Happy Sad Confused - Dan Levy

Episode Date: January 11, 2024

If you're Dan Levy how do you follow up a genuine pop culture phenomenon like SCHITT'S CREEK? Well you write and direct and star in a movie! Here Dan joins Josh to chat about GOOD GRIEF, the origins and impace of SCHITT'S CREEK, the spin-off he's thought about, and more. Taped live at the 92nd Street Y. SUPPORT OUR SPONSORS! BetterHelp -- Visit BetterHelp.com/HSC today to get 10% off your first month ZocDoc -- Go to ZocDoc.com/HappySad and download the ZocDoc app for free!  UPCOMING EVENTS January 24th -- Masters of the Air (Austin Butler, Barry Keoghan) -- tickets here! February 6th -- Emily Blunt -- tickets here! Check out the ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Happy Sad Confused patreon here⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠! We've got discount codes to live events, merch, early access, exclusive episodes of, video versions of the podcast, and more! To watch episodes of Happy Sad Confused, subscribe to ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Josh's youtube channel here⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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begins now. I'm Josh Horowitz, and today on Happy, Sad, Confused. We're live at the 92nd Street Live was Schitts Creek creator and Good Grief Director, Mr. Dan Levy, everybody. This New York City audience has just seen this wonderful new Netflix film, Good Grief.

This is Dan's writing, directing, starring debut in feature film format, the first of many. I'm sure you'll agree. It is a beautiful piece of work. We all, yes, come on, guys. You guys. You guys all laughed, you cried, you did all the things. That's what Dan Levy does.

He does it so well. This is such a thrill to have him on the podcast for the very first time. We're going to spread the good word of this. You guys have sold out this theater, by the way. Amazing. Well done. Well done. Please give a warm New York City welcome.

His first time on Happy Say I Confused. Mr. Dan Levy, everybody. Hi, everybody. Hi. Hi. Oh, thanks. Thanks. Such a thrill to be here.

This is awesome, Dan. Congratulations. This is a moment. Thank you. This is a big moment. Thanks. I mean, we can say officially, Dan Levy, filmmaker.

How does that feel? Well, my film school, I didn't get a degree I dropped out, but at least the theoretical degree I would have gotten now has come to good use. There you go. Look, I mean, you're one of those, I mean, I mean, mean, I mean, need this in the nicest possible way. Psychopaths who wrote, directed, and starred in their own film. Christopher Nolan didn't do that. Eat your heart out. Come on. I have one thing over Christopher Nolan. It's amazing.

But, you know, in all seriousness, we're going to talk a little bit about a lot about the film and the entire career. But what does this moment feel like? Because I know this has been a long time coming. And I'm sure this has been on your mind for a while. And I don't know, is there a sense of satisfaction or relief? What are you feeling? Yeah, it's like, it's satisfaction, it's relief, it's excitement that I get to kind of share it with people. But there's also just like, I don't know. It's like fear and anxiety and all these weird things

that creep into my head like on the best of days, but now they're kind of exacerbated to the point of like, you know, doing things like this and like playing it for giant theaters full of people. But it's great. It's an exercise in learning to just accept the good things. You know? Well, it's fun to like, yeah, chase that thing you want, yes. Chase that thing you want and then you're like, oh wait, but this also brings me fear

and anxiety. Like I'm chasing, but this is what I wanted, right? And yet- Well, it's interesting because I think what a lot of people, well, I don't want to speak for people, so I'll speak for myself. What I really like is the actual tangible process of making things. This is a sort of part of it that I mean, I love being here, don't get me wrong, but the actual like publicizing of things

is less comfortable than actually making it. So in a way it's like in a perfect world you'd kind of just like make it and then it would be out and people would like it and that would be that. No, this is the price you pay. You have to suffer in front of us. You have to dance for us, Dan.

Come on. And there are people out there who genuinely live for this part and I would kind of kill for that self-confidence. I will say, and we're going to go full-sert. later on the conversation. This is a special treat for me because I've known Dan over the years and we've got to have these kind of weird parallel lives because Dan and we'll get to it but like you had the MTV life in Canada and I've had the

MTV life in the US and we would cross paths and I just want to stay at the outset and I've said this to you before it's just been such a joy to see the the arc of your career and people know how difficult it is to go from one side to the other and just like I'm just so happy for all your success. I so appreciate that and I'm so happy for your success. So, okay, let's talk a little about this wonderful film. So the audience here has seen it, but we're not going to spoil it for all the folks listening on the podcast. But take me back, 2020, kind of a crazy year, to say the least.

