Conan O’Brien Needs A Friend - Quentin Tarantino

Episode Date: December 15, 2021

Screenwriter and director Quentin Tarantino feels trepidatious about being Conan O’Brien’s friend. Quentin sits down with Conan to discuss drawing influences from iconic 1970s television, going deeper into the story of Rick Dalton with the novelization of Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, his favorite Burt Reynolds story, and much more. Got a question for Conan? Call our voicemail: [phone]. For Conan videos, tour dates and more visit TeamCoco.com.

Hi, my name is Quentin Tarantino. And I feel trepidatious about being Conan O'Brien's friend. Why trepidatious? Why would you, who've created so much fear in other people's hearts and minds, why would you be trepidatious at all about a simple guy like me being my friend? Well, I could flatter you and say because you're such a legend. But I shan't. Fall is here, hear the yell, back to school, ring the bell, brandy shoes, walk in lose,

climb the fence, books and pens, I can tell that we are gonna be friends. I can tell that we are gonna be friends. Hey, and welcome to Conan O'Brien Needs a Friend. This is a very unique episode. We do this from time to time. We're gonna drop this one out of sequence. There's gonna be none of the usual banter of foolishness because this is a guest I've been wanting to interview in this format for a very long time. This gentleman and I have a lot to discuss.

I'm a huge fan. We're gonna go down some crazy rabbit holes and I can't afford to lose any time. So let's get started. This is exciting. My guest today is an Academy Award-winning screenwriter and director whose films include Pulp Fiction, Kill Bill, Jango Unchained and Inglourious Bastards, just to name a few. His new book, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, based on his movie of the same name, is available now. I'm really honored.

He's with us today. Can't wait to get started. Quentin Tarantino, welcome. You know, I have been very excited to talk to you because, as we were just mentioning off-mic seconds ago when you walked in, crashed in really, kicked the door down. You weren't even scheduled to be on the podcast and you said, we're doing this now. We were talking about how we both are a similar vintage. I think we were born the same year and we both guard our career together.

We were born the same year and we both guard our career started around the exact same time. Yeah. You went on the air in 1991, right? I think it was 1993. In 1991, I'm at the Simpsons, but my career was starting to heat up a little bit and then 1993 is when it really... That's when it actually premiered. Yes. In 1993.

And yeah, okay. So then I had, as a matter of fact, yeah, I had just been on the scene since 1992. So I mean, there's this weird, anybody who became famous around that time, I always feel this kinship with them. That we all kind of came up in the show business high school together. In the trenches together, yeah, around the same time. But the thing about with you, it took me actually a little bit to see your show because I was actually just going around doing publicity all the time. But all my friends at Video Archives were watching it and they were telling me about it and they were telling me two things. Sisters of my old girlfriend and everything were saying, one, he's kind of like you.

That's what they all said. He's kind of like you. It's almost kind of like if Quentin has a talk show because he likes a lot of the same things you like and he's in the same kind of vein. And then they also told me, and he brings up reservoir dogs from time to time. Yeah. Yeah. Well, it's really funny because we've been able to talk before, but it's six, seven minutes, go to commercial music, come back six, seven minutes. We talk about your movie.

We show the clip and you go. But not only that, though, more than on the other talk shows. I'm not sure I pulled it off. But on your show, particularly as opposed to all the other talk shows, I tried to kind of come on as a comedian. And not like some dorky director just like plugging his movie. I came up with bits. Yes, you did. I worked out stuff.

You did. I practiced it for you a little bit beforehand so you could feed me the right kind of inline. You treated it like the way a stand-up guy would deal with this couch time. But it was nice because I got to see, first of all, how much we have in common. And I say this with the massive caveat that I would be a terrible film director. And Hollywood is blessed that I've never tried to direct a film. You're not going to go to John Stuart Rapp? No, no, no.

It's just no one wants to see a film. One film, the Conan. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I would see a film I direct because I would keep wandering in and looking at the camera and winking and doing a bit and then going back behind the camera. So no, that won't happen. You say that like it's a bad thing. Yeah, exactly.

But one of the things that has always struck me about your work that resonates with me so much, and I think one of the reasons I'm such a massive fan is that many people have explored how much you have an encyclopedic knowledge of film and how much film has meant to you. What's always struck me is your knowledge and reverence for 1970s TV because you and I came up at the same time. And the actors that you've used and the references that you make are born from a little boy watching 70s television.

Yeah. And down to when I was a kid and they would show reruns because there wasn't as much TV as there is now. But there's a ton of TV now, but it means less because it's just all over the place. But when we were a kid, especially during the afternoon when all the syndicated shows would be playing, no, we had that and that was it and we watched it. But the thing that stunned me is when I was with my brothers, my brothers and I, particularly my brother, Neil, who's older than me, we would sit and we would watch The Big Valley.

And it would be an episode with Bruce Dern. Now, we knew who Bruce Dern was because he was the baddest badass that ever came on The Big Valley. He'd always come on. It was the Barclay family. They were the good guys. They were rich. And he'd always come on and go, you high and mighty Barclays with your high and mighty

ways. Like Prairie Scum. Yeah, Prairie Scum. He was Prairie Scum. And then we revered Bruce Dern and we knew his name and we cared about Bruce Dern just from his appearances on The Big Valley. Flash forward to you using him and the same thing, the way that you would take characters from the 70s or actors from the 70s that you clearly revered and you would help David

Carradine and you would use him and that show meant so much to me, Kung Fu. And then you brought him back. You did the same thing over and over again. And I realized really so much more in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood that, yes, it's a movie about so many things, but really of all the movies you've done, it might be the one that's really going into television the most and your reverence for TV and some of these actors and the whole subculture and the whole subgenre of this world and these terrific actors.

And you realize that Bert Reynolds came out of television and Clint Eastwood came out of television. 1960s TV shows, it doesn't happen so much today. You know, it's such a, it's a completely different world. Well, yeah, it's funny because I had this feeling at some point when I was writing Once Upon a Time in Hollywood and that it almost felt even more so in the book because I was able to actually utilize all this stuff as opposed to a movie. Well, I'm making a movie, I got to tell a story at some point.

But as I was writing the script, I was like, it's just as if I've spent my entire life filling my head with all this knowledge that I started picking up around when I was a kid at the expense of everything else. When I was writing the script, I was like, oh, wow, this is almost like the script I was born to write. Right at the point where I'm in my 50s where I'm starting saying, did I waste my life putting all this stuff in my head? Now that, which actually was a thing when people didn't have all this information at

their fingertips by going on a computer and you ask me a question, no, I'm answering it from my memory. I'm answering it from what I know, I'm not looking it up. But the thing about it is in writing this, it was like, oh no, I am an expert on this. And so almost as if I've been filling my head just to write the script with this type of expert analysis that a shark expert would have on sharks if he's writing a book. So you, what's interesting about a pilot expert would have on how a plane's engine works.

