Mike Birbiglia's Working It Out - 86. Wendy MacNaughton: Putting On Your Art Eyes

Episode Date: November 21, 2022

Wendy MacNaughton is an acclaimed visual artist whose work you’ve probably seen and/or love. Between illustrating the bestselling cookbook Salt Fat Acid Heat, drawing for the New York Times, and teaching “Draw Together” online art classes for kids, she somehow found the time to design the artwork for Mike’s show The Old Man and the Pool, as well as co-design the cover art for The New One book. Mike talks with Wendy about the process of finding one’s artistic voice, turning her car into a mobile art studio, and the relationship between writing jokes and drawing pictures.Please consider donating to Girls Garage

I mean, a lot of people ask who are starting off drawing, and I'm sure you get this maybe with comedy and jokes too. People say, well, how do I develop my own style? Like, well, first you copy a lot of people, right? You just do everything, just riff off of everybody. But then I ask them, how do you figure out your handwriting? Like, you just did it, right? You just wrote, and you just kept writing and writing and writing and eventually you created a handwriting

that nobody else's handwriting looks like. We are back with a new episode of Working It Out. That's the voice of Wendy McNaughton. She is possibly my favorite artist, visual artist on the face of the earth. You probably know her work. She drew all the pictures in Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat, which is like this book that sold a zillion copies.

It's incredible. She did the Old Man in the Pool artwork with Jen, my wife Jen's photograph of me in the pool. That's super cool thing. She did the new one book cover along with Crystal Saka. For a period of time, she was a journalist slash artist for the New York Times. So she would do these really fascinating drawings of real people, including, we talk about today, in Guantanamo Bay. She drew the trials in Guantanamo Bay.

They're astonishing. As a matter of fact, you should consider following along. Just, you know, Google Guantanamo Bay, Wendy McNaughton, New York Times. You'll see these incredible, incredible drawings. She's just like a one-of-a-kind artist. And we talk a lot today about the relationship between visual art and comedy and joke writing and all kinds of art and how they're sort of all interrelated. And I would be remiss if I didn't mention she has an incredible series for kids called Draw Together. And Una loves it. I know tons of kids who love this series. You can see them on YouTube.

You can go to her site, which is drawtogether.studio, which has a nonprofit component with video supplies for underfunded art programs. And she's phenomenal. She's at Wendy Mac on Instagram. And she was in town for the Broadway show, and that's why we recorded this. The show is up and running,

which is why we've had reruns the last couple weeks. I've just been so busy with it, but it's so fun. We're doing eight shows a week at Lincoln Center, Vivian Beaumont Theater. It's the old man and the pool.

If you want tickets, go to mikeonbroadway.com or go to this site or app called Today Tix. That seems to be the least expensive way to get tickets, and I keep sending people there

because there's just a lot of good deals on there. I think you're going to love this conversation. It's a one-of-a-kind conversation. We've never had a strictly visual artist on before, and so I'm going to send you to Instagram and TikTok to check out some of the videos of this stuff because visually it's really cool, and at one point it's not on the audio,

but she teaches me how to draw, which I think will end up being a video too. Enjoy my conversation with the great Wendy McNaughton. We're working it. We were talking the other day about how sometimes art scales, and sometimes it doesn't scale. So sometimes you'll make something, because art's so personal,

you do it alone in a room, or alone in a park, or alone whatever. And then sometimes it ends up with your book, with Samin, Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat, in a million homes. Yeah, that's kind of crazy. And then sometimes it's just in your notebook, right? Right. And I don't think if you think, like if, I don't know how this is with you,

with what you do, but if I start thinking about where something's going to end up, like when I'm actually making it, that's a really surefire way to fuck it up. That's a loser strategy. Kind of doesn't work. John Mulaney and I talk about that sometimes with jokes. If you imagine a laugh, there will not be a laugh.

Oh, yeah, that makes a lot of sense. Similar. Yeah, and I think that some people, but everybody works differently, like visually speaking. I don't know anything about comedy or anything about anything really, but I know like a little bit about drawing and how different artists work. And there are some people who think about how they want things to look, like when they plan it out. They do a sketch, and then they do like three sketches, and then they do a final, and then they tweak it, and then it's done. But I don't know where a drawing is going when I start.

I might have an idea of what I want to do, but then once the pencil or pen is down on the page or the paint or whatever, it goes in a totally different direction. So I don't know how somebody would, as you say, try and think a joke is funny and then tell that. I don't think I could try and do a good drawing and it turn out well.