We're all experiencing loss and trauma in that year. You suffer some losses like many of us did. And I guess take us through those experiences and how that, how that gave birth to a good grief. I never thought I would ever write a screenplay. I was too intimidated by the process of it. I could, you know, make an 80-episode television show, but for some reason, like,

sitting down to write an actual screenplay was so scary. And I never really thought about it. I never even knew if that was something I would ever get to do in my life, like make a film. And then through the process of the pandemic and losing my grandmother, Playing with the idea, not playing with the idea because that feels kind of reductive, but it was more like trying to make sense of the grief that I was experiencing in relation to the general grief we were all experiencing was a really confusing thing. And I was trying to figure out what it meant to me. I was trying to figure out whether I was doing it properly. All of these very strange questions that felt like they shouldn't be related to grief and yet they were.

And that, to me, was in that moment, I thought, well, maybe there is a movie here. And so I started to sit down and figure out what that could look like. Is that a debate in your own brain? Because then, I would imagine, again, for us overthinkers out there, where you're like, OK, so I'm experiencing this loss.

I'm questioning how I'm receiving the loss and how I'm interpreting it. And now I want to make art out of it. I'm exploiting my own grief. But as a writer, that's what you have. That's what you have. kind of the only way that I can do it. Because I'm far less articulate

in my mouth than I am with my hands as just exemplified this evening. Wow. Scary. But so it was almost like journaling. A lot of people write. If you can write, if you love writing,

a lot of people tend to turn to writing to try to make sense of what they're doing. So writing this script was not only a challenge in a time when I needed one, but it was also an opportunity to try and figure out what I was thinking. And over the course of, I think, three plus months, I ended up, well, I bought Save the Cat. Save the Cat being a screenwriting book. Yeah, claps for Save the Cat. But I started from scratch. was a completely different discipline ultimately.

And I had no kind of hubris about what I was capable of. So for me it was about starting at the very beginning and figuring out what are the things I needed, following a kind of rubric of like how do you put these ideas in order, asking friends who were screenwriters to come in and sit with me and look at my beatboard and say, you know, I think maybe that scene could go there and switch some things and maybe you can get some more out of this scene if you just put it here. did that. It was a real kind of collaborative process, but

you know, in letting people in and recognizing that I didn't know what I was doing. And isn't that like the, yeah, the conundrum right? Like you come off Schitt's Creek and you have like all these opportunities seemingly, you could probably do a lot of different things and yet you still have to start with the blank page.

Like you're still at square one. It doesn't really matter. Great. I won every Emmy known to man. I still need to I still need to start start over. Yeah. And that's exciting, and it's also daunting. It was totally daunting, and yet at the end of it, I knew that there was something special here,

at least in terms of something that I knew I would watch. And I think that's the best place to start. It's like if it's something you feel like you would watch, then maybe it's something that other people would want to watch too. And I also feel like I tend to respond best to movies and to scripts that feel really personal to the filmmaker to the screenwriter. And yet we live in this age

where so much is made for public consumption and not for the people who are making it. And so, I don't know. I just felt like there was something interesting in the script, and so we took it,

and people also liked it, and now I'm on this stage talking to you. Whoa, and you gather this... And then a bunch of stuff happened in between them. Let's mention one or two of those things, namely... Making it. Making it, casting it.

Well, I was going to say casting it. I mean, you have Hamesh Fettel, you have Ruth Naga, who we were discussing about backstage, as we always should. It must just be, and these are obviously very key roles and important to cast, and to establish these deep friendships. I mean, Schitt's Creek, you have years to kind of, like, build it up. Oh, yeah. Here, day one, how did you establish that?

Obviously, there's the script, but did you have a path to how you were going to establish? I just in two weeks of rehearsal for us and we all just got together every day for like six, seven hours a day and talked, talked about our relationship to loss, talked about our relationship to love, talked about our relationship to friendship and relationships, and it really kind of cracked open this lovely dynamic between the three of us, and we did an escape room. I heard this. Are you an escape room guy? I love an escape room. Are you good?

No, I'm terrible at an escape room. You do not want me anywhere near an escape room, but I love them and I'll show up whether I'm invited or not. So doing all of these different things to try to actively crack us all open and get us close. The escape room we did with Ula Berkland,

who was the director of photography on the film, And so we are, our first AD, because part of it, for me, was not just the camaraderie between the cast, it was also the comfort that they had with the people who were going to be very close to them from the crew. So bringing in key members of our crew to also get to know the cast before we started shooting felt like a way of easing that first day. Because we come in on the party, and that was the first, we were in that house for the first five days of our shoot. and those relationships had to feel so lived in. You're coming into like a 15-year relationship with these people.

And so it was important. So we did that. We went to the country with Luke to get to know Luke. It was important. And it became very, I mean, it was in the first chemistry read with Ruth and Hamesh and I, it was very clear that there was something sort of special there. One of the many things I love about this, and it's no surprise given your attention to detail,

fashion costumes on Schitt's Creek, et cetera, but like the level of production design and feel and just, it's so meticulous. Clearly you put a lot of blood, sweat, and tears into every aspect that we're seeing on screen in this. Yeah. No? No, yes. Absolutely.

