Happy Sad Confused - Phil Lord & Chris Miller

Episode Date: June 9, 2014

Phil Lord & Chris Miller are nearly as fun and hilarious as their films are and that’s saying alot. Phil & Chris visit Josh to chat about “22 Jump Street,” argue the merits of “Ghostbusters 2,” and how to direct comedy. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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please contact ConX Ontario at 1-866-531-2600 to speak to an advisor free of charge. Hey guys, welcome to another edition of Happy, Sad, Confused. This week, you get two wonderful guests for the price of one. Not that we're charging anything even for one. They are the filmmaking duo known as Lord and Miller. I don't know if they're really known as that, but that's what they actually are. Phil Ward and Chris Miller are the directing talents behind Cloudy with a chance of meatballs, 21 Jump Street, the Lego movie, and now 22 Jumping.

Street, which I have seen, which we talk about at length. Not really any spoilers here. Don't worry. What is there to really spoil about a big action comedy anyway? But they really hit it out of the parking gang with 22 John Street, which is a tough act to follow after 21 Jump Street surprised so many. They talk about the art of the comedy sequel. They talk about the Lego movie and their humble beginnings in animation, creating a show that some of you may know called Clone High, which has a bit of a cult following. These guys are great. They are absurdly young and talented and funny and just a good time to hang around with

and chat about movies. They're big movie geeks like myself. So I had a blast. I always have a blast talking to these guys, and they are, as I said, they're on a hell of a hot streak and huge films being dangled in their faces, but they are making all the right moves right now. So you guys, I know we'll enjoy this conversation. we get into the chat. As always, I want to remind you to hit me up on Twitter,

Joshua Horowitz. Let me know who you want to hear. Check out all our stuff on MTVNews.com and afterhours.mtvee.com. Lots of cool stuff coming your way. We're in the middle of summer movie season, which means I am talking to some of the hugest stars on the planet about their ginormous blockbusters, which is a lot of fun. It's just really wishful fulfillment for me as a kid. I had known that I would get to cover these movies that I was obsessed with going to, you know, every weekend in the summer seeing these movies multiple times. Now I get to see them for free and talk to the stars and directors for free. So be annoyed at me, but hopefully enjoy the spoils on MTVNews.com and afterhours.mtvee.com and on the podcast.

As always, please enjoy the podcast and rate it on iTunes, review it on iTunes, and just spread the word. this has been so much fun and we continue to book all the guests I hope you want to hear there's only the people I want to talk to so Lord and Miller certainly fit that bill and I know you guys are going to enjoy this one so without any further ado

here are Phil Lord and Chris Miller I apologize in advance I mean we think MTV would be able to afford two mics one for each of you We don't need it we don't need it You tell us what sounds good You want us to put it in the middle

In the middle, I think. Yeah, yeah, that's fine. How do we differentiate your voices? You can't. It's impossible. You can't. We both have nerdy voices. The super funny one is Phil.

Anything that is embarrassing is me. Nerdy voice number one is Chris. Nerdy voice number two. How are people, the three of us, that's literally going to sound like one monologue? Wait a second. Are you saying I have a nerdy voice? Impossible. No, no, no, no, no.

So Chris and Phil. Yeah, whose voice is going to crack first? That's the real test. Does this thing never stop? It's kind of like in the movie. That's right. This is the inception of totem. Wow, that's incredible.

I like to test whether... That never ends. I want to know if this is reality or not, and apparently this is not reality. Apparently, we're... So I can just leave that. If it falls, if it means it's a nightmare, or if it never falls,

it means that we in order to Caprio gets another $10 million. Now, it's not a dream. Isn't that right? It's not a dream. It means you have to get Michael Kane to bring your kids to Europe. You got to just call them on the phone.

Say, hey, maybe... Like, hey, could you just bring the kids? Instead of just complicated. to dream things. Rarely is it my job to bring sanity to a conversation, but I'm going to try. Let's just bear down for a second. Gentlemen, hello. How are you? There's no official welcome. Don't worry.

How does it start? Yeah, it had to start. It started when you left in. So that all stuff, that's in it. That was real personal. Congratulations on the movie, though, guys. Thanks a lot. No, it's honestly great. You must be feeling good. I don't know if you were screening it before this week. As we taped this, this is the week before the week of opening.

