Monday Morning Podcast - Thursday Afternoon Monday Morning Podcast 4-3-15

Episode Date: April 4, 2015

Bill sits down with Will Forte, star and creater of 'Last Man on Earth'.

Hey, what's going on is Bill Burr and just check it in on you for the Thursday afternoon Monday morning podcast that I'm doing on Friday. Just to fuck with all you drug users out there. It's payday or it's the day after payday. Do you go out and blow it and get some whores, a little bit of blow or whatever? So you're probably breaking my balls saying, why am I a day late and a dollar short? I am not a dollar short. I'm sitting here in the All Things Comedy Studio with the one and only star of Last

Man on Earth. Mr. Will Forte. Hello. Bill. How are you, sir? I'm doing great. It's a beyond the thrill. So I screwed up the schedule and this should have been Thursday?

No, no, no, no, no. Not at all. This is all right. I mean, I would have done Thursday if you weren't on it, but people understand that I'm going to wait. Oh, Bill Burr. For someone like absolutely. No, I'll tell you, if it was like a reality show star, I'd just be like, it's not going

to work out. We're going to have to reschedule for another Thursday. But no, no, absolutely, man. I was psyched. I finally ran into you. I've been such a fan for so long. I ran into you at the night of too many stars. Yes.

There was too many stars there, Will. And I got to watch you sing the song, Wanted Dead Alive with Bon Jovi. That was very exciting. You crushed it. Oh my God. Just crushed. Just screaming wanted though. Crushed in the bad way.

But that was what we were supposed to do. We were supposed to ruin this song. Now, wasn't the thing was they didn't want you to wear the hat because he didn't want like Richie Sanborn to make it seem like you're making fun of him. Yeah. I guess I did. Yeah. I think there was some word on that.

There was a hat that we ended up not going with. It just made me look even goofier. Dude, I got to tell you, one of my favorite things about you is your facial expressions. I've never seen like the desperation and like the characters you do, the faces that you make like in like McGroober or on your new hit show there, Last Man Standing, like the looks that you come up with. It's called The Last Man on Earth, not Last Man Standing. Sorry, Last Man on Earth.

You know what I'm thinking? No, my mom does it. My mom does that. Did I say that twice? No, no, no. You said it right once and Last Man Standing. I mean, as long as you get Last Man, I'm fine. This is why I don't.

This is why I never have guests. What an asshole. I'm going to write it down so I don't fuck it up. Last Man, I just wrote Standing and I had to cross it out. Basically the Last Man Standing, well, for the first couple of episodes, no spoilers. Yeah. Oh, there's going to be a bunch of spoilers because I love the show and, you know, whatever. Shut it off.

I don't give a fuck. It's a great show and I want to talk about it because I'm a fan. First of all, how did you come? Thank you, though. The look of desperation that you mentioned is something that I've basically workshopped my whole life because I've basically been kind of a desperate individual and it's, you know, looks come very naturally to me. How so desperate?

I don't know. Just desperate for, I'm a little OCD and a little everything kind of desperate for acceptance. I would say that's probably, you know, I used to have a real hard time like leaving a party unless I knew that I had said goodbye to everybody. It took me forever to, you know, it's like that kind of thing. What were you worried about? I don't know. You know, when somebody offended that I didn't say goodbye to them or something like that

and then you just learn, oh, that's right. When somebody else leaves without saying bye to me and I'm friends with them, I don't think that our friendship is over. It's all fine. I don't know. So would you find yourself laying in bed at three in the morning buzz going, oh, fuck. I didn't say, I didn't say hi to Mike. Yeah.

Yeah. And then I would make a special call the next day. Hey, sorry, I didn't get to say bye to you. I'm not joking. Now, where did that, where do you think that came from? Uh, I don't know, probably, uh, uh, my mom, who's a very, very nice person and my sister. Yeah. And you seem really like down to earth.

How the hell did you end up in this fucked up business? If you just seem like you're, you're just like a me, I met you with like within two seconds. I'm like, this guy's a sweetheart. Oh, look at you. You're blushing. Well, I don't, you know, I don't know. I don't, you know, it's, it's weird because there are a couple ways into it and a lot

of, you know, a lot of the, the popular theory is that, you know, people, uh, um, work out their aggression and their, their horrible childhood, uh, childhoods up on stage and stuff. And mine was a different, different. I mean, we all got problems, but, but mine, I had a supportive family, I had a great upbringing. Was Orville a tough name growing up? It was, but I would, I always went by will. Oh, you did?

Well, that's not true. I had Billy for, uh, like five years and then, uh, I got teased because of Billy Jean King. And so I said, I'm, I changed it. I came home one day and just changed it to will. How, why Billy Jean King? We playing tennis at the time? Uh, no, but just like, you know, she was very popular back then. I'm 44.

So I was, right. It was probably 1975 and she was at the, the height of her tennis powers. Wait. You were in 1970 by 75. So you're five years old and the kids in your greater, like up on, uh, the woman's movement. It was a big tennis community. This is Northern California. Oh, all right.

It was, uh, you know, so did you make, you made a conscious choice to switch from, uh, Billy to will. Yes. Because they were, they were calling you, uh, Billy Jean King. Yeah. It has nothing. Uh, yeah. That was it.

It's not a, you know, it's a fact. It's not a great story. It's just a fact. Okay. I was just, I find it bizarre that kids at five years of age knew who the hell she was. Did you hear that? Yeah. Did you hear that shit was rigged?

What was rigged? I think a little Bobby Riggs. Oh, the Bobby Riggs. Oh, guys. Last name was rigged. Unintentional pun or was it a pun? I don't know what it was. I'm sure somebody's cringing, but like he wasn't like, he could have kicked her ass and he

didn't. He'd like bet on her. This is serious. Well, I mean, this could be like people who hate women so much or actually creating this theory on the internet, or it actually happened. I hope it happened not out of some slamming women's shit, just out of some degenerate gambler kind of thing. Like if he was like in deep and they were going to break his legs or something like

that. And I tell you something right now, you whatever the fuck his name is, Bobby, you got to lose. You got to lose the Billy. Well, this is fucking, you were going to be going to kill you or something. I don't know. I, I, I think she might have beat him fair and square because she was pretty damn good I mean, you know, I was named after her for like five years. So I got to stick up for her section.

She should have destroyed him. That thing actually bugged me. I hate how women thought that that was like a victory. It's like, what? You beat an old man. You had the champion of your sex playing this old man. I mean, I mean, at some point, Bill, I'm staying out of this one between you and your God.

Northern California guys, you just, you guys are, are, are I guess really nice people. So anyway, it isn't, I will say that a lot of really nice people up there. It's a, it's a, no math, no heroin, there's, you know, there's probably like it's creeping in everywhere. What about it? I didn't see a lot of it. I didn't see a lot of meth and heroin crazy was meth and heroin. Was that just heroin was over and meth wasn't around when we were kids.

Yeah. I think I'm actually going to be doing a gig in Eureka, California. Oh, really? And that's way north. And I was excited about that. And then somebody, you know, I don't know if they just, you never know what the internet like they just sit there and they just constantly just go the negative route on everything, but they were saying that it was a little shady.

I'm like, how the fuck? How could that place be shady? It's nestled up there in the Redwood forest. Like I would think people would just be, I don't know, leaving pies on the windowsill. Like, well, I mean, Albuquerque. That was where we made McGroober and, you know, that's obviously where Breaking Bad was set. And so there's presumably a huge meth situation up there and there are a lot of great things about Albuquerque.