You just kind of do what's in the moment. That's why art and commerce have a challenging dynamic. Say more. Because in other words, I'm always reluctant. You're my friend, but I'm always reluctant to ask my friends to work on something for a few reasons. One is I don't want to offend them in some business way of like, I'm bigger than that.

I wouldn't do it. Trust me, I've had these. Has that happened to you? I've had a couple of these over the years. They're wild. Really? Yeah, yeah, I have. They make me cringe.

I can't imagine that happening. Yeah, no, it's been an odd thing. And then there's the other version, which harkens back to what we're talking about, which is I don't know if you will have a vision for something that you would be proud of making that also coincides with the show, The Old Man in the Pool, that I'm writing. coincides with the show, The Old Man in the Pool, that I'm writing. So I think at one point I showed you the photo that Jen had taken, and you were like, oh, you could do this, this, and this,

and this could be something. And I don't even think that I asked you. I think you had an idea, and then I was like, oh, then it gave me permission to ask. I think that's true. I think we talked about it, and then I went in some direction, and then you came back with that photo, and then it kind of all came together. And I think that's a really good collaboration, right? When you have kind of some nebulous, loose feeling,

not an idea of what it's going to look like, but maybe what it's going to feel like, right? And then I kind of see whatever you have or get a sense of that feeling and then go in my direction and we make something that like neither of us would have come up with on our own. That's when it happens well. I think that's the best case scenario. And I think even like that photo, for example,

I think it's good that it wasn't on a soundstage with a swimming pool. You know what I mean? Well, I love that you like that. With lights everywhere. Yeah, I mean, that's the same way. So I think most artists, actually, especially at your level, would probably want maybe more control over things like that. Because you're giving up a lot when you're just using a snapshot.

It's a pretty, for any folks who haven't seen it, I'm sure everybody's seen it by now, but if anybody hasn't, it's a very vulnerable photo. You're just wearing your swim trunks in a pool. Gosh, I think I look great. My world is crashing around me. Vulnerable is handsome and sexy, Mike. Absolutely. It's a very vulnerable shot that does look like, yeah, authentic, right? It's a human body yeah in a vulnerable state floating in the water yeah yeah and i tried to do a bunch of different styles of lettering some were more like watery or bubbly or whatever but they all looked kind of contrived and it didn't match like the authenticity and

vulnerability of the photo yeah so it became like really simple. It's funny because like, so you've drawn for a whole period of time, you were a drawing journalist, an illustrating journalist for the New York Times. Yeah. Which someone else does now. Julia Rothman does it now. She's amazing. She does it with her writing partner, Shana Feinberg.

It was the first drawn journalism column in the New York Times. It was very cool that they're willing to take a big leap with somebody like me. What's interesting about that to me, partly, is that I don't know if this is the intention of it. In some ways, when I've read those and looked at your journalistic drawings, it sort of points to the subjectivity of journalism in a certain way. Say more about that.

Because it's your perspective. Well, but it's always journalist perspective. Right, right. It always is. And there's this whole thing. You can go on a spiel. Sure. You want a spiel?

No, I want. You want the spiel. Have I got a podcast for you? Great. Okay. So there is this idea of, so like, oh,'re no i'm gonna go deep just for a second bear with me so for a long time painting was this thing that represented what we wanted reality to be so like the kings would hire the artists to like put up these portraits they don't really look like

them but it was the idea of what that person looked like and that was considered reality right yeah and then photography came along. What? And then, well, what is painting? If you can actually show what's real, what happens to painting? So then all of a sudden they're painting grids and splotches and splatters and all that stuff, which is great. But painting became something totally different because photography was what's real.

The literal. But it's only in the past, whatever, 25 years from that, people started thinking, well, wait a second. Like the photographers are choosing like what is in and out of the frame. They're choosing like the kind of feeling that the photograph is bringing up. It's totally subjective. Yeah. So, but it still kind of tricks you because it's like made with this machine

and it's in a newspaper and it's kind of the best we can do. So, with drawing, this drawn journalism thing that I do, my goal with it is to just completely embrace the subjectivity. Yes. and real story that I can possibly present is by doing my very best to spend as much time as I can with somebody to get a real sense of who they are, use their own words, and combine that with drawings that are done mostly from life and put those together and tell a story. So when somebody looks at it, they're not seeing a kind of hard machine-made idea of objective reality. They're seeing what Wendy experienced in that moment. And if you trust me, then that's the most real that it can be. I think it's interesting the thing you're saying about photography because

that was like a huge revelation when I was in college studying photography and drawing for the first time because there's this conception and there's this conception of I feel like from childhood I think it's a very child you know thing which is you're the good artist in the class like I remember it was like you, I remember like in fourth grade, like there was like a girl in the class who was like, she's the drawer of the class, right? Yeah. And then the rest of us were like, we're not the drawers.

