Fitzdog Radio - Robert Smigel - 1031

Episode Date: November 30, 2023

Legendary SNL and Conan writer and the hand up Triumph’s ass Robert Smigel comes by to talk about his #1 Netflix movie LEO.  

Welcome to FitzDawg Radio. It is with a heavy heart today that we say goodbye to FitzDawg Studios. It's the fourth or fifth FitzDawg Studios, but probably the most significant one in the history of this show. I've been at the Santa Monica Airport in an office for the last 13 years, and we just lost the lease. The Santa Monica College bought the property from the city, Santa Monica College bought the property from the city and they are demolishing it so they can put up pickleball courts. Yes. So that little stupid overweight people that are afraid of real sports can smack a little ball around. Instead of hardworking, entrepreneurial Santa Monica and Venice citizens can actually do jobs. This whole office building is filled with the most interesting people, just like little indie filmmakers, directors, writers, architects, fucking so. How about like dressmakers?

There's actual dressmakers. It's like an amish barn uh met a lot of good friends over the years in this office and i'm saying goodbye to them today i already said goodbye to a bunch of them and moved my shit out my big lazy boy is out refrigerator tv it's all gone And we've moved on. I got a lead on a new place. And we'll pick it up from there, I guess. But I just am very thankful. I'm trying to look at it like that. Always think about gratitude in life. Because whenever you're having a hard time and you feel like life is screwing you,

you can also look at it with gratitude. I know it would sound corny, but honestly, I get a lot done in this little, this office is about 15 by 15 or something. I don't know. It's tiny. And I wrote a book in this office where I pulled all-nighters and I slept on the Lazy Boy for a couple hours at three in the morning, then got back to work at five in the morning. I mean, I almost had a nervous breakdown and I got it done. I have done probably more than half of all my podcasts have been in this room. Written scripts for TV shows. I've written a lot of stand-up comedy.

I have thought of shows. I've brainstormed shows with friends and fellow writers. I've taken naps. I have, it's just, the place means a lot to me and I got a lot done here, and I'm grateful. That's how I'm looking at it, and now we move forward. I've been written on a lot of TV shows where I had my own office, and, you know, sometimes you get fired. That happens on occasion.

I've left a couple of those offices with a milk crate with my shit packed in it, doing the walk of shame on a Wednesday afternoon on a production day. Yes, that happened on one particular show. I won't say which one, but that bitch got what was coming to her. America found out, whatever. I'm not saying which show it was. There's been so many.

Getting fired is really bad. It is, as far as human experiences, I'd put it up there with a breakup, especially when you got a family to feed. I'd put it past a breakup because it's real. A breakup, you may get back together. When you get fired, you ain't going back. That's a permanent breakup.

And you don't even try. It's not like you show up with roses the next day and go, hey, sorry, you know, you don't think I'm talented. That wasn't why I got fired. I got fired because I had a fucking bad attitude. And now you all know why. I'm not saying which show it was. I've written on, go to my IMDB page.

So here we are saying goodbye to this office. And I can't think of a better final interview than what I just had this afternoon. Robert Smigel triumph the insult comic dog uh snl writer first head writer on conan uh he's got a new movie out we'll talk about that in a minute uh but he's a guy that is one of my all-time heroes and he came in today we sat down and we talked we did an hour and i don't know hour and 10 minute podcast and then we talked for an hour and a half afterwards in the office

we had a very heartfelt talk we talked about a lot of shit and it was really nice getting to know him he's a guy that if I lived in New York, I think we'd be friends. Dare I say we'd be friends? I don't know. He's living in fucking Jersey now anyway, so who knows? But anyway, so that's coming up. We've got, what else? We had a nice time Thanksgiving week. My mom came out for eight days. Love her. Had such a nice time. Just stayed busy with her every day. I mean, she's getting up there. She's like 82 now, I want to say.

81? Maybe she's 81. Yeah, 81. But she had a really tough heart surgery a couple years ago, and it took a lot of her energy away. She's not the fireball that she was, but she's still going strong. We did a lot of walking. We went to the Getty Center Museum,

which is just the best. If you ever come to LA, do not miss the Getty Center Museum. It is John Paul Getty. John Paul? Or was it Ringo? I can't remember, but it was Getty. He was a wealthy oil guy and he left like a lot

of money and they built one of the most incredible houses and museums you've ever seen in your life with the best views of LA. And I took my mom up there and we looked at the art and my daughter was there with her friend Mimi and Mimi was very taken by a lot of the art. It's just beautiful to expose people to that. So check it out whenever you can. And then we went down to San Diego on Friday to see off my niece, Julia, who came up for Thanksgiving. And we drove back down there, saw her apartment. We went to the Coronado Hotel. It's a very photographic hotel. There's Christmas trees up, and it's built in 1888. And so every time I saw a group of people with getting their picture taken, I would walk next to whoever was taking the picture, and I would also start taking their picture. Two mixed results. Some

people immediately started laughing, high fives. Other people, let's call them Asian, didn't get the joke. That's fine. I think your jokes should not be gotten by all. Let's shoot for 78% of the audience. That's about right. If you're getting 100, probably ain't that funny. So did that. Had a great Thanksgiving. We did the soccer game in the morning. We did dinner.

We had 11 people over. Ran in the ocean. Went to the Dunskies for some desserts. Got home late. Great day. And my mom, she likes her red wine. We always know when it's time to go, when your teeth turn, when they go from pink to red to purple.

It's time to head out. Everyone loves her. She just, my mom, gets in your face with love. She goes up to people, and she's a listener she asks you questions and then at the end of the night she puts her hands on both sides of your head and pulls your face in close and tells you what a special person you are and she means it and it's and it runs right through you and i miss her already she She just left today, and she got to fucking LAX, and she gets there,

and there's no wheelchair to take her to the gate. Now, she probably didn't reserve one. That's not my mom's style. I think my mom just kind of shows up to places and expects everything to work out, which is a little bit how I live my life. But so there was 30 people waiting for wheelchairs at LAX because she can't walk that far.

So I finally was on the phone with her. I was like, Mom, your flight leaves in a half an hour. You better start walking. So she starts walking and flags down a guy who's on his way to the 30 people, and she grabs him and goes, No, you're taking me. So she made her flight, just talked to her. She got in all right, no, you're taking me. So she made her flight. Just talked to her.

She got in all right. And she's back in Florida. So that's it. And then I go to the airport again on Saturday. No, a week. No, this Saturday? I think in a week. No, a week from.

No, this Saturday. My son is leaving. He's going to Central America. He's flying into Guatemala and he's going to spend five months in Central America, like taking buses around, hitchhiking, going to Mexico for most of the time. And so I'm very excited for him. I'm doing a Kickstarter account

to pay the ransom for the kidnapping. But, you know, it'll be an adventure. It'll be something he talks about when he's older. You know, other people talk about like, oh yeah, remember when we played flag football in Central Park and then we went out for tall boys at McSorley's? No, no, no. He was gagged and bound in the back of a makeshift pickup truck and held by banditos

until his parents emptied out their savings account to bring him home oh i'm a little nervous a little nervous about my son going away but he's traveled he's traveled the world before he's traveled around europe for months and months and uh and he's a smart he's traveled the world before he's traveled around europe for months and months and uh and he's a smart he's a kid grew up grew up in a city he knows what he's doing traveling with a good guy gabriel and we'll get him back right yeah i'm going away also i will be in san francisco this weekend at the punchline, November 30th through December 2nd. Maybe my second favorite club in the country. There's a big benefit.