It didn't exist before this week. I was going to say, because I know the schedule this time around, frankly, was a lot tighter. Yes. Was that a little bit of a daunting task when you agree? Because I know you were wrestling

whether to go back and do the sequel, too. I mean, that's a... Yeah, honestly, the speed of it was an advantage. Because it felt like, oh, we can... This is what we told ourselves. It'll be fresh. Like, we won't be able to overwork it. You won't go second base it.

Exactly. We'll have to first guess ourselves. But it just meant that we were working longer hours every day. Yes. It was, yeah, any future sequel filmmakers out there. That is not true. It was very, very tight, and we had a lot of stuff that we shot. Like a lot.

Our first cut was almost four hours long. Yeah. Getting it down under two hours. First, we wanted to get it to Wolf of Wall Street length, and then we wanted to get it under two hours. The funniest movie of the year, Wolf of Wall Street. I did miss the... I did miss the orgy on the plane sequence that you guys shot.

That's too bad. It's too bad that had a good. I believe me, we're sorry, we missed it too. Yeah. But it's funny because oftentimes, as you know, sometimes stuff in the trailer doesn't end up in the film and I get annoyed about that. In this case, I'm not because the film is so good

and it's like, obviously you guys found the cut that worked the best. But, I mean, how close to where we are now were you actually cutting the film? When did you off the film? We finished the scene. I finished the sound mix a couple weeks ago, like two weeks ago. Like two weeks ago today.

Yeah. Was it, because it's kind of, again, like I say, a daunting task to take on. We were talking as you walked in, you noticed my Vigo the Carpathian poster, speaking of the comedy sequels. One could spend an hour arguing the merits of Ghostbusters 2 or not. But Vigo, clearly the best part. First half, great. First half of the movie is great.

Yeah. Peter McNichol is good in it. Once the toaster starts to hop up and down maybe. Exactly. Right? That's literally the point where you should just turn off the DVD and go make some eggs or something. But Peter McNichael, amazing in it. A delight. And Vigo. Great to see the guys back together again. Yeah. So, so I mean, the ratio of comedy sequels, as you well know, that are actual successes, I'm not even talking financial, I'm talking just like quality, is frankly pretty low. It is a tricky thing to pull out. Why is it hard? I really don't know. But why is it

harder than just a sequel. Right. Well, because... Bad Boys, too, obviously, better than Bad Boys want. Exactly, right? Comedy is... Because it's longer. Because there's more of it.

Comedy's based on surprise, right? You're not expecting something. And then the sequel is sort of giving people more of what they like, I think. And then you're just sort of often rehashing the same bits from before. And it's not a surprise. It's more like a familiar friend. And so then it becomes kind of a bummer. It's because comedy is supposed to surprise you a little bit.

It's surprising and fresh and mix it up. And so that's what we were trying to do with this, was sort of like give you sort of the beats that everyone knows you have to do because it's a sequel, but then try and mix it up along the way. And one of the things I know and appreciate about this film, and I wonder it must have been a balance for you guys too, was to figure out kind of like how self-referential it is. Because there are a lot of references to kind of like, yes,

like the things that people pour on to sequels to seemingly make the, to seemingly make. them better that don't necessarily actually add up. There were more. Yes. There were more. You're like, to answer your question. It's impossible to believe.

There were more. Really? You always define the balance in how like meta and self-aware you're trying to agree. I think of like the most memorable one that we cut out, but I don't know of it. Like I feel like deeper. There was, it's going to be on the DVD bit at the end of the movie.

They had a conversation about, so this is like, this is really similar to the last mission that we had. He's like, no, it's going on. No, no, no, no, no. I got shot on the other arm. Totally different. Totally different.

It's daytime, not at the end. It was nighttime at the end, last time. Amazing. We liked it. We thought it kind of protected us a little bit. But when we showed it to audiences, that was the breaking point. Oh, really?

Don't tell me that the thing I just saw sucks. Right. I want to come out thinking that it was good. Don't question my judgment. I thought it was good until you told me it wasn't good. It's a good lesson. Another lesson for future filmmakers. Yeah, exactly.

