what I'm talking about? Can I tell another sidebar story?

Oh, my. Yeah. Okay. All right. So, Cede and I were on the sitcom. We were like, oh, we're going to be big stars. Everyone was like big stars. And we were talking about like which lines we were saying we were going to be on T-shirts

and stuff. Sitting in a park car outside a hotel. Being like, we got to, like, brace ourselves. Because there was the first day, do you remember the first day where they did the sexual harassment seminar? Three-hour sexual harassment seminar. I had to sit through that twice because we knew for Fox, too. Yeah. And the NBC, this was, we were on a show for NBC. NBC passed on it.

And then Fox picked it up. And then we were like, no Jews, and kicked me out. That's not even true. They hired a different Jew. But they were like, no Griffin. And then you continued it up and then we're like, no Jews and kicked me out. That's not even true. They hired a different Jew. But they were like, no, Griffin. And then you continue doing it on Fox. But we had this sexual harassment seminar where they were going through the list of all the stuff. And they were like, you know, this and that, this and that.

If you say this, you'll be sued. If you make a joke like they were like, so, Griffin, if you were to say an inappropriate joke to Seton, but there was a crew member on set who overheard it, even if it wasn wasn't directed towards them they could sue us as a company for creating a hostile work environment yeah and one of us was like but what's the chance of that actually happening and they were like it's going to happen you're like leads on a big sitcom it's going to happen yeah yeah i was completely like i was really down to fuck one of the extras but that was my dream i was about to do but that shit ruined it i couldn't even i was like i'm gonna get sued but i remember we sat in the car after that and we were like they're like telling us that everyone's gonna try to sue us now like i just became that level of whatever

where people are gonna be trying to extort money out of me yeah um that shit was that reminds me when i was like when i first went to howard university in 2000 in washington dc it was right before white people started moving into D.C. So it was still violent. It was fun. For freshman orientation, they would just sit us in this room. They were like, listen. They would point, that street right here that's adjacent to this building,

if you walk down there alone, you will get robbed. And then they pointed, see up north that street? If you walk down Harbar by yourself, you will be robbed. That's what walk down a hard part by yourself, you will be robbed. That's what this was like. She was like, you will be sued. Yeah, no, it was awesome. Yeah, if you eat a hot dog, you will be sued. It's like, why?

It's too phallic. Someone's going to sue you if you eat a hot dog. But do you want to tell the top five story? Which one? Well, just, I mean, the basic setup was like, so we're on this thing. Everyone's like rubbing our shoulders being like, you're going to be huge. You're going to be huge. Oh, yes, yes.

Go, you finish it. You do this. Right. And then we, like a month later, like the fucking ball drops and suddenly we're like nothing. Nothing. And then two months later, we both get hired onto top five. Yeah.

And I have. Chris Rock movie. Right. I had auditioned with five lines and then it became one line and then I was cut out of the film. Yes. Yes. You had auditioned with five lines and then it became one line and then I was cut out of the film. Yes. Yes. You had auditioned for a role.

I was just for five roles. And I got nine of the five and they offered me a stand in role. So I got to be a stand in. And then it kind of worked out. You were fake Chris Rock when Chris Rock wanted to be behind the camera. Yes. I would. Yes.

You would occupy his space. I would play Chris. There was one scene where I put on the bear head and do cocaine, line of cocaine. Oh, yeah, right. That was my hands dancing. Yeah. And so I got, I feel like I got like two or three jokes in,

in the movie, which made me feel good. But the scene I was in, you would audition for something and then Josh called you up and was like, hey, I don't know how this happened, but somehow they thought you were auditioning for a stand-in. So they offered you the role. Wasn't that what happened? It was something sad like that.

They were just like, we kind of negotiated a deal, actually, more or less like, all right, if you do this, then we'll give you some FaceTime on camera. Yeah. And, you know, they said they were going to give me a line, so I ended up just getting FaceTime, which was fine. My ego, let me tell you, my ego was low. Like, I really.

You get to play, you're one of the actors in the Nat Turner movie, right? That's what it is. Yeah. Okay. But, but also, I mean, you got to fucking spend two months with like all the best comedians alive. Once I got my ego out of the way, I realized, I mean, there were scenes where like, there were parts where Cedric the Entertainer was talking about the Kings of Comedy Tour.

No, actually, notice what happened. I was sitting with the writers because Jeffrey Joseph and a few other writers i know we were sitting talking and then chris would come over because you know we're all equal for some reason and uh we're just talking shit and all of a sudden they're like talking about the kings of comedy tour which i'm you know obsessed with and then and then chris was like you know let's ask cedric about it and so we all get up from the table and walk over to cedric the entertainer's table and cedric tells a story from the you know that's the kind of day it was being. I was like, this is fucking really awesome

that I can hang out and then like, what's his name? Rosario Dawson's mom is really loving and so she cooks like food sometimes for the entire crew.

That sounds great. Yeah, the food was like, this is Lanzazania that was amazing and so, you know, I'm sitting between

Rosario Dawson and Chris Rock and her hot mom comes over and I get up for a tequila, ma'am. I'm Googling her mom. Yeah, her mom's over and I get up for a tequila, ma'am. I'm googling

her mom. Yeah, her mom's funny because her mom was like, you know, the son's actually prettier than the daughter. And I asked Zario about that. She was like, yeah, yeah, it's true. Look at my brother. And yeah, he's pretty hot. He's a pretty hot guy. I mean, they're not exactly inaccurate.

It's a beautiful family. Let's say that. Nah. And then like, yeah, you get random advice. You get to smoke weed with a, what was his name? I don't want to say name. Point being, yeah, I know I'm being all serious now, but that was a, I thought if you take your ego out of the way, you learn a lot from just not being an actor first and just watching motherfuckers, how they fuck up, how they do well.

Yeah. Habits. And just go like, no, you have no stakes? You go, oh, okay. This is fucking good. I think this movie's hard to talk about because it essentially doesn't exist. It's like Vaporware, right? The Lesser Bender. It feels like it doesn't exist as a movie. It came out, no one

wanted to talk about it. It was forgotten. It very quickly made a ton of money. It made a ton of money, but I feel like fans of the show are just like, let's just forget that ever happened. It's weird, man. Let's just forget about that. And then they just did Legend of Korra and were like, we're reclaiming the legacy. Like now, you know, the cartoon series had ended. It was going to be live action film series.

That is aborted. And then they're just like, new cartoon show, new cartoon show. Have you watched that? I haven't watched that. I haven't watched it. I've heard great things. I don't care. You don't care.

It's just because you love the show. I love the show, but I don't. I would have thought you'd gone to Korra. It's not that I'm sexist. It's just that I didn't think. Like, the show, but I don't. I would have thought you'd gone to Korra. It's not that I'm sexist. It's just that I didn't think. Like, it's the same problem with Star Wars, where it's like, well, if she's already a fucking Jedi, what the fuck am I coming for these next two movies for? Like, if you've already figured it out.

Is that what Korra's about? I don't know. Whatever she is. I don't know. The first one, Airbender didn't know what the fuck's going on. He was learning for three seasons. This one, she already knows what's going on. So I'm like, well, what's the journey?

