Blocks w/ Neal Brennan - Phil Rosenthal

Episode Date: June 20, 2024

Neal Brennan interviews Phil Rosenthal ('Somebody Feed Phil,' 'Everybody Loves Raymond') about the things that make him feel lonely, isolated, and like something's wrong - and how he is persevering despite these blocks. ---------------------------------------------------------- 00:00 Intro 1:35 Everybody Loves Raymond 16:35 After the Sitcom 25:03 Sponsor: HelloFresh 26:59 Sponsor: Cuts Clothing 28:23 Travel 33:00 Negativity 54:37 OCD 1:01:30 David Letterman ---------------------------------------------------------- Follow Neal Brennan: https://www.instagram.com/nealbrennan https://twitter.com/nealbrennan https://www.tiktok.com/@mrnealbrennan Watch Neal Brennan: Crazy Good on Netflix: https://www.netflix.com/title/81728557 Watch Neal Brennan: Blocks on Netflix: https://www.netflix.com/title/81036234 Theme music by Electric Guest (unreleased). Edited by Will Hagle Sponsor Blocks: https://public.liveread.io/media-kit/blocks Sponsors: https://www.hellofresh.com/NEALAPPS for free appetizers for life https://www.cutsclothing.com promo code NEAL for 20% off your order Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hi, Neil Brennan here. This is the Blocks Podcast. My guest today has a Netflix show where he eats. I say that because you've done a show that took actual work. He also created the Everybody Loves Raymond show, which is one of the best sitcoms ever as far as I'm concerned. And his name is Phil Rosenthal. You're wincing right now.

I'm the least... I love your show. I love you. I think you're hysterical. I can't believe we've never met. We have these mutual friends. You have cool guests. Yes. I'm the least... Welcome to the least cool guest you've had on this show. You're cool.

It's never good when you have to say you're. No, let me explain why you're cool. You're accomplished. I respect. That doesn't make you cool. There are very few people. It does to me. There are very few people I respect more than people who created and ran a tv show it's don't ask me why

no there's there's a it's just the but neil there are hacks that are accomplished i agree but there aren't but you're not one of them so it's very nice um i'll i'll explain to you my point of view on everybody loves raymond i've known ray romano as we discussed before since i was like 13 14 him and my brother started doing stand-up together in the 80s so i got the pilot well i got the pilot for everybody loves raymond on video ah on vhs okay this is when this was yes so i had the pilot for that and i had the chris rock bring the pain ah on vhHS as well that had come out maybe three weeks earlier. This is the 1996, right? That's right. Me and Dave Chappelle watched them together.

And he literally was like, I feel like I just got hit in the head with a two by four. Because it was literally we watched them back. They did not exist. And then we watched them within three hours so it was like like a mark of show like my life like the before i watched it and after i watched it was so well developed and it was so it the other the thing i've always expected about the show was like you guys had your own pace yeah which must have been a decision yeah the plot it wasn't that plotty oh no and it was in the golden age of friends in seinfeld when it was like plot plot plot plot plot plot plot how did we're in the golden age of friends in seinfeld when it was like plot plot

plot plot plot plot how did we're going the other way how did you guys did you specifically decide that first meeting with ray we're just talking at a at a deli and he tells me about his actual family just in conversation like if i was going to work with you tell me about yourself where you were born you're from pennsylvania right? Yeah. So is my wife. Yeah. Great. From, from Philly. Yeah.

Okay. So it's questions like that. Tell me what was, and he tells me about. I got twin boys and an older daughter. My parents lived close by. They were always bothering me. My brother is a police sergeant and he's divorced and he lives with them. And he's, he's always touching every bite of food to his gym before he eats it.

And he's jealous of me. He saw my cable ace award and he said it never ends for raymond everybody loves raymond i said wow it doesn't seem like there's anything there we can use right and i thought no that ray that's actually a great place to start he goes what do you mean i go i don't know anything about you you're not an actor okay he would become a phenomenal actor yeah but i'm not going to make you like uh you know a gay astronaut from cleveland yeah let's let's make you you and he goes does there have to be a story and i'm like yeah i mean the sitcoms that i'm trying to emulate are the honeymooners all the family mary tallemore taxi the odd couple shows

that are grounded and on planet earth yeah he goes couldn't we just have it where i'm sitting in a diner with the other comedians and we're kind of just i'm like well first of all there is that show and i'm the wrong guy for that show i'm not the observational comedian who's who's and and we make a show out of that. He goes, so what do you mean? And I go, your family. And what I don't know about them, I'm going to fill in with the characters from my family. And he was unsure.

He was afraid it might, his biggest fear was it might be sitcom-y. Well, that was the great thing from, I don't know if it was, I think it the pilot where he goes uh in the in the cold open or the credit sequence where he's like my parents live across the yes i know my parents live across the street that's right like he was which is like great great you're owning it yeah and then the trick is to make it better than that would seem. So what we're saying is you don't want a bunch of artificial plot stuff. No. How do you do it where it doesn't just be nothing? You have a story. So here's the thing.

You're talking about these plots where let's say you have six characters in a show each of them have their own story during the show it seems very plotty as you were saying yeah okay so i'm like if a show is worth telling first of all we only have 21 minutes yeah okay if a story is worth telling at all i think it's worth telling for those 21 minutes meaning the subject is strong enough to carry you the best episode of seinfeld is the contest not just because it's about masturbation right really funny yeah but because all four characters are in on the main plot count me in on this i want to be in on this too they don't all have their own plots right and is it as someone who's written a lot of this type of show do you approach it as like

what is this person's philosophy is it philosophical or it, would you think of, and then he comes in and he's got a plot wrinkle or is it just more like. Character. So you call it philosophy. I would call it character. Okay. Character is writer plus actor. What the actor gives you. Right.