There were like two boxes that were shipped in from my own living room. I like a throw, you know. I knew that I had the, like, perfect camel throw in my house. Just the one. Get it in a box, ship it to set. But Alice Normington, who was the production designer, did just an unbelievable job, and, you know, Julian Day, who did the costumes.

But it was, yeah, you have, production design and costume are two of the most invaluable ways to tell, to speak to someone's life. without having to write that. And so I've always really valued production design and costume design because it's a way of revealing character without having to make the characters speak to it.

And yeah, I mean, you know. Can you make a film of this type, a drama with some comedic elements set in Europe without, you know, worshiping at the altar of the Richard Curtis, of even the Nancy Myers, of like, are those your, somewhat your touch? Yeah, I mean, yeah, in that I completely admire what they've been able to do, and I think they've essentially like opened the doors of possibilities for for younger filmmakers to say, oh, I want my version of that, right? You know, you can create these really beautiful places that an audience will want to return to, hopefully. So that was really important. I wanted, the subject matter was quite heavy. And so part of, the balance of it all for me was creating these locations and these spaces and making the film look and feel really sumptuous so that even when the times were tough there was a softness and there was a beauty to what was going on around them that essentially protected the audience from feeling like they were in unsafe territory if that makes any sense does does making a film about grief unlock anything does it fix not feel

fix you, but help you in understanding how you handle grief going forward. I mean, is it's... Yeah, well, funnily enough, like, I don't think it answers anything because I don't think grief has a resolution. I think it was interesting. There was some really sort of lovely words written in the New York Times about the movie, and I found them really profound. This idea, I think, I don't want to summarize, well, I'm going to. basically was like, but it was, the last sort of sentiment was that the movie is essentially

saying that the movie doesn't offer a resolution but rather, something about, rather kind of inspires this idea that we just have to love our way through it. And that was, that is someone who got the film, you know? That to me was one of the greatest takeaways, reading something that was so beautifully expressed, I butchered it. that spoke to my own experience, which is what I came to realize in the process of trying to figure out my own grief. I lost my dog five days

before I started writing this script as well. And so that was almost like a full house audience. That was like... Felt it. Really sweet. So, you know, I think to me, one of the greatest, like, magic moments of writing this movie

was the scene with Imelda at the end because I had no control over the words in a way. Like, the scene just wrote itself. I had gotten to a place in the script where I think I had detangled my own feelings enough to let that little sentiment make its way to the page. And I didn't think about it.

It was just there at the end of the day. And I looked down and I thought, well, that is what I'm feeling. That was the answer to my question. And also becomes sort of the answer to Mark's question and many of the characters in the film. It sort of speaks to the whole experience of it. Does this experience, especially, I mean, it seems like, I know this wasn't a calculated

movement, like, I've got to zig where they expect me to zag after Schitt's Creek, but this does start to establish you as it's, like, there are themes, there are, they're familiar aspects of this for anybody that loves Schitt's Creek, and yet this is a different tone, obviously. Does it feel like, I mean, if we're charting the next 10, 20 years of your career, do you think it's going to feel more like this, or more like, what, what, we know from shit. I don't know. And I hope I get the opportunity to be surrounded by people who like want to take that ride. You know? Because I think all you can really do is support people whose ideas you love. And I think the worst thing we can do, which is what this industry does

all the time, is take someone's success and box them into being only that. Yeah. Give me four more of those. There's so many actors and writers and directors and artists out there who have been boxed in. And if you don't have the strength of mind to realize that you can fucking open that box and find some other place to be, it can really swallow you up.

And so for me, the greatest tragedy is the idea that anyone would feel boxed in by their own success. So this almost came as a reaction to wanting to just explore something different. You do 80 episodes of a comedy, even though we've always, as a writer, we always looked at Schitt's Creek as a drama. Inherently, it's very sad. Stop laughing. There's nothing funny about it.

Not where I'd expect the laugh, but you know what? I'm desperate and I'll take it. But yeah, it was inherently dramatic. heartless people out there. Now we've opened it a little bit and they can't be stopped. Yeah, exactly. Now I know. I just want to go where my curiosity takes me

and I am very grateful to Netflix for understanding what this meant to me and saying yes. Because there was a world where they could have said no. And it was almost... We came close. But they said yes, and that means the world. And that changed my career.

And sometimes you have to invest in people's curiosity instead of constantly putting... Hungry now. Now? What about now? Whenever it hits you, wherever you are. Grab an O-Henry bar to satisfy your hunger with its delicious combination of big, crunchy, salty peanuts

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Mates is back. Mike and Tom, eat snacks. Wherever you get your podcast. Unless you get them from a snack machine, in which case, call us. We call us. Profit and what people want or what you think people want. knows what people want. That's why all the great movies end up pushing through and doing so well. The movies that cost no money and end up making a hundred million, all those movies

that, you know, some executive somewhere was like, this is weird. I don't know if an audience will get it. Guess what? Audiences are a lot smarter than so many people give them credit for. So, yeah, that means a lot. It meant a lot to me, and I hope that I can continue to have that support, and we'll see. Okay, let's go back if you'll indulge me. You have a somewhat of famous amazing dad, Mr. Eugene Levy. Give it up for the great. I would venture to say he's just, he's amazing.

