My Mom's Basement - EPISODE 102 - ALEC SULKIN RETURNS!

Episode Date: January 11, 2021

Alec Sulkin returns to the Basement to discuss writing Family Guy in the middle of a pandemic, what inspires him creatively, what happened to the blockbuster comedy, and more. 3Chi: Use code MMB at checkout to receive 5% off at 3Chi.comYou can find every episode of this show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or YouTube. Prime Members can listen ad-free on Amazon Music. For more, visit barstool.link/mymomsbasement

Hey My Mom's Basement listeners, you can find our episodes on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or YouTube, and Prime members can listen ad-free on Amazon Music. Hello and welcome to My Mom's Basement, presented by Barstool Sports and 3Chi. I am your host, Robbie Fox, and today I am bringing you the first guest interview of 2021. I know we had Clem on last week, but I don't really consider him a guest at this point. I mean, he's basically family down here in the basement. But this week, we've got Alex Sulkin, who is a friend of the program, definitely a friend of the basement. They talk about writing, he's talking about movies, we talk family guys, Star Wars. I mean, it was just really a catch-up chat. It was

a great time. And for any MMA fans out there, we will have an interview with Cub Swanson on Wednesday. It's a great interview. I already have it in the bank. It was definitely an honor getting to talk to a legend like Cub. Now, before we get into this interview with Alex Sulkin, let me tell you about 3G and their Delta 8 THC products. What is Delta 8 THC? It is a federally legal version of THC, and it's like a more functional alternative to marijuana. It gives you an amazing buzz and that great body feel that you're used to, but with a clear head, less anxiety, paranoia, all stuff like that. It's available online at 3chi.com. That's the number

three, chi.com, right now, and at retailers around the country. You must be 21 or older to purchase, and remember, this is not CBD. It it is psychoactive and it will give you a buzz so please use it responsibly again go to 3chi.com that's the number three chi.com shop for vapes gummies tinctures and oils you can make homemade edibles all that stuff use the promo code mmb you will receive five percent off your order at checkout. That is promo code MMB for My Mom's Basement. Again, this stuff is psychoactive. It will give you a buzz. It has been getting me through these past few days. Trust me. All right, let's get into this interview with Alex Sulkin. Welcome back to My Mom's Basement, ladies and gentlemen. It is a very special edition of My Mom's Basement with our friend Alex Sulkin.

I'm very happy to have him back on the pod. We've got a lot to discuss, but first let me just ask you, how was your year last year? 2020, weird for everyone, right? I assume you had to do a lot of writing from home, a lot of Zoom meetings. How was it? Well, you know, it was obviously just like kind of a tough year all around, but I always feel bad saying this, but my year was okay. Like family guy got to continue via zoom. You know, the fact that we can still do the show and, and be separate and remote, which was good. A lot of moving around. I moved hopefully permanently out of Los Angeles.

Oh, wow. Where to? Here on Cape Cod in Massachusetts. Good for you. Back to the East Coast. I didn't even realize that. Yes. So it happened very suddenly. We come here every summer anyway. And so we kind of came at the end of June, you know, did that sort of holding our breath on a flight thing back here. And we've been here ever since. And a couple months into it, we just thought, why not be out of LA? And we went ahead and sold our place there. And we're here now. Good for you. I'm gonna get out of the city not too long myself. It's gonna feel like a weight has been lifted. I think when I don't hear like sirens and

horns going off every now and then. Right. I know it is a little more placid. Of course, we're like already thinking about like, should we get a place in New York? Everyone's leaving. Yeah. So with you moving back to the East Coast, like, are you just realizing that in Hollywood, you could do stuff remotely? Well, I think we're all kind of realizing that now. Yes. I mean, certainly for, for family guy, the remote office system has been, if anything, I think it's made us oddly more productive. You're kind of more focused on zoom I've found than we,

we are live in a room obviously i miss that everybody does you know live interactions but uh being on zoom everybody's it's just like this like i'm staring at you you're staring at me we're listening to each other we're not looking at like a hundred different things and checking our phone and going out and getting snacks and whatever so everybody at work kind of stays very focused and we finish faster and then i hear people say after the day that they're like way more exhausted than they usually are because everybody's just kind of leaning forward and looking into a screen all day yeah and how far in advance are you guys like writing family guy episodes as someone that's not aware with the animation process and stuff like that, the last season that we saw come out, season 19, I think it was. When did you guys write that? the sort of conception of an episode and when it's the first draft is written a show doesn't