Meaning their strengths. Yeah. What they're good at. Peter Boyle is good at this type of line. Holy crap. What we write for him defines the character. So it's just a simple thing. And was it,

and that could be backstory. It could be, uh, uh, what, whatever the kind of philosophy, but it could be based on as a story, an anecdote.

It could be based on, uh, never thought of it as philosophy, but of course you're right. Every character has a philosophy of life. What's fun is playing with that and surprising people the way people in your own family surprise you by saying the outrageous thing you never expected them to. In our world, Deborah, the wife, was always right.

Raymond was an idiot. And was she actually right or was she just had to win so that was what was fun was you run long enough you get to now explore hey what if she's wrong about this yeah now what now you got a show yeah well then it's not yet literally this had come yes dear exactly at the beginning was it a bit yes dear and kind of it has to be you have to establish character and philosophy before you start bending it otherwise it doesn't have any comic weight it won't it won't but i think you would you could have challenged it in the third episode i mean deborah could have been wrong right we did challenge it in the third episode steve scrovant came in with a story about an iq test an iq test i'm taking a criminal psychology class to make

lieutenant and i have to learn how to give an iq test i think he wants me to steal third they took an iq test ray won completely unexpected great we twisted it immediately great and then of course it turned out that the iq test given by robert as part of his excuse was a police training or thing and they said let's take it and they took it and he when he told them that, of course, she was very angry that this idiot got a higher score. Yes. And at the end of the show, of course, the test was how do people react when they find out the partner has a higher IQ than them? Oh, that's funny. That's the real test.

Great. I've also heard IQ tests for cops. If they're too high, they can't be cops. Oh, my God. I've actually heard iq tests for cops if they're too high they can't be cops oh my god i've actually heard that oh my god my friend was an ex-cop and he said you have no idea how many of them were picked on as kids oh interesting this is their revenge huh it doesn't read uh wait so they're yeah no i had a guy tell me his son was a cop and i go why and he goes hey he's a bully oh see yeah just like yeah that makes sense um okay so so then the show had like a kind of slow boil in terms of popularity absolutely we were on

at 9 30s on fridays there hadn't been a hit in that time slot since Gomer Pyle on CBS. And then something crapped out on Monday nights, their big night in April, late in the season, we got a chance to be there. And the head of CBS said, I'm giving you this shot. You're going to have six episodes there. But if you don't do well there, I mean, we like the show, but if it doesn't perform, you're done. if it doesn't perform you're done and uh we did very well the first showing there and of course ray and i this is what we have in common we both thought we're gonna go down next week you know go down from here and we went up and that is when we knew we might have something. You guys were both late 30s at this point? I was mid 30s, yes. So you're, it's handleable. The hours, yes. Well, not,

well, the hours, yes, but the excitement of success. Yeah, we'd been on a slow boil. That's right. Plus, our whole careers and lives up till then.

So it wasn't like we're teen sensations. So you didn't, nobody freaked out. Here's something interesting. You ever hear this? You are, I believe, emotionally arrested at the age at which you become successful. Yeah, I've heard that. Because you, that's the moment people stop saying no to you.

So you have no reason to grow as a human being anymore. Yeah. Well, yeah, I think that's true. I think it's maybe different for writers. people stop saying no to you so you have no reason to grow as a human being yeah well yeah that i think that's true i think it's maybe different for writers because no one's saying no because we'll always be insecure yeah it's also it's a colin quinn joke of a lot of people enter some people enter the room people are the people are like yes and other people under the room people are like what like that and we're more in the what category yes um because just because writers are yeah dude because we we have bad posture

preternaturally even if we have good posture um how did you find the hours you guys had reasonable hours right because i'd worked five years in the business before that and thought this staying up till three in the morning is bullshit this is horrible nothing by the way ever got funny at three in the morning you just thought it did because you're hopped up on candy and you can't live that way and now we're starting to have kids right yeah and we also knew this show is the perfect vehicle for stuff from home right call rhino ran dick van dyke what happened at your house this week i thought that stealing that that's exactly how i should run this show so if you work for me your job was to go home get in a fight with your wife and come back in and tell me about it great

that was the show so that was very important so i engineered a schedule the first year very hard on any show because you're trying to find what works so you are staying a little later than usual but i'd say we had maybe dinner at the office three times in that first year and then i did something that wasn't popular, but I knew would help us. So meaning you've reached the end. You did 22 episodes that first season. And now, thank God, we get a vacation. We're lucky enough to be picked up for season two. We're going to now have, I think it's three months before pre-production where we come in and start writing scripts.

I say, nobody's going anywhere to the writers. We're going to stay for two weeks and we're going to break stories. And each writer is going to have a story to write on their vacation. And everybody's like, even I don't want to do it. Was it where they would get some sort of payment though right oh of course you get paid yeah but this is my vacation you know we're kids we want to go have play in the beach so we all stay it's not fun but we don't leave until we each have an approved by the room story which is how many people the hardest part there's eight of

us yeah 10 of us maybe including ray and we all go off now pre-production starts i have 10 first drafts and we spend pre-production pre-production polishing those drafts in the room and even developing the next stories so day one of production i have 10 finish scripts plus 10 more yeah 10 that are that are on the way that's the season practically so now we have bankers hours 10 to 5 unbelievable how great it was because i don't have to tell you production is this giant boulder coming down on your head and if you get behind you just have to go to the boulder yes and put your hand on at the beginning and then you let you just you lead the boulder instead of yeah it's hard you need to have strong arms but like go put your hand on the boulder and then you can have a little bit of say of it. So this became the way.