I have not announced this yet, and I'm remiss. I produce a big benefit every year for Best Buddies, which is a group I work with. It helps people with intellectual disabilities, and I donate 10% of all my merch sales I have for about a decade to Best Buddies. So I produce this big comedy show every year. It's going to be at the Comedy Store on December 13th. We got Sarah Silverman. We got Andrew Santino, Bobby Lee, Annie Letterman. We got a big name we cannot announce because this person has a big

theater show in LA coming up. But it's going to be an amazing show. Get your tickets now. It sells out every year. Go to my website, get tickets. Also coming to Fort Worth, also coming to Fort Worth Hyenas December 15 and 16 Milwaukee Improv December 29 through 31st the Den Theater in Chicago on January 13th also coming to

Atlanta, Portland, La Jolla and Tampa all tickets at FitzDawg.com come out check out the new material post special and also we want you to check out other live events the best way to get tickets whether you want sports whether you want comedy theater you name it you're going to go to game time it's an app that allows you the fastest and easiest way to buy tickets for

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That's going down. Enrique Iglesias is coming at $79 with Pitbull. So anyway, it's fun to track. It knows your area, and it shows you what's coming up. It's a couple of taps on the app. It's real easy. Downloads right into the app. You don't have to print anything. You don't have to transfer anything. I use it all the time. No matter what city you're in, you can use GameTime.

And here's how you do it. Take the guesswork out of buying tickets with GameTime. Download the GameTime. And here's how you do it. Take the guesswork out of buying tickets with GameTime. Download the GameTime app, create an account, and use code FITSDOG for $20 off your first purchase. Terms apply. Again, create an account and redeem code FITZDOG for $20 off. Download GameTime today. for $20 off. Download GameTime today. Last minute tickets, lowest price guaranteed. Hey now. All right, let's get to my interview now. This guy, he just co-directed, co-wrote, and wrote all of the original songs for and voiced characters in this movie called Leo. I watched it yesterday. It is, I don't care if you're a little kid. I wouldn't say little. I would say kids six and up all the way to adulthood. It's a really, really well-made,

funny, good film. He's the guy that also brought you TV Funhouse. He's TV Funhouse from SNL. brought you TV Funhouse. He's TV Funhouse from SNL, legendary SNL writer, obviously first writer, first head writer on Conan O'Brien's show. He's written a lot of movies with Adam Sandler. I think he wrote The Zohan, Don't Mess With The Zohan, You Don't Mess With Zohan, punched up all these scripts like Wedding Singer and Wayne's World 2. He's done it all. I mean, you know the guy. He's the best. I was so honored to have him in. And we had a great chat. So here's my talk with Robert Smigel. Robert Smigel, welcome to the Fitz Dog Radio podcast.

Pleasure to be here. Is this thing on camera too? I don't know how things down the barrel oh okay okay solid two shot okay good that's all we do we keep it pretty simple give the people a three-quarter yeah let us see the profile profile is a little excessively jewish i think now uh is that uh is that your father's nose or your mother's nose? Wow. I think it's more my mom's original nose. Yeah. Oh, did she have some work done?

See, you've already done it. We talk before the show. Anyway, she's a beautiful woman. We talk before the show about things that you're gonna want to take out nothing comes out no no it's all fine and you're not gay is that what i read on wikipedia um you know what uh it doesn't matter like george clooney says it doesn't matter what i am and um it's great whatever I am is great however I come it's fantastic you fucked George Clooney did I just say that oh shit there it goes there it goes congratulations big news uh your movie leo is now has 34.6 million views in the first six days the

biggest debut ever for a netflix animated film that's a lot of viewers you might want to check it out the lizard that you'll fall in love with yeah he's 34.2 million netflix subscribers can't be wrong um it's like this is it is amazing this is the first thing i've been in show business for like 38 years i think and this is the first thing i've ever done that everybody likes oh really i think so wow i mean other i mean there's like comedy sketches yeah like that but every project i've done since that has been outside of late night comedy has had success. Right. But not like this, like,

you know, like I did some movies with Sandler and, you know, normally a lot of times they're mean to him, the critics. Yeah. Like you don't mess with the Zohan, that kind of thing.

And then I did hotel Transylvania, which made a shitload of money. It was a big success, but not a critical. I did two of those. Yeah which made a shitload of money. It was a big success, but not a critical. You did two of those, right? I did two of those, yeah. Not a critical success, though. This thing just, and Sandler was positive that this was going to happen.

Oh, is that right? Like when I pitched him the idea practically, he was like, fucking, that's going to fucking be, Smikey, this is so, I was like, really? That big? Yeah. I was like, okay.

It's, uh, I saw it and it's, uh, Oh, you saw it. I saw it. I loved it. You're a professional. I'm a professional. I've done like three interviews in the last couple of days

and nobody had watched it. Oh, really? Thank you for watching oh jesus yeah i loved it and i've already recommended it to uh my cousin has two kids yeah that are about that what are these kids like 11 yes yeah they're 11 and her kids are 11 and 13 so i said you got to watch this that's great it, funny jokes. Yes. It's got great characters. Cool. Great voices. Bill Burr. I don't know. Yeah. When you write for Bill Burr, like how much of it do you let him? He improvised a little bit, but most of what we used was

scripted and it was just written for him. mean i just pictured bill yeah from day one when i started writing this draft and uh i just love bill obviously he's one of the greatest comedians going certainly over the last 15 years he's incredible yeah and um you know and i i pitched it to adam and i was like because i was thinking, he's probably going to want to use Schneider. And Schneider's great, and so is Steve Buscemi's could have been great. But I just had Bill in my head, and I just thought it would be fresh and exciting to use him. And getting to work with him and have him abuse me was a thrill. Oh, did he?

Yeah, yeah. Well, it's part of his act i like to think yeah and yeah robert smigel yeah terrific terrific yeah oh no nobody likes you you understand that right oh that's hilarious i mean we go back because i i was such a fan of his back like before he exploded he was still like one of the funniest comics in the country and and i i had him close night of too many stars oh he did yeah a couple of times like back in like 2012 and i remember we we had this amazing bit on night of too many stars where katie perry came out and sang with an autistic girl they sang firework and the girl was like really good at piano yeah and they they they did a duet and everybody the whole audience was in tears and then bill came out and he murdered he

did this insane hilarious uh riff on steve jobs and how overrated he was and uh and it killed but and and i was just over the moon after that show because primarily because of this katie perry thing it was just like amazing and everybody's coming up and talking about it. And then Bill's like, yeah, thanks for having me follow the crying kid. Yeah, the kid wasn't crying, but everybody in the audience, I knew what he meant. Yeah, that's great. That's great.