He is amazing. He's amazing. We can all agree upon that. He's great. So you grow up, and I'm doing my math correctly, you're growing up at some very pivotal age me right now? Well, I'm just going to say... Go for it. Some pivotal ages. Around 13, Guffman comes out. Around 15

American Pie? I can't think of a worse age for a young human being whose dad is in American Pie. I was in high school. People thought the movie was about my life. It's a miracle you're as together as you are. I would have killed from my life. my life to be that interesting. So yeah, no, it was, yeah.

But it was interesting. Like, my relationship to his work was always very removed. Like, my family grew up in Toronto. That was an active choice on his part. One Torontoian in the audience. Because he didn't want us around the industry. He wanted to go and do the work

and come home to his family. And that I know now, must have been a huge sacrifice. And yet that goes to show the leadership that I had, which was a constant prioritization of family, of life, of personal

life, over fame or a quest for fame or even success. And he was very lucky in the sense that his talent was so unquestionable to the point where he could do that.

But I remember all of these movies coming out and watching them and thinking like, the fuck did you do that? When did this happen? Was this when you were gone for three months in March? Now you made Waiting for Guffman? What in God's name? Also, what's in your head? How did you write that?

Totally. And yet it was completely inspiring. Clearly set a good template for you. So the Cliff Notes version, as I understand it, is film school, breakup, move to England, back home to MTV. Do I have that right?

You do. Wow. Wikipedia's in the place. Okay, yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm feeling it. You mean you didn't pay attention closely to my entire life just independently? I've been watching.

Interesting. Watching closely. No, but so film school, so clearly you did have a passion early on. I did three and a half years of a four-year degree. So that's a bad break. I got a job at MTV and I thought

I can't pass this up I'm 20 it's a big job I hope that I have been promised that I will also be able to produce the work that I do and that I think I've always worked better when I'm doing it.

I've always worked better when it's a conversation rather than being taught something. And so I made the choice to leave film school. I said to my film school can I use my next six months on television the work that I'm doing, producing, writing,

whatever. As credit, they said no. I said, fuck you. They've asked me back now many, many times. I have been offered degrees. And you're stonewalling them, aren't you? No, thank you. But it was what it was.

And now I'm degreeless and on stage with you. So who won? Who won? This guy. As entertaining as this is, the 20 minutes we just had swapping stories about being on red carpets backstage. Oh, that was good stuff. I have come to, listen, you have to be nice on a red carpet.

The people asking you, the questions, don't necessarily want to be asking them. There are producers that tell you what to ask. And then you have people like you that always ask really great questions, which is why anytime anyone sees your face on a carpet, it's like a beacon of light. It's a human being. Well, thank you. I appreciate that.

But this is about you. But you are that conflict, and like many of us, I feel the same way, introvert, extrovert, right? And that must have felt like a very odd, you're on live television. a lot in these high-stress environments having to be on. So, like, was there a sea change? Like, was it fun at first? Did it shift at a certain point?

It was never comfortable, but it was fun, and it was exhilarating, and I knew that I was learning something, and I am always kind of, like, at my best when I'm learning. And there just came a point where I realized I've learned what I need to learn. It's not coming naturally. I'm terrible on a red carpet, I'm panic-stricken, I'm mumbling, I'm asking awkward questions, I'm stumbling over my words, it's not for me. There are people who are born to do this job and I am not one of them. And so there came a point where you say, okay, I'm going to venture

out and hope for the best and see where life takes me. And I want to say eight months later, we wrote the pilot for Schitt's Creek. We're not going to talk about Schitt's Creek. Of course we're going to talk about Schitts Creek. Schitts Creek. Okay, let's get into it. So you go to your dad with this, and that's a big moment. That's got to be a scary moment. I'd never gone to my dad with anything.

Right. To the point where I think it's ruined our relationship. Or it did until we rebuilt it through the show. But no, I think there was a part of him that always wondered why I never came to him. And, you know, it's a, we know the culture. We know how judgmental the culture is. We know how easy it is to judge people

who happen to come from families of people who are also in the industry. It's a fundamentally naive ideology in the sense that ultimately it comes down to money and like, no one's taking a risk on someone's kid unless the idea is good,

enough. And so I had gone not only my whole sort of high school life into college, into MTV, I didn't, they didn't know who my dad was when I auditioned for MTV. I didn't speak about my father on television. Why would I? But for, I want to say, six years or five years. And then when I felt like I had established my own relationship to the audience, I had a successful television show in Canada that I had built with my producer and my co-host, I felt okay. I felt independently okay, like I had earned a place in the conversation, and that's when I brought him in. We did like a spoof episode on MTV of my Super Sweet 16, where I took him to a Mercedes-Benz dealership and asked him to buy me a car, and he said no.