really get on the on the airwaves for another 18 months holy so yeah it's a very long time and just briefly in that way we're definitely kind of at a disadvantage compared to some show like south park where their style of animation allows them to get something on the air within a month. So they can do more topical stuff and they do do it and they do it very well. But what we try and do is think of stories that will work whenever they come on. And if we are doing some kind of a topical story, it better be about something huge that will still be interesting in a year and a half. There are many points along the way in the 18 months when we get a chance to look at the episode as it is, like in different states of

being animated, and we get to kind of rewrite change things along the way so there are opportunities to update things or change things that are no longer make sense or whatever um but yeah it takes quite a while that's crazy is there an element of excitement that comes with that like when you finally see the episode you're like oh shit yeah we wrote that 18 months ago like that's awesome well it's it's either excitement or sometimes like a shrug or groan where i'm like oh god i remember this episode and i don't want to watch it again but yeah usually it's um you know it's it's a good thing and and and i will have seen it maybe a couple of months before um And then within the month leading up,

they usually send me a version of it so I can do what's called an audio lock where I just listen and hear if there are weird noises or different things that should be changed. So I get to see him a few times, but there are definitely times when one comes on the air and I'm pleasantly surprised. I'm like, Oh, I'm glad it's this episode. Yeah. I thought this season was awesome. Stewie's first curse word the godfather episode there were so many funny moments in this season that like i was watching them weekly on hulu like going every single time

it would drop it'd be like oh shit i gotta watch the new one that's well thank you and it's funny the ones you mentioned yeah the the godfatherfather episode was written by one of our writers named Alex Carter, who did a fantastic job with his script. And I'm sure maybe you know a little backstory about that, about Seth's feelings about the Godfather. Yep, of course. I feel exactly as Seth does. That's so fun. I mean, I could not disagree with you more. But having Seth no longer in the room as we write them, it really freed us up to do this Godfather episode. Like the teacher's out of the room, let's misbehave. Yeah, he never would have approved.

But to his credit, you know, all he does now with the episodes is record all the voices, which, you know, takes a lot of doing. But he recorded that one you know he went through he didn't make any snarky remarks about like i would never have done this or anything he nailed it committed to it so i think it turned out a very fun i mean it was just every italian joke just got thrown into that of course but it's so funny that i mean the montage shot of like them walking down the street and the narration coming in. So frigging funny. Right.

So we talk on Twitter all the time about random movies. You'll send me a movie recommendation. I'll watch it. I'll be like, that was fucking crazy. Can't believe I haven't seen it before. The two most recent movies that you sent me to watch were Never Say Never Again, the Sean Connery, James Bond, his return to the role.

Because it was similar to Tenet in so many funny ways that you pointed out. I looked it up afterwards too, because I was like, Sulkin's fucking right about that. A lot of weird similarities to Tenet. Nobody on the internet has made that comparison. Not a single person. We got it. We got the Woodward and Bernstein of that. The Assassination of Jesse James by the coward Robert Ford. Those are the last two you recommended

to me fucking fantastic i mean uh never say never again such a fun movie but assassination of jesse james i'm saying that weird every time assassination of jesse james such a long fucking title jesus totally terrible and you weren't even done with it no no i'm not doing the rest of it fuck that i'm doing the first half unbelievable i'm i'm a big Western fan. I got into him because of my brother. He'll send me, you know, watch the true grit remake, watch the man with no name trilogy. He'll send me all the classics and stuff. Yes. This is one of the best Westerns I've ever seen. Like no doubt about it. And when I started it, my brother said, listen, bro, he's like,

it's a slow burn, but I promise you it's worth it. By the time you get to the end and the ending is so perfect. I'm not going to spoil it for people because if you're like me and you haven't seen it nobody's oh my god it's so good well I it's you know spoiled by the title but the actual ending and the way that it's crafted I said it was like a Christopher Nolan movie it was so like perfect everything fell into place perfectly the scenes were all perfect fucking Casey Affleck Oscar winning performance unbelievable I'm so glad you don't know what a gratifying experience it is on my end when you recommend something to someone and then they actually kind of very soon after that go watch it and have a reaction uh so I

appreciate you doing that first of all and yet that movie was so criminally overlooked. And I think it kind of came at a time when the taste of American audiences was definitely for like shorter, more action. Even if you're going to drag somebody to go see a Western in this day and age, it better have a lot of gunfights and everything better be fast and flashy this obviously is not like that but the cinematography of the movie as you pointed out Roger Deakins is just like the best and he had

