Quick Question with Soren and Daniel - Michael Swaim and Abe Epperson Stop By!

Episode Date: May 17, 2023

Daniel is joined by two old Cracked favorites, Michael and Abe, to discuss their new independent film, and eventually get to a quick question!  To support their new movie go to https://seedandspark.com/fund/papa-bear

Si vous faites vos achats tout en travaillant, en mangeant ou même en écoutant ce balado, alors vous connaissez et aimez l'excitation du magasinage. Mais avez-vous ce frisson d'obtenir le meilleur deal? Les membres de Rakuten, eux, oui. Ils magasinent les marques qu'ils aiment et font d'importantes économies, en plus des remises en argent. Et vous pouvez aussi commencer à gagner des remises en argent dans vos magasins préférés, comme Old Navy, Best Buy et Expedia, et même cumuler les ventes et les remises en argent dans vos magasins préférés comme Old Navy, Best Buy et Expedia. Et même cumulez les ventes et les remises en argent.

C'est facile à utiliser et vous obtenez vos remises par PayPal ou par chèque. L'idée est simple. Les magasins paient Rakuten pour leur envoyer des gens magasinés. Et Rakuten partage l'argent avec vous sous forme de remise. Téléchargez l'application gratuite Rakuten et ne manquez jamais un bon deal. Ou allez sur rakuten.ca pour en avoir plus pour votre argent. C'est R-A-K-U-T-E-N. I've got a quick, quick question for you, alright? The answer's not important, I'm just glad that we could talk tonight So what's your favourite? Who did you get?

When will I be remembered? What's it out there? Where did all the go-to-eats go? Oh forget it I saw a movie, Daniel O'Brien Two best friends and comedy writers If there's an answer, they're gonna find it. I think you'll have a great time here. I think you'll have a great time here.

So, hello again and welcome to another episode of Quick Question with Soren and Daniel, the podcast where two best friends and comedy writers ask each other questions and give each other answers. I'm one half of that podcast, senior writer for Last Week Tonight, author of How to Fight Presidents, and bowtie-tire Daniel O'Brien, joined by my two co-hosts, record scratch, Michael Swayman, Abe Epperson. Guys, say hello. I guess you're wondering how I ended up here. Flashback, flashback. Me shooting out of my mother like a cannon. Hey, man, thanks for having us.

I hope we do so we're proud. Yeah, well, we need to quickly address what makes this a weird podcast. And it's something that might be top of mind for some listeners. The Writers Guild of America, the union of which Soren and I are both proud members, went on strike recently. we didn't want to no writer i know wanted to go on strike but the studios did uh they're on the other side of the negotiating table and they uh they really wanted to strike and to get your favorite shows uh postponed or or cancelled so all of the writing has stopped all writing on television programs and movies has has stopped as long as they're affiliated with our union and we won't return to work until the studios agree to

pay writers what they deserve uh this podcast is obviously uh not scripted and it's very clearly not scripted or written and we are still allowed to do the podcast but Sorin is so committed to this strike that he hasn't even spoken right he's not even said a word like right before the strike he texted me to say uh every word he says every thought he has is technically legally art and he won't be sharing it until this strike is resolved so let's all hope that it gets resolved soon. And in the meantime, no one can replace Soren on this podcast. No one person can replace Soren. So I've brought in my two amazing, amazing friends, former co-workers.

You know them and love them from Cracked. Those aren't muskets. Kill me now. It's Michael Swayman, Abe Epperson, and they are going to do their best to equal one Soren. I don't know. I don't think it's going to happen, but let's see. Yeah, especially hard because even though Soren, nominally, his mind is completely blank. He is here in the corner looking at us. He's just looking at us.

I think that makes it a little trickier. I mean, in a way, though, when I look at him like sitting in the corner with his face you know like just the light hitting it it it says art to me oh like and that's a problem where's the solidarity with the studio alert buddy daniel am i right and uh i assume you're more on top of the details than i, but well, if the strike goes our way, would it not also affect the audience in so far as there will be less incentive to cancel shows like right in the middle of season two to screw everyone out of residuals? Is this addressing that at all? I believe so. Yeah. You, you, you said you hoped I'd have more uh information and be more on top of the details

i really i truly don't okay um the but the broad strokes are this is supposed to be good for uh listeners oh whatever you want the strike will address that and and and make your life better and make the candy man can better. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Cool. It was wild. I was in New York today protesting like you do.

And this whole thing has been to get real for a second, destabilizing and, and, and weird and unfortunate and as inspiring as it is to, to stand in solidarity with this massive guild that has our support, it's really demoralizing that the studios don't even seem to want to come to the negotiating table because that's how little writers are valued. So it's been kind of a bummer.

And I was happy to, not happy, but but like i felt responsible to go and picket with other writers in solidarity outside of hbo uh offices in manhattan today and i really went there like with a serious face on and to like be prepared to to march on this very important thing and i was you guys it was like a star-studded fucking picket line it was so cool yeah i was ready to be like serious and i was like all right what do we want oh my god is that john leguizamo right nice and they're all writers so the signs are like brutal just eviscerating yeah that's yeah that's one thing i was like oh one of the smartest things they ever did the blank signs signs just make them blank it's brilliant

uh but yeah it was a cool time and uh again i tried to be very serious but you weren't gonna drop more there's no more names it was okay uh mandy mandy but tinkin was out with us um wow the whole it looked like most of the cast of Severance. What an honor. Oh yeah, they're paused. They just announced. Bob Odenkirk, who was the first person I saw. I was looking for my buddies from work and Dan Gurwitch,

and then I was like, oh my God, it's Bob Odenkirk. What's he doing here? I just heard he's going to be in season two of The Bear. Very excited about that. Yeah, did you like that, the first season? Oh, yeah. Definitely a standout show for me of the last couple years. I was good at anxiety.