So I think you're going to find some very, very big positives in Eureka. It must be. I assume a lot of history at the Gold Rush. Can I please drive cross-country with you and I'll just keep going negative. And you'd be like, you know what, I think Oklahoma City is going to have some surprisingly mom-and-pop kind of places. I knew when I watched the show, I was saying to my wife, I go, this looks like, this looks like where they shot Breaking Bad.

And I'm just going, I know it's a desert, but for some reason it looked familiar a little bit, some of the landscape and she, for some reason thought it was like in Arizona or something. So that makes me feel good. Wait, no, no, no. Last Man on Earth is Arizona, but we shoot it in Chatsworth. But McGroober was Albuquerque. Oh, McGroober was. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

All right, Jesus. How bad am I fucking this up around here? Doing great. And I do want to drive cross-country with you. That sounds really cool. I have to ask you, after years of being in this business and bringing it off, not even remotely as crazy an idea as what you have with Last Man on Earth, like how the hell did you not only get that on the air, how did you get that on like Fox?

I mean, I should preface this for people who haven't seen it. It's basically the post-apocalyptic. And as far as you know, your character is the last person on Earth and doing all this crazy shit that you would do when you were by yourself. How did you even come up with it? It was Chris Miller and Phil Lord are a huge reason for it because they're the guys who did the Lego movie in 2122 Jump Street, Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs, and we've been buddies for years.

So they asked me if I wanted to write something with them. And God, they are having such amazing success right now that people are lining up to work with them. So I just got in at the right time and we all came up with this idea together. How long did it take you to get to that because usually it's probably like, all right, where did you grow up? What was your childhood like? And they try to mine that type of thing.

How do you go from the usual way? This is one of the most original ideas for sure. I've seen it in a long time. Oh, God, thank you. We sat around for about three days and just three full days. We brought up The Last Man on Earth kind of early in the process and just went right by it. I don't know.

It didn't seem right to us. And then we had settled on this other show idea. It was actually about Val Kilmer. He stayed with me for a while because we became buddies through McGroober. Oh, this is in real life. This is in real life. How did he end up staying with you? He stayed with me because he has a place in New Mexico, but he likes to have a place

in Malibu as well. Well, he was leaving this one place and wanted to look for another place. So he just needed a place to stay for what I thought was a couple of days. And he just couldn't find the right place, so it ended up being several months. So that was what we were going to write the show about. It was going to be kind of a fictional, partly fact. Did it get weird at some point where you're like, wow, I got to tell Val Kilmer to, hey man, it's such a weird thing.

It's not like he's a bum. It's like, dude, can you hurry up and find a mansion overlooking the ocean? I'll tell you, it was the best couple of months of my life. It was so much fun. He's like a member of the family, so it's... He's hilarious too. Remember? The best.

Oh my God. His Doc Holiday? Oh yeah. The one at Earp? Earp from Tombstone? Excuse me. Oh man. I started it.

He's the best. Have you met him? No. I never met him, but I just... You've got to have him on your show. He is so wonderful. So he stayed with you for three months? And so smart.

And yeah, he was there for three months, so we were going to write something about that. And I don't know, for some reason, we just couldn't figure out what's the... Because there were a bunch of really fun things that happened in real life. But then it was like, what's that blend of fact and fiction and how does it... So we were a little mixed up with that. And right as we were going to figure it out, what's up? So they were probably going to go with the comedy thing, because you can't get five years into this guy crashes with me.

We had a great time. It's the best time of my life. They probably were going to try to go the route that the guy was annoying you. No, because we were just going to base it on our own characters, because it was kind of like an odd couple in a way. But an odd couple in which both people are kind of the Oscars, kind of mixtures of Oscars and Felix's. He's the best, but it's just there's some...

That actually, it's very funny, because we thought about while he was staying with me, I was watching The Amazing Race, I was really into that show at the time. I still like it, but I just don't watch that much anymore. But he thought I was an idiot for watching it, and then I got him hooked on it. I don't know, hooked is the wrong word. Fascinated by it. You got sucked into it. He was fascinated.

So we, for a short period of time, were planning to try to get on The Amazing Race together. That would have been awesome. We both called our agents, and they were like, no way you're doing this. There is no way you... I still think it would have been. It would have been great. Yeah. I still hold out hope that we'll do it someday.

I had an idea a long time ago. It was a good friend of mine, one of the best comedians I ever saw, Patrice O'Neill, right? Oh yeah. So we were... He was crashing with me during this pilot season, and we were flipping through the channels and Judge Judy was on, and she was just sitting there screaming and yelling and berating people and everything. It was just fucking annoying.

Just her whole... I don't know, it's almost like just grandstanding to get ratings, and I came up with this idea. I was trying to convince him to do it, but I was saying, listen, either you sue me or I sue you, okay? And we'll pay each other. And then when the dust settles, I'll just give you the money back, or you give me my money back in cash. Nobody knows, right?

And the whole thing was so we could get on that show, and then all we would do was go on there and try to see how mad we could make her. And just when she told us to shut up, you keep interrupting her, going, lady, lady, lady, just anything just to get into her ego. And I just felt... Because so much of it just seemed like a cartoon to me, that she was yelling just to yell. And also, there was so many mouth-breathing morons that they had on the show that she was always going to seem super intelligent.

So I felt if we went on, then we played the dumber we played it. The more her show biz sense would kick in like, oh, this is comedy gold. And then once we got her mad, then you sort of start insulting her and just seeing if we could just make her lose her mind. That would have been great. Were you guys at that time? Could you have gone under the radar? Nobody knew who we were.

Nobody knew who we were. That would have been perfect. Nobody knew who... Maybe... No, I don't think so. I was trying to think... You couldn't do that anymore. He did a...

Yeah, because now at the internet, they look up, they find out who you were. But I think they'd find out after they aired it, and then they'd never air it again. I don't know, man. I didn't watch The American Race, but if I saw the two of you on there, I would definitely watch it. They ought to have a celebrity one. No, fuck that. Mike White was on there once.

Did you know that? He was on there with his dad. That was one of my favorite things. Like seeing him with his dad, it was that they had such a sweet relationship. Oh, they didn't fight or anything? They didn't really... They were very supportive of each other. Mike was...

I kind of remember everything, but I remember his dad was not as fast as him, but Mike was incredibly patient, and they were great. It was just so much fun watching them, and I thought, God, I want to go on The Amazing Race with my dad, Orville Kilmer. Let me ask you this. With your nice laid-back vibe, how did you first react to New York when you went to New York during your... Did you go to New York first and then get on SNL, or did you have like other gigs brought

you there? I went there for SNL, but it wasn't my first time I was there. I wrote for Letterman for about, God, nine months in 1997, 1998. It was my first job ever was the Jenny McCarthy sketch show on MTV, and then I got a chance to write at Letterman right after that job. It was terrifying. Like, Letterman's my... You know, him, Steve Martin.

That guy still has like a scary vibe. Those are, you know, the Peter Sellers. Those are my four, you know, God, Monty Python, but Letterman is one of the things that really shaped my comedy, you know, and so to work at that show was really crazy, but terrifying, and I sucked at it. That was not good. Oh, you did. You know what we do in monologues?

Are you writing sketch pieces? Yeah, doing sketch pieces and, you know, writing top tens and stuff like that, and it was such an honor to be there, but like, I wish that I had a little more experience before I went there, and it was so tough because then these guys, I was probably 27 at the time, and then the guys who came in right after me were coming straight from college. I think they were 22, and they were doing amazingly well there, and it was super easy for them their first job at a school, and they were the guys who went on to create How I Met Your Mother.

