Gilbert Gottfried's Amazing Colossal Podcast - 42. Dan Harmon

Episode Date: March 13, 2015

Outspoken and controversial writer-producer Dan Harmon went from performing improv in his hometown of Milwaukee to creating hit television shows like "Community" and Adult Swim's "Rick and Morty." Dan joined Gilbert and Frank for a refreshingly candid and revealing conversation about the perils of celebrity, how his various neuroses fuel his creativity and why he chose to launch his own podcast (the wildly popular "Harmontown") instead of going to therapy. Also: Dan pays "homage" to Bill Cosby, gets canned by Sarah Silverman, creates the never-aired cult show "Heat Vision and Jack" and locks horns with comedy hero-turned-antagonist Chevy Chase. PLUS: "Manimal"! "Misfits of Science"! "The Streisand Effect"! Gilbert hangs with Charlie Sheen! And Dan receives a VERY special delivery! Also, don't forget -- COMMUNITY returns for its SIXTH season on Yahoo! Screen on Tuesday March 17th! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Hi, this is Gilbert Gottfried, Gilbert Gottfried's Amazing Colossal Podcast. I'm here with my co-host, Frank Santopadre. And we have a new subscriber. And his name is either Michael Arne or Michael Arne. I don't know which one he was, but he wants me to call him a miserable son of a bitch. So, whether it's Arne or Arne, Michael, you are a miserable son of a bitch. What an honor. I get that honor every weekend.

I don't even have to pay for it. So if you guys want a similar shout-out on the show or you'd like us to say something flattering, go to patreon.com, patreon, P-A-T-R-E-O-N, dot com, slash Gilbert Gottfried, and you can get the same kind of respectful treatment. And now I have to go to the doctor because I've just been diagnosed

with Arnie. Arne. Or Arnie. Or it's Arnie. I had Arnie. That was a football injury. I had, I still, when it rains, I really feel it. Because I once hurt myself.

So I still have Arnie. Thank you, Michael. In France, it's called Arne. Hi, this is Gilbert Gottfried, and this is Gilbert Gottfried's amazing, colossal podcast. I'm here with my co-host, Frank Santopadre. I'm here with my co-host Frank Santopadre, and our guest today is a writer and producer, the creator of hit shows like Community and Rick and Morty, and the star of one of the most popular podcasts on the internet, the funny and talented Dan Harmon. Woo! All right, that's an intro. Yeah, no, that's an obituary. The funny and talented Dan Harmon.

Woo! All right. That's an intro. Yeah. No, that's an obituary. See, I want my guests to feel like they're dead and buried. That's fantastic. Yeah, thank you so much. Thank you for doing my show in New York, by the way.

People who are fans of yours, if they wanted to listen to my podcast, they should definitely listen to the episode where you guest co-hosted in New York. Yes, that was a wild time. Yeah, you were great. You were fantastic. And I remember, okay, I'm proud to say I know very little about Dungeons & Dragons. It makes me feel cool. Like I don't know about that game.

Yeah, yeah. Well, yeah, I guess you should feel cool to not know about it. You handled it as most people do. You kind of sat there and said, I have no idea what's going on. And I remember we were lucky enough where we brought up a blind guy on stage.

Yeah. There was a blind guy and a black gay guy. That's right. And yeah, we pitted them against each other. How do your guests normally react, Dan, to you suddenly playing Dungeons & Dragons in the middle of the show? They're actually quite addicted to it. I mean, it's because Spencer, our dungeon master, he's been part of the show.

I mean, it's because, you know, Spencer, our dungeon master, he's been part of the show. He was he sort of represents the audience in a lot of ways because he came up out of the audience. I asked one night, is there a dungeon master in the audience? And he raised his hand and he's been a part of the show ever since. Aside from people who have never gotten laid in their lives, I would imagine that people who like Dungeons and Dragons, there must be a lot of autistic and people with Asperger's syndrome. It kind of strikes me as one of those. Yeah, I would say so.

Yeah, I think that's a healthy guess. I think my show's audience probably has a disproportionate amount of people on the spectrum in the audience. I get that impression. I feel a little spectrum-y myself. I'm more of a verbal thinker and kind of like not that intimately emotionally connected by default with people. But I'm very, very emotionally affected affected by them if that makes any sense like yeah it's very easy for me to just talk into a microphone to a bunch of strangers and reveal very personal things about myself than it is for me to actually just recognize when when i'm being mean to somebody face toto-face, you know, and be sensitive to their needs in the moment.

Yeah, I think Sarah Silverman said you would say stuff to her that would depress her. Yeah. But she was your biggest fan. She was your biggest fan and liked you and fired you. Yes, yes, yes. She kind of steals the movie with that line. She makes the trailer for the movie about me with that line.

I'm his biggest fan and I fired him. Now, I think of all the things you've done, what you're probably best known for is shoving a Sharpie in your asshole while you were jerking off.

Yeah, I think that's, hopefully that's tombstone worthy because I think it's what I've contributed. Can you explain to me in detail how this came about? It started with me, like it started with my friend Rob Schraub telling me when we were still pretty young, he said, you know about stimulating the prostate, right? Like if a girl loves the area between the thing and the thing while you're orgasming, like it'll be a more intense thing and i was like oh that's okay that's i didn't know that and then and then i remember reading reading about that in like a playboy or a penthouse subsequent to that or somebody wrote in and said hey i was i was having sex and my girlfriend rubbed me in that area while and the orgasm was crazy what is that

and the person responded with well, she's stimulating your prostate. Some people do it internally. And I was like, oh, so that's the same. So that's why people shove stuff up their butts when they're having sex and stuff. That kind of

makes sense. I wonder if that's way better. And then I kind of, you know, it was a rainy afternoon and I, you know, I didn't have to be anywhere for a few hours. So I looked around the house for, you know, it was like, I wanted, I wanted to play it on the cautious side. It was the groovy the first thing I stuck up my butt. I looked at like, you know, a regular Sharpie pen, you know, like the the the the white end of it, like not the cap end, but the you got to watch out for the cap end.

