Pardon My Take - Rounders And Billions Creator Brian Koppelman, Plus Coach K’s Classic And New NFL Rules

Episode Date: February 21, 2020

Coach K has done it again. He pulled out all the old tricks for Duke’s loss to NC State. (2:40-9:20) We talk NFL rule changes and a 17 game season and finish off the leftovers from the Astros controversy. (9:25-20:21) Fyre Fest of the week. (20:22-27:28) Rounders and Billions creator Brian Koppelman joins the show to talk everything from Basketball, to the movie business, to how he created an Iconic movie and hit show. (28:25-1:22:29) PR 101 for Greg Robinson, (1:26:24-1:20:29) Sorry not Sorry for Kevin Love, (1:30:30-1:33:55) and FAQ’s (1:33:56-1:39:06)You 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/PardonMyTake

Hey, pardon my take listeners, you can find every episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or YouTube. Prime members can listen, ad-free, on Amazon Music. On today's part of my take, we have writer, producer, director, podcaster, everything guy, Brian Koppelman, actually a really interesting interview with him he created. He wrote rounders, he writes billions, which is curling going on, so you've probably seen one of his movies or shows, very, very interesting interview about his entire career and the creative process, something a little different for your Friday.

We also have Firefest, we have FAQs, PR101, new rules in the NFL, it's going to be a packed show and it's all brought to you by the Cash App. Pardon my take, it's always brought to you by the Cash App, the number one finance app in the App Store on top of creating the best way to spend, send, and save money. Cash App's engineers have spent the past 18 months developing a tongue twister for their favorite friends, say it six times quickly and you'll be blessed with good financial instincts for 48 hours, ready? Cash App, Chaps, Chug, Can, Crush, Crab, Cash App, Chaps, Chug, Can, Crush, Crab, Cash App,

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Welcome to Part of My Take, presented by the Cash App, go download it right now, use code BARSTULE, you get $10 for free, $10 to the ASPCA. Today is Friday, February 21st and I just want to say Coach K, a round of applause because that guy, that guy when he loses. Now you might say, hey look, Coach K loses to NC State, they're 7 points favorites, Duke is, it's their year, they're going to win the Final Four, they're going to go all the way. No, they lost to NC State, it was a little bit of a stunner, yeah he brushed by, did

the blow by handshake and was a poor sport, but you forget, you forget that Coach K when they lose, he's teaching the kids because he went up to NC State's best player afterwards, Markel Johnson and he hugged him and he said, you played a great game, not a good game, a great game and PFT on top of all that. I don't know how this happened, but there's a picture of it, of him talking to him. So the whole world saw him having a very private moment where he was so classy in defeat after doing the blow by handshake, which of course he always does when he loses and they rush the court and he says it's a safety issue, so he makes sure that he doesn't do even

the slightest level of good sportsmanship after a long time. It's a safety issue. It's a very big safety issue. My favorite is when Coach K goes into the other team's locker room after the game while they're getting changed and tells them what a great game that they played. Just negging the shit out of his team that is actually the ones that need the coaching at that moment. Now Coach K will always remind you after a loss that he did you a favor by allowing himself

to be beaten by you because it showed, it teaches you a lot about your mental toughness if you can even take on the likes of Duke. Now this is a pretty bad job. We joke around about Coach K and his hypochondrianism or whatever it's called. He made zero adjustments in this game. I watched the whole game. I was betting on the over. Class Act by Duke all the way to hit that three with about 10 seconds left.

I really appreciated that, but there were no adjustments made. My only conclusion, Coach K at halftime was just on WebMD. He's like, Oh, I've got, I've got polio and coronavirus in migraine, so not going to be able to switch up my defense in the second half. I think what Coach K was doing is he is doing the classic midseason coach move where he's like, I'm letting you guys figure it out. You guys go coach yourself. I'm not going to put anyone in on the off the bench.

I'm going to let you guys figure it out. And then they can come from this loss and be like, you know what, like that's the start of the DVD loss right there. Right. You know, that would be the one where, well, we were, we were at NC state and we were down and coach K challenged us to come back and we didn't. But after he took away our jerseys and told us it's actually less about wins and losses and more about the lessons you learn along the way, that's when it clicked for us and

we went on a tear afterwards. I can't wait to play that exact sound bite in like two months with some inspirational like it's probably going to use that for the DVD. One shining moment. Yeah. With highlights. I think that you're onto something that like coach K intentionally didn't make any adjustments because he was letting the team know that this game was on them and they could get themselves

out of the hole they dug themselves into. And then by the end of the game, after they get blown out by 20 points or whatever it was, his team will finally realize that they really need coach K. He's the only one that can save us. Not able to do it on our own. And then yeah, maybe like a little motivational thing. Coach K removes, he should remove the K's from all the Duke practice jerseys because they're not representing him.

Also they're do. So take the K's off all the practice jerseys, equipment bags, you have to earn that K at Duke University. That was borderline of Rick Riley joke, but I do like that. I like that the do their do take away the K's boom, we're ready to go. I love this when it happens in college basketball where a coach will let the huddle coach itself. He'll stand deliberately like 10 feet away from the huddle and be like you guys figure it out.

You guys get yourself out of this mess. It's your fault. Yeah, I went and recruited and dropped a bag at all of your houses and you're all like top five recruits and on paper you should beat everyone in the country by a million. And all you need is a little bit of coaching to make you great. But yeah, you guys figure it out. Yeah, it's on them at this point. And their only conclusion is going to be that they absolutely need coach K. Now who are

they playing next? What's Duke schedule like they probably actually feels like they probably have a good game next because this was a probably a look ahead spot, which they always lose one of these trap game. Yeah, where they're playing against, you know, tech, so not a not a look ahead spot whatsoever. I mean, there is no actually home. There's no look ahead spots really in the entire ACC this year because it's very, very top heavy.

So most of the games, not exactly big time games, they'll kill Virginia Tech by a billion. And then everyone will say, Hey, look, they figured it out. Yeah, they don't even have any good games left. They're going to win every single game for the rest of the season. So there we go. I was like, Duke is here. This, this is, this is big cats rant that he went on right there is absolutely going to will coach K to another NCAA title.

Yes. Yeah. They're good. Duke has already lost their last game of the year. Guys. I said it. It's already happened. All right.

Other news we got going on. So that was an all time coach K performance. I love that. I love when he teaches the kids. Don't you think when you lose, he's a coach, you have to remember when you lose, it's all about winning. So when you win, it's important to win, but when you lose, it's actually not about wins and losses.

It's about teaching the kids. It's actually sometimes a loss is better than a win. Yeah. Yeah. I would rather lose every game because then we would learn more 98% of the vision one athletes aren't going to play pro sports. So he has to teach them and set them up for the future. Yeah.

There we go. You're not saying. I love it. Yeah. Get statistic. Yeah. If you learn more from a loss and an interception than you do from throwing a touchdown or winning a game like James Winston is going to be.

That's why he's a future Hall of Famer. Yeah. He's just storing up all the knowledge right now. So yeah, I would much rather lose a game for coach K than win a game for some random coach at NC State. I like that Hank just spit a fact at us that was just an enterprise commercial like, hey, you guys hear this one. Yeah.

We have every single March also 25 years of our lives. Also Home Depot employs 1200 Olympic athletes. Oh man. And football is family. That's also a fact. Yeah. Even if everyone in your family roots for a different team football is family. All right.

If you want to watch us, we are barstoolgold.com slash PMT. We are Skype show PFT still in Atlantic City. People love the Skype show. So we're back for a Skype show. We have to talk really quickly about the NFL's new rules. I would assume we haven't spoken PFT about this, but I would assume you're in favor because how could you not be because it would be six games on wildcard weekend. Yeah.

I'll give you a couple, couple of thoughts that I have. I'm technically in favor of this because it's more football and more football equals better. I'm also in favor of this because if you go back, like if you have, if you have that extra game on wildcard weekend for each conference, I feel like this is a big bat signal that they're sending up to get Jeff Fisher back into the league. Like this, this eight and eight playoff team that could make some noise. If you're looking for a coach to capitalize on that, it's almost tailor made for coach

Fisher to get back into league. So I like it for those reasons. The reason I don't like it is because I'm really good at thinking in my head of what the possible records could be when I see the schedule come out. I'm like, Oh, that team can go nine and seven. Oh, that team can go eight and eight. But when you add in the extra game, now I have to learn another, another possible outcome to this is, Oh, this team has a strong chance to go 12 and five.

Right. That sounds weird to me. That does sound weird. So Warren Sharp put it together in the last 10 years, we would have had five, 10 win teams, nine, nine win teams and six, eight win teams. So if your argument is you will have really, really bad teams, that's actually not really the case because it doesn't look like we'd have many, uh, below 500 teams. The, the other part that he threw out there, which was just an unnecessary shot that really

hurt my feelings in this, like if we had this entire setup, Mark Trestman never would have been an NFL head coach because lovey Smith was fired when the bears were 10 and six. We Smith would have been, uh, the only third time in, in bears history that the bears had gone to the playoffs three times in a row. So he wouldn't have been fired. So now we're playing like revisionist history that's fucking my whole head up. I, here's my thing, PFT, and I, I've been thinking about this. I have the perfect NFL schedule.

I don't think they're going to do it, but this is what I would like a perfect NFL schedule to look like 17 weeks, 17 games. So what they're doing now is they're taking away some of the preseason games, right? So it's really not going to preseason game. Yeah. So it's not going to go that much longer. So what I want is 17 games, 19 weeks, two buys, and you stretch it out so that the playoffs start in mid-January and Super Bowl Sunday is now president's day weekend.

Boom. So you get the Monday off, boom, we've solved that. Now here's where it comes, here, here's where a little wrinkle comes in. I think you could do one, cause what people will say with two buys, you're going to have a lot of weeks where like the schedule is all fucked up and good teams aren't playing. Stick with the one rotating buy. So exactly how it is right now, Christmas week. There's college bulls all Christmas week.

Just eliminate that week on the schedule of NFL football because you can watch bowl games, there's NBA Christmas, and it will make you force you to spend more time with your family and be like, I miss NFL football, then it comes back the following week. And also you look like this is also a win for NFL where they can say, we give the players Christmas week off, like how great are we? So huge PR win, they come back, they finish the season maybe with three or four weeks going from new years to middle of January, boom, you solved every problem. I think that's the perfect schedule.

Okay. That's not bad. I don't hate that at all, giving the players Christmas off. I think the NHL does that with Halloween, right? They give the players off Halloween so they can go trick or treating with the kids. The NHL also does a like handshake moratorium on trades during Christmas week. Yeah. There you go.