But the truth is we're all the drawers. Totally. Did your teacher say anything to you? I don't think so. No, we were never corrected on it. And so I feel like when I got to college, it was my screenwriting professor, this guy John Glavin, and I was studying screenwriting very intensely.

And he goes, you know, what you should really be doing is taking photography classes and drawing classes if you want to make films. Oh. Because really it's about framing. It's about visual framing. Filmmaking is about visual framing. And did you take some classes? I think my drawing classes are the thing that changed the way I looked at all art for the rest of my life. Really? What do you remember from your classes?

I just remember the concept that when I see that bottle here on the table that I draw what I see and not what I imagine a bottle looks like. And it's so simple of an idea. But once my eyes were open to that idea, I was like, oh, that applies to everything. That applies to improv. If I initiate a scene where I play a mailman, I don't play what I imagine a mailman would be like.

I play it like a person who I've met who very well could be a mailman. So I'm more personally related to the character. Oh, that's so interesting. I didn't think about that connection at all. Yeah, we did a, I think the first time that you and I met, we did this drawing exercise that I do with a lot of people when I ask people to look at each other and draw each other for a minute or two minutes without looking down at the paper. And that's one of my favorite things to do with people who say they can't draw or they're not drawers or whatever. Because that drawing has nothing to do with making a good drawing. I'd argue most of the best drawing in the world has nothing to do with making a quote-unquote good drawing. It has to do with learning to look and see what's actually in front of us.

And when two people do that for a minute or two and they don't look away, which is what we're usually trained to do, it creates this intimacy that I think is's like magical, like magic stuff happens after that. We just don't do enough like looking. And that's what joke writing is too. I mean, it's just looking. It's just paying attention. How do you notice things when you're like, so if I'm going to go get a cup of coffee right now, I'll just walk down the street and I'll get a cup of coffee and I'll come back and I'll probably look at my phone and I won't really notice anything or anybody for that matter.

But I do have this little switch in my brain that I turn and I kind of draw together, which is the kids drawing classes we do. I call it putting on our art eyes. classes we do um i call i call it putting on our art eyes if i put on my art eyes like it's this switch and i start noticing things in a really different way and i start framing things and um i guess that's called paying attention yeah right but is there something like do you switch between modes like that too are you always on yeah so like like like I find that the job of a comedian is just to be, like you're saying, art eyes, being open, listening, paying attention. Like, you know, one of my jokes from a few years ago was like walking into a cafe here,

and this woman in front of me in line says to her son, like, Arrow, if I don't get my coffee soon, I am going to die, literally. And I just thought that was really funny. Just the dialogue of that. So I just wrote that in my notebook. I just thought it was funny. I was like, it's not a joke, but it's funny. And then I go home and it's in my notebook.

And then I wrote the joke, which is like, what I wanted to say to the woman was, the joke, which is like, what I wanted to say to the woman was like, I don't think that maybe the word literally is the best word for the situation. Because if your son thinks that that's what literally means, he might think he's an arrow. And if he is an arrow and he hugs you, you might die literally. And it's so stupid, but it's all just from, like you were saying, art eyes. Yeah, from your art eyes. You caught it. And so you keep a notebook and you write notes.

Like you don't write the jokes down. I have piles and piles of the notebooks. And you carry them in a pocket? Yeah. So I carry a sketchbook, right? And that sketchbook, sometimes the drawings I do in that will end up being a finished drawing. I'll go home and I'll paint it or something like that. But then similar to you, I'll also just take those drawings and those will kind of put them together in a way and they become a final thing. I don't really know many people who make stuff who don't carry around some kind of a little notebook or something.

It's a tricky moment we're in right now because when you walk down the street, and I'm guilty of this too, you just see a ton of people staring at their phone, and that's not where artists come from. No. Have you ever gotten a good idea from looking at Instagram? No. You got made friends, you know, or gotten stuff out there, right? Friends. Friends. Friends.

They like you, right? Yes, exactly. But you're right. No, I've never gotten a good idea from Instagram or Twitter or something. No. And yet, like I do find myself scrolling and thinking like maybe if I keep scrolling, I'll hit a good idea, you know? And it just doesn't. No, it only, you only, like I only find good ideas or draw good things through actually drawing. Shocking, right? But it's hard to switch over to that gear sometimes with this damn machine

in the hands. It's interesting though, like the thing you're saying about the exercise of just drawing someone, it is sort of an act of love in a certain way because you're seeing the person. You're spending time looking and thinking about that person. Yeah, we say in Draw Together, drawing is looking and looking is loving. Love that. Yeah. Yeah. What's interesting is like you've drawn stuff,

like draw together with kids, and then you've drawn stuff, like draw together with kids, and then you've drawn very serious stuff, like you drew some of the folks, the detainees at Guantanamo Bay. Yeah. And so those are two very different things. They are very different things. Although I would argue there's a through line in everything.

