How Did This Get Made? - Last Looks: Ghost in the Machine & Morbius

Episode Date: January 13, 2023

It's a Jason and Paul overload as Jason Woliner (Borat 2) joins Mantzoukas and Scheer to chat about his genre-bending Peacock comedy Paul T. Goldman. Plus, Paul digs into Corrections and Omissions from both Ghost in the Machine and Morbius, shares exclusive bonus Morbius content, and announces next week's movie. Places people, it's time for Last Looks! Go to www.hdtgm.com for tour dates, merch, and more.Follow Paul on Letterboxd https://letterboxd.com/paulscheer/HDTGM Discord: discord.gg/hdtgmPaul’s Discord: https://discord.gg/paulscheerCheck out Paul and Rob Huebel live on Twitch (https://www.twitch.tv/friendzone) every Thursday 8-10pm ESTSubscribe to The Deep Dive with Jessica St. Clair and June Diane Raphael here: listen.earwolf.com/deepdiveSubscribe to Unspooled with Paul and Amy Nicholson here: listen.earwolf.com/unspooledCheck out The Jane Club over at www.janeclub.comCheck out new HDTGM merch over at https://www.teepublic.com/stores/hdtgmWhere to Find Jason, June & Paul:@PaulScheer on Instagram & Twitter@Junediane on IG and @MsJuneDiane on TwitterJason is not on Twitter

Super Soakers, Paul T. Goldman and Hollow Bones, all this and more on today's episode of Last Looks, People, Places, It's Time For Last Looks. Last looks, last looks, say something before it's gone, because it's last looks, last looks, this is the opening song. Well, after this one, Paul moves on. Hello, all my address book killers and my hollow boned Greek vampires. I'm your host Paul Shear and today is a very special episode of Last Looks. That's right, because we took a little last looks. I ate us over the holidays. You know what? We needed a break. It was great. We had a nice vacation and now we're back and we're here to address all your issues on not just Morbius, but also Ghost in the Machine. And if that's not enough, Jason Manzuchus and I will be chatting with our good friend, Jason Wollner. You know him as the director of Borat 2, segments on Nathan For You, also the director of Eagle Heart on Adult Swim,

but more notably, especially for me, my co-creator and director of Human Giant, my sketch show that I did with Aziz Ansari and Rob Hubel. He has a one-of-a-kind new peacock series called Paul T. Goldman that I can't get enough of. I'm literally pounding the pavement, getting the word out about this peacock series. It's so good. We're going to talk to him. We're going to sell you on it if you haven't watched it. And if you have watched it, you'll get some good dirt on it as well. Plus, we're going to reveal next week's movie, but first things first, a big shout out to Quinn for that opening theme song. Thank you, Quinn. We love these songs. They're great. And if you have a last looks episode theme song, please send it to us at HowDidThisGetMadeatEarWolf.com.

Keep them short. 15 to 20 seconds is best. Brevity, soul of wit, and also the soul of song parodies. Since we have such a big episode, we're going to skip by Paul's helpline because I want to get to the meat right now, okay? But you can still call me if you need advice. 619, P-A-U-L-A-S-H, 619, Paul asks, we're approaching Valentine's Day. If you need help thinking of a good date or picking out a gift that doesn't totally suck, you just give me Paul, a.k.a. the love doctor. That's the name I used to have when I was doing radio in Memphis. I'll help you. I'm going to help you sweep your partner off their feet. Trust me, someone who hasn't been on a date for upwards of 15 years, I'm going to tell you how to throw a perfect Valentine's Day. Because you know what? When you get into a relationship for this song, oftentimes your partner's like,

can we just not do anything on Valentine's Day? Like, let's just not jump into that. At least that's where I'm at. And I kind of love it because, well, I have issues about Valentine's Day, but I always will do something special because even if your partner tells you they don't want you to do something special, you got to do something special. I think that that's the only right thing. Anyway, 619, P-A-U-L-A-S-K, that's 619, Paul asks. We'll talk about love in the future. But right now, let's get into it. Our last two episodes, we talked at length about Ghost in the Machine and Morbius. We had questions. You had answers. We might even have missed a few things, but here is your chance to set the record straight. You can fact check us. You can throw facts at us, whatever you want. It is now time for corrections and omissions.

Questions and omissions. Questions and omissions. Questions and omissions. Questions and omissions. Woo! Thank you, Joe Foster, for that great theme. Up first, let's get into our souls and how they're getting sucked into the Internet. Or is it an electrical grid? I mean, who knows? We were talking about Ghost in the Machine. By the way, I love the shirt that we made for that on T-Public, just that little dishwashing machine with all the little phrases on it. T-Public has been killing it on the shirt front lately.

So if you want to get your own dishwashing machine shirt or even your Morbius shirt. By the way, I think a lot of people are confused why we have the Darth Maul on the Morbius shirt. You know what? You had to be there. Anyway, let's go to the Discord right now to talk a little bit more about Ghost in the Machine. Joe Tangelo writes, my favorite line in the movie wasn't brought up. It was when the kid gets an email from the killer and he says, an email? How did he get my number? I missed that. Classic early 90s Internet lingo. How did he get my number? Were they not even calling it an email address at that point? How did he get my IP address? Oh, I love that. Joe, great ears. I wish we had that as a clip.