It's all about family. I don't mind that at all. I think it could be a pain in the ass for a coach to get fired the second week of January because then they have to go back and do taxes and be like, oh, I technically earned like $125,000 during this year. And that makes it just it muddies the water as far as income tax season comes along. But yeah, I don't mind that. I like the two buy idea.

17 weeks just seems, I don't know, 17 seems like a weird number. It absolutely feels like it's just a bridge to get to 18 games. Yeah. I feel like that that's the finish line. It's going to be 18 games. No one's going to want a 17 game season. It's just too weird to say the number 17. And if there is 18, then my two buy makes even more sense because you can't do 18 games

and have only one buy. That makes no sense. Correct. Now the other part that I would like to see. Maybe expand the rosters. Yeah. There you go. Expand the rosters.

If there are 17 weeks, what I would want them to do as well is make a cross conference like guaranteed game every year. The Giants and the Jets should play each other every single year. Like the, I don't know, maybe you do the Chiefs and the Packers, Super Bowl One. Like there are certain rivalries that you could create out of this extra week that you play every single year and I think people would really like the Colts and the Bears should play each other. They're two and a half hours away from each other.

Like there's all these different teams that could play each other, the Ravens and the Redskins. Like there are, I think if they did that, that's an easier sell for the fans where they're like holy shit, we get this cross conference rivalry that's pretty fucking cool. And then every four years you play the team twice, which is even more fun. Steelers and the Eagles. Yeah. Our Steelers Patriots.

You make sure that you get that game every, but you're talking about like cross conference rivalries. Yeah. Steelers and the Eagles play every year. If there are two mannings in the league, brothers, brothers should always have to play a game against each other. Yeah. JJ Watts should play a game against TJ Watt and Derek Watt.

Actually here's an idea. If you're going to be adding in extra playoff teams and kind of watering down what it means to make the playoffs, why don't you have the first game on Saturday be two wildcard teams? They play each other and then the winner has to play again that night. It's like, it's like, or the next day. It's like early MMA where you're, where you're fighting in a tournament. Yeah. Just last team standing.

Yeah. Really last team. I do like how they, how Warren made sure to like twist that knife and you a little bit letting you know that this is, this is like Skynet. If that had been developed like 10 years too late, instead of saving the earth, you ended up with Mark Trestman. Yeah. So that was a nice twist of the knife, but I, I liked the idea.

I think this all obviously, if the players agree to this cause it's all coming up with the new CBA, if I were a player sitting there and I saw 17 weeks, all I would say is, well, we better be able to smoke weed now because that really is all it is. Like we'll play an extra game. We get to smoke weed and none of this bullshit that like the league tests for it. Cause that's, you know, like, and, and obviously less preseason games would make sense as well, which kind of has a weird effect because I think you'll have guys having less of a chance to obviously make teams.

I don't know though. I'm down for more football. I think they just need to think about it more. There should be more practice in the preseason and all that stuff, but either way, football is buzzing again. Way to get back in the news. Michael took back, took Rob Mann for now. Stay relevant.

Yeah. Is there anything new that's going on with the, with the Astros? Cause the only news update I saw from that was that there's now a Pennsylvania little league organization that's not letting their teams be the Astros this year. So it's a movement that's going from coast to coast officially. We're not letting the kids wear the Astros uniforms or not even using the name Astros. They're the butt strokes as far as I'm concerned. So I, I hope that more and more little league teams will kind of follow along with that.

I was thinking, would it be possible for anyone who bet on the Astros in 2017 to file a class action lawsuit? If they bet against them, you mean like if they, if they, yeah, if they lost money on an Astros game because they bet against them, I'm sure someone has absolutely that's that there's hell half no fury, like a gambler scorned. So that absolutely has been filed in Vegas. And I'm sure Ravel is waiting to tweet about it. Ricky tweeted about Greg Robinson.

We'll get to that later. To tell you any update, the only thing I saw was when Rob Manfred cited changes in society for the backlash to the Astros part of it. The quote is part of it is the way society has evolved. It's very different. It's a very different world than 1919. Yeah. We're talking about the Black Sox.

Mostly yeah, mostly recycling. We recycle now. We don't use trash cans. And social media. This is a weird thing to talk about because I'm pretty sure like the Black Sox was the biggest controversy basically in the history of the world. Like that was the biggest story of the century up until that point. And we had already fought in a world war like that.

They went in front of a grand jury. It was America's pastime. So he couldn't be more wrong about this. It overshadowed World War One, which at the time wasn't even called World War One. It had to rebrand in 1939 because it was now there was now World War Two. So it was just the Great War, the Black Sox scandal. Fun fact, no one got convicted with the Black Sox scandal. So they all got off legally.

But then baseball gave him the death penalty. I haven't done enough reading to figure out exactly what happened and what type of evidence if Shoeless Joe Jackson wasn't wearing shoes because he had buzzers in them or I don't know exactly what the technology aspect was. I don't know how they got convicted by the court of baseball, but not in real life. But I feel like everyone that has a take on this Astro scandal is just basically saying that Manfred is being a giant pussy. Yes, yes.

And we knew this when it first happened because it's a player run cheating scandal and not a single player is being held responsible. That's what we knew that the minute they released the report in A.J. Hinch got fired. It's like you guys are sacrificing the wrong guys here and you're doing it and hoping we'll all forget about it. And guess what? No one's going to forget about it and everyone's going to get bean this year.

And I'm excited. That's right. Yeah. It's just my thoughts coming from a sports junkie, regardless the sport I play. All right, let's do Firefest before we get to our great interview with Brian Koppelman. He came in. Actually, we were working on President's Day not to brag, but it was an awesome, awesome interview.

Very long, very like, like one of those interviews that you sit there, we could have done hours because he has so many interesting stories and life view. So Firefest PFT, why don't you start? Oh, okay. My Firefest of the week is I talked myself into an eating contest and I'm not very good at eating contests. So I got on Twitter, was mouthing off a little bit this morning. Guy Fieri was trying to choose what XFL team to support.

I was trying to get on board the defenders bandwagon. And I ended up challenging him because I'm here in Atlantic City. He has a restaurant here, which I walked by several times. I was like, hey, how many of your chicken wing lollipops do I have to eat in order for you to not only become a defenders fan, but also come on part of my take and discuss. And he told me 35, which is perfect number of Mr. 35. So I agreed to it. I took a look at these chicken wing lollipops.

They're about 75% of an actual chicken wing. It's just the drumette and just the like the top meat. There's no there's no bottom meat to it. So I feel like I could do it. But historically, I'm I'm not good at eating things. So I was hoping that I could get a tip from you an expert at eating stuff. And you've competed in a food eating competition before. So as a professional eater, what would you recommend that I do to expand my stomach before

tonight? First, you got got by Guy Fieri, because he's already agreed to come on part of my take. So you threw that in, he's he got you on that one. But the DC defenders fan thing, that's got to be a big deal, right? Like that's, Well, I mean, I, I've DM'd with him as well, but when did he agree to come on part of my take? Well, his guy did.

Well, we were trying to get it set up Super Bowl week. We were basically set up, but we didn't want to go to Fort Lauderdale. So he's in. Okay. But so you should maybe like negotiate less because like, hey, material change, you've already agreed or make him like get a DC defenders tattoo. This is better than, than planning this behind the scenes because now it's out in the open. True.

He's already agreed to it. Absolutely. So now he can get, he can get pressured. I think having like a connection with his booking representative, that type of stuff falls throughout the time. Now we've got the, the added benefit of our simp army on social media, right? Big cat simp army going after big cat or after Guy Fieri. Uh, yeah, you're a 35.

I think you got this easily. I think you're fine. Like honestly, 35, you're fine. This is no, no. What should I do? Should, should I get in the steam room before? Does that help? No, just pound.

I think the, the biggest thing is you got to go hard for like 25 minutes as hard as you can. And then you're going to hit a wall, but make sure you get that first 25 minutes, like put up numbers, get to like 20, 25 in those first 25 minutes. Get buckets. Yeah. Yeah. Is there a time limit because you can just hang out and just eat slowly all day?

Uh, there was no time limit specified at all, so I feel, I feel like an hour seems reasonable. Yeah. Yeah. But you, you got this. I have no doubt in my mind that you can eat 35 of these. I mean, you've eaten 35 wings and one sitting before, right? I'm sure I have. Yeah.

By accident. Right. Like you didn't even mean to, and you did it. You just, I've also got, I'm not a drug guy, but I do have a brownie. Got it. No. No. Okay.

You got to, you got to stay hydrated and, and clear, clear eyes because I say, no PEDs, no PEDs. You got, you've done this. You've definitely fucked around and gotten a triple double fucked around and eaten 35 wings by accident before. Definitely. This is good. You don't even have to think about it.

Right. Just order wings and then be like, whoops. I just ate 40 by accident. I accidentally won an eating challenge. Right. Right. With yourself. Okay.

Got it. Yeah. So big. I don't even know if you saw this, but I was with you this week and I was filming some stuff behind the scenes and we were in a hotel room with like probably 10 people and I put my camera down on like a desk the size of probably this desk here and it like fell, landed on my foot and like I didn't see it fall. So I just landed on my foot and it like shocked like I was in shock pain, tears basically

streaming down my face, but I had to act like I didn't want to like outwardly be like screaming and pain. So I just had to stand there and act like my foot wasn't broken, but I'm pretty sure my foot's broken. Yes. Yes. You have a pretty much broken foot. No, he really, he looked, I looked at him and he wanted to cry.

I would, tears started streaming from my face from like trying to like not react and I was like, are you okay? He's like, yeah, yeah, I'm fine. I just dropped it on my foot in front of everyone. Wow. But no one swollen. Yeah. It's a little bruised.

Let me see it. Let me see it. I want to take my. We got to get some more of that Russell Wilson nano bubble. Russell Gold. That actually, yeah, let's see. Show me the feet. Sweetie.

Show, show me the feet. Let me see them. Let me see them. Piggies. Let me see those feet. Have them little tootsies doing. Yeah. Oh yeah.

Yeah. His toe is around his big toe. Pretty good. Show me your toe. Yeah. He's got a nice. Let me look how fucked up your toe is. That's.