Yeah, the cap end. You don't want to clip on it. Yeah, that could be dangerous. Yeah. Yeah. Like a bat grapple. Like it would it would it would hook in there. Yeah, like a bat grapple. It would hook in there. So yeah, it was a smooth, narrow thing, like a good beginner's butt thing.

And I just tried it. And I came and I was like, ah, that feels good. But now I have a pin up my ass. like ah that feels good um but now i have a pen up my ass and now i have to pull it out and you know i'm sure you're familiar with the fact that a man's orgasm is followed by a instant like disinterest in sex like you're kind of like shit you've done to get there like the the if you've done something elaborate like after your orgasm now you're you're dressed as batman you're and now you're just a regular guy again you're not like a horned dog you're just like sitting there with a pen up your ass and and so i guess that's why i never did it again because

it's like well it's just so you you only shoved a Sharpie in your asshole once. Yeah, I think so, yeah. And hopefully you threw it away after. Yeah, I mean, I put it in the cup of pens that only I am allowed to use. Good decision. Good decision. Now, if I, and it's funny because I'll be bringing up a word that is, was just used in a podcast of mine yesterday. And that's taint.

Yes. Now, is that the area that you'd be rubbing? Yeah, yeah. The taint, when you're rubbing your taint, if you're masturbating, I don't know how gross your podcast gets i don't know there's nothing intellectual in this it's not the mcneil layer report but you but you have like uh you you you have like uh uh producers from the jack benny show on your show and stuff, don't you? Some of them. But they can hear, so it doesn't matter.

So you're saying, like, then according to your friend, if you're having sex with a girl and the girl is rubbing your taint, it would be a more intense orgasm. Yeah, in theory. I think, yeah. Yeah. Like, you're pressing on it, because I think the muscle underneath there is what's, like, that's what's spasming when you're orgasming. So I think you're, like, I think if you hold it down, I don't know.

I don't know why that would feel good, but. I learned so much on this show. You know, we had the same discussion with Sir Ben Kingsley. Dan, how did you meet your writing partner, Rob Schraub? Fuck that. I want to know about rubbing the taint. Well, it's the same answer. I met Rob.

We did comedy sports in Milwaukee. It's an improv franchise, kind of a working man's improv olympic where people come to these short-form improv shows that are structured like they're fake athletic events, like two teams competing against each other for comedy points. I used to have something here like that, Comedy Olympics. Yeah, I think there's a couple variations out of it. Comedy sports is a direct derivation of theater sports, which was started by Keith Johnstone in Canada, I think for those improv people listening. The emphasis was not on the art.

It was on the comedy and the laughs and stuff. And so it was very intense, short form improv training. And it was the only thing like it going on in Milwaukee. And so if you were like an attention hog and interested in the creative field. You kind of gravitated to comedy sports in Milwaukee. So that's where I met Schraub. And he was a comic book. He was making his own comic books, wasn't he?

Yeah, shortly after I met him. He had just graduated from art school in Milwaukee and was not really doing anything with his degree. And then one day he just revealed that that for the previous few months he had been drawing his own comic book on his kitchen table and uh very cautiously started showing it to people in a three ring binder and everyone was really into it and he uh partnered up to publish it independently with our friend peter and uh at a certain point uh it was it was published as a comic book,

and then it found its way into the hands of Oliver Stone's production company, and they optioned the film rights to it for like $10,000 or something. And we, you know, it was 1993 or so in Milwaukee, and we thought, this is it, we're going to Hollywood to help make this movie about our comic book. Then we got out here, and, you know, it turns out that's not quite how the business works, but, you know, it got us out here. Now, one person I've worked with and met a few times over the years, and I can use that classic cliche,

well, he was always nice to me and that's Chevy Chase because he was always nice to me yeah I never had anything bad to say about him but obviously you didn't feel the same way well I mean yes and no i mean i think there was a lot of sadly there was a lot of the same blood in our veins i mean chevy and i i think we would both admit we're kind of narcissistic and uh i mean i i created this show he was a huge star uh acting in it and um you know it he and i both kind of like oh we don't know, we take our shit really seriously. And I wanted to make it work that way. I was like, go ahead and take your part on the screen super seriously. Let me inform the character with that, you know, that angst and that darkness.

Because I think that could be a really cool character. I think if you're a community fan and you watch season one and two of Community and you can see, I think Chevy's at his height in playing that character in the Dungeons & Dragons episode of Community where he's a villain. The heroic part of him as an actor is the part of him that doesn't want to, say, the, the heroic part of him is as a, as a, as an actor is the part of him that doesn't want to say die. It doesn't want to go gentle into that good night. And I, I guess, you know, like, uh, we, we got along as much as, as much as we could. I worked with him longer than anybody's ever worked with him.

Um, I, and, and I, and he created a great character on the show that we loved a lot. The feud that got so well publicized was just a result of pretty typical razzing between us. Like it just somehow kind of went viral. Well, not somehow. It went viral because like a dipshit, I played a voicemail that he left me into a microphone and someone someone in the audience was recording it and they put it on the internet so it was it was pretty fun to listen to so um it went viral i i didn't if if i had if i could go back in time i definitely wouldn't uh i wouldn't play that voicemail into the mic but at the time it was

like you could cry out into the darkness. Ah, Chevy Chase is a dick. I don't like working with him, and he hates me. And no one cared. No one was listening. It was just like something you would share with 50 people in a cabaret theater. Oh, I know that feeling. Exactly.

It used to be you could just crack a joke, and it was a joke. And the world kept spinning now yeah yeah the medium was different you know it it if you were in a stand-up club then it was it was it was understood that you were performing for 80 to 100 people there and you know something you know your thoughts about 9-11 were not meant to represent the planet's zeitgeist about it. We're not meant to be consumed in the cold light of day on Good Morning America. And we've exited that time. It worries me a little bit because I do think that there's an importance to context, in particular, the dark cloisters, smoky clubs where people can be vile and explore the crevices

of their thoughts, you know, and not... If we all have to speak to each other as if we're speaking to the planet, things are going to get real boring real fast. And I think the public, a lot of the public, still wants

something that's going to shock and offend them. And they kind of enjoy it. It's a thrill knowing that that could happen. Well, of course, yeah. I mean, we love, you know, we're human beings. We're primates. We're like weird animals that are half God, half, half, half, uh, monster. And we, like, we, we, we are terrified that we're going to get kicked out of the species.