Rich Kappa, aka chunk style writes, I'm afraid their plan to erase the digital address book killer with a big magnet wouldn't work unless they went and did it at data net where he is presumably stored for a magnet erasure to work. It has to be acting on magnetic storage floppy disks, spinning hard drives, tape, etc. When a BK the address book killer is electrical signals in a wire, the magnet would do nothing. Well, wait, weren't they in that facility at the end? But I guess maybe they just use the magnet on the wire. I don't know. I'm confused. I thought the magnet was acting on the mainframe. I could be confused because this is months ago, but I also don't think that they thought it through that much, Mitch. I mean, they're calling email addresses, phone numbers. I mean, at that point, all bets are off. It was a simpler time. Elaine Smithy writes Karen Allen uses a gun against the address book killer in the finale when a super soaker would have been a much more effective and fun 90s weapon to use.

I'm the scientist, but water seems more like electricity is natural enemy than bullets. Elaine, you are goddamn genius if Karen Allen pulled out a super soaker and just and then just sprayed down. I mean, this movie any I mean, taking out a gun to fight digital imagery is next level stupid. It's like something you would see in a naked gun movie where like they would put a real gun to shoot it at VR and then kill people in the video game place. And I'm now dating myself by saying VR is in a video game place. Well, if you go to the cool places like I went to the amazing ones like the void. Have you gone to the void and done the Star Wars thing where it feels so good. Anyway, I don't get lost in me telling you about how great the void is.

I don't even know if it made it past COVID, but the void was sweet. It was over here at the Glendale Mall. Sean McBee writes when the ABK dies in the MRI, a doctor reaches in and basically the instant his hand makes contact with the body. He goes, he's gone and definitely not long enough to check for a pulse. There is no attempt at all made to resuscitate him. Furthermore, someone in the room immediately says notify the next of kin. Yet as the MRI screens clearly indicate he was a John Doe. It was only later that it was worked out who he actually was. Well, look, Sean, you know, you're working in a hospital.

You're not looking at facts and files. You just you got a script. You're just hitting that script. He's dead next to kin next that that's all that's going on. I feel like in many respect, I mean, you are all finding plot points that are not even hidden. You are all finding major gaffes that really anybody even in the 90s could have just been like, hold up. Let's let's bring this back just a little bit. I do feel like movies are very quick to pronounce people dead. Although I would imagine that because they are on some sort of machine,

maybe they're seeing the EKG going off, but maybe I don't know. Just, you know what it is? This movie is anti-crazy drivers. They didn't want that crazy driver to live. They wanted to get his organs donated so they could make another movie that we did on the show called Body Parts. Where a serial killer's limbs, I think were implanted on a regular person. I don't remember, but that seems about right. Subject 117 writes, it's not surprising.

Paul thought the frozen TV dinners were porn VHS tapes. They had names like Private Selection and Manhattan Nights. I'm actually looking at one of the covers of it right now. This one's called Petite Sweet Peas. It's written like porn. Thank you. Thank you, Subject 117 for backing me up. We're going to find that in this last looks, I am vindicated a lot.

So many great ghost and machine corrections and omissions. But coming up after the break, we've got morbid questions, comments and concerns from our Morbius show. Plus, Jason and I interviewed Jason Wollner about his new Peacock series, Paul T. Goldman. So stick around. Welcome back. We've talked about ghost and machine. And now it's morbid time. We dive into the corrections and omissions from our Morbius episode.

Here it is. Let's start by going to the phones. First up, Eric from Chicago. Hey, Paul, this is Eric Jimenez in Chicago. Super bum that I missed the life showing of the Morbius episode, but it was pretty incredible. And I'm super glad I got to listen to it. This would fall under the corrections and omissions to answer Jason's question and to confirm your guess as being correct. Yes, Michael Morbius in the comics is Greek.

He was born and raised in Greece, as a matter of fact, and is generally considered to have a Greek accent. So when Jason was wondering if someone was supposed to be Greek, you were right in the money when you guessed that Morbius is Greek. Also, and this is probably more of a personal complaint than a criticism of anybody's performance because I think everyone was firing on all cylinders with the material they were given. But at least two times, Adria Arjona, the actress that plays Martin Bancroft, says noble prize and that just drove me nuts. Noble prize. He won the noble prize. He refused the noble prize. Pretty sure it's Nobel. Anyway, thanks for all the awesome work and fantastic entertainment. I hope you all are well. Take care. Yes, Morbius is Greek. Jason is Greek, which means that Jason Manzuchus might be related to Dr. Stephen Morbius.

Is his name Stephen? I forgot. It's definitely Dr. Morbius. Also, oh, what a bummer. Noble? Noble? There should have been a script supervisor on set to catch that one, at least in ADR. All right, now another Chicago caller. Love Chicago. Corey, what do you got? This is Corey from Chicago. Just got done listening to the Morbius Live episode. I was actually at recording. First off, I know it was a long recording, about three hours, so great job editing it down to something manageable. I had a call for just a quick clarification about the cat litter scene. It was a very silly scene for sure, but in the episode you guys mentioned that you thought he was shaking it to call the cat.

What I believe is happening is that he was checking it and seeing that there was no actual litter in the cat poop, I guess, meaning that the cat was gone, and presumably the doctor, Martine, had taken the cat with her. So that's how he had deduced that she was gone. Silly detail in the silly movie that they probably should have clarified, but I don't think they were trying to call the cat with the litter. Anyway, great show, great episode, keep up the great work, come back to Chicago, and hopefully we get to hear some deleted scenes from that recording. All right, talking later. Okay, I hear you, Corey. That makes sense, kind of. But it also hypothesizes that before they left town, they cleaned the litter box. Like, if you're leaving in a rush, you're not like, let me clean the litter box, let me get some like dusting done.