Right, a 747, how it works with the ratio of drag to lift in once upon a time in Hollywood. It's a very good use of adjectives on that. It made my point very well. In once upon a time at Hollywood, there's a TV show within that called Bounty Law. And it's fascinating because you're using a lot of your knowledge of 60s TV. Because there was a show called Lancer. And you can see that you're using your sort of reverence and your knowledge of these shows. That was an interesting thing of how I ended up using Lancer because I didn't start off,

I didn't start off, I was going to use Lancer. It was going to be, Rick was doing an episode of, it wouldn't exactly have worked because it was not the right time. Rick is Leo DiCaprio's character. Yeah, Rick Dalton's character, Leo's character, Rick Dalton. It wouldn't have worked. So I would have had to change it to something else. But initially it was going to be he was doing a Green Hornet episode.

And so it all kind of tied into what later became a flashback. And then one of my things I was the most happiest about writing is I actually watched a bunch of different Green Hornet episodes. And then I wrote this big megalomaniac based on an episode. I wrote this big megalomaniac speech for Rick that you can see him film. And the whole idea was he was, he's the leader with a bunch of other millionaire guys that are ridding the city of crime. And so they're like knocking off all these kingpins of crime.

And now they've wiped out all these guys and the hunting club or whatever they call themselves. And then he has this big speech. And he's like, we've read this town of all these people, but now we are after the number one criminal of this entire town and we're going to bring him down when we bring down the Green Hornet. Right. And that will be the first time you realize that this has been a Green Hornet monologue. Yes, yes.

But it wasn't the right timeline. But out of the because it was like a few years earlier, if I wanted it to be in 69, but out of the blue, a woman Western fan expert writes Western novels, got a touch with me, just sent me a letter and I got it out of somehow. And and she was like, look, you really are you really into Westerns and you've done two Westerns already. And you're talking about you. You'd like to do a third.

Well, I'm a big fan of the show Lancer. Wow. Okay. So you'd like to do Lancer as your third Western. And so she sent me and she goes, and I happen to know the people, the guy who created the show Lancer. He's passed on, but I know his wife and he actually has underlying rights to the show that you could get if you wanted to.

And here is and she sent me like a crappy black and white copy of the pilot episode. Now it was funny because it was like, huh, I remember that show Lancer, but that was just one I never watched. I didn't watch it either. Yeah, I knew of James Stacey. I knew about him getting his arm and his leg was the star and and and he's kind of played in a way indirectly or directly by Tim Oliphant. Yeah, yeah.

Well, he's playing James Stacey. He's playing James Stacey. Yeah. And what's really fascinating, just as a side note, because I have to get this in from my brother, my brother, Neil. I'm friends with Tim. I love him. Yeah.

And he's one of my favorite people and my favorite. I love him as an actor. I love him as a person. He and I are hanging out and he was super excited because he had just got, he told me, I'm not allowed to talk about it yet, but I'm going to be working with Quentin. I said, that's so crazy. And he said, yeah, all I know so far is it's something to do with this guy, James Stacey. So we both get on the phone and we call my brother, Neil.

And we say, Neil, tell us about James Stacey. And he has an encyclopedia. James Stacey started in Lancer. Now Lancer began because James Stacey had done a star turn in 1966 on this show and it had done so well and rated so well. Oh my God. It's like right out of my book. All right.

You're like doing the entire. No, I'm telling you. The whole chapter, the James Stacey chapter could have been written by your brother. And my brother might even make a correction or two. My brother would say, and then he knew all about James Stacey and Tim Elephant was there. My brother's on speakerphone and Tim Elephant was like, what the fuck is this? This is my family. My brothers and I would watch this stuff.

We both. Why aren't I doing the show with your brother? We'll have him call in. He says, awesome. Yeah. But the only thing that would annoy you about my brother is that he loved Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, but and you did everything just perfectly, but he'll probably find out the one thing.

He will find that song was not on the radio in 1969, not in February of 69. Yeah. Yeah. And he'll also say that that Buick only came out in 70 that Buick was not commercially available. It had slightly different tail lights and you would throw your headset through the wall. And my brother would say like, oh, he seemed kind of upset. Anyway, I knew who James Stacey was because a few years after Lancer, he got into a horrible

motorcycle accident and he lost his arm and his leg. And he was just kind of out of it for a long time. But then Kurt Douglas cast him in this movie he directed called Posse, where he played the newspaper editor of the small town and he's just on his little wooden crutch. And he's kind of awesome in that movie. And then this is how I really, really know him. He did a big deal TV movie at the time called Just a Little Inconvenience. That's him and Lee Majors at the height of Lee Majors fame and Barbara Hershey.

And it was one of those things where Lee Majors had got the script and he goes, oh my God, this would be perfect for Jim. This is like an acting role for him. Well, it was like a big, that TV movie ended up being a big deal. So he did the talk show circuit. Him and Lee Majors did the talk show circuit. I especially remember the Merv Griffin episode. He did.

And then he got nominated for an Emmy for Just a Little Inconvenience. It's a good movie. It holds up. What I finally got, so I started getting the TV guides around the time of when the movie takes place. So I know exactly. Oh, okay. So it's at eight o'clock and they're hanging out in February 8th.

Okay. What was on TV at that time? Right. And then so I get the TV guide and I actually look at Lancer and I see where it aired. I think it aired on Friday, well, no wonder I never watched it because at the same time as Lancer on NBC, they were showing Star Trek. Yes. Of course.

Yeah. Yeah. And what are you going to do? And at the same time on ABC, they were showing the Mod Squad. Right. Well, there's no fucking way that Lancer's ever going to win compared to Link Hayes and Captain Kirk. That might as well not even existed.

But so anyway, she sends me this thing. So I watched the pilot episode and it's actually written by Dean Reisner, who's actually one of Don Siegel's big writers. He did a big rewrite on Dirty Harry. It was actually written by him. I go, wow, this is a really good show. This is a really, really good premise. And it turned out that Samuel Peebles, who created the show, Fox owns the show, but he

had the right to do, he kept the right to do a movie version of it if he wanted. Well, I was able to buy those rights from his wife. Okay. Okay. So, and we kind of made a movie version of Lancer. So I was able to actually own the show as far as I was concerned and own the characters. And I thought that would just be a neat thing. And then all of a sudden, now Rick playing the bad guy on a Western after him being the

hero at Alt-Titan. Well, also, I think what's cool is that these shows, when you and I are the same age growing up in the 70s, Alias Smith and Jones, which I know is a big show of viewers. I remembered that was a very cool show, I love that show. Did we talk about that before? No, I don't think we have. And then Pete Duel, really, the co-star of it, commits suicide. And then suddenly the show, they tried to keep the show going without him.

But I remember that being like a moment in my childhood that this very charismatic actor had killed himself. I had this exact same conversation with Brad Pitt, who's on our age too. He brought up Alias Smith and Jones. And then I said, yeah, as a matter of fact, I remember that very well because I remember he died. And then my dad said, wow, Clinton, Pete Duel. And we watched that show every week.

And I was like, what? He died. How did he die? Well, he committed suicide. And I'm a little kid. I go, what's that? What's suicide? Well, that means he killed himself.