I was anxious the whole time. And I love cooking shows and reality shows. It's like a natural evolution of things I watch already. I don't know if you guys listen to this podcast. I don't, and I don't recommend it, but our listeners will know how refreshing it is for me to have someone on the other side of this podcast who has seen something that's come out recently. Because Soren watches almost nothing.

Baby stuff. Yeah, he does baby stuff all the time. Always has, always will. Yes, he always will. The vacant old Soren. Every once in a while, he'll be on uh a flight and he'll have no choice but to watch a movie and he gets very excited to talk about it but it's it's still he'll be like hey i just i just got back from arizona have you seen gremlins 2 it's like yeah man i'm

not ready to talk about it now yeah that's so funny uh every dad i know and i i'm worried that this will be my fate uh all the fuck they talk about is bluey do you know this bluey character he has tried to i haven't watched it yet but he is he has uh recommended it to me on this show and i just like i couldn't be fucked i haven't had a a reason to find it put it on. But as soon as that episode came out where he recommended it to me, my brother David, himself a father of two, texted me and was like, Soren's right. Bluey fucking rules. It's like, what is going on?

Every dad I know is like, man, I have to watch all this baby crap. It's rough, man. It's mind-numbing. Bluey is pretty good. Yeah. It's like the brain slug from Futurama. You know, where just everyone goes there, comes back back and they're like i'm hoping that i will put it on and there's some like kind of like it somehow is uh like drugs or something like i watch it and they're like heroin shoots into me i'm like

oh i get it oh Oh, that's, that's fine. That's why you just say, that's why they call it blue. I mean, if the writer's strike goes on long enough, they might whip that out. Yeah.

You know, their eye and Chad GBT, like it's ready for prime time. You're like, no, it's not, man. It's really not yet.

But speaking of movies and writing, uh, and dads, do you guys have any information you want to share about what you guys are working on before we get into this show? Avers? You're so good, yeah. So, hi, we're Abe and Michael. So basically, yeah, we're making an independent film it's based on the time

that michael's father came out as a gay furry while as a teenager and uh furry someone who enjoys anthropomorphized uh version of animals as in art forms and zootopia teenage mutant ninja turtles yeah so on and this is you is semi-autobiographical. It's a coming-of-age sex comedy slash drama. So if you've heard of our stuff that Daniel so gracefully mentioned at the top of this cast, you might be interested in the fact that we're producing a feature and you can help. So basically, we're just trying to get the word out uh the name of the movie is papa bear uh and we're trying to get this link out which should be in the description that you can

click on but if you want to type it in right now because you're so excited that's seed and spark.com slash fund slash papa hyphen bear and you can like become a part of the movie get stuff from the movie watch the film early even go to a premiere premiere we'll take we'll fly you out so visit the page and uh you know i don't know help us out we want to make this movie really bad it's the only thing we really want to do in life yeah and we really hope we hope you agree that it's like a story worth telling um yeah yeah that's funny it's poignant uh it's i think timely and hopes to explode a lot of myths about furry fandom because it hasn't really been portrayed charitably in the media or the news uh well still being much broader than that right it's not for furs only uh it's like a fun coming of it we compare it to like

eighth grade ladybird stuff like that book smart these are vibes we're trying to aim for uh and basically on a personal note like we as since kill me now which was super fun we've been trying to sell screenplays for like eight nine years and we we're like itching to just spend time on this earth, making a film together more so than like trying to navigate the system anymore. And we've had a lot of success. We're super lucky. We already have investors lined up on the backend,

but like the crowdfunding piece is also going to help us right. Stretch to fill the gap. But we're ready to make like a scrappy independent movie. And I'm really proud of the script. You can check out the script, the business plan, the lookbook. Like it's fully transparent over there. Seedandspark.com slash fun slash papa hyphen bear. Yeah, we're done.

I mean, the movie has a lot working in its favor, in my opinion. And for listeners, I think our listeners are almost exclusively people from the Cracked.com days. It's them, my family, and my ex-girlfriend, and that's it. We have not picked up any new listeners. No one is interested in this podcast. But if you are fans of this show, which means you're fans of Cracked, Michael and Abe are underselling themselves a bit. They are wholly responsible for the basic vocabulary of sketch comedy that came from crack.com. They invented it themselves as far as what our sketches and shows were going to look like and feel like and sound like. I learned everything I know about sketch writing from working with these two,

because I was very lucky to be there at the same time. So if you like all of the visual output that was put out through Cracked, you're gonna like these guys as a writing and directing duo, as a pair of people who are making movies, and you have a rare opportunity to help them make a movie and put it out into the world that's one great thing this movie has going for it another it's just like a very personal real story that like since i found out about this uh i don't think it's it's weird to say uh michael's unique life uh i was like biting my tongue for years being like make that fuck it what are you doing make that movie this is you're the only one in in my life who has this story why you gotta tell this story because like a lot of people my only exposure to furries has been uh like thrown off punch lines in sitcoms and a real sex episode i watched when i was 13

years old that was essentially just like hey look at this parade of freaks let's all laugh at them like ah all right that's good uh there hasn't been like anything uh humanizing uh you know these human beings until michael and abe that's right thanks for the kind words daniel that means of obviously so much coming from someone of your caliber uh i was just re-watching just to put some shine on abe too specifically who is the visual whole visual technical side of everything uh that we did and are gonna do with with this film. I was just watching If the Internet Was a High School Again. Man, beautiful. What a clean, nice production.

Soaring as Facebook, I believe. Something like that. Lots of fun, man. That was, so, a little bit behind the scenes on that is it was done as a one-arm, which is industry shorthand for all one take, no cuts. You can watch that back and realize like,

oh, this is, it's all happening in real time. It's a massive cast and travels to a couple of different locations within this school with no cuts at all. It's a really fun an ambitious thing to do and we had to do so many takes because soren kept fucking up it's kept one of my favorite things because he never fucks up yeah points of the sketch yeah imagine the feeling of you miss your line two-thirds of the way through like a seven minute sketch that's a one-er right because it's all choreographed we all have very specific places we're supposed to be and uh you can watch

that sketch back there's like with the exception of uh michael and maybe uh the actress who plays google uh yeah most people have like one or two lines and then they're out you get in with like i'm reddit i'm doing a joke in the voice of reddit okay now i'm gone now this person is a joke in the voice of instagram we all have one or two lines easy to memorize generally and soren is a good memorizer and he still fucks up his one line over and over again and like i always thought it was he was not having a good time on the day he was really disappointed in himself hard on himself yeah he was absolutely like why is this happening he got the yips yeah you know uh i always like the interpretation that he did it as a power move because he was i did, he insulted me somehow.