Nothing better. Nothing better than following an autistic girl, hugging Katy Perry with all her might john's fucking john stewart was even crying ladies and gentlemen bill burr ladies and gentlemen bill burr yeah thanks that's great that's great can't wait to do it again anything for the cause Bob anything for the cause oh that's amazing and then and I think and you know how it is with him you can't totally tell if he means it yeah I mean he's got to mean it on some level right but then like then he's like no no it's cool I want to and then he said every every time we cool. I want to. And then he said, every, every time we do this, I want to close. I like the challenge. I want to close. Yeah. Yeah. He likes the channel. Yeah. Yeah. He texted me yesterday and, uh,

I had, I had shit to do. He had shit to do. And we spent 45 minutes texting the most profane, horrible shit to each other. And that's our conversations. He'll call me on the, we started together in Boston. I'm sure. sure yeah he'll call me on the phone and just be like what are you doing queer i will just stay in those voices for 25 minutes and then my wife will come in and go like how's bill's wife how are the kids i'm like i was adam totally went for it and is very happy that we used bill did they do scenes in the booth together they only had one day they did all their lines separately and then we had them work together one day it is weird but i was like we

gotta get you guys together just once in case there's some. We know. And Bill did come up with a lot of funny shit that day. But wouldn't that save a lot of time if they were both in the same room? You would think. Yeah. But it was complicated. You know what? You know what?

It was this movie was done. So we had a table read on February of 2020. Oh, no shit. And we're over the moon. It went really well. Thank God we got the table read in because the network, you know, the Netflix executives heard all these laughs. So that was like a big relief. We didn't have to like litigate every joke, you know.

joke you know but then like a month later you know rudy gobert rudy gobert from the jazz on the end that's when that's when everything turned when rudy gobert who plays for the utah jazz or it did at the time announced that he had covid nba star this is before the bubble in Orlando. Oh, yeah. No, this is what caused that. It's like within a day, March 11th, I remember, everything went to shit. An NBA player announced he had COVID, and then the NCAA March Madness was canceled, and we all knew that we were in it. Yeah.

And here's the craziest thing for people who know the NBA and Rudy Gobert. So i had taken my kids i had turned 60 and i was like fuck i'm actually gonna do something for my birthday this time because i'm i hate being 60 and so i i managed to conan was somehow covering the i don't know somehow they got me tickets to see the all-star game in Chicago, the NBA all-star game. And we go there and we didn't have great seats, but my kids were able to run down the steps. They were only like 10 years old at the time. And they get to see all the players leaving the court. And, you know, they got to high five a couple people and then rudy gobert this player who's uh you know a superstar center gives one of my kids his compression sleeve yeah and we're all so excited look at this rudy gobert's compression sleeve

and then like literally two and a half weeks later rudy gobert has rudy gobert has covid and nobody knew any shit about covid like i didn't know that if you got it right now didn't you couldn't possibly have had it three weeks ago yeah you know we had to do research like the one fucking person who gave my kid a souvenir is the first souvenir, the first NBA player, the first professional athlete to announce he has COVID. So we were just freaking out for like an hour and then we figured out that everything was going to be all right. But but so we ended up doing the whole movie on Zoom, the entire movie. Oh, really? Everything. doing the whole movie on zoom the entire movie oh really everything and and bill had to do his

voiceovers like for the first round of they call it a scratch track yeah you know the uh you just have to get the voices down in decent shape and you know start it wasn't even animating to them we just had crude drawings of the characters and storyboards. And we wanted to create what they call an animatic, which is just a video representation of the movie with just still shots. So Bill, just everybody who did voices just did them from their houses. Yeah. You know. And they're not playing off anyone else's voice. No, they're not.

Sometimes I would like do the voice for him back and forth so that he'd get a little sense of the rhythm. Right. You know, I would do Adam or whatever. But because it's mostly him and Adam going back and forth. But yeah, it wasn't it wasn't a welcoming. It wasn't a welcoming environment for for improv. Yeah. You know, he's literally in a closet. Right. You know, are you hearing me is this working jesus fucking christ smigel bad enough i gotta work with you

now i gotta do it in a closet fucking fantastic fantastic uh so we had but so yeah so adam and bill until you know it wasn't until like 2022 that everybody felt like they could right in the same room yeah so yeah so we had already laid down a lot of shit and i was like let's just do one session with the two of you together if we get one or two funny lines yeah out of it that's great yeah yeah amazing and then uh and then you're you had uh kids in it and adam had kids in it yeah yeah well adam's kids are like incredible they're so talented and they've been in a lot of stuff of his uh you know he put it he put them in just because he likes to have them around and as a lark uh you know and when they were younger but now they're like i mean they just did that other movie about the bat mitzvah oh i didn't how old are they now they're like 14 and 16 or 15 and 17

yeah and so this girl sunny is basically the star of this movie that came out last september uh this september called you are so not invited to My Bat Mitzvah and it got really great reviews and the girls got great and this is like they had to overcome the whole nepo baby craze like suddenly if you have a parent in show business it's a crime so like

Jamie Lee Curtis you know just been fooling us for the last 30 years apparently you know who's good too ising us for the last 30 years yeah right right you know she's good too is judd's judd's daughter judd's kids are great they're both they're totally great yeah and my boys are in this movie but not by design so much they are not actors they are just kids um and they are in the movie because so when we were laying down these scratch tracks during the pandemic, they told us, well, if you can, anybody, if you can use any family members,

it'll, we don't have to pay them. So I was like, well, actually, Ethan, I kind of wrote the bully with his voice in mind. Cause he, he, he likes to bully the other kid. Who's Rowie, who actually does have a nut allergy and several other issues and has this really sweet voice that always kind of reminded me of Linus in the old Charlie Brown specials. And I even like secretly wanted to use Rowe when we did the second Transylvania movie and introduced a little kid because he just had the sweetest, cutest voice. But I was like, he's six years old. I'm not

going to do this to this kid. But this, now they were like 11 or 12 and they were into it and there was no pressure because we just did it in our basement. But then Sandler heard their scratch tracks and was like, they're fucking

good. Let's fucking keep them in the movie. Let's put them in the fucking movie, buddy. so now they get paid now they get paid and but then what they didn't realize or at least one of them was fine with it but the other one was like you have you actually have a song i wrote a song for you he's like i don't want to sing he sings a song in the movie that my boy rowey and it's like one of the most popular songs on like spotify of i mean not on the whole spotify but out of the soundtrack rowey's song it's the one where the kid sings to the drone the breakup the breakup song to the drone that's your son singing yeah yeah shit that's amazing yeah i mean these kids we didn't want kids who had like showy

right we just wanted sweet real voices yeah like again like sort of the old charlie brown cartoons yeah this the kids didn't sound like newsies you know like professional spirited at what yeah look at that my snoopy hat oh nice sno. Yeah, I love, I feel like my very first introduction to comedy was Peanuts when I was growing up. I had all these books with every comic strip ever. I was obsessed with, me too. Yeah, really? We even said obsessed at the same time. Wow.

