Quick Question with Soren and Daniel - People Who Make the Room Better | Quick Question Ep. 311

Episode Date: December 9, 2025

Daniel has been obsessing over the part of Beatles lore where tensions are high, everyone hates each other, and the only thing keeping the world’s most famous band from imploding was… Billy Preston. That launches a full tour through the guys’ own history with morale-saving personalities — the people who walk into a room and immediately make everyone behave, write better, or at least stop threatening to quit.They cover behind-the-scenes moments from Cracked, the sets where one good vibe could salvage a 3AM shoot, the gravitational pull of Sam Richardson, the sorcery of Ben Schwartz, and the peculiar negotiations that happen with network standards when your show involves nudity, violence, or hot dogs with speaking roles.Thanks to DripDrop for sponsoring this episode. Get 20% off your first order: dripdrop.com and use promo code qq. Follow the guys on Bluesky!https://bsky.app/profile/danielobrien.bsky.socialhttps://bsky.app/profile/sorenbowie.bsky.socialBonus episodes 2x/month at patreon.com/quickquestion OR Apple Podcasts

I've got a quick, quick question for you all right. I want to hear your thoughts on to know what's on your mind. I've got a quick, quick question for you all right. The answer's not important. I'm just glad that we can talk tonight. So what's your favorite? Who did you get? When did I be?

I remember. What's it out there? I heard it all that. Oh, forget it. I saw a movie Daniel O'Brien. Two best friends and comedy writers. If there's an answer, they're going to find it. I think you'll have a great time here.

I think you'll have a great time here. Hello again. We're back. It's the Quick Question Pod. Soren and Daniel. I'm Daniel. Sorin, I've been, I can't get a thought out of my head. Oh. It's just been rattling around in there.

We've, we watched the nine-part Beatles anthology documentary series. I know it came out a long time ago, but, but it just, like, popped up on Apple TV. And it's very, it's very fun. It's fascinating. Yeah. There's some really dorky, one of the, one of the problems of, uh, doing a documentary with the Beatles who lived an interesting life, but I think are pretty boring people and not great interviewers or storytellers, is that, like, you will get the same story

three times, especially in the beginning, where they're like, and then we went to, we went to Italy for the first, we went to France for the first time, and we were expecting all these, these French girls, you know, to come see these French girls, see the Beatles play, we get there. We were so surprised there were a bunch of, there was a bunch of boys, much of French boys. Now, the first, time we went to France you know we were excited you know what I mean French girls and we get there on it's only boys and then here's where I would do an impression of George Harrison having to tell you that same story in your back pocket I don't have that one in the pocket but so like that those parts that are fun and dorky but the thing that's been rattling

in my head is they're they're they're deep into being the Beatles at this point they are starting to hate each other they either are being very bitchy or strung out on heroin in John's case so so like things are tensions are pretty high their recording let it be they tried to do it in one studio and that wasn't working out for them and Paul was trying to make a documentary at the same time and that pissed everybody off and so they moved to a different studio and everyone's uh kind of at each other's throws and sniping at each other and I forget if it was George or John but one of them uh very like very lucidly so probably not John uh was was, people are on better behavior when there's someone else around. And I'd been hanging out

with Billy Preston. And so I just brought him to the studio. And then not only just like Billy Preston play on Let It Be a lot, he is apparently just like around in the studio. And he solved all problems. Not in a like, oh, I'm going to play keys on this. I'm going to fix it. You just, you see him in the documentary show up, and there's the first time he's mentioned in the entire nine-part anthology series. And he's just this like, smiley, cool, happy guy. And they're like, and everybody likes Billy. And it's, it's, it's maybe the smartest decision anyone has ever made that was just like, no one is, no one's in a bad mood when Billy Preston's around. So even though we're the Beatles, even though everyone's pissed off, we're a bunch of, of, of, of, of tweaked out millionaires.

let's just bring Billy Preston in here and it calms everything and magically calms everything down and makes everyone just like happy to be there and happy to make music. It's crazy what a switch flip it is. And I've been thinking in my head. Sorry.

No, go ahead. Did they address race at all in that? Like, not even that you just have somebody else there, but that you have somebody who is of a different ethnicity than you because the dynamic immediately changes. It's not like they're going to be shouting the N-word without him there. But the fact that you suddenly start to feel a little bit like a representative of like a whole people. And it just like it falls on you, but you don't do it consciously.