Wow. So the first time I ever hearing what suicide is, is because of Pete Duel. And it was someone you knew because, I mean, I had the same bond. I had a bond with someone on TV, and I didn't know people could die. And then I go, he killed himself. Well, why did he kill himself? And I go, I don't know, crime. I guess he was depressed.

And I'm like, he's Hannibal Hayes. What the hell does he have to be depressed about? He's on TV. He's the coolest guy on television. I know. But then Brad Pitt goes, yeah, actually the first time I ever, suicide was ever explained to me was because of Pete Duel's death. Right.

I was watching once upon a time in Hollywood, and I was seeing all these references. They were firing in my brain. I mean, clearly there are the major references that we know, which are the Mansons and Sharon Stone and those killings. Sharon Stone. Sharon Stone. I'm sorry. I made an attempt on Sharon Stone's life once.

I apologize. And it failed. Thank God. The killing of Sharon Stone. That sounds like a TV. No, I'm sorry. It's not like a TV movie. I twice went after Sharon Stone.

Linda Gay George and Richard Krenna and the killing of Sharon Stone. I'm glad that you guys corrected me. I was asked, Thursday Night Movie. I thought you guys corrected me because I would have gone on for 10 minutes about it. Right after the Waltons. The terrible, shocking murder of Sharon Stone and people were like, what's Conan talking about? And Sharon Stone's hearing it crying.

What happened to me? I think there are so many things that you're, that are firing. You're drawing on such a rich tapestry of stuff that I think other people have not drawn on. And to the point where in your book, and I want to stress, this is a, you've done a very cool thing, which used to be pretty common, which, and I think it's kind of, it has gone away and you've resurrected it, which is it's a novelization of a movie. So a movie, it used to be a movie would come out.

And then if the movie was popular, they would quickly put out a novel that basically told you what was going on in the movie. Not even just waiting for it to be popular. It was actually, it was meant to sell the movie. Yeah. Here's a book that we wrote very quickly. In weeks. In weeks.

So what you've done is you've written, and it's a really entertaining book. It's the, it's a novel once upon a time in Hollywood. But I read it and I was like, I love this because you are really going into the weeds here and going much deeper on the relationship between Rick's, I mean, sorry, Leonardo DiCaprio's character and Brad Pitt's character. You're really going into the weeds on who they are. And you're, you're filling in lots of detail that I didn't know, wouldn't have known from the movie.

Yeah. Yeah. Cause you don't have time. I've got a story to tell it. I got to, I got to keep moving. But one of the things about the book that was actually kind of fun was when I get a chance to tell the story in a, in a, in a different way. Well, while it's on one hand, it, it, it absolutely positively is a novelization of a movie.

It also fits into that sub-genre of books about Hollywood. Yeah. And there's a whole, that's a whole sub-genre of literature, you know, books about Hollywood. And again, that's where I was saying where, well, my expertise in this subject, oh, well, now I can just, now I have a place for it all. And I, and I worked out Rick's entire career, even past what takes place in here. I know what, I, I know everything he did in the eighties. And I just had a lot of fun time of getting so specific about him being so, you know,

everything he, he did, he could have done. Yeah. Yeah. There's nothing, I'm not winging it at all. You know? And so then it was just, it was just fun to describe Hollywood in that, that period, that little period of Hollywood, describing it in as much detail as I was able to do, which is what you want in a novel about Hollywood.

Yeah. And it's all in whatever era. You capture it in the film and you go into greater detail here, but, and, and maybe the business really hasn't changed, but you realize, I think one of the ways it has changed in the late 69, you know, Rick's character is panicked. And you see it in the movie, it's all changing so fast. So he came out to Hollywood to be a star, like one of the people he grew up watching, you know, in the 1930s and 40s or whatever in, in, in, in Westerns.

And yeah, he gets a big part and he's on bounty law. And this is great. Yeah. He's big. He's on bounty law. And then it's, what have you done for me lately? Yeah. And you're knocking around.

You're looking for bit parts. He has the flashy movie career, except it just doesn't really go anywhere. Right. You know, they don't take him a hundred percent seriously. So they just kind of stick them in, in, in their, their studio films, but they're more routine Westerns. And usually it's, as he describes in the book, you can cast on this, right? What's that?

I can cast on this, right? Yeah, yeah. Okay. This is just mostly a children list. But very, very cynical children who've heard it all. Well, his whole thing is like his problem with his movie career was always, you know, new guy with old fuck. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So him and Dale Robertson, him and George Montgomery, him and Ralph Meeker, you know, and, you know, and so they just don't take off and that kind of, it runs this course. And now he's back doing television, but now he's usually the heavy because that's normally the guest star parts. And I remember when I was, you know, and that's just a trajectory for the actors that didn't

quite make it. I mean, there was a, there was a time in the late fifties, George Meharis was one of the hot, because Route 66, he was one of the hottest actors out there. And people really thought he was going to have a big time movie career and, and he had the opportunities. He did about four or five movies, but by 1970, he's guesting on Cage County. He's guesting on, you know, he was, he's a big name guest star, but, you know, he's the bad guy on all these different, on all these different shows.

And I remember even when I was a kid watching that phenomenon, because I was a huge William Shatner fan. Yeah. And not just from Star Trek, but always absolutely from Star Trek, but all his Twilight Zone was amazing. His Twilight Zone was amazing. His Twilight Zone episodes. I mean, I totally knew who William Shatner was.

Right. It was my heart to see him play the bad guys on other people's TV shows, because he always got the shit kicked at him. Right. He was always getting beat up. Yeah. And, and you're like, this is Captain Kurt. When I was back off, I know, you can't do that.

And it's literally people hitting him with trash cans in an alley. Oh, I remember because I was a fan of that Bill Bixby show, The Magician. Of course. Yeah. It was really cool. Sure. And the William Shatner episode, he gets his ass kicked from the beginning of the episode of the fucking head.

And you know what, it's literally, you literally see the pecking order. It gave my heart problems. All right. Yeah. No, you see. But it's at the end of his Petracelli episode, he's going to get punched in the mouth by Barry Newman. Fucking cannon is going to beat him up.

I know. Everyone. God, all those Quinn Martin shows, he got beat up on every Quinn Martin show. But I got to say, though, after living through all that William Shatner time, that's the way it was. And they also had all those really cool TV movies. Yeah. The Pray for the Wildcats.

That's a great one. Did you ever see that one? I don't think I saw that one. No. Oh, that's the one where it's Andy Griffith, William Shatner, Robert Reed and Marshall Gortner and Angie Dickinson. They're all, the guys who aren't Andy Griffith are advertising executives, and they're trying to sell this new advertising campaign to Andy Griffith, who runs this company, but he's

a megalomaniac, crazy, I mean, it's like the, along with a face in the crowd, it's his other crazy, benevolent performance. And so he goes, well, I'll tell you what, I don't really do business with nobody. I don't really know that well. Well, I'm going on a dirt bike riding trip through Arizona. Why don't you boys join me? And so, okay, these Madison Avenue guys, you get their little motocross shirts and rent their bikes, and then he leads them on a trip to hell that he's the captain.