And so it was only after that, when I had done the work, came up with the seedling of the idea for Schitt's Creek, knew that I had what it took to carry my weight. When you're in those situations, you almost have to do triple the work, justifiably so, to get to a place where you can go, as I did to my dad and ask him, to work with me. So my question is, is there a plan B? If God forbid the great Eugene Levy says, maybe this isn't good for our relationship, maybe this isn't the right thing, is it like, can I get more than shorts number?

Like, what do you like? There's a list. No, I at that time was like, maybe I'll be a children's book author. Maybe I'll, I was really, I had to remove ego from the situation. When I walked away from MTV, I made the choice that even though my life was cushy in Toronto and people knew who I was,

and the show was successful and things were going well, I'm going to make a big change for myself. And part of that has to include not letting the fun parts of the job, not letting the ego-related parts of the job interfere in starting from scratch. If nobody knows who I am, fine. And that continues to be the philosophy. it's hard to believe but it's all you can do in this industry because the bottom could fall out at any minute and if you're not okay with going back to where you started or going back to a place you know where you came from then there's a

problem because you're now starting to be defined by who you've become and you're chasing something that you'll never catch up to absolutely I mean I think part of the beauty and maybe the reason, among many reasons of Schitt's Creek's success, was that you did, it was a passion project, and you did do it kind of like on the cheap at first. It was held together with, like, glue and tape. So when you look back at those, that first season, what are the inadvertent or conscious decisions

that the lucky time you turned left instead of right, you think that is responsible for what it became? Can you pinpoint? You know what? I think what I think is the reason for the success of the show is people allowing

it the space to grow and that's not what TV is for the most part. It's like if you don't have a pilot that hits hard and then your next three episodes don't equally hit hard you're done and I in a way

I hope that the show can be used as an example of potential in these television shows. We have to invest in the potential of a long term slow burn because it's worth it. So I really think that CBC, up in Canada, who made the show and pop

TV in America, which previously was the TV Guide network, we were on standard definition television for the first three years of our show. They didn't tell us that at the time, but we were. And yet, because they needed us, they continued to pick us up. And because we were continually picked up, we were able to grow. And look what happens.

A lot. A lot happened. A lot happened. I'm very grateful for all of it. It's not a comedy, guys. It's drama. I feel like I need to explain that. We approached every episode as a drama, but it was the characters and the circumstance,

folding in cheese, for example, that offered the comedy. Is that ever quoted to you in restaurants? Does the chef come over a thing? I am probably just as bad as those two in the kitchen, frankly. I know. Who wants to date me? That was a fun scene. That was a really fun scene to shoot.

Oh, my God. How many people assume that Catherine is your mom in real life? Do people ever think that? Yeah, kind of. I mean, I think people just expect to see her every time I'm with my family. Kind of be awkward for her. Yeah, that'd be just tag along. No. And my mom is so much more capable than Moira Rose. on the flip side on the dramatic side and this has to be the level of the show that really must touch you every single day

is just the way this has resonated on a profoundly emotional level with so many people and especially with queer audiences seeing their lives depicted in a world where as you've talked about this a lot without judgment without bigotry and I'm curious like when you started

do you remember when you started to receive that from the audience to feel that kind of connection and resonance I think it was well I think it started after the season finale of season two when the family says I love you to each other for the first time and it took like 26 episodes to get them to say I love you, but that's how long it took. And I think there was something in that moment that was kind of revelatory for people in realizing that this family that they've come to kind of know is growing and that there's hope for them.

And I think in those early days, people were writing about their own families and how that moment offered hope, whether they had troubles in their family, whether they hadn't spoken to relatives, whether there was kind of fractures. That was the first time that I started reading letters. And then, of course, once Noah came into the show and once we started to explore the relationship between David and Patrick,

and that, of course, cracked open a whole other conversation. Which, to be perfectly honest, I was not expecting. Genuinely, because I just wanted to write a relationship that spoke to my own experience. I wanted to write, essentially, I wanted to write myself a story that was hopeful. Growing up, had you seen any examples

that felt? No. No. Yeah. I don't know. I'm going to have to think on that. Yeah. Well, that's telling.

That's telling that you have to take that to you. Of course. Nothing that felt. I think about a movie like Maurice, for example, but then again, it's fraught with, like, you know, sadness and loneliness and people not being themselves. So, no, I don't, I will probably think of something. I'll think of a handful the minute we stop talking.