And because of that one sacrifice that summer. And it's not hard. By the way, once you have the story outline, you should, if you're a writer, be able to crank that out in five days. Yeah. This 40 page script. Yeah. Fuck in five days. Yeah. This 40 page script. Yeah. A fuck around five days. Exactly.

Yeah. And it made life so much easier. So during pre-production, we actually had free time. Hey, you want to go to Vegas? We all go to Vegas. Great bonding thing. Yeah. The whole writing staff and crew.

Come on. Fun was important. It's always important. Yeah was important it's always important yeah the writers never happen is anything more fun than being in a fun writer's room yeah if it's yeah if it's you're absolutely right it's like not work you're getting paid to laugh yeah and did you and then did you do that every season after that because now we had that jump right so now we could actually because we were ahead we didn't need to take the extra two weeks at the end we could take it towards the end of the season we're breaking stories for next season great and no one else has really done that have people done

it since i guess sitcoms if anyone's listening who's done that i actually put it in the book i wrote a book about how to do one of these shows it's called you're lucky you're funny how life becomes a sitcom and it's about how to take what you think is your boring terrible life and turn it into something good like a sitcom yeah great okay so then you finish and you've got you know uh, a small GDP amount of money. Mm-hmm. You've got a small country's GDP. Very nice.

And how many kids? Two. And how do you feel at the end? I feel like... It's 2010, right? 2005. Oh, wow. 2005 is when it ended. Oh, right. Okay.

Sorry, my mistake. Went from 96 to 2009 years. Yeah, my mistake. Yeah. Something happened. When I was a kid, I never traveled at all. And then when I was 23, I got a courier flight to Europe and it blew my mind. It changed my life.

Travel is the most mind expanding thing we can do in life. I became like, oh, this is what your extra money's for. Yes, I have to pay rent and eat, but every penny is not going to be spent on clothes, certainly, or stupid material things I'm going to save up to so I can travel. Yeah. Because this is great. Okay. In between season one and two, I say to Ray, where are you going on your hiatus?

He says he goes to the Jersey Shore. I say, that's great. Have you ever been to Europe? He says, no. I say, why not? He says, I'm not really interested in different. And right there- Say this for Ray, knows who he is.

Or thinks he knows who he is. He's the greatest. Yeah. Right there, I get an idea. We're doing that episode. You're going to go to Italy as you, and you're going to come back as me. Someone excited about travel and Italy especially. Yeah.

And it's where your family's from, right? Yeah. Okay. Took me three years to convince him. He's afraid to fly. Yeah. Get him. Turned out.

For that six hours, he can't really gamble. On the flight, it's hard to gamble. Yeah, I'm kidding. Turns out to be a very nice episode, but the best part was the change that I wrote in the character. The character arc, I saw happen to Ray. It actually happened. Phil, have you tried gelato? I know.

Yeah, that's funny. Yeah, when that happens to somebody. It happened to my brother, Joe. He never did it, and then he was like, have you guys been? You know,, that's funny. Yeah, when that happens to somebody. It happened to my brother, Joe. He never did it. And then he was like, have you guys been? You know, New York's great. We're like, yeah, we all have lived here for 20 years. You know, the theater.

No, yeah, we know what's great about it. I think this is one of my favorite things about Ray. And it's probably true of all comedians. They say the thing as if it's never happened to anyone else yeah yeah that's the gift and the curse yes i love i think young people have that as well like young people think like have you ever i one time said everyone when you're young you think every day is your birthday oh well it kind of is it kind of is yeah um okay you're doing it right so you're – So I – right there when I saw him get it in real life, I was like, wow, that's fun. I'm guessing you do what you do because you like turning people on to stuff you like.

Yeah. Right? Yeah. That's the greatest thing. Yeah. Seeing your friend light up because you gave him a cookie. Yeah. because you gave him a cookie.

Yeah. So I thought right then and there, this season, whatever, four or five, what if I could do this for other people? This travel, give them the travel bug. Got it. Okay, but Raymond runs nine years and you put that dream in the back of your head. And when Raymond's over,

I naturally think my purpose on the earth is to write more sitcoms everybody's telling me to yeah so i write a sitcom nobody wants it did you is that did that literally happen yes you wrote a sitcom i even wrote the i had the spinoff ready for robert and people were like no thanks too old yeah they tell me the business changed in these nine years now Now we just want hip and edgy. Yeah. I mean, God bless. We want young and pretty, hip and edgy, none of those things. By the way, CBS stayed on the middle-aged track for another 20 years and still is on it.

Not for lack of trying. They tried to be cool and they couldn't. They rejected the spinooff because everyone in that cast would have been over 40 and they greenlit something while everyone was in their 20s over 40 you mean over 40 million dollars a year they rejected it and what did they do they they did a cool young person show that never happened and then they ended up going back everyone did the friends imitation yeah there was one friends yeah god doesn't often give with both hands there was one friends and it was seinfeld okay uh uh yeah so so now i knocked my head against

the wall i wrote pilot after pilot i wrote with younger people that's funny because from the outset in i would always wonder what is what i wonder phil rosenthal it seemed like it should be you should just be like a chuck lorry like just do it and do it and do it and do it do it i'm not him right and and so i can't right i didn't realize it was because they didn't want them. I thought it was because you just stopped. I thought you were like, ah, I'm good. No, no. I would have been perfectly happy to have another sitcom right away. Okay. So after a few years of that, I go, if I'm going to strike out, well, I think I'm going to pursue this dream thing. And my agents looked at me like i was out of my mind and did you ever get the sense within yourself that you were like a frustrated performer no i was thrilled running raymond yeah i was thrilled i mean i thought you know acting was my immature self and now i'm a grown-up right that's really how i felt yeah which is a fair way to think this is phenomenal yeah it was like it's not like hitting the jackpot it's like hitting it over and over and

over again yeah spectacular i'm not even talking about the money at all yeah you're talking about like the feeling and the having an idea and then and then it crushing it was five days later. And the friends I made. Yeah. You know, people ask, do you miss that show? No. The show, we did 210. You don't miss the show. Right. You miss your friends.