Yeah. And it's great. Yeah. It's Kurt's going up river, but it's Andy Griffith. And finally, and William Shatner, the wimpiest of the whole group now asked to go up against him in a mono-a-mono dirt bike. Please tell me he gets his ass kicked. There were so many great actors from that era, and you've utilized so many of them,

but there must have been some that are on your wish list, but they passed away like a Victor Buono, you know, King Tut, and who was an amazing actor and worry alive today. He was actually much younger than you think. Yeah. You know, he'd be in his 70s or 80s. I actually have a comedy album that Victor Buono did. It's really good. Oh, he was hilarious.

Yeah. I didn't even know that there was a guy, that he had a comedy album, and I found it, I always go as a huge record store. I go to the right to the comedy section and go, yeah, Victor Buono, wow, 26 years to listen to it. And when I finally did it, oh, well, this is really funny. You know what? Also, everyone had a comedy album, and people you don't like think should have had a comedy

album, had a comedy album. There's so many actors, I just... Or you miss them. Yeah, even if I had been who I was six years earlier, I could have utilized Aldo Ray. I could have utilized David Cassidy, when he still had his David Cassidy thing going on. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think the same thing about, you know, obviously you were fortunate to get so many people,

but I think the same thing about my talk show career, the people I just missed. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, like, oh my God, if it had been just a few years earlier, I could have talked to Fred Astaire or something, but I missed it. And it didn't happen because he was murdered by Sharon Stone, yeah, which is why I then tried to murder Sharon Stone. Why is it called the Sharon Stone murderer, because she's the murderer? On this topic, Bert Reynolds was going to get, was going to play the part that Bruce

Stern got. Yeah, George Spahn, yeah. George Spahn, who is the owner, proprietor of Spahn Ranch, and passed away before he could do it. So, Bert Reynolds, another guy who I mentioned, was a TV star, who then made it as a huge movie star. You got to do one of the last, you got, he was, he was reading for the part, or not reading for it.

He was, he was playing the part in the script reading, in the script reading, and passed away maybe a week later. I have a story, so you got his last performance. I interviewed him, and he was quite unwell, but he came on the show, came out, and he sat down, and he did the interview, and he was terrific. The next day I got a bottle of wine sent to me, and it said, I hope this is the beginning of a long friendship, Bert. I think weeks later he was gone.

Oh, wow. Murdered. By a combination. Who is it now? We have a long list of murderers. Sharon Stone and Vince Edwards. No, but I mean, it was really sweet, and just, I teared up at the time because I thought, you talk about these people that, they're constantly leaving us.

But one of the, I mean, one of the things that I, I think we always vibed with each other that was funny was, along with being geeks about all this other stuff on television, we were also, which is strange for male boys. We were talk show geeks. I spent my whole childhood watching talk shows, and I would get home around 3.30 from school. That's when it let out, and around four o'clock would be, you had your choice between Dinah, the Dinah Shore show, or the Mike Douglas show. And then you had Merv Griffin on at 8.30 at night on syndication.

And you kind of just go home and say, oh, who's on what show, all right? Oh, Ben Vereen's on Dinah. I love him and Ben Vereen's on Dinah. But the thing about it, though, is we watched all these guests and we, and we had our favorites. And to me, the two superstar guests of all guests that took over the show whenever they were on was Bert Reynolds and Robert Blake. Yes. Either time, any one of those two guys were-

Same thing on the Tonight Show with Johnny Carson. They would, you could tell Johnny loved it when they came on. And they would come on and they would just take over. And they were fantastic. But Bert Reynolds to such a degree, Robert Blake had his own thing going on. But Bert Reynolds, the way there is acting in movies before Brando and there's acting in movies after Brando, there are actors on talk shows before Bert Reynolds. And then there's actors on talk shows after Bert Reynolds.

He created the whole kind of self-depreciating, non-public relations, non-publicity kind of talk that people did on talk shows. He wasn't just there to plug anything on- Well, he really made fun of his old movies. Right. Right. But he was so charismatic, Bert Reynolds. And he-

Like, what leather suit is he going to wear tonight? Exactly. And he had that great laugh. Yeah. But the thing is, I've met him the first time. I didn't really get to know him, know him until I talked to him about the movie and cast him in the film. But I bumped into him like a couple of times.

It was always like we wanted to get this friendship started and finally we had an excuse. But earlier on, the first time I bumped into him, he had his son who was also named Quinton and he wanted to introduce me to him. And so I did, it was at a party or it was at a premiere or something. And then just before he splits, he leans into me and he goes, I love watching you on talk shows. That's amazing. That's amazing.

And he did. Bert Reynolds. Yes. Bert Reynolds. I love watching, okay, okay, however, okay, I took it as this massive compliment. Yep. Only years later did I start dissecting it a little bit because he didn't just say, I love you on talk shows.

That was it. He added a little thing at the end of it. I love you on talk shows dot, dot, dot. You just don't give a fuck, do you? I took the compliment as given for years. Sure. Years later, I was like, you just don't give a fuck. I'm to me.

That's what he's saying. I'm to me on the talk shows. No, I'm supposed to be cooler. I'm supposed to have a more of a persona. I was to me. That's what he means by I don't give a fuck. No, but I still think it's a compliment. He meant it as a compliment, you know, and I think, but I realize I've been doing it

wrong. Yeah, clearly, your career has gone nowhere. I wanted to find out about Bert Reynolds, and I also know that Bert Reynolds kind of suggested a line that ended up once upon a time in Hollywood. Which was that? Okay. Well, Bert Reynolds is definitely somebody who knows who stuntmen are and knows all the stuntmen.

Right. And when we having our first additional talk, he goes, okay, so let me get this straight. Brad Pitt's playing the stuntman. There's no stuntman to look as good as Brad Pitt. Oh, yeah, I think if you're going to have a play the stuntman that like somebody should say, hey, you're pretty good looking for a stuntman. Right. Someone should comment on it.

Somebody needs to comment on it because it's something that would be commented on. Yeah. So, and then you have, is it Bruce Lee who says? Yeah. Bruce Lee is. Yeah, you'll kind of pretty for a stuntman. But I love that because I know also that Brad Pitt probably doesn't love anyone talking about his good looks.

But because, because Bert suggested it, he kind of had no choice. This time, amazing. My observation about, and I'm sure it's not an original one, but Brad Pitt, he's the best looking amazing character actor you'll ever see. Yeah. Because he's a tremendous actor. Well, that's, well, that's the, that's all cliche about him now is, oh, he's a, he's a character actor trapped in a leading man's body.