Like, there's a lot of steps there that you'd have to make to make the assumption that the litter box simply is the only arbiter of whether or not the cat is still around. Although I've never had a cat, so I don't know. All right, back to the discord. By the way, you can all jump on the discord if you want to go to discord.gg slash httgm. MMA and Mastiff's rights. I am a bat biologist, and I have a number of corrections. Ooh, get out your popcorn. Here we go. Bats, bones are not hollow like birds. Whatever Paul read off of was incorrect. Okay, that may be true. But my friend Jen, she actually tweeted at me after listening to Morbius. I want you to know that Warren Worthington, a.k.a. Angel from the X-Men has hollow bones and she knows because she works for Marvel.

So I might be wrong, but I'm also right. Bats are not blind. They can see just fine. Echo location helps them navigate in the dark. Okay, MMA, you're bringing in some solid facts here. Echo location is not super hearing. It is the use of sound bouncing off the components of the environment, which the bat then uses their ears and sometimes their nose to interpret in real time. So we're talking daredevil. Daredevil is a bat, right? And then bats do not cyclone nonstop like they did in the lab. If they are trapped like that, they will find a place to roost rather than waste energy. Great. Even in the light? MMA and Mastiff's? Even in the light?

And of the 12,000 species of bats, only three are true. Sanguine Varus. Is that how I'm pronouncing it? Sanguine Varus? I know like carnivorous. I don't know. Sanguine Varus. That's subsisting on a diet of blood. So thank you, MMA and Mastiff for dropping some real bat knowledge. I've had a lot of bad bat knowledge put into me by terrible films and you just set me straight. Sean McBee writes, So in the mid credit scene, Adrian Toomes appears in a cell in this universe, transported in from the MCU. The next mid credit scene, he has his full vulture suit on,

which is made from alien tech, largely from the Chitauri invasion of New York. That did not happen in this universe. So are we to believe he just threw this together from everyday parts or that he acquired it in reality in which he has no official identity, job, money, or resources of any kind? Sean McBee laying it down. Well, maybe the suit also got transported. I mean, why was he also in the jail cell? I don't know. A lot of questions there because I'm pretty sure that another character showed up. Wait, hold on. Didn't. Well, I got to take it back for a second. Didn't Tom Hardy show up in this fight? All right. So everyone's mixing around. I had imagined that maybe the snap or the multiverse also moved some stuff.

Maybe somebody has a Ford Festiva in like the Morbius universe and then they get out to get their car and it's like a Subaru. So that I'm going to just say, like that movie with the time jumping, I'm going to say vehicles and tech can morph. Dr. Guts 1003 writes, I want to know why Dr. Morbius's lab contains bookshelves so high that they require a rolling ladder to reach the top shelf prior to injecting himself with vampire bat DNA. Morbius could barely walk. I can't see him being able to climb a ladder to reach those books. Wow. Okay. Well, first of all, let's not be ableist here. But yes, you have a point. I mean, I mean, maybe he puts the books he doesn't care about up there. Maybe he puts like those money books, like those little safe books up there, full of money or diamonds. You know, and then he just has somebody get it. Go get me that book and then they get it needs to be able to open up and, you know, bring a couple of twenties down to pay the door dash person.

Because obviously, Dr. Morbius pays door dash and cash. He's worked out some sort of agreement with them that he doesn't have to put a credit card on file. I don't know. All I'm saying is it's possible. Anyway, wow. So many great corrections and omissions this week, but there can only be one that is truly the best, the one person who thought everything through. And that winner has to go to MMA and Mass Diffs. That's right. Extreme fighting and extreme dogs. You are our winner. And you get this amazing song from Joel Terry. Hit it, Joel. You win, everybody else all loses. You don't get a medal to prove it, but you don't need no accolades. You can sit back and say, I win tonight on pause, mini episode. I win tonight on pause, teeny tiny little mini episode. All right, if you want to chime in with your own thoughts about the latest episode, like I said, hit us up on the discord.discord.gg slash HGTGM or call us at 619 Paul Ask.

Coming up next, Jason and I chat with Jason Wollner about his new peacock series, Paul T. Goldman. But first, Corey from Chicago, you said you hope to hear some deleted scenes from our Morbius show and you are in luck. Here's a clip where I explained to June and Jason the internet phenomenon of the phrase, it's morban time. And you actually hear Matt Smith's reaction to an interviewer asking him about it back after this. I do want to talk about something important because... Have we not until now? This is arguably the most important hour of my life. I don't know how much you all know about this. We'll jump around, we'll get back to more of the movie. But I want to talk about this with June. Are you both familiar with It's Morban Time?

No. Only because I know it's associated with the movie. Okay, so It's Morban Time became a meme for this movie. So the idea being that at one point in this movie, Dr. Michael Morbius says, It's Morban Time and then becomes Morbius. He never says that. Because I'm going to be honest, not only did I watch the movie and not hear him say It's Morban Time, I got so nervous I had missed it that I scrubbed through looking for It's Morban Time in the closed captions. Also not in there. Okay, I've had a hard day. I also drove here from Cleveland.

You're saying Morbin? It's Morbin Time. So this became a big thing. I'll kind of break it down a little bit more in a second. But so much so that the internet created this vibe of It's Morban Time, that they re-released this box office bomb in the theater and had Jared Leto be like, It's Morbin Time, Morbius is back in the theater, and then no one saw. Like, the executives go like, Oh shit, it's pop off online. Because it was being mercilessly mocked.

They were like, let's capitalize on being mocked, we'll re-release it, we'll clean up. They didn't think it was being mocked and neither did Jared Leto. So let me show you what happens. This is clip nine of Matt Smith being asked about Morbin Time. Matt Smith is talking about Game of Thrones, and here we go. So did you at any time say it's Morbin Time? No, I actually didn't even know what that meant until yesterday at the panel, because I'm not on the internet, so I had no idea.