It's very funny to look back and laugh on it now because it's so out of character for him to be the reason that things don't work on set one day. But it was really like getting into a couple hours on that. It was like, maybe we don't do a one-er. I don't know. Maybe we cut Soren. Are we allowed to do that? He works with us. He's a dear, dear friend.

But yeah, I think that's a cut. Yeah, especially because the other thing that you guys were famous for was After Hours, which is memorizing, I don't know, several monologues. Huge blocks. Yeah. Like I think After Hours had a very special feel. It feels like a simple show to the point that people have, you know, ask here and there or assume that we're improvising it, that it is just a, we're that insightful.

And it's an uncut five and a half minute conversation that we had wild um but i think most people pick up on that it's obviously highly scripted but i think if you're not an actor you might not realize that almost no show has these dense technical monologues that was like unique to after hours and a few like there's not a lot of shows that throw that much in like i'm doing a book report right now really cool really really quickly and that shit's hard to do very funny anytime someone has been like i loved after hours it's just like the conversations me and my friends have like really your friend talks for six uninterrupted minutes yeah because i don't the future. Yeah, because I don't know exactly

how your guys' memorization brain works, and I know everyone's slightly different, and I've only had to do it a few times, but I would always look at, someone says something else, literally anything else. Even if it's just like, yeah, that's right, Abe,

or something like that, that is my oasis, because that means that I got through a section all in one so now I can memorize a new section and it's like when you don't have any of those there's no stops there's no you just have to get out two paragraphs that is just daunting yeah because your brain has to do the performance aspect in the real moment but also hold in your brain 80 things and then someone says one thing and then you have to remember 80 other things and once in a while

it would be the third episode and it would be like we got to do this because dawn is coming so your brain's not working great yeah you're doing an all-nighter it's one of the worst things we ever did but it was very much looking forward to doing it for papa bear yeah it was always very funny with an after-hour script because i uh michael i'm sure you as well when i'm when i'm writing it i was just like this character talks this character talks this person needs to have this argument and this argument goes for as long as it needs to go. And I wasn't really thinking about the logistics of it while I was writing it. And then there would be times when I would realize

I gave Sorin a three and a half page monologue. And I'd just be like, hey man, I'm sorry. I'm really sorry. I know you don't like Star Wars, but this version of you do, you love it a lot. And you have to talk about it at length and all the names are weird. I'm really sorry, man.

And it just so happens that in this episode i wrote that my character uh eats a lot and doesn't speak very much my bad i'm sorry uh yeah we would try to start breaking it up with like snipers so there's usually room for three arguments and whoever's the fourth is just sniping with punch lines so you try to be charitable and like punch one in the middle so it has to cut to the opposite side of the table and then back yeah and you can get away with that sometimes man remember when uh justin vachon right was this the original yeah fire fire sorry uh the very first director he should i mean vachon is good that's pretty that's pretty amazing. That's pretty cool. He should do that.

He should consider that. He wanted to include, and I think we did include a couple trick shots and Breaking Bad style shots where the camera's connected to stuff. God bless you, Justin. I wish that would have worked out. But we did at Craig's get to do a whole range of scrappy, low-budget guerrilla filmmaking, but all the way to some pretty high budget effects driven stuff yeah um and i feel like so there's this malcolm gladwell book uh the one about you know doing 10 000 hours or being in a particularly like good time and place to hone your skills and i do feel like sketch is

such a good place especially a cranked where the content mill was like cranking fairly aggressively all the time to hone every genre. And Abe has like nailed every genre and learned how they all work, which is really cool. A cool aspect that I think is going to give us a lot of leeway. We're doing some experimental stuff in the film. Like it wouldn't be, I don't think a furry movie without animated sequences to represent like the

artistic part of the community. So anyway, yeah, I navigated it smoothly back to the blood. No, no, no. Yeah.

I'm curious. Let's suck each other dick a little bit. Yeah. I have, I have some, some quick questions. Are we doing QQs? Yeah.

Yeah. It's about that time. I've actually, we had our old coworker and friend, jason parge not a little while ago and i was asking him about his writing process because i i am i find myself like completely uh obsessed and fascinated with uh the physical act of writing that people get into and i'm extra curious what it's like with with the two of you because you are a pair your creative duo and I just and like what is what space are you in when you're breaking a story and what space are you when you're like like physically writing it we've heard those those

stories about the the Coen brothers where they're like locked in a room somewhere taking turns at a typewriter or computer and like talking each other through line by line, what's happening. So having never been in a duo, I'm very curious how you guys operate. I'm not even kidding. And I think it's because they're our favorites.

It's exactly that. Really? Yeah, I think we did it on purpose. I think we were like, that sounds good. Well, because we did talk about, because I like we did it on purpose. I think we were like, that sounds good. Well, because we did talk about, because I like co-writing scripts lately. It's a lot of fun with all the various crack folks because it's like combining two random instruments

and you always get something that's slightly new. And when I write with Ganser, for example, we get an outline, rip it apart, trade it back and forth, divvy up sections, write them, workshop them. And Abe and I very consciously, actually, because we've collaborated for so long, we've done it a few different ways. But the most common nowadays that we settled into, and sometimes I hate it because it's very slow going. It's a slow process. But we go, but you want to do it right and we're both micromanaging. So we're like, we'll just do it together on the phone

together, line by line and take turns, whoever's typey type. But it is, and it's so slow compared to writing by yourself, but I think you get great results either way. But yeah, we will be like, okay, hank said that so what would trade say what's that line agonize over that and then sometimes we'll be like you know what we're not solving it and this is slow going let's move to a different well it often turns into long philosophical tangents because you're like okay so what does the scene mean well people are basically this oh you think people are basically that is that the core of the message of what we're

talking about with the scene and yeah um in fact if you're a small beans patron which i would say right now throw your money at the papa bear campaign but eventually we actually um recorded ourselves writing the whole script. So there's like a 55-hour series called Movie Production Diaries where you can hear us in real time writing the script. It's painfully slow. Man. Right.