Oh wow. Look at that. All right. My fire fest is also from that trip. Hank, because I think I've peaked as in my life because we went on this trip to different casinos and Hank can attest. He was laughing in my face, but every single casino we went to, they asked for my opinion in my opinion was we need more TVs and that's, I realized like I was born for this job to

basically walk into a room and say, yeah, there's not enough TVs here to watch every sport that could possibly be on TV at the time. And I don't think I'll ever get, I'll never get to like this level again. Hank, you were laughing in my face when you, when you, like they would actually earnestly ask me like, what do you think of our casino? And I just think, uh, not enough TVs. And that was my only. Yeah.

I mean, that's really the part that you were born to play. It's like your job is to sit down and be like, there needs to be more TVs and there needs to be a bathroom closer to me right now. Yeah. Bathroom and bedding. And Wi-Fi. Yeah. And Wi-Fi.

Oh yeah. I did say that too. I'm standing in a room and they, they were all discussing serious things. I was like, Hey, just a like question. Do you have Wi-Fi in here? Cause I don't have really bad cell reception. And they're like, what? I was like, well, if we're going to be here gambling, I need to be on my phone all the

time. So I'm thinking for the comment. It does make a difference. Yeah. Of course. It makes a huge difference. Wi-Fi can take a shitty, shitty scenario and make it a billion times better. Like if FedEx field had the fastest Wi-Fi on the Eastern seaboard, I bet people would

actually like going to Redskins game. Agreed. They're not paying attention to what's going on the field, but they can update their fancy team in real time super quick. That a good Wi-Fi can cover up a lot of sins. Yeah. Like a great, a great sauce at a restaurant. So I'm out there thinking for the people I'm, I'm, I'm using your eyes.

I've been trained my whole life to think about the most basic common man needs more TVs. Yeah. More TVs, better Wi-Fi and then bathroom locations and convenient USB plugs that you can put your phone into. Yeah. All the time. All right. Let's get to our interview with Brian Koppelman.

Great interview. Like I said, wrote, uh, Rounders. He writes and produces billions. I think he produces it. Yeah. Showrunner. Everything. Executive producer.

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He is a filmmaker, essayist, podcaster, former music business executive, record producer. I mean, you hog it all, dude. I mean, I can shoot pretty well. Shoot pretty well. I mean, that's it. Shoot pretty well. Is there a podcaster that you've tried to get in that you have not succeeded in? Oh, a profession that I've flamed out at.

I mean, the truth is, if you had asked me at 12, I would have been thought I would be a point guard. Like I really did think there was a possibility. Back then, I'm 53, so I'm old. So, you know, there was hardly even the distinction, like was Clyde the point guard or Pearl the point guard? They both could play the point. They could both shoot.

So growing up, it wasn't, you wouldn't even think in that way. But I always thought, well, if I could just shoot a little bit better, I could play college ball. Yeah. Failed point guard. Brian Koppelman. Yes. Who's the best ball player in the industry that you've played with in recent years?

I love it. I love the question. So Clooney is very, very good at it. I hate that. Interesting. I hate that. Very good. Like full college level athlete.

Some guys have it all. He does. Like he sold his tequila company for like $2 billion. Yeah. He can grow a beard. When we were making. Yes. He's got everything.

He's got everything. Truly everything. He's really the most important part. Yeah. When we were making Oceans 13, George had a basketball game every day. I don't know if he still does it. I haven't seen him in a couple of years, but up until even a couple of years ago, they played basketball every single day.

He was a great baseball player, like college level baseball, recruited for baseball. And he's like a really, he defends really hard. He really knows how basketball works. Like he knows how to do a pick and roll. That's it. He knows. He understands basketball. Cutting.

Yeah. So he and I would play and we would have these wars. And I'm so, and you know, he's like in the best shit. What do you think his body fat's at? Right. Especially 12 years ago when we're making that movie, six percent. Right. And my body fat floats probably around 48 percent, something like that.

And we would play and we would always be tied seven all we play in the California heat. And then I would start like sweating as though you could rotisserie like a rotisserie chicken basically. And then he would just win every time like 11, seven. I would keep it close brother, little brother, like, Hey, I just want to keep this close and then I'll beat you at the end. Not that I could. I would just get so gassed.

I couldn't move to defend them. And then Woody Harrelson's like really good at basketball. Interesting. I play. Yeah. I thought whereas Clooney, I kind of knew all that guys. I thought I could beat Woody and then because Woody smoke, I mean, you know, you just smoke so much pot all day long.

I mean, he's just high. So does everyone in the NBA. Right. Sure. Every sport really. But Woody's not a pro athlete. And I just figured, well, I'm going to be, he destroyed me, man. He was up at the hoop.

He could really get right to the hoop. Like even though they lowered the hoops, I think they lowered the hoop and white men can't jump. They did. For Wesley couldn't play basketball. Yeah. For Wesley, not for Woody. Woody has hops.

Yes. It's like it's actually a hilarious story that like he didn't like he really actually didn't play basketball and they had to kind of Wesley didn't. Yeah. Right. Right. Yeah. It was a shock to me.

All right. So let's talk. Let's start. Where do you want to start? I mean, you have an fascinating career, a fascinating career. You started as, I mean, even going all the way back to your dad and I was listening to a story that you not discovered because he was already on SNL, but you were you had a brush with like early Eddie Murphy.

I was just always enthusiastic about stuff. Like in a way, I've just always been unbelievably curious and enthusiastic and would like if something was great, I've just always been super attracted to it. I think that's like if, you know, all of us have something in us that we can stoke that might lead us towards some kind of success. And without even knowing it, like that incredible curiosity and sort of just regard and affection for stuff that was truly great and then decided to follow it. So yeah, like I was lucky enough.

Eddie Murphy was already on his way to being Eddie Murphy. I was just lucky enough to be in a situation where I was at a club and he was performing as a comedian and I snuck backstage and found a way to get in a kind of say, like, you're like a rock star, even though you're a comedian, he had just as a featured player on SNL the first year. And then my dad was in the record business, so I got home and I woke my dad in the middle of the night. I was like, you're going to think I'm insane, but I just saw this guy and he's going to

be the biggest fucking star and you've got to work with him. And like the next day he called him and was like, you know, that 16-year-old kid, that was my son. And then they did, they made these three albums together. For me, the perk, you know, obviously there was no money in it or anything for me, but the perk was like, I got to hang out a little bit with Eddie, which was incredible. Like, I remember just right before he became hugely famous, he and I would like karate fight, fake karate fight with each other.

You're 16. Yeah, maybe I'm 17 by that. But you know, basically 17, he's 20. Yeah, he's not much older. But he was so young. Yeah. And I mean, I could barely, he was, I was in such awe of that guy because you never saw, guys, you never saw anybody that funny in your life.

Like what he was able to do and the charisma that he had. And I was just like, you know, I had, I'm lucky I was raised by parents who like gave a shit about me. So that sets me apart from like a lot of people. And so my dad took me half seriously, even though I was a total fuck up in school, I played sports and I did the plays, but I did very badly in school, but they were always like, well, you have some other thing going on. So like if I said, I saw something great, they kind of believed me, which was like great.

That's huge for a kid. Fantastic. Yeah. Huge. Right. They'd still get really pissed about the school thing, but they were, you know, like if I cut school because I wanted to get the new Iron Maiden album, that wouldn't endear me to them.

But then they also wouldn't take their, they would understand like, well, he really likes this stuff. Yeah, it's not like you were just lazy. You weren't just like hanging out on your couch and skipping school. I wasn't. I wasn't. You had active interest that you were pursuing on the side, which I think is probably a more important indicator of success than anything else.

Like in a classroom, you know, averaging a 95 on all your tests, I would say like being driven in your passions is probably going to make it more likely that you'll succeed. You're so, you're so right. I mean, I remember this one time I loved to read and I had bad ADHD and I couldn't read this stuff that they would give me, but I loved reading and I remember I was in a class and it was too young. I couldn't read like the Odyssey. They wanted me to, but I was reading another book and I remember I'd put the other, it

was the fountain head and I was like 13 or 14 and I was reading the fountain head and I took the Odyssey cover and I taped it to the book that I was really reading and I was sitting in class reading it and the English teacher was also the wrestling coach. So you know, that means he was a horrible douchebag and he kicked the book out of my, I was just sitting there reading and he fucking kicked it into my face out of the thing and he was like, what do you have that crap in here? And now I'm like, if you've got some kid in your room and he's reading, let him read. You were doing Friday Night Lights.

That's what Johnny Mock said. He had his playbook, but he had Slaughterhouse 5 inside of it instead of reading Spider-T Y Banana. Varsity Blues. Yeah. Oh, Varsity Blues. Yeah, Varsity Blues. The prequel.

John Voight kicked it out of his hand. Right. Well, this guy, this was, I remember the name of the guy, but I'm not going to shame him and say his name. That's okay. We're going to guess all these names by the, and by the way, Big Cat's absolutely right. When you just, when you don't name something on Twitter, it's usually like the third reply gets it perfect.

You're talking about runner, runner right now. Yes. Yes. Sometimes they will get it. There are certain of these people where it's just like, I don't, I'm not telling those stories to, to, to make that person uncomfortable, I'm more just trying to tell it so people know the way things are and like how it, how it goes. So like if there's some famous old director, I don't need to make that guy's day miserable

by naming him. Right. Now, I would have, by the way, when I was in my 30s. Well, okay. So we'll have here because I read a quote that I thought was very interesting. You were talking about how when you were younger in your profession, anger used to fuel you. Totally. And now when you're older, anger doesn't run as clean and you don't, you don't use that

the same way. You try not to. Like, of course, I love that you're asking about this because I feel like we're both 35. I actually feel myself getting right into the anger doesn't fuel me the same way it used to. Well, because also you, you have success now, right? Right.

So it, it does, you start to realize if I only still, so the anger we're talking about is that thing where someone didn't believe in you. They told you were loser. They told you there was no chance. Um, they gave you, and so you use, and by the way, you know, or someone was fucking horribly mean to you or tried to steal your girl, whatever the fuck they did that you put in like an arrow in your quiver and, and you were like, well, I'm going to fucking show, show them. Right.