It's Morbin Time, apparently it's a meme, isn't it? It's a meme, yeah. I didn't know very recently what it was either. Look at how uncomfortable they are in your film. No, no, no, no, it's not even in the film. I still don't fully understand it, but the guy said it at the panel and I didn't... Anyway, it doesn't matter, it's about someone else. Yeah, it's a huge thing from the fans of your movie Morbius.

And it's not even in the movie, but it just became this huge thing anyway. Oh, that's full. Alright, wow. Patty Considine looks flummoxed. And Matt Smith looks mortified. Or sorry, morbified. People, if you've not checked out Matinee Mondays, they are truly a lot of fun. What are they?

Well, they're episodes that we've pulled from The Vault. They're no longer available behind a paywall. We made them free, we put them in the live stream, and you can listen to a bunch of great episodes like this week's Matinee Monday, which is Zack Snyder's Justice League with Griffin Newman and David Sims from the Blank Check podcast. It was a podcast crossover where we dug into the four hour opus that I watched in a COVID vaccination haze. And I really, spoiler alert, liked it. Alright, and now let's get into something that we have been enjoying doing here,

which is talking to our friends because on this episode of Just Chat, Jason and I were super excited to sit down with our good friend and awesome director, Jason Wollner, to pick his brain about his new Peacock series, Paul T. Goldman People. I love this show. And if Jason was not my friend and coworker on certain projects, I would still love it. Paul T. Goldman is a documentary that Jason has been working on for about 10 years. I remember when he went down to Florida to meet Paul. Paul is a man who married a woman who he suspects was running a sex trafficking and prostitution ring. There's a lot of evidence to support that.

There's a lot of evidence to say that he might be exaggerating. Anyway, it has not stopped Paul Goldman from taking a story and making it into a book and then taking that book and making it into a script in which he adds scenes that didn't even happen, but yet this is an autobiography. And Jason Wollner has decided to make this movie of Paul T. Goldman telling his story while he also does a documentary on Paul T. Goldman telling his story. It is a doc, it is a true crime, it is an action movie, it is a parody of a doc, it is a satire of celebrity, it is so much. Here's a clip when Paul's wife tells him she doesn't want to have sex anymore. Paul threatens to divorce her and after an argument, she sends him her version of a quote unquote apology email. Take a listen.

A few days later, I got an email from Audrey. She was sorry about what happened and she wanted to get together. Here's to Paul, please consider this. But with conditions. 5K per month deposited into joint checking account to cover my current expenses. Sleep time shall be around 8.30pm and wake time around 6.30am. Sex time around 5am. Dinner with friends and or family once per week.

Exercise daily, walks. Synagogue weekly or biweekly. What'd you do? Great plan. Come for dinner tomorrow night. Send. Okay, I know what you're thinking. You're an idiot. Why did you accept those conditions?

I accepted those conditions because I wanted a family. Oh, I love this show. June and I have rewatched episodes. That's how much we like it. That's just a little taste of Paul T. Goldman. Without any further ado, please enjoy our Just Chat with Jason Wolner. Anton Whelan, play us in. Paul and Jason have things to say.

And it's a fact that we cannot call in. They're watching their movies. They're watching movies. They're going to tell you. We cannot call in Just Chat. Jason, we're so excited to have you here on Last Looks. Thank you so much, Paul. If you don't know Jason, by the way.

Oh, Jason, wrong, Jason. I'm talking about Jason Wolner. I'm so glad to be here. No, no, no. You are on a show. You're on the show all the time. We have a guest also named Jason. What?

Yeah. He's right there in that zoom box. There he is. Hey, guys. Thanks for having me. I'm very excited to be doing this. Jason, we are excited to have you here for a multitude of reasons. We collaborated originally on Human Giant, which you directed a majority.

I would say the lion's share of the pieces in that show, but you also co-wrote a lion's share of pieces in that show. So you have been behind that. You go off, you make other things. You show run Eagle Heart, Chris Elliott's adult swim show, which was amazingly funny. Brett Gelman, Chris Elliott, so many great people on that show. You now are coming off of Borat 2, right?

You direct Borat 2. You do the impossible. You take a movie that everyone thinks you can't have a sequel to that. And it somehow is better because it's shot like in the middle of COVID. And it seems like it comes out at the perfect time. And in addition to all that, you have directed some segments of Nathan for you. You did the building walk when Nathan was going to walk a tightrope across the buildings, right? He was the hero.

That was, I think, third season finale, maybe? Yeah, he poses as another guy and tightrope across from two buildings. All of the credits that Paul listed for you, Walner, is like all working in concert in this single show. Like all of those elements, all of those elemental styles and skills and tools from all those other things are so masterfully on display here in a way that I was so delighted to go into this. And listen, we're talking about it, so I hope our audience watches it.

But I will say, going into it blind, not knowing anything and just watching this first batch of episodes, I was like gobsmacked by like how insane and how layered and how interesting and incredibly nimble you jump around between narrative styles to tell a number of competing stories. It's absolutely fascinating. Thank you, Jason. Yeah, it's not really like a lot of other stuff on Peacock, I would say.

I want to just step back and say, if you've not watched a show, Paul T. Goldman, how would you pitch it? Because I know a lot of people, I've read reviews, I read things, people like, pitch it out, but I always am interested in how you would tell people, how did you sell this show? Like what did you get people excited for? Yeah, part of the reason it took 10 years to finish is because I don't think I was very good at selling the show and it's very difficult to describe.

But the show is basically me telling the story of this very unique man telling his story and his story is about him meeting and marrying a woman who turned out to have a secret double life and he wound up uncovering all of this stuff and attempted to, it's basically about his attempts to bring down this crime ring that he believes that she is running. And so he basically wrote a book about his story, he wrote a screenplay based on the book and the show is me filming his screenplay with him starring as himself in these kind of reenacted scenes from his life.