But people say that they listen to it and they fall asleep to it because we force ourselves to be calmer than we really are. Because as you can tell tell the alarming amount of patience that you have to have like i'm sure any solo writer is listening to this and is like that sounds exhausting and a terrible way of doing things and a horrible waste of time very true but it's kind of how you get two minds to see as one and there is no replication for it it's just in the trenches working with each other until your ideas and his ideas are the same yeah and the reason abe and i have been i mean besides

from like the human shared core value aspects of friendship like our i think our creative bond is we think very similarly and have similar values and messages that we want to put out into the world, but also our slight discrepancies in terms of skills or whatever are perfectly complementary. So we both can write dialogue, but I have a special facility for it, I think Abe would agree, because I'm about to compliment him right back. But then when we're in the early stages where we're breaking the story we're basically just both pacing around on the phone

and Abe definitely takes the lead with he just has structure so under his belt that Abe will take the lead with this should happen next or like this is the proper time for this to begin happening and so Abe will sort of take the lead with this should happen next or like this is the proper time for this to begin happening uh and so abel sort of take the lead in that part and i'll take the lead on the finite dialogue and then on set similarly uh because i have like a theater background and

love working with actors i'll take the slightly like we both do both but i'll take the lead working with actors and i will say the one glaring blind spot is i can't work a camera for shit or choose shots for shit so abe will take full lead on an ownership of like directing the film and daniel never underestimate the power of a cocaine enema you know i remember abe's uh structural insights being very valuable at Cracked because, Michael, when we were writing together on Agents of Cracked, I hadn't done much like episodic writing of any kind. like you come from a theater background and like you i also really like dialogue and playing with that uh and it was really abe who could boil things down very simply for us where it was like season one enemies become frenemies season two frenemies become friends season three frenemies become lovers and i was like oh yeah i never would have thought like if if i was left to

my own devices yeah it would just be two people sitting across from each other saying funny things until the lights went out. That's the other thing a good filmmaker will do is remind you it's not a comic strip. All you've written here is two heads talking and saying very good things, but maybe they could move around. Maybe something they say could be a visual thing instead of things they say like that's very smart you just blown smoke up my ass you guys are both insanely talented and you know it uh well the thing i'm just trying to get you some more investors for your movie because you you did that's true you have some investors lined up, but they are Ghislaine Maxwell, Roman Polanski, and I just feel like we need to crowd them out.

Not if we can. Look, we misread the website. It turns out it said monsters. Monsters was the word that we misread. Current day Kanye is in, but classic Kanyeye is out we've got all the wrong people very specifically he was like i am coming to you as an investor now with my black nylon stocking mask on that's the version right after i said the hitler shit yeah uh i will say that's been new because like our first movie there was one investor ie very interesting like this slick british executive dude just had the money

and gave it to us and we made a movie yeah but this time we're even doing the investment raising ourselves and very very humbled to just ask the world for money to make a movie and have some people from all over the world call us and write us checks for like tens of thousands of dollars pretty trippy yeah it's it's wild to ask the world still not enough usually gives you we need more though yeah and to have it return kind of on that investment is it's wild it disrupts everything i know about the universe daniel uh i really like that you guys are i'm i'm sure it's it's tough soliciting investors and and and crowdfunding but i really i i it feels like a criminal act of unfairness that you guys haven't been making movies regularly since kill me now kill me now i think we all kind of thought like this is it

they're gonna make this it's gonna be great because it's them and then uh none of us understood how hollywood worked at the time and i still don't but it was like once you make a movie then they will let you make more movies if it's good if it's objective yeah which it is not yeah uh very kind and but i i will say uh i it failed to find like massive distribution i think is what daniel's alluding to there which is a whole second challenge uh and yeah that was really a shift for us i think where we realized we can't just play the politics game or like the hustle game um we're just gonna try to make a movie because the way we've always done it is just so young and naive back then kill me nowadays yeah yeah we were that was a lot of fun you guys let me be in your movie i got to to to fly out to illinois with you guys and yeah super fun

it was yeah i got to do scenes with kyle mooney and beck bennett who obviously are like highly notable now and i have said this before but i'll say it again because it's short and sweet uh beck did a scene where he had not slept for like 48 hours because he had to do other scenes because it's a production like that and he was sitting in the front seat of like a corvette while i argue with him and he fell asleep between every take but as soon as someone said action he would just spring awake and start acting like really well yeah and uh when we finished he's like okay i have to go directly to the airport and go home now or i'll miss my flight because it was that kind of production and i was like you're going to be famous soon and i was absolutely right this is this is some more uh smoke blowing

because i really remember i mean beck is is like a world-class talent everyone's seen him on snl or listens to him he's launch pad on ducktales it to him. He's launchpad on DuckTales. It's fucking great. He's killing it and it's wonderful. And he's a sweetie. He, to continue blowing smoke up your guys' asses, he like fought for that part in the movie. He lobbied for it.

I was at the initial table read with you guys where he was not cast as that part. He was one of the like assistant frat bros. And then when the person who got the part that when the main person dropped out before filming started, he like petitioned you guys. He was, he really like pushed for that part in a way that, that, uh, showed how much respect he had for the writing that you guys done. I'll say something that I like memory.