It's supposed to be his great, great granddaughter. She's like the new airbender, like 100 years later. But she's from the bloodline, I think, from his bloodline directly. Well, they're like reincarnated. It's like the Dalai Lama. That's like who he's supposed to be. It's like they give him some objects,

he picks them up, and then he's the avatar. Right, but fucking Star Wars, this bitch figured out how to be a Star Wars chick in one scene. Not even a whole movie. We did like 40 episodes of this movie. And I was the lamest negro.

I shouldn't even go on that campaign. Alright, I'm sorry. This movie does remind me a lot of the Phantom Menace trilogy though. Yeah. In the same way

where there's like so much going on none of it is of any emotional import. There are no characters you can care about and it just becomes white noise

because there's like And it keeps because alright the worst part of this movie is when they finally get over to the other water city. Yeah. And then they introduce that princess girl who's got like white hair.

Oh, right. By the way, I look her up. She's Mexican. So even when he cast people of color in this movie, he made them look like albinos so that it like didn't count. Yeah. You know? Everybody can be white in this movie.

Everyone gets a shot. But you know, the movie's like unless you're bad wow look at her yeah yeah because if you look at her like if you look at like pictures of her

she's like a brunette like a yeah she's hot but no she shows up and they're like oh whoa here's a big new character

for you and then she dies like 15 minutes later like it's crazy this was the thing I was gonna say I assume she's a big character in the cartoon. Or at least she's in the cartoon.

Actually, she's introduced in the cartoon like that except you just have more episodes to lament on her. But she lives for four episodes versus 15 minutes. Four episodes, that's a movie. That's a long time. It's a movie. I just remembered the thing I was originally pulling up. Because this connects this.

There's a lot of fucking weird narration in this movie. Yeah. But it's like... Posts, editing, like... Exactly. And then we went over here. Yeah's a lot of fucking weird narration in this movie. Yeah. But it's like post editing like and then we went over here. Yeah, a lot of that. But it's like over scenes

that you could tell were clearly supposed to originally play out in full where she's like we went to the temple and met all the elders and Sokka met the princess and they immediately hit it off.

Right. And then the next scene you see them talking they have a relationship and we missed the stuff. So in this interview this was an interview the Vulture magazine, Vulture of New York magazine, did with M. Night, like the Friday the movie came out, right?

And they said, Airbender's running time is only 104 minutes, which isn't very long considering it's an adaptation of a 20-episode first season of a cartoon. So it's 10 hours he's condensing into 90, 104 minutes with 10 minutes of credits, right? Was it hard to pack everything in there? This is M. Night's response. And so if you go by the guy on the message board, which I'm inclined to do,

he's just doing damage control. Like he's spinning, you know, whatever. Shoot. I'm dying to make a two-hour movie. I just haven't earned it yet. Wait, that's what M. Night said? What? What does that mean?

What? He's definitely made a two-hour movie. You made nine movies. What are you talking about? All his movies are fairly short, but I'm really tough in cutting, and I have a style that creates a certain pace and a way of writing where I try to get nuances in one scene that help other scenes. This is just a lie, though.

That's just him. This doesn't even make sense. Do you think he'll do like a Christopher Donner cut one day where he's just like, this is the three-hour? And he cuts together the audition tape so that you have the original script in there because that's what the Donner cut does. Yeah. It has like screen tests as part of the scene.

That's Superman 2 made so much sense in the original draft. You're like, oh. Really good. Kind of. I mean, except for the spinning planet thing. Go ahead. He says,

I try to get nuances in one scene that help other scenes. Don't even understand what that means. It creates a very similar pacing in every movie. Six cents, unbreakable, signs, and I believe the village were all the exact same length that's not true i'm not that's that's empirically him just that's just him covering his tracks he's saying like what am i it's like kind of like when he said the happening was a b movie yeah he's like i make these cheap little movies like i'm sorry i just did the same thing i i only know what i can

do that man's good at brandon Let me just say this real quick. That is a branding king. Yeah. He is. I mean, I need to get down that shit. You should team up with M. Night. You should definitely. Yeah, team up with M. Night?

I mean, I could do it myself. Oh, you just want to be the new M. Night. I could do, I don't know if the M. Night. I could be a white version. Who's the white version of M. Night? I'm going to be that guy. I'm sorry, I'm being ignorant. Just do the first half of M. Night's career. Yeah. Just stop. Like, that's what you version of M. Night? I'm going to be that guy. I'm sorry. I'm being ignorant. Just do the first half of M. Night's career.

Yeah. Just stop. Like, that's what you want to imitate. You want to stop around the village. I don't know. I like the ebb and flow of a career. I might be. I like to throw some out and give a fuck. Well, this is like an ebb.

I guess it's about, it's starting to flow again, maybe. Maybe. What has he done lately? He did this movie last year that people liked called The Visit. There you go. It was cheap? Cheap. Self-financed.

I'm telling you. Five million bucks. Out of pocketanced i'm telling you five million bucks out of pocket i'm telling you that shit that's the shit i'm telling if he could just keep making things of high quality you will work i mean that's probably the lesson learned with this movie right yeah like enough i cannot like just like have the studio have so much control i fucking hate cooks in my kitchen i hate that i hate being an actor but i ain't gonna lie like i'll do it i love the money and tell me what to do but I fucking have better ideas than you. That's all

I always think. I got a better version. But he does one more movie before he realizes this and that's with Will Smith and that's probably the most meddling. That's his next movie. Will Smith was after Earthway. Will Smith, Jaden Smith. Did you discuss this already? No. I haven't even watched it. I've seen it. That was his last big budget, right?

I bet you something did happen. That's why he did it with small things. You've got to imagine, Will Smith's the kind of star who, there's a lot of meddling on every level, right? He has to exert a lot of creative control. And that was also the movie where he was trying to make Jaden the new Will. Yeah, that's right. He was passing the torch.

So it was like a big brand management movie where they were designing it to make the audience love Jaden as much as they loved Will. It's annoying because you can't create a star. You can't give somebody something they don't want either. You can't give somebody a title. You can't give them a belt. I also, I don't know if you listen to You Must Remember This, which is a really good podcast about old Hollywood stuff that David and I listen to. Good podcast.

Karina Longworth, who's a great film critic, does this podcast. She talked about MGM and the old Hollywood star system and Louis to. Good podcast. Karina Longworth, who's a great film critic, does this podcast. She talked about like MGM and the old Hollywood star system and Louis B. Mayer and he had this quote where he like, and he of course was a guy who like created stars,

like found people who had a look who didn't have acting talent who were like a background dancer or a rodeo clown or whatever the fuck it was and then like molded them and like shaped them

and created a backstory and changed their name and then like slowly because it was the studio system, like we'll put them in four films in small roles. Like we can place them in movies and position them. And he would say when people were like, how are you so good at making stars or discovering stars?

And he said, I don't discover stars. The audience does. And it's like, the trick is even if you are handing someone a star, you have to make the audience think that they found this person organically and they want to like them. You can't fucking be Nicola Peltz

and have your dad pay to put you in the movie. You can't be like the kid of the guy and just be like come on, we assume you should like this person. Rapping to me has really shown you how you introduce a person. I don't know if they do it as well now, but in the 90s that was literally like a good rapper

kept appearing on rappers' songs. Who is this guy? That's a good verse. That's like the old studio system. You make them part of the tapestry, so then when they finally get their solo album, you're like, I'm ready. And the solo album would sometimes be like, oh, it's like Dr. Dre knows this guy, and he's producing this album.