Yeah. But I mean, he always has been. Yeah, absolutely. I think he's always been able to access that. Well, it was actually kind of interesting because, you know, he's another one in our little club. We all came out around the same time, Brad Pitt. And I was asking him, I go, um, I go, do you watch your movies, you know, years later

and everything? No, not really. Oh, come on. You don't really, I don't buy that. No, not really. Oh, wait a minute. Okay. So even if you're going through the cable guide and you're going through the showtime

one, two, three and HBO one, two, three or four and you see one of your movies on there, you don't just hit it to just check it out, check it out for a little bit. And he goes, okay, I do it on a couple of them. I do it on a snatch. I do it on the Coen Brothers movie. I do it on your film. I do it on the funny ones. He likes the funny ones.

He likes the funny ones. He doesn't want to get bummed out. He doesn't want to get bummed out. He wants to see the funny ones. Yeah. He doesn't want to be with Morgan Freeman, you know, opening a box to see if there's a hand in it. No, but he considers Fight Club one of the funny ones.

Well, it is. Well, it is. Actually, it is very funny. But you know what? Let me go back to Bert Reynolds a little bit about that. So we had this wonderful conversation on the phone and I sent him the script and when I sent him the script, one, I wanted him to play the part, but also he was like the first guy who actually got like the whole script because this is his era.

I wanted him to read it and I wanted him to be impressed by how well I did it. And he was. And so we talked about stuff and look, I just grew up listening to Bert Reynolds tell Bert Reynolds stories. So when I'm talking to Bert Reynolds, I'm telling Bert Reynolds stories. And then we even had our rehearsal period and we did our rehearsal. And so he spent the rehearsal, Bert Reynolds telling Bert Reynolds stories and then me telling Bert Reynolds stories.

And they're all stories I heard either he gave in a written interview or just on the Tonight Show. As a matter of fact, if you read the book, the that whole section in the book where it talks about how Rick and Cliff got together and how Rick caught fire. Yes. And he realizes that he's and he thinks he's going to, he's going to do, he's going to panic. He's going to do the worst thing you can do.

Just run when you're on fire. And then Cliff just says, Rick, calm down. You're standing in a puddle of water. Just lie down. Fall down. Yeah. That's a Bert Reynolds story. That happened to him on in the movie Fuzz.

Oh, wow. If you remember the movie Fuzz, did you remember to see that one? I saw it, but I don't remember. Yeah. In it, there's these kids, one of them, Charlie Martin Smith, that they're setting bums on fire. You know, they're going and finding a bum and they're throwing whiskey on him and then like setting him on fire.

Jesus. And so Bert Reynolds is like, is playing a bum, he's a cop, he's doing a stakeout as a bum. And then they come and they, they set him on fire. And apparently it went bad and he just really went up. And then he said like, oh my God, I'm starting to panic. And then he just heard this kind, said the stuntman's name. It wasn't Hal Niemann, but somebody else and he goes, you're okay.

You're standing by a puddle of water. Just fall down. Just fall down. And he didn't. That's great though, that you have so much at your fingertips because of years and years and years of loving this stuff and hearing it and being that it's in there. And then you get to use it at, you know, you can, you can access it. Let me tell you my favorite Bert Reynolds story because this is the one that really just shows

how sharp the dude was because one of my favorite directors is this old Western director named William Whitney. And he directed a bunch of the Roy Rogers movies and stuff. And, and he worked into the seventies. He directed a Jim Brown and I escaped from Devil's Island, but he also did a whole lot of television stuff. And he directed a couple of episodes, only a couple, only a couple of Bert Reynolds TV show River Boat with Darren McGavin.

And I've watched those episodes and Bert doesn't have much to do in those episodes, but he's in them. And anytime I meet somebody who ever worked with William Whitney, I always make a point to ask him about them. And like, you know, some people in the know know who he is, but a lot of people don't. So we're at the script reading where all the cast is there and we're sitting around a table acting it was one of the greatest moments of my life at script reading. It was a fantastic.

And so we get to the middle of it and we stop and have a break and I go over to where Bert is because yeah, once Bert sits down, he's going to be sitting down there for a while. And so I lean down and I go, Hey, look, I got a question I've been wanting to ask you. I've been asking him about everybody and I go, it's a deals with the show River Boat. Oh boy. Okay. What do you got? So no, put this, I got to put this in perspective.

I'm asking him about a director. He only worked within the fifties only a few times who directed episodic television on a show he didn't like. And you're asking someone who's had a career that blew up and he became the biggest star in the world. He has worked with everybody. So I am positive nobody since the fifties has brought up William Whitney to him. And so I go, you worked on River Boat with a director named William Whitney that I'm

a big fan of. Do you remember him? Of course I do. Oh, of course you do. Oh, well, that's great. Well, personally, I think he's one of the most underrated action directors in the history of Hollywood. You're right.

He is. Let me tell you about what working with William Whitney was like. William Whitney worked under the assumption that there was no scene ever written that could not be improved by the addition of a fist fight. So you've been doing a scene with him and you're saying exposition and he was like, cut, cut, cut, cut, cut, cut, cut. You guys are putting me to sleep. Here's what I want, Bert.

He says that and that makes you mad. So you punch him. Yes. And now he's punched you. So now you're mad at him and you punch him. Now we got a scene going on. Okay. Action.

So literally people are just like at the reading of a whale or a very dry scene and people start punching each other. For Bert Reynolds to tell that greatest story, that perfectly worded, that kind of comic intention into it. Not planned in any way, shape or form about a guy he has not worked with in 50 years. It's just right there. It's right there. Yeah.

That, that's lost. Yeah. That is just lost. That's gone. Well, I think too, and I've talked about this. I think that there's two kinds of actors that are actors that think I can't be funny on a talk show because almost in the Brando Dean tradition, I need to mumble. I need to sort of seem uncomfortable because that's what's cool.

Yeah. I can never be caught smiling. And I always think. I can't be part of the machine. Yeah. I got to be against. I got to be, I got to be a rebel to the machine. Yeah.

To the machine. This is the machine. And I always thought, take a page from, look at all these amazing British actors. I had to, I got to have Richard Harris on once before he passed away. He's Richard Harris. He's one of the most iconic actors of all time and he's, and he loved just being hilarious. Well, if, if, if to use my Conan knowledge on you, I actually think you've all, you've said that in that first season, yeah, the episode that you thought really kicked in.

Yeah. And this was like, hey, if we can make the show close to this every week, we've got something was the first time Michael Cain. Yeah. In the first season. Oh no, Michael Cain came on and I remember. He killed it. He killed it.

Killed it. And so he's, he's, you realize, wait, this guy hung out with the Beatles and was making them laugh. And now he's sitting here talking to me and I remembered in the commercial break, he was telling me which island in the Caribbean I really should vacation at to a guy who'd never gone to the Caribbean on a vacation. And then he was saying, and you know, I don't do a Michael Cain impression, which is tragic, but he was saying, and you merely must try this, a special sun cream you could use that

I have found quite helpful. Michael Cain is telling me which island to go to and which, like I'm in the club. Of course, I quickly forgot it and I was probably quickly kicked out of the club. But I like the idea that he's like, okay, you might have a problem there, however, I can solve the problem. I am quite worried. Quite worried, old boy, about your lack of melanin. You know, one of the things to sort of Google Earth out for a second and look at the bigger

picture that I think, I love your films and one of the things I think you do almost better than anybody is you take opposites, you put people together that almost shouldn't be together and it's explosive, you take this compound and that compound and you put them in the same room with each other. And you think, oh my God, you put, and I think about like in Inglourious Basterds, you take Christoph Waltz, who by the way, what an achievement I thought that you cast him as Hans Landa because I, here's a Nazi who's in the beginning of the movie, he's hunting Jews and he's called the Jew hunter.