I'll always treasure was no one was doing that movie for money. He was just like, this is a good part. I want to do this part. I think I can do this part really well. Please give it to me. And, uh, yeah, very honored. Like Brad fancy fancy who played the killer still writes me to this day

to say like what's cooking you're one of my favorite writers like it was very inspiring that they did it because they thought it was funny and good like that's the best reason right and uh one memory that i'll always treasure was sorry i just remembered bruna our objectively racist hairdresser but that's not what i want to talk about right now yeah i did not like her she was borderline nazi lady anyway but uh what i i went upstairs because it's a horror movie we're shooting in a cabin and uh kyle who we fell in love with online because he does this amazing man on the street weird improv stuff where he's just fully like courageous comedian so organic that you know it's improv and you assume man this dude must not prepare at all he must just be like a natural talent and uh something interesting about his character i'll spoil the

movie because it's a decade old now is uh he did it all along it can't be a decade old i'm 17 what do you mean he done it he's the bad guy and um the scene where he reveals that he's not funny right it's like a brief moment of real horror or seriousness and i saw him like go off to be alone and drill that scene every day of the shoot for hours and i was like that's so cool i respect respect one more quick uh set story about bruna and then I swear to God, we'll get into the show. We're still in the intro. I didn't care for Bruna. I was on set with you guys for two or three days, I can't remember. And one of those days, I bought a bunch of food to grill for the cast and crew as a 3 a.m. lunch or whatever we're gonna do it's got a

bunch of sausages and burgers and it was gonna like cook for you guys and I started grilling at some point because like the the set was an active like house like it was a cabin in the woods so they had grills and barbecues and I was grilling and like the I don't know if any of our listeners has ever had to cook for like a hundred fucking people. And a lot of them crew members who have been carrying stuff and holding mics and lights and lugging equipment all day. It's like a bunch, it's a high stress situation where a lot of very sweaty, very hungry, angry angry aggressive people are about to descend on you and i'm grilling as fast as i can like food takes as long as food takes and fucking bruna who didn't do shit for me was just standing and like watching me cook and shaking her head at how long

sausages physically take to cook she's like shaking her head at how long sausages physically take to cook. She's like shaking her head like, this is not fast enough. This is not, I'm going to, I'm going to do what I think her voice was, but it's, I'm wrong. This is not fast enough. You need to go faster. And I was like, hey, this is, this is, you're not being very helpful right now. This is, this should have been done already. This should have been done already. This should have been cooked already for them. And I had to like, the lead in your movie was Caitlin Large, who is my childhood best friend that I've known for 30 years or so.

And I had an entire telepathic conversation with her while I'm covered in sweat. And Bruna is telling me that I need to cook faster. I just look at Caitlin and I stare at her for 10 seconds and she's like oh i know bruna come with me and she's like i had to like take her away from the situation it was like come here yeah uh like caitlin you need to get rid of this woman or um we're gonna make the news i don't know i'm surrounded by fire and i'm mad at this woman and i I don't, no one knows that I'm here in Illinois. So anything could happen.

Please remove her. In the woods. People go wild when they're sleep deprived. Nick Mundy had some surly words with Jacob Reed on that set as well. Really? It takes a lot to get, to make Nick Mundy ornery. Mundy, yeah. Yeah.

Well, it's that Jacob was legitimately sick, like with the flu. But Mundy was, you know how monday is like it was about how he monday was so helpful yeah and he felt like the spirit of the shoot was such that everyone should rise to that standard he was shooting you should be proud that you have the flu that's right he was while monday was shooting scenes where between takes he would throw up and then come back and go no i'm good let's do it man let's go we go we will get it again yeah and uh and jacob was like no i'm sick i'm gonna not shoot today and my b was like but this but we're all it's like we're a high school football team we're all you know we're all like yeah and he was like you're not that's fucked team. We're all, you know, we're all like, yeah. And he was like, you're not? That's fucked up, man.

Yeah. I remember because I was so separated from like the cast, really, during that production. Because I didn't direct. That was our friend Travis Long. But I was director of photography. So I was on set every moment. So people have times to go away and do something. And I remember Beck Bennett and I, whenever I saw beck i would be like what's like what's the hot goss like what's going on in the

actor's world and he would do like point by point like as if it was like a powerpoint presentation and we were young people like yeah there was juicy shit happening i will say oh living vicariously through it was like a whole thing it was also a special time abe is it fair to say um did you not sleep during that movie uh it was tough i slept on the couch i felt like you were on set always because you were dp so you're always filming, and you're conceptualizing shots. And then I felt like the time that I was there, when set was wrapped, you were watching dailies with Travis in a hotel somewhere,

or a house somewhere, constantly watching things. And then like mid-morning, we'd sleep fitfully for four or five hours and then start again. Start again. But yeah, it was a mess. Can't wait to do it again. Well, that's something I don't know if people know, but shoots are almost always 12 hours unless there's famous people or babies involved. Because you can't force either of them to do that. people or babies involved because you can't force either of them to do that but when you're like mid or low budget it's always 12 hours because that saves

you thousands of dollars like you'd cost yourself by not doing it that way so it is it's a grueling lifestyle when you're on set at least and you'd be surprised how taxing both acting are and waiting around to act is it's tiring that yeah I actually feel like you get, I feel like there's that X-Men. I don't know much about X-Men, but the juggernaut, right? Isn't his power that you just like keep getting momentum?

Yeah, he's unstoppable momentum. Yeah, yeah. I much prefer the thing that I do on sets, which is almost typically you turn on and you slowly churn and churn until your maximum velocity. And then you just maintain that until you fall, you fall apart.

Yeah. I'd rather do that instead of what you guys do as actors, which would be to, all right, do that and then stop for an hour and then do it again and then stop for an hour. That sounds bring your energy up, bring your energy down over and over and over.

Yeah. Yeah. That's tough. But Abe, you're a great actor too i don't know i actually check out the classic sketch sleeves if you want proof of that in anticipation of of this podcast and also just for nostalgia's sake i re-watched a couple of agents of cracked episodes because that remains like love that such a fun and silly time in our lives. And I'm so glad that we got to do it together. This was our body switching episode.