They'd be packaged with a famous person. Exactly. You can't just be famous for no reason I can't give you two hours people are famous for no reason it happens I'm just saying

you can't give two hours to a motherfucker I don't know I'm 34 I can't wait where do you draw on how long do you give I don't know

I haven't watched a comedy in a while have you watched what was the last comedy film comedy film yeah nigga I mean

it's you count Deadpool? Yeah. Deadpool was Fight Club. I love that shit. Yeah, I didn't like Deadpool. It was Fight Club frame for frame.

Yeah, it's very similar. Not even fair. It was exact. The only thing that was Edward Norton, but they made Edward Norton and mine was the same.

No, his flashbacks were basically Edward Norton. So it was basically he was Tyler Durden and fucking Jack. It was... And Marla and for opening credits. I was like, oh shit.

I love how much we don't want to talk about this. We really don't want to. There's something to talk about. But here's what I'll say also. We should talk about Dev Patel for a second. We have a couple things to talk about. We should definitely talk. And Asif Manfi.

I do think, yeah, we should maybe just go through the performances. I do think that everything we're talking about is thematically linked, because it's all about this idea of having ownership of your voice and the sacrifices you have to make in a career and how you like don't lose it um i you know there's there's a common trend where like if a studio has a movie and they really think it isn't working and they're just like we put a lot of money into this we just got to make our money back they just cut the shit down because they're like we can fit in more show times that way if the movie's fucking 80 minutes long, we get more showings in per day,

we make our money back before people know about it. I guarantee you that's what fucking happened with this movie. The one last thing I want to read from the Vulture review before we go through performance for performance. They go, have you read the reviews for Last Airbender? And he says, no, I haven't.

And they say, well, are you aware of theender? And he says, no, I haven't. And they say, well, are you aware of the reviews? And he says, no, actually. I mean, okay, okay, Knight. And the interviewer has to say, well, for the most part, critics have not been kind. Sure. Are you just ignoring them? I mean, will you read them this weekend?

Have you just not had time? And he responds with, are you saying that in general they didn't dig it? Ooh. And the interviewer goes, in general, no. Roger Ebert, who liked the happening, did not. The first line of his review is,

The Last Airbender is an agonizing experience in every category that I can think of. That's brutal. And others still waiting to be invented. So how do you react to something like that? And he says, this is like, I think, think you know if the whole point of this series is to try to figure out who this fucking guy

is and what happened to him why he was good when he was good why he got bad when he got bad how he can be saved if he is you know on the upswing now I think this is like the purest dose of M. Night we've ever got he says I don't know what to say to that stuff I bring as much integrity to the table as humanly possible it must be a

language thing in terms of a particular accent, a storytelling accent. I can only see it a certain way and I don't know how to think in another language. I think those are exactly the visions that are in my head, so I don't know how to adjust it without being me. It would be like asking a painter to change to a completely different style.

I don't know. And then they said, critics haven't been kind to your last couple of films. Do you worry about reviews? He goes, I think of it like an art form. So it's something I approach as a sort of immovable integrity within each of the stages. So if you walk through the process with me, there's not a moment where I won't that I won't treat with great respect. So it's sacred to me, the whole process of making a movie. And I would hope that some people see that I approach this field with that kind of respect and that it's not a job.

All right. I do agree that you look at his films and it's like, I do think he respects film a lot. I agree, except for this one. I think he gave up on this one because he couldn't win. Something got out of his hands with this one. But he's still like, I mean, when this movie is terrible, it's terrible in a way where it's so self-serious, it's so lifeless, and it's so sort of arch. No. But he's never like fucking throwing it. Do you know what I'm saying? It's terrible in a way where it's so self-serious, it's so lifeless, and it's so sort of arch. But he's never fucking throwing it. Do you know what I'm saying?

It never feels like it's sloppy, but sloppy in a way that's kind of weirdly meticulous. It feels like a movie that has too many cooks in the kitchen. They have no direction. I think when you have too many voices and no vision, that's what happens. You said lifeless. That's the way to put it. There's no character to this movie. Okay, so the plot of the movie is-

And it wouldn't make any sense if there wasn't a cartoon series. No, absolutely no sense. You would be like, what is this shit? It would be like Battle Earth or Battle- After Earth. No. Or Battlefield Earth. Battlefield Earth, yeah.

Where you're just like, what is this whole world that is supposed to exist? Yeah, yeah. So my entire plot of the film, they find a boy in a block of ice. They say he's the last airbender. They try to get him out, and then the other people try to take him, and at the end of the movie, he dies. But there's elements. So it's like there's the water people.

They bend waters. The fire people, they're like conquerors, and they shoot fire at people. There's the earth people who are Asian, East Asian. East Asian. Brown. No, no. Oh, the earth people, yes. The fire people are, yes.

The earth people are East Asian, but we don't see much of them, and they no no the earth people yes the fire people yes the earth people are east Asian but we don't see much of them and they get like conquered or we see they kind of rise up

and then at the end like the fire people try to conquer the water people but then they beat them back so Dalai Lama he's supposed to be

a reincarnation of this thing in the cartoon show he was a little boy and part of the fun was that he was figuring out who he was but also his innate

energy was just of an excitable small child in this environment where everyone's putting all this on him and in this movie in trying to take out

the humor they make it just like yeah and they keep saying like like because part of his story is like he he ran away

right he's like anointed and then he like flew away they told him about the sacrifice he'd have to make that if he became the avatar

which by the way they had to remove avatar from the title because this came out a year after avatar and he flew away. They told him about the sacrifice he'd have to make, that if he became the Avatar, which, by the way, they had to remove Avatar from the title because this came out a year after Avatar, that if he became the Avatar, he wouldn't ever be able to have a family. It's like joining the priesthood or whatever. So he flees, and then his whole tribe gets wiped out, I guess. But the implication is because he wants to be a kid. He wants to live his life.

But the movie doesn't do that. He never acts like a kid. No, no. And that's almost the easiest part of the movie, is just like, oh, find a kid who acts like a kid, like he wants to live his life. But the movie doesn't do that. He never acts like a kid. No, no. And that's like almost the easiest part of the movie is just like oh, find a kid who acts like a kid. That was actually reminding me of another horrible movie called In the Wild. You know what I'm talking about?

The Sean Penn movie? You hate that movie? I like that movie. Really? I like that movie too. I hate every drop of that movie. That might be a real white people movie though. I might say that. That's a good succinct definition. I hate every drop of that movie. Really? I like that movie too. I hate every drop of that movie. That might be a real white people movie though. I might say that. That's a good, succinct definition.

I hate every drop of that movie. Every drop of that movie. I thought it was a real white male prop. I thought a white male. I hear that. Only because I was

waiting the entire movie going, okay, there's a good reason he left his house. There's not a good reason? No, no, no. There must be such a solid, and just because his dad

had the courtesy to have a second family on the side and fucking keep beating your dumb ass, you got to go in the fucking woods and die? Fuck you. What I like about that movie is I think that movie knows he's stupid. I think so, too. I know. I see your argument. The guy's pretty himself.

Because he's just like, why do I care about this guy? Like, you know, not only what you just said, but he goes into the wilderness and he's like, I don't know, I'll eat these berries, I guess. He doesn't know what he's doing. Yeah. And you're just so frustrated. Yeah. Yeah.

You fucking picked a trailer in the middle of the fucking Alaska frontier and you're wondering, oh my God, am I going to live? No. He runs into Kristen Stewart. She's like, let's have sex. He's like, I don't want to. I find that very funny. He's like, let's hang out.