So we try to button up and, and, but we are fascinated with the idea that the guy next to us might make a mistake or, you know, what he might have to say. And our heroes and our villains are both people who, you know, say shit they're not supposed to say. Yeah, I mean, I guess we could segue into the Cosby thing now if you wanted. Well, we were going to ask you a Cosby-related question because— Oh, and can I interject here, too? Cosby is another one on that list of, well, he was always nice to me. Yeah.

Yeah. I mean, yeah. I think that says it all. But one of your Channel 101 shows, Dan, was House of Cosby's. Right. Yes, it was. Which people can find

on the internet, and it's very, very funny. And what happened to it? It was short-lived. Yeah, it was Cosby's lawyers sent a cease and desist to Channel 101. We weren't making any money off of it, but they sent a cease and desist

to us, and we kind of ignored that because it was like, well, this isn't how society works. This isn't't like we're allowed to put a cartoon on the internet based on your fame you know um and then their lawyers contacted the internet provider and threatened to shut them down for letting us have a website on their internet service that was in their mind interfering with bill cosby's right to sell his own likeness and stuff and that's the argument against like that's that's that's the that's the other side of this of the parody argument when you're doing stuff like that um is like if my parody of gilbert godfrey is me just doing his act and sounding like him then

then then gilbert you know it's like, well, that's not parody. You're calling yourself Gilbert Gottfried and you're doing my act. But that's obviously not what we were doing with Cosby. But the internet provider kowtowed to it. It was a bummer at the time because it was like the creator, Justin Roiland, really did it out of love. He loved Bill Cosby. You don't do that kind of thing without being fascinated with somebody and doing it.

But we did have to take it down at a certain point. But you can find it with a cursory Googling. That's what gets me about the Internet. It's like everyone will get shocked and offended and they go, okay, we've taken that down. Taking it down means it'll take you another minute to find it. Yeah, exactly. I think that's what they call the Streisand effect now in Internet culture is that actually the attempt to mitigate access to the content creates big road flares leading to it now. The story becomes the story becomes the story.

And that gets back to people wanting stuff that they shouldn't hear. Once you tell them, Oh, you're not supposed to hear this. Then they want to hear it. Right. Of course. And it's crazy. The disparity between the things that we allow to exist inside our heads and the things that we allow to exist inside other people's heads. It's really, it's kind of admirable and kind of sad and often angering and sometimes uplifting. Just like the weird standard we hold ourselves and

each other to. And it's so clearly out of just loneliness. We're just so scared that we're going to make each other mad or get kicked out of the tribe. And we need to give ourselves so much more credit as a species than we give ourselves. I mean, we have terrible, dark, horrible thoughts and not sharing them and not talking about them is history shows is the surefire way to reach horrible behavior. Well, it's like funny. I worked recently with Charlie Sheen, and he's a famous character that the knee-jerk reaction, you have to say, oh, I condemn him.

He's awful. And then you go, and I think every single guy is going, wow, he parties and gets laid and they really want to admire it, but they're scared. Right. Well, you want to, you want to know for sure. I mean, with, with we, we, we adopt celebrities as like these tarot cards, these archetypes.

So you go, you know, well, this person is the promiscuous person. This person is the drug user. This person is the – we have a lot of these roles that we reserve for people. And we tragically, even though they give us release and fantasy, we want to punish them for that. Otherwise, we feel like we shouldn't be with our wife. We feel dishonest about being normal people. So we want the people that we initially reward for their debauchery to then be punished for it. And it's a little sad. It's a crucifixion that plays out over and over again with these tabloid celebrities.

We pump them up and we fill their heads and we put them up on our shoulders essentially and we drag them up to Golgotha and we nail them to a cross and watch them bleed to death and spin on them. And everyone gets to pretend at any given time because it was all this big Ouija board, this big collective movement. pretend at any given time because it was all this big Ouija board, this big collective movement. Nobody in particular like dragged Charlie Sheen up that hill by themselves. We all get to like hang back and participate in the whole cycle with just a pinky finger. And, you know, I've been on that side of it, the business side of that. Of course, with the Chevy thing, it was like I suddenly became overnight like way more famous than a writer should ever be and for way different reasons than a writer should ever be known. Having people tweet me just because they read my name in a TMZ article and just getting their shit off of their chest. I'm not complaining about any of this.

I'm not entitled to anything but i'm just saying emotionally the experience is like when you see it from from the barrel end it's like wow we are fucked up to each other like we really and i think it's it's all it's all because it's when we cease to see each other as people like when we become symbolic and people think that celebrities are they're like the moon you know you could throw a rock at it as hard as you want because it's impossible to hit it. But, you know, what if you found out the moon was like sitting up there going, ow, ow, ow, ow. Well, in Chevy's case, was it was it just a matter, Dan, of of of onset razzing or was I mean, I was reading your your your AMA on Reddit. Supposedly, he refused to do certain things.

He refused to do a tag. Yeah, he didn't do a – there was a bit. It was like – it was magnified, his refusing to do it. Like he had walked off set before. He gets tired. He gets cranky. He leaves, whatever. He was a three amigo.

He can get tired and cranky. But it was the end of the season, and I was at dinner with my parents who were from out of town. And I got a text message that he had walked off this last thing, this very last thing that he needed to shoot to wrap up the season before all of the sets got torn down and put into storage. So there was never going to be a chance to pick it up or fix it or anything like that. I did get – I got a little upset. But I did what I always do with my anger, which is I try to turn it into entertainment for other people. So at the wrap party, which is a celebration of people

that work really hard on the show, who suffer all year long, and I made a joke out of it and i said you know this is the rap party i'm your boss you can't get fired if you if you say fuck you chevy right now and everyone said fuck you chevy um because he's a little bit of a pill on the set you know and and i and i and that you know he he heard that and he left and uh and then i i think i exacerbated it because he was like i was still mad at him so he was like texting me you know telling me you know that was that was fucked up And, like, I, you know, I was still, I was, I think if looking back on it, I could have been a bigger man and, like, you know, I could have said at that point, okay, well, it really made me upset that you walked off the set for that one thing.