Yeah. But I watched the dinner party episode, which I think ended season two and compulsively scrolled the comments as one does. And there's so much love for Abe's crazy Raul and a look you give to the comments as one does and there's so much love for abe's crazy raul and a look you give to the camera at one point that is like genuinely unsettling and terrifying yeah that's what i was going for yeah uh that's that was fun i shouldn't have done that by dinner party do you mean the one where i make you eat dinner at my house yeah the same one where i send you a text with like a toy car yes yeah that one okay abe does a little hand wave move that cracks me up every time like to answer a question about where someone is

he just like does a sign wave in the air with his hand the thing that i find so special about agents of cracked is even though we did have some structural ideas in place it was very clear that we were making this show um while we were so young but before we knew how hard it was to make shows. We were so stupid that we were just like, let's just do it. Let's just, let's just see if we can do it. Let's just have the characters hang out and do this thing. And like, like stuff that I don't think I would have written years later when I would, when I would be thinking about like the logistics of how to film something. At the time we were, we were we were like we were we were too dumb to know what we were doing was hard and and for that reason we were just more fearless and it was and it felt easier to us yeah and case in point that and there are still people doing it

uh but that entire trend sort of died down in the new trend that's good i love it i watch a lot of it is uh just long long essays with someone either just sitting there saying it or a couple simple shots or even just voiceover and footage you know why yeah because it's infinitely easier and it can still get millions of views like you don't have to do what we did um but gosh i wouldn't have it any other way well i mean we want to make movies so making short movies was what we wanted to do anyway. But this new form of, I watched these, I mean, and we made our fair share

as it started to ramp up, but just explainer vids essentially. Like Maggie Mae Fish does great ones. And I'm like, we should have done just those. That's easy. Abe probably doesn't agree. No, I mean, I hate it. Our coworker, Jason, was very gently trying to nudge me in a direction

when i was running video at cracked where it was like hey look this is uh jenny nicholson she is uh filming explainer videos on her iphone and she's got 12 million views right are you sure you want to spend 30 000 making another season of rum.com? I was like, yeah, I do. Cause it's awesome, dude. It's fun. It's funny in the way that I like. Okay.

Just leave us alone. I like the internet content. I like them all. I was talking to, you remember Michael Cox? Uh, people don't necessarily. Yeah. Uh, he's, he was, he was kind of coming up through USC. He was like my, we were like partners, basically.

We were cinematographers and all that stuff. And we worked with each other so much that I usually brought him on as DP or as a gaffer on our stuff. And there was a moment near the end of cracked where it was just like talking head shows or news where he turned to me and he was like, this place was really special. Wasn't it? And it absolutely like broke me. I was like,

Oh man, like there's so much history here. And the beauty, like that sentiment is so beautiful and at the same time he's absolutely right yeah that is that is very it's done very sweet and wonderful and yes if i had heard that at the time i'd be like what the fuck do you mean was it's still great what are you talking about i'm very happy i'm very happy everything's fine uh it's yeah it's just i i though the those few years there was like five or six years there at

least we were really lucky it was like we were so lucky and making frankly some of the best stuff you know just we were just felt bigger than the world it was amazing oh it's been downhill since then for me for sure i'm still trying to chase that high and hbo is not doing it yeah you want you need those baby you want those sweet sweet streamies you want that paul sheer buzz uh let's get into the show speaking of movies hey guys i got a quick question for you yeah um Are there any movies from your past that you love and you haven't disavowed, but you're still kind of embarrassed of them? I can get us started because it's a really specific needle that I'm asking us to thread because there are some movies that were foundational for me that I loved, like Garden State.

We talked about it on your show. I loved Garden State so much when it came out. It's not a movie that today I stand by and will insist people need to see. And meanwhile, there are some movies from my childhood, like Jurassic Park or Ferris Bueller's Day Off, where I'm like, yes, you have to see this movie. I love it. And I'm right for loving it. and there are other movies the specific kind of movie that i'm talking about now like the movie euro trip that i loved but i understand it's probably bad i don't care i love it i don't i'm not i'm not gonna fight about it though but like you wouldn't even proudly recommend it, right? No, no, no, absolutely not.

There's a little bit of guilt in it, but that's not stopping you from loving the shit out of it. But you feel if you shared it, they would then think you have bad taste, this kind of lane. But it's the kind of thing where if we were at a dinner party and I mentioned Eurotrip and I was like, I don't really care about it.

It's dumb. It's not good. And then someone at the I was like I don't really care about it it's dumb it's not good and then someone at the party was like yeah it's bad like well you know it's sort of a character actors paradise it's like I would fight for it if I was challenged on it I think

are you going to tell me Fred Armisen is wrong are you going to tell me Thomas Lennon is wrong who the fuck are you who are you have you guys before we go any further have you guys seen euro trip no i've seen your trip absolutely and i i kind of agree with you in terms of that you know like uh that that canon i guess of trashy movies it's one of the top tiers. It's still trash. Yeah. And you're trash for liking it.

No, I love you and support you. It came out at a time where there was like too many early two thousands raunchy 16 comedies. The American pie had set off a crazy domino effect where they were just like, let's make road trip. Let's make this.

Let's make that. Let's make your trip. Let's make so many movies that are trying to capitalize on this raunchy teen movie fest. And Michael, I'm so glad you haven't seen it. Because the premise of this movie is that, so very quickly, there's this guy, Scotty. He's 40, but he's playing 17.

He just graduates high school. He is dating a gal named Fiona. And he has an email pen pal with someone from Germany that he believes is named Mike. And he has been emailing Mike, telling Mike all about his life and all of his fears, all of his concerns. And he's got such a great connection with Mike. And then right after graduation, Fiona dumps Scotty. She's been cheating on him. So they break up and Scotty's upset. And he's talking to his pen pal, his German pen pal, Mike, about it.