Yes. I don't know how old you are, Greg. I am 57. Okay, so you probably had, were they the whole reinhardt winston books i'm sure i mean like a dollar a book yeah yeah they were uh there's a museum if you ever get a chance i've been there i've taken my kids there genie schultz gave us a tour no way yeah because i met genie schultz she happened to be doing comic-con at the same time i was. And I had done like a tribute cartoon to Charles Schultz on Saturday Night Live. And Jeannie had known about it.

So she came to our exhibit. We did a whole session, a TV Funhouse session. And she stood up and then I met her and we became friends. And I've gone to some of her charity events. And then when my boys were old enough, like, so I raised my boys to like, they just love the Charlie Brown Christmas.

I mean, that's like, who doesn't love that? Yeah. But they became really Peanuts obsessive. And so I brought them to Santa Rosa and Jeannie met us and took us to the actual, to the real office that Charles Schultz used. There's like a recreated one inside. Then there's also a real one. And I got to like, they got to hang out there

and she's just a great lady too. That's amazing. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. The recreation, it was my favorite part of the museum. He's got like this drawing table. Yes. And then he had built a skating rink next door because he liked to-

He loved to skate. He loved to skate. He loved to skate, yeah. So he'd write and then he'd go skate come back and write i know yeah my daughter lived in that town that's how i lived in santa rosa oh man yeah yeah it's so beautiful but then they had a wildfire a couple years ago and his house burned down not not the museum house and or office but his actual home so tragic because he had a lot of she had a lot of his old stuff there yeah yeah but um but yeah i just loved peanuts as a kid so much because it was the first thing that you know it was the first cartoon i had encountered where

not everybody was happy and not everything was simple. Right. And I just connected so hard with that. Yeah. They had a therapist and you had, uh, yeah. You know, yes. Kids had,

it was like the psychiatry craze at, in the sixties. And so, yeah. So Charlie Brown would go talk to Lucy about his problems. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

That was the best. Yeah. So, um, I was just telling you when you came in the last i think the last time i saw you was the gong show was probably like 2007 or something seven maybe yeah i was the head writer and you came in as one of the judges yes and david tell was the host david tell was the host and i And I'm trying to remember who your co-host was. Who your co-judge was. I know that Dana and Julia,

because they kind of had a Sandler connection. Didn't Sandler, didn't Happy Madison produce that show? Yes, they did. Yes. So they were there and Adam Carolla, one episode. Yeah. And Triumph usually gets to say funny things but adam carolla like just every single time it was time to comment on the uh performer adam carolla would just he's adam

he just he just doesn't stop right and i didn't have it was the first time triumph was ever like too polite it was like and also i i okay forget it no i'm good i'm good go ahead what adam what adam said it's all right and then another episode was with brian posain and i can't remember maybe andy dick was there i don't know but i i had a lot of fun doing it yeah it was a great idea to bring it back, but I honestly, and I love a tell. I think he's obvious. We all think he's one of the funniest people ever,

but I just think he should have been a judge. He would have been one of the funniest judges imaginable. Right. Right. He could have been the permanent judge. Yeah. Because like, I almost felt like he was being held back in the role of a host. Yeah.

I remember saying at the time, Norm MacDonald should be the host of this show because it needed what was great about Chuck Barris. Now we're really like, this is for like people over 70. We're talking about Chuck Barris from this. Peanuts. I know, Chuck Barris. The original Gong Show had this incredibly confusing guy

who you didn't know if he was serious or not. He was sort of doing a parody of a host and pretending that he cared but knowing that it was ridiculous and i felt like norm could have captured that and kind of knowing that chuck barris even being a kid i didn't know what cocaine was but it was so clear something was going on with this guy there was a mystery to the guy like there always was with norm on some level yeah like you didn't know exactly it wasn't drugs with norm it was just like is he fucking with me right now right yeah right it was like an edding an ending an enigmatic host was required for that show yeah the host almost has to react to the acts without saying

anything and then react to the judges yes and the host can't shit on the performers because that's the job of the judges brought them out he's the host yeah yeah yeah but the magic of the original was that the host acted like this is the greatest thing he's ever seen on some level, but you knew that he didn't think so. Right, right. So you were also- I will say this about Attell. He's one of the greatest guys too.

And this was one of the strangest things ever. So I had been doing Night of Too Many Stars a couple of times at that point. So I have an autistic son and I do this, uh, benefit for, um, autism schools and programs and a lot of stars participate. Dave couldn't do it, but he, he was just grateful that I had done his show and he's like, he asked me about when is the next one? I was like, I don't know. He literally just pulled out a checkbook

and wrote a five thousand dollar check and handed it to me he did yeah yeah it's just like no one's ever done that yeah holy shit he's the most generous person such a decent yeah he is every time he shows up to a club he walks in with a giant bag of candy and he gives it for real and then he tips the shit out of everybody and like that's incredible you know he does that um it's so funny mics with jeff yeah of course yeah and then they sell merchandise after the show but then dave ends up giving like there's always somebody from the club that helps you sell and he gives them like half the money oh really yeah yeah yeah incredible incredible i do a benefit for have you heard of

best buddies no best buddies is a group that was uh started by um patrick shriver who is maria shriver's brother and it's for people with intellectual disabilities and i've been working with them i give them 10 of all my merch sales and then i do a benefit every year which is coming up in two weeks oh wow and it's uh it's this year is burr is a maybe uh sarah silverman's doing it sarah does everything yeah is there anything sarah won't do i know sarah's the one who set up katie perry for me no and she didn't even know her really i didn't know how to i i asked katie perry via her manager will you do this and they just wrote back she's not available and i just couldn't let it go and i somehow was like scanning for katie

perry like any clues to how i could get to katie perry found an interview where she was on like the mtv awards red carpet and she said one of the women i admire most is sarah silverman and i don't know because she's bold and whatever it was and so i called sarah and just said do you know her and no but and i explained what it was that i wanted her to do and she just dm'd her out of the blue. She DM'd Katy Perry and Katy Perry responded. And then they communicated and she just talked her into doing it. Unbelievable.

Yeah, yeah. That's Sarah. Sarah's like a tell. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, that level of generosity and sweetness. Yeah, yeah, yeah. that level of generosity and that's amazing. Yeah. Yeah. Um, and we have, uh, we have a, a, a guy who's got autism that I've been kind of mentoring to do standup comedy

dream. So for the last, we've been doing this benefit for like 10 years and the last five years he gets up and he does five minutes. Well, that's incredible. Fucking crushes. Really? Yeah. He's like, his father helps him write the material and this is out here in in la yeah yeah oh man that's tremendous sometimes he gets a little stuck but then he but then the crowd is kind of like they wait yeah yeah of course yeah it's really cool that's great man that's great so i want to talk about your early days with conan because i was friends with a lot of those guys.

Yeah. Obviously, Louie and Sweeney. Yeah. Mike Sweeney. And then was was Dino Stamatopoulos part of that group or was he later? Absolutely. He was one of the most important people. I mean, Dino's like quietly the comedy genius that most people don't know about. Yeah.