I read about it there's a shot towards the beginning when they're doing a train robbery and the train comes and it hooks up with the camera and kind of pushes it along for a while and apparently that shot was you know took a lot of doing but just it was so beautiful the music was so perfect and light whoever the hell that narrator was I looked him up and he was like nobody like he had never done anything since or before and his voice was just so great and as we talked about Brad Pitt has

said that that was by far his favorite role uh to play and he thought it was the best movie he'd been in um and I can't argue with him it was he was great Casey Affleck was beyond great and you had all these supporting actors who were Oscar winners winners like jeremy renner and sam rockwell so good in it rockwell was so good in it like the tension in some of those scenes in the house by the way it was like when i watched the mandalorian every week and people compare it to old school westerns and they say like oh my god the old school western tension of two guys sitting at a table and talking it's like man no movie nailed that more than this. Right. I know. My goodness, it was tense. And even that guy who was sort of the bust out on Parks and Rec season one was very good.

Yes, he was. So let me ask you this. I'm going to flip the question on you. What have you been watching lately? And those are the last two things that I really consumed. Have you been watching any TV shows, any movies that have been catching your attention? Well, it's funny. I'll talk about it. Cause I think it's worth mentioning, but I wouldn't quite say it's worth recommending. So I just finished this series on Netflix called the stranger. It's a, it's a British like crime mystery kind of thing.

It stars. I don't, you're a lord of the rings guy right i don't like lord of i mean i've seen him but i don't like lord of the rings our paths you know they intersect at certain points and they diverge at certain points i'm a space nerd not a dungeons and dragons nerd you know i draw the line i respect that i respect that you're not like an incel. So this show, The Stranger, anyway, it starred a guy who was in the Hobbit trilogy, but you don't care.

So I'm watching it, and the pilot starts out like an absolute house on fire. In the first two minutes, my wife and I were looking at each other like, holy shit, there's so much happening already in this show and we were like all in for it five or six episodes in you start to realize it's very predictable and they're not going to tie up a lot of the loose ends but the noteworthy thing about it was that it was clearly made this year during covid so and it's set in Manchester, England, which is like a big, bustling English city.

Empty. Like, the streets are always empty, empty, empty. And, like, every scene where they'd have to be at, like, you know, the cop station house or something, we were looking around and we're like, there are, like, three people in this giant office. Like, they would do things, like, that was almost out of a naked gun where there was

a chase through the streets and there's nobody in the streets except like one or two people. And they would bash into them anyway, nobody in the street. So it became like, it started as like, Oh, I'm really into this show. And then halfway through the show, I was like, I'm no longer into the show, but I'm fascinated by these like deserted streets and places it's like the random stuff that hooked you and caught your eye about it that is very funny crazy do you get creatively inspired by shows and movies when you watch them like if i watch certain like really really great shows or

movies i'll like want to go write a blog and it's the dumbest thing because it doesn't really connect. But do you feel the same way? Totally. 100%. I feel like definitely there are shows that can do that for me. And I feel like, you know, it's all the all the great shows, like if I watch, you know, like Game of Thrones, or The Sopranos, or even like House of Cards, and things like that, where I'm just like, God, this is so good. I got to, I got to do something. I got to think of something. And even the Westerns, you know, Jesse James, and I'm telling you, you got to see Open Range next. It was fantastic. But like, they make me think of like Western plots. And I think to myself, well, we kind of did a comedy Western that was sort of like an eh, but I want to do something that's like a serious Western. And it really makes me think about that stuff.

But I find the thing that makes me, that inspires me the most writing is music. Much more so than other, you know, shows or things like that. I find when I'm listening to music that I love, my mind will wander in such a fruitful way. And it just happens that like, you know, I'll think to myself, oh, that's a great idea. And I'm always in the middle of listening to like, here comes the sun or something. And I'm like, oh, that's a great idea.