Don't bag on the movie at the end. Do it at the beginning, and then beat the lowered expectations. It does also feel like you poured, you and the writers, like, poured everything into this one to almost back yourselves into a corner about, like, could you even conceivably make a third one? And if you do, it's going to be, frankly, really difficult because of, like, how much cool stuff you poured into, especially the end of this one. Was that something kind of discussed in terms of, like, a scorched earth policy? Yeah, kind of screw the third one.

If somehow that happens great, we'll figure that out if we get it. Yeah, a problem for our future selves to solve. Well, you know, we found that people wanted to see those guys together, and we thought, what better way to sort of send up sequels than to really let everyone see them together forever. Zoom for all eternity together. There was an alternate ending where they were like, I got a new mission for you.

Like Q was on the beach going, I have a new mission for you, and they said, nah, man, I'm done. Never doing this again. They're like, no, thank you. But, like, it made everybody sad. Was, well, let's go back to, like, when you guys, I'm going to go way back in a little bit

about the beginnings of your collaboration, but the beginning of this particular one. How did Jump Street come to you? How fully formed was it when it kind of came across as a potential project? The first one? Yeah. There was a really funny script by Michael Bacall

and Jonah and they we read it and felt this is a really crazy idea for a movie it's really gonzo McCall has like a really cool tone and

it didn't have enough heart or feeling and so we had just come off of Cloudy where we had spent four years basically learning how to put heart and feeling into a comedy and how that can make it funnier

and so we thought that we could do that for Jump Street. Whether we accomplished that or not, I don't know. But that was our pitch. Yeah, we thought we wanted to do like the opposite of what we did on Cloudwood's and a R-rated action comedy with Jonah Hale seemed like pretty different. And so we pitched ourselves hard, and luckily we had a good relationship with a studio at the same studio that made Cloudy and we knew Jonah socially from comedy circles and

then we had to like-suckers and gave us the job. And we had to convince Neil Moritz. where so we like cut together like a five-minute action reel from Cloudy. Oh really? That was just like explosions and stuff. You didn't know it, but we actually made a crazy action movie. We made an action movie and he saw it and after 30 seconds. He's like, okay, I get it.

I get it. I get it. That's fine. Most sad validation for like encouragement. Yeah. I get it. It's a good introduction to Neil H. Bril. Was a, so obviously John was on board then with Channing.

on board then? No. Chaney was not on board and we had lots of discussions about who would be and we often Jonah and we would say like someone like Channing Tatum like but younger. And ultimately we were like, you know what? Let's just let's just go for this guy. And then Jonah called him up and then we had dinner with him and it was very clear that he was a hilarious guy and no, it was sort of an untapped resource.

It's funny because I remember when I visited you guys on set of that first one, I don't know if it was just like him portraying something different than how he actually felt, but he still seemed nervous and wary of his comedic skills. Did you feel like there was a little bit of hand-holding and validation? Like, no, you're really nailing this. Because he is, like, honestly, the MVP.

I mean, Jonah's amazing, but he's the superstar that kind of emerged out of this. He's the surprise of that, especially that first movie. And he was very preoccupied with being funny, which is so dangerous on set. Because the minute somebody's doing that in their head, They're not in the scene and then they stop being funny and you feel like they're trying too hard. So our advice to him was always, don't worry about it.

You're funny. You're funny. Just be yourself. And Jonah was there to be like, I'm going to throw your lines if you want them and I'm going to make sure that you have funny things in the scene. And we kept reassuring him and really he is so gifted and just naturally funny. It ended up being really easy. Like once he got comfortable. being himself and

and so then obviously the second time he was less nervous because he realized he's not going to embarrass himself well he had an intention you know he was like um you know we were like we wrote this incredibly dumb character for him and he's like

oh but he wanted his first instinct was I want to do something a little broader you know and I have a friend and he does this crazy voice and I want to do that and I think it's better if you just the way you know they talk about if you want to play drunk as an actor you need to play someone who's trying to sit up straight yeah exactly the guy is trying to prove that he's not drunk yes and that's how you can do it so this one is like try to prove that you're smart right

instead of trying to be dumb and then he brought this incredible thing which is his idea is like I'm going to play that I'm trying to get Jonah to fall in love with me in every scene in the first one amazing and it was great and made the whole movie where were you guys of like the scrutiny and stuff. Were you able to kind of have tunnel vision? Because I'll confess, I was doing a little research about this today. Was it just like,

jumps just probably going to suck. Literally, like, okay, so I want to show you this, because we can laugh about this now because it's awesome and everybody knows it. But like, literally, this was like the deadline Hollywood story

when Channing, like, join. Uh-huh. And the comments are, are amazed. You mean there are some internet snark? Don't read comments. That's another good piece of advice. Did you, like, read these?