We also have behind the scenes, we also have interviews. It's kind of, you know, there's true crime elements. You see, I'm already kind of just rambling. It kind of just spirals out into, it's much easier to watch than to describe actually. It sounds very complicated and when you watch it, I think it's pretty clear what's going on. It is really, it's a number of shows like Woven into one. Like it's a documentary, it's a piece of fiction, it's a documentary. It is, and all of it, he's an unreliable narrator

and frankly I question whether you're a reliable narrator in the telling. Exactly, and that's what's really interesting about it is there are like, it slices away, you keep constantly showing us different layers of this narrative. His first person narrative, flashback stories, filmed scenes that he wrote. Pieces of narration that he's just reading aloud from his audio book. It's all, he's inside of scenes both acting and then doing takes to camera that are just factual for him. As he's explaining to the other actors why he wrote this scene. And those are themselves very, you're playing with all these tropes of true crime,

of documentary filmmaking, and I think there's definitely like hidden camera elements to it that to me feel also really fascinating. Most documentary subjects I think are found by a director in a way, you know, it's, oh, this person, I bumped into this person, I heard about this person. Paul T. Goldman is a person that was trying to get this story told. Like the way that he reached out to you was via Twitter saying, I've got the craziest story, can you help me make it into a movie, right? That's how it starts.

That's how it starts, that's how the show starts is in 2012 he tweeted at me, you know, yeah, I have an incredible story, I wrote a screenplay about it, will you help me, you know, bring it to the screen. At the time it was a movie, it became this, this show. And I looked at his Twitter and you know, he had said that to hundreds and hundreds of other people. And it wasn't just like reaching out to people, it was also like he wrote a book, he had merch, like he was actively trying to get on local news, like he was trying to get someone to listen and yet no one did but you.

And what was that moment, like when was that a moment where you're like, I'm in, like when did you get hooked in? You know what, I clicked on his website, I was, you know, I'm usually wanted to go down any internet rabbit hole I can and I looked at his website and on it he, you know, he had put a video that he had shot himself. Some of it's in the show, he's on a blue screen with like an ocean background. He's talking about how he, you know, took down this crime ring, transformed from wimp to warrior, basically empowered himself after this terrible marriage

and discovered all these secrets. And I became very fascinated with him and his personality. I was like, okay, I'll read the book. I read the book and just became very obsessed with it. It was my favorite thing I ever read. Paul, actually remember, you remember we used to go to that house in Ohio with our like families years ago. And actually I was, I just had to remember, I haven't thought about this in many years,

but this was, that was probably almost 10 years ago or around 10 years ago where that was when I was reading the book, I remember having it by my bedside to the room and just like being obsessed with this thing. I mean, like, I need to figure out everything about this thing. And so I took a few months to kind of also make sure he wasn't crazy, make sure he wasn't like a dangerous person. Because you were scared at one point. I remember, am I misremembering this?

Like when you went down there, you're like, I'm a little like nervous because there was like, I mean, the world that he is creating is a world of danger. He is a Jason Bourne or he's trying whether he's made himself into this, but he is living in a world where there is danger and he is the hero of the story. So I imagine even going into that world in the beginning, you don't know. Yeah, you know, I felt like I was safe talking to him, but there were also, there was investigating that we did and part of that's in the show in terms of going to real locations,

looking to try to talk to the real people involved that he's talking about. And oh God, for so much of this, I was terrified that even if it wasn't entirely true, if parts were true, yeah, like you just don't know what you're going to be dealing with. And he had so many things that he was alleging and so many pieces that connected in terms of this big criminal conspiracy. And it was like, well, if any of this is true, yeah, these may be dangerous people and we might be kind of putting ourselves in some danger reaching out to them. And part of this process has been really trying to figure out the truth really,

figure out what happened. Which is part and parcel all of true crime is trying to get at what is the reality here and what is in this instance like self mythologizing. Like the text that you are using is his self published book. And his then adapted screenplay. Like what's so interesting is in a world that is so obsessed with true crime and true crime stories and uncovering the facts or the truth. This shows so I think really fun and really interesting because everything you get at

starts to kind of fall away like sand in your hands. Like you are like, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. Like there's a scene and I don't want to give too much stuff away. You have scenes in here where you reveal the casting process for the show that you're shooting. And the fact that there are people involved in the casting process who are from his life is bananas. Like there's stuff that's really wild. And it was completely, yeah, it wasn't planned at all. Like the scene you're talking about, there's so much stuff in this that was just kind of miraculous

that just happened on set. There's another thing in that episode where he finds out on set a bit of history about just a guest actor that tied into the story in a crazy way. It all just like happened. And yeah, Jason, what you're saying, like it is about self mythologizing and it's also, but it's like the thing is that he's not crazy and the story is not, it's not like I went in and found this odd guy and tried to prove that everything he was saying was crazy. A lot of what he says is real.

And, you know, and then maybe I look at some of it that maybe I'm able to show wasn't real, but I was really trying to kind of figure out why basically what motivated him. And then to what you were saying, like the question of if you're not entirely living in factual reality, does that matter? Like if it's like, are there like the idea of true crime? What are we talking about when we're talking about stories? When we're talking about narrativizing a story like this, like, or like any of these, like we're obsessed with like all these true crime shows or true crime podcasts, like all of this becomes stories.

And he even says at one point, well, you know, you got to embellish a little bit, you know, and that's true. That's how we all talk. Everyone takes all these kind of confusings, often random events of your life and you make it into a kind of a simple story that you can understand. And so you wake up, you know, next to your spouse and you just know, well, I love this person. You don't have to figure that out from scratch every day. You know what your job is. You know what you like.