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So if it's not there, create it, create the world that you Yeah. I mean, I knew I had the opportunity. I knew that we were likely not going anywhere. We were in a very lucky situation where I knew that we were likely going to be able to tell this story for as long as we could because it was a value to the places that we're keeping it on air. We were the big fish in the small pond. And what a lucky thing. So, yeah, it wasn't even a risk because I didn't think of it that way. But I did know that there was a story I wanted to tell that. likely couldn't have been told on network television in America. Okay, it's official. We are very much in the final sprint to election day. And face it, between debates, polling releases, even court appearances. It can feel exhausting, even impossible to keep up with.

I'm Brad Milkey. I'm the host of Start Here, the Daily Podcast from ABC News, And every morning, my team and I get you caught up on the day's news in a quick, straightforward way that's easy to understand with just enough context so you can listen, get it, and go on with your day. So, kickstart your morning. Start Smart with Start Here and ABC News, because staying informed shouldn't feel overwhelming. Obviously, this show, as it should be, is so precious to you, and I know you get asked every day. How much time have you spent even ruminating on what to do with these characters? None. It's too soon.

It's... Is it a matter of if not when or when not if? What's the... No, it's like, I don't know. I just, you... Sometimes it's okay to not have what we want. Right. I know it goes against our culture.

But we left on... on the highest possible note a television show could leave on. I don't think you could do better. And so I'm so aware of the relationship that an audience has to TV, the loyalty, the legacy, the feeling of returning to something, you always return to the shows that leave you wanting more. You never return to the shows that overstay their welcome. and part of

the gift of this show, at least from my perspective, is the fact that we left people wanting to go back and watch the show over and over and over and over and in some cases over and over and over and I don't want to

I care too much for the audience to ever tip that relationship to a place where they don't want to return to Schitt's Creek. You think you want it guys, but you just want I don't know. We'll see. If it comes to me, I don't know. In the early days, I was, like, thinking about, like, spin-offs. I had spin-off ideas. And then, I don't know, there's something very kind of elegant about leaving it be. Do you have one spin-off idea that you now know you'll never do, that you contemplated for a second?

I really wanted to take Alexis to New York City. Come on. Dan. Dan. Dan. This is an 800-person intervention. That is a conversation for another time. But, yeah. How far down that road did you go? Kind of. I kind of had a sense.

And the reason in a nutshell not to do it is... For another time. Okay. I'm rattled. I'm rattled here today. Okay. I know you've talked about hating auditioning back in the day. I hate auditioning now.

I was going to ask. Are you... Because, like, you've created the best roles for yourself. No one is using you as they should. Like, you're creating great... I appreciate that. Hopefully, those people will listen

to this podcast. This is what I'm saying. So, like, what kind of stuff are you even in the mix for? Are you, like, is there anything... Uh, like... Versions of David Rose that are not written as well.

Yeah. Frankly. Yeah. Um... And then some other things. Is there any kind of thing you want us collectively to secret into the universe for you?

I don't know. I mean, you know, it's kind of tragic. Like, at the bare minimum I'd like to know who his friends are or who his family is. Hey. You know, you think about it, like all of these a lot of sort of queer characters in various television shows and movies are like,

you know, yeah, honey, you go and get your man, and it's like, could Yeah, yeah. No, that line is, I'll say it, but can I know, like, does he have a partner? Like, what does he do when he goes home? Oh, nothing. We don't care. Okay, great. So just, and the line is, oh, honey, go get that guy. Like, I don't know what it is. But it's tough out there. Yeah. Still, even after Schitt's Creek, I thought that might have helped in some ways. And it has. There's great work being done.

But it's not mass amounts of it. Is there a show that if they came calling, White Lotus comes calling? I'm in? Is there anything like that? Oh, of course. I mean. Absolutely. I would have done pretty much anything to be on Succession. Yeah.

That way, I mean, you know, there's such amazing TV being made. Yeah, of course. We're going to get to the audience questions in just a second, but before we do that, let's do the happy, set, confused, profoundly random questionnaire for you, Dan. What's the wallpaper on your phone? A sigh-twombly

painting. Nice. And it looks like it's broke. Everyone thinks my phone is shattered, but it's not. It's art, guys. It's art, everybody. I'm artie. Now that I've said that out loud, it sounds really pretentious, but it's not.

I just like the painting. Anyway. That's our giff of it. the day, thanks, Dan. What a dick. Last actor you were mistaken for? Oh, Johnny Galecki. A lot of people confuse me, think that I'm on the Big Bang theory.

And I was like, I would have killed for that paycheck. I'll tell you what did not pay that. Shit's Creek, everybody. Despite what you think, not big money there. Anyway. The best karaoke song of all time is... One day more from Les Mis. You gotta get people on board.

You gotta do the whole chorus. Oh, wow. But it's a banger. You had it all out? Oh, God, yeah. I mean, you have to get the right people. Sure. But yes.