So he is the worst person that you can possibly imagine. And then you fucking trick me into finding him charismatic. And I think, no, I'm like every sense is I have to keep reminding myself, no, he is the bad guy. He's a terrible guy. But he's also so goddamn charismatic. And I think very few people, when you have your Nazi, they're just supposed to be, this is black and white.

This is the Nazi. And I think that was ingenious. But then to put him, you know, I've got to put him in the same room with the person who's going to hate him more than anybody, which is Brad Pitt's character. I'm going to put those two together. And I'm going to put them, I'm going to take these two, this, this matter and this anti-matter and I'm going to shove them together and then realize that, hey, they have something in common.

They're both kind of funny. Yeah. Yeah. The Nazi and the Nazi hater, the guy who's sworn to kill Nazis and the guy who's, and I think you do that in reservoir dogs. You take Michael Madsen and you have him do the most horrible thing in the world, which is torture of policemen horribly, but you make me kind of think he's a cool guy. Yeah.

Right. And so all my neurons are misfiring because it doesn't compute. Well, you know, one of the things that is actually interesting in the case of Hans Landa is it's just one of those things where it's a movie. You're watching a movie. You want the movie to be entertaining. Yeah. You want the movie to be good.

After both myself and Christoph have done a pretty good job of illustrating that Blonde is a great detective. You know, like right up there with Sherlock Holmes kind of guy. Yes. Fantastic. Yeah. He's a great detective. The audience buys it.

He's smart. They buy all that. Basically, not because the audience is rooting for Landa to win, but the audience wants Landa to figure out what the bastards are doing at the premiere because it's going to be a more exciting movie if he does. Right. And it'll be really disappointing. We expect him to figure it out because we've just showed you that he's a genius.

So we want him to be a genius because it's going to make a more exciting movie. Yeah. You know, it's like, I'm not worried about any of the implication. When I watched Taxi Driver, I'm not worried about any of the implications about Travis Bickel taking a gun and going out and shooting up that horror hotel. Right. Even if he did start it, I'm on his side. Right.

Right. There's like the pimps that are trafficking a 12-year-old girl and there's Travis. Of course, I'm rooting for Travis. Right. Also, but because it's a movie, I wanted to have a really exciting ending at the end. I've watched it this far. I wanted to, I wanted to explode. I thought the same thing about The Hateful Eight, where you're taking all of these people

and trapping them in a cabin together. Talk about shoving all the hot coals into one. Well, see, that goes back to almost our TV talk a little bit because one of the things, you bringing up the big valley, one of the things that was, because I got into a whole big thing of watching a lot of these Western TV shows. I watched them when I was a kid, but I started watching them as I was writing this stuff more. And one of the things, I'm also going to the episodes that have good guest stars.

So Robert Culp's on it. I'm going to watch it. Right. Right. Darren McGavin's on it. I'm going to watch it. Right. Those are heavyweight guest stars.

They usually have the best role on the show. But if you watch these guys who are the guest stars, whether it's Charles Bronson or James Coburn, Vick Morrow, whoever it is, usually it's a situation where they show up at the Barclay Ranch or the Ponderosa Ranch or the Shiloh Ranch or wherever it is. And they make friends sort of, you know, with Heath or they make friends with Trampas. So they make friends with little Joe. And there's something about it that the, there's something you don't know about these guys. There's something, there's a secret.

Yes. They're there for a specific reason that's not revealed to us. Now, maybe somebody's after them, maybe they're after somebody, maybe they're planning some sort of robbery that they've got some agenda that the lead of the show doesn't know and we don't know. But we have to watch the whole episode to find out who these guys are kind of sketchy though. But we kind of like them.

But we have to watch the whole show to find out whether or not they're a good guy or not. And if they are a good guy, then usually Trampas and little Joe and Heath helps them. Or if not, they end up killing them right at the end. So I thought, wow, those are interesting characters. What if I did a whole movie with nothing but those guys, those guys who are guessting on the Virginia, those guys who are guessting on Lancer, those, those, those dubious guys that we don't know anything about. But there's no Heath.

There's no little Joe. There's no the Virginian. I'd like that back to his name was only the Virginian. I'm the Bostonian. Not Lance the Virginian. No, just the Virginian. Um, no, what you did was you said, let's have Lucky Charms, but only the Marshmallows. Right.

Which I've done, by the way, it takes about an hour, but it's man, it is better than any drug you'll ever have. You put some milk on that. A lot of people take a lot of time bringing these elements together. You are so economical and also kind of impatient in a great way. No, this, we have to get these people together. Yeah. We have to put these people that are diametrically opposed in close contact with each other.

Yeah. Um, I don't know how you feel about it because I love the movie, no country for old men. But at the end, when Javier Bardem's fantastic serial killer and Tommy Lee Jones miss each other, I, I think a day doesn't go by when I, when I'm not enraged and I love the Cohen brothers. Yeah. But I wanted my money back. I was like, no, you've got, and I thought Quentin Tarantino wouldn't do that to me.

Yes. If you ever get the right to me make the last 10 minutes of that movie, I want to do that and then give Tommy Lee Jones a monologue that's apropos of nothing and then say the end, here it is, the Quentin Tarantino ending to the Cohen brothers, no country for old men. A 10 minute really cool speech about slim gyms. Yeah. I just love, and I mean, look, Django Unchained is another amazing example of you saying,

let's take the coolest, you know, black gunslinger and put him in the antebellum south where there's slavery and for a technicality, he's allowed to kill a bunch of people and he's allowed to take a whip away from a slave driver and whip the shit out of him to really fucking great music. Yeah, yeah. Right. And I think, yeah, that's the idea. Yeah, exactly.

That's fantastic. So I'm just encouraging you to continue making movies. Oh, thank you. I mean, I really like the book, but come on, you know, we, you can do that every once in a while. Sure. Sure. You know, I'm curious if you have said, I read a quote of yours, which is you don't,

it's very important to you that your last movie, whatever that is, be a really good movie. Well, obviously I want it to be a really good movie. No, no. I know everybody does. Everybody does. But you're very conscious. Well, no, it's not, it's not, I'm, it's not a Max Opus, oh, I got to do Lola Montez

and if it's not the greatest movie I ever made, then my entire career is worthless. No, I'm not coming from that point of view, like, oh, I've got to make the ultimate movie is the last movie. I kind of think Once Upon a Time in Hollywood is the ultimate Quentin movie. So I'm, I don't know what the last movie is going to be, but I'm imagining it'll probably be a little bit more epilogical than like, you know, the dynamic, right? Final chapter. I think this is the dynamic final chapter.