You know, it fulfills you. And we make these stories so we know what our lives are because because otherwise we would go crazy trying to figure things out from from chaos all the time. And so, you know, what we don't all do is self publish them on Amazon and write a screenplay. So that was like, it felt like, oh, it is a very unique person, but a way to explore things that I think at their core are very universal and relatable. Yeah. Well, here's what I'll say about it too.

It feels to me like we are in a society where we quickly write off people, right? That person's a coupe. That person, I listened to that person. And I think the majority of people you saw, he wrote 100 people, you know, say, like, make my movie. You might be like, okay, I'm going to stay far away from this guy. And what you do, and I think what you do so beautifully in this is you go, let's do it. Let's execute this idea. And through executing this idea, letting him shoot the script of his movie where he is starring it willingly.

He's not, you didn't make him start it. He wants to start it. Jason. Yes. Changes. Changes. Yes. Yes.

We're going off script. It's going to be great. At the end of this, I'm going to talk to the audience, right? Okay. And after I say I'm going to bring down the whole damn ring, then you yell out, buzz, texts are coming in. You're getting texts from the audience watching at home while you're acting in it. Yes. Very cool.

Maybe we'll do one on script because that's why. No, no, no. This is the script now. Don't worry. It'll be great. Don't worry. I'm so delighted to be making this show, it's so fun to be along for that journey. And I think it's a good idea for a lot of people.

I keep on, like, coming back to this. It's like, yeah, there might be an element here where he wants a little bit of success. He wants to be on, you know, Jimmy Kimmel. He wants to have a poster with his face on it. But also, like, we can't just write these people off. You can't just write off people because they appear like, okay, this doesn't feel like it holds water. There is something real there. And very true to the fact, I think, you know, we're leading to the finale, not this week,

but the week after. You know, he's been along for the journey. He was there with Seth Rogen, one of the producers of the show. How did this get made guest as well? Like, who, you know, he's on there. He's seeing the reaction to it. You brought him your premiere, which I was so bummed I could not go to because I was, you know, shooting anyway.

No big deal. I love to act and work. But no. But you brought him out on stage. You know, and he's with you. And there's something about like, you're not hiding it. This is not like a, you're, they're letting him come along for the process. And what is that like to not only make something, but attach yourself to a human being like that?

I mean, you know, I mean, it's very interesting. I mean, part of the, the idea and the hope with this was to take someone who like you're saying, Paul, you would write off or you would think is a kook or a weirdo or whatever, or just someone you would laugh at. And hopefully by the end, hopefully if you watch the whole thing, you can see this person with a level of complexity and nuance and see the real human being that's there in a way that you maybe wouldn't at first. But yeah, I mean, you know, I never wanted to be in this show.

I really spent years trying not to be in it all. I wound up being in it. I wound up being kind of a big part of it. I hate being on camera. You know, we did human giant. I like, I hid like, I don't like to be. There's never more of a Jason moment in this so far from what I have seen than there's a moment, I believe it, that the end of the second episode where the camera like comes

to you and you kind of humor it for a second and then wave it off. It's like, like that to me, I was like, oh yeah, like you're not, you're not trying to be and no offense to Morgan Spurlock. You're not like trying to be like, I got to get out on this is my story too. I didn't, I didn't want to spurlock myself. I didn't want to direct myself. I had to. I will say like there is like, there are like, I was going to say like there are jinx elements

to it. There are elements to it that have those kind of you are excavating this personality. You are excavating this man through all these layers of narrative storytelling and that is absolutely fascinating. And I found there is this idea that I love, which is as we all are engaged in a world that seems to really love people telling their stories and framing themselves as the heroes of their own stories in this true crime obsessed true life obsessed authenticity obsessed world. What is the truth?

And why couldn't it be any of these frames? Why couldn't it be any of these layers? Well, and mining that I think is for both comedy, but also for like interesting personality driven storytelling is fascinating. None of us live in objective truth. We all, you know, pay attention to certain things that we want to and ignore certain things that we want to and no one really lives in like full brutal truth. And on top of all of that, it's still a comedy.

I mean, I want people to know that we're talking about all these lofty things that you are doing. Like this show is down and dirty. Funny. Like it is a funny fucking show. But I watch it with June and I've been kind of tracking the show from different versions. I'd seen pieces of this in different ways. And what it also does is scratch an itch that June has, which is true crime. Like you do something here.

I was saying like it's a it's a parody of true crime. It is true crime. It's a documentary and it's also a documentary of a documentary. Like it is. There are so many. It's both a documentary and a mockumentary somehow. Like it is all it is all of these things as lots of things are that purport to be fact based, you know. Yeah.

I mean, I mean, at the end of the day, I feel like it is a documentary project, even though there's so many weird kind of conceits and techniques and everything. Ultimately, it is kind of a profile of a real person that I'm trying to figure out this guy and then beyond that, trying to figure out what's the truth and how much it matters and all that. You know, really, all these different conceits that are used are really just about like the film scenes with him in them and then the behind the scenes. It's really it's like kind of my way of trying to take the camera inside of this person's mind and let him, you know, watch him walk through his memories and really just like, you know, it's like watching someone walk through

the memory of their version of their life and then be able to tell you about it. And yeah, I just thought that would be an interesting way to kind of approach this. I remember 10 years ago, you going to Florida to meet with this guy. Like, I remember you coming back and like, oh, yeah, it's weird, this guy. And you're trying to explain to me what America now is seeing for the first time. Are you using any of that footage from 10 years ago? Yeah, actually in the show, there's footage that was filmed over the last 10 years. I was filming, I was interviewing him in 2012 and 2014.