Oh, some people just, some people just, they're born with that gift to be of, I can't, I suck at that. I tried writing for the SBs a couple years in a row, and I was just, I just never wrote like that. Did you have to do the pattern stuff? When they go up to the, you know, to announce awards, and you got it, oh, that's the worst. Louis C.K. talked about that on, on, on Opie and Anthony was saying that, like, what the pattern that they come up with, believe it or not, that's the best you can do.

You write something cute, you do it, you get in, you get out, and that's it. I never had to do that. I had to do like monologue jokes, but like, I just never had written from that, like, like, okay, Bill, we need some volleyball jokes, and you just sit in there going, all right, volleyball, and you just staring at that blank page, I just felt like I was back in high school again. It's just, I've just always written from like, you know, oh, that bugs me, I'm going to talk about that, but now all of a sudden you're like writing for somebody else, so like, you

know, it's a good joke, but it's not really in his style, it's too mean-spirited, I got a lot of that, and like, it was still a great experience, but just trying to, to do, I had already respected writers, but to actually have had a couple of those jobs, it was, I quickly realized it was like, this, this is not for me. This is not something I'm going to do. Do you get an idea? Do you write it down on, like, I used to have these notepads, and would, is that, how do you remember your ideas?

That's how I- Ideas. That's how I used to do it. I used to, back in the day, I was working in a dental office with my dad, and these little Manila envelopes that you'd put the x-rays in after I'd taken x-ray, pour up a model of some shit, right, and I used to just write them down. I used to write, but I would be writing out the whole idea, you know, and hoping that, you know, didn't want to lose any of it.

And then I'd try to transfer it to a notebook, and then it just became those little Manila things, then it just became like one word, and now it's just like, occasionally I'll type it into my phone, but I kind of just, I don't know, I just see something like, oh, I'm talking about that, and then if I remember, I go on stage and I talk about it, and if I forget, I just, I let it go. I want to look at my, I know, I think I have like a little section in my phone. Oh, I got, I got all kinds of shit in here. Let me see what you got.

Okay. No, I think I just write one word. No, I wrote bad jokes. These are, I want to remember bad jokes. Oh, these are so, oh my God. Here, I'll throw a couple of these out. I have a series of, me and my buddy have these dumb, who's on first type jokes, but they involve, like, for instance, a Vanagon.

If I see a Vanagon, I say, oh my God, look, I used to have a Vanagon. Wait, is that it? Did you ever, wait, I used to have a Vanagon. This is already awful. This is why it's in the bad joke section. I used to have a Vanagon. Oh, that's crazy. I don't remember you having a van in the first place.

No, I never had a van, but you said you had a Vanagon. No, I, yes, but you never had a van in the first place. You never, no, it's, it's really bad. So then I wrote down different, uh, cardigan, we could do it. Greg Abagon, Toboggan. Okay, that's horrible. Then I have, no matter what speed you're going, you're always going this fast when you're going through an airport, terminal velocity.

That's not even a joke. Yeah. I said bird seed, it's so overrated. Know what I think about bird seed? It's for the birds. You know, what's this is mining? Can I do stand up? I could, right?

Oh yeah. I have down here. It says, I know the comics are being the back laughing at this. This is the worst. It says, ricotta be kidding me. Like ricotta cheese. Uh, yeah. I don't like, oh, here's this one's great.

Oh, here are two that are great. I like Dublin, but there's one place I like slightly more. Tripplin. Boom. Yeah. Clothes break. Uh, yeah. I go to this great dive bar.

Greg Laganus is there all the time. Okay. I actually like that one. I asked, those are the kind of jokes I send to my wife, just to annoy her. I sent her one the other day. I said, what did the fashionista say to her son? I'm proud of you. Like Prada shoes, just to watch her fucking grown and send these things back.

They're horrific. But I just, I don't think any of these are good. That's, they're, you know, they're supposed to be bad, but I don't have a thing in here that says good jokes. These are just, I only like remembering the bad ones. I got in my phone right here. I have, I don't Kanye West and then it says dictator. Even I as a white dude have unfulfilled dreams as a dictator.

I don't know what that means. And then cruise ships, cruise ships. No, there's this thing that I'm doing that if I took over the world, um, my ethnic cleansing would be sinking cruise ships. So it wouldn't be race or religious space. It would be, I'll be based on people killing, killing people who are dumb enough to think going on a cruise is a good idea. So that's something that I'm working on.

There is like, there's, you know, the Norwalk virus that kind of takes here at some of that, right? Oh, it's gotta happen. I'm going to ask you, doing the last man on earth with creating that thing where you guys, any, there's got to be some, somebody in there's got to be a little bit of a conspiracy theorist or somebody's. Paying attention to the fearful talks about global war. Like you see this shit on the internet saying California is going to be out

of water in a year. And you're just like, why am I still paying my mortgage? Yeah, yeah, yeah. I, I get terrified by that stuff. The, the new one, I've always been scared of earthquakes, but the one that I keep hearing about is like super volcano stuff. Um, I haven't even heard of that one. What's that one?

That's, uh, apparently there are a couple gigantic volcanoes that blow every couple hundred years and, and there's one somewhere close to us that's, that's way overdue. And so we're worried about these earthquakes, but there's going to be a super volcano that's going to lava. I just can't wrap my head around that that could ever happen to me. I just feel like you're going to be in France at the time. I know you're going to be in France is you're going to be safe.

Why? Cause I just know you're going to survive this. How do you know I'm going to be in France? Cause I just have this feeling, you know, have the shining, you know, I'll tell you how fucked up that is. I was actually talking to my wife about an exit strategy out of this business cause nobody seems to ever work on it. Yeah.

Like how are you going to get out of it gracefully? Yeah. How are you going to walk away? Like the way Seinfeld did, and I say he's out of the business, but the way he had that great show, it fucking killed and I got, what do you do now? And I said, yeah, I don't know. Maybe do some stand up. Yeah.

And he just chilled until he came up with the next idea. The, uh, the comedians and cars, things like, or like Johnny Carson or Flip Wilson, you get your money. Like that's the hardcore one or Marvin Hagler. Yeah. You know, really? I didn't beat Sugar Elenna. Go fuck yourselves.

And he moved to Italy and starts making like my Gruber type movies over there. So I was thinking I'm 23 years in, I'm 46, going to be 47. And another 23 years, I'll be 69, 70. I'm thinking that's a good, possibly time to just walk at 70 and 70. I either walk and I either, it's either I'm going to buy a place in Paris. Sell all my shit, live there and finally become bilingual right before I croak or Alabama. I said, I'm not joking either.

Why Alabama? I like it there. I just, I like, I actually love the South. I like Wyoming. All those fucking states, everybody's shits on. I love them. No, oh my God, you know, I've just never spelt. I love all of those places.

That's not true. I drove through, uh, Alabama, but it was late at night. Um, I was driving from New Orleans to, into Texas and, and, uh, so I don't know Alabama too well, but God, I love Florida. I love New Orleans. No, I was going from New Orleans, excuse me, Florida, New Orleans. Yeah. Sorry.

I don't, I don't want to be a, yeah. The road, no, no, I made the, I figured out that. Absolutely. Actually, you would not go through Alabama. Well, I'm sorry, I'm sorry. Where, where in Alabama do you think you would wind up like Tuscaloosa? Um, college, uh, yeah, I would definitely Alabama is right. Yeah.