And he's like, I don't think I can hang out. Hal Holbrook's like, I want to be the father that you wish you had. And he's like, I gotta go. I gotta go die in a school bus. Because my dad had the common courtesy to keep feeding me even though he didn't want to. He had other pussy. He didn't want to

keep feeding me, but he did. I totally forgot about that. That asshole put me through college. He goes to college. It's a good soundtrack. And he got me through college. He goes to college. Yeah. It's a good soundtrack. And he got him a car. He got him a car. And he met her.

Yeah, the song, I mean. Yeah. Oh, man, people, I remember this one dude on Facebook, he was like. So that movie reminds you of The Last Airbender. Yeah, I mean, yes, absolutely. Because it's just a kid where it's like, what's your problem? Yeah, what's your problem? You're a magical kid. Yeah, you're floating.

Really going to float away? Just own it. Because you're a burden? Yeah. And there is some dark implication. It's like, yeah, his whole family, his whole airbender tribe got wiped out. All the monks got killed because he wasn't there. We should talk about, well, we shouldn't talk about it, but he keeps, like, talking to a dragon.

By the way, in the cartoon, he didn't do that. Really? In the cartoon, he did not run away because he was mad. In the cartoon, he was, like, playing around with In the cartoon, he did not run away because he was mad. In the cartoon, he was playing around with the thing. It's more coincidental. And then a storm happened. Oh, shit. And then it was more like, oh, fuck.

So that whole character was that he was fun, right? Because they're trying to give him this emotional arc in the movie where the dragon eventually, because he talks to this spirit dragon, says, you need to confront, you need to accept what happened to you and what happened to your tribe. And that's when he does all his water power. Even though he walked in a fucking graveyard of all those skeleton bones.

Yeah, right, there's skeletons. What the fuck you think I'm here for, nigga? And that happens literally the last five minutes of the movie, and then the end is M. Night does the thing he was clearly building up to by rewriting. I didn't know that the backstory was that he ran away because he was playing and chasing a butterfly instead of being awriting. I didn't know that the backstory was that he ran away because he was like playing and chasing a butterfly instead of like being a brat.

It wasn't a serious thing. It was like not even like he was not a big build up. I think he had fights like that but it was like not a he was just in the he just happened to be floating in the North Pole.

The way they tell it in this fucking movie is that like they had the ceremony where they were going to make him the avatar and everyone bowed down and he was supposed to bow back

and instead he was like and like just fucking snagglepuss make him the avatar. Everyone bowed down and he was supposed to bow back. And instead he was like, and like, like snaggle pussed out the door. Right. I don't remember that part at all. And I wasn't smoking weed at the time. It's a flashback and it sucks in your defense. It's hard to remember any part of this movie.

Yep. Um, but, uh, then at the end, the fucking last image is everyone goes like this new tribe that he's saved with the princess who died is like uh they're like hey we want you to be our avatar and then a billionaire's daughter is like

we all do and then they all bow and then he sort of bows back and that actually happened in the show sure well yeah it works better it could be earned on the show um so we we used to be a star wars podcast and we started doing this thing when we were a Star Wars podcast. Jesus Christ, it's so hot in here. Performance review. Performance review. I'll get acting as well right now. Dude, it is on.

I was not. I know. I know. This is a weeks-long saga, man. Yeah. We would go through the cast to try to figure out whether or not the acting was good in the movies, right? And I think it's a foregone conclusion that acting overall is not good in this film, but I think every remaining interesting point we have to say is tied to a specific actor.

Okay, well, do you want me to just run it down? So, yeah, I want to go through this cast, yeah. Okay, Noah Ringer, he played Ong. Okay, kid's clearly not an actor. No, he's bad. He was a martial artist, right? They watched the tape, and they were like, oh, he's so good. He's like, yeah, he's got the thing.

But it's like, this movie doesn't really have him do martial arts because it's all just him moving his hands around and the CGI going around him. So they don't need a kid who's a martial artist. It's not like it's a Bruce Lee biopic. He's not fighting anyone. There's no contact. You could have hired a dancer to do it

because you just need someone to hit really strong poses. They hired him because he had the look, like you say. Yeah. Like you said, he dressed for success. But he was too old for the role as written look, like you say. Yeah. Like you said. He dressed for success. But he was too old for the role as written, and he was super white. Yeah. Dev Patel as Zuko. Okay, I think this is the only good performance in the movie.

He's all right. What do you think of Dev Patel? Um, as Zuko, yeah. He's supposed to be angry. He was too old, too. I mean, everybody was just too old in the movie. Right. Because, like, all the problems were child problems on these adults.

And that only works in rom-coms. In the show, the fire people are Chinese. Their names are all Chinese. They kept the names. Right. Like Zuko, Zhao. These are Chinese names. So I don't know.

I mean, obviously, they're going to keep it. But it's a weird decision. I've seen the cartoon. He is younger, Zuko. Yeah. And I mean, I guess Dev Patel is supposed to be brooding It's okay He's okay

His dad His dad cast him out Because he's not tough enough He's trying to prove his dad wrong Which is a relatable storytelling trope It's a classic theme In storytelling And so it works better than anything else in this movie just because that's like

you know elemental and I think he's an actor of some subtlety so those scenes he's not just doing mustache twirling you feel a little bad for him but it's not a very well written character. No because he's just his whole motivation is if I kidnap this airbender

kid then maybe I'll prove myself right but they keep grabbing him and then he just flies away because he can fly. They don't really address that at all. I think he's the best performance by default. He's also the only person who I think feels like a human being in this movie. I think Sean Toob's pretty good. Oh, right.

Okay, well, so let's, yeah. As the Uncle Eero. Yeah. Oh, the Uncle's great. Yeah, he's good. He's great. Yeah. What a fucking great actor who never gets credit. Great actor. He's the dude in the fucking cave with Iron Man. The dude who inspires Iron Man to become Iron Man. Yeah.

And he was the guy, the fucking guy who sells the guns. He's the racist shop owner in Crash. In Crash who tries to shoot Michael Peña. Oh, yeah. He's one of these dudes who's had key roles in all these big movies, but he always looks And gets cast as a bunch of different types. Every race. It's Hollywood.

It's weird, man. The more I get into this business, I realize there's respect and there's fame. Yeah. And I think I was looking for, I was mixing him up until a couple years ago. I was like, oh, I think I'm looking for two. Those are, I think I want more respect than I want fame. You want more respect? I love that you're opening up about this so much on this episode because it makes the

episode all thematically rich about this entire quest of like wanting to be the artist you want to be and not have to make the last airbender oh yeah i a that's the only way i can keep this conversation going and uh and b no i i like bullets of a broadway we brought that up that movie scared me for such a long time because i was like what if i do give a fuck because like john can't character it's like i want to be a writer. And at the end he goes, oh, I can't do this shit. But he figured it out way too late in his life. You know, he was in his 40s until he figured it out. And I'm like, that and Ed Wood, two of the scariest movies ever.

Yeah. To, like, not have it and not know it. Mm-hmm. Yeah. I love Ed Wood. Ed Wood's, yeah, one of my absolute favorite movies of all time. Oh, it emotionally affects me too much. It's like City of God, basically.

I can't watch that shit. I'm sorry. No, no, no. Nick LaPeltz, Jackson Rathbone, we don't need to say anything about those kids. Yeah, they're bad.