Drawing a good picture is not very interesting to me. The process of drawing and looking is very interesting to me. I feel lucky I get to connect with people through drawing. That's all it is for me. Drawing is a way to connect with people. Guantanamo Bay, that was really intense. But the opportunity to be there and witness something, because there's no cameras allowed in Guantanamo Bay, right? So who hired you? The New York Times. So they got permission from the military? Yes. Do you really want me to tell you about this?

Yeah, sure. Yeah, yeah, please. On a comedy podcast? Oh, yeah, yeah. Okay. Let's talk about Gitmo. I think people are smart enough to listen to this podcast and know that it's not all laughs.

Oh, boy. So in Guantanamo Bay, I think I was the fifth artist who'd ever been allowed on base at Guantanamo Bay and the first that the New York Times had flown out there. You have to get permission from the military. And I was there to document the war court. I worked with a woman named Carol Rosenberg who's been there since before they opened. And she is the main reporter for the New York Times who covers it and makes sure that there's always attention being put on what's happening there and bringing stuff to light. And she wanted to do a story that was kind of about the aesthetics of the courtroom and

specifically like, it's super weird. Like I was saying before, like your sweatshirt tells a story, right? In the Guantanamo Bay courtroom, everything everybody wears and how they sit and how they move all tells a story about what's going on politically. It's like a theater. And I hope it's okay for me to be saying all of this. Yeah, yeah, I think so. I've spoken to the president. Okay, you got permission? He said it's fine. Okay, good. So yeah, so I had to go through and get all of the FBI security clearances and all

that kind of stuff. And then went out there with all my pens and my papers and went to the courtroom. This is the craziest thing about drawing in Guantanamo Bay. Wow, these are stunning. I'm just looking at these. People have to follow along by going. Just search for Guantanamo Bay and Wendy McNaughton, and you'll see these drawings. They're incredible.

So the ones you're looking at there, I wrote a piece about what it's like to draw there and the challenges of it. So one of the reasons that this assignment, it was a journalistic assignment, made sense for me is because I draw from life, like almost exclusively. And so I could sit in the courtroom, but I'm not a sketch artist per se.

Like I really try and capture a moment. Everything that you draw in the observation room of the courtroom has to be finished by the time you leave. Oh my gosh. So you can't make changes afterwards. You can't change anything. It's literally illegal to change things. Literally.

So an officer had to come into the courtroom and look at every drawing that I did and made sure that there was nothing that was not supposed to be included because there was all these things I was not allowed to draw. Wow. Couldn't include any of that stuff. And if it was approved to go out into the world,

the person would take a sticker and put it on the drawing and then sign it and say, this drawing has been approved for release by the military. Wow. It was the most intense drawing experience I've had. And I would not say that I would love to do it again. Being in Guantanamo Bay for a week was not anything I would really wish on anybody. But I'm glad that the reporters there are doing what she's doing.

And it was a huge honor to be able to do it and to be able to capture these images and share them with people because otherwise they would not be out there. Right. they would not be out there. Right. So the other hard thing about this, again, this is probably too intense for your podcast, but like the real, real story of this is one of the main instructions I was given is that I was not allowed to make eye contact

with anybody in the courtroom. Oh. So like KSM, the guy who was kind of the orchestrator of 9-11, he was in there. And I was not allowed, I had to draw him, but I was not allowed to make eye contact with him. And the premise of all of my work is like to humanize people and to bring people, like make a connection between the viewer and the subject. And so I had to, I wasn't allowed to connect with them myself. So it was like an emotionally kind of impossible feat.

So in other words, you couldn't speak with them, but you could look at them. But they couldn't look at you? No, they could look at me and I could look at them. But if we made eye contact, I was told to look through them. Oh, my gosh. That's so strange. It's so strange. It's so strange. And then you do.

I can't tell you how against everything like in my cells that goes. Yeah. But it's like that's the job. And that's why in a way like I'll say I do journalism, but there is this idea of like this objectivity and being able to look through somebody and just tell the facts. And I think that's a load of crap. I think it's.