That's where, okay. I would make a decision if I was going to be an Auburn or Alabama fan. And at this point, just because I've been into LSU, like I just got into him, you know, watching the crazy coach there. It's just so much fun rooting against Alabama. Um, and also like, I mean, people know I'm fucking around, but like, I, I have like this, this just based on nothing, like sort of phony hatred for Alabama. I don't like the, the crimson tide.

So, uh, whenever they have a big game, I always write Alabama, the dream ends tonight because like their dreams always win the championship. It's just stupid. And then I really annoys people. So yeah, I think I would go, uh, maybe I'd be an Auburn fan, but I would have to live up in crimson tide country. Cause it'd be no fun to be an Auburn fan around a bunch of Auburn fans. This is the standup comic in me.

Like, where's the fun in that? Let's go annoy people. And, um, I think it's, you know, it's natural. And, you know, I'm not trying to offend crimson tide fans either, but like, they're just such a powerhouse. You always got to, unless you are born into that, you have to, it's kind of like rooting against the Yankees, you have to root against the Yankees. You know, I'm a, I'm an AIDS fan.

So that, you know, the Yankees are a natural enemy and I'm a, I'm a Bruins fan. I went to UCLA and, and so I got, you know, I got to be against, uh, Alabama. They're just, you know, they're, they're so good. They're too good. Yeah. No, that's, I mean, it's actually, I guess you shouldn't get mad. It's, it's a, uh, my Bruins are coming.

They're coming. Oh yeah. And what, football? Yeah. Oh yeah. How'd you guys do last year? I was on the road for the whole season. Uh, we, uh, we did.

All right. We did pretty well. We were like 10 and three, I think that's pretty. Yeah, that's right. You guys were like a flat line in there for a good 10 years. I mean, we have, you know, there, we had a, uh, a couple, uh, we had some tight games in the beginning and then we really started getting it together. And then we had a couple, uh, tricky ones against, you know, organs.

So good. And that was, that was a tough one. Those guys with their stupid uniforms, they're ruining football because not, not, not cause the uniforms are bad. Yeah. It's cause everybody's now trying to come up with a cool uniform and they're just not able to pull it off. It's like they're, they're Fonsi.

Everybody else needs to just fucking beat Potsy. How do you feel about, is it Eastern Washington that has, or, or like Boise state, the color, the blue turf, crazy. They have the blue and, uh, Eastern Washington has that crazy red. Uh, I think it's desperate moves by schools that want to get noticed, but it worked cause now Boise is actually becoming somewhat of a, uh, powerhouse. I mean, I don't know if they kind of have the up and down, but I also think that once they limited the amount of scholarships, all of a sudden, you know,

Appalachian state, beach, Michigan, that would never happen back in the day. So, um, I don't know, but I, you know what I realized with my ADD, I never got around to, uh, coming up with the, the, the last man on earth when, uh, so, yeah, so we were a mess with the Val Kilmer thing, sorry. Oh my God, no, that's, that's, uh, that's a good memory right there. Um, no, I, you know, it's, it's, I read all the tweets when people shit on me. So I have their criticisms like in my head, they're not necessarily bad. Like, dude, he was fucking about ready to say the thing.

And then you interrupted. So, no, this is the most boring part of it. We, so we were, we just had all these lingering questions and we were about to go and, and then I would be left to kind of figure out, uh, uh, a route to this, um, Val and will show. And then we just, on the way out, Chris Miller is getting his jacket on. And then I just said, but wait, let's look at this last man on earth thing one more time.

And we just, something, a tiny adjustment was made and, and it just all started pouring out. So it was, uh, you know, we, we got really excited about it. We never thought that it would be a show for Fox. It definitely is weird as we were thinking it up. It seemed like it was way more of a, a cable type tone. AMC, FX, FX, whatever they got now. So we pitched it to, uh, you know, a bunch of, a bunch of people, uh, half of them

cable, half of them network. And we really were just doing, uh, the network pitches as a, as a courtesy because we thought never would any of them, uh, be interested. Uh, the response was very good. It was, uh, you know, we had a lot of opportunities and, but, you know, you go in there and you're partnered up with, uh, the studio, which was, uh, 20th. And, and they kind of help you decide where to do it. And they, they, uh, Fox was, was very interested in, and, you know, they, uh,

they have a lot of history, 20th and, and Fox, obviously. So, uh, so, you know, it was decided that that was where we'd try to do it. And I, I got to be honest, I was a little nervous at first cause yeah, I like to swear and I like dirty, uh, situations. I was going to say, like when you guys were pitching that, did you guys pitch the Margarita pool and the toilet pool? And didn't we, uh, or did you come up with that afterwards? That was part of writing the, the pilot.

That was part of writing the pilot, uh, that it was basically just the storyline of this guy's all alone, uh, doesn't know what to do. And eventually all he's hoping for is, is, uh, you know, to see any other human. And then finally another human comes into the picture and they just don't, don't get along at all. And yeah, you finally meet a woman. You think it, and then it just becomes this, you know, played by the great Kristen Schaal.

She's so unbelievable on that. And I'm psyched as a comedian to see another comic, you know, not only get a, you know, she's killing it on the act and things, cause there is sort of a stereotype, you know, sometimes about comedians, act or whatever. So she's doing us all a huge favor. She's great. And she, in the ones that, that haven't been aired yet, she's even, she, like, she's asked to do a lot of, cause she, you know, she play, she's so funny and,

and, and, you know, has always very easily accessed that. But, but this is like, she is asked to do some very tough things where she's like still supposed to be this fun, crazy character we've created, but also do like some kind of emotional things. And she's just perfect at it. She's, she's a great actress. So I'm excited for people to see that. Your, your relationship, your guy's relationship is driving me nuts on the show.

I'm like yelling at the TV going, just dump her. Just do, can't let her move in. And I'm just watching you getting sucked into this relationship. And like, I would just be like, it's better off to be alone. There's got to be somebody else out there and like, who gives a shit if she moves in with you, just go steal another house down the street. Just grab your shit and go down there. And I do, I can't tell you enough about that.

I just love like all this shit you were doing when you were by yourself, like driving your truck into stuff and bowling balls into fish tanks. It's just like, I mean, I would do that. But I also like, yeah, that's, I would do that too. That's, you know, we would just think up things that we would actually do ourselves. Yeah. Find a firework store and just, just come up with, you turn into like an eight year old. Yeah.

But what I liked with, what's her cat, the Carol character, Kristen Schell's character, how she is, she still had morals. So as annoying and nagging as she is, like there's something that you still have at the core of her, she's like a really good person. Oh yeah, she's great. She's, she's, you know, that's the thing is that because I'm the last man on earth and we have to start on me, we have to kind of create this, this sympathetic character. But as the show goes on, you realize like she's the, she's the real good person here.

And like, and so your, your, your allegiances are constantly shifting. Um, so we're trying to, you know, we're trying to walk that tightrope. And I don't know if I've gotten too far away from it because, because we don't want people to hate me forever. But, but I, you know, your character is hilarious. You couldn't know, you know, you saw, you had your morals is when you didn't leave Todd in the desert, which is one of the way you guys shot that, or you were like, you know, I'm not going to try to get away to whatever you, you try.

Oh no, no, no, we've already shown it. If people haven't seen it, they, they shame on you. You should have seen it. You got to stay up to date or you're going to get spoilers released. Exactly, exactly. But how you just drop them off. And I just love to look at his face where he, he's such a good guy. It doesn't register that you would leave him out there.

And he's in his size, his weight middle of nowhere, like three hour drive. He's going to die and you're just driving away. And then you have to scream and like, I can't do this. This is morally wrong. You keep backing up and then go, no, fuck it. I'm, I'm, I'm totally butchering this the way you guys shot that thing. Oh my God. That was a Peter Atencio, the guy who, who directs all the key and peel stuff.