That's the first time. No, what are they? They sound good. It's like, I think Shane Tames is a heart. horrible choice. Great, another studio ruining a great TV show by making a stupid movie about it. And Jonah Hill, seriously, won't be wasting

my time or money on this one. What's that guy's name? We'll find him. We'll find him. That is random Reedy. Oh, random reading. Random reading. Eat your words, my friend. There are like dozens of these. And they, of course, have not. Worst cast ever. I like that

from Matt. Matt. I know someone named Matt. My friend Matt, that's so rude. But, I mean, were you guys, like, reading the stuff at the time, or were you... I tried not to read, like, internet comments. We probably did, though. I'm sure we did at that moment. Oh, yeah.

Oh, no. Did you feel, I mean, did you feel like a lot of confidence coming... I mean, you know, that was your first live action feature. Cloudy had been a huge success, but one could argue it's apples and oranges or not. Yeah. Oh, we were super nervous. We were super nervous, and, you know, our first week on set had, like this extended

16 hour day to include Johnny Depp in the movie and it was like a big secret it was because of Johnny's schedule we had to shoot the climactic penthouse like gun battle scene first

and by the time we got to Johnny's day it was like which was the third day it was the most time we had spent on a live action set in our lives in any capacity as like a PA as anything. So we were thrown into the deep end of the pool.

So how are you in a situation where like Johnny Depp shows up that day? And like, was that the first time you were meeting him or had you? Well, we met him. Actually, we met him at a party. I forgot about that. And pitched him the idea. And he was like, yeah. And he had some crazy ideas.

And we're like, literally, you could be wearing a panda suit. I don't care. Whatever works. We'll figure out a way to make you work in the movie. So in that situation, where you've had relatively limited interaction with him and this is a full on huge action sequence beginning of the shoot Johnny Depp shows up yeah like are you like internally like freaking out as you're talking to him or you absolutely freaking out every moment of that day and he was like he

wanted to get a banjo for the scene and we're like what and so then he he like throws himself into the makeup and costume, as you might expect. That's his character development. And he's sitting there in the makeup chair going, oh, this would be cool. This would be cool. That's, like, kind of how he does it. So we, like, you know, we offer him, like,

a whole bunch of different crazy tattoos that he could have and, like, a bunch of different choices. But then one of the things he requested, apparently, was a banjo. Sure. And so then we were like, I don't know the banjo. I have to admit, we were against the banjo. he was supposed to be in like a motorcycle gang

with like all these other tough looking guys and it seems crazy if he wore a banjo so then the prop person like went to go get a banjo and we're like we convinced Johnny we're like you know it's it's you know we're running a little short on time and maybe the banjo isn't worth it and we might have to wait for it

meanwhile we're in New Orleans there is a banjo and a music shop like around Every corner. You can literally hear the soft strumming of a bandjohn. So we convince him we're like, we don't need to do the banjo. He's like, all right, I guess we don't need to do the banjo. That's fine.

And then we like walk out of his trailer and then the prop guy's carrying a banjo. Hide the banjo. Hide the banjo. But he was so proud. He's like, guys, I got one. We literally are fired. In like a cooler. Maybe he was testing you.

Maybe he was testing your medal as relative early young filmmakers. And like, offering up. absurd ideas and see where you would actually stop him. And you passed. You did it. We passed. We passed. The banjo test. That was the strong. He does that in all his films. We literally said yes to every other whim that he had, however small.