I dare you to perform. one day more, in a karaoke room with people who are very passionate and not feel a transcendent electricity. You have a fancy life. Name drop. Who's the coolest person you've ever karaokeed with? Come on. There's somebody. There's a story. I think, well, I, the, probably,

Lawrence Pugh? That works. Yeah. It was worth the wait. We got it. Yeah. She's fucking great. Did you do what?

Well, I was wondering if like, because there was a point where I didn't know, anyway, I didn't know if she was actually in the room. There was a night where we all went out and then it got to karaoke, but I was like replaying the night in my head. Cut two, wasn't there, calls me tomorrow. Pissed. I would never karaoke. It's not who I am.

Anyway, she would never. She's the greatest. Worst note a director has ever given you. You recall a moment on set. It wasn't a note. It was a producer right before I was about to do something. And they told me to

calm down. And then I could do all the campy stuff. And what I was doing, folks was not campy. I think they were referring to another word, starting with an F.

But I'm not putting words in anyone's mouth. I'm just going to titillate with a little blind item, I guess. Anyway, it was bad. That's not good. Don't use campy inappropriately with a gay man before

he's about to perform. Don't do it. Because it will come back to haunt you. In the spirit of happy, Second Fuse, who's an actor that always makes you happy. Emma Thompson. This is a good answer. A movie that makes you sad? Cinema Paradiso.

The music alone. But good sad. Oh, my gosh, yeah. One of the great scores of all time. Amazing. One of the great movies. food that makes you confused. Now we're talking, yeah, let's get into it.

Like a steamed fish? Oh, sure. I just ordered one, like two nights ago, and then immediately questioned why I did it. Because it's almost like... I thought I was being healthy, and then it came, and I was like, I don't want this. What is this?

Some steamed vegetables all around it? I don't know what this is. Yeah Yeah It's that Fry it Just fry it Yeah

No it's that gray zone It's like Do sushi I don't want that Or really cook it Don't half ass it It's like it was Microwaved or something

I don't know Okay We have some wonderful questions From the audience You ready? Sure Who did all the paintings artwork at the end of the film

The artwork is beautiful Of course And I know this is It was great Wasn't it A Canadian painter named Chris Knight who is so great and is such a talent

and I'd been following him for such a long time and I in fact own a couple pieces of his and when I got the green light on the movie it was in the script. It was all kind of scripted obviously I mean it's anyway stupid thing to say but the movie was kind of predicated on these paintings and I knew that like if we didn't get the paintings right we could you know it could teeter into very cheesy

territory. So the minute I got the green light on the film, I called Chris, cold called. We'd never met. We followed each other on Instagram and I asked him to be a part of it. And he had, he told me that a week prior, he was having a conversation about

Francesco Clemente's work on great expectations, ghost painting on great expectations, and how he'd always kind of been curious about doing that. And then a week later I called. And he did it. And he, you know, he allowed this movie like a safe place to land, ultimately.

And that's an amazing thing when art can do that. Heather would like to know why you decided to set this movie in the UK? Because I wanted to. No, because I wanted Mark to be not in his home. I wanted him to be a fish out of water. I also think there's something to be said about a character moving to a place in their 20s, as I did with London. there when I was in my early 20s and the relationships that you form with people

when you were by yourself in a new place so it felt like it really lent to the concept of like found family for him that these two would be the sort of the first two friends he made in the backstory was that they would be kind of the first two friends that he made and they ended up living together and and so it essentially forced a kind of intimacy and and sense of displacement like for Mark so that he was running away from things and ultimately when he found his husband there

like that was it his life just stayed so it was a distraction it was isolation it was all of those things and London's great and you know Tiffany would like to know how you approach finding the balance for the viewer between gut wrenching grief and humor so perfectly I mean this is I mean

we've obviously joked about this about approaching Schitt's Creek as a drama first but then you know you can almost like invert the ratio here. Yeah, it's kind of the reverse of that. Right. But I think it's not even, I don't even know if it is perfectly in a way. I think it's kind of, I mean, thank you for saying so, but I think it's, it's messy, and it's clunky, and it's uncomfortable, and that's all intentional, because that's what life is, I think. You know, we've all been in situations, be at funerals or weddings when

someone takes the mic and you're left gobsmacked that this person had the audacity to take up space in such an inappropriate time and place that is life humor comes in like our saddest times because it has to

I think laughter and humor is like the greatest coping mechanism we have so these moments of levity these moments of like laughter in the movie are intentionally uncomfortable because that to me is what life is so

and then some I mean I was sort of backstage listening to some laughs and I was like didn't even know that was funny okay I'll take it yeah so that was it was important to show those moments of laughter to show to break the tension a little bit. John L. would like to know, first thank you for a beautiful film.