That thing can drive you really far. Like, but the problem is then if you're, it leads to you having no satisfaction. If you keep going from that, for me anyway, if I keep working from that place, it stops me from figuring out what the next thing I'm really curious about or interested in or engaged in for the sake of the thing. By this time, the ambition is hardwired in you guys, right? The desire to be successful. That's not going away just because you take your foot off the hate gas, but at a certain

point the hate gas just starts making your engine bumpy and, and it just doesn't, it, it doesn't serve you. It serves us. Look, you know that feeling like you start even to pick up basketball game or pick up soccer game and at the beginning of it, some guy fucking needs you and doesn't say sorry or whatever, you know, you get the adrenaline goes, you could have 10 minutes where you're just lights out, but then the adrenaline recedes and you're gassed and there's another half of basketball to play better to sort of just like be Kobe like in that one way where they

can put the ball on your face. You don't even move and you just silently absorb it all and you go about dispassionately like prosecuting the game and it's really hard to get to that place. And by the way, we all, I still, I'm no, I'm not Buddha. I still fucking remember every insult, but I try not to allow that to be the thing that drives me in the morning. Yeah. I find that anger and, and using like the motivation of people doubting you is good to get you

off your ass and engage in something. But for me, if I'm like, if I'm trying to come up with something creative, it's actually counterproductive because I've got, you know, I'm thinking about something else ultimately in the back of my head instead of thinking about what would really drive me to be creative, which is just like coming up with something that I laughed about, that I'd make my friends laugh about, that sort of thing. Yeah. You know what?

If you're mad, you're not going to get to that place. Dude, you know what's brilliant about that too is it'll stop you from taking. If you're worried, if your whole thing is I'm going to show them, so I'm going to succeed, then success becomes the thing that's your target. And then taking the risks you have to take that could sometimes lead to failure is too great. It's too great. Oh no, if I fail, then they're right about me.

Yeah. You have to take it off your head because the only way to become successful is to take huge risks. Right. The kind of success in any of this stuff, the arts or entertainment, you've got to take gigantic risks. And if you were worried about looking foolish for taking those risks, you'd never take them. So that actually segues perfectly to rounders and how you started in the Hollywood business

because you took a big risk. You were what, 30? 30 years old. And you said, I'm going to change kind of my whole entire profession. So you decide, when did it click? Was it actually playing poker in a club and you're like, this is... Well, yeah. I mean, I was a degenerate poker player.

I spent maybe two years. I was working full-time, but I think I spent like two years, a year and a half, almost every day playing in the underground card rooms. This is pre-online poker. So you're doing it in real? Oh yeah. This is 1995. It's funny to think that if you were 10 years older, you would have made rounders, but it

would have been like some dude who's jerking off and he's like playing online poker. He's wearing sunglasses that have a dinosaur on the loose. That's really the last moment there. Greg Raimer? Like Greg Raimer? Well, I actually wrote Fossilman and Chris Moneymaker down because I wanted to ask you which one of those two is Mike McDermott because you start, rounders helped propel... But they were after-rounders.

No. I mean, Moneymaker was after-rounders. Right. But they helped. Raimer was like around that time. Moneymaker was like my thing. No. So that's it.

No, that's true. Right. Yeah, yeah. No, Chris said it on Letterman. Yeah. I didn't know. And then he goes on Letterman. He goes, I watch this movie, Rounders.

And that's what made me want to be a poker player. But for us, it was like Huxed and Phil Helmuth and like the generation before. Right. Before. Before Phil. I mean, they weren't famous to regular people. Stu Unger. They were famous to us because we were degenerate poker guys, Dave.

Dave and I were. But I was playing... I was just playing cards a lot. And then my son, Sam, was born and I had this really like, and I was still playing a lot of poker. I was working and playing tons of cards. But at a certain point, I realized like I wanted, and this part can sound corny, except it's 100% true.

I realized like I wanted to be the kind of dad who would tell his kid like, go live whatever your dream is. And I was not. Because my secret dream was to do this stuff, but I was terrified. I was horribly blocked writer. I was terrified by my perfectionism and the ADHD that I would fail at it. But I really wanted to be the kind of dad that would say like, if you have a dream, go chase it.

And then I wasn't. So I had this real like moment and my wife kept saying like, you can do this. Like I know you have it in you. She was incredibly supportive. But one night it just, I was eating cheeseburgers. I'd never smoked a cigarette in my life in 29. I'd started like a half a packet a habit. I was eating cheese, double cheeseburgers in my office.

And I was just fat as fuck. And I realized like my life was not where I wanted it to be. And so I called Levine. My best friend, he was bartending and I went over to where he was working and I said, we should write a screenplay this and you know, I'd been just gone to that poker place where I went in the poker place maybe two weeks later again, called him in the middle of the night and said, I know what we should write the thing about. And then we set off.

We cleared out this storage space underneath our apartment building. It had a slop sink in it, one chair. It was a quarter the size of this room. And Dave and I just met there every single day before work. He would get done bartending. He'd sleep a couple hours. I'd get up super early. We'd meet for two hours, outline and write the script and then I'd go off to work.

And as soon as we started, and I'd say to anyone listening who has some idea in their head about who they think they are, you don't need to upset everything. So I didn't quit my job. All I did was get up earlier, sleep a little bit less. And then I found that that was the part of the day that I felt the most alive. That one hour even, I just felt like, oh, this is a version of me that I like because I had started hating the version of me that was hiding out in poker clubs and smoking cigarettes and feeling like I was going to become a toxic person.

Like if you have a dream and it dies in you, I think it's like any other kind of death and it's toxic. And that that toxicity that would like leech out onto the people you love, the only people you care about being really good to, you would ruin by your bitterness for not chasing who you want to be. And I had that thought consciously. And then as soon as I was writing the script with Dave, it was like, well, this could get made.

It could not get made. I could have to write 10 of them before one gets made. But this is what I'm supposed to do. This makes me feel like I am who I am. We were lucky that the thing we wrote, you know, the part, we were lucky that we were talented enough and hungry enough that we wrote a script and we were rigorous and ruthless about throwing out, you know, draft, ripping up scenes that didn't work and we killed ourselves. But we did come out of there with that script that is a movie that people, to this day,

absolutely. So obsess over. I mean, today there was a, you know, I got hundreds of tweets about it today, just out of nowhere. Someone will tweet something about the movie and then there will just be just a run of conversation. So you're not going to tell us Teddy KGB's last hand. That's the one thing.

I don't know how long it would take that process from starting to when the final script like came out. We started. He's a huge fan of yours, by the way. Oh, cool. Thanks. Yes. I'm a fan of yours too.

He used your inspiration when he was in film school. Yes. Oh, that's awesome. Yeah. I listened to the show. I know who you are and everything. Yeah. Thanks.

So I listened to the show because the Levine boys got me into it. I love those guys. Yeah. Because the Brooks Capge. The Brooks Capge. My three favorite listeners. The Brooks, my son and I listened to the Brooks thing and just howled laughter. You know, not that long.

So like we, I'd say that like I'm compressing the time a little bit, but David and I probably outlined it for a long time, like from when I first walked into a poker club. I'll say I know that I first walked into a poker club in New York, an underground club. I was playing in lots of places, but I probably first walked into an underground club December 15th, 95 or something like that. And then we started writing the script like six months later where we really started writing the script. We probably were outlining from then until we started writing the actual script.

Once you start writing the script, four and a half, four and a half months of writing the, writing, you know, scenes from the outline, four and a half months meeting every single day except Sundays. We didn't meet Sundays, but we had six days a week. And then we sold it. I guess we finished it. Oh, I know. We finished it right before New Year's.

We rewrote it right after New Year's and then of 96. And then it sold March 3rd, 1997. That's when it sold. And then we went into production December 15th. So exactly two years from when I walked into a poker club to the day I have that we made starting making the movie. So yeah, it was an incredible crazy shit that happened that way. So how far into the process were you because it obviously felt like it was a natural thing.

You felt good when you were writing the script, but how far into it did you think this is actually going to be successful? Or did you even know? I don't know. I mean, no, you don't know. You really don't. I mean, Hank, if you make stuff like that, you know, you don't have any way to, you can just go by like our goal for it.

Like so there was the one goal, which is I want to prove to myself I can write every day. I'm not sure I can. I want to prove to myself that I can do it, right? So that's goal number one. But then the other goal was we had movies that we watched over and over and over again, the two of us like Diner and Stripes and the Godfathers and Goodfellas. Love Diner.

And like so Diner was like the movie for the two of us that we knew every word to. And we just wanted to make a movie, write a movie that dudes like us would watch over and over and over, quote to each other, know all the words, argue about. We never thought it would have an appeal beyond that. And that's all that we were focused on. I think in, as I'm sure when you guys started this, you were just trying to entertain guys like you, right, who would get the joke, who would understand what you were doing. And the fact that then at mushrooms, because the more you commit to the specific vision

where it's like, we're just into the thing we're into, the more actually you find out that there are more people who want to get some of that energy. But speaking to what PFT was just saying, we had the benefit of instant feedback because we say, we tape something and it's out there. You have, you are sitting there writing and you're saying yourself, well, I think it's going to work, but we have no idea what you have to be willing. I mean, that's the hard thing about being a writer, right? Being a writer, the internet changes it a little because you can test stuff out in different

ways on the internet. Now, which I think has its drawbacks as well. Well, if you listen to too much instant feedback, you start to second guess everything that you think is good and find yourself doing that. You guys do that. It's hard not to, like I tried not to, but like, you know, if you're getting a hundred tweets about something that you put out that day, 60% of the people liked it, 40% didn't. The 40% is just going to overwhelm you and that's all you're going to focus on, right?

For me, it's more about just like trusting yourself and knowing that if I think something's funny, then we just go with that. That's like our true north that we follow. And you have to. And it's weird too, because we're in a different, like podcasting is a weird spot to be in right now because it's now old enough that podcasts have been around long enough that people are starting to be like, well, we've listened to this is old hat. It's kind of, I'm sure it happens with billions where you'll have people, you know, oh, I

used to like season one and two, but now it's things. But I just ignore that shit. You can't. I mean, also I have different kind of metrics that I care about. Like the show is so like you, like your audience, the, our core audience is fanatical, right? And they're not going anywhere. And they're watching our, they're watching episodes of the show three, four, five times. They're binging the whole season over and over again.