Was there any discussion about how you could resurrect Johnny Depp for this one? We talked about it. We talked about him being a ghost. You killed me. But we thought it. We had enough crazy. definitely right um i wonder did you guys see that video like last week or two that someone

created about like a comedy direction it was like uh oh that's funny i haven't seen it you guys just a guy that says like yeah roll the cameras no no it's actually the opposite it's interesting it's kind of this guy that like talks a lot about edgar right in particular and about how great he is with a camera and how he can he's very talented guy yeah and how he uses the camera to accentuate comedy uh and and and add to it and i would frankly put you guys in that category two, and how a lot of filmmakers that make comedies, frankly, feel a little lazy with a camera. I mean, I don't know if you would agree with that or not. Do you feel like there is a tendency in comedies where you're... In defense of laziness, I would say that it's a very legitimate

choice to say in comedy, keep the camera simple, keep everything simple. Make the lighting dumb, make everything dumb so that the jokes and the comedic performances can come out. We're not really of that philosophy, but it makes sense to me. There's also a thing about comedy, which is when people are improvising a lot, it's a lot easier to cross-shoot, which means you have to light for both sides, and so it looks a little bit more basic, and you can't really move the camera or do anything too interesting with a camera, because then when someone improvises and someone responds, otherwise, you have to shoot one side and make it all cool, and then have like a list.

like a mile long of every improv that person did and try and recreate the magic on the other side and it's a pain in the butt. And Edgar, like, designs shots around jokes, which is really scary because if the joke doesn't land, you're, like, stuck with that. There's no coverage of that moment. He does something very clever, he does a lot of really clever things in editing, but one of them is he does really clever versions of dropping out frames and allowing, like, for, really smart version of basically a whip pan off of one scene onto another and then he

uses foreground like wiping elements so he'll have like I don't know how he does it but it's almost like he does it in front of a green screen and uses somebody walking in front to like get you elegantly in and out of a scene totally so I mean who would you count among not necessarily among your peers but like growing up who were the comedies or comedy filmmakers that were kind of your touchstones And were they similar? Did you guys have? Like, I would assume when you guys got together, you related on a lot of...

We love Billy Wilder and Chuck Jones, you know. And those guys that are the same. And Hal Ashby? Hal Ashby. We'll get roasted for saying that. But that's not, we're not comparing ourselves to him, but we certainly aspire. Yeah. Just something like that.

Like Harold and Rod was something that we connected on early in college and we met. Yeah, and that movie has like slapstick scenes, and it's got very moving, warm scenes. and very dry, kind of sarcastic scenes in it. So that's probably my favorite. But also, you know, Mel Brooks, especially Young Frankenstein. Young Frankenstein for me. That was it. I mean, that blew my mind when I saw.

I think I've seen that maybe more than any other film in my life. And then the jerk. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Which is another, like, crazy masterpiece. So where is your guys head at? Because I know you've got like half a dozen projects. like in terms of development and stuff

and the Lego movie was an amazing success that I want to talk to you guys a little bit about too but like you know you mentioned things like Hal Ashby and Harold and Maud and stuff and like all your films have had like amazing heart at the core and emotion and the characters work which is why I think audiences why they're as successful as they are in addition to the jokes

one would argue but there's a broadness right now certainly to the Jump Street stuff like I mean do you want to like operate in a in a sphere where it's there's more subtlety where there's like less broadness in comedy is there is that an aspiration or it's always trying to find a balance and then we try to make sure that the characters feel real

and that the stakes of the of the movie feel real and that we find that if you buy into that stuff you can sort of get away with whatever you want and I mean it just sort of depends on what the project is you know there's like a lot of different types of movies that you can do and each story sort of needs its own tone. Yeah. It would be hard to make a Hal Ashby-toned movie out of 22 jumps run, for example. You know what I mean? It doesn't, every time you try to do that, it doesn't want to do that.

Right. Yeah. And Neil Moritz does not want that. No, and the actors also don't want that. They want to, like, they want to riff and, you know, and generate material on the day, and it's not just, it's not that kind of beast. I hope our career is long enough to include stuff like that. Yeah.