He did that. Oh, wow. Yeah. So good. I know him. Um, you would like him. You would like, I don't know if I ever met him. I'm the worst dude.

Like I, I, I act when they let me. So I like a couple of times a year. So I'll get a gig and I'll meet all these cool people. And then I'm just back out on the road doing my, uh, doing my, my, my stupid little act, how, how many days would you say you're on the road? Uh, not enough. No, none. Uh, I love it.

I absolutely fucking love it. I love being a comic. So, uh, I don't know, at least, at least half the year, maybe not, maybe not as not, but it's not bad. I mean, every other week I work. I mean, that's a joke compared to back in the day when I had a job and had to be there every fucking Monday through Friday. And it's just like, um, I mean, no wonder people like, like, there's no reason,

the only reason for me to become an alcoholic is just the downtime, just out of boredom, which is a pathetic reason to keep you busy. That's a pathetic reason to be an alcoholic, but like anybody who's in the working world, I, I totally get it. Yeah. It's just like, it's just the buildup, the bullshit. I used to be a smoker and that was the, it was the same deal. It was like, it would either be when I'm really, really stressed out smoke or

when I'm just really bored. So I just had to be kind of busy, but unstressed to not smoke. No, I just remember by like Tuesday, I always said Tuesday dragged worse than Monday. Monday was just so bleary eyed from the weekend before you knew what the roach coach showed up or was lunchtime. But like Tuesday was just like, that's when reality set in. You didn't drink the night before you fucking sober and you just sitting there going, oh my, this is, this is it.

This is where I'm working. You're tired from Monday, but you still have enough of the rest of the week that sucks. You're not like, once you get to Wednesday, it's like, okay, only two more days. It's close to Wednesday were the worst for me. And then Thursday, you got your check and you got hope. It was the first time you had hope. And then Friday felt like the last day of school.

And, um, yeah, then I just remember like literally running out of, I worked in this warehouse, which was a great job unloading trucks and shit, but I just remember running out of there and, and just, I don't know, the weekend would go by in two seconds by Monday. I was fucking broke. I'd like no, I had no overhead or anything. And I would come in, I would just be absolutely broke. And so Monday though, I would make the people laugh, telling my stories

from the weekend. That's how I'd get to lunch. And then I just limped through. But then, but then Tuesday, Wednesday, which would just fucking kill me. So whatever, I'm just getting back to the point. If you have a drinking problem and you actually have a job, I completely understand it advocating alcoholism. So I don't have a drinking problem.

I drink, I fall down. I don't know. I drink, I get drunk, I fall down. Not a problem. No problem. There you go. I'm going to write that in my phone. They just put that on a t-shirt.

Hey, if you are into booze, there's a really good whiskey. Somebody turned me on to a cold alibi. Have you tried it? I've never tried it. Oh my God. I love, I'm a whiskey person, whiskey and bourbon, but not Scotch. It's not Scotch whiskey, right? I don't even know.

All I know is a couple of ice cubes. Alibi sounds like it wouldn't be Scotch. Alibi sounds like it would be the kind of stuff I like. It's the perfect, yeah. If you just want to have a couple before you go to bed, it's like 30 bucks for a bottle, just tear through the thing. You're not worried about, you know, like when you actually buy something nice, you got to have like the, it's got to be, is this the right moment to open that

bottle and, you know, don't put any, don't put any fucking ice cubes in there. This is just, I don't know, everybody's drinking makers, everybody drinks Jack or whatever. It was just something different. Somebody got me and I got a tour coming up, going through the South with some buddies of mine and we're going to be on a bus and I'm going to think of stocking it up and, oh, here we go. I'm going to whore myself out.

If the makers of Alibi would like to send us some whiskey, we'll talk about it on all our podcasts. There we go. That, that's, that'll be like the end of me. So, um, all right, I'm jumping all over the place. I got to go McGroober here. Okay. One of the funniest fucking movies of the last four or five years.

Absolutely loved it. Paul Verzi, the buddy of mine who, uh, headliner, but every once in a while come around and open for me. He, uh, he's the one who told me, he said, dude, you got to see this movie. He went to go see with his two brothers and he said, he was like punching one of them and fucking grabbing the other one, just watching it. And, um, oh my God, dude, I was watching clips of it this morning. I, I, I finally, uh, you know, I was so busy.

I had to watch, refresh my memory and all that stuff. Cause I forget movies the second I saw them. I just like, I don't know, I'm going to ruin this movie too, but just how you put together the whole, what it is, I grew up on those movies and they weren't trying to be funny. No, we were roughly the same age and I, the movies that we were, were like, this was our love letter to those movies that are the same movies that I watched. Uncommon Valor, uh, you know, diehard obviously and, you know, leave the weapon,

all those, that the eighties was just the golden age of those. And they just, they just kept coming out with a guy. There was, there was Stallone and then Schwarzenegger and then I want, then, uh, and what's his face was in there? Uh, uh, uh, oh, Mel Gibson now Mel Gibson was in there. What's this guy? Uh, the guy with the red beard, Chuck Norris. Oh, Chuck Norris, the guy with the red beard kicked me across the room.

Uh, Delta Force, right? Delta Force. Yeah. Missing all the missing in action trilogy with Tex Cobb. I watched all of those. Then there was a Jean-Claude Van Damme and before him, I was, was he before, uh, Steven Segal, Steven Segal. I think I always have the two of those guys lumped together.

Uh, no disrespect, you know, Judah Freelander. Oh yeah. Yeah. Judah will break down all of those movies and he'll, he'll have you wanting to go. I remember one time I was going, what was that one way he was, uh, they kept breaking everybody's arms and stuff. Like, and he goes, he was just like, Mark for death. He's a great movie.

I go, what was that one about? He goes, that was basically Steven Segal beats up Jamaica. And he introduced, and he gives him credit. He goes, he introduced the breaking of bones into martial arts movies. Well, before it was like people got knocked out. They got kicked. They got thrown across the fucking room. They went through wall, but he actually like, I swear to God, that movie has like

so many like Joe Thysman, like bone breaking. You got to like look away. But, um, so I got to ask you being a fan of roadhouse also was a big one for us. I was just going to ask you, that beginning scene has to be an homage to use that. When you're in your Miata and you put your stereo in and they show you putting your, your, your glasses on, it was that roadhouse has that classic scene where Swayze gets in the car and they show in the car, it's like, they're showing his car at one point, like they're showing all this cool shit about him.

At one point he takes out a key, he's sliding a cassette tape into his stereo. Oh my God. I don't, you know what? I, I have probably only seen roadhouse once, maybe twice. And it was, none of it was researched for the show. Oh, okay. So I, these were all just, you know, so if, if it was an unconscious, uh, homage, if it was any kind of homage, I mean, definitely, you know, those are the movies

we loved, but, but as with everything, I usually, my research consists of my tattered memories, trying to remember, you know, the whole, the whole philosophy behind roadhouse where it was just like, this guy had this bar and he just couldn't keep it under control and like Swayze's like this, like almost like a national headlining comic, but like he's a bouncer. Like we got to get this guy in here to start beating this shit out of the worst world. It's like, why don't you just call it cops?

Yeah. You know, get a metal detector. Maybe, maybe not over-serve people. Like, why don't we start with the basics before you have to bring in like, like this ringer to come in, but, um, I want to watch roadhouse again now. Now I'm excited to see it again. Oh dude, it's, it's one of the, it's just, that's, that's where I think the throat rip, uh, didn't, didn't they rip somebody's throat out in roadhouse?