So like, yeah, I would like everyone like, but I'm sure you guys have seen on Twitter, like I'll take the worst comments and I'll just retweet them and I'll be like, thanks for watching. Or I, because for me, it's funny. I can't allow myself to listen to what the odd, I want the show to work. I will never slack off. Like David and I beat ourselves up so much making the show, you know, I lose sleep. If I think there's a three minute, if I think there's, as I'm sure you guys, if I think

there's a three minute section in an episode that isn't working when we're editing, it will cost me sleep for a week, two weeks until I fixed the three minutes. So I'm obsessed about making the show as good as my like limited talents and abilities will allow, but it's never going to be cause I'm not working like I'll work forever. And so will David, the two of us will kill ourselves to get it right. So once we've gone through that process and given it just done the best, I know how to do with it. Some guy sitting at home sniping at me, who's clearly watched it by the way, still watching

probably wants to be a writer. Yeah. And then if you interact with those people and you go, oh, hey, whatever, but then three back and forth, they're always like, shit, man, I just got my script rejected by the blacklist today. And I'm in a shitty mood and I mean, there you immediately find out. Yeah. It's someone who was clearly watched the show and took the time to find your Twitter handle

and then get so he's familiar with you. So it's yeah, he's got something else going on. I'm sure you know, it's just like having a dialogue back and forth with you is probably like that's that's a good night for that person. Yeah, it would have been for me. That's the other thing for me. Like if I could, I mean, if I could have like communicated with Harold Ramis when I was a kid, you know, who made Stripes and Caddy Shack and all those movies, I would have like

lost my mind and maybe on a weird night when I'd smoked too much. I would have been like, ah, the second half of Stripes kind of sucks. The first half of so much lost the plot. Yeah, what happened there with, you know, like Sergeant Hulka, why did he disappear? You know, but but the truth is, I would have been like, holy shit, how Ramis responded to me? I would have printed it out and put it up on my wall. So I don't know. Do you you can't really listen to like what people say when it is sometimes can be helpful.

It's tough to separate constructive criticism and good feedback from just the noise sometimes. And so you're separating the signal from the noise. The whole thing on the Internet. Right. It's tough sometimes. But I think that the second you start to discount any criticism is the second you start to die. Because if you're not willing to evolve and and you've become so egotistical in what you're doing that you think that you can do no more wrong, you're in a bad place and it's not going to end up. Well, but that that then it's about choosing.

So like my friends and I and colleagues and I always show each other shit and always are brutally honest. There are five or six or seven men and women that I'll show stuff to and then get unvarnished, brutal feedback from that. I'm completely engaged when I'm making it. Once I'm done, though, I don't there's not like it's made. There's nothing I can do. But it's like that thing on sex in the city. Did you guys watch it? You can admit it if you watch the show. I never watched Samantha was the one that had a lot of sex.

Right. All right. You've watched Mr. Big. Yeah. So but there's this famous thing where a guy on the show, Berger, he wrote a book and it came out and then Carrie criticized the book. And he's like, well, I can't fix it now. Right. It's out already. So that's the thing. It doesn't know that it's so they took cats back in Sonic. Yeah, they reedited.

Well, that was that was before. Yeah. So how did that work out for everybody on cats? That worked out well for everybody. Really well, really well. So speaking of her maid stole the vibrator, right? I guess. Did you remember that? So along these same lines, I'm very curious.

So billions, obviously tremendously successful. You season four is coming out May. Five. Five is coming out May. Yeah. Now, watching how people consume television now. Yes. And the binge watching and everyone's a critic. And you saw probably how Game of Thrones ended. Yes. Do you have anxiety with how are we going to land this plane? Like, how is this someday we're going to have to write the last episode of billions?

I'm sure that I will feel pressure, but it's internal pressure because the thing that protects you from that ego is the thing I was talking about before, which is like just throwing yourself into the work because the work makes you the work forces you to get humility because it's so hard and you fail all the time. Right. When you try at this shit, you're failing every minute, right? You're failing when you're writing a scene and it's not as good as it should be. You're failing when you're shooting.

Like it's tons of failure. Everything that we do involves a high level of failure constantly. And you're just constantly bumping up against your own limitations as an artist and your own limitations. There's great limitations. If you're not Paul Thomas Anderson or Wes Anderson, you have a quentin. There's just a lot of fucking limitations and you're just trying your best to like transcend them, which is to say David Benioff and Dan Weiss

are fucking geniuses, those guys and who made Game of Thrones. I mean, Benioff wrote like my favorite novel of the last 15 years, City of Thieves. Even if you're not a reader of novels, go read that book. It's fucking incredible, as good as any TV show ever. And yeah, whether those guys nailed it or not, I don't think they we are probably your favorite TV show is you put so much of yourself as a viewer into it. Suddenly, it's like that thing where some listeners or yours

thinks they're your best friend. I know you guys show up places and your listeners feel like they know you incredibly well. They know a part of you, the part of you that you allow them to know. And it's a real part of you. It's who you are, but it's not 360, right? So our intern tweeted out a picture of my penis one time. So yeah, it's most of it. Yeah. But yeah, I know what you're saying.

Yes, we we we expose ourselves in a limited amount sometimes. Yeah, so you do feel like there is like so it's like people have a relationship with the TV series, but that is not really David Benioff and Dan Weiss responsibility, their responsibilities to like make the best show that they can based on the way that they see it. So it's the same thing with our show, like we will. Dave and I from the beginning have just been trying to make a show. The great thing about having a partner who's like your best friend,

who is your best friend and is when I'm writing my scenes in the show where he's writing his, we're just trying to amuse the other guy. Right. I just want to make Dave laugh. I just want to make Dave wonder what's going to happen. Like I just want to entertain him. And I know that if I entertain him and he entertains me and also we're each other's harshest critic and biggest fan. So I'll fucking rewrite him without a moment's thought and he'll rewrite

me without a moment's thought and we'll hash that shit out. But at the end of it, it's going to be this collective thing that we've been doing since Rounder's together. And I guess I have to trust. I don't know another way to do it, man, except to trust that that thing won't reach everybody. A lot of people won't like it. But our tribe will understand if we're true to what we're doing,

like our tribe will get it. And that's all that I can do, really. I don't I don't know how to do the other thing. Yeah. I guess there's like a leap of faith that comes in at the start, because you you've had such a good track record now where it's probably easier to trust now than it was at first when you're writing Rounders. And you're like, I think this is good.

I think that we should trust ourselves. But there was probably some creeping doubt that's like no idea. We could be totally totally. Of course. Nobody could want that. Of course. Yeah. I mean, when you start a movie with three stacks of high society, you know, nobody knows what that means. They could everyone could have been like, this is bullshit. I don't want this. And it was rejected, by the way.

But I mean, that's the other thing. Hank, it was rejected those those three and a half months until somebody said yes, was just like, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. And we got rejected by every agency in Hollywood. I mean, they just slammed us to the mat and they all sorts of bullshit reasons and probably true reasons why they rejected us. And that was when I had huge doubt. I was like, we were already trying to write the next thing.

But I mean, I thought, oh, man, maybe maybe we're just completely fooling ourselves. Maybe we're just total frauds. When it comes to landing the plane as big cap brought up on billions, I've got two ideas that are foolproof. Fire away, just sign a little thing that says I can take the idea. No, you can verbally I'm granting you this kind of thank you. That's great. OK, one, this is almost a no brainer. You've probably thought of it already at the very end of the very last episode.

Bobby Axelrod realizes that he was also Paul G. Mottie the whole time. Oh, cool. Split personality. Well, we got to. Yeah. Yeah, that's what we thought. You just actually now and I have to reshoot the first episode of next season, because that's how we started. We started the episode with that.

Like the whole fifth season was supposed to be that journey. Yeah. All right. Well, my other one was just that he wakes up and it was a dream. Also, an excellent idea. He's in prison. Also, I just ad lib that one right now. He's in jail for insider trading. OK. After season one, we throw one out there. Sure, I'd love it. Have you seen the show? No.

OK. Great. I know. Yeah, teaching some of it. No, I've seen every episode. I was mistaken when I asked Mark Cuban. All right. You've been if he was the basis for billions. And he was like, no, I've actually been in several episodes. I was like, yeah, oh, that's right. You and Bobby Axe got a little pissing contest over that car.

Yeah. I remember how I consume television now. I'll wait till it says like, OK, season seven is the finale season. Then you'll watch the whole thing. And I'll watch all of them. Then I'll be like, this show sucks. I can't remember anything that happened because it all becomes one show. But what about I saw not because you were treating about it because Rich Eisen was treating about it nonstop

that he was in an episode, right? He and Bob Mennery together. Yeah. OK. So how about you have Rich Eisen come back and then you kill his character off, but you also kill him in real life. Then you never have to do a finale because it's like the show is over. You're in jail for murder. I understand all your show business success now. Yeah, I really do.

Exactly. You're really incredible. You know, I'd write a finale. Amazing. They actually killed Rich Eisen. Plus Rich Eisen is dead. Yeah. And then we don't hear about Mission being back. Can I just say, seeing those two guys together, because Rich, I love Rich. Yeah. Rich is so straight-laced in that way. And Mennery is so not.

And watching the two of them commentate together and like what was happening when we would call cut. It was fucking hilarious. Because then Big Cat and I could write our own TV show about how you killed. Yeah. Rich Eisen is documentary. Yeah. True crime story. And how we convinced you to murder. Where do you guys have this idea of starting a murder spree?

Where is the bomb? No, I mean, all these ideas are free. Yeah, they are free. Speaking of how's your Miles Teller movie going? Good. Thank you for asking. Oh, he likes it. The boner thing is going on. I actually want to talk to you offline about the boner thing,

because I feel like there's a good opportunity. You want a little like dialogue? Just for me to be here for me to pick your brain a little bit, because I'm actually going to write this thing. The boner. It seemed like he didn't like you guys, by the way. Well, when you asked, yeah, no, I think he did. But he's also kind of like, I like you guys a lot. He's a little prickly sometimes, but great actor, like truly great.

Great. Yeah, great. We're going to do the boner thing, but we want to do it in a way that's really the most intelligent movie ever made about dog boners. Great. So do you think we should? High bar, high bar. Do you think we should take Viagra before we write like you did with your partner? Sure, like you're trying to do a do a Roman ad right in the middle of this whole thing, because I'm so it just comes right in the conversation.

I assume that that's a product placement, right? It's like a product placement. Raging hard erections the entire time, right? Well, here's what I would say about that. What else do you guys want to know? What else are you talking about? You did you did you were on Vine for a while, right? Oh, yeah, you're doing like six second screenwriting tips.

Yes. Can you give we're going to try to remake Vine? Can you actually how I found you, I think. Oh, when you were in film school. Yeah. Cool. That's fine. Yeah, I had 60 million Vine loops, whatever. No big deal. Yeah, that's pretty good. It was pretty good. Fine was awesome. I loved it. Well, it was all just to, you know,

that was all just to take the fucking piss out of these bullshit screenwriting teachers. Right. Basically, I just said for the fuck of it one day, all screenwriting books are bullshit. All of them read screenplays, watch movies and let those be your guide. And as a joke, I called it six second screenwriting lessons because what happened was on Twitter, people were asking me all these questions like, hey, in the seven X structure that you have to do, what happens in the fourth act?