It feels false. Totally false. Well, everything, gosh. I can't believe we just went down a KSM rabbit hole. But I want to zoom out to just art and jokes and comedy and the relationship between all these things for a second because I want to point out that whenever I talk to young comics and they want advice and and I'm guessing

it's the same in the universe of drawing but I don't know this to be true is is I always say keep trying to find your voice keep trying to find your version of whatever this is. It's like there's going to be a thousand people's jokes on the midterm elections, let's say. I don't do political comedy. But what's the one that's you? What's deep inside you in relationship to that? That's the only thing that's interesting. Right.

I think that's true. That goes back to like the handwriting thing. Yeah. This is your handwriting. Yeah. I mean, a lot of people ask who are starting off drawing, and I'm sure you get this maybe with comedy and jokes too. People say, well, how do I develop my own style? First, you copy a lot of people. You just do everything, just riff off of everybody. But then I ask them, how do you figure out your handwriting? You just did it. You just wrote and you just kept writing and writing and writing and eventually you created a handwriting that nobody else's handwriting looks like.

That's right. My handwriting is projected onto a screen in The Old Man and the Pool, and it is not pretty. But it's so authentic. But it's interesting. That's what it is. It's yours. And it's human.

Yeah. And that's what people are showing up for. Right. That's right. And I think if you had some font that looked human and was nicely kerned and all of that stuff, it would feel very eerie and not like you. Yeah. Right? But getting back to not like you. Yeah. Right?

Oh, but getting back to the college thing. Yeah. So my college professor told me to take a drawing course. And it changed the way that I looked at framing. And I just still think about that. You know, if you take, for example, this bottle we're looking at, and it's like, you could shoot it aerial, and that's a completely unique thing. You could do an ultra, you know, close-up of the label,

and that's a unique approach. You could do it from a low-angle shot and give the bottle power. Listen to you. I mean, I guess that's the same as like a film, right? Same as film, yeah. Right. Do you do that with jokes? Like do you try and come at it from different angles?

Yeah, so you take the same joke and you go like, well, what if I did it, you know, extremely passionately? did it extremely passionately? What if I did it extremely in a self-deprecating way? What are the different angles of the same story? And do you do that in advance of a show or is that part of you doing shows and like working stuff out on stage? It's all in the draft process.

So like, that's why I'm curious. I'm curious about how many drafts you go through for a typical drawing. Obviously the Guantanamo Bay example, you can't do multiple drafts, but like for me, of a typical joke, there'll be five, 10, 15, maybe 20 drafts of the same joke. Of my shows, there's 20, 30, 40, 50 drafts of the same show by the time it reaches people. And I'm just trying to understand the contours of it so that I can deliver something that people, honestly, I'm not trying to be popular,

but I am trying to connect with as many people as possible with the thing I'm not trying to be popular, but I am trying to connect with as many people as possible with the thing I'm doing. Yeah. Which is like an odd, it's a subtle distinction. No, I get it. I get that distinction because you're also, you're trying to, to go back to what you said, like very much be real from you, right?

If you start trying to be popular, then you're asking what other people want you to do and you start doing that, right? Which you're going to lose, get lost in. But I guess I'm in awe. I work so differently than you in that. After you've done all those drafts, then you go on stage and then you're making little tweaks. I've seen The Old Man and the Pool three times now and it's been three different experiences. There's just been subtle and a couple dramatic shifts that have made big changes, right?

You saw it in Berkeley, Los Angeles, and then in New York. Right, and so the Berkeley one had a totally different ending, right? And then both Los Angeles and now New York has this, I'm not going to say anything about it, but it's like really powerful. And part of that, by the way, was in Berkeley, the change of the ending was based on a note that Pete Docter gave us. Pete Docter, head of Pixar, director of Up and Inside Out. Basically, sometimes to grill our artistic friends,

we'll say, because they'll go, great show. And then we'll say to them, like, what do you say to your partner on the ride home? That's such a good question. What do you say? Like, it was good, but there's one thing. And we try to get to that. Yeah.

But what's the but? What's the thing that's like nagging at you? And do people want to share that with you? Sometimes they do, sometimes they don't. Over the years there have been a handful of instances where I've asked people I admire, what's the butt? And the other trick I ask people is,

were you ever confused? Sometimes what they're quote unquote confused about is actually what they don't like. But they're not going to say they don't like it because they're quote unquote confused about is actually what they don't like but they're not gonna say they don't like it because they're your friend right that's that's smart p doctor had said this thing about the ending which is that there was a version of the ending where he was like you're kind of telling us uh-huh the whole the whole show is a story the story a story we're with you we're with you we're with you and now're with you, we're with you. And now I'm going to tell you something. Becomes like about the thing instead of the thing.