Once Upon a Time in Hollywood is the final. Yeah. And this is the epilogue. Right. So that's a movie I could be in. I mean, you don't need the best people in it. If it's going to be a different tone, it's not so much a different, but it's not, oh, now I've got to make the end all movie.

Right. I just want to be in it. Yeah. Okay. I mean, in the background is a waiter. No, I'm actually, what I'm actually thinking would be really good is like, if they're watching television and we come up with a show for you to do on television, so you're a character.

Trust me. Yeah. I'll do anything. I also really liked the idea of something where it's like, I think I haven't 100% ever done it before, but like where it takes place in the Quentin universe. And then there's a character on TV that's popular and you see the characters watch them a little bit. But when they go driving around, that person is like all over billboards, you know, there's

like Conan Mania is going on because this show is just becoming, you're as big as David Carradine in the first season of Kung Fu and Don Johnson in the first season of Miami Vice. Yes. You've got your record album coming out. Yes. It's all. Not a comedy album.

No. And I have my own. Heartlines. Leisure wear. Yes. I have my own line of clothing that's coming out and all the men are trying to dress like Conan. They're all trying to dress like you.

I'm just a bit of a personal question, but I know you have a very young son now. Do you ever think, how old is he? Is he about two years old? Yeah, he's almost two. Yeah. Check out when is the appropriate time for him to watch, check out your uvra, your body of work. Yeah.

I think the appropriate time is whenever he wants to. Right. You know, whenever he really, really like, hey, daddy, let me see this. Let me see this. Right. He'll hear about it for a little bit, but when he's actually, I want to see this. I would imagine probably Kill Bill will probably be the, probably be the first one he watches. Yeah.

I mean, he's a little boy. But if I was seven years old, Kill Bill is the one I'd want to see. Right. Yeah. Yeah. Kill Bill, I think, could be first. I don't think he's going to have seven. He's going to be getting into the pop culture monologues.

70s, 60s, my new ship, but the bride finding 88 guys, the samurai sword, shooting the fountains of blood from a cut off arm, that he'll appreciate. There was also, I mean, it was hard not to see some of, man, the scenes in Kill Bill with blood shooting out of, I mean, it was fantastic, but it also had a hint of the Monty Python. It's hard not to see some of the comedic angle of it, too, of people who were firing blood everywhere and screaming. It can take you a little bit back to Monty Python, the Holy Grail.

Like, obviously, I do like that sequence a lot in that movie, but I was kind of jumping off more from the pop Japanese samurai movies, like Shogun Assassin or, you know, the Zadawichi films were just, and then all of a sudden, people have garden hoses for veins, you know, and they just like a fire hydrant. Everyone suffers from hypertension. Everyone has incredibly high blood pressure. I mean, the first time I, before I saw the original Japanese versions, the first time I saw any of the Lone Wolf and Cub movies was that Shogun Assassin version, which is

a really good version. I thought it was just thrilling the way the blood just like shot out like the Bellagio fountain. Yeah. I thought that was fantastic. But also, the thing about it that was actually really cool was, well, you're not going to get this confused with real life. This takes place in this hyper, hyper-realized, hyper-violent, hyper-comic-booky kind of world.

Yeah. And when you see that, then you kind of take yourself off the hook for how you're supposed to react. Well, no. First of all, there's no restaurant like that, and no one has immediate, no one can just flip a switch and have 88 assassins at their disposal. So in a way, you've put yourself in a different realm where it's all cool. It's all fine.

Yeah. It's all aesthetics. Yeah. And I wanted to, last thing I wanted to mention was Westerns, which is, I know that once upon a time in Hollywood, you're dipping a lot into the Western genre, and you did it with hateful eight, and clearly, Westerns are a big part of your life. I know that you believe, or I've read that you believe that Westerns are this ultimate reflection kind of of what's happening in that decade.

It ends up being that case, I think. Yeah. Meaning a Western of the 50s will represent what people think in the Eisenhower times. Yes, exactly. They end up being a mirror to whatever is going on in that decade, those 10 years. I don't know if you have a favorite Western. I think mine personally might be the Unforgiven. That's a good one.

Because it's a movie where every single character is trying to do the right thing, and nobody's doing the right thing. That's what Willie Will said on that. Even Little Bill thinks he's... Little Bill is a sadist, but Little Bill is trying to keep the peace. Yeah, he thinks he's just being a good sheriff. Right, and everybody misinterprets and misunderstands what's happening, and that movie really spoke to me because I thought, that is so true of the world we're in.

People don't say, even without getting too political, people on Fox News or MSNBC, people don't say, I'm going to go be evil now. Everybody in their own way thinks they're doing the thing that's going to save the day, and we're all careening off a cliff. Yeah, no. If they get their righteous indignation about it, that's so sad because there's never a chance to listen to the other guy. Because you're demonizing the other guy.

Right, and in the Unforgiven, if Clint Eastwood and everyone else and Gene Hackman and Morgan Freeman, if everyone got in a room for a minute and talked, they'd go, oh, wait a minute. Okay, no. Oh, so that was a minute. Right, okay. Let's go. Let's get out of here. One of the highlights of my life is I never got to interview Clint Eastwood.

I don't know him. I've obviously idolized him as an actor and his work. I ran into him once, and I told him, I said, I hate to bug you. I just ran into him, and I was introduced to him, and I said, I just got to tell you that how much I love that movie, The Unforgiven, and he was just nodding and being Clint Eastwood and very cool. Nice, but very not saying much. Then I said, and I made my point that everyone's trying to do the right thing, and he was

nodding like, yep, kid, I think you got it. That's right. For you, here's a cookie. Then I said, and I love the line at the end where Kill Bill's lying on the floor. I mean, Kill Bill. I'm doing everything. I love the part at the end where Gene Hackman's lying on the floor, and he realizes that he's going to die, and he says, I don't deserve this.

Clint Eastwood looks at him and says, and just then Clint Eastwood cut me off and said the line. Oh. It's got nothing to do with deserve. Oh. I'm still tingling, even thinking about it, and I bowed, and then backed away because I thought it's never going to get better than this. Yeah, no, you just hold on to that.

Hold on to that. Pressure-sealed. Yeah, I went to a doctor immediately, and he said, all your life signs show that you are now 30 years younger biologically. I have a situation sort of like that, that was a wild thing where I set it all up and the actor ended up saying the line, I couldn't believe it. The great wild man character actor, Timothy Carey, kind of came in for Reservoir Dogs, and I was just so excited.