And I was like, I never thought about any where you. So I wrote back like, where are you getting this shit? And then they were like, well, everyone knows what you're supposed to do. I went to a seminar at the Radisson and I was like, stop. Like that's total. So then I just grabbed the phone and it was Vine. And I just said it as a fucking joke. I mean, I meant it.

But it was like, and I called the six second screenwriting lessons and I sent it out and let's say at the time I had like 3,000 followers on Twitter. I wasn't even on social media hardly. By the end of that day, there were like 10,000 people all talking about what I said and all being like, wait, you mean that that stuff that they I pay money to get a genre lesson is fake. And I was like, I don't even know what that word means. Like, stop. Yes, it's fake.

If you have to go to a Radisson for a seminar, it's fake. No matter what the subject doesn't matter what the subject is, you're paying money to attend a conference room at a hotel. You got scammed. There's an issue that you're getting scammed unless your employer is paying for it. There's something about your life right now that has a big hole. If you're trying to fill that hole in a hotel conference room. Yeah.

If you feel like you're in a scene from up in the air, that movie where Clooney is taking the backpack out, like, yeah, don't don't go to the seminars. So I said that and then I realized people want permission. They want someone to give them permission to try their crazy dream. They just they feel like we were raised in these schools that were originally made to teach kids how to go work on their parents' farms. Like the schools would give you the discipline to go work on a farm and know how to keep track and records.

And you were so you were taught that you need some authority to give you permission to do things like go to the bathroom even. So people are like, well, I can't be an artist or I can't create. And I realized, well, of course you fucking can. All you have to do is do it. Don't worry about the labels. Don't worry that when you were in eighth grade, some kid knew how to play stereo to heaven on the guitar already.

And he made it seem like he'd just taught himself he working on it for two years, probably. But it seems like a magic trick. And it seems like that guy's the special one and you can't be. So I just wanted to say to people, of course you can be. Why can't you be just takes a lot of work, rigor, tremendous rigor. Right. So if you're willing to put in that work, who who should tell you what you can or can't do? That's what I was saying. It's an important lesson.

Yeah. Do you find that the the structure of your screenplay is kind of naturally falls into the story? Well, it's storytelling. By the way, this is what I talk about on my podcast, which is not, which is called the moment with Brian Coglman. I am. I talk about that. Yeah. Oh, you're going to believe it. Yeah. The moment with Brian Coglman. Yeah, I wasn't trying. I mean, I did it very directly, right?

It's a very direct thing. The moment with Brian Coglman. There we go. Yeah, great. And but I try to talk about that there as well. What was your question? Just ask me. I was plugging so I was saying that do you find that the structure of the screenplays that you write kind of fall into that traditional three X structure?

Well, so that's one of the things I talked about on the finds, too. And I talk about the podcast, the moment with Brian Coglman, which is that you don't have to tell story. It's a beginning, middle and end. People make it so complicated, three X structure, inciting instant. That just inciting instant. It is like something holy shit. I was at the handball court yesterday and this fucking guy wouldn't let me.

Oh, what happened? Yeah, he pushed. I wanted to I called winners and he and his friends had go fuck yourself. That's the inciting incident. And then it's like, well, what did I do? And how would you tell me that story? That's it. Beginning, middle and we all know how to do it. If you had to tell a story because you got a member of whatever sex you're attracted to in a bar to pay attention to for two seconds

and you had their interest and you just had to tell them a story to get them to walk out of there. Believe me, your story would have an inciting incident, a beginning, a middle and an end. And that's all you have to do in telling a screen story, too. Just get my interest and keep my interest by telling me a story that rises to some point in the middle. And then there's some kind of reversal in it that I didn't see coming.

And then there's an end. People want to earn money by telling you how to do this stuff. They want to make it complicated. That's what con men do, right? Con men, they want to take something that's simple. They want to really complicate it, and then they want to get you to pay them so that they can then make it uncomplicated for you. This stuff isn't that complicated.

It just requires a tremendous amount of work. What all of us are looking for is a hack that will prevent us from doing the work. That doesn't exist. You've got to do the work. But if you do the work, you can solve these things. They're not impossible. Not the smartest guy in the world. I just was willing to work really hard every day to figure it out.

And that part is interesting to me because your podcast, the moment, which we will actually plug, you talk to a bunch of people and, you know, whether it be success, failure, whatever their story is. I think you can you can attest this, but they all just worked really hard. A lot of it's true. Like and that kind of comes back to what we've done and what you've done. Like a lot of the times, you know, even if you're not the most talented, if you work very, very hard

and outworked your competition, you have to because you don't know if you're. Thing is, yeah, you need to have some talent. You have no idea if you're talented until you do the work. That's the that's the fucked part of the whole game. You know, you got to be willing to put so much effort in to find out. And you know what? By the end, the work may just will out. The work may just win. You may just find your way.

This is like JJ Reddick. We had dinner with JJ that night. I mean, I got to go this summer and rebound. That's how he knows that I can shoot because I went and I spent an hour with him at his workout. That guy's what, the third best shooter in the NBA, maybe second. It depends, certainly safely, the third best outside shooter for his whole career in the league.

He could just and he's making third. What is he making now, 13 a year? I think like, oh, yeah, maybe 13 or two years, 20, but a two year, twenty six million dollar deal, right? For these two years in noise. That guy said the deals. It's. Guaranteed money and he's still in there, killing. I never saw a human being work harder than I saw him work in that hour in the gym.

I mean, he just comes in there. He fucking carries this huge speaker with him that he rolls this huge speaker in. He turns on some hip hop of questionable auspices and time period. But I guess it was what he was listening to when he was in college. And then twins. Yeah. Yeah. Some. Some hip hop was not Kendrick. He's putting there was no tip of a butterfly.

He's putting on this music and then his very affable, relaxed personality. And the moment the training started, it all disappeared. He was like, stand over here, pass me the ball this way, rebound this way. I'm going to take put this chair here. I'm going to go around like a defender. And the guy, I just don't put himself through paces for an hour. And it made it so clear that's why this guy's got a 20 year career. And he's going to have 20 year career in the NBA as a guy who's constantly

able to score because he'll just push himself harder than all these other guys who are trying to either compete with him as a shooter or defend. He's willing to kill it. He's in the Hamptons. It's the summer. He's not. He doesn't have to do any of it. He could play himself into shape as so many people do.

Yeah. He's not playing himself into shape. He's walking in ready to play. Right. That's inspiring as hell to me. Yeah. He was saying that he's he's always afraid that every single time he steps into the gym, he's not going to know how to shoot anymore. And so that's kind of what motivated, which is insane. Because he's been doing this for what, 20 years, probably. He's been shooting at an extremely high level.

Opposite. Every time I step in the gym, I'm like, maybe today is the day I'm JJ. Right. You're like the kid in the meme. You're like, I haven't done any of the work, but maybe I'll just get hot out of nowhere. Yeah. And just start hitting everything. It's just so much work to be good at shooting. But yeah, I spent years trying to learn to shoot. Well, but that's the thing, like that level of that level of just like industriousness, there's no substitute for it.

Mm hmm. Mm hmm. Has anyone ever said this to you? Because I'm about to say it. It's totally honest. Go. Billions, rounders, everyone. Say whatever you want. I'm successful. My favorite movie that you wrote was Walking Tall.

Thank you. That's all you say. Thanks. Glad you like it. You didn't like it. No, I mean, listen, getting to Right for the Rock. The Rock. Getting to Right for the Rock. Johnny Knoxville. Kind of a little bit of a roadhouse part two.

Dude, getting to Right for the Rock is a huge thrill. An honor. I love. I genuinely loved that movie. I'm a lifelong WWF. Like, I'm a huge wrestling person. So, in fact, I watched the greatest interview last night. Have you ever watched Honky Tonk Man's? Yes, where he talks about how he refused to drop the belt to

he refused to drop the belt to Macho Man when he had the Intercontinental Championship. It's insane. Old school wrestling. I wouldn't say an interview. He just did this interview recently where where it was a totally a shoot interview where he was just completely laying out how Vince told him to drop the belt and why he wouldn't. You can't take your eyes off it.

Honky Tonk Man, it's insane. I went down a rabbit hole the other day. Posted for people. It's nuts. Mr. Perfect Vignette. Sure. It's actually like the best writing ever. Like him doing or winning it. Everything was just the greatest character ever.

Throwing the basketball. But Honky Tonk Man was just talking about. I mean, it's the same thing we're talking. How can I remember just going, I mean, here, I'd put so much work and effort into creating the character. And I'm thinking to myself, you just put a little shit in your hair, dude. Yeah, yeah, right.

What did you? He was like, I just took years. I was like, I felt so bad for the guy. He said he was just sitting there and and Vince calls them in. And he said with Randy and and Elizabeth and he said, Randy. Vince would never even meet his eyes. He was just going, so Randy will take the title on Saturday. And he ignored the guy the whole time, not one word to him.

Yeah. And he's like, I just had to walk out of there like some kind of a dickhead, man. He goes, I had to call my wife and I had to just tell her, honey, like we just had a baby and I had to be like, I don't know if we're going to get to keep the house. Unbelievable interview. So I can't I can't argue with walking. OK, I just want you to know,

there's at least one person walking around who's like walking tall. The truth is, our best movie is a movie called Salazar, man, that Michael Douglas starred in. You should watch that. It's not like walking tall at all. Walking tall. Dave and I worked on that for four weeks. And so in four weeks, we are part of that we wrote it.

Someone had written the draft of it. This is rock. He had a big stick. Well, yeah, so that's the funniest thing is, you know, when they hired us, they said they hired us to rewrite. So someone had written a script. That's one of those cases where they brought us in as like script doctors because they wanted Johnny Knoxville to say yes. He'd been offered the movie.

They'd offered him like five million bucks. He turned it down and they were like, can you guys write a script? Good enough to get Johnny Knoxville to say yes. And we thought, I think we can do that. Yeah, I did. How did you punch it up? Well, to target. So you get a conference call. Well, you're joking.

But this is Hollywood. This is Hollywood and what we get on the call and it's with the rock and everybody when they're going to hire us to do it and rock was great. And then he hung up, you know, we talked to him for 20 minutes and he talked about what he wanted to do, and it was amazing. And then the studio exec said, OK, we'd like you guys to do this. There's one thing really important. We said what they said, you have to really make sure you give the stick a personality.