So now let's reset and hope we get a fourth season and etc but i i i was i was a passive aggressive dick i was like not responding to his texts and kind of like torturing him a little bit that way and and it's it's funny when you were talking before because i've certainly have been in front of the barrel of the gun a few times. Yeah, yeah. I mean, the aristocrats documentary. And the tsunami that got me fired. And it's like all these people, like I feel like people, once they get outraged and offended, they feel good about themselves. Right. It's weird.

That is really a weird trait we have. I understand outrage, but like when you feel like – if what you're doing is easy, if you risk nothing by condemning someone, that doesn't mean you shouldn't condemn them. But it definitely means you don't have to be proud of yourself for doing it. It's like, oh, you know, that guy said that horrible thing, and I disapprove. It's like, well, that's not heroic to disapprove of that thing that anyone— I always kind of felt like when it was going on with me, like, are you flying to Japan and helping with the rescue effort or are you just getting mad at a joke? Right. Yeah, it's if you're if what you're saying or doing, you know, if you just run it through this acid test of like, is it do I risk anything by saying or doing what I'm about to say or do?

If the answer is no, I absolutely risk nothing by saying or doing this thing. It might still be okay to say or do it. It's just, but you know, try to remember, like, like it's a good dose of perspective to have. Like I'm not doing anything risky at all. So maybe I don't need to take such a high road about it. I could lend my voice to like, you know, crowds love to boo somebody. Oh, yes. You know, you go like somebody says something inappropriate and you go boo, boo, boo. OK, that's a healthy function of society. But you're just that's the same as applause.

I mean, it's just it's, it's just a fun group activity and your part in it is not heroic by any means. Has Tim's got a treat for you? Well, actually a treat in a treat, get ready for Tim's dream cookies. Now in three delicious flavors, double stuff,

Oreo, caramel, and Reese's minis. They're soft, chewy, and baked fresh daily. Try one today at participating restaurants in Canada for a limited time. And, And now another thing that I guess you're very famous for is fucking a blow-up doll. Same question for Ben Kingsley.

It's a real doll. So it wasn't a cheap blow-up one? No, God no. What am I, some kind of creep? So this is one of those real advanced... I've seen photos of those advanced ones that look like you're actually fucking, well, a dead girl. Are you talking about like the one in the Ryan Gosling movie? The Lars and the Real Girl?

Yeah, they're fully articulated Terminator skeletons with silicon skin over them. It's a whole deal. And they feel like real skin and everything? They feel

more like real skin than a balloon or – It's not a – it's definitely not. I mean my thought was – I was in my early 20s and I was like, you know what? I keep having these relationships. They keep failing. I keep thinking I'm in love and then hurting people. I keep getting hurt by other people. Like maybe this is a modern convenience for people like me. Like maybe maybe all I want is just like, you know, this creature comfort.

And I can if I can take myself off the marketplace, maybe that's actually a responsibility I should I should do instead of like going out every six months and going, OK, I'm lonely again. So I love you. I love you. I love you. Now, how much did this cost you? They were like at the time. Like you don't know, Gilbert. Well, I'm still using the cheap blow up ones.

They are the price of a Seg a segway they're the price they're like six or seven grand wow and they come to your house in a crate now does when they deliver this giant crate do all of your

neighbors know what's in this crate pretty much I hope not. I allowed myself to think that wasn't the case back then. But then again, back then I was probably thinking, because before you click submit on the order form for this thing, I think you have to go to a place of self-acceptance. Kind of like the Sharpie. Yeah, you're kind of like, you know what? I'm clicking this button because I have had it.

And so I guess... It's kind of like right before you pull the trigger against your skull. Yeah, I mean, I guess if my neighbors, if I thought my neighbors knew that there was a rubber woman in the crate that was being hauled up my apartment, I would have I would have I guess at that time I was in a state of mind where I was like, yeah, this is what you've done to me. So you pretty much were at that level where you said, yeah, everybody, I'm fucking something made out of rubber. Yeah. Be nicer to me at the laundromat if you want.

Now, did this... She laughs with you so much. And this had only same openings? See? uh it's limited to the to the number of openings uh well it had a mouth obviously with teeth yeah they're like they're like rubber teeth soft rubber teeth yeah they, they're soft. Oh, that's an improvement though for a real girl. Yeah, it is. And obviously a vagina. Yep. And it had an anus,

I imagine. It had a little butt, a little tuchus. Now, did you ever fuck this rubber tuchus? I tried the tuchus. I mean, it's there it's not Mount Everest

it was you know it was like actually this may be this may be the right time to try the tuchus before I take it on the road you know it's all the same I mean the the the took us being a smaller rubber hole than the than the vagina hole on this thing it's so basically you didn't really know notice

the difference between the rubber vagina or rubber asshole well it was smaller. The butt was smaller. Oh, okay. So it was tighter. It was more realistic. Well, I mean, I I've only tried anal sex once in real life. And I guess relative to the human body, it's the same thing. It's like a

smaller hole. That's the idea. Yeah. I mean, it's basically the that's for sale there, right? I mean... So I like the idea that so much science

was put into this doll where they said, well, the rubber asshole will have to be tighter. Yeah, yeah. Because that's the way an asshole feels. to be tighter. Yeah, yeah. Because that's the way an asshole feels. Dan, I hate to change the topic. Wait, wait, this is very important. He's going to be talking about this on 60 Minutes.