Did they? I'm pretty sure that's, I haven't seen in a while. I just remember Swayze and leaning against the wall and the music was on and rather than nodding his head down on the beat, he was doing this thing where he was nodding it up, which made it, it made it look even more, it was almost like he was saying hello to somebody across the bar. It was just, it was just so, I don't know, the guy's dead. I shouldn't be shitting on his movies, but I mean, it's just, it's, I feel

like you're glorifying them. I don't, I mean, it's, it's, I love that movie. We went too far in the other direction though, because now I feel like every guy in so many of those movies age, you know, he doesn't have to express himself. He's awkward. He's got his hoodie up and I just, you know, the whole, uh, my wife calls it the man boy, you know, the guy was 35, but acts like he's on like a first date. Like that whole thing.

I just feel like that is, uh, was sort of the over that, like that's the price we're paying for all of those, you know, uh, missing in action movies. Like now it's going to go completely the other direction. Yeah. So I'm trying to think how the hell they're going to mock those like the next generation of people mocking like those, those types of movies that everybody grew up on. But, uh, but I, I asked people on Twitter to, uh, send me some questions for you.

And one of the overwhelming ones was, is there, you know, is there going to be the McGroober part two? Well, we, that's, that's the plan. We, we've written about two thirds of an outline. Oh my God. We, uh, a very in depth outline. And we really like the stuff that's in there. Um, we have to figure out a, you know, it's more just scheduling stuff like we've

been working on the last man on earth, me and John Solomon are two, two of the trio. And then Yorma Takoni, he's working on, uh, a movie right now. So, so it'll be a while. We're going to try to start writing. How long does it take you to week or something? How long does it take, uh, to shoot? It's the McGroober was like 27 days, uh, 27 work days. So it was, you know, five and a half weeks or something.

I just love when you blow up your whole crew. Like what's funny about you is you go with the real reaction. Like you do, but for a different thing. Like when, like if you blew up your friends, you just dropped your knees, but you go like, Oh no, no, no, no, no, like it was literally like a cat was peeing on something in your house that you were going to wear that night. That's fucking killed me. All of that, like your, like your facial expressions and all that type of shit.

Well, by the way, I don't even know if we've, we have some information that there are a couple of different, uh, people who might be willing to, to let us make the movie. So, so, but you know, we won't know until we actually like send in a script. How did you come up with the salary bit in McGroober? I need a distraction. Like, and you just go like, all right, I'm going to get butt ass naked and stick a piece of salary between my ass.

I think we, we were just watching a butt, uh, I know that Yorma and John watched a bunch of MacGyver's and while we were writing and you know, some, one of us would be writing and they'd be watching stuff and writing also. And, and they saw something in there where he, uh, he had had this table of things laid out and made it seem like he was about to use every element of that, uh, to, to cook up some kind of, uh, solution, traction. Yeah. And one of the things on there was a carrot.

He said, all right, let's see what we got here. And then you cut to him eating the carrot. Right. It was just like he was hungry. And so for some reason it, it came from that. Um, and originally it was going to be a carrot. And then we thought like, Oh, well that, that'll seem, it already wasn't, you know, it was our own disgusting take on, on that.

And it didn't really have anything to, you know, obviously, McIver never stuck a carrot in his pot. You just, you just stripped down to nothing behind something. You grab your junk and you stick celery and you just walk out in front of a camera crew. That's why people go like, Oh yeah, you know, like doing stand up. Oh my God, they like take so much courage. It's like, dude, I walk out closed and if it goes wrong, I blame the crowd.

I mean, it's, it's easy. Like you got a worse thing is my mom was there that day. And not, that wasn't even the worst thing, but my mom was there. So we're at this warehouse and I looked, you know, I had done a couple of takes and I look over and there's my mom and she had two friends with her. Um, so they're the friends where, you know, my mom has kind of a pasted on smile, like that's my son, that's he's doing. This is, he's getting paid for this.

It's comedy. It's 12,000 dollars. I made $12,000 from Gerber. Um, Jesus Christ. And then her friends were just aghast. They, they, these all Northern California. Nice. Yeah.

Nice people. Wonderful people. And I think they're, they're, you know, at least, at least they weren't there on the days when you were down on your knees going, I will suck your day. I will let you, I will let you fuck me. My mom lost friends because my mom is the most supportive person in the world. And she's, she brought several friends.

She would just, my mom probably saw him a gruber 20 times in the theater, just so she could bring different friends. And some of them are no longer her friends because of that movie. Really? You know, Kristen Wake, who's one of the funniest people ever playing your, uh, your love interest there. And I loved it. The keyboard.

So my favorite thing was when she whispered, I love you at the end of the song. But like your sex scenes, I mean, thank God, your, your mom didn't show up that day when you let, hey, hey, like, she's, Kristen was such a trooper. How hard were you guys? Like, I was thinking you could probably get like 0.8 seconds before you start laughing, like how long did it take you to shoot that? It, uh, thank you for using that term shoot. Um, it was, uh, it was like probably two hours in this, uh, upstairs bedroom.

So it's, we're in Albuquerque in the middle of the summer. It's already super hot everywhere. You have these, these lights, uh, burning you, you know, and, and so this room is just an oven and I'm, I am a sweater. If I get to a certain point, I'm just, I, I start sweating and it doesn't stop. Certain point of fake fucking, you can't sweat. Oh my God. Like about four thrusts in and I just started pelting her with, with like huge

drops of sweat and there's hair all over her. It was her birthday too. So she was, it was just the worst birthday of all time. Oh my God. But they, they gave her a very special treat, uh, they, cause we were in Albuquerque. So they, they like hooked her up with this special room in Santa Fe where she could go and shower off and get massages and get the memory of this experience out of her head.

Did you, uh, did you like, what sort of mindset? Cause I, cause you know, I'm, I try to get these acting gigs or whatever he wants in a while. And like my big thing is like having to, you know, the big, the thing that turned in point for me when I finally actually started getting jobs was to not be self conscious, like something like you, you seem to be a quiet, reserved kind of person, but like the, the characters you play and how hard you commit to them. Like where, where do you like meant?

I'm just asking you like, uh, as a, you know, potential actor to a great actor, like where do you go like mentally before you just walk in like, all right, fuck this, I gotta just, I gotta, do you have to psych yourself up to go a hundred percent? Are you one of those people like, all right, I'm just, I'm this guy now. So all my hangups disappear. You know what it's, I think it really is, if you, if you believe in the thing, if you like what you're doing, it's really easy to fully commit.

It's, it's really hard when you, when you think something is, is not good to, to do that, you have any examples early on without outing anybody that wrote something. I know you, you seem like you don't want to shit on anybody. So just different sketches at, at SNL, uh, you know, when, when, sometimes you would be asked to do somebody else's sketch and you were, you know, you have no say in it and, uh, or sometimes you would write your own little turd and, and like you'd get out there and you'd go, oh, this is, this is not good.

How does that work? How does it work? I will say, oh, sorry, go ahead. It makes it through the gauntlet of all those people trying to get a sketch on. Yeah. It makes it past Lauren. It makes it past, they do it like a little run through, right? Everybody's thinking it's funny.