I'm like, God, Timothy Carey's outside, and he shows up with his son, Romeo, and then he sit down, and he's talking about the script, and he really likes it. And I go, well, there's that scene of you in a passive glory when you're in this jail cell, and the next morning they're going to take you guys out and shoot them, and Joachar Kell does that whole bit, he goes, see, tomorrow, that cockroach, that cockroach will have more to do with my wife and child than I will have. And I said the whole thing, and I'm just doing it just exactly like Joachar Kell. And then he's sitting right next to my desk, and Timothy Carey, boom, slaps the imaginary

cockroach, and he goes, no, you got the edge. I wanted to masturbate, I mean, it was just, I just did, I just did, I'm very, I'm very fast, I'm a very fast masturbator. But I have to say, you know, to try and sum this up, which is impossible, because I swear to God, I could talk to you for 35 hours, and just enjoy every second of it, but I do think, yes, you have gobs and gobs and gobs and gobs of innate talent and ability in this area, but I think one of your greatest strengths is enthusiasm. I know that you, and it just comes out of you, you are very, very enthusiastic about

what you do. It means a lot to you, and I think one thing we have in common is, there's lots of stars in the world, but God damn it, the ones I get most excited about are the ones that I saw on TV when I was a kid, and we're losing them every day. But the moments that still to this day, changed my life is when Andy Griffith came on my show and knew my name, and I'm thinking, no, I sat in a high chair eating baloney strips in 1968 watching you, I was in a high chair for a long time, I was in a high chair until I was 35, but I sat in a high chair and watching, Mayberry RFD, wait a minute, you were 11.

I had polio. Look, you're missing the point, Mr. Griffith, but those are the ones that I can see that you just lose your mind if you heard, you know, Don Knotts is still alive and he's downstairs getting an ice cream, that would blow your mind more than, you know, as much as you love Leo de Caprio and Brad Pitt, that would mean, you know, Don Knotts is Don Knotts. Yes. It's incredible. Mr. Limpit.

Yeah, absolutely. Well, I am encouraging everyone listening, once upon a time in Hollywood, obviously, the movie was and is a true delight. Now, have you read the thing that we added to the screenplay for a bounty law episode? Yes. Here's what I love, because this is you. This is the essence of, I call you QT behind your back, but the essence of Quentin Tarantino is so you write this very good novel, novelization of, and again, this is not a replication of

what happens in the movie. It's sort of a deeper dive in some ways, and then tell the story, it's the same story but I tell it in a vaguely different way. Very different way. Yeah. And then you get to the end, and you have written, I believe, a script for a TV episode of Bounty Law, and you've written that it was, and you have a very realistic front page of the script.

With a coffee ring on it. With a coffee ring on it, and it says, it's written by Robert Fuzz, don't know who the fuck that is, and it says Revised Final Draft July 6th, 1959, and then it's a very good bounty law episode. You get a sense of the show. Yeah, episode of Bounty Law, and then you have all of this, like the bounty law lunchbox, and the bounty law comic books, the comic about the TV guides, which are, and then you have the Mad Magazine parody of Bounty Law, which is fantastic and spot on.

Okay, this is the perfect last story for this episode that you will appreciate. Okay, go back again to the cover of the Mad Magazine there. Oh yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Okay, got it. Okay, so the idea was, okay, when it comes to Rick's apartment, his house, he's gonna have like, you know, some of his posters will be up frame, and like the TV guides that

he's on, he'll have those framed, but also was the idea that Mad would have done a spoof of Bounty Law, and so he would have had the cover of that. And so we went to the Mad Magazine people, and we said, look, what we want to do is we want to have the real Mad Magazine cover that you guys draw, and we want to draw as if Jack Davis was doing the drawing on it. And I had the whole idea in my mind that it would be Alfred E. Newman on the wanted poster with his finger up his nose, and Rick kind of doing a double take when he sees him. And so I described to them exactly what I wanted for the poster, and they go, okay,

and so they have their Jack Davis guy, and he went it, and he drew it, and then when it was done, it looked so terrific. It's perfect. And then we came back to us, and then we said, hey, look guys, I don't know if you want to do this or not, but if you want to do it, we can show you all the footage we shot for Bounty Law, and if you wanted to do a spoof in the Mad Magazine of Bounty Law, Lousy Law, I'm the one that came up with the Lousy Law title, we would be into that. Well they thought that was kind of a good idea too, so they came down into the editing

room and we showed them all the Bounty Law footage we had, and then they wrote their little spoof, and then they came out with it, and so they used that cover as their real cover, and then they had the spoof in the magazine. It turned out that that was the last original issue of Mad Magazine ever published. Oh, you're kidding. They still publish Mad Magazine, but it's reprinted now. Yes, I've actually seen that, because I've run across them and I wanted my son to know, because Mad Magazine was such a big deal to me, and I used to actually always go to the

movie spoofs. Yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely. And I would read those, and often, it's a really good movie criticism in these spoofs. Yeah, really good movie criticism, and also, often I read those without seeing the movie. Yeah, I have been a bunch of times, and I'm like, I don't need to see this movie. Okay, but you're not getting the most important part of this story, Conan. Sorry. I designed and formatted the cover of the last original Mad Magazine issue.

I want to put a little twist on your summation. You killed Mad Magazine. What about that? After all the other carnage you've unleashed. I didn't just say, oh, it could be something like this or that. I described it to the T, and they did it. It's beautiful. It's an apatow.

So my question is, are you going to make Bounty Law? You've got the script. You probably, would you make some now? I might. I might. I might do it as a, if I did it, it would be like a 50s half hour question show. And true to itself. Absolutely true to itself, exactly.

Well, I've got about five episodes written, so I could do that. I don't know when I'm going to do it, but I could do it. All right. Well, you keep, god damn it, keep making stuff, because you will not, listen, thrilled, absolutely thrilled that you could do this. Oh, it's my pleasure. And you know what? I have to say, I've known you, you know, whatever, 28 years, you know, off and on and we passed

each other and you've done the show and you've always been lovely to me and I've watched everything you've done countless times, but my dream was to sit and have a real conversation with you where people like Warren Oates would come up or whatever, you know, Bert Mustin or who, you know, Pete Duel, Bruce Stern and talk about this stuff. It just meant the world to me. Oh, it's my pleasure. Thank you so much. No, actually, no, it is actually funny.

I have as many times as I've done the show, but to give you some credit on that, though, when we did the show, we would slip in 30, 40 seconds to a minute of this kind of geeky talk. Yes. Yeah. It was a tight schedule, but there was usually 40 minutes or to a minute of back and forth about minutia. Yeah.

Yeah. Well, thank God, we now have way too much of it now, but check out this book Once Upon a Time in Hollywood because it's really special and I can't wait. Whatever, I swear to God, if you were making, manufacturing asbestos, I'd go out and get some. Thank you very much. I'm not suggesting that because apparently it's very bad on the launch. Brian Tarantino, God bless and go on and do good works.

Thank you very much. Good to be here. Conan O'Brien needs a friend with Conan O'Brien, Sonam of Sessian and Matt Gorely, produced by me, Matt Gorely, executive produced by Adam Sacks, Joanna Solotarov and Jeff Ross at Team Coco and Colin Anderson and Cody Fisher at Year Wolf, theme song by the White Stripes, incidental music by Jimmy Vivino. Take it away, Jimmy. Our supervising producer is Aaron Blair and our associate talent producer is Jennifer

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