Yeah. I miss sitting in that room with Mike Royce and Ray and Steve and Lou and, you know, all those guys. Yeah. They're all comedians. Yeah. I laugh my head off every day. Nine years is like going to high school and summer college with people. Yeah.

They become your war buddies. Yeah. So we still have that. We'll always have that. Do you have that in your life? Yeah, of course. These great friends. Yeah.

So what beats that? So I thought, yeah, I want to live in that world forever. And then I was being rejected again as if i never did anything and i thought what about this so people think because i did raymond they handed me this whatever i want to do show from the time raymond was over to when the show got on pbs and we had tried every network and cable station. PBS, you're talking about the food show? Exactly. Okay.

It was called I'll Have What Phil's Having. Between Raymond and I'll Have What Phil's Having, which is a very similar show to what I'm doing now, was 10 years. Now, I did write a book. I did do a documentary about the Russians calling in. Yeah, I saw that. Exporting Raymond. Yeah, yeah saw. Yeah. Exporting Raymond.

Yeah, yeah. So that was my first time naturally in front of the camera. I only agreed to go to Russia if I could make a documentary about the process. I wasn't planning on being a movie star, but naturally, if it is about the process, I'm the guy helping the Russians. Right. And it's naturally going to be about our contrasting sensibilities. Right.

Okay. But stuff came from that. Oh, I Skype with my parents accidentally in that show. Just came up in the moment to Skype them because this Russian family, the grandparents knew how the computer worked. And I said, this I have to see because my parents are completely, they can't, they said, they said, I said, you know how Skype works? Because I had tried to Skype with my parents. I could barely get them to, they go, yeah, we know. I said, call my parents. That right there, as we're filming, my parents just happened to be up. They're the hit of the movie. They're the funniest thing in the movie. And then when I got

the food and travel show, I'm going to Skype with them. Why? Because they're funny and you like recurring characters coming from the world of sitcoms. And there's a natural reason for it. The Skype call, the Zoom call is the modern

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of style and comfort with Cuts clothing. Okay, so the impetus for the travel food show is to show people the world. I think the world would be better if we all could experience a little bit of other people's experiences.

It's not just a guy eating. If it was a guy eating, it would be really boring. And'm the guy eating yeah it can't just be about that i'm okay so what i'm using food and my stupid sense of humor to sneak in the real message and what do you think makes because i because when you started bourdourdain's on the show. He's got TV. And there's a few shows like this, right? You know how I sold the show? How?

One line. I said, I'm exactly like Anthony Bourdain if he was afraid of everything. Great. What makes one of those shows good? Because I don't know. As an outsider, I don't know what what differentiates one from another as someone who's just like casually a viewer of these shows there's one element that makes every show good and that is interesting kubrick said to jack nicholson when they were filming the shining and doing 70 takes

nicholson said i don't know how to do it any different uh am i not doing it right are you looking for something he goes i'm not he goes and how will you know when it's right and he goes when it's interesting right that always stayed with me yeah one of the things that of course we think keeps something interesting is is it funny the only thing i have to offer in that genre is maybe i can make you laugh a little, maybe. And if I'm not making you laugh, it better be goddamn gorgeous, have food that looks like you want to eat, or some interesting fact about the place. Because the real point is to bring us together.

It's inclusivity, not exclusivity. If you're talking about philosophy, that's my philosophy of comedy. A lot of comedy is exclusive. Hey, look at that guy. He's fat. Right. Right. Inclusive is when you make fun of yourself.

Right. And when you bring the world in a little bit to you and they can come to you. Great. Because I watched the Thailand, I watched Portugal, and I watched one of the Spain. Madrid? I think so. Yeah. Barcelona was in the PBS.

We only did six for that. Whichever one's on Netflix. That's it, Madrid. I refuse to watch PBS. Do you make it? I'm kidding. Not an easy place to work. Interesting.

Yes. Well, you know what I'm wondering about watching those? Do you ever want to say something negative about the place of course and do you never not you don't think it would be worth it you don't think it would be like this is great but yeah like i'm watching the bangkok one i'm like the thing about you sort of graze at the beginning like bangkok's you know the heat can be over and it's's like, Bangkok is severe. You went. Yeah, I've been there. It's like, it's full on. Like, wow, this is a lot.

This is like three times the power of a city. Yeah. In one city. There's traffic. It's hot. Yeah. It's gross. Phone wires. Like, you can't believe you can't like

uh like uh like a 19 year old's apartment yeah and then you eat yeah and holy moly that food come on look how beautiful that is look at that and then the people yeah and then these pockets of gorgeous right where you're you're just blown away, it is worth it. Why dwell on the negative? There's enough negative. No, well, I'm just wondering. Also, no, I mean it. People say it looks like you like everything that you, yeah, I like everything I put in the show.