How do you feel, I mean, this year in particular for you guys, like a movie, I mean, I haven't looked at Ron Tomatoes or anything, but it does feel like it's like the most beloved movie of the year. Like, it was beyond a box office, it. Like, no, I don't know anybody that didn't love that film. Did that, I mean, obviously you believed in it and loved it. It was a long labor of love. But, like, the fact that it resonated and people said such kind things,

It's got to be a nice moment. The relief is really the only emotion that... The only positive emotion you can feel in this. Yeah, I remember we were doing the sound mix this January when we were supposed to be editing this movie. And looking at it going like, gosh, we worked so hard on this thing and so many people put so much into it. And it was a great team of amazing crew and other filmmakers

that we worked with. And we were like, wow, this has so... so much in it I hope people appreciate it and I hope people like don't just dismiss it as a toy movie and it was such a relief to see that people actually

noticed and it's crazy I remember it's looking at you and be like this movie is nuts people are either going to like reject it it's really weird yeah it's weird in a thousand different ways

I mean taking aside even like one thing I want to mention is like a spoiler word if you haven't seen it And you probably have twice by now. But the third act is, you know, is a huge surprise. And, I mean, was the feral live action stuff always intended to be in there? It was always part of it. Yeah. It was always, we thought we were going to have to fight really hard to keep it from getting bigger

because we thought, oh, once you cast a movie star in this part, like the studio, they're going to want it everywhere. They're going to want it in the trailer or they're going to want it everywhere. they ever want to know as a matter of fact it was the opposite yeah it was convincing all of ourselves that it didn't break the movie to go there and and teasing it just enough so that it made sense when you went there but you were still surprised and then not staying there too long we had longer cuts of that stuff yeah and people wanted to get back into the Lego world yeah so uh we had a test screening where it was kind of make or break for that stuff we were prepared to do all kinds

of crazy things to take it out and then there was so we're in live action world and the audience is just silent kind of putting it together and then Will Ferrell shows up and the minute they know it's him

there's this huge laugh and then they love it yeah yeah yeah that's an advertisement for Will Ferrell being cast in movies I mean he is uh yeah people ask me I mean just even in terms of people

to interview he is the most like fun person to be around period smartest funny sky yeah um So we're in the MTV building, so I feel like we should bring up clone high a little bit. So what are your memories? 98% of your audience.

But that wasn't intended as an MTV show, right? At first, that was that for Fox? It was that right? It was right. For Fox, yeah. How did it end up over here? The person who was the president of Fox when he purchased the show was not the president of Fox. When we finished it.

This tends to happen. Yeah. If you get a pilot picked up, finish it fast. I recommend that. Because you never know. People that like you might not stay there. They might not stay. But the nice people MTV liked it.

And so then they bought it. We made the whole show for them. Which was a great experience until, you know, obviously the hunger strike in India and the show going off the air. Yeah. That part was less fun. So you were saying you didn't enjoy. I didn't enjoy when they canceled the show. And then, did you know what show they replaced Arshault with?

I did not. Tell me. It was a little show called Punked. No kidding. And it got three times the rating that Arsow ever did. And that was it. And literally changed the face of the network. Yeah. That was, yeah, that paid a lot of paychecks for a long long while.

We are never doing narrative. Thanks for killing narrative animation for a few years, guys. What were we thinking? That's crazy. So was that like the first kind of huge? break up you guys were super young then that was like a big opportunity that was a big yeah yeah Bill Lawrence who at the time was just starting up the first season of Scrubs and had come off of Spin City was the only we were the only

people young enough for him to supervise he had just turned like 29 or something and he took us on and liked that idea and championed it and is the reason it got on the air and and Godfathered that project and Basically, we were, I don't know, 26 or something, and we had a writing staff and our own TV show, and we stayed up every night until 4 in the morning for a year and a half, and we're really proud of it. There's certain things I'm not proud of,

like the Mina Suvari forehead references, like don't hold up very well anymore. Any sort of very time, pop culture specific. It'll come back around. It means very good. It's totally good. I mean, did you wield power well at that young age? Did you feel like a responsibility being like, okay, I'm 26.

I know I'm in a privileged position. I got to handle this right. We tried, right? I don't think we were, we did anything too. Yeah, we were at Lampropinis. No, no, no, no, no, we didn't go nuts. We just. We're going to live forever.

This show's going to be on forever. What? Our grandiosity was more like, we're going to have, we're going to have the most fun writing room in the world. We had a thing called Funny Fridays, which meant that on Friday we would go to like a crazy restaurant and we were working in the valley, so there were a lot of them. Like one, we went to a Russian restaurant one time that was a mafia front because they had no food

and nobody was there and they were just like two goons out front going like looking at each other, like we don't know what, I guess we should serve them of food. It took like two hours. They clearly went to the grocery store and it was bananas. But the idea was every funny Friday. I noticed you're missing some fingers, actually. Yeah, what happened was you had to drink during lunchtime.