He did this. And we're like, what? I know this movie. Give the stick a personality. The stick needs a backstory. We need to understand why this stick. But it was we felt like we were in a Hollywood comedy at that point. Because so the answer is you just give John Knoxville some dialogue

that sounded like the kind of dialogue Dave and I write, and then he wants to come do it. We'll include a scene with a shopping cart. They're wrong. So happy I brought that up. I had no idea. Give the stick a personality. I mean, you did. It's one of the greatest things anyone in Hollywood ever said.

You did. You did. You did. You did just that. Keep a straight face, because when they're paying you for those, you know, as a screenwriter, the only times you can make like wherever you are in the business, the only times you make substantially more is when there's like pressure like that, where they're like, we have four weeks, we want to green light the movie. We're going to pay you weekly.

So every week we have a star we want to get. We have one other guy with a rock with a moment. Those are the only times that you have any leverage as a screenwriter. And so we knew we would get a paycheck that would take us through the next two years or whatever. And so when they're like, give the bad a personality, we were just like a hunt. Oh, absolutely. Yes, sir. We know exactly where we were. Yeah, we personality.

Don't you worry about. No, this thing is going to be like Dave Chappelle. Yeah, the best personality in the world. There'll be a sequel with justice. You won't believe the personality that this man is going to have. Soon after that, we stopped taking those gigs. The two by four. At a certain point.

I would talk real quick about billions again, because it fascinates me this show. And do you watch Succession? I'll watch it after. I won't watch it till we're done. I don't want to ever be, you know what I mean? There there's I know that there's a similarity of the world. Yeah, so I just don't want to fuck with it. Yeah, so I will.

I love out of my case. No, I do actually have to have the same perspective. I try not to listen to too much other like sports talk because then you start internalizing. Yeah, you just don't have a mutual understanding that we don't listen to the lebatard show and they don't listen to us. Right. No, that's because we both like each other. But we know that we will be accused of taking the same area. Yeah. And people will be like, oh, so if you just don't listen,

then you when someone accuses you of it, you know, you're like, hey, listen, there's no chance I stole it because I didn't listen. Which one of you is to God's? I mean, I'm small. Yeah, we go back and forth. Yeah, we flip back and forth a bit. So yeah, I mean, he's a big guy named Dan. Yeah, right. Yeah.

Well, that's why we made the show. That's exactly what happened. But in terms of those two shows, in particular, Succession and Billions, one thing that's kind of in common about the two is neither show has any character that is like pure, that is like 100 percent like, you know, the person that you can root for all the time. They all have their flaws. How does how does that impact writing an episode to like try to figure out

how to get the audience on the side of one person who might not always be morally. So a trick is if somebody is great at what they do, the audience is interested in hanging. If you're fucking amazing at what you do, the audience like, you know, we watch John Jones, because we watch Connor. I mean, Connor, it's possible he's not a great human being. I would say that's very possible.

Really possible. That's the most aggressive I'm going to get about Connor, because I can end up in a room with him someday. But yeah, I punch you. That's you're writing is weird age wise. Oh, yeah, hell, I'm almost old enough. I'm almost old enough. He's like, really, if I were 65, I'm not just 53, 63 then.

But it's positive, but I'm compelled to watch him. Right. Yeah. And also in the real world, most people are great. Most people on their have their best moment. You would think they were saying in their worst moment, you think they were a double. And so not everybody, but we are interested. David, I've always been interested in examining people in between. And that's fascinating to us. So I was never word executives in any endeavor in any business

will always try to get the, you know, what's the safe middle? But if you're a creator, you can you have to ignore the safe middle and you have to be going for what's really fascinating to you. And to us, it was these kind of people who are, you know, prosecutors who use the prosecutorial office to try to advance their careers. Hedge fund people are richer than any human needs to be, who still feel like a failure if they don't make another billion dollars. And so what corners are they willing to cut?

And what story are they telling themselves? And if you can make that stuff compelling enough, then people will hang in. And then, you know, in our culture now, people will will look at folks like that, like heroes to David and me. They're not they're not heroes at all, but they're humans. But when you make somebody really great at what they do, really smart, funny, like our characters are, people will they'll fuck with that shit they want to. You come from a family that created egg cartons.

My great, great uncle Leon invented the egg carton. Wow. It makes no money off it, but he did do one of those egg carton. Trust. I am egg carton baby. Yeah, that's that's a great like ice breaker. If you ever had to be in an awkward situation, like you think that would work. Interesting about yourself. I think that'd be a terrible ice breaker. You could take credit for virtually every piece of recorded music

that's coming out in the last 50 years because of the baffling on the walls. Yeah, yeah, that's good. You get a cut. That's a wild one. Yeah. Yeah. I think his name was not no, not Leon. It was it's in it's somewhere on the Internet, whatever it is. But it's an egg carton. It's a real thing. What's you love Twitter threads?

Is there a like goal? Like how long could you make a Twitter thread? Like I want to see you go for like Kobe goes for 81. It's true. I do really I do really dig them. I do dig them because like I have a I could just like write an essay on the blog. You should do. But I think the Twitter thread is somehow better. I like it. But do it.

You want me to get go like 80 go 85 because I actually I don't write and the problem is I don't write them ahead of time, right? I'm just going. So you do one slash question. I sort of know. I sort of have a sense of where it is. And I'll just do one. And then perhaps see how far I write end at the end.

Yeah, you want me to do like a hundred. Yeah, go to the top of a person because I feel like I read a book when I read along Twitter. So I'm like, wow, do you not like Twitter threads? No, I think it's not for that. I like them. I think it's very funny. I actually have no problem with the person who writes the Twitter thread. It's the people who quote the Twitter thread and be like very important thread.

Well, like thread. Well, I would say the things I'm doing, I think it's pretty clear. I don't take myself seriously when I'm doing it. You're fine. I'm just fucking around telling funny stories. I mean, I call them Hollywood gold for Christ's sake. I don't really think they're gold. You know, I just do them when I have a good commit to it, though. Like, see if you commit.

I'm a endless thread. I am a professional storyteller. The longest. Write a whole movie in thread form. Have you watched any big cat or any lad matches since we talked about that you have to go and watch? No, I have not. That's I forgot.

That's got to come on. I know. That's my bet. You was the best. Hand up, hand up. Why have you not watched any? Because I forgot we had that conversation. The big cat. I know. I forgot.

I forgot. I forgot. All right, I got one last question. Good. Seeky question promo code. Take you get ten dollars off. Go do it right now. I don't think it was ace ace because that would be corny as hell because obviously you had the aces at the beginning of the movie. I won't answer the question.

So we're going to bleep it out. Do you think? Oh, I can just tell you guys. My theory is either had ace, ten. Excellent. Or you had nothing. Cool. That's great. It's been so much fun, guys.

Ain't nothing. Do you have nothing? This has been put your head on if you had nothing. This is the best. This is the best. Oh, I've one last one last last question. I've always wanted to be an extra. Done.

I'd be an extra. Yes. OK, it's really bad, though. Have you done it? No. It's it's the worst time. But yes, come come do it. OK.

You just got to sit there for so long. Are you really going to come for 12 hours, man? Yeah. Well, what what type of extra do you think? I don't think I'm going to be a dead body. So now we're in a negotiation. No, I'm just I'm curious. Yeah, I could put you in a restaurant

behind somebody or something. I could be in a restaurant. I'd love to be in a restaurant. I'd love to. The answer is yes. I could be a dead body. But you're really showing up for 12. Like you're you're there for 12 hours

and it's going to be boring and annoying. I will eat, though. Do they give you food? Yeah, you'll get some croff services. I will I will guarantee. Plus, you'll be able to hang with us by the chair. It won't be as bad for you as for like. But it's a really hard job.

Background being those people who really do that. What they do is hard. I guarantee you and I don't want to diminish from what they do because you're right being an extra. It's a tough way to make a buck. I guarantee you I would show up for 12 hours. If I could, if you could guarantee me that I would be in the background of a shot in Billions.

Well, well, here's the thing, right? If I'm friendly with somebody and I put them in as an extra, my goal is not going to be to cut them out. That seems that just seems bad all around. Yeah. If the whole scene, if the whole very funny break to pull on the whole scene, well, we would have had to start that big cat and I would have stunted that before.

If the whole scene gets cut, that's life. But like one of my good friends came and we were shooting a softball scene and he played shortstop and he was really good shortstop, but he was so psyched, then the whole scene got cut and he like retrained himself and he hurt his shoulder and then that scene got cut, which was sad, but it happened. Listen, I'll take my chances.

You would probably be in the show. Yeah, I'll take my chances. Guys, yeah, rounders for sports betting. I'll help you write that. Great. Awesome. Rounders too. What is that coming out? Right. That's good. That is coming out, right?

Yeah, I heard Edward Norton talking about that. Nobody gets through an episode of Pardon My Take without having to deal with those type of questions. Let me say, I'm so happy to do this, guys. I really am such a fan and the Levine boys, Joe and James and Robbie, you're so happy right now. I think that Uncle Brian did this. And yeah, thanks for having me.

Which one of the Levine boys is Pete Gass? Let me tell you this, Robbie Levine is an incredible, all three of them are amazing. Robbie, could you guys be talking about Robbie as a professional athlete? Whoa. Great. Okay. Okay. Thanks, guys. Thanks.

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By the way, before we do that, I was texting with our guide, John Rostine, last night. He, we'll have to figure out our schedule, but he wants us to do a wing eating contest sometime soon. I think we should do it in- I don't do those. Yeah, we should do that maybe in the off season, because this is March, you know, like it's gonna be March.

I was thinking though, why do we sleep in May? Why don't we sleep in like- It's only February. It's only February, but why do we, why don't we sleep in the whole second half of April? Because you're still coming down. God. You're still thinking about college basketball.

I was thinking about that. We sleep in May. It's like, yeah, that makes sense, except the final four is like April 4th. Yeah, but we sleep the last three weeks of April. That kind of rolls off the tongue. We sleep in the last three weeks of April. Right, you missed taxes, done, don't have to do those.

Good. Your Honor, I was asleep. Yeah, I was asleep. Case dismissed. Too much basketball that I watched in March. Had to sleep the rest of April. All right, segments. PR101 Greg Robinson.