I was going to ask like, what is the music you're talking about? What is the music you love? Well, it's interesting. I have sort of a, I would call it like a 95 mile an hour fastball musical taste. Like the Beatles are by far my favorite band. I love Radiohead. They're my second favorite band of all time. The only band that has any chance of scaling the tawny heights of the Beatles.

But I find that kind of music especially Radiohead if I'm like out walking and it's a gray day and I'm listening to Radiohead it's like oh my god I'm thinking of every kind of like alien invasion takeover kind of thing um but it can really be any music I I love listening to Sirius XM I listen to because I'm old I listen to eighties on eight all the time and, uh, or the bridge, which is just like old person, white rock, Eagles and Jackson Brown and all that shit. But, uh, I find on the eighties on eight, I listened to these things every weekend. They played the top 40 from this week in like 1984

or this week in like 1988 or 82. And listening to that, it weirdly just brings me back so, you know, so strongly to that era. And it makes you think it just bounces you around your memories and makes you think about like other things that could be interesting in that kind of time space. And I just find it's very like, I love doing that. I love that you say that because I feel like I've never heard someone that's not a musician reference music in a creative way like that. And I feel that way about music as well. Like I'm such a Beatles head. And I feel like this is also where our paths intersect. And then don't because I'm not a Radiohead guy. So it's like, I'm the biggest Beatles fan there is, but Radiohead, I just don't get I never hit my ears the right way or something.

But I feel the same way about music, so that's fascinating. You mentioned, oh my God, I would love to do something like a serious Western one day. I was going to ask you, you've been doing animation for so long. You've been doing comedy for so long. Do you ever think, hey, I would love to do a feature that's outside of what people would know me for? I think about that stuff all the time and I don't even necessarily think of it as like a feature like it could be a TV show it could be anything but there's a little secret that people who write comedy all know is that writing drama

is incredibly easy like when you when it comes to writing if you think about a family guy you know you may or may not think it's funny but we have to throw x number of jokes in there all the time and that's like the hard part like it's just like you have to make sure they're funny and there's so many with drama like you can just get away with like a good actor a little swell of music and a close-up and you're like oh i'm done writing you know somebody can pick up a letter and look at it weird and like have a tear roll down their face and it's like he's the greatest writer ever you know yeah so but i do think about doing stuff like that all the time just because you know it's fun to write uh fart jokes for a cartoon baby i love it like i love writing

family guy jokes i love writing for family guy but i do also have this like urge to express other sides of the brain you know yeah because i talk to you about movies all the time and the way that you look at movies the way that you kind of like dissect them or notice the things that other people don't maybe it's just because i know you but i'm always like fucking sulk should do something like that every time i watch something i'm like he should do something like that he should do something like that he should do a fucking mando episode i watch the mandalorian i'm like they got to give him a fucking mando episode it's like when when star wars announces like all of these shows is that something that you're like that would be a dream to write an episode of a star wars show not only would it be a dream it was it's something that the minute that fox and disney merged uh you know

a couple years ago i reached out to um another uh family guy former family guy writers and it's david goodman you might recognize his name yeah we did raiders of the lost ark yeah with him yeah that's right we watched raiders he's a great guy so and and he's a huge star wars guy so i just told him i was like let's i'm like david let's you and i just schedule a meeting with some star wars person and pitch ourselves to go like right for them you know we'll pitch an like an obi-wan kenobi at the time none of these series had been announced and we're like we'll go up there and we'll pitch an obi-wan kenobi series that fills in the gaps between oh you know young ewan and old alec guinness and so we actually thought out this whole thing we went in like we pitched to some very nice

woman up there at star wars and like it was just basically like instantly a polite no like they're just like we got we got this covered don't worry like we don't thanks we'll call you and there was nothing but that's how much I would love to do something like that is that I actively I never actively pursue anything yeah and like that was something where i was like this we have to go up and meet with them and at least get on their radar i mean that would be so amazing and hell i listened to so many podcasts and people said pitching has gotten a lot easier in 2020 in hollywood because you don't have to drive anywhere you could do it via zoom so maybe 2021 is the year of you and david goodman's uh star wars show somehow i that's right. I didn't take into account the Zoom thing.