Now, when it goes out there is, and when it just dies, is it? Well, I mean, it's the, the funny thing is like you, you, uh, like at the groundlings, we, we do shows that are, are, uh, I'm not there anymore, but, but when, when we, when you sign up to do a show, you're doing the same show for about three months, you know, you, you have this process where you're getting the show together and once you lock in the show, it's the same show, you know, four, four nights, uh, you know, one, one show on Friday, two shows Saturday night, that same show for three months and there are nights when everything kills and there

are nights that stuff just totally falls flat. So you just realize, oh geez, it's, it's the audience. It can be anything. So at SNL, you're just, you know, some nights, some nights, it's definitely the material, some nights you just have an audience that might be slightly older or slightly younger, you know, you just, you never know. So sometimes you get really lucky and sometimes you get really unlucky. Most of the time, you know, this stuff will get the, the, the shake that it

deserves, but, but, uh, not always. And what was your game plan? If you're doing this, okay, if you're, you're on live television, you're doing a sketch and it bombs, it's starting to bomb. It's starting to bomb. You feel it bombing and then do you have like a thing where you're like, you know, whatever plow through this thing or I'm going to commit even harder or I'm going to try to make the other person in the scene laugh or just some, some way to

try to pull some sort of victory out of it, or do you just try to get through it and pretend it never happened? I'm, I'm pretty good about maintaining the level of commitment. I'll never try to laugh. That's, that's a little bit of a cheat. Um, yeah, I never saw you break character. I mean, it's, I kind of go into hyper focus. It's not even that I don't, like sometimes I think stuff's really funny.

And I just, I just am concentrating on not screwing up. Um, but like it's, we did, Bill, Bill Hader and I did this sketch with Josh Brolin called fart face. And he just talked about it on, let him in. See, I'm already into it. It, this, I wish you were in the audience that night because, uh, people hated it. I mean, it was, it was. How can you hate fart face?

I know, right? And it wasn't just that. It's not like, but it wasn't gratuitous use of the, it was semi gratuitous use of the term fart face, but it was a business setting and these two very committed, uh, this emotional scene between two guys, one of them's calling the other person a fart face. And it's hard to describe. We did it at the dress rehearsal show to complete silence.

It was almost the, it was almost so silent that it was a vacuum. We almost opened up a, you know, some kind of port, yeah. So, and then we, you know, we thought, Oh, that's crazy. I've, I liked it. I don't know, I don't know why that audience didn't like it, but you know, well, we gave it our best, uh, gave it our best try. Anyway, we go up, you know, what happens is you finish the dress rehearsal show, you wait about a half hour, then you go in to find out the pieces that are selected.

Now this was the night it was during that 2008 election cycle and, uh, Sarah Palin was actually there that night. She, Tina had already been doing her Sarah Palin. This was, I believe the night that Sarah Palin herself actually came on too. So this was a big deal of a show for SNL. I think it ended up being the most watched SNL in years, you know, years and years. Anyway, we go in there and we see that fart face is somehow in the show. It made it into the show.

You, I mean, there were no laughs at all. So it was, I still, you know, a real testament to Lauren, because it was, you know, he thought, he thought it was funny, I guess. Oh, the one note. So what did you guys say? Lauren goes through and he does different notes during the, during the, uh, you know, it's like, oh, it's too, you know, there was a, there was this, uh, maybe you tried to speed up this during this and he goes through each sketch and I just remember

him coming to, to ours and he says, there's a boom shadow on fart face. And that was it. He goes on to the next thing. So, uh, we go out there and it was just like, we remembered the experience of no, uh, no laughter at all. And we just came out there and what was the deal? Bill, I didn't remember this, but Bill told this on, on Letterman. I think he said that Josh Brolin came out and we were all sitting there.

It was like we were going into battle and Josh Brolin says, all right, let's go shut these motherfuckers up or something like that. I forget something like that. Uh, and, and it was, and we did, we did. We went out there, but we gave it our all, you know, all three of us. But it was, I watched it, um, because when I heard Bill talk about it, I thought, I got, I want to watch this again. We watched it, uh, and, and I still stand by that sketch.

It's funny. I don't know why the, I don't know, we really committed to it. It's stupid for sure. Right. Um, but I, you know, I don't, I, I don't know. I, you know, some things you just, that's, there's no way if I went out there, if I was with two other people and I'm doing something like fart face and it's bombing.

I think I would start laughing. I would like not laughing like it would just make me want to commit harder to it and maybe stress fart face or make a weird face at somebody. Just something that, um, I got this weird thing where I, I kind of enjoy like bombing a little bit. Yeah. Not, not, not if I'm really like, if I really believe in something, if I really think a joke's good and they're not laughing, then that gets frustrating.

But like, um, if I still know I'm being funny, but it's bombing, that's one of my favorite things that I did a run through one time for this, you know, yet another failed pilot and, um, they said they wanted something edgy. So we went super edgy and I guess it was way beyond what the fuck they thought it was going to be. And so we start doing it, the run through in front of the network guys, you know, they come in, it feels like the AC has been fucking turned down even lower and they come in and just the first thing dies, the second thing dies.

The next thing, and all of a sudden these actors I'm working with, got these looks on their faces and then that became my motivation. That became my entertainment was doing the scene and then passing other actors and they were shooting me looks like going, Oh my God, this is bombing. And it just became my entertainment. It was one of my favorite run throughs I ever did. When I tell you from the beginning to the end, it was 22 minutes of silence. Like we, the things started off been there.

Yeah, it started off with that. Why am I telling you so you don't know what it is? Like they literally started off with the guy playing my friend, a homeless guy comes up to us who they later said was way too homeless looking, way too dirty, way too filthy. He asked for money and I'm the liberal. So I go to dig it in my pocket to do it, to give them the money. And my brother who's in a wheelchair grabs like some, a scuba ice cream,

calls him a scumbag and flips it in his face. And it totally like caught his beard and like ended up in his hair. And I remember hearing like an audible gasp from the network. They're like, Oh, like it was horrible. And it just immediately became, I was like, Oh, here we go. We got one more scene. If we don't get him in the next scene, this thing is good. This is a runaway train and dude, like we fucking bomb so bad.

And I remember afterwards drinking with this guy and we were both back at the hotel just laughing, going, I'm getting fired. No, I'm getting fired or whatever. No, I don't know. So what stage was that? Was that like the early run through of the show or was that the final? No, no, this was, this was, uh, we were getting ready to shoot the pilot. Okay.

And we were, we were coming up on it and I forget the name of the director, but he was rehearsing the hell out of it. So we were all like, I remember the night when we shot it, they toned everything down, but like this guy like rehearsed it so much. I was like, this is like maniacal, man. This is crazy. But I just remember the night when we finally went to shoot it. There was only a couple of pickups.

So I totally understood the method of it, method of his madness. I just needed to do one episode with them. Yeah. Unfortunately, that was the last one because he was a great director, but, um, the, uh, at that point, it was just a run through. So we're already in there. There's nobody in the bleachers. There's no audiences, no nothing.

And what's funny is they did the first scene and usually the writers will sort of laugh along and try to prime the, to get there. I mean, there are some people who are writers, uh, who's who basically are only hired because they're good laughers during run through just to get people going. But I think when they audibly gasped and it bombed, and then it was just the sound of shoes walking on the floor over to the fake living room to like do the next thing, I think everybody was like, Oh my God, this, you just felt it in the air.

And, uh, I think even the writers claimed that they probably wanted to walk out. It was, uh, is this the weirdest thing ever? It was one of my favorite things I ever got to be in. Yeah. Um, that 22 minutes of just, it's just absolute utter, so I can't even remember in the end, I can't even remember the end if there was even any clapping. I just remember this one actress face who was playing the mom. She kind of like, she did a line that bombed and then I did my line that bombed.