Yeah. So then it stops being a story and it starts to be, oh, he brought us here to tell us a thing as opposed to us arriving at something emotionally on our own. It's just so, I'm very in awe of what you do. It's really so different. The process, like I'm way too much a perfectionist to be able to do the process of what you do. If there is an equivalent in drawing, and there is like people who do sketch and sketches and sketches and then they do a painting. Yeah. That would be the equivalent, I guess. Right. Especially if you're doing oil painting, because then when you do the oil painting, you can erase everything and keep going.

But I used to paint in oils and I am a perfectionist, which meant that I kept changing it and changing it and changing it until it was like a muddy mess. I just lost track of the whole feeling and why I was doing it in the first place. That's part of the reasons why I use watercolors and only draw with pen. You can't erase a pen and you can't redo a watercolor. You just keep going, right? If you mess up a watercolor, you either got to change your tack and work with it or crumple it up and throw it away and start over. So it keeps me in the moment. It keeps me like, keeps the energy of whatever I'm trying to draw, whether that be from something I'm observing, which it usually is, or something that's coming from inside.

Like it's really present right there and I can't overthink it. Yeah. I guess we like figure out mediums that support our own neuroses or whatever they are. Right. Right?

Yeah, but if I had to, if I had the opportunity to redo and redo and redo things, I don't, I think I'd like drive it into the ground. But you managed to like make it better and better and better and better. But you did like the cover of the new one. And you sent me a thing that is framed in me and Jenny's kitchen, which is the various like, I wouldn't even, I don't know how,

the different paint colors on the side that was the color palette. Yeah. And then part of the cover painted. But I'm like, well, which part of that? Is that mid-process? No, because that's the actual thing. No, I think that was pretty much it. I think what I sent you, I think maybe we laid in a background color

or something like that. But no, I sent you the art. That's the master. That's the master drawing. Yeah, that's it. That's the finished final drawing. Yeah. We did some sketches though.

Remember that I was like on the road and in the back of my little mobile studio. Sort of living in your mobile studio car thing. Nice way of saying living in my car. Yeah. I've been in this car. When I was in Berkeley, you showed me this guy. I living in my car, yeah. Yeah, well, I've been in this car. When I was in Berkeley, you showed me this car.

I rode in this car with you. It's a car that you created. This is extraordinary. We have to post this on Instagram so people understand what I mean. Wendy's at Wendy Mac, and I'm at Upper Bigs, but we'll post this. It's like you created essentially almost like a drawing work studio kind of easel situation in your trunk of your car.

Is that anything like what it is? Yeah, it is. It's a really good close. Yeah. It's a Honda Element, I'll have you know. Wow. Not just any car. Sponsored?

Sponsored? Yeah. Please, I'm waiting. I'm waiting for them. Oh, you're waiting for them, I'll have you know. Wow. Not just any car. Sponsored? Sponsored? Yeah, please, I'm waiting. I'm waiting for them. Oh, you're waiting for them? I'm waiting for them. Oh, come on, Honda Element. Yeah, Honda Element. Come on.

Also, they stopped making them. Oh, they did? So if they decide to relaunch them, which I hear they might do. Oh, all right. And if they do plan on doing that, they'll make some of it. All right, heads up, Honda Element. I worked with a woodworker to totally remove the interior of the back of the car, like rip out all the plastic and then build out an art studio in the back

where I can both draw, paint, and sleep. It's tight. It's cozy. But it's good. I love it. So you sleep in it? I do. Yeah.

And you've seen it. It's not luxurious. It's not huge. It's not huge. And I am not that petite. So it's cozy. Where's a safe? I mean, I've slept in my car a handful of times.

I've had a long career. Where do you sleep? It wasn't always going so well. It's a hotel on wheels. Well, yeah, early in my career, I did have a handful of times where I slept in my car. Of course. But where do you do it so it's safe? I've slept in truck stops.

I've slept on the side of the road. I've slept in parking lots. Wow. Yeah, I know. But you know what? It sounds really gutsy, but I have this thing called like a lock. Right, a lock, sure.

I just lock my door. And then I'm locked inside. And I have these little special windows I put up so you can't see, and it's all blackout windows. People can't see into it. I sleep with a little knife next to me. You know, I'm totally safe. Have you had to use the knife?

Not yet. Not yet? Not yet. Not yet? Not yet. All right, so these are some slow round questions. What do you find the hardest to represent graphically? Here's the thing. Nothing is hard to draw if you don't mind doing a shitty job at it. Like if you're trying to do it right, everything's hard to draw.