And then, and that's why it was funny Friday. And then, but no work would ever get done in the afternoon. The first two hours after lunch were very productive. And then everyone got real sleepy. Well, everything seemed super funny. And everything was hilarious. And then the next day you look at everything, like, wow, this was funny. We're in the interim years between, say, like, clone Hong.

and Cloudy, which is like the next huge thing, obviously, that kind of got you into the film world. You did a bunch of TV things. Like, one thing that jumped out, I always looked for like the odd thing on the resume that I'm like, oh, that's, I'm curious about that. I remember Louis Guzman had a sitcom. You're the one who remembers. I mean, I love that actor. He's amazing.

I literally went to a tribute to him here in New York that he showed out that. It was at Two Boots Theater, and they just, like, showed like a montage of all in his work. And I didn't realize he was going to be there, too. He was like 50 of us and him. Oh, my God. He must have been pretty high. He was very happy. So what was your, what's your memory of that?

Oh, my God. He is an amazing human being. He's funny because he looks like the scariest. Wolfman. Yeah. A wolf person. And then he talked with like a funny boy. And so.

It's like a sweetheart Muppet where you're like, oh, it's like a monster. Oh, but he's nice. He's like Elmo, basically. Totally. Like when you see him in like boogie nights or traffic or something, you're like, oh, I love it. Yeah, it's like a friendly game of it. And you're like, the punk rock idea of casting him as the lead in a sitcom, you know,

like the face of a leading man. We thought that was like an avacarde, like art stunt. It's like, I can't imagine that happening now. Like that must have hit at the right exact moment in both his career and some crazy executive that was like, yeah, let's do that. It felt we were really excited about it. This guy, Will Gluck, who's a great filmmaker. and a good friend of ours

and he hired us as like mid-level guys on that show and it was really like it was only the second sitcom I guess that we had worked on but the first one on a

major network is moving up the chain we went from the WB to Fox nice but anyway no UPN you skipped over UPN we skipped over UPN barely but he

we got turned down from the UPN but he Which show? Which show did you get? The PJs. I vaguely remember that. Oh, yes, yeah, yeah. Is that on the UPN? No, it was on Fox.

No, I think that was UPN. No, I think that was UPN. But anyway, we But anyway, that One night I find myself, were you with me? So, like, that show was like a lot of great camaraderie.

Writing staff was really fun. We loved the job because we came right off of Clon Eye and we had all this responsibility and suddenly it was like whatever happened, it wasn't our fault. It was poor Will Gluck who had to deal with whatever

consequences. So we were having a blast and he's a great guy to work for and one night after taping we all went out and the night got later and later and eventually I wind up playing X-Men Uno at Louis Guzman's like condo or whatever

which is in, it's like at Hillcrest or something it's a cross from the Fox lot in like a kind of planned community and that's where he's like living the whole time he's like shooting the show and he's like commuting from Vermont or wherever the heck he lives. So it was just like, and then at some point he gets really high and at some point starts explaining to me the rules of X-Men, Uno.

Is it different than Uno? No, he's like, okay, this is a, Phil, this is a mutate card. And you can mutate this, you use it to mutate a card to one card to any other card. If it's a two, you could mutate it to a three. If it's a three, you can mutate it to a four. And he just like went on and on. Like, this is one of the most wonderful nights of my life. This is why I got into the business for this moment.

It's fantastic. How much time would you say you guys daydream a week of not working with the other? Of just your separate ways. I'm just saying, screw that guy. I don't need him. We're, uh... It's less than 50%. Oh, yeah.

We're sleeping for a good deal all the time. That's true. If you count sleeping, it's way less than 50%. But is the partnership pretty seamless? Does it feel just sort of still organic and just like the right fit? Yeah, we compare ourselves to brothers a lot because we are a lot alike and we fight a lot. But we have like a longstanding love and respect for you. We're better when we're less tired.

It's true. Right? Most of us are. And we're less stressed out. I think when we get really stressed out and really tired. gets a little chippy on the basketball floor. Have you ever fought in front of the actors? Have you ever had a major disagreement?