Was the scene on the bus with you looking over at the lady with the dog, your nod to redmond? Yeah, it was. This is Anthony. As a queer person making an LGBTQ-focused film, what did you want to be short to convey about gay relationships in good grief?

I didn't want it to convey anything. And I don't actually, I mean, I appreciate the question, but I don't even consider it an LGBTQ film. I think it is inherently in the sense that it's very much involves it. But I don't think it would be defined by that. And I think that's the point. All I can do is, like, write to my own experience. And I think the minute that you try to make anything more out of your stories,

the minute that you try to make meaning out of something, it loses its authenticity a little bit and so I think what I try to do at least is to just remove the greater meaning behind it write what I want to write and hope that the I hate using the word normal but like the normalcy

the kind of nonchalance of the subject matter that that kind of speaks on behalf of like a greater meaning in a way. I think that was certainly what we tried to do with Schitt's Creek, too. And I think it was because it was not treated differently, or

it wasn't pedestalized, or it didn't have this, like, active meaning. That's why I think... Not underlining the points. Yeah, because we deserve that. You know? Allison and Ray would like to know, can you rather want to hear you speak about the role music plays in your

creative process? Are you writing to music. Are you playing music? Yeah, I play list everything. Like every project, there's a playlist before I even start writing and I will go on hikes every day and put the music in my ears and think. And oftentimes like scenarios and character and dialogue and moments will come to me while I'm listening to music. Tina Turner and Schitt's Creek came to me while I was hiking with music in my ears and and it was part of the playlist that I had put together for Schitts Creek.

You know, when I needed that song, I went back to that playlist and thought, okay, what could we slow down? Music is like such an important, has always has been such an important and informative thing for me in the creative process. And Seeson, Kent, who was the music supervisor

on the film, was like the greatest partner in crime on this because we both thought, well, what are the weirdest choices? What are the strangest, And yet they all made sense because they all served the story. And it was also important that in this case, music spoke, a lot of the music choices we made, spoke to their relationship of these friends when they first became friends.

Right. Again, those kind of... The early Robin, the Annie heartbeats, all of those kind of moments mixed in with a kind of timeless, like, can't place it, mix and match. Well, as you were saying before, it's telling the story without dialogue, whether it's production design or music. These are the shortcuts for a filmmaker that really tell it all.

So what's up next? Are you going to do lay-miss on Broadway? I'm doing Lea-Mis on Broadway. Thank you so much. I'll be back here talking about the worst reviews you've ever seen for Le-Miz on Broadway. Would you ever do a musical? Would you write a musical or be in a musical or both or I would love to do a musical?

I would love to do a musical. I don't know. My whole thing is I have to feel like I'm going to bring something additive to any job I take. So whatever that musical is, God bless whoever asks me, it would have to be something additive. I don't know. I'm going to take a break, I think. Well deserved. Yeah, I'm going to take a break. I think you need to live your life to be able to write about your life.

And sometimes you get to a point where you think, oh, I haven't really done much recently except exist in this cyclone of whatever the hell this industry is. This is normal life, Dan. What are you talking about? So you have to step outside. You have to take, you know, like Michaela Cole said it so eloquently about just going away. We'll let you go into your cave and do whatever it is your real life. Cut to, it's like a week. They're like, why is he back? He said he was going away. Need actors. I don't know. I want to travel for a bit and we'll see. But there's some, there's some. There's always some things in the fire. I'm so thrilled that this film exists and that this career continues to evolve

in wonderful ways. It has, I mean, I'm seeing the connections as I was alluding to before in that these projects have humanity and humor and reality and relatability. And I'm just thrilled of what's come in the last few years

and I'm thrilled at what's going to come in the future. Good grief, as you guys well know, is a great piece of work. It's on Netflix. Spread the good word. Thank you so much for coming and watching it. It means the world.

Thank you. Thanks. Thanks. Thank you for such great questions. This is a thrill. And so ends another edition of happy, sad, confused. Remember to review, rate, and subscribe to this show on iTunes or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm a big podcast person.

I'm Daisy Ridley, and I definitely wasn't pressured to do it. It's by Josh. Goodbye, summer movies, hello fall. I'm Anthony Devaney. And I'm his twin brother, James. We host Raiders of the Lost Podcast, the Ultimate Movie Podcast, and we are ecstatic to break down

late summer and early fall releases. We have Leonardo DiCaprio leading a revolution in one battle after another, Timothy Salome playing power ping pong in Mari Supreme. Let's not forget Emma Stone and Jorgos Lantamosa's Bagonia. Dwayne Johnson, he's coming for that Oscar.

In The Smashing Machine, Spike Lee and Denzel teaming up again, plus Daniel DeLuis's return from retirement. There will be plenty of blockbusters to chat about two. Tron Aries looks exceptional, plus Mortal Kombat 2, and Edgar writes, The Running Man, starring Glenn Powell. Search for Raiders of the Lost podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and YouTube.