He had 157 pounds of marijuana caught. He is a very rich man. Obviously plays for the Cleveland Browns. And this reminds you of Nate Newton, of Sam Hurd, in a long line of very rich football players who decide they want to be Scarface. What's the PR101 here? Besides already making it look uncool

by having Ravel tweet out the street value. Yeah, that was a big narc move. I think it's, well, it is a JV, Nate Newton move in every sense of the word. So it's half as much as Nate Newton. Nate Newton was. Nate Newton was a Dallas Cowboys offensive lineman that got busted with like 350 or like 400 pounds of weed,

something like that. Back in, I think, the late 90s, early 2000s. But it is, so it's like half as much weed that he had. He plays for the Browns, not the Cowboys. His name is Greg, which is not a weed dealer's name. I feel like that could be a personal use case right there. Like, what drug dealer do you know named Greg? Greg is the guy that owns the grow house

that you rent the grow house from and he doesn't have any idea until his electric bill jumps up to like $5,000 a month. Greg is not a drug dealer name at all. I'm old Greg. Remember that video? Yeah, Viral AF. Yeah, very viral.

I don't know. I don't know what the PR 101 here is, except he should just say, I play for the Browns. I should be allowed to smoke marijuana medically. Yeah, or he could just go with the, well, dude, you wanted 17 games. We get to smoke and distribute lots of marijuana now. Yeah, my understanding was the new CBA ratified a clause

that you could kidnap an Uber driver and force them to take you to Mexico and come back with 150 pounds of swag. Yes. So he, Nate Newton had 175 pounds of marijuana. So not that much bigger. Sam Hurd had still a lot, still a very lot. Sam Hurd didn't have, he just was trying to procure,

he said 1,000 pounds a week and 20 pounds of cocaine. And then in his, I remember in his defense, his lawyer was like, well, he was just trying to, he was just trying to flex. Like he didn't actually need that. Right, he was just saying it. He was just saying that he was dealing drugs for the cloud. It's just a prank.

So either way, Greg Robinson, I mean, I think this is one of those situations too, where like what's worse, jail or having to go play for the Browns again. Well, obviously playing for the Browns, but Nate Newton, when he was arrested, he had 213 pounds of marijuana during a traffic stop. And then he got arrested again a month later

with 175 pounds of marijuana. Got it, got it. So he forgot, he forgot it was against the law. Yeah. That's what, that's what he needs to do. Greg Robinson needs to get arrested again in another month. And then it can become a discussion of like, does the NFL have an offensive lineman getting arrested

for distributing hundreds of pounds of marijuana problem? And it becomes an institutional problem and not just a Greg Robinson thing. Right, right. So, yeah, I mean, this is a, I guess it was a good time to do it. It's also one of those weird ones where it's like, who cares?

Greg Robinson, like you make a couple of jokes and you move on, he's not good enough to really care. So that kind of sucks. If you're not good enough to have everyone, like if you are a professional athlete and you get caught with 157 pounds of weed, and you don't trend for more than a few hours, you're not that good.

That's bad. Also, yeah, in some legal scenario, they should just, they should just give up those charges because the charges aren't popping, your honor. Right, yeah, like it's not lit enough. People really don't care enough. And you're in the southern district of New York, you're trying to make headlines here.

You're not trying to arrest like a Brown's offense alignment that was graded lower than the quality of his marijuana. Right, right. And also Ravel just totally made it not cool by tweeting out the street value. All right, sorry, not sorry. Quickly for Kevin Love.

So Kevin Love did, he notoriously hated John Belan. He came to training camp like two seconds before the season started, hated him from the beginning. And then John Belan finally gets fired and Kevin Love came out and said, we gotta look at ourselves in the mirror. I was talking about passing that mirror test. Definitely myself, I've been a shithead at some points

this season, I let losing get the best of me and nobody likes to do that. It's really just looking at ourselves and finding out how we can be better and from there trying to pull it all together. I love this move because he's basically apologizing for being a bad person, bad teammate and undermining his coach only after his coach got fired.

So he can be like, yo, my bad, I did get you fired. And you also sucked, but you know, my bad, I'll try a little harder, I'll look in the mirror. Well, yeah, I mean, there's a lot of mirror talk in that statement that you just read. There were like three different instances of him talking about in a mirror or looking at himself. So we have to ask if Kevin Love is a narcissist.

It sounds like the answer is pretty clearly yes. He learned from LeBron about how to undermine a coach and then be upset after that coach lost his job. True. Actually, you know what it sounds like with Kevin Love? He sounds like the Joker in Batman, where he's like, I was just chasing cars. I don't know what I would do if I ever caught one.

So his thrill this entire year was just undermining his coach and insinuating that he should be fired. But now that he actually got fired, Kevin loves like what now, now what do I do? Wait, I gotta play. Now it's kind of boring. Yeah, I gotta try. You want to see how I got these scars?

Yeah. Kelly Lenick probably ripping my shoulder out of the socket. The calves, by the way, this is now they're gonna, I want them to fire. Who's even their interim? Who is it? Do we know? We can look it up.

I want them to fire their interim before the end of the season because they're going for the record, I think. This is their fourth. Oh, it's JB Bicker staff. This is their fourth coach in less than 12 months, I believe. I can't remember. JB Bicker staff. That guy's fired.

That guy's got a name like a corrupt mirror in a Dr. Seuss book. We need him fired because I need them to get five coaches in like the span of 18 months. I don't think that that's possible. I mean, I didn't think that was possible, but they're knocking on the door of that. Yeah.

No, I think it's very possible. It's absolutely 100% likely to happen. Now, what happens to Beeline now? Does he go back to college? I don't know. That's a great question. I'm reading right now the calves. It's like, there's an article.

Cavs are in an awkward stalemate with interim head coach, but that's not talking about JB Bicker staff. That's talking about Larry Drew because it was so recent. So it's still like the fourth spot. Their last interim head coach is still the fourth spot on Google when you search Cavs interim head coach, even though they have a new one. I think he goes back to NCAA because he's a very good coach.

Where? I don't know. But yeah, he's definitely going to go back, right? I think any school would be happy to have him, but then it's just a matter of what schools are going to have openings. University of Texas, Texas back. Dude, shock of smart. Oh, that was bad.

That's been a bad run. All right, should we finish with FAQs, Hank? Yeah, it was FAQs. We also asked for if anyone had playoff improvements for any league in any sport. Oh, I like that. How to fix playoffs in basketball. Make them a five game series.

All games should be played at street ball venues like Rucker Park. Special playoff only OT rules. A player from each team is selected to play one game of course. What? That's a bad one too. OK, these people are high.

Just bad. Play every game on an aircraft carrier. Have Brooks Kepika back on the show. That's a good playoff rule. I agree. I like that. We should actually, yeah, we will have him back on the show. Absolutely.

How to fix the NFL wild card weekend. Invite Brooks Kepika onto your podcast. Done. Done. Give home field advantage to the team with the most lit fans. Lit fans can be measured by their average blood alcohol content, cool traditions, noise costumes, and receiver gloves per capita.

I like that. OK, that now we're working. Yeah, there's a fan metric all year. This reminds me, Big Cat, the one thing I don't like about giving the players off the week of Christmas is we're not going to get as many shots of fans in the stands wearing the team color Santa hats. No.

That they only get to bring out one time per year. Well, no. I don't know if I'm willing to give that up. We'll write that in the CBA. The fans will be part of the CBA. And it would be like, you have to wear the game before, closest to Christmas, you still have to wear those hats. OK, there should be a fan union, to be honest.

Yeah. Yes, absolutely. We can concede that for this idea. FAQ, this one's for Slim Cat and Hank. Do you ever call PFT by his real name outside the office or off air? And how often do you see him without sunglasses? Actually, no, we don't.

No. I always call him PFT. Yeah. Yeah. It's not that weird. It's real easy for everyone. Yeah, that's not really weird at all. And we probably, I mean, PFT is probably, I would say it's like

50-50 with sunglasses in the office. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Was it Jason Biggs that was talking about my baby blues? Yeah. I feel like I need to, as many people as possible need to talk about how great my eyes are, even though they're not that great,

just to have the mysteries out there. I'm like, oh, that's why I always wear sunglasses, because if you took them off, he looks like Coworkin Jr. He actually tried to take them off for a show once, and we just started ferociously making out. So we had to stop that. It was tough. Erections were knocking into the mic.

Good old Skype days. Sup, PMT boys, not so much Hank. My wife has a crush, sad face. How about we shuffle divisions every year? Example, World Cup. Wait, wait, wait, wait, the wife has a crush on you? I mean, that's what I'm inferring. Damn, Hank.

Yeah. There you go, Hank. Cookham. Shout out Justin Bieber. You're not the only one who can hit on rank. Too big of a cool nickname for you, Enria. Tell your rank. Rank.

Hank. Henry. Hia. Henry. Hia? Henry. Henry. Tell your wife too bad.

How about we shuffle divisions every year? Example, World Cup group drawings. Instead of eight divisions, have four in top two seats from each division, make playoffs, and have the Super Bowl at Lambeau. Fuck the Super Bowl at Lambeau. Although a snow in Super Bowl would be cool. Snow Bowl, it would be wonderful.

It'd be great for me as an owner to get that extra revenue every single year. So I'm 100% in favor of that. You have to remember, though, the Super Bowl is not about the Super Bowl. It's about the media. So we need our vacation. Yeah, but it'd be like the true football.

The true football. I feel like the media would like that. No, the media would not like to be in Lambeau in the middle of January or February. I think that there is definitely an element of the media that would like it. Like Peter King would just get so turned on by the fact that he rented out a single level house

that's caddy corner to Lambeau Stadium and just like walk from the front door, pick up the paper, and walk to the stadium for the game. Bart's Brett Favre once threw up painkillers in front of this house. It's got history. Right. All right, last one, are you guys

doing anything special for the PMT one year anniversary? No, we need to. What day is it? Yeah, we said that's the 29th. So that would be years. Leap years always fuck me up mentally. It's like, whoa, that's it's another day in February. That's next Saturday.

So probably not. No, but thanks for thinking about it. Yeah, I'll text. I'll text the group chat. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's pretty sad. Happy anniversary, gang. One year.

Yeah, that's dude. Leap years always fuck me up. That's kind of cool. That's all I got. I just kind of like looking at it, you know, 29, man, 20. Do we get, do we get paid extra for this month? Yes, that's how it works for most labor since there's one more day.

Yeah, 30 K. Yeah, pro re extra 30 K pro rated for the day. I love it. We work extra hard this year. So good job. All right, what do we got Monday? We haven't decided what we have Monday. We have a lot of good interviews that are in the bank.

Maybe it's the more good ones coming up. Yeah, maybe the one, one of the ones we do tomorrow. Maybe one of the ones we do tomorrow. All right. Well, get excited because we've got great interviews coming up. See everyone tomorrow. Love you guys. One, two, three, let's go.

One, two, three, let's go. One, two, three.