They read their lines. Jackson Rathbone's an actor I don't like. I've seen all the Twilight movies. Is he in anything else? I've only seen the first Twilight movie.

Some other shit I've seen in him for like a second. He's really fucking posey. You know what I'm saying? Yeah. He's always sort of standing at an angle and he has this air of like, I think I'm really handsome and i'm doing you a favor by getting to

look at my face and it's always like eyes really wide open lips pouting at angles very still he has one mode and he delivers every line he's fine in this movie he usually irritates me nick lapelts is fine they're both fine but it's like no one who's carrying this movie you actually care about. Asif Manvi as Zhao. As the evil command Zhao. I mean I feel bad for him. He's going for it. He's going for it. I like Asif Manvi.

I didn't realize he was like the main villain in this movie. Yeah. He's like the only villain in this movie. He's like the Darth Vader. Yeah. Because I thought from the advertising that like Dev Patel was the villain but he's like the conflicted like anti-hero I thought from the advertising that Dev Patel was the villain, but he's like the conflicted anti-hero. In a world, Dev Patel's supposed to be like the Draco Malfoy, right?

The villain who lots of people like. A whole subset of fans are into. I guess he's probably like that in the show. Zuko. He's sympathetic. Zuko? Which one is Zuko again? The prince.

No, he's sympathetic around the end of season two. It takes a while. He goes back and forth, back and forth a lot. Like a fucking 16 year old. It's awesome. Right, right. Then he gets some pussy in season three and it really calms down. It's really cool.

It's really natural. Which is how it often is right yeah you're like oh right that's what all this energy was about i had when i was a girl i need to get some and then you get older you learn masturbation really does both of that work for you you get a good conversation get your hand going but there's that thing when you're a virgin you masturbation you can't settle for masturbation because you're like what if that other thing's so much better? And then once you've had sex, you're like, I can get most of what I. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. I'm just reading this now.

The dragon is a composite of four characters in the cartoon. I guess. Does he talk to like old avatars in the cartoon? He does. I see. I see. So they're just sort of making the dragon that. Yeah.

Just this random dragon. Yeah. They're kind of like taking. I think they might even saw Naruto. You ever seen Naruto? No. Naruto, he goes into his head and talks to his big Firefox a lot. Yeah.

But I think Naruto, I hope they don't make a movie of that. See, Japan does it well. Anime, they actually just make independent movies that have nothing to do with the storyline. Just take the characters, take a big problem, and have them solve it. Right. And it's like, oh, that's how you should do movies as opposed to this whole. Right. Try to make a 36-part story into a two-hour movie.

But it's also like the fucking show exists. Why do you need to make it again? I mean, you said. Because live action. Because people are like, whoa. What do you mean? Yeah. But you know what?

That's why I kind of like Netflix. I like. I kind of like. I have problems with Daredevil. But I like the effort. Very small budget. Yeah. Small budget action here. Like, especially because like the 70s was done so badly. Like, remember like Spider-Man? small budget. Yeah, I do too. Small budget action here.

Especially because the 70s was done so badly. Remember Spider-Man? Yeah, the live action Spider-Man. He just threw rope on his belly and he just pulled him up a building and he just flailed his arms. They're better than that now. That's the thing. I don't think Daredevil... I have problems with Daredevil, as you said.

But it's like, I like that it's low stakes in a way. Because it's a fucking TV show, not a movie, he doesn't have to save the world. Right. There's no portal in space that opens up. Yeah. And episodes can be about his fucking legal cases in the way the comic book was, where it's like the thing you were saying about the day-to-day thing. Like, part of what's cool about superheroes is seeing them go through all these fucking

arcs and like the things that are boring and the things that are exciting. Well, we're saying what's good about TV. Yeah. But this is a movie podcast. I'm just saying that Avatar movie could have been a live-action TV show even though that would have been annoying. Or they could have gone,

here's the basic fundamental idea for this. Here's what the characters are. Let's write a new story. Write a whole new story. Rather than try to adapt specifically, let's take the idea of this thing and come up with an arc that can be completed within 90 minutes.

Or, or, or, like at the end of the arc of it, because at the end of the whole show, you know, him and Zuko become best friends and old wise people. Start from there. Right, start from there. That could have been a whole new one more problem before I die. Yeah.

And then. You're never going to make people happy, though. I can't wait to start pitching movies. I'm going to pitch everything in that voice. I got a movie, okay? Avatar goes into a bar. I remember when the one day I worked on Top 5 where it was a scene that is now part of a montage at the beginning of the movie where he's doing like a Q&A for a bunch of college students. Charlie Rose is interviewing him.

I've seen the movie. It's barely in the film and I'm not in at all. But I asked one question and he was behind the camera when they were filming in the audience and all these different kids had to ask questions. He would be behind the camera and Seton would sit in the chair. Charlie Rose wasn't there because he was wrapped for the day. They like shot all his stuff first and so it was Seton having to like replicate the jokes that Chris Rock had been

delivering all day and I'm in the last row of this like auditorium it's the New York Times Art Center and Seton's on stage and we're texting back and forth and looking at each other and just going like what the fuck is going on but there was a point where you like texted me and you were like I don't know if I should be doing

the Chris Rock voice or not. Because they wanted me to do his jokes, but then they started correcting me on how to tell jokes. Because I have a habit when I'm on stage all the time, so my habit is when people are laughing, I'll keep talking and keep them going. And AD was like, Seton,

say the joke, let them laugh, then say the next joke. It was like one of those like, Seton, say the joke, let them laugh, then say the next joke. It was like one of those, like, okay, all right, well, breathe. But that was the other part of it was, like, your job was, hey, we're getting reaction shots of this audience laughing. So you have to make them laugh. If you can actually be funny, it makes the results of the film better. And you're like, well, these are Chris Rock jokes. They're not Seton Smith jokes.

Do I try to translate them into my voice and still try to make them funny or do I get up here and like do a Chris Rock impression when Chris Rock is standing two feet away from me and you just kept on texting me like I'd check my phone I'd get the text I'd look up and you just looked like you were about to cry yeah I wasn't about to cry I just looked missed I was really high

that was the one if I ever if I die of an odor dose, I know my drug habit started on that set because the crew were more than willing to give you drugs. Like, hey, you want to get the drugs? Start smoking. And I started making brownies and giving them to

security guards. I started... So there was a whole transactional sort of empire going on at this point. I mean, it wasn't a buy-sell thing. It was more or less like, you know, hey, y'all got weed. It's just everyone's moving it around. We ain't doing nothing. Let's do some ass weed.

It was one of those, it was a chill, it made me want to go, I can't wait to make a movie. I can't wait to be like, look at those, that was the coolest set I've ever been on,

of course, no offense, was Girls, Lena Dunham. She makes that set just gold. I hope she would invite you one day. We were talking about it off mic. Let's talk about it on mic. I've never auditioned for the show. Come on, Lena Dunham. She makes that set just gold. I hope she would invite you one day. We were talking about it off mic. Let's talk about it on mic. I've never auditioned for this show. Come on, Lena. There's one season to go.

Come on. Oh, is this the last season? Season 6? No, the next season's going to be the last season. Season 6 or season 7? The one that's airing right now. Right now we have 6. Okay, so they're producing one more season. Yeah. But look, I don't even want to throw that out. This is season 5. Because I'm in it, so I know that. I more season. Yeah. Yeah. But look, I don't even want to throw that out. This is season five. This is season five.