I have less than an hour to get you the message that you should come here. So it's also philosophy of life for me now. I don't have time for the negative. Do you think most places are worth going to? I do. First of all, I think you can get a great meal anywhere now. I totally agree. Because the world is flat because of the internet. A kid in Peoria can see what a chef in Paris is doing, emulate it, use local ingredients, invent something great and new and everywhere i go

i eat very well yeah and it doesn't have to be a high end in fact i prefer it's not yeah i'm with you you you just said something that i think will will use it to get into the point of the show which is you don't have time for negative negative did you in your life were you overwhelmed with it and what was your let's say negativity let's call that a block tell me about your relationship with negativity well first of all when i was five years old i was the star of the apartment and then my parents brought home a replacement great oh i know i watched the one with your parents too. So your brother. Yeah.

Your brother doesn't look like he would be your brother. He looks like he's from a surfing sitcom. He looks like from a sitcom about California. So imagine looking like this, and then they bring home, I always say, you know, it's like we were the Beatles, he was Paul,

and I was Stanleyley myron handleman yeah yeah that's how it was yes the cuter uh sweeter yeah and i became jealous angry i was a short little skinny nothing that was picked on in school and i would come home and i would take it out on him and i was not nice consciously kind of like oh yeah like you know what happened that's you remember you remember you showed up yeah that was and and you will his original sin yes was i will exact my revenge yeah and it wasn't always like that and we have home movies proving that we loved each other but if i had a bad day i was that guy who came home and kicked the dog and in this case the dog was richard when did you realize that that was a bad idea the moment i left

home and it wasn't all through high school you grew up right and you were like oh I did you apologize quickly I don't think in so many words but all my actions he's my best friend oh great he's my absolute best he is he is I can't I can't describe it any other way we were best mans at each other's wedding and now I get to travel the world and make a show with my best friend. Is he the, he's the main? He's the producer. Oh, great. The reason the show's any good at all is because of him.

Oh, wow. That's awesome. He's just great at what he does. Really smart. I think we have the brother's connection and sensibility and the shorthand that you would have with your brother or someone you know for your whole life. Did you, okay. So did you were,

you left the house where you negativity can be good for comedy. Absolutely. It can be good for conversation, honestly. Plus you go, you move in New York, you move into New York. Yeah.

New York in the eights was dirty smelly horrible yeah in many ways the subway uh unsafe disasters hot in the summer torture hell that grinds you and you can't help but be cynical and yeah angry and then i uh you know there were so many times when i felt just awful about myself and if you feel awful about yourself because you're not making it, you're not doing what you'd like to do, you're doing a terrible job to pay the rent, and you're not happy. So that is reflected out. But the moment you get what you want, shouldn't that make you nicer? Yeah. But I think you're, the grooves are used to doing what they do. You have the negative grooves.

I do. So, but they went away in large part. From success. From happiness. And how did you get happiness? Found a nice girl. Uh-huh.

Married her. Had kids. I like them yeah how old are your kids uh 29 and 26 in fact my boy ben who's 29 is getting married sunday oh that's fucking so i'm just like i'm in heaven yeah and i get to do look what i get to do yeah podcasts i'm good uh i do that too yeah but why because i like talking to people it's fun and okay so you uh so a lot of your negativity was just from frustration and from because i was having a bad time yeah you and i could make fun of a lot of stuff i will not do it in public because i don't want to hurt anybody i don't want to ruin anybody's career if i take a bite of something in the show and it's not fantastic or at least good i'm always going to be polite yeah but i'm

never going to spit it out and go you're an idiot who made this yeah which i've heard some people do yeah i don't like that that's there's no reason for that why hurt someone's business yeah just cut it out just take it out yeah i take it out. Yeah. I will. I have had negative reactions on the show to an ingredient. Okay. Or if I went to the pizza place in Buenos Aires that has incredible pizza, but when you pick up this slice of pizza, rivers of cheese are pouring off it as you pick it up.

It's like waterfalls of cheese coming off this pizza. And there's so much cheese on it that there's still plenty of layers of cheese left on that slice and you eat it and it's an oily mess it's delicious but now you need a napkin and the napkins in this place are like the the napkins in remember the black and white notebooks as if you tore out a tiny corner of a page of that here's your napkin you're like this is completely unsuitable for the job at hand ridiculous first of all i'm an american i need super absorbency please it's what we're known for yeah that's all we have and and i and this is inadequate so I made fun of the napkins. It doesn't hurt anybody.

Yeah, great. When you were negative, did you think it was cool or a badge of honor? Or were you like, I can't wait for this to be over? A way to get a laugh maybe and bond with someone else. Because it is the quickest route to connecting sometimes is how about that thing that stinks yeah yeah and did you kind of take that out of your repertoire or you you are just more aware of what it was doing to you it still can be there in private god knows there's enough on the news that we can talk about that all day. Right. I'm still a person.

I'm not like Pollyanna about the world. I still get upset, angry, worried, depressed even about the state of things. I can't believe some of this stuff. I don't know if we're going to survive. I mean, it's very easy for me to go down that route. Yeah. But I choose to and I don't want to get you know no i'm i'm interested in it because i'm it's i'm having my own experience with the choice okay so that

here's what helped me not about the news but just about everything else selection as a way to be i know i happen to that depression, it can be chemical and not just an outlook. But here's what helps me, and I've had therapy too, because the business drove it to me. Even in the middle of success, I had a couple of experiences where I thought I was going to work with a friend and it just turned into a nightmare. I couldn't believe it. And that made me depressed and sent me into therapy and that helped. But I don't, I don't know. Are you, do you go to therapy all the time?