He's not quiet at all. No, no. But yeah, people don't know about. Yeah, he's not quiet at all. No, no, no. But yeah, people don't know him as well. He's never had the giant hit that was attached to him, but he was one of the great writers on the Ben Stiller show. And then when we were starting Conan, stiller show and then when we were starting conan he his his writing packet was just by far it wasn't even close yeah there were like literally 15 ideas it was like i would put this on the show yeah he came up with so many amazing bits the first year this the bit conan babies which was

just like conan andy and max when they were like a running cartoon thing that we did and he came up with it's this weird like he came up with this word crunk he spelled it k-r-u-n-k and it's like the all-purpose curse word like because we can't curse on the air so we're gonna make up a curse word and it was crunk and we did a lot of bits with that and then crunk became this other thing that starts with a c in rap culture which was very strange how that happened really yeah yeah yeah crunk became a big word in rap culture but it spelled with a c and i don't know if i'll never know if it was like unconsciously right lifted from dino's bit or if it was um i mean what a wild man uh he used to oh yeah yeah he used to be like my sidekick for a while when i first started

this podcast is that true yeah i had no idea yeah yeah and he uh and he was just coming with these stories about you know bondage oh yeah and you know just i sometimes we would wonder if is is your whole life just a bit is everything you're doing just so that you can tell people about it. Yeah. Yeah. Right. Because he basically told people about everything he did as as quickly as he did it. Yeah. Right. Like you'd be like having wax poured on his dick and calling you from a cell phone about it. be like having wax poured on his dick and calling you from a cell phone about it my friend set him up on a date one time yeah they went back to her place you know got comfortable and then he asked her to take off her shoes and socks and she was like what he's like that's all i really want really and and of course he can't wait to tell the story told it on the radio yes yes just how how he made a girl uncomfortable

what you don't like feet feet are beautiful come on what the fuck um amazing yeah so so you were the first head writer on Conan. Yeah, best job ever. Greatest dream come true. Yeah. Yeah. And how did you hire writers? Like, was it all packets or you knew some people? No, I didn't know anybody.

The whole thing came out of the blue. It was like Dana Carvey had been offered the gig after Letterman. Oh, that's right. Yeah. And he didn't want to do it but for a moment he considered it and he was telling me and conan about it and he had this little carrot on a stick and you two guys could be like you know you could perform on the show and i was like okay and then i just gave me all these ideas for what what a show following Carson and replacing Letterman could be. Because I had never considered it,

but then I just started getting all these thoughts of like, oh, well, we could bring sketch comedy to that time slot. Because Letterman did all this found humor. Right. And Letterman openly says like, oh, I stole from Steve Allen. Exactly. But Steve Allen also had this whole other half of his show know and letterman openly says like oh i stole from steve allen exactly but steve allen also had this whole other half of his show where he would like have sketch performers like louis nye now i'm talking to the hundred year old people uh and um who's that great actor tom poston oh sure

you know i would watch these things uh at Museum of Broadcasting in New York. Like I was fascinated. 50 Second Street. I'd be there all the time. Yeah, I was fascinated by late night television. Even when we started the show, I made Conan watch with me. I had ideas for sets. I was like, let's do these throwback kind of sets that were just kind of like modern art, kind of weird shapes and stuff. And I'd make him watch Jack Parr.

And Conan just had a different energy. And he would watch these make him watch jack par and conan just had a different energy and he would watch these things just felt like this is just so slow yeah oh my god yeah and i loved the fact that it was slow but i knew that wasn't going to be part of the show yeah but so conan was the one that lauren hired to produce the show yeah but it wasn't his dream to produce a late night show it was his dream to be on camera right he was incredibly funny around the office yeah just had great energy and i was funny in a different like i could imitate lauren michaels and get laughs and stuff but i didn't have this kind of you know own the room energy i was just a brooding typical writer yeah you know and uh but like for me the dream was to

do the behind the scenes thing and come up with the show so conan quit the gig he told lauren and they he was like forced to forced to he took the gig and he and they would go to dinner with like john stewart drew carrie all these different potential hosts and they would go to dinner with like John Stewart Drew Carey all these different potential hosts and they're all great but Conan just had it in the back of his mind yeah I swear to god I think I could do this too and he just couldn't handle it and he told Lauren I'm sorry but I just being around this environment just makes me realize that what I really want to do is be a performer and, or at least try. And, you know, I'm not saying that I could host, but if, you know, if you want to consider me, that's great. If you don't, I understand.

And then Lauren just took a shot and, um, and Conan calls me and says, Lauren's going to let me audition. And, and I have to admit like the tiny little part of me was like scared and selfishly like, Oh, well what if he may not be that good? And I was like, I had had all these dreams of like,

I'm going to, I'm going to do this show and like have some amazing host and it's gonna be and like i i felt really guilty but and i was trying to still like no no so you'll audition and we'll see how it goes and all everything and then like and he said i would like you to be the head writer i was like okay yeah no i could see that but I didn't just and then like I called him back because like like an a day later and I was like I just realized what an asshole I was I was like it doesn't matter if he's my friend and like he asked me to do this and he's been supportive of me like when I did stupid weekend update things on SNL once in a blue moon. So I called him back.

I was like, yeah, let's go. Let's do it. But then, then he ended up auditioning and had a killer audition. Yeah. Just, I don't know what it was that made it like he, I guess he just felt like he had nothing to lose.

Right. And it was a very tiny audience in Burbank. And did you write material? No, no. I had nothing to do with it. Okay. He just went up there and did a very tiny audience in Burbank. And did you write material for that? No, no, I had nothing to do with it. Okay. He just went up there and did a very loose monologue and then interviewed Jason Alexander

and who was Tom Cruise's wife at the time? Nicole Kidman? No, before her. Penelope? No, it starts with an M. Oh, shit. Yeah. What's wrong with me?

Anyway, someone will know. The actress, we have Google. we should google it um anyway he had this killer interview mimi rogers mimi rogers world series of poker winner yeah oh really yeah he had this amazing interview with her and and after that i was just I became too confident. I was like, this guy's going to fuck it. And then we all hired these writers. And over the summer, Conan was so funny around the office. I was just like, fuck, man. This guy's going to own late night television.

Within six months, everybody's going to have a pompadour. And everybody's going to want skinny legs. pompadour and everybody's gonna want skinny legs and like and and so that it gave me the confidence to like just make the show absolutely bananas yeah in terms of like the crazier the idea the better and so that's why it was the most fun gig ever because we had like lauren michaels behind us so we were somewhat protected we thought right you know and I thought Conan was gonna be great and to me it was like we have a responsibility following Letterman right to be as innovative and crazy as he was you know but it didn't didn't do well out of the

gates though did it well here's the thing so the first week we had the benefit of chevy chase had done a show uh-huh like the week before for fox he had he he decided to venture into the talk show world and fox gave him a talk show yeah and i love chevy chase i i think he's hysterical and it kind of made sense. I remember when I was younger, he was a rumored replacement for Johnny Carson. So this is like 20 years later. This is like 1993.