Going back to your childhood in Milwaukee, and before you hooked up with Rob, this is something I'm curious, and it didn't turn up in my research. Was there any point that you knew you wanted to be a writer, that you wanted to be in comedy? Were there shows you watched

that you sparked to, something that inspired you to know this was going to be your life? Oh, yeah. I knew I wanted to be a writer since I was old enough to, you know, even talk. Yeah, I always always always wanted to uh to uh write little stories and show

them to people and that's that's what i did that's what i got praised for and that's i never really had any other phase i never was like oh i'm gonna be an astronaut um i just always wanted to write stuff I wasted a long period of my life thinking that I wanted to just be like Stephen King you know like I was going to be a novelist I was going to write books it didn't occur to me until relatively late in my life

that people wrote the movies and TV shows that I loved I just sort of thought of them as movies and TV shows and thought of myself as someone that wanted to be a writer. What kind of stuff did you watch back then? I mean I grew up with my parents watching Cheers and I loved Taxi and reruns of the original Bob Newhart show and All in the Family and the classics.

I also really loved sci-fi shows. Those don't tend to last as long. I would love the NBC shows that would fail after six episodes like Manimal and Misfits of Science. Simon and the Corkindale. Manimal.

That was one of those infamous horrible shows. Which one? Manimal? Yeah. He was a guy who, I guess he solved crimes by turning into any animal. Sure. And what was the other one you said?

Misfits of Science? Misfits of Science. With Courtney Cox. Yeah, Courtney Cox was in that. I love those conceptual shows. I mean, when I was a kid, The Incredible Hulk won an Emmy for Best Dramatic Series. I mean we were living a great time back then. But yeah, Knight Rider was one of my favorites.

I was like this is the perfect show. But comedy just kind of came as a result of like going where the heat was. Like people like to laugh. There's a big demand for it. So it's a better place to cut your teeth. I mean it's harder to, without a classical education, I think, blow people's minds with your drama than it is to just be funny and get better at being funny. I was doing stand-up from an early age and just anything I could do to get attention and get rewarded for it. Speaking of Knight Rider, we have to ask you about Heat Vision and Jack, which I asked you backstage the night we met at the Y,

which is a little bit, and correct me if I'm wrong, a little bit of Knight Rider meets the Six Million Dollar Man? For sure, yeah. Yeah, Ben Stiller saw a lot of Six Million Dollar Man in it, so he brought that to it. I mean, there's also a lot of elements of Star Trek, the original series, in it. But definitely, primarily, Buck Rogers and Knight Rider, most of all. Buck Rogers in the 25th century. That was another one. And now, in Buck Rogers, was Mel Blanc the voice of the robot? I believe he was.

Yeah. Yes, I believe he was. That's it. Very Yeah. Yes, I believe he was. That's it. Very good. Yes, yes. Oh, and who's the, I forget her name. I met her recently. Erin Gray?

What? Was it Erin Gray? Yes, yes. She was really hot back then. Yeah, I worked with her. She was really hot back then. And I heard she had a rubber anus. Oh, really?

Yeah, it was a tight rubber anus. Well, Heat Vision and Jack was one of those shows that I told you when I met you, Dan, that Beth Lapidus used to show it in L.A. at UnCabaret, and it just became this cult thing that everybody had to see. Yeah, it was amazing the extent to which back then it's so hard to – even for me, let alone for I'm sure young people to grasp the idea that before a certain point in the internet's evolution, if you had a TV pilot and it didn't get picked up, you just – that was the end of the story like you didn't know if it was good or bad or if anyone ever liked it like and Beth Lapidus back then in LA was she was one of the only people that was making it possible for people in LA to show their surplus work you know and get some back on it now were you telling me that story that you had a copy they did a pilot you had a copy of it and you were in your los angeles

apartment by yourself yes yes and tell us what you were doing uh i tried to fit the tape up my butt um it i i i mean when i describe this to people i i am as amazed by it as as anyone listening like i i just report the facts i don't know what i was thinking but this is the emotional state i was in i had a vhs copy of heat vision and jack i had just found out Fox wasn't going to turn it into a TV show. And I remember taking the VHS tape over to my next door neighbor's apartment door.

And this was a young lady who I never spoke to. I'd never spoken to her. I had only ever heard her boyfriend come to her door because the walls were so thin. boyfriend like come to her door because the walls were so thin. He would come to her door and he always did this gag where he'd knock on her door and she'd say, who is it? And he'd say, it's the milkman of human kindness.

That's the only extent I knew them. There were just these voices. And I walked over to that door with this VHS tape and knocked on the door and this, you know, those people's that are like little windows, little doors. So he opened that thing up and like, I could see his little, his little eyes and he, he, he peered out and he said, yes. And I said, Hey, um, is the, uh uh the young lady that lives here and and he said uh why and i said um i'm i'm the neighbor and i uh i made this tv pilot and uh

they didn't pick it up but i was just wondering if she wanted to watch it. And he turns his face away from the people to an off-screen person and says, do you want to watch a pilot? That's hilarious. And you just hear this murmuring like, no, why no? He's like, no thanks, buddy, no. And I'm like, okay, all right, thank you. What massive deuce chills do you get every

time you think of that story? I mean, I can't even, it's beyond deuce chills. I don't even know. It's just like watching an alien species. Like, what was I And then the idea that I would ever make fun of anyone uh you know ever for anything is like preposterous to me but i still managed to do it was a smart show we should point out to our

listeners who aren't familiar with it is that it was jack black was the star and the motorcycle was voiced by owen wilson and my favorite part was that Ron Silver played the bad guy named Ron Silver. Yeah, but he was actually playing himself. In the show, he's an actor who is also an astronaut who's pursuing Jack Black. Yeah, so in other words, if you made it, you too would have cost your neighbors with it at their door.