We were auditioning other actors, we were auditioning actors to play him before we landed on him playing himself. Just because it's been 10 years and obviously things have changed in 10 years in this last bout and when you knew you were going on Peacock and doing it on Peacock, were there things that still surprised you or by that point had you figured out? Now, obviously there are these little moments of like happenstance, like what you said, like like a character actor in the piece reveals something. But were there, were there things that you still found? Every day and so many that we don't even, most of them are not in the show.

Just the craziest stuff every single day. Like for instance, Dee Wallace, who plays Terry J, the medium in the third episode and beyond. She came to set or I zoomed with her to try to convince her to do it. And she's like, oh, so you reached out to me because you know I'm a medium, huh? And I was like, what? And she's like, oh, yeah, I do readings and you go to a website and she had, I had no idea. And just like the Russian mail order brag, just there are all these crazy things that just kept happening. And so what I just tried to do is like set up an environment.

And that's something I learned from working with Sasha and Borat of like the chaos of that was so much about just kind of setting up a situation where interesting things could happen and then being ready to film it in the right way that it'll translate on camera. You can definitely feel inside of the show a sense of discovery moment to moment discovery that things are not planned or that things are being discovered in the moment. And that is a documentary, even though there are absolutely narrative elements to this. It feels like it has shot through it all of these moments of genuine discovery. Even if it's even if that is you're catching what seems to me behind the scenes footage of actors saying to Paul,

wait, so this really happened to you and him then telling his getting a chance to once again tell his story. And everybody can you imagine everybody wants to tell their story and he gets the chance over and over and over again in all these different ways to tell his own story. And that is why I oddly locked in amber, too, which is really interesting. Like you do a great job of like over like layering him verbatim telling the same story over years. And it's so that's really interesting, too. It's not like, oh, every time you talk to me, it's a little slippery. He changes it.

No, no, no, it is like he's got a script of his life because he had never seen. There's a part in the pilot where he discovers this thing called BCBS, which is like this fraud that was being perpetrated on him. And he would just tell the story in the same words in the same way every time. And so we do this editing thing in the show where we show him in a few different environments. And then the scene he wrote telling the story with using the exact same words. But then, you know, five years later, he had never seen that pilot. And I just would hear him on set telling someone this story in the exact same words.

And that is like, yeah, it is a portrait of a guy who is very obsessed and fixated on telling his story to the world, to anyone who will listen. Yeah. I mean, you also have to oddly direct yourself, not in the moment, but I guess in the editing process of it. I love you as a director. I think you're so good. I've seen you work with difficult people or people where you have to be like, oh, I have to finesse something here. I have to do this. Is this why I was cut from human giant? Flower sack, baby. Yeah. Oh, flower sack. We could never figure that out.

Me and these both switched roles on that. We're like, you know, you actually do it. I think you have a better handle. Oh, my character. That was an Ian Roberts written piece. But yeah, did you did you learn anything about yourself as much as you are like learning about him? Did you did you catch anything that you weren't aware of? Yeah, I just learned that I hate being on camera. I really like that. That is really, I mean, yeah, Paul, you can attest.

That's how I direct. That's how I am on set. I wasn't, you know, performing. I try to create an environment where people are comfortable and free and don't feel self-conscious. But like in the first episode, I'm trying to get him to, you know, he's finding out shocking information in one scene. And he was so excited to be on camera. That was during the pilot five years ago. That was like, he was just excited. And I was trying to convey like, maybe you don't want to smile so much. Okay, let's go again right away.

Yes. I think your impulse is to smile. Yeah. I think this scene will play better without smiling at all because you're finding out shocking information. Okay. So it's still playing a little bit too light, I think. Unless you were smiling while you met him. But I feel I know.

Yeah, so I imagine you to be kind of annoyed and upset in this stuff. Okay. Let's try to do it very seriously. Okay. Great. Then remember, Paul, very serious. Look upset. Action.

It's good to meet you, Bob. I wanted to ask you right off. How long were you married to Audrey? We were only married four months. Four months? You couldn't take her lies anymore. After two months of marriage, she asked me to put her name on all my assets. Oh, I'm sorry.

I wasn't thinking that the cameras were rolling on me at the time. And, you know, sometimes I was aware of that on set because we had this amazing documentarian named Jason Tippett, who was this third camera who would just kind of wander around. Sometimes I would set him up, be like, okay, cover this from here. We're going to do this, or I'm going to have the address come over here. You should plant it right there. Other times he would just wander around and follow Paul and just capture things. And that's when I wave him off in the second episode.

Yeah, I really just didn't want to be in it for a long time. I just really didn't want to be in it. And eventually I had to admit that I had to be in it. Well, it also really helps. You know, frankly, your presence helps solidify that layer's reality. That layer's reality includes you, your voice, your presence. And that is actually quite helpful. Yeah, that's what I thought.

I thought, oh, baby, the only people will just get what's going on. And without certain things that kind of held a viewer's hand a little bit, the whole thing was just way too complicated and way too hard to understand. So I tried to have a balance there. What can you tell us as we get to the end here? I want to kind of use this episode as something where people, if you've not seen it, we're not going to reveal too much, but are we building to, you know, in these, you know, last couple of episodes?

There's only six, they're half hour episodes. But is there a shocking twist? Is there going to be something in the sixth episode that is going to change our perspective of the entire thing? I think so, yeah, I hope so. I mean, to me, towards the end, a lot of it was about, I felt like because this was about real people in their lives, I did have a responsibility to determine the truth of what happened

as best I could. And so a lot of the finale dives into that and the consequences of that. And, you know, I just literally this morning, we finished mixing the finale. We've still been working on it. So it comes out, yeah, in a basically a week after this air. So, you know, very, very soon and we're just finishing it. This thing has kept changing daily basically for the past few months. I went in to this finale with three sentences.