And the talk show was a complete train wreck. Yeah. Just an absolute disaster. Like, you know, maybe as bad as Magic Johnson or Jerry Lewis. Do you remember when he did that? No, I didn't know that. Jerry Lewis had like a week, and Charlie Callis was his sidekick, and it was just as Jerry Lewis as you could get,

just like the pompous anger. This man, no one will understand what this man, what his gifts are. And Charlie Callis is like, when do I get to be funny? When do I get to make my noises? And nobody. It was just as repellent as you could dream of. Yeah. And so we got to be compared out of the gate to chevy chase instead of letterman

like we still were compared to letterman but we had this buffer for like a week so the reviews the first week were not that bad we were like we dodged a bullet thanks to this chevy thing and plus we thought we had great material i watched the first show like a couple of months ago because it was our 30th anniversary and i'm like still unbelievably proud of the first show and all the weird shit we did like literally on the very first show this guy's never been on television and middle of john goodman's interview he says're back. We're talking to John Goodman. We've got Drew Barrymore coming up, but right now, what was it? He says, we'll be right back after this special effects technician. And then we cut to this redheaded, like special effects guy,

just dancing like a hippie. And we played one more night by Phil Collins and he's just, and then we just got back to, and we played one more night by phil collins and he's just and then we just got back to and we're back and it got a huge laugh and great yeah and i just was over the moon that we got away with that and conan was nervous but really giddy with excitement. It was his first show. Yeah. But then like a week later, kind of that energy, you know, that excitement kind of died down and the quality of guests

became what you would expect for a show that has an unknown. Right, right. So now he's interviewing Gore Vidal and I'm still like doing insane bits and like you know i'm having the interview be interrupted by like you're it's conan's neighbor he's like interviewing gore vidal i was like hey coney how you doing oh sorry mr vidal that's doug my neighbor like literally interrupting interviews this guy's trying to learn how to be a talk show

host on the fly it would have been great if he had had so much experience that he had the confidence of like when Kimmel became a late night host yeah he had years thousands of hours of radio exactly he was a broadcaster so it was really bumpy but he didn't look bumpy he never he never had that you never felt like Kimmel was nervous right and like the show didn't really get its legs for a couple of years but it was never about Kimmel looking anything less than professional but Conan could get rattled and was very hyper aware of the audience. Yeah. And what's really caused distractions. I'm sorry. He caused his own distractions, even though he wasn't comfortable in the seat. Yeah. Yeah. And, and what's kind of

ironic now is that he's a podcaster and he's like almost a totally different guy. Yeah. He's amazing in his podcast. And that's the guy that we all knew. Right. Behind the scenes, like just this incredibly quick, has this really funny way of like kind of bullying people, but in the funniest way possible. Yeah. You know, and and his interviews are much more in depth now and you can really see how intelligent he is and how much he knows and how curious he is. And that wasn't possible on a late night show. You're just supposed to set up stories.

Right. You know, you're not really having conversations. And so and I remember like that summer we would do these practice shows in studio 8h the saturday night live studio because letterman was still working and we would do these setups and it would just be conan and like dino or andy richter would be sort of on the set too he's giving him somebody to talk to and then we would have like people from the staff come on and be pretend guests and he was so loose and funny he was very much like he is on his podcast and i remember fantasizing like why do we have to have an audience why do we have to have an audience that just throws

everything he can just relax and just be himself and now it's literally 30 years later and that's what it is and i think he's mean, he obviously had an amazing career. Yeah. And he did a fantastic job, but I think he's better on his podcast. Right. I think that's the real guy. Yeah. That's interesting.

Yeah. And Louie was just a baby when you guys hired him. Louie was a baby. Yes. He was 25 years old. Yeah. He had orange fingers because he ate a lot of carrots, I remember. And he did not have a great writing submission.

And I could get very anal about that and then second guess myself. And I remember Dino, just fucking hire him because he had made these incredibly funny movies. Oh yeah. Ice cream, ice cream. Tomorrow night was later. That was a feature. I'm actually in that with Steve Carell for a few moments.

Tomorrow night's amazing. Yeah. But this was something called, what was the other one? He said ice cream and there was one other. And, um, between that and his standup,

which was already great right he hadn't cracked the whole my kids are assholes side of his career yet no he was still an he was an absurdist yes i can see which fit perfectly for our show and so he ended up being i think the greatest writer the show ever had he contributed so many but if you're a conan fan like the staring contest that andy and conan would do or the actual items bit which was like a perfect expression of what we were trying to do because remember i said i wanted the show to be we're going to be the show that makes everything up as opposed to dave who just puts a mirror on reality and right twists it and brilliantly but i just can't copy dave can't i didn't even let conan do remotes for like a year yeah because i was so anal about because i'd seen dennis

miller try to do remotes and pat sajak and it's like and like dennis is incredibly funny but it's just letterman was like the master at the moment and i didn't want the guy replacing him to try and do what dave did in any way shape or form so we would have you know so we so the actual items bit was basically a parody of headlines yeah which jay leno's headlines which is stolen from dave letterman's small town news but they were basically they would just put up funny headlines and like this is really you can't make it up folks you can't make it up you can steal it from dave but you can't make it up and uh why dave invented headlines all of a sudden what's that all about dave didn't he invented the news thank you oh sure sure what didn't dave invent

can i talk about polio vaccine or did dave invent that but like uh so but louis bit was like we call these are actual items that we found in the news and of course they were the most they were weird stuff we completely made up completely over the top and every time we would show look what i found in the new england daily herald and it's just some make-believe advertisement and conan would always say you can't make this up you can't make this stuff up so yeah louis louis just louis and dino made just an incredible contribution like i had the first instincts of what i wanted the show to be and you know, Conan and I fleshed that out a little bit and, you know, I came up with my own bits, whatever in the year 2000. And, um,

I don't remember, but, but I feel like Louie and Dino contributed just as much to that first year really in, in defining what that show was. I remember I wrote on Louie's first sitcom the hbo one and i just remember lucky louis lucky louis yeah i loved it i just remember you guys being on the phone like constantly oh really yeah i remember he would he would talk to you and he talked to chris rock you mean about his sitcom i don't know if it was about it but i just remember being a lot of phone louis is a great friend of mine. Yeah. Yeah, yeah.

And yeah, that was a great show. I thought so. Yeah, I don't know. HBO didn't like it. I think it was too ugly for them. And not just the- Aesthetically. That's what I was gonna say. Because he wanted it to look like Ralph Cramden's house.

Right, right. And HBO hates that shit. Yeah. They want everything to be, you know. Yeah. Yeah, they want everything to look pristine. I had a problem with that too. I can't remember why.