But it's just like naturally if like when I lived in a neighborhood that was 98% black, I was like, I was the model citizen there because I was like I'm representative of another race here. They didn't address it. But if you're watching the whole series one after the other, the subtext is very obvious to any viewer. Not exactly what you're talking about, but like they're so clearly early Beatles are ripping off black American artists. Like that's their whole thing. Like even more even more than Elvis was doing, there was like, we're so. charmed by this exact style of music and we're going to do it and they got so fucking huge doing it and then of course like brought other influences in but you can imagine for for guys who like

this is why they got into music was what american black artists were doing uh and that's who they were trying to sound like and what they were trying to do and then they see billy preston in there they must be like if any bit of them had like imposter syndrome and then billy preston walks in And they must be like, oh, man, oh, man, you should be the Beatles. Oh, Billy, you, you, this should really be you. Do you want to, do you, do take the mic? You do, you want to do something. Can't take nothing from nothing.

I don't like, I don't do it good. You do it good. It truly just seemed like, like a cure-all for everything that was going wrong with them in a way that I, I, I, it never would have occurred to me. You know, because you and I, we're sort of the Beatles of Internet comedy. It never would have occurred to me when we were in, like, the long-year days of cracked or, like, on after-hours set at 3 o'clock in the morning. Just be like, let's, we need to bring in someone else right now. But it would have been a real cure. I guess after-hours isn't the right thing because that was mostly just like sleep deprivation.

but when you would we were meeting trying to come up with videos and like um trying to pitch new series every week because every single week it seemed like Verizon go 90 wants to spend big bucks on original series and that can't be anything you've ever pitched before to anyone and be like okay let's get this group of people together and pitch let's get 18 original ideas for narrative and unscripted shows for Verizon Go 90 and then next week we're going to come back

and we're going to do it for Roku TV and the week after that Virgin America wants an original web series pitch so we got to do that and you do this week after week

to no success with the same group of people and you get to know like I know what Cody's going to pitch I know what Michael's going to pitch I'm sick of hearing my own voice

and I don't and I'm like all the frustrations how smart it would have been for us if it was like we're going to get all same fucking people together and also let's get

Sam Richardson in here everyone likes Sam so much yeah we just get it he doesn't have to pitch anything just like be in the room and we'll all be on our best behavior because Sam's here and we want Sam to like us so much

we did so this happened once in our show's history which is I think you're absolutely right on set it wouldn't have made a difference because there are a bunch of new people on set and a lot of those people are very accommodating and kind and nice but

when it's just when it's just us and like in like some little conference room with no windows and like we're just rining it out and we were getting kind of like testy and everything there was one time when we did it we did a show briefly there was like the prelude to like news for us which was we were going to do a show during the election cycle right before Donald Trump got elected and everyone thought Hillary Clinton was going to win where right we had a bunch of people in the room together and we had a researcher there with us and then we had Ben Joseph.

And Ben Joseph is like, fills that role perfectly. He's somebody who's like, easygoing, very cool. It's going to be a joke sniper. Like he's got a lot of like good ideas. But he's mostly just like there to be like, I'm a vibes guy. We had a week where we were watching, I remember it now.

We were watching the Republican National Convention. There was a small team of us. It was me and you and Rosie on the cracked side. And we got Natalie Scher as our researcher who was also funny. in her own right we got ben joseph and we got leanna maybe and we just took over a room to watch the the rnc make jokes and develop this show in real time and you're right it was ben is a great fives guy and it's and i'm also sitting there and i'm thinking like i know i've been writing for eight or nine years at this point but ben's like a writer so i i i better he was a television

writer at that time i'd better pretend that i'm a writer too i'd better i'd better be good today. Not only was he a television writer, he had come from writing hit after hit at college humor. Like anything he touched turned to virality. Yeah. Yes. God bless Ben. Yeah.

I mean, he's, he's alive. I don't know. He's doing crazy. He's still writing for TV. He's thriving. He was a friend to us all, and we're going to miss him. I'm the type of person who gets headaches, ladies and gentlemen. I get them and occasionally I get migraines as well.

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Stock up now at dripdrop.com and use promo code QQ. We did. I know we said that injecting after hours with some life wouldn't change that, but it would. We had no, you and I

boots on the ground people who had no control over like who was going to be on the crew and yeah yeah we were very lucky that for the most part everyone on all of our crews we'd gotten to know all of them

we were all around the same age so like our our DPs the guys who operate the camera and the people who do sound people who do hair and makeup we'd all become friends over this entire process but there were some that were more fun than others and like we would get to

after hours and I would look at like all right what's on what's on the craft service table What's next do I have? Okay. All right. It's a bunch of stuff I can't have. So that's a dud. And then I'd look around and like, who's shooting us today?