What was the reason that Fox gave you guys at the time for not going forward with it? I heard it was expensive to do. Yeah, they said they felt it was more of a sketch than a show. They couldn't see the longevity of it. We had anticipated that and given them 100 log lines for future episodes, but I guess they didn't believe. But I mean I think they looked at it as like in the tradition of sledgehammer or naked gun kind of like –

I think they saw a shelf life in it because it was – in their view, it was mocking TV, making commentary on TV and not actually just doing what TV is supposed to do, which is give the nice poor people a reason not to burn down the White House. I saw it at Beth's show with Lookwell, with Robert Smigel and Conan's pilot, which you could put in the same category, a show that was making fun of TV. Yeah, but it's like the thing is now that's all TV and I don't think that, I think that Look Well and these shows were like, you know, it's not like we were making fun of TV because we wanted you

to stop watching it. We were making fun of TV because we were, we had grown up on it. And so it's like, It was affection. Yeah, ancient Greek myths are all making fun of so it's like, like, like it was affection. Yeah. Ancient, ancient Greek myths are all making fun of ancient Greek myths. I mean, they're all,

they're all a bunch of people running around going like, I know how this is going to go. I'm an ancient Greek person. Um, and, and, and then the Oracle is like, yeah, but you can't, you can't get out of being an ancient Greek character just because you, you, you know, that a guy with one red shoe is going to kill you um no i'm going to kill all the people with one red shoe and then you do that and then a guy with blood on his shoe says you killed my mother and kills you it it it's all commentary it's all meta you know it but but i think back then it was just sort of like well if you're making fun of tv then you're not making TV. It was a smart show.

I wish it had – and there was talk about doing it as a feature, reviving it? Yeah, there's always been talk of doing it as a feature. Now doing it as an animated show they've been trying to do for a while. I think its only hope would be – I think it could be a nice companion to maybe like Eagle Heart on Adult Swim. I really like Eagle heart. I think that, I think that the guys that make Eagle heart who I know, like, like that, that's the, that's the modern incarnation of that sensibility is like, yeah, this show still tells stories and it's, it's winking at the camera, but it,

you know, these are archetypes and there's you're still being told a story and it's a, it commits to the genre that it's in. I could see like doing a live action version of heat vision on adult swim. You know, when you were saying about keeping poor people from burning down the white house, do you find,

I find this a lot in TV shows and movies. They, the message is don't want something that sounds better than what you have. Correct. Don't experiment with change. Like rich people made a mistake being rich. You'll be miserable. Guys that get laid a lot are pathetic. Right. It's mostly about mitigating ambition it's it's and i don't think it's necessarily i don't really believe in conspiracies to the point where i don't think

there's a room full of guys with cigars going like make sure the show's about this it has this effect on people i think what it is is that capitalism by its nature if you make tv for money then that means that you have to use the same set week to week. And it means that the actors are under contract. So if you make a Star Wars TV show, then they can't blow up the Death Star at the end of the pilot. They have to just talk about how much they want to blow up the Death Star for the rest of the TV show's length. So it's about reducing overhead. So typically in the stories that we watch on TV, the characters have to be reset at the end of the story.

So the stories end up being about futility. They end up being about people going, I wish that I worked at a chocolate factory instead of a greeting card company. Well, guess what? He's going to find out that he shouldn't have ever wished that so it has that nice effect of like telling poor people like you know what we're all in the same boat like life is hard keep your head down go show up to work the next morning isn't rob schneider funny just stop complaining and get back to work what was that nicholas cage movie that gets on my nerves i think the married man uh which one with him and uh taylioni

oh yes yes kind of like a so there he meets like a black genie. Right. Don Cheadle. And he goes from being this rich playboy in a luxurious apartment building to having a broken down house in Jersey. And he works in a tire store. jersey and he works in a tire store and and he finds out at the end that being rich and fucking a lot of models is a bad thing and it's a good thing to live in jersey and work in a tire store well don't you think i mean i kind of i i i think you could get pretty pretty sick pretty fast of a lot of the things that we're told are supposed to fulfill you. I mean like how much floor space do you need and how attractive is a sexual partner going to stay if you don't love them? I don't know.

I guess I'm on the side of that sappiness. Like I, I, I believe that I think that in those shows that like, that we're talking about where they train you not to aspire to too much, I think they're keeping you on a treadmill and they want you to think that if you stay on the treadmill, you're going to get rich. And that's why when people riot in cities and they're setting fire to shit, like we, we, there's this streak in us that tends to side with the people in the tanks and the riot gear and it's like it because we have this sense in us that's like well don't rock the boat like like that you're being unfair by complaining like we

can't all have everything but and then the unspoken part of that is i'm gonna be rich one day i'm gonna be rich not these other poor slobs next to me um i believe in this system i'm gonna get rewarded for this with my scratch-off ticket or my retirement plan. I'm going to have supermodels sucking my dick six different directions. Something's going to happen. Something's going to happen, and I'm going to be happy. I'm going to be made happy by all of these things I'm going to attain. I'll sell out the poor person next to me in order to get there. And I have these rich people's back because they're playing.

I believe in this system because I'm going to be rich. And I sympathize with that because it's like who wants to live in a world where we all just throw up our hands and go, yeah, there's so many of us. There's not enough food. Line up. Here's a piece of bread now of of stuff you've done that maybe if you went back in time you shouldn't have uh you called steven spielberg a moron so much for the warm and fuzzy side of dan harman well i was i was talking to a little kid.

Just to clarify, you were writing a letter to the daughter of a friend. Yeah, she was scared of the movie I wrote called Monster House. And she didn't like the movie. It was scary to her. And there were things that didn't make any sense about it. And in my letter back to her, which I didn't think was going to be on the Internet, I ground some axes that we all feel free to grind in our apartments, but not so much on the Internet.

Yeah, call Steven Spielberg a moron. I don't think that's your head in the business. Yeah, well, I'm doing fine. Okay. You mentioned Adult Swim, Dan, so we have to talk a little bit about Rick and Morty. Right. Which is just Gilbert and I were just watching an episode.

It's the episode where Morty asks Rick to basically help him get laid. Right. And he gives him the, what is it? It's like a pheromone of voles made for life. It turns people into praying mantises. It's really elaborate. I mean, we were watching it just for an animated show, the levels of it. And they wind up burying their own dead bodies. Yeah, yeah.

It just turns surreal on so many levels. It's such an ambitious show. Yeah, I'm very proud of it. It's something else. I wish we could make more than 10 a year. I mean, it takes a long time to make animation. I wish we could churn those things out. I'd love to just do that show

and you and justin created that and it was it was if i have my my facts right it was based on a on a webisode uh yeah it was kind of based on these characters that justin would do to blow off steam that were sort of uh bastardizations of of doc and marty from from back to the future um kind of his punk rock way of saying like I don't know just blowing off a lot of steam Justin was working in animation for other people at the time and didn't and he felt kind of constrained and he just wanted to I think as as the character says in Fight Club he wanted to destroy something beautiful and uh so he so he you know he made these characters who just talk about licking each other's balls and just kind of – it's very, very, very juvenile, very liberating.