And then Mike makes romantic overtures to Scotty. And Scotty's like, I don't want to fucking date a man. It's the early 2000s what are you talking about and he sends a devastating message to mike that is like sever all contact leave me alone get me out of your head and then he learns that uh the person he thought was mike this whole time because it's german it's Micah and it's a girl and actually it's a hot girl oh whoa and Michael that's enough to justify this movie's existence like that's that's the plot he's like I'm gonna I thought it was Mike and that's gross but it's Micah and it's hot and we're going to go to Europe and let's track her down uh so i can fuck her in the

vatican i think is what ends up happening i think that's right i think they do yeah they're in the vatican you know this movie well i do that lady from buffy shoved a flute up her vagina and it launched a whole sub-genre of film that's all I know I haven't seen any of them I haven't seen American Pie either really oh because there was a different Lady from Buffy in Eurotrip that's right Michelle Trachtenberg

Alice in the Sky and Michelle Trachtenberg wow that's smart way to catch that I do have an answer for you but it's not exactly because I really did think about this a lot. And you have already put more effort into the show. I know, but it's a great question.

And you're right. Like I, I could tell that as soon as I started thinking about it, I was like, I don't really have like a guilty pleasure about this but i do think there's a slightly different thing that is kind of in the same vein that you're talking about which is there are movies that you sometimes have such a deference for uh still to this day and you want to like shout it from a mountaintop and say everybody you should think it's more important than it is even if they're like yeah i, I see how this is good. But I'm like, but do you? Do you? I have that movie. So it's more of like how I watch it, which is a sobbing mess. And that movie for me is October Sky.

I knew it. Yeah. I can't watch October Sky with people because it's like Pavlovian at this point. I will start crying. I will just start crying. And that movie, two things. I, one, I've never seen that movie, uh, to the fact that you're crying and I, I know you pretty well. I want to take a guess. Is it about fathers and sons? Yes. It's about a father who disapproves of the job his son wants to do he wants him to do the job that father is chris cooper and that son is jake gill and all and is his name homer in it homer hickam homer hickam if you had one thing to guess dan what they their fundamental disagreement

and estrangement is about yeah knowing me knowing who i am the title october sky right what do you think it might be do you have a guess this is gonna sound insane space it's it's rockets baby the dad is a coal miner underground the son wants to go to the opposite place of that he wants to go to the opposite place god almighty god almighty writing is so stupid it's so funny but i love that like hey you go down in the ground you're in a void of blackness with little sparkles around you you go up in the sky same shit dad i want to go up to space not down you gotta go down to the ground, son. That's exactly it. It's a metaphor.

I love it so, so much. But your grandfather played left field and I played left field. You want to play right field? That's the opposite. Man, oh man. There's so many lines that make me go, like father and son stuff. Like I feel seen right now. You totally nailed it because that stuff gets me. I know it gets Mike sometimes too,

but the other thing about this movie is it's thoroughly mid. Like the, most of the, uh, scene work is just about, ah, 1950s, better times.

Disney family movie. Yeah. Yeah. And it's just like oh man that never works on me is this like first Wes Anderson this is not a Wes Anderson at all it's Joe

Johnston actually really yeah it's a guy who made Jurassic Park 3 oh good he's pretty good though he's made October Sky he's uh he made october sky well yeah it's just a like uh what you'd imagine like a robert zemeckis like it would be like a good like oh i know that guy's work and it's very similar very heartfelt kind of transparent

americana mainly heartfelt that's its main thing. Yeah. Yeah. So Michael, do you also like this movie? I like October Sky. Yeah, for sure. Just because,

I mean, Chris Cooper for a long time was my favorite actor after adaptation, I think really locked it in. That's such a, what a specific choice. It's a good choice. It's not a bad choice it's just yeah i think uh i want to poll a hundred americans right now and ask them who their favorite

actor is and i don't think one of them is going to say chris cooper it's it's not a it's not a bad answer but it's no one's answer no that's true and uh i my pick to answer your question also features chris cooper so i was glad abe and i have some kind of overlap i think it's for different reasons and i'm sorry to tease it but i want to reveal it less just because there's a few things i want to say about it before everyone's minds are tainted which is that this is really exciting i I hope it's Silver City. I hope so much. I feel very deeply I'm an emotional guy, both the highs and the lows. I do believe in like when you're in that state of being fully present,

everything in the world that you encounter is like a beautiful miracle, including like a plastic bag floating in the wind. No! So the reason I'm really embarrassed is, well, pretty obvious. There the kevin spacey connects but also like it's a focal point for something that i do see is true and had to be woken up to they're like sopranos and phantom thread like boy we sure do write a lot about how

the white straight guy might be mean but he's sad inside so you can forgive him you could see how he's human right and it's like almost the the victor class like you know rehabilitating or like mostly writing fiction from their own point of view and uh that's not ideal and i think a lot of people feel that way about american beauty now like oh you fucked your son's girlfriend oh no you know i like it said in that context a lot and yet the kid the weird kid with the camera who talks about how sometimes like i feel like i'm gonna dissolve because the world is so beautiful i feel like that a lot i think of that kid is that a movie that you would uh so i i watched it when it came out certainly and haven't revisited it is it a movie that you would uh so i i watched it when it came out certainly and haven't revisited it is it a movie that you would would like tell people in your life oh you should you should

see this movie do you think like i have very little memory of it at this point yeah other than uh being attracted to mina suvari uh in ways that like feel complicated now because she's a child in that movie. So smooth. Jesus Christ. I'm just thinking of the cover with the rose petals and the... It's like a very soft situation. Yeah, but you didn't say soft.