There was something I wanted to do on HBO and I was told it's too down and dirty for HBO. I can't remember if it was a Triumph thing. But yeah, they have that obsession with aesthetics and i remember i can't remember it was dave becky or somebody was saying to louie like they love the characters they love the jokes love the show they just want you to hang better curtains and put different wallpaper and then we're good and we're good and louie was like nope not gonna do it he can get very defiant yeah yeah you know i mean i just think he hated having

a writing staff oh yeah yeah no i remember talking to him about that yeah yeah there was a part of him because he felt like they're they're just gonna kind of dilute right the well he had a head right wait you were head writer no no no mike royce right yeah you weren't that writer yeah yeah yeah no mike royce i think had already done raymond at that point right or did he go on to do raymond i think he had already done raymond yeah yeah and then he came over and he was he was great head writer he's gone on to head right at oh yeah yeah but i think there was something about like louis had an instinct that he didn't want professionals yeah fucking with us right yeah yeah which i and i remember him talking to me one time and he was just like you know how sometimes in the writer's room you'll say like we can't do that because he goes just don't do that just don't ever do that because i don't want anybody doing

that yeah i feel like i remember him telling me this yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah writer's rooms are a weird dynamic it is because yeah i mean you look at some of the greatest shows of all time and they were kind of one-man shows. I mean, Curb is all Larry pretty much, right? Well, no. I mean, he has guys that... He has sounding boards. He has a core group of people who worked with him at Seinfeld.

Right. Mandel and Schaefer and Alec Berg, all of whom have gone on to... Larry was his director. Yeah. But those three kids, they've all gone on. Mandel ended up running Veep and Berg ran that Silicon Valley show.

I mean, these are genuine, talented kids. I worked with them either at SNL or Conan. And, you know, I mean, obviously Larry's the engine. Yeah. You know, but like, it's the same with stuff I do. I get credit for shit, but I always have people helping me, whether it's triumph jokes. Who are your guys for that kind of stuff?

Well, Feldman, you know that. David Feldman. Yeah, oh my God. He's one of the funniest people in the world. Feldman's a maniac. Yeah. He has written some of the greatest fucking jokes oh yeah he says uh me and my wife yeah you know we have our hall passes you know for a long time mine was um Goldie Hawn and hers was Tom Cruise and then I

asked her recently if we could update them and And she picked Patrick Swayze and I picked the babysitter. That is so Feldman. That's beautiful. Oh no, you know what though? It's interesting. So I mean, I could list like 10 other guys who've written for Triumph, amazing jokes,

including Sweeney and other conan writers but just to stay on feldman for a second he's he's his uh we did this puppet show a couple of years ago that nobody saw it was called uh let's be real where they wanted to do a spitting image kind of show for america and i was, this is a terrible idea. Everybody would rather see comedians play famous people than just see puppets. It's too cold. Then I had this idea, well,

what if the puppets are interacting with humans? And I thought that'll work. Okay. That, that'll be interesting. So we tried it and I think it was a very funny show, but nobody saw it. It was just buried on Fox's Thursday lineup.

But anyway, it was great to see feldman get an opportunity to write sketches she never really had before he worked for mar yeah you know and he's written a lot of other joke oriented stuff but he wrote the first sketch we did which was the funniest fucking idea it was and Andrew Cuomo, no, not Andrew Cuomo, yes, Governor Cuomo, at the height of this scandal, this sex scandal. But it was also the height of COVID,

and Cuomo, it was actually, it was like the sex scandal was just starting, and oh shit, am i gonna remember the sketch now it was all about how cuomo would give these daily updates remember he was like a hero he was the guy he was the guy he was a pillar and then the sex scandal happened yeah and then he was oh shit i have to google this we got to stop tape because no you know i'll tell a feldman joke while you look it up tell a feldman joke feldman is joke me and my wife came out of that

movie indecent proposal yeah and my wife said to me would you let another man have sex with me for a million dollars and he goes well you know i don't know if we get a million dollars but i think we get 50 bucks 20,000 times. Oh, my God. Yeah, he's written amazing triumph jokes, but I'm going to find out. There's another guy that gets himself in trouble on podcasts. Oh, really? Oh, yeah.

Yeah. He lets it out. that those are on my podcast that's the beauty of being somebody nobody gives a shit about right right you can't cancel he would laugh at that yeah uh but yeah that's that's his secret yeah as long as no one gives a fuck what he says he can say anything he has nothing to lose okay so here's i found a copy of this this is so fucking funny so he's like uh you know i know a lot of you think uh the worst is behind us but that is the most dangerous time and we must exercise caution and stay vigilant if we're ever getting back to normal. I know summer's approaching.

You all want to go out, dress in light clothing, show some skin. But I cannot stress enough how that behavior will increase the number of New Yorkers who will be sexually harassed by me. Let's look at the first slide, please. All right. As you can see, since I was first accused of inappropriate behavior back in late February, there was at first a spike in accusations. Remember how he had all those charts? He's doing it about himself. There was a spike in accusations. And I think all of us worried that there was no end in sight. Next slide. But we were lucky enough to see an inevitable decline as more women became aware of the situation and kept a safe distance from me next slide and then it's like and then it goes to like uh he starts saying shit like

um okay how do we flatten the curve number one staying six feet away from me at all times. I know some of you are thinking you can get closer than six feet if you're standing behind me because I can't see you. Trust me, I know you're there and I'm ready to pounce. And in only a matter of seconds, a New York Minute, if you will, you'll be added to this number. All because you couldn't be bothered to stand six feet away from me just amazing he wrote and he every word of it written by david written by david it's perfect yeah yeah so david feldman absolute treasure yeah he's the best. Yeah. And he moved to New York. You live in New York now.

I live in New Jersey. I had to move to New Jersey. Yeah, because my son, who is autistic, we couldn't get him into a decent school in New York. It was just like too many waiting lists and not enough schools. And it was a real struggle for him until he was seven. He finally got into a school that could help him significantly, but it was in New Jersey. No,

no. He's like not nonverbal, but very limited in his ability to speak. And he needed a lot of, need a lot of attention. And, um, to speak and he needed a lot of need a lot of attention and um and so we finally got into this school and moved to uh moved to bergen county and um i've lived there since have you grew up in new

york i grew up in manhattan yeah where on west 89th street oh no kidding yeah yeah my wife grew up on west 78th is she jewish she is of the jewish of course how could you not be yeah i love love the jews had to marry one jewish women are the best i like them did you marry a jew i did marry yeah yeah there's something about them that's like they can they can put up with the little shit they don't like my wife doesn't sweat me about little shit. Right. And then she picks the stuff that she digs on. And then I go, okay, I can go with that.

You know, my wife like doesn't sweat the little shit, but sometimes so much little shit adds up. She finally has to say something. Yeah. You got to poke check once in a while yeah yeah you can't just check yeah and like it's another thing is so funny because of the autism connection is like sometimes she thinks that my behavior that like i have like shadow syndromes as they say like that symptoms that is uh like that there's maybe like you're a little bit on the spectrum i think and i understand it and i'm like i'm pretty sure i'm just an asshole i'm pretty sure

i'm self-centered right now and that i'm i have no problems processing i have problems thinking about something other than what i care about. Yeah, right. But, you know, by all means, I can't. But that's ADHD. And that's the thing that a lot of writers have, because we can hyper focus. If you give us a script. Oh, yeah. We can fucking dive into it and not notice anything going on around us.