And so when Adult Swim was expressing interest in working with me, I called Justin and said, what are you most excited about? And he said, I love doing these characters. And I said, well, let's figure out how to make that into a show then. Let's do that. And we did. I'm very, well, let's figure out how to make that into a show then. Let's do that. And we did. I'm very, very proud of it. It turned out to be a great show. And you, I guess, have a lot of neuroses and depression and whatnot.

Do you think that made you more creative? Yeah, sure. I mean, I think honesty is the important thing. I think if you're super confident and healthy and love your kids and have no problems internally, um, and you're honest about it, I think that the people will want to hear from you because we'll be fascinated that that person exists. But I think that in lieu of that, if you know, you should be honest about what you're afraid of and what, what makes you what makes you feel petty and triumphant and victorious.

So you don't have to – young people always want to know like, oh, do I need to drink? Do I need to go to a dark place? Do I need to hate people? No, I don't think you need to do anything bad. I don't think you need to think or be anything other than what you are. But the important thing is you need to have transparency, I think. Now, I think what a lot of people are wondering right now is, did you ever shove a Sharpie up your sex dolls asshole?

No, I don't think so. I mean, I that would many people are wondering that? Speaking of— I'm trying to make a transition out of that now, David. Speaking of penetration of the literary community— Just talking about the psychological process or what we were talking about a moment before, and I've heard you say that Harmontown, that the podcast happened. Do I have this right? Because you didn't want to

go to therapy? Yeah, that's right. Yeah. Yeah. I feel like I have thoughts that rattle around in my head and they cause damage up there if I don't get them out. And when I've gone to therapy in the past, it's like you're sharing these thoughts with somebody who's being paid to be an agent of compromise. I mean, if you have a problem with the way society works and you're like behaving irrationally because of your problem with society, a therapist is never going to tell you, oh, you better go out and fix society that they're going to tell you, well, here's what you need to do to calm the fuck down. Um, whereas if you tell an audience that you're pissed, um, about, about the way the world is run and you wish it was run differently, they will either sit there quietly and nod their heads or they'll laugh or they'll boo.

They'll engage you in some way. And in either case, you'll be heard and it will be over with. It will be out there in the world instead of bouncing around your skull. And I always found that very therapeutic. I've since come to appreciate the merits of a professional mental health person like listening to you because the good ones can then take that stuff and go, okay, thank you for sharing that with me. Now let's talk about how you can, I don't know, kind of structure your life and your behavior

so that you're not putting yourself in situations where you're getting upset. And what was the catalyst? I mean, do I have the information right? Was that the catalyst for creating the podcast? Was it being let go at Community? No, I was fired from Community after I created the podcast. Oh, okay. The impetus for creating the podcast, which not to overcomplicate and make it boring, but the podcast wasn't really a podcast until the Chevy voicemail leaked. Because it was at that point that I was like, well, if people are going to record the show, which I thought was sort of confidential, if they're going to broadcast this on the internet when I say stuff, then I want them to hear the whole insufferable two hours of me babbling.

So before that, it was just me talking in the back of a comic book store. So and the reason I started doing that is because I was starting to get really stressed out by the third season of Community. And I was feeling like, you know, I need a I need a place to be able to talk about my anxieties. So the therapy you received on stage was much more useful than professional therapists to you. Um, I mean, at the time it was, yes, at the time, absolutely. I, I, I probably tried like nine therapists up until that point and none of them worked, um, the way that just talking into a microphone did recently. And I think the key is because she's a couples therapist, so it's easier to go into somebody's office and say,

I want to be happy with my girlfriend, I want to be happy with my wife, than it is to say, I want to be sane. One thing is achievable and practical and one, the other one is not, you know? Um, and so I think like, like, like couples therapy, like go, like going in to talk to somebody about my relationship with my partner that opened me up to the fact that people who become psychologists, they're not, they're not necessarily agents of compromise. They, they're, they might be actually like kind of on your side and your side alone and um you although you're very honest with your podcast tell us about the one time you went back and actually wanted to edit out well i mean in the yeah in the documentary

harm in town you can see this like i we when on tour, I did a show in Nashville, and I got so drunk on Moonshine. I was drunk on stage. To me, it was insulting to the audience how drunk I got. I'm always drunk on stage when I do the podcast. It's sort of part of the gimmick, but I guess there's gradations. It's sort of part of the gimmick, but I guess there's gradations. I think that a little bit of lubricant, lowering my inhibitions and making me able to be honest and forthcoming, it's a good thing. But I'm not John Belushi, so to me it's not worth the ticket price to watch me be unconscious. I felt like I was running around stage just slurring into a microphone.

I guess the line for me is when I start slurring because if I can't speak and finish complete sentences, then I'm wasting the audience's time and my mind a little bit. What happened? Somebody in the audience just handed you a mayonnaise jar filled with homemade booze? Yeah. We were watching. Gil and I were watching the doc. Yeah. I thought, what the hell is that?

You're just going to drink it. Yeah. It said somebody. Yeah, this is moonshine. I mean, it had a barcode on it. Oh, okay. Legitimate. It wasn't from aine. I mean, it had a barcode on it. Oh, okay. It was legitimate. It wasn't from a bathtub.

So that made it safe. It has a barcode, then drink it. Yeah, it's tough. I had Moonshine again at a show in, I can't even remember what city it was, but I again, like, the thing with Mo moonshine is it's so potent that you drink a little bit and you don't – there's too much – there's a little bit of delay between it fully affecting you and you determining whether or not you should take another sip. And if you take two sips, that's twice as much. It's just, I don't know. It fucks you up.