I've done it. I'm not going now, but I, there are periods where I've gone a lot. I don't understand going past when you need going. It's like I broke my arm, fixed my arm. Yeah. I move on. I don't keep going to the doctor look at my arm gratitude is huge yeah i wake up in the morning first of all i'm happy i woke up

yeah at this age yeah second wife of 34 years next to me next my favorite dog i've ever had is at the foot of my bed kids doing well house pillow bed nice tv big yeah happy yeah food yep happy everything else is gravy did you grow into that yeah what and it it wasn't something you worked at because i'm i i think when you the things you've said, the thoughts that came up were, I think a lot of people get, people stay in therapy because they get stuck in the monologue they're telling themselves. That's exactly right. And that becomes your frigging life. It becomes your personality and it becomes your life and it becomes like, it is your hobby. And you know who wants you to stay there the person in the hobby with your therapist exactly just like we were talking

about the surgeon recommends surgery yeah i think that they want i i agree that they want you to stay it's like well that's all they care about also so they want you and i think now, especially there's premium put on victimization and agreement. So people like staying in it because it gives them points culturally. There's a thing. Culturally. Yeah. You're better off being a victim than you are being a anything else.

That's a terrible way to think. I totally agree. But I think that's the way a lot of people think there's a and i brought it up on here before there's a thing called post-traumatic stress yeah disorder and the which is famous the thing that's not famous is uh a post-traumatic growth there's a thing called post-traumatic growth that no one seems to talk about that's beautiful where you can again not better off for the hardship but like you can get over shit and you're not a sellout you're not a uh a bitch for getting over for for uh for not being aggrieved anymore right here's one of the best things i heard about thinking

we worry about stuff oh my god i have this thing coming up i'm so worried it's gonna go bad okay you owe it to yourself to think about it being turning out great yeah because there's an equal chance. So why not? Right. Because I think we're evolved to look for threats. Ah. I don't think, I mean, I always said most of the, sort of the, all the woke settlers died of arrow wounds. You know what I mean? All of like, let's look on the i'll be your friend yeah like let's look on the bright side didn't didn't it didn't really work for a lot for most of human

history remember uh independence day the best moment in that movie is when they're trying to understand the alien and they say what do you want and they the alien says we want you to die what is it you want us to do how do you reason with that hitchcock knew this hitchcock knew that the scariest thing was the guy you do everything the guy tells you to do he's going to kill you anyway yeah yes for fun or because he has to yeah yeah for yes so obviously it it seems like you're doing due diligence by being negative wow i never thought of that i hadn't either but i think it really does i think it's like you're going through you're sort of by the way that is the definition of due diligence you have to think of everything that could go wrong yeah you have to yes but that doesn't have to affect you emotionally you can look at it as

a business plan in front of you yeah but i don't i mean i think that's easier said than done of course and when i write anything i wish that worry was not part of the writing process, but for me it is. What do you mean? I worry about it. Explain that. I worry this will be bad. I worry that this will, I won't be able to write anything. But the isn't. Every single time.

Yeah, but isn't, I mean, I think that's part of the job. But couldn't worry not be part of it? Couldn't it just be thinking without worrying? I don't know anyone that does it that way. I'm trying to take the emotion out of it. Worry indicates emotion. Right. Negative emotion.

I feel bad. Right. Worrying. Yes. Worry makes you feel bad. Keeps you up at night. Yeah. I don't want that. Yes. I wish I could just be clinical about it. Here's the task. I got this to do. Jerry Seinfeld seems like, and you know him better than me, but he seems like, first of all,

the most confident person in the world. Right. Second, I think he writes every day and he loves it. Maybe he's so in love with everything he puts down on paper that it's only a good time for him. I think, and he came on and I didn't hit him with this, but I think he's got more. I mean, I did say he's more negative than he seems and Larry's more positive than he seems and he agreed. he's more positive than he seems and he agreed so like i think my i think what you're asking for may not be human in that the thing that makes you have an idea yeah because you're not satisfied with the existing idea do you know what i mean you're worried that you're going to be vulnerable whether it's this plot isn't good enough yeah and the and the if you play that sequence out it's this plot isn't good enough and uh we're going to be found out and they're going to cancel right or or this trip to buenos aires isn't interesting enough right and they're

going to pull the plug and you'll be discovered as the fraud yes that's the cliche right and that i think that is like the cascade that is the domino yeah and i don't know how to get to like well things are good now but what if they were better like i don't i don't think that's a legitimate human approach. Here's how I justify it to myself. Well, maybe the quality of a lot of things would be better if people worried about them more. Yeah. Well, I would argue. Right.

I would argue that part of the reason that the things that you or I have done were good was because we didn't settle. We didn't go, that'll do that'll do pig that'll do pig that'll do we actually were like obsessive and it might have been dark and we hurt ourselves to give you this kind of like i'm sure you have acid reflux in some form yeah i don't i'm my stomach's pretty good oh that's interesting i only got sick once in all my travels and it was san francisco i of all the exotic places that that uh tenderloin sidewalk i got a little uh untender i got a little something so yeah so i would say that whatever negative i think it's got has its place a bit of negativity but the thing that i've been aware of recently that maybe you can relate to

which is in terms of trying to turn turn it off is i'm a receptacle for this bad feeling right and i don't want to be one of those charred chalices that they put molten steel in that just is black and tar and burned out yeah and burnt because of all of the shit my brain is spilling into my body yeah Yeah. And I literally thought of it 10 times yesterday. I'm like, stop it. Stop doing this. This is not good for you. And I wouldn't even, it was just passive worry. I had nothing to worry about.

I mean, that's literally, I've written in my gratitude checklist book, which I have, and I do three or four a day. You do? Checklist, yes. Gratitude checklist. That's great. Does it help you?