Because I'm in it, so I know that. You might be right. Humble brag. I'm humble. Humble brag. Well, fine. I'm in the season finale. Six is the last season.

It's the last season. Damn. You're in the finale? I'm in the finale, yeah. Can you tell us what you play, or is it? I play a storyteller, and we get into a fight in the line. Ooh, very cool. Yeah.

Yeah, I know. It's just, you don't get very many cool credits. Because me on a sitcom, you got to explain it. Like, I'm on a sitcom. What channel? Fox. When? You know, you're like, when was it on?

Was it off? I could say girls. Oh, I know that. Yeah, it's great when you only have to use one word to tell people what your job is. No, like SNL people. They don't have, it's really cool to be like SNL. I didn't say it, but I mean, I look at their eyes. They look happy.

You know, for a minute. Not the whole job. The job is miserable. But the minute where they have to tell someone's relatives what they do for a living, they look happy. When you don't have to explain your job to a relative, oh, that is sexy. That is a beautiful feeling, yeah. Yeah, you don't have to do that anymore, right? They know your job?

Now, I don't know. I mean, people my age know. We even said this on podcast. The last time we recorded was an hour before the news was official. It's broken. The news is broken. But I'm going to be on the new TV version of The Tick. Yeah.

Playing Arthur. Amazon. I feel like anyone of our general generation they know, but I feel like to my parents' friends. Right, your parents don't know The Tick. But they know that Amazon has shows. But I can tell them I'm playing a superhero on Amazon and that will sound like something real to them, you know? That will. Whereas two years ago they'd be like

it's a TV show on a bookstore? What are you talking about? Now I can say like Amazon and they know. Yeah, they know that Amazon has, yeah. People know vinyl, right? People know you're on vinyl. Yeah, vinyl works because that's an HBO show. Wait, did I see you? What episode did you do?

He's in most of them. All of them. I'm pretty hidden. Okay. I'm like the Where's Waldo of vinyl. Okay. Are you in every single one? I thought you were in all the one.

I'm in the single one. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You're in the record company? Yeah. I have a mustache, and I get yelled at. I feel like I saw you, and I just didn't because my girl gets annoyed because I see you have so many friends on TV. Right.

And I scream now, and she gets so annoyed. And now she's you have so many friends on TV. And I scream now and she's like, she gets so annoyed. And now she's finally starting to see friends on TV. So now she's not as annoyed. But at first it was really like, come on. And so I probably have to suppress my joy when I saw you. But I saw you in the fucking other movie and you were the best part of it.

What was that movie? Fort Tilden? Killed it at Fort Tilden. Killed that opening. You were like, hey, script. You mine now, nigga. I did. Yeah, I worked in a lot of Fast and Furious. You know, that's a fun fact.

In the opening of the film where they're like, oh, look at those cute boys over there. And I'm saying something, but you can't really hear what it is. I'm explaining the chronology of the Fast and Furious movies. And I go, it's 7-4. I'm literally just numbering them in order. Well, this is not what I want the podcast to be about. Yeah, this has turned into a Griffin Newman retrospective. I like it.

No, but I don't like it. You would have been good in this movie. You would have been better than almost anybody in this movie. I wish you'd gotten the Jackson Rathbone part. I'm 19. I didn't do anything yet. We should say this movie made a lot of money. Made a lot of money.

Opened at 51 mil. Yep, 4th of July weekend. Ain't shit on that. Ain't shit on that crowd. Nothing wrong. It ended with, it dropped. As all things do. But it's at 130 domestic.

130 domestic, about 370 worldwide. I mean, I think it was one of those movies where they didn't really lose money on it, but they were like, we will lose money if we make another one because no one wants to see this again. They didn't lose money, but it wasn't what you really want, which is like a franchise. Like Spider-Man on Broadway. They survived. They survived. We all live, really.

Right. In the long run. I love, oh God, this is maybe my favorite episode of the podcast. I just like, I like thematically the larger things we're getting at. The episodes we've been doing recently, they're all different. Yeah. Yeah. Like M. Night Shyamalan's filmography.

Oh yeah. I mean, that's the other thing to say though. This is his what? Fourth movie in a row that basically is like a huge bomb. Yeah, yeah. Like M. Night Shyamalan's filmography. Oh, yeah. I mean, that's the other thing to say, though. This is his, what, fourth movie in a row that basically is like a huge bomb. Yeah. It sweeps the golden raspberries. Not that we like those stupid things, but like... But he made a bunch of movies he hates, and now he's made one good movie he loves. I'm gonna go see that movie.

Seton's like trying to, you know, sort of like put a bow on this. We have to do one more bad episode before we get to that upload. We have to do After Earth, and before we get to that upload. We have to do After Earth and then we get to do the movie that people like. Then we get to do the good one. Possibly.

I don't know. If it's as an artist, I just know that it's an ebb and flow and you just got to keep going. Because I mean, I love Clint Eastwood and Woody. They keep making movies and they've had parts

where people ignore them and then they kept making movies and people loved them. Make them that consistently. And then people sometimes will go back to the movies they ignored and be like, you know what?

You made a couple good movies. My dream, I realized I was walking today and I realized my dream in life is to make a chunk of great work. Like, I like what Mulaney did. I like the latest stuff I've done. And I want to get, like, I don't know, 60, 70, make movies, and then kind of do something else for 20 years. Become senile in a house and go like, oh, man, I ain't got nothing else to do. And they'll be like, well, you want to watch some of your old movies? Fuck, what did I do?

And I'm like, oh, shit, that was funnier than I thought. Yeah, you want to rediscover them. I want to make a good discography for me to die to. But have no memory of. You want to watch it fresh. You want to make the work that you would want to see and then get old and see it all enough that you can watch it. I don't have to be completely senile. What if you hit your head and then you wander into a town and you're like, who am I?

I don't know who I am. And they're like, I know you. You were on a TV show. And then they sit you down. See, I don't want the fame. I just want to enjoy my work again. I want to enjoy my performance. You get to rediscover it for the first time. Yeah, I want to do that. At 90, if I make it that far, maybe 80.

You'll make it that far. Trump will be in his 14th term and the water will be lapping up. We'll all be drinking Trump ice. The rivers will run with Trump ice. You see Rachel Maddow recently had a great article on him because he compared this election to the Goldwater election in 64. You know what I'm talking about?

I didn't read the article. Very Goldwater took over the primaries, similar to Trump. They had KKK following him. Movement conservative. And everybody was freaked out by him. And then Lyndon B. Johnson being really the most darkest political minds ever. He didn't do any debates with him at all and just did the weirdest series of commercials. You've seen some of those commercials?

The Daisy commercial? Did you see the one with the guy? Awesome commercial. Awesome. Now, I was watching that commercial recently. That is a performance. Great performance. That is a great performance.

I would do that as a monologue. I would put glasses on. Have you seen this? No. It's this great old political ad. It's like six minutes long. No, it's four. It's a four-. I would put glasses on. Have you seen this? No. It's this great old political ad. It's like six minutes long. No, it's four. It's a four-minute monologue commercial.

But for an ad, you're like, this was on TV? It's like so long. It's just basically a monologue of a dude explaining how he's a Republican. He's like taking his glasses off. He's like, I just don't know. It's like a real. Yeah, like 1960s monologue style acting. He even smokes at the right moment.