But if you give that up and do the trick of like drawing without looking down or something like that, you can pretty much draw anything. And I don't – I do draw like that a lot, like without looking down. Yeah. Yeah. Wow. Were you the kid growing up who was like she's the good drawer in the class? I was. You were? Yeah, yeah. I was for a little while until I went to art school and then I became like not the good kid.

That's super hard. Interesting. Yeah. When you go from being like the, I remember in high school, like the drawing I did of, you know, Dr. Zeus or whatever got onto the t-shirt and I won $150. And it was like the biggest thing ever. And then I thought, yeah, I can be a professional artist. And then I went to art school and I was bottom of the heap. Everybody else said, oh my God. And then I stopped drawing for 10 years. Yeah.

Yeah. Did you really? Yeah. We don't have to go there. After art school? During art school. Really? Remember that thing I said about being a perfectionist?

The thing that goes along with being a perfectionist is being really hard on yourself and not giving your, like if you're not the best or doing the best thing, then you quit. It sucks. And I quit. I quit drawing and then started 10 years later. This is huge. This is huge. So there's people who are listening to this or watching this who are perfectionists who have stopped.

How do you start again? That's a really good question. Do you think people, I think probably a lot of people listening does that. Everybody. Everybody. I know so many people who are great, great artists and writers who are perfectionists and then they stop doing it. Why? I think it's the most common thing. Why do they do it?

Because they get a knock. No, they get some kind of a knock, right? Yeah, they feel like they can't execute the thing that's in their head as well as they want it to. I know, but of course, because they do have these big ideas and the only way to do it is to keep doing it. Right? But it's really hard to stick

with when you're doing the shitty stuff. What's the answer? What's the answer? What's answer what's the solution keep doing it i know keep making i know crappy stuff i know like that's it and also like oh here other trick is keep putting it out there so that everything like i think you do this really well because you're always putting stuff out there it almost devalues it a little bit i'm not saying your work is invaluable it's so valuable really well because you're always putting stuff out there. It almost devalues it a little bit. I'm not saying your work isn't valuable. It's so valuable. But when you're putting out that much, you can't be as precious with everything.

Here's another way to look at it, too. I know a lot of filmmakers like this. They make one film. They don't make another one because they're going to fuck it up or whatever. Especially if that first film did really well. Right. It's a very common thing. they're going to fuck it up or whatever. Especially if that first film did really well. Right.

Right? Yeah. It's a very common thing. The people who we admire, you know, the Robert Altmans of the world, the Orson Wellses of the world, this stuff that we admire, they think they fucked it up. Right? If Robert Altman were alive, he'd go, I fucked up Nashville. Oh, my God.

Here's what's wrong with it. Oh, my God. Here's what's wrong with it. Oh, my God. Right? Can you imagine? And the other thing is we don't see what is in his head. Yeah. We see what's on the screen. Exactly.

And our bar is here, low. His bar is up above the ceiling. Yeah. And he ends up getting it somewhere in the middle. So we're like, holy shit. Yeah. But we don't see this stuff, right, in between. Yeah. You're only privy to the holy shit. Yeah. But we don't see this stuff, right, in between. You don't, yeah.

You only see the, you're only privy to the final draft. Right. And then you just assume that was the first draft because your brain does a mental trick that makes it just jump onto the screen. Right. As Quentin, you know, oh, it's Quentin Tarantino's, that's not Quentin Tarantino's first cut.

Yeah. That you're watching. That's Pulp Fiction draft 15. Yeah. And nobody sees the other 14 or the things that Quentin is upset that didn't get in the movie that he wanted. Sure. Yeah. So we're all just probably really, really hard on ourselves.

What do we do about it? We make mistakes over and over again. Over and over again. And then we release the mistakes. Yeah. And that's the again. And then we release the mistakes. Yeah. And that's the hard thing. You got to release the mistakes. I know there's things wrong with my movies and my shows.

I can see the flaws. Yeah. It's painful. Some nights I'm on stage, middle of the show. Yeah. This isn't as good as it could be. That's my inner monologue. When you're in the middle of it?

Yeah. What do you do when that happens? As good as it could be. That's my inner monologue. When you're in the middle of it? Yeah. What do you do when that happens? I just try to find it, find the most inspired version within the constraints of the words that I have. Mm-hmm.

And then how do you switch your feeling inside? You just keep going? I find that from the audience. The audience gives me the energy. So if they're laughing at something, that lights me up because I love it when people laugh. Yeah. What's a nickname that you've had in your life that's either good or bad? Oh, wow. McNotty. McNotty, that's hilarious. Yeah. Let's just leave it at that. I like McNotty.