We're going to have to pester a lot more people this year. Did you watch The Mandalorian this season? Because I hit you up at one point during the season and you hadn't been caught up. I still have not caught up. I can't wait to do it, but it's just like I need a certain mental space and period of time to be like, okay, now I'm going to do it. They used one of your jokes at the thing. a certain mental space and period of time to be like okay now i'm gonna do it or probably they

use one of your jokes the thing i'm like i figured that your mentions would have gotten blown up like the second the episode came out can you tell me what the joke was did you say it already i didn't because i didn't know if you would want to know it or if you would want to wait till you heard it in the show it's such a subtle thing but they make a joke about the empire not having railings oh right yeah there's like a pretty like there's a beat where I even said to Jeff and Ken Jack, it was like, you guys think that was a Blue Harvest reference? And they were like, oh, yeah. That's funny.

Hmm. All right. Well, now I can't wait to see it. I think it was episode four. I think it was the Carl Weathers directed episode where they make that reference. But if you liked season one, season two just took everything to the next level i mean deadwood references western stuff bill burr's characters fucking fantastic you gotta check out season two i know when you do you gotta hit me up and tell me what you think about it i will well now i have to do it sooner to honor the way you

handle my requests oh no you don't have to do i'm just always looking for recommendations all right here's another question for you yeah you know how much I love Ted. You know how much I love Ted, too. I even love Million Ways to Die in the West. You referenced it before you called it an eh movie. I don't want to call it an eh movie. I think it's great. Yeah, thank you. people stopped political correctness people stopped wanting to do it do you buy into that do you believe that's why these huge comedies i feel like you know growing up i used to go to the movie theater constantly and see these awesome like bridesmaids stepbrothers this is the end those type comedy movies yes just none anymore like what happened to that i think it's all cyclical i think they're still here i think they're in the pipeline i think they're in the pipeline. I think there'll be coming. I think we won't, you know, we didn't, you didn't know who Seth Rogen was until he was Seth Rogen, you know, like the,

he just exploded onto the scene and all of a sudden he was like the funniest guy anyone had ever seen. And obviously Will Ferrell was on SNL for a little while, but like these people come around and they're here you know you get a couple of them a decade who can support these great comedy movies and they'll be back they're they're here you know i think there's some version of them that exist in like for some people in like a jumanji area like that's not necessarily my cup of tea or maybe yours, but like they're very popular. They're very likable. They're very winning. They're big comedies, but they'll come back.

You know, you remember that era when it was like, the big comedy was like Jackie Chan and Chris Tucker, you know, it's like, we'll go through a time like that. And then we'll come back and it'll be more Ghostbusters and Animal House and you know, that kind of stuff that we, we love. All right. That's reassuring. Thank you for setting my nerves at ease there. I'm like, what the fuck happened to all these movies? No, they just, they're,

they're going to find ways to make people laugh all the time. And that just will change by about five or ten percent in each direction but it'll we'll get we'll get our stuff back because another thing about it was you hear so many directors todd phillips was the big one when joker came out he was like people don't want to make comedies anymore because people are just going to trash him stuff like that when you hear people say that i'll see a movie like king of staten island which i don't know if you saw that but i loved it i thought that was hysterical. I thought it had heart.

Like there are the good comedies that are thrown in here and there where it's like, obviously you can make a very funny thing without the political correctness police coming at you and being like, making it not fun for you. Totally. I think you can. And I think it's always been about like,

with something like Ted. And there are many movies like this. Obviously people talk about, you know, Blazing Saddles, if you want to go all the way back there, which is at once held up as like the top of the pyramid of comedies. But it's almost,

if you showed it to someone in 2020 who was quote unquote woke, they'd be like, what the fuck am I watching? Like, I can't, I cannot get down with this at all and even ted which is about a little less than 10 years ago now there's stuff that we did in ted that you could never do today like it just wouldn't fly but the fact of the matter is

if it's funny enough like it always kind of gets, it gets a pass. It gets well-remembered. It gets, you know, held up and people will be like, I don't care that it had this joke or that offensive joke. Like I love Ted. I love Mark Wahlberg. I thought it was great. You know? Yeah. So it's, it, it's tough now like trying to come up with something and saying like, well, what I, you know know there's a lot of stuff that's off the table now you can't and I think it's like it's good that we're all moving in the right direction and we're no longer you know perpetuating stereotypes and using words