What poor, what poor bastard is hitting record on the camera? And if it was Michael Cox, I was like, hell fucking yeah. I love this guy. Oh, great. This is going to be a good one. He's just such a sweetie. He had a real thankless, like, I mean, if you've seen after hours, there are two shots two shots and so it's a pretty thankless job for a DP so it's truly just like who is going to make a few hundred bucks and increase morale by 300 percent oh it's Michael Cox today all right yeah that was always really nice there are also there are other things on those sets where I it would be it would be a bad day for a different reason like if I knew that

Katie Stoll was in charge of catering or like whatever we were going to get for dinner or for lunch that day I was like fuck she can't eat anything she doesn't know what's good she can't eat anything she hasn't had a really she's like got all your kinds of limitations what she did at the time and I was like oh fuck we're fucked she doesn't know what's good

give me somebody who is 250 pounds and like my my spiritual cousin like give me somebody who's going to bring me nothing the pasta. Just some 2 a.m. pasta so we can get it to the home stretch of after hours. Pasta and a

Dr. Pepper, please. That's what I'm running on in every single one of those videos. Yeah, that was, it was always when you're on set, you're surrounded by a bunch of people you don't totally know. And a lot of them are actually in the scenes with you. So like after hours is a different example.

There were some people who were like working as cashiers, pretend you know like acting as cashiers or as waiters and stuff and so there are people on set who you are aware of so when you're fucking up and you're fucking up over and over again and you're starting to get really mad at yourself you can't outwardly be that angry because you don't want them to that be the story of the day where you're like I went to her I saw them do after hours and soren is a tyrant yeah he was slamming the table and swearing I brought someone I was dating to the set of After Hours once and got so sweaty and so bad at my lines that I was like, this was a mistake for a couple of reasons. This is bad for the show, and this is not how I want to be, this is not where I take the new girl to impress them.

This is not the place. This is not me at my best. A couple of times people, like, fans got invited, and I can't remember what the circumstances were. But we shot up in Montrose once, like a diner that we'd never been to before. So maybe it was a bakery or something like that. And we were like running up on the day. So it was like, there was a time crunch where they had to open and we had to get cleared out of there. And it's like we had to get our lines.

And somebody had invited like, I don't know. There were people who had come who were excited to be there, which was where. And they were watching. And they were like watching us do our takes. and it was so in the back of my head the whole time that, yeah, like I could. I was going up on the lines constantly then, man. And I was like, there's no helping this. I can't fix this.

And you can't. Here's the thing. If you're not familiar with After Hours and you're listening, there's a show that we used to do in which you're like, you're laying out an entire essay. You're memorizing, we're doing three episodes at once. And so you're memorizing so much. You're memorizing essays on Predator or whatever. And it has to come off naturally. has to feel good and

he has writing down Predator for our next time. I don't think we did a Predator episode. No, we didn't. We didn't. We absolutely should have now that it's back in the Zite guys. But it's so much to memorize. It's like it's so much to keep in your head for that period of time.

And then also try to make it look natural and everything like that and keep in mind that it's 3 a.m. And it's like and we were, we're testing man. And but it depends different people like it comes out differently in different people like for daniel it's very internal it's a lot of like he'll go up on a line he'll go hold please come on daniel with this with the same voice as somebody at the gym being like you're so fucking soft you're so soft um but yeah it came out differently but yeah we all got on each other's nerves there yeah and you certainly can't i wish i could remember the thing the episode you're talking about where fans got it that is not landing in my brain but it was a bakery certain i i remember the bakery i just

don't remember the fans um but it's that's more than any other case you can't say like these people need to leave now because they're the problem i could have done that with the woman i was dating at the time i could have been like hey why don't you why don't you go home and get some sleep and I'll finish up here or you know anyone else that we knew pretty well we could be mean to them and send them away but fans who are so

excited to be there they're going to make the news if you're like hey everything's going fine can you just get these two fucking kids out of here they got to go not just out of my eye line I don't want them in the building I want them in in a car and the car

moving please and and I'm being nice about this also there's so I was going to say that there's a lot of times they give you that like an AD will come up and be like if things aren't going great everyone's being really cool about it everyone's being really quiet trying to give you the space to get it right but occasionally it's going so wrong that an AD will be like do you want to take a couple minutes yeah and then you but here's the trick of that like that is such a diabolical move because if you take minutes to go get settled and you come back and it still happens, everyone's furious. What did you do? What did you do with your minutes? So you can't take that time. No matter how much you want that time, you can't take it.