It's just like he lights it at the right moment. He sits there and he paused and he goes, damn. I bet you it was like 400 takes of that motherfucker. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Because it's one single shot. Yeah. It's unbroken.

So your point is that's what you want to do. You want to do one piece of work someday at that level of quality. Yes. Without Donald Trump. That's the goal for all of us. I want to make like somebody told me this shit once, like Kira Kurosawa. I was like, you like him? He's like, yeah, just watch any of his movies. They're all great. Yes. Without Donald Trump. That's the goal for all of us. I want to make, like somebody told me this shit once, like Kira Kurosawa. I was like,

you like him? He's like, yeah, just watch any of his movies. They're all great. Yeah. I want somebody to say that about my shit.

Yeah. You can't say that about me, you motherfuckers. Well, no, but look, I say this

and not just because you're my friend. Thank you. I do, I haven't said the thing yet. Hold on. I'm still going to accept it. I do think you're one

of the best stand-up comedians working in the country right now. I truly believe that. Thanks, man. Yeah. And I think every time I see you, you have advanced so far beyond because of the standards you hold yourself to and how much you care about the work. You're constantly tunneling deeper and deeper into the types of things you want to say

and how you say them and how you perform and marrying the writing and the performance in a way that I think few people do at the level that you do. Oh, man. thanks for saying that. I have no question in my mind, there's no doubt that you will have the body of work that you hope to have, and you'll be able to watch it all once you've lost your mind and not remember that you— I may even lose it quicker than I think. I may not make it 70. I really don't know why I think that.

I mean, if you're drinking that much during the Fox run, it's— I wasn't even nervous. It really was a boredom drink. I was like, hang on a minute. I might as well drink. It wasn't even like I need love. It wasn't even emptiness. Well, I'll say this.

Okay, so the last bunch of weeks on the podcast, I had started this thing. I was starting like a public campaign, like a petition to try to get cast in Fast and Furious 8. I really wanted to be in a cast in Fast and Furious 8. And still very much a goal, but now I have the tick, which obviously was just means to an end. I mean, you know, that was so I could leverage that into getting in fast and furious eight so now i have the momentum hopefully that will work good luck man but i i you know i want to use the time that we would devote to that on the episode to when you text me with the congratulations about the tick news you said there's there's a combo character that you have always fantasized about

playing oh freak and i yep freak oh my god if i could Freakazoid. Yep. Freakazoid. Oh my god, if I could play Freakazoid, nigga. And you even said that to me. Like, I remember in one of those part car talks, where you're like, if you could play any part, what would it be? And I was like, Spider-Man, and you were like, Freakazoid. Like, you've had that answer ready for years. Loved Freakazoid. The show, the first pilot episode of Freakazoid is genius. It gets really off the rails

later, but that first one is just like, oh, it's like a superhero who's, like, the world was very concrete, and he bounced around, and that's how is just like, oh, it's like a superhero who's like the world was very concrete and he bounced around and that's how you're supposed to make movies. That's how Beverly Hills Cop, that's what made Beverly Hills Cop a genius. His funny advanced the story. It's like a perfect structure. Let's throw that out

into the universe, though. Yeah, I want that. Let's do fucking live action Freakazoid reboot. Build up enough cred or whatever power and then you're like, alright, alright, we're doing this. I want Freakazoid. Give it to me. Freakazoid. And I to me. Freakazoid. And I think I want to make like a Harold and the Purple Crayon, but that's one later years.

Oh. That'd be incredible if you pulled that off. Harold and the Purple Crayon. I loved that when I was a kid. So much. My mother is a minister. She did like a whole sermon on that.

Really? Yeah, because basically it's a metaphysical argument that you control your world and your destiny. And your destiny, yeah. You're such a good guy. Why don't we kind of hang out more? It was very nice to have you on the podcast. It destiny. And your destiny, yeah. You're such a good guy. We could hang out more.

It was very nice to have you on the podcast. It was nice having you on the show. Too bad that this movie just completely sucked. It gives me something to do, man. I've been in my room just writing a lot. I ain't been human. You came in with a notebook. You got a full notebook of ideas.

Oh, yeah, I got to work on my act more. I figured out a good system to work on my act more. So I just wrote this good pilot script, and so I had to remember how to do stand-up again. Because I didn't realize you had modes. Sure. Mode switching. I've got to jump back in.

No, you ain't got to. You've got to go do your TV show. When do you start? The next month, end of April, beginning of May. It's pretty crazy. That's so cool. They cast the ticket? No.

No. And I'm not just saying that. They literally, they have not, and I don't even know who the people are who are close to getting it. But I did get the email last night about my costume fitting this week and it was like oh that feels real now like they have to make a superhero suit to my stupid body you gotta put a lot of lubriderm on them nuts right make sure you i was thinking about that

because here's the thing i haven't told anyone about like on the production side of things i got ibs i'm usually pretty good at like fucking scheduling around it. Sure. But if I'm in like a skin tight suit. How do you get that off? And like mid take, I'm like, hey, do we have like two minutes? Can I run to the bathroom? Right.

Do I have the time to take the suit off and put it on? I don't know. Please write in with your thoughts. Blank check podcast at gmail.com. You got single cam. And so you get it. Single cam. You can just pull that dick out.

Right. On the side of the camera. Because it's going to be wild, wild west. I love single cam you just pull that dick out right on the side of the camera because it's gonna be wild wild west I love single cam it's just wild wild west it's just like it's like all rules we got to shoot illegally over here in this little booth go pee over there hurry up pull that dick out on the side of the camera multi-cam is so much more official like there's a bathroom there the office is there that's what Bryan Cranston would do on Breaking Bad famously he'd always pee on the camera operator's leg. I don't have time for that.

Not true. Seaton, thank you for being on the show. Thank you. Is there anything you want to plug? No, I did the girls thing there. She's a finale girl. This is a good thing. I did a little spot on characters for my friend Natasha Roth.

Oh, yeah. That hit Netflix this weekend. Natasha Rothwell is one of the best. She's awesome. I didn't start improv. I this weekend. Natasha Rothwell is one of the best. She's awesome. I did start improv. I started improv after her, but the same school.

Okay. She's great. You're both great. Watch that. Also, just jump in now on the ground floor of Seton Smith. We'll have one of the greatest careers in American history. Get on board.

Yeah, man. I'm not sure which network's going to say yes to my TV show, but just tune in. Might be a bidding war. Yeah, might be a bidding war. Fucking Netflix Freakazoid reboot, 2017. I'm calling it now. Oh, that'd be great. Because I have to change the character. First be a bidding war. Might be a bidding war. Fucking Netflix Freakazoid reboot, 2017.

I'm calling it now. Oh, that'd be great. Because I have to change the character. First, he's white. I could change that, but he's like, he's already a teenager. He's like blue. That's what I was going to say. He's like a blue guy.

Who cares? The blue is what I'm talking about, the original guy. But I mean, I could change that. He was also a kid. I got to figure out how to get around that, too. But you know what? This feels like The Mask. I feel like the same structure. Right.

Right. You can do it. I believe in you. You're a living cartoon in a real world, right? That's what Freakazoid is. Freakazoid is, yeah. He's bouncing off of, like you said. Bouncing off with that fucking nice suit.

Tweet at your local senators and tell them to put a Freakazoid reboot into development with Seaton attached. Yeah, that's how it works. Tweet at us. Email us. Feel free to listen to our other podcast on the used to be comedy network. Sure. Definitely.