Helps me immeasurably so then you know the secret yes yes but it's so oprah-fied that it's why was that her secret i never read she was the first person i know who are publicly who talked a lot about gratitude and gratitude journals and shit really that i could be wrong so that's great yeah people yes but i don't i think most people don't and somebody goes i don't have time i'm like you don't have time to understand that you are so lucky compared to 99 of the world i don't have time i have too i don't have i simply don't have time i have to listen to podcasts um okay so so that negativity you seem to have gotten some kind of handle on i think so yeah because look what happened to me yeah people say was it was it worth 10 years

for the yeah of course of course it was was worth was what worth 10 years this unbelievable thing you get to do as your life oh the 10 years between the sitcom and the or the 10 years leading up to the sitcom was it worth it of course it was look at every single movie that wins best picture they hold up that award and they go it took 10 years to sell this yeah nobody wanted it yeah that's how i would say if you want to get good at something go be a loser for 10 years. It's the Malcolm Gladwell thing too. Yeah. Right? The 10,000

hours of... I used to watch TV. Were you like me? Watch TV instead of going out and living at all? I guess kids do it now with the phone, but I was a student of TV without knowing. Jerry Seinfeld said he hugged the TV when he got a TV.

He hugged it. My parents would say to me, go outside. What are you going to do? Get a job watching television? And the moment I started working in television, I sent them a television, the biggest one they made at the time, with a note on it that said, ha ha. Great. Okay. So you got that. You at the time. Yep. With a note on it that said, ha ha. Great. Okay. So you got that,

you got the negativity. What you also sent OCD, light OCD. A little bit. Yes. Tell us about that. Uh, I, I think I'm a creature of habit. I think a lot of people are. The trick is to turn your bad habits into good ones. So if there's a thing you're going to do every day, sit on the couch and watch TV and eat potato chips, replace some of that with working out every day. So now I've reached the point where I never exercised until I was 40. And now if I don't work out or do something, at least every single day, I feel weird that I didn't do that. And is it physical or it's OCD? Meaning is it your body feels different? Are you even aware of how you feel in your body?

It's OCD. I have to do it. It's compulsive. I must do it. Every trainer will tell you, what are you doing? The day of rest is actually essential to being healthy and creating muscle even if that's what you're going for. I don't think it's about that. I think I got to be, let's go. We got to do it. Got to go. I walked today before I, we started today at 11, but I already got up at a quarter to eight and walked a mile and a half to my coffee shop as I do every morning because I'm obsessive about it. I also love the little congregation of people, neighbors that I've accumulated over the years on Larchmontlevard and and i love seeing them so whenever i'm home

i'm either walking the dog there i'm going myself but i am going and then i come back and if i didn't have this today uh i would be working out in my little room where i have some weights and doing doing that which i'll do as soon as we're done i have to i have to i can't wait for this to be over so it sounds like no but it's not that it i when i was thinking of ocd i was in bed this morning and i was like what am i not and i hadn't journaled yet ah so it's there's there's got to be a way to, it's like positive OCD. Yes. Because we're all going to have something.

We're all going to have a habit. So the trick is make it a good one. Yes. Don't do one that hurts you. I'm sure I still have it. I still don't need a healthy every day. I could be healthier. Sure.

But you're, you're not, you're slim. I wish I had the writing ocd where i was compelled to write every day i wish i had that i know but you know what it's a lot harder to write than it is to work out it's harder to write than do anything i think of i mean i can't think i again like well coal mining no coal mining at least there's friends with you yeah exactly or chance at friends yeah and their writing is the loneliest thing yeah unless you're in the writer's room you also it's not going to be good if you just gangbang the script altogether it's never as good as the single vision it gets way better after everyone's pitching in but it's got to start but you have to yeah otherwise it's there's nothing yep all right ocd yes we've got uh

what are your insecurities you've got insecurity down here whatever you can think of look at me i mean let me start guessing i'm good uh yeah like is just? They haven't improved the same old? Am I good enough in any way? You know, I get validated. You get validated. You go on stage, people laugh and love you. I get to, you know, I do a live show now. Great. I go around, we show a little highlight reel of the show that people seem to like.

I'm playing theaters that are, I played the Chicago Theater a couple weeks ago. 3,200 people. I played the Beacon Theater. I have no business being in that theater. The Rolling Stones played there. Great. I go on with a moderator. I tell funny stories about my career, my life,

and then Q&A for the second half of the show. It almost, I feel guilty that this is a show yeah that people pay money to come and see yeah is did you do what you set out to do do you get the sense that people that you converted people to travel or is yes absolutely 90 of the audience went somewhere because of the show yeah makes the world better a little yeah i always say to the audience you seem very nice you're exactly the people who should be traveling because we should be exporting nice do you ever think of nice is boring yeah and what and then how do you talk yourself out of that good good nice equals good yeah so yeah it's a little more boring than roasts no yeah no exactly yes but what if you could be both what if you could be nice and shit on people's jacket well not shit on people's jacket but funny yeah i so i'm i'm interested in

in how you're if you worry about being a beacon of boring and well not a beacon do you know what i mean like if you're just kind it's uh millennium kroll did a joke one time about broadway which they they said it's something something about with it's with no tension or stakes. It's hysterical. Right. It's like there's no it's a Broadway play. It's a story with no tension or stakes. So what I what I what I worry about as being as going trending more positively, I go, am am i just gonna be like fucking hallmarky and

yeah but probably not so um um i complain in the show uh my brother makes me do things i don't want to do in the show yeah so that is quote unquote a touch of negativity okay i'm not happy now right i'm gonna complain now i'm not uh i'd rather be eating a nice hot dog right now than you throwing me in the coldest water in the earth yeah did an iceland show the water was one degree above not water it was painful yeah lasted 10 minutes hilarious in the show to my brother correct so isn't that all that matters yes so it's that if you're looking for a little uh sand in the oyster that's look for new value programs when you shop at loblaws like hit of the month so you get the best deals and low prices on amazing products every month and did you know pc optimum members save more for exclusive offers and members

only pricing. Just scan and save. And don't forget in stock promise where you can count on great offers being in stock or get a rain check. Discover more value than ever at Loblaws in store and online. Conditions apply. See in store for details. Your teen requested a ride, but this time not from you. It's through their Uber teen account. It's an Uber account that allows your teen to request a ride under your supervision with live trip tracking and highly rated drivers. Add your teen to your Uber account today. Yeah. So we have that element.