that are offensive to people like obviously that's these are all steps in the right direction it just takes a lot of clubs out of the bag when you're writing so it's like it's it's just a hindrance have you and seth talked about doing something on the big screen in the past i don't know five years yeah uh we're we're actually working on something now it's at the very early stages. And I'm not going to say what it is because I don't think I have permission to. It's like, only because of my respect for you. And I know how far reaching that your podcasts are. But we're working on something now which could potentially be hilarious and a

lot of fun and something that i know someone like you will enjoy and i promise the minute i can tell you what it is i will tweet you and let you know amazing all right i'm just happy that you guys are in the lab you guys are one of my favorite tag teams in all of uh earth i would say so just get back in the fucking lab write some comedies you guys are the the dream team oh please before we get you out of here i got one more question for you sure we talked all about the george lucas saga i don't know you watching blue harvest and empire strikes back with george lucas last time which is so amazing but i recently saw howard stern say that the best part of fame is getting access to your heroes and I agree with

that entirely like by far the best part of Barstool for me is getting to talk to people like you getting to talk to people like wrestlers that I grew up watching or fighters that I currently love who were those people aside from George Lucas for you oh my god well it's like it it's so fun you know first of all let me just preface this with uh i smoke a lot of pot i forget most things like i've forgotten most of the people that i've met in my life including people but it's a never-ending stream at family guy you know when we were in the office yeah it's just always like week after week there are more and more people coming in well obviously George Lucas is way at the top of the list clearly Tom Brady you know for you of course yeah yeah from Ted too that was just

as Seth described it because I have a picture with him that I try and use everywhere I can oh I've seen it yeah where I always feel like I have to identify myself in the photo. I'm like, I'm on the right. So when I took that photo with him, and I think Seth maybe even took the photo, and I was so starstruck. I think I sort of babbled out, thank you for all the happy Sundays. That was the best I could do. So clearly I was like...

Like that scene was written from your perspective almost. Yes, totally. Totally. And I mean, a lot of the sports people get me as much as anything. I met Kevin Garnett, you know, like when the Celtics were in their championship season and like I was very tongue-tied around him.

Whoever it is, it's always fun and you get that weird little buzz inside of you that's like i can't believe i'm talking to like you know sam elliott or uh you know jeff goldblum or whoever it is it's like it's always crazy adam west even the the previous mayor like oh my god talk about a legend huh batman he was he was awesome and he was just always so funny he was exactly like the character that he was on the show just insane and so hilariously funny and like incredibly like every time i saw him i'm like god i wish i i hope i looked that good at 85 you know he was just like totally with it i've been re-watching uh the 1966 batman through quarantine i bought it on blu-ray

and i used to record every single episode on vhs as a kid they would rerun them on tv land and it was like my favorite thing so over quarantine it has been the best like talk about taking you back like the um serious xm channels like i know i young, but this takes me back to being three years old right again. That's awesome. You know, you and I have so much in common. The fact that you used to tape that shit. I always used to tape Betamax. I would Betamax SNLs because I couldn't stay up that late.

And I would watch them on Sunday morning, like the 1984 season, just eating cereal and laughing my ass off great I used to DVR uh late night shows before school or I would DVR the late night shows and then watch them before school and then tell the monologue jokes is just like hey this will get me friends like that's awesome yeah that was my fifth and sixth grade it was like retelling Jimmy Fallon Jimmy Jimmy Kimmel monologue jokes. Unbelievable. Yeah.

All right, Alec, this has been a blast. Thank you for joining the show. It's great catching up with you as always. Robbie, you're the best. You're so good at this. I enjoy your work. Well, I really appreciate that as well. I enjoy your work as well.

A Family Guy episode that I forgot to mention, by the way, the Christmas episode this year was fucking tremendous. The Grinch, the Lois stuff. Oh, so funny. So funny. We had a lot of good stuff in that. When she comes down to the living room and Stewie's there and he's, oh, let's just both forget this ever happened.

Runs up to the room. Oh, hysterical. All right, Alec. Until next time. See you on Twitter.