I meant to ask you this that night, Dan, when you did the show with Gilbert at the Y. Is the entire show improvised? I mean, do you do like a bullet point thing, like a Curb Your Enthusiasm episode? No, not at all, no. You just fly by the seat of your pants for three hours? Definitely, yeah. Because I think you've got to be open to things happening. So like Gilbert said, all of a sudden we've got a blind guy up on stage and a gay black guy. And it's like, dude, what if we had bullet points for some other topic that we'd wanted to discuss?

We'd be asking the blind guy about uh texaco or something like are you blind to what's going on in the middle east right now or you know it's like you want to you want to dig into that guy and ask him ask him blind questions you don't want to you don't want to you don't want to have shit on your to-do list they'll be distracting well as i recall between the blind guy and the black gay guy there was black gay guy, you took a woman out of the audience who was, maybe she'd had a little too much to drink and she wasn't quite playing right. She wasn't quite playing by the rules, which I guess you have to do sometimes. You have to dispatch people. I can't remember. Yeah, specifically. I think that if she's listening, I don't want her to be shamed. But I think that the only problem I've ever had with people or the only reason I've ever said to somebody like,

okay, well, that's enough of you. You can sit down now. It was when those people openly admit when they come up on stage that they had no reason to come up on stage other than wanting to be up on stage. So they come up and they go like, oh, my God, I can't believe I'm up here. I'm up here. I'm up here. And it's like, okay, all right.

Well, then you're done, right? You're up here. You're up here. I'm up here. And it's like, okay, all right, well, then you're done, right? You're up here. You're up here. You don't want to talk about anything other than being up here. That's why I like to say things like, well, who's in pain right now? Because then you have to be honest about it and go like, well, I'm afraid my pain won't be as much pain as somebody next to me, so I better bring my A game. It's kind of like those people who call up radio shows just so they can hear their voice on the radio.

Yeah, and there's surprisingly little of that at the Harmontown shows. I mean, I think that there's a longstanding culture in stand-up. Like, I mean, Gilbert, you come from a world where it's eat or be eaten up there. culture in stand-up. Gilbert, you come from a world where it's eat or be eaten up there. You have a microphone, you come out and you have to have an incredibly tight set and you have to exercise control over an audience that's like if things start to loosen up too much, they might storm the stage and take over the show and it might be a

disaster. I, I, I, it took me a while to realize that if, if, if what's for sale when the, when you buy the ticket isn't necessarily that,

then people will behave themselves a little bit and that things can be loose. Like there's not a lot of people that come to the shows and just go, Oh, I hear that there's no control here so i'm gonna come here and make an ass of myself like most people just show up loving it like and they they're really respectful and it's kind of cool we were watching the doc dan and there's a moment where you you say you want it you want it written on your tombstone and i'm paraphrasing because i don't remember your exact wording that that that you people, that you actually made contact. Yeah.

Could you talk about that a little bit? Because it's kind of inspiring. I mean, most writers are shut-ins, and here you are going out and hugging your fans in the lobby and, you know, really meeting the people. Well, I think it comes back full circle to that Asperger's thing. I mean, I don't know that I have anything diagnosable, but I know that I know that I spend a lot of my life like kind of not understanding people and feeling like I don't really like, like, like that, that no matter how hard I tried, I don't think there's like, there's a certain amount of feeling from other people that I wouldn't be able to get.

So I think a lot of writers, like they shut themselves into a cabin and they blow their brains out because they, they, they just, they're, they're like regular people plus genius and they feel too much and they can't stand how stupid everybody is. And they, they eventually just go, okay, my knee hurts. I'm going to kill myself. But, uh, I, I, I, I, you know, I, I have some of those elements, but above and beyond everything else, it's like I just don't get people. And if I could spend a little bit of time feeling a little bit normal, which is how the show makes me feel,

it makes me feel like maybe the version of me that maybe would have been popular in high school or had a skill that other people could appreciate. I don't know. It's unique enough to me that I'm able to reach out for it. It's just like, I don't know, if you had less nerve endings in your hands, you might touch people more. It wouldn't make you a more sensitive person.

It's just like you'd be like, what do you feel like? I don't know. Well, all right. We have been talking to the man best known for spending $7,000 on a blow up doll. And he fucked it in its mouth that had rubber teeth that wouldn't scrape his dick. That had rubber teeth that wouldn't scrape his dick. And a rubber pussy.

And a rubber asshole that scientifically was made tighter to feel like... We're talking to the man who fucked a rubber girl in her rubber asshole. And shoved... He shoved a Sharpie in his own asshole while jerking off. This does not go on the tombstone. Yeah. No, it'll have to be a bigger tombstone. I will pay for your tombstone to have all this put on it.

That's not what, I, I, I, I, yeah, I, I wish you would hear here at the signing of the Declaration of Independence. I love this journalism. This is yellow journalism at its best.

We've been talking to a man who's done all these things and more. Before we run off, Dan, anything you want to plug? New season of Community. Yeah, it's coming on Yahoo. I think February 3rd. I think I have that date right. Just keep watching the skies for a Yahoo version of Community, season six. And I'm reading that Rick and Morty might become a comic book?

Yeah, I think that's in the works, yep. And a book of essays. Yep, I signed a book deal to write some funny essays about putting stuff in my butt. You're busy. Yes. You can call Steven Spielberg anything you want. And to wrap up further, you and your friend believe if a girl pounds you in the area between your prostate and dick, that you'll have a better orgasm. That's correct.

Me and my friend. That's correct. Me and my friend. The man who knows all this and more. The great Dan Harmon. Thank you, sir. Who has, in fact, fucked a rubber girl in the ass. Yes. Thanks for doing it, Dan.

We appreciate it. Thank you so much, Dan. Thanks, guys. Talk to you soon. Dan Harmon. Bye-bye. Thanks, guys. Talk to you soon.

Dan Hart. Bye. If you like listening to comedy, try watching it on the Internet. The folks behind the Sideshow Network have launched a new YouTube channel called Wait For It. It's got interviews with comedians like Reggie Watts, Todd Glass, Liza Schleichinger. Schleichinger, I've been friends with her for 10 years. One of the funniest people out there, and I still have a hard time with the last name, Liza. Our very own Owen Benjamin, that's me, takes you on a musical journey down internet rabbit holes and much more.

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