I don't know. We fought in front of the crew a couple times on this one. At one time, so much so that the crew were like, we're going to take five and let you guys work this out. I mean, you don't need to get into the degree, but like the nature of the disagreements is it literally just. It's always dumb. It's always dumb.

Clone Hyatt was like, I wanted Abe Lincoln to have a squared off nose, and Chris wanted it to be a round nose and we compromised at a rounded square after a month of like aggressively drawing over each other's drawings. And then on clone it was like how close to Diplo's stage should the fight with Channing

and the beer bong and the girl and stuff be like how close did we want the stage to feel which by the way I don't think you can. can even tell. You probably couldn't tell it if he was closer. I was arguing for it to be closer and Chris was arguing to be further away and it was like a matter of like yards, you know what I mean?

Right. And it was like almost came to Fistakuffs. It's worth it. But when we fight we do fight old-timey Fistaciccuff style. Oh yeah. Like in gangs of New York. You both strike me as world class. That's a, that's a realist. We're physically intimidating. That's a line will never cross. We'll never

fight like modern style. Right, right. Like park kickboxing or something like that. No, no, no, no, no. We'd never cross that line. It's like, don't go to bed angry. Right. Yeah. Old-timey Irish fight? Only? Yes. Pistols at dawn?

Yes, only pistol. We have, I feel like only a few remaining. Do we have a special guest? We're running low on time, so we're going to go straight to our wacky hat of random questions. Okay, here we go. You ready, guys? All right. Okay, pick something random, and

let's weigh it in. Okay, we each do one? Yeah, whatever you want. There's no, that happens. I didn't dig very deep, so if you put anything, like a cold envelope for whatever in the front. My first celebrity crush was... The Lord. That's right.

It should really aspire. It was Prince's Leah. Come on. There you go. It's not very interesting. That works. But not anymore. I'm trying to think of what mine would have been.

Okay. I have two. Lauren Hutton, from Zorro the Gay Blade. Nice. I like it, I like it. The gap between the teeth always gets me. My current girlfriend, Irene, has a gap between her teeth. I was gonna say you must have a thing for Paul Shear. And I have a massive thing for Paul Shear.

Oh my God. I cannot. I got lunch on the other day and it couldn't take on him. And when Andy Samberg first came on the scene, look out. It was like all gaps. It's like a bunch of little chicklets of adorable. You should start a website. there isn't one already.

I'm sure there is. I got favorite childhood TV show. Okay. This is a good one to end on. What do you guys got? Greatest American Hero. Oh, wow. Of course.

Wow. Yeah. Hard to beat that one. What a kiss ass. Is it a kiss ass of my William Cat's son? What it was? Wait and see. And then there's a, I don't know, I don't know what mine would have been.

Favorite. Barney Miller. Is that weird? Really? Okay. All right. I was going to say. Yeah, you were a prematurely old man.

I know. That's crazy. It was more probably closer to like Welcome Back Cotter or something. Or electric company. I guess in fairness, it was electric company. You're a man of many interests. We've learned a lot about you gentlemen today. Congratulations, as always, on the new...

Oh, thanks a lot. It's a good one. And you're welcome to... Josh is one of the first people who ever condescended to interview us. He stooped down to our level. It was a horrible idea then. Horrible idea now. No, it's always good to catch up with you guys.

Yes, this one accomplished. I'm Amy Nicholson, the film critic for the LA Times. And I'm Paul Shear, an actor, writer, and director. You might know me from the league, Veep, or my non-eligible for Academy Award role in Twisters. We love movies, and we come at them from different perspectives. Yeah, like Amy thinks that, you know, Joe Pesci was. miscast in Goodfellas, and I don't. He's too old.

Let's not forget that Paul thinks that dude too is overrated. It is. Anyway, despite this, we come together to host Unspooled, a podcast where you talk about good movies, critical hits. Fan favorites, must-season, and case you miss them. We're talking Parasite the Home Alone. From Greece to the Dark Night. We've done deep dives on popcorn flicks.

We've talked about why Independence Day deserves a second look. And we've talked about horror movies, some that you've never even heard of like Ganges and Hess. So if you love movies like we do, come along on our cinematic adventure. Listen to Unspooled wherever you get your podcast. And don't forget to hit the follow button.