It's both good and bad. What is your earliest memory? I remember standing up in my crib looking out the window at San Francisco. Oh, my gosh. I remember the door opening, and I wasn't supposed to be standing up in my crib. Oh. That's what I remember. I've also seen a photo of that, so I don't know if I remember it or not.

If it's real. But I choose to remember that. Oh, what's the thing that you crave most in art or film or television or any art you're enjoying? What do you crave most in it? Is there a quality that's consistent or a theme? I don't like things that take themselves too seriously. I don't have much of a tolerance for that. So I guess the positive way of saying that would be that I like things that are a bit humorous and a bit light and might be able to look at something that might be real challenging or something like that, but do it with a little bit of humanity and levity.

What's the best piece of advice that you've been given that you used? One is, so being a perfectionist, I can work on things forever, right? And so if you told me like, I remember I was given an assignment to do a story. I'm like, but I'm going to need a month to do the story well. And my editor was like, yeah, but you only have two days. I'm like, but I need a month. He's like, well, why don't you see what you can do in two days. I'm like, but I need a month. He's like, well, why don't you see what you can do in two days? And that changed my whole frame of like this idea, seeing things what it could be versus like

working with the restrictions of what are, and things end up working out really well when we give like really intense restrictions, I think, to work. We had another thing called Working It Out for a Cause where we contribute to a nonprofit of your choice. And we link to them in the show notes. So who do you think is an organization that does a great job? Wow, I've heard of this thing called Draw Together, but I'm not going to do that.

No, no, that's what you should do. No, that's not okay. Okay. I am going to say that Draw Together is a great thing to support. Yes. And what I would like to support with this, though, is a great organization called Girls Garage that is out in the East Bay, in the Bay Area, and they teach girls how to use tools and build things

and gain a lot of confidence and be pretty awesome. Girlsgarage.org. This looks so cool. It's so cool. Even just going on their site. Yeah. Their motto is fear less, build more, and they teach girls to build bus stops and tables,

and they go and do it for nonprofits. I mean, this is fantastic. It's cool. Founded by Emily Pilliton. The best. Sometimes you get so down about the state of the world and the country and all these things and then you see an organization like this, Girls Garage, or Draw Together

and you just go, oh, there's people doing super positive things and we should support those things. Thank you, Wendy McNaughton, for being my friend and my collaborator and someone I admire. Right back at you, my crew biglia. This has been super fun. Thanks for having me on.

Thank you very much. Working it out, because it's not done. We're working it out, because there's no hope. That's going to do it for another episode of Working It Out. That's Wendy McNaughton. I couldn't recommend more highly following Wendy McNaughton on Instagram, at Wendy Mac. She's just a fantastic artist. You should visit drawtogether.studio,

which has these great videos and is a great nonprofit organization supporting art in schools. Also, look out for, we didn't talk about it today, in July she has a book called How to Say Goodbye that is gorgeous. It's about coming to grips with people who you love dying and sort of dealing with that. And it's gorgeous.

She actually sent me a version of it once when Jen and I were going through something and it really brought me to tears and it was very cathartic. So look out for that. I think you can pre-order that now. Our producers of Working Out Are Myself, along with Joseph Birbiglia and Peter Salamone, associate producer Mabel Lewis,

consulting producer Seth Barish, assistant producers Gary Simons and Lucy Jones, sound mix by Kate Balinski, special thanks to Marissa Hurwitz and Josh Upfall, I'm going to have to go. score on all the other music producers. Special thanks, as always, to my wife, the poet J. Hope Stein. Her book is called Little Astronauts in your local bookstore right now. Special thanks, as always, to my daughter, Una, who created the original radio fort made of pillows. Thanks most of all to you who are listening. Tell your friends, tell your enemies.

I can see you telling your friends and enemies, by the way, on the Apple podcast. I read all those. They help. If you literally, if you have three minutes this holiday season, this holiday season, that needs to be,

that needs to be a message in the holiday season. Go on Apple podcast, just write, here's my favorite episode of this. And then we can find, get some of the friends and enemies to show up to the podcast.

And enemies can be anywhere, really. I mean, maybe you run into one of your enemies at one of Wendy's Draw Together online classes, and you can say, hey, if you're enjoying Wendy's drawing class so much, maybe you'd enjoy an episode of a podcast she was a guest on called Mike Birbiglia's Working It Out.

It's where creatives get together and chat about process. And Wendy will be like, get back to drawing. She doesn't really talk like that. Thanks, everybody. We're working it out. We'll see you next time.