It's absolutely true. And I can go long periods without wanting to write. And then I'll lock in on something and i'll write like when i'm writing a screenplay yeah you know i'll write like like that whole segment where the in this movie where jason alexander is singing a song and then we cut away to another room and he's having a conversation with this girl yeah yeah and then that song jason alexander song where he's bragging about his family turns into this other song where Leo is kind of mocking his family her family and I like I just locked in on a plane on an airplane flight

from Los Angeles to New York and just wrote the whole thing the song the scene yeah I just it just happens that way sometimes where I can I I'm just like flailing and you know, doing nothing. And then I just decide and then it either hits or it doesn't. I'm not one of those writers who's like, like Apatow is like every morning, every morning I get up and I'm going to put something down on paper and it doesn't matter what it is. Like, I'm like, no, no, I can't do that. I have to be inspired well i'm incapable it's hard to explain to your wife when you're hanging around in your underwear watching a

cartoon or whatever that like this is process kind of process it kind of is i know yeah i know you can you can it's like it's like being able to write off business expenses it's the same thing it's no no this is all weeding to something yeah it's a screenplay it's it may not be for another few years may not get sold right but it's all feeding the beast trust me well that's why this this office as small as it is like yeah this was my place to get out of the house and just fucking nice to have a nice big screen tv oh nice mini fridge and my coffee maker and that's all i needed yeah and i could waste half the day right and then finally guilt myself into going all right fucking do it now but i can't do that in my house i don't know what i'm gonna do this is my last day in this office i

know i have to start working out of like my house i do that i work out of my house you do my wife understands like that i just need space and like i work in my son daniel's bedroom uh-huh i just i like work on a bed yeah really yeah i do i'm just like no shit yeah a lot of times i don't even sit at a desk wow yeah i'm just on the internet and just like formulating shit and um you know when it's really time to write something properly i will remove myself from the prone position and and be an adult but i spend lots of times just lying down and, you know, but I'm working in some, in some shape or form. Yeah. I'm working. Do you miss like a constant writer's room? Did you like that?

I, I don't miss having to leave my house. Like I have twin boys that are just my whole life. I just love them so much. And I love that. I don't have to, that when they come home, I'm home. A much. And I love that. I don't have to, that when they come home, I'm home. A lot of times I'm stuck doing something. I had to work on an LA schedule with this movie because they had the production team in LA. So I would like get my kids up at seven with my wife and then I'd have to wait till noon to work and end the day at eight, which sucked. But you know i mean i

didn't i mean i was working during the pandemic it was a miracle that i had this animation job it was like the one thing that right you could actually do yeah you know so it was not a place where i could complain about it but but yeah i really, uh, and the movie is a lot about like, I'm not slumming writing kids movies. I'm writing about my life. You know, I, it is a little weird to go from triumph humping a live animal to, it was not what I expected because I go into movies. I don't want to know anything about a movie before I sit down and watch it.

I fucking hate trailers. I get to the movies 20 minutes late good i won't listen to anybody i just so i went into this knowing it was called leo that was it that's amazing and i and 10 minutes in i'm like when's the south park shit gonna start happening you know when's the big mouth stuff gonna start happening and it just was uh but it was it's just really fucking it's really great man congratulations thank you yeah i enjoy the challenge of i mean i've overdosed on the south park big big mouth kind of comedy i mean just in the 90s and and beyond i've done so much inappropriate shit i did an entire comedy album with triumph with songs like cats

are cunts. And yeah, you know, I mean, so at a certain point I was like, I was almost like, I want a different challenge. I want to work within parameters. Yeah. So I was kind of interested in, in, in doing long form. So between that and then having kids you know it's just that's become my life and i don't think of it as slumming i'm it's like kind of what i'm interested in and there's a lot from in this movie that's just my life like characters and like different kind of entitled parents right and you know like i said my two kids are playing kids that are a little bit reflections of themselves in some way. And and some of the other kids are based on friends of theirs. Right. You know, and I just so I don't really feel like I'm making any kind of compromise. It's just something that I was invested in and interested in yeah and i tried to make it as funny as possible and adam you know i wrote the first draft of this and the basic storyline but then adam came in and just you know he's always doing like five other things but every time he jumped in he just made it funnier and funnier oh that's amazing yeah yeah

yeah and he would find places he's like this could be fun that's that's my biggest weakness i think as a writer is rewriting like i'll write my draft and like this is fucking great i don't have to i love this what are we changing it but adam would wear me down or he would just top it and like oh yeah no and i just i think one of the reasons the movie is is really good is also because it took three years to like it you know a lot of our movies we just kind of knock out and shoot right and this one we couldn't do that because animation takes so long but we kept coming back to scenes like oh wait we could do this in this scene we could add this we could add this yeah you know and that's why i think it's kind of like

a lot of people have told me how funny it is. And I'm very proud of that also because I love these Pixar movies. But you sit in the theater and the kids aren't really laughing all that much, you know. And they're still my favorite movies. Movie like Up or Coco. Love Coco. Coco's amazing. Yeah. But it's not like a nonstop laugh fest and that's okay.

Yeah. That's the type of movie that is. But Adam and I are comedians and we're excited to make kids laugh. Yeah. You know, so Hotel Transylvania, it's not considered a classic movie or anything, but we were very, very gratified. We would go to theaters and we'd hear the sound of children laughing all the way through. Yeah. And that's just a great feeling. Like, yeah. And it's something that, you know, your kids can see before they're 21 years old. Well, I'm a bad father. I let my kids see South Park at age 12. I was like, I'm going to let it find, they wanted to see it for so long. Yeah. You can't stop them. Yeah. But it opened up the floodgates.

All right, so I don't want to keep you. I value your time. I'm so appreciative of you coming on the show. Oh, please. I'm thrilled to be here. Tell your friends, get on Netflix. Leo is now, it came out as the number one film on Netflix. Number one.

Which is pretty sweet. Although this week you are losing out to a game show about squid games. I'm pretty sure that's going to happen. Yeah. I mean, how's the squid game? I mean, that's like, how can you not lose to squid games? The second I saw the first episode of that show i said they're gonna make a real game show about oh really oh yeah i knew it instantly yeah and you know uh yeah i haven't seen it yet

but but i'm i'm interested now we'll make a real life uh leo game show right maybe that'll do the trick so thank you uh can i just plug i don't know when is this coming out? Tomorrow. Oh, Night of Too Many Stars, if you're in the New York area, is December 11th. We've got Jon Stewart, Colbert, Chris Rock, Adam Sandler,

Rachel Bloom, Amy Schumer. It's going to be amazing. Sounds like you need a headliner though. Oh, Triumph, the insult comic dog.

Oh, there you go. No, he's not, I'm not. All right. I'm not. Where is the venue? It is at the dog. Oh, there you go. No, he's not. I'm not. All right. I'm not. Where is the venue?

It is at the Beacon Theater, December 11th. If you're interested, there are tickets available and also very expensive packages where you get privileges and help autism. Nice. So do that and check out David Feldman's podcast while we're talking about him. You're right. Yeah. What's it called?

I think the David Feldman Show. David Feldman Show. All right. talking about him. You're right. Yeah. What's it called? I think the David Feldman show. All right. Yeah. All right. Thank you.