He may be going to a race car at 187 miles an hour i thought i was gonna it was the worst thing that's ever were you driving you were a passenger i was a passenger even worse yes so your insecurities haven't gotten they have the age is pretty good for that aging right for insecurity you just stop you know what's a really underrated thing in the in human life forgetting the truth that just you forget a lot of you forget times you were a total piece of shit we did this episode in on raymond we call it uh nature's editing outstanding yeah like you don't remember you just don't remember we will forget the shitty always uh you don't have kids right i have like a i'm trending toward a relationship but yes yeah video every second because the videos actually become

your memories interesting and you're only videoing the good stuff when something shitty happens you take it out i don't need to keep that yeah that's how your mind should work that's how your mind does work yes don't hang on to the negative it doesn't help anybody yeah it doesn't help well it's funny but it's as somebody who likes justice yes i'm sure you do as well why why write comedy of course uh it it's kind of not just it's just if it's just when i forget the awful things i've done. Of course. It's unjust when you forget. Do you know what I mean? Like, it's not like, think, because I think about like, oh, well, I'll be assailing someone in my head and I'll be like, you did that. And I was like, oh, I just forgot.

It's not part of my, the official records. Have you ever been surprised at how wrong you are in remembering something i like absolutely that it didn't happen the way you thought it did and you've been hanging on to this for freaking years we're idiots yes i know and it's but it is you hate to say hitler forgot things well if anyone had a right to forgive himself. He had so much to forget. But I'm saying like there are, you know, you want justice. And it's like, I don't know, Pol Pot probably wasn't hung up on or maybe he remembered it.

And it was like, you know, it was good. Or, you know, that was a heroic moment. All right. In closing, what is the, what is the, what would you like to impart to people? What's the lesson? What are you trying to tell?

What's the point of view? Great question. Two things. Best advice I ever got was from that crazy show runner from, from baby talk who did many other brilliant shows. I just happened to get to him when he was doing Baby Talk. Got it. I'm writing the pilot for Raymond.

I said, any advice for me? He goes, do the show you want to do because in the end, they're going to cancel you anyway. Philosophy of life. Letterman said the same thing to Seinfeld when he was writing the pilot for Seinfeld. Oh, that's so good. Yeah. Philosophy of life. We all get canceled one day.

He was the producer on your show. He didn't tell you that. Never said anything. I had the weirdest interview of my life with David Letterman. Because after Ray and I seemed to get along, next step was you're going to meet Dave because he's a producer on the show. It's his production company in conjunction with HBO for CBS. I go to New York. Late Night with David Letterman is still on.

Big deal. Yeah. I never missed a single episode. I'm meeting God. You ever go in his office? That one, no. You go in his office on the sixth floor at the Ed Sullivan building. The desk is facing the wrong way when you go in his office.

So in other words, you come in and you're behind the desk and he and his two producers they tell me to have a seat and he letterman gestures to the seat his seat at the desk i say not behind the desk he says absolutely behind the desk. So I sit like it's my office, my meeting, and he and his buddies sit on the other side. I said, the first thing I'd like to do is throw you all the hell out of my office. He has the music, heavy metal music playing at a deafening volume and does not lower it during our first meeting. I don't understand it. Was it to see if I could put up with stuff, or are they just pranking anyone who comes?

I didn't understand it. He said to me, so tell us what you think of the show. What's going to be? I said, well, I like Ray's personality. I think I'm starting with his family, but it's pretty much going to be, you know, his character and these characters. And they just kind of nodded as if they'd never been in this business before, which I think they dabbled in a tiny bit. Yeah.

Here was Letterman's advice. You ready? Okay. Just don't embarrass us yeah i said that's what i say to my kids when i drop them off at school every day yeah that's kind of all you can if you're not in charge or something don't embarrass me and then i heard from him he was an executive producer on everybody loves raymond david ledin in nine years a grand total of five minutes hey i heard you're picked up how many do they pick up

how many seasons do they pick up now like five i said just one day one at a time yeah not like you yeah he's a quirky gentleman he got sweeter yeah after he had his boy yeah he became and and i called him to thank him when we were done and he was in the middle of his last week of shows and he called me right back two days before he was done and I talked to him for half an hour. Couldn't have been nicer. Yeah, he was the first guest on here. It was great.

I listened to that. Yeah. I was in awe. I think he's wonderful. Yeah, he's outstanding. All right, so that was the first point was you're going to get canceled anyway. Yes, and second, be nice and travel. It's the most mind-expanding thing we can do in life.

If somebody gave you a house as a gift, here's a house, big house, would you stay in one room of the house? We've got to have a TV. Yeah, we have this gift, right? Yeah. Keep it nice, number. We have a, yeah, we have this gift, right? Yeah. Keep it nice, number one, and go see it. It's a one-way street.

You know, this is it. Yeah, I agree. All right, it was great talking to you, man. I love talking to you. Yeah, all right, great. Thank you. All right, buddy. See you soon.

Shake, shake out. Oh, because we're on TV. Yes, we're on YouTube even better. Thank you. Thank you.