It was classic, like, you know, a sitcom movement of actors. Yeah, you say your thing and then you walk out this door as somebody else walks in, you know, just that sort of like a play. And I just remember her walking past me, this fucking look on her face. Like she had just seen a ghost and, um, I don't know, that's why I always like talking to you guys who came up through sketch because I've always been a huge, huge fan and I just went the completely different, uh, the isolated way. So, um, yeah.

I mean, at least the thing about sketch that's really nice and reassuring is you're always out there with other people and you're also usually playing a character. So if you, if you have a reaction that's just horrible, you can blame it on the character, you don't have to blame it on yourself, which is the, you know, what's really tough about how you do it is like when you bomb, it's, you know, Bill Burr is bombing. They're not liking you as the thing is, you don't bomb. But as it, oh yeah, oh yeah, I do.

And I did for a long time. As you bomb though, you have the option to just pull the ripcord and go into something else where you guys are just like, it's like you're getting in a bobsled and you just going down, you're picking up speed, going to this brick wall and there's no break and you just have to slam into the thing. But you just brought up like doing characters. So I wanted, uh, cause we kind of, I know you have this, uh, what was it? Wondercon you have to go to?

Wondercon. Um, I wanted to, whenever I wanted to ask you, like, what is what are your favorite characters? Um, that, what's, do you, do you have a favorite character that you do? Favorite characters that I'd, yeah, the most fun for you to do. I love doing this character called Hamilton from SNL. I didn't do it that many times, but, but the funny thing is, uh, it's kind of this, it's definitely a very odd, uh, insensitive, uh, racist, uh, just a weirdo.

And, and it's any, yes, it's very, uh, weird voice like this. And he's just says crazy things though about society. And, and, and it's so much fun to do this. And, and then, uh, Seth Meyers asked me to do the character at his, uh, his rehearsal dinner. They were, he asked me to give a toast as this guy and that was, it's one of the most fun things I've ever done. And then Andy Sandberg's wedding was like two weeks later.

And so he, he was at Seth's and he said, Oh, we gotta come do one of those for me. So I've had so much fun. How do you come up with those? Doing that character. And I don't have a outlet to do stuff like that, that much anymore. How do I, uh, it's late nights at SNL. Like you're, how do you like to think the little kids? This is a comic.

I'm so fascinated with, with the sketch guys. Like how you do the thing. Um, uh, I was watching when you were doing the Tim Calhoun character. Oh, Tim Calhoun. And when you were like running for president, I watched this clip this morning and you, you were doing this thing with your fingers when you, you do like, like three with the left and then three with the right. And you were just saying all this horribly, like offensive stuff.

And you were speaking in like this whisper, but like you, you kind of captured like that, uh, like somebody runs for president. If they're making an annoying gesture, yeah, like they'll say, Oh, don't do that. That, that, that seems rude. And then you can just see them like, so as they're trying to give this speech, self-conscious about what to do with their hands. Like you like, we're picking up on that stuff. And that's one of those things.

Well, I got to give the credit on that. And like that, that's something I used to do at the groundlings. And that's, that's one of the things that I used as my audition piece. Cause that was, uh, um, but, but I had written this thing and I was, can you do a little bit of Tim Calhoun? I don't want to put you on the spot. Do you remember how I was like, I just remember. I am Tim Calhoun, I am the president of the United States,

the senator, the president of the United States of America. Here's some of the things I would do. America needs another big lake. That's the worst rendition of that. But you were going to trade the grand canyon for the Eiffel Tower and when they sent us the Eiffel Tower, we're not going to give them the grand canyon. The, uh, the woman, uh, who was our director at the groundlings, she was the one who told me to do something with my hands and, and even, uh, gave me these

specific instructions. So I, I had the, the sheepish look and the, the words I had, I had written all that, but, but she gave me that, which is such an important element of it. So like that's, you know, that's one of the good things about sketch too, is it's, you know, you've got this whole team of people around you who are, who are helping to make everything better. I don't know. I think, I think you're one of the best, man.

And I'm, I'm so, I'm so happy for you that, that you are one of those guys. Like, you know, I didn't even bring up like Nebraska or all this, like that's a drama that, you know, did, uh, somebody won an Oscar in that, right? It was nominated and I have done any research in this. Hey, that movie did okay, right? I think somebody won something shiny. No, it was nominated for a bunch. Bruce Dern was nominated.

Alexander Payne was nominated for directing it. They was, the film itself was nominated. Uh, June Squibb was nominated for, uh, for supporting actress. It was, uh, it was an, I still can't believe I had to be a part of that. Yeah. Well, I've been, I've been, obviously, I was gonna say, I've been watching you. That sounds creepy, but I've been a fan of your career, but I, you just seem like one of those guys where you, uh, you actually have the career that I love.

You, you're like, people know you, but you're not like sucked into that, uh, you know, entertainment tonight. Like tonight coming out of Starbucks, we got Will Forte and some Uggs. Like you weren't in that. And I was just like watching, like you said, this guy's making cool choices. Everything that he makes is of quality. Well, you know, you know, whenever, you know, if you get in a fucking movie, you don't know what it's going to go up against, whether it works or not.

But like, you would just always get good and everything. So when this thing came out, um, I was thinking, oh my God, such an original idea, oh my God, Will Forte is going to be, this is going to be, you know, exceeded expectations, but I got to give Fox props because way back in the day, they did a real, um, um, do you remember Get a Life with Chris Elliott? Where he, he lived at home with his parents and he had a paper route. And he was like in his thirties. That was just, he lived in the attic and it was just so fucking weird.

And like, so they do have a history of, of, uh, doing stuff like that. So many of those old, like, like I remember when Fox was, was really young. And, and, and yeah, that show, Get a Life was so great. The Gary Shandling show, Gary Shandling show. Oh my God. Margaret Shold was the one that blew up with children and Tracy Olman show. All those shows were Simpsons and the Simpsons came out of that. Yeah.

So, uh, well, dude, you're, they passed the baton to the right guy, man. I, I, uh, do you have anything that you want to promote before, uh, no, no, this thing up? Look at that. It's effortless hour here. No, I've, I mean, uh, whatever. I just want to say thank you to Fox and thank you. It's our night live to the great experiences of my life.

All right. I did, you know, we talk about stuff and I go back and like, I, you know, I, I go like, God, I hope, you know, I'll tell little stories about Saturday Night Live. And I forget if I tell the part, which is like how appreciative I am to what an experience it was and like, you know, to Lauren, none of this would be happening if it wasn't for him. So, yeah, you know, what a great experience. Well, dude, you've been, you, I've just, you've been, that's my little kiss

ass, that's the equivalent of me saying good night at the end of a party. It's still in there. Well, listen, man, I am so psyched that you agreed to come on the podcast here. Continued success. I'm watching every episode. Anybody listening, if you haven't watched, if you haven't been watching Last Man on Earth, uh, definitely go out and try to get caught up with it because it's really one of the most original things that I've seen on TV in a long time.

It's absolutely, uh, hilarious. And gradually, congratulations to all your cast members of Christian Shell, January Jones, Mel Rodriguez, who's crushing it. Um, and that's it. Enjoy your time down at WonderCon, whatever the hell that is. And I hope to run into you soon. Tell them, I said, hello, I will. All right.

That, that's it. That's the Thursday afternoon podcast, Monday morning podcast on Friday. All right. Go fuck yourselves. I'll talk to you on Monday. COVID-19 doesn't hit every community the same. Many of us have had COVID and no people who have gone to the hospital. Some never came back.

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