You said smooth and that's different. Choose my words very carefully. But like, do you... Should I re-watch that movie or is that one where you'd be like no you it's fine so you'll think less of me if if you watch it now so i definitely because i love film and craft can watch stuff and appreciate just the craft like october sky for the acting and the shots and the beauty of like the set deck and stuff um i would say it's along those lines like

alan ball wrote it and alan ball is very good he did uh uh what's it called six feet under and then the one i don't approve of as much with the true blood yeah he did the vampires yeah but uh i still think it holds up in terms of being a good script. It's just has that Sorkin stink where as we progress great, you know, awesomely as like a society and species, it has that stink of like, right, right, right. hollow but he rediscovers the spark by basically doing whatever he wants and fucking everyone over and uh but then he gets trade but then tragedy befalls him and isn't that sad it's like a lot of people don't have patience for that now and that's why it answers this question for me is i'd go yeah fair enough there's no like reason to watch it for the message um but it's good the craftsmanship is certainly good i might like it on rewatch because one of my my least favorite things about me is uh how much i like aaron sorkin i know it's right

i shouldn't i even like the newsroom his tricks i'll say shamefully that's a good answer too aaron sorkin's tricks work on me yeah i hate it to admit it. I really agree with everyone. I'm like, yeah, what a hack. Then we watched The Trial of the Chicago 7, and I was like, that movie was so good. Who wrote that? And it goes, Aaron Sorkin. I was like, fuck, he got me. Fuck.

He got me again. Yeah, I almost answered this question with the American president. Great movie. Great movie. Nothing wrong with it. Almost nothing wrong with it. I mean movie. Nothing wrong with it. Almost nothing wrong with it. I mean, probably stuff wrong with it.

You can find some stuff. He's like the modern screwball comedy guy in a way. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. What was the other thing? Oh, the other thing that American Beauty made me think of that will always be very funny

to me is, Michael, you know my friend Joee my childhood friend joe uh the he's a lawyer now his senior quote in our yearbook forever is from american beauty and there's just no there's no coming back from that i think it's i i wouldn't remember me either hyphen american beauty and just like ah man that like most of us are our senior quotes aren't great but like that's real tough it's it's a beautiful that's a kevin spacey yeah yeah i i got him yeah i got him beat you know what mine was i quoted from the song by third eye blind oh boy is it when i graduate nope motorcycle drive by. What? I've never felt so alone.

I've never felt so alive. That section. Oh my God. And the counselor was like, is this guy okay? Do you need to talk to this kid? No. Because everyone was just like, ah, this guy sucks. We're out of here. He's the state's problem now.

Yeah, exactly. I think I just copy pasted some generic stuff uh sure it seemed like it was about it did the job i guess it did the job i absolutely have no memory of what mine was sorry i oh no that's fine i uh this is the question about is the show about senior quotes. So it's weird that you didn't bring yours. But it's okay. Mine, I was so, like, probably before even freshman year, I was determined to have a Ben Folds or Ben Folds 5 quote as my senior quote. And I spent so much time thinking, like, it was more important to me

that I said something from Ben Folds than what I actually said actually said right and then by the time i was ready to graduate i picked a lyric from uh us to begin with a lot of people don't know ben folds and to take it further almost no one knows the song one down which he wrote sometime between Ben Folds 5 and his more successful solo career. And the song is about songwriting. It's not about graduating high school in New Jersey or anything meaningful to me. Or abortion even. I know, not even about abortion. It was just the line, not even about abortion it was just the line uh one down and 3.6 tomorrow and i'm out of here and uh what hooked me was like tomorrow when i'm out of here yeah like me i'm leaving high school and going somewhere else and so that was my senior quote and then people will be like what does it

mean one down and 3.6 i was like oh i don't know don't know. I have no idea what he's talking about. Did you ever find out? Does it have some, like, does it mean heroin or something like that? No, I think I looked into it at one point and it might be about like the length of time a song needs to be, like he's delivering songs to his record label

and he is just sort of like going through the motions of like all right there's a song now they want one that is uh 3.6 spins long i don't know who knows that's that's wild while you were doing that i cracked open my yearbook it turns out it's also a third eye blind you're my priestess i must confess little red panties face down on the mattress yep weird weird yep both bangers man yeah all right well we're about ready to wrap the show up unless you guys have anything else to say there's no the show uh typically ends when one of the hosts uh gets bored and starts looking at twitter or some other website um so it doesn't need to be a certain length uh we have internally decided that sometimes episodes are 38 minutes long and that's fine uh so if you guys

i'm like oh word okay yeah all right if there's anything else you guys want to talk about we can otherwise i'll i'll start the sign off not specifically always a delight i'll take back time and walk my dog my beautiful dog all day but like i have nothing to bring in the table yeah i could continue to talk with you the one thing i do i do want us all to take a retrospective right now and realize that we said euro trip october sky american duty and just pause it watch those in a row dude you know if i may play the song role here and have a quick question are we dirtbags i think i think it's possible yeah i think we get all of them The other one I was going to bring

In high school I adapted into a play And performed with friends Was Usual Suspects Oh yeah You can't watch that no more You got a thing for Kevin Spacey And isn't that It's Bryan Singer too

Oh boy Seedandspark.com slash fun slash papa hyphen bear. Thank you, Daniel. We really appreciate the amplification. We really appreciate it, man. Thank you for coming. The show is Quick Question, but the audience knows that already. We are recorded, edited, and produced by the irreplaceable Gabe Harder.

Our theme song is by the incredible Merex. Their digital album is available at merex.bandcamp.com. You can find the show on Twitter at QQ underscore Soren and Dan. You can email us QQ with Soren and Daniel at gmail.com. I don't want to list any more links or socials because I have reached the point where I'm tired of talking into a microphone. Thanks again to Michael and Abe who are making their movie Papa Bear, which you should fund. And if you can't fund it right

now, then you should see it when it inevitably gets made. And it's going to be great because it's Michael and Abe. So smooth. No! Smooth. Smooth. Bye! Bye. What would I be if I remembered? What's it up to? Where did all the good weeks go? Oh, forget it I saw a movie, Daniel O'Brien

Two best friends and comedy writers If there's an answer, they're gonna find it I think you'll have a great time here I think you'll have a great time here