Because if you come back from it and you still haven't got it, oh, boy. Brother, oh, brother. And especially when we're memorizing essays and it's 2.30 in the morning, five minutes to yourself isn't going to solve the problem. And you know on some level that it's not. I mean, because the issue is not, I didn't study this enough. The issue is half my brain has left my skull and the words don't sound like words anymore. And so I'm just, it's, I'm, I'm just hoping the fumes will push me there.

And like, give me three minutes to myself to stare at the script and I'm going to watch letters dance off the page for a while. It's not going to do anything. What I'm going to actually do with those three minutes, they're going to be like, all right, thanks, everybody. step outside piece of shit piece of fucking shit piece of fucking dirt shit you're less than dirt

you're worse than dirt people used to dig holes for their jobs and you're just trying to say predator just say predator fuck stupid fuck all right I'm good

I'm good I think I got it I got it I came up with a little like demonic memory trick that's gonna it's gonna it's gonna go now you get it you get it on this one or I'm gonna kill you I'm going to kill you

Soren yeah I've been thinking sorry I interrupted There's a lot of Beatles stuff happening And I interrupted it But you're getting somewhere You're gearing up with Beatles Well I was

I've been obsessed with the Billy Preston of it all And like I was thinking Is there someone else That is so immediately A crowd pleaser That you could just drop them into a tense situation But I don't know as a thought experiment If that's even worthwhile to pursue

I mean I have somebody in mind You mean like celebrity status? Yeah Yeah I have somebody in mind who I think is maybe the most charming person. An affable and, like, humble. And every time that I've seen them in anything, not just like acting, by the way, it's an actor,

not just as an actor, but I've also seen them just interviewed and stuff. I'm always like, holy shit. This person is dripping with charisma and charm. They're so, they're so, and they're like, make everybody around them feel at ease. And it's Ryan Gosling. Really?

Ryan Gosling, if you've ever seen him interviewed or anything, thing. Sometimes he does press junkets with like a co-star. He's so good at being on the level of every single person there, both the person who's interviewing who is deeply nervous every single time. Yeah. And then also his co-star, who is not, who is sick of this shit. And watching him like thread that needle is, it's so incredible. It's a child who's grown up in this environment and has been like, I'm going to learn

how to negotiate this the best I can and did. I think for this. The same, very different vibes, but also, full disclosure, this is a person that I got to work with a tiny, tiny bit. Ben Schwartz filmed an ender for us at last week tonight. And there is, I can't think of anyone I'd rather have on any set. It's one set that I've been on with him for a few hours. And I just think like, this guy, it makes so much sense to me why. you book him for a day on Parks and Recreation and then you write his character back into that show for the next seven fucking years because he is so professional, so funny, so, like, he knows everyone's name,

he's kind to everyone. None of it feels like bullshit. It just seems like this guy is just so, I don't know if he goes home and there's a lot of darkness there, if this is easy for him, but this is a guy who seems acutely aware that he is a celebrity person and that there are a lot of people around him

and he's going to give all of them the best fucking day that they're having. It's just like, this is, this is a, again, I don't know if it's like my natural inclination with people like that is to assume, boy, you are really good at this. You are really, you really thought about how you're coming off, how you're how you're being received and uh what your function is on this set not just as an

actor but like as a as an energy that's going to be here that's what where my brain goes it's entirely possible that he is just an effortlessly joyful person like that that's a thing my brain can't like anytime i see anyone who's like good somewhere i'm like boy you're really good at being being likable. Where did you study that? I don't know that you're wrong, no, because it's like, the job is bigger than just the job, like what you're hired to do. So you're hired to come because you're good on screen. He is somebody who's very fun to watch on screen. He's a good

improviser. He can add to whatever you bring him into and he's going to make like the scene better. But he's also like if the job is bigger than that, it's like knowing how to make everyone to ease around you while you're doing it. or like make everybody else in the scene even with you feel better about like more comfortable with themselves like that's like and if somebody's doing that somebody's doing all of that it means that everybody could do all of that it's not like an every actor who comes in is like who's a who's a Daniel day lewis and it's like making it miserable for everybody else around them but you're getting the best performance possible on screen you're like I get it I get why you maybe you're doing all your heavy lifting to be in the character And then you see somebody else doing that and being like a pleasure to be around. You're like, oh, no, I think maybe you could do it