Subscribe. All that. Rate and review. Here's the thing about all those podcasts. They're all produced by the same man. Oh, yeah. He hasn't spoken. He's been sitting in a booth in the room next to us.

He just coughed. Yeah. Hey. Hi, guys. Hi. I don't think you saw this coming. No, I didn't. Yeah. hey, hi guys. Hi. I don't think he saw this coming. No, I didn't. Yeah, hey, listen to our shows.

Ben, did you like The Last Airbender? No. Did you watch it? Yeah, no, I watched it with my roommates and I could not pay attention and got distracted. I don't even know actually how it ends. How does it end, guys? He bows.

He bows? Yeah, he bows. The boats leave. They turn around. Did you get any good work? Oh, at the end they have the fucking cliffhanger thing with the sister. What? What's the cliffhanger thing with the sister at the end of the movie? Where they go to Zuko's dad.

Oh, she's gonna be like the new Prince Zuko. And he's like, you gotta take over. And he's like, can you do it? And then they cut her and it's a lady and that's supposed to be a big twist. It's Summer Bishill from Towelhead. I feel so bad for her. They brought her on. They were like, okay, so you have one line in this film. Yeah, but you're going to be in two. You're going to be all over Last Airbender 2.

Why is she feeling bad? One day at work, I pay like a motherfucker? That's true. She probably made, yeah. One day at work. You have the right fucking attitude on everything in this industry. Well, this is the thing. This was a bitterly bad negative movie, and Seton has kind of guided us towards positive

thoughts throughout this episode. Oh, it's a lot to be learned. I mean, when people get paid, it's not that bad of a, and Seton has kind of guided us towards positive thoughts throughout this episode. I mean, when people get paid, it's not that bad of a world, all right? Yeah. Yeah. Everyone made some money. Everybody made money. You know? The studio didn't even lose any money.

Nobody got died. In the 80s, motherfuckers used to die all the time. Helicopters chopped people's heads off in the 80s. Didn't happen. Oh, shit. Everybody lived. Everybody got paid. I've spoken to some people who worked on Crew and said it was fun.

Sure. Right. It was just a movie. Yeah. I got to travel. Yeah, good movies and bad movies. Nobody could tell when you're on set. It feels the same.

Well, sometimes you'll see some amazing movie and you'll hear it was like a nightmare to make it. Yeah. And you're like, wow, they made a great movie. Yeah. Yeah, but you know what the thing is about getting to be in a really bad movie? You still got to be in a movie. Right. I didn't get to be in a movie.

You know what I'm saying? That's insane. That's a business of love. That's crazy. That's a business. Yeah. I only ever auditioned for one movie. What movie was it?

Nobody's Fool. You auditioned for the Paul Newman movie? The Paul Newman movie. When I was like seven years old, they came to my elementary school. Play what? To play the kid. There's like a kid in the movie. Wow.

Yeah. I talked to some guy. I don't know. Wow. Wow. Good. Yeah.? To play the kid. There's like a kid in the movie. Wow. Yeah. I talked to some guy. I don't know. Wow. Wow, that's good. Yeah. That was it though. That could have been, see?

I was almost in the Woody Allen series. Oh. Oh, in the Amazon one? I was almost there. Wow. I got to meet him and everything. What? That was cool.

Okay, we got to end on that. Can you tell any story about meeting him? No. It was really as small as possible. Everybody keeps telling me that he's like a nervous, neurotic mess in the corner. Sure. Nah. It's a calm, right?

It was completely in control. I walked in. He's like, how you doing? Can you sit right there? All right. Done. See you. It was very quick.

You read the thing you did. Yeah, read it cold. I was like, all right. And I think I tried to put a character on it. I should have been as supernatural. I made a mistake. You're on the radar. Yeah, it was two sessions.

They said they liked me. It was fun. Sure. I liked him. For me, it was like it was two sessions they said they liked me it was fun sure I liked it for me it was like he makes a lot of stuff he makes a lot of stuff yeah

in the last three years I've literally met almost every one of my heroes like I've been in either met or been in the same room as everybody that's fucking queer

I realize I have one on the list I haven't met who? Steve Martin's like the only person I'd put at that higher level who I haven't met

yeah yeah I said one thing he was actually for us it's a painful memory he was supposed to be in episode 16 of Mulaney is the only person I'd put at that higher level who I haven't met. Yeah, yeah. I said one thing. He was actually, for us, it's a painful memory. He was supposed to be in episode 16 of Mulaney. He was already scheduled. Are you serious?

Jeez, damn. Oh, my God. Number 14 was Bill Hader, and 16 was going to be Steve Martin. Oh, my God. He fucked up canceling Mulaney. What was he going to play? I don't know, but like... I know the ratings are bad.

They also fucked up firing Griffin Newman from Mulaney. No, totally. No, completely. It was really all karma. It was karma, really, for firing him. I mean, when I see the ratings are bad. They also fucked up firing Griffin Newman from Malay. No, totally. No, completely. It was really all karma. It was karma, really, for firing him. I mean, when I see the character, you ever seen Simon Rich in person, though? Yeah. Yeah, I just want to think about it.

I see, like, oh, that's why he high-cast you. Yeah, it's similar. Yeah, because he was very much with Simon Rich, and he said, you know, like, oh, okay. All right. And then two different networks were like, that guy doesn't make sense. Well, because it was just two Malanys. He was giving you all his lines. It made no sense.

And then it was, yeah, he should have made you a friend outside and come in. Or he should have just dated him the same the whole time. Life led us where it led us. We're all in this sweaty room. Can't we just leave minutes ago? Can we get out of this? Yeah, let's get out of here. Thank you all for listening.

We're going to go. Next week, After go. Next week, After Earth. James III? James III from the Black Man Can't Jump in Hollywood podcast. He's awesome. Thank you for listening. Rate, review, subscribe. Email us. Sign my fast ape petition, but I'm also on a fast track now.

Oh, you're on a fast ape track? Yeah. I still haven't gotten my Sony PSN account unlocked, even though Sony now has employed me. They're producing the tech. Well, I should get on that. Probably don't want to talk shit about your bosses, man.

Yep. That's all he does every week. That's my running bit. Seton is going to continue eating a salad and... I'm going to finish this motherfucker. I'm getting my calories on. It's a big salad.

Yeah, it's a big man. It's a big salad. I started doing Kung Fu. All right, as always... And as always, big thanks to producer Ben, calories. It's a big salad. Yeah, it's a big man. It's a big salad. I started doing Kung Fu. Alright, as always. And as always, big thanks to Producer Ben, a.k.a. Purdueer Ben, a.k.a. the Ben Ducer, a.k.a. the Poet Laureate, a.k.a.

the Haas, a.k.a. Mr. Positive, a.k.a. Birthday Benny, a.k.a. the Tiebreaker, a.k.a. the Peeper. His name is not Professor Crispy. He's not even a nickname, a.k.a. Producer Ben Kenobi, a.k.a. Kylo Ben. Seton has not Professor Crispy. He's not even a nickname, a.k.a. producer Ben Kenobi, a.k.a. Kylo Ben. Seton has picked up his salad.

He's stretching. David's unplugging here. David's packing his stuff back up. Seton's contemplating his life while he was here in the studio. And as always, a hearty hello final for all of them.

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