I had no idea what would be in it except a few scenes. I knew I wanted to shoot. But really, it's been a big question mark. It's been a big work of like trying to discover what the story is and tell it in the right way. And there's a lot going on in the last one and the last two. And in five as well, you'll see it's almost an entirely different show than it started out as.

So, yeah, it's going to keep keep throwing things at you. And I guess like the question also is, you know, as you are, as you are kind of capturing it, like, you know, part of the invitation to the premiere was that you were taping it as well. So, there is something really interesting about doing a documentary series, which is capturing a reaction to the documentary series. Like, you don't often, most of these things are done in a vacuum, you know, and you have to wait for something like, you know,

like those three guys who are convicted of murdering that child, you know, my brother's keeper and stuff like that. So, like, years later, we follow up, you know, we see it from a different perspective, but you are able to within the original series do like the staircase even. It's like we wait 10 years and we get a different perspective. But like, is that, I mean, does that throw you for another loop too? I mean, because it is like, oh, shit, now I have to incorporate this whole. It's having, yeah, it's having to really be ready to pivot.

And there are big question marks about the finale, about showing Paul the show, all this stuff that we didn't know how it was going to go. Our ending was until very recently, within the last few weeks, and really just the last three days, we kind of finished it, finished editing. So, yeah, it's something we wanted to be able, you know, the show is very meta. It is very much about making of itself. And part of the ending is about the end of that process. Yeah. I love it. Well, Jason, you are great.

If you are not watching the show, check it out. You've definitely enjoyed Jason's work. And I would say this, more than anybody I know, from back in the day, you literally almost kill yourself to make these things. Like, you know, from, from editing all night, we were doing Human Giant, and they're running tapes to a machine to get like 15 minutes before it needed to be. I was thinking those Air Force drugs, right? I was going to say that, but I didn't know if you wanted me to say that.

Yeah, you were taking Air Force drugs to stay awake. What you did during Borat 2, you know, what you did, you know. Yeah, like you're escaping militias. You are, you are somebody who, you know, as much as you don't want the camera on you, you do very camera worthy things. Like you are in the mix, you know, you were in the, you're in the hotel room for Rudy Giuliani. Like you are, you've done, you're there. And I feel like that's the other part of this is it doesn't feel safe in a way where you like,

you didn't take the easy way out. So I think across the board, I think it's really hard to top like, what's next? How can you make a documentary that is doing things more and more interesting? And I think that you did it in so many ways. So I really hope everyone checks out Paul T. Goldman. And you can sign up for Peacock right now. And you have probably a 30 day free trial or a week free trial. And you can do the whole thing.

Thankfully. You can find McGroober. You can find some other great Peacock shows. Oh, they're killing it. We are lady parts. There's stuff to watch on Peacock. But make this, make this the reason that if you don't have it, make this the reason you do that free, that free trial period.

So you can get into the show. It's only $4.99 a month. And when you do, when you do make sure you watch it all the way through, set it up to auto play and watch every episode all the way through. And make sure you select the boss baby as your avatar. Peacock is cute. Fun. Yeah.

Jason, thank you so much for being here. Paul T. Goldman on Peacock right now. Yeah, check it out. Thanks guys. All right. Thank you so much, Jason Molnar for chatting with us and be sure to check out Paul T. Goldman on Peacock right now. And for all you singer songwriters out there, remember,

we're always accepting new songs for just chat and last look segments, whatever you want to do, send them into how did this get made at your wolf.com. And don't forget to keep them on the short side. Now we got Ghost in the Machine and Morbius out of the way. Let's talk about next week's movie. We are going from bloodlust to studlust. That's right. Next week we are watching open marriage.

Oh, people, I'm so excited for you to see this movie. Here's a short breakdown of the plot to save their struggling marriage. Becca and Ron agree to an open relationship with their friends, Mindy and Max, and they're ill prepared for the jealousy, heartbreak, and betrayal that soon follows. The movie has zero reviews on Rotten Tomatoes and that's only because it's a lifetime film, so it's a little tricky to get reviews there. So we're going to turn to my favorite site, Letterbox,

and Greg on Letterbox says this movie wants to be horny, but turns out to be the opposite of horny. Let's take a listen to the trailer of open marriage. Ron and Becca are a young couple whose marriage is on the decline. Now, an indecent proposal from old friends. How's your sex life these days? Mindy and I have been on an extraordinary adventure. We've opened our marriage.

Wait, so you guys are having sex with other people? He's about to awaken a sleeping passion. What is this place? It's an underground club. So who wants to go first? You can stream open marriage on Amazon Prime Video, Tubi and Pluto. You can also rent it on YouTube and Google Play.

I encourage you to check out this movie maybe on Hoopla or Canopy, which are digital media services offered by your local public library that allow you to borrow movies, music, audio books, e-comics, and more for computer tablet and phone. Even your TV. Just try it for free. Your public library. It's there for you. That is it for the show. Please remember to rate and review. It helps if you listen on Apple Podcasts.

Make sure you are following us and visit us on social media at HDTGM. We are releasing some more bonus content from the Morbius episode exclusively on our social. So be on the lookout for video of me showing Jason and June a bunch of Morbius memes. And you might get your answer to why Darth Maul is on our Morbius shirt for commercial free access to How Did This Get Made? and our entire archive and so much more. Sign up for Stitcher Premium for a free one month trial.

Use the code bonkers as B-O-N-K-E-R-S. And a big thank you to our producers, Scott Sonny, Molly Reynolds, our movie picking producer, Avril Hally, our engineer, Alex Gonzalez, and our publisher, July Diaz. We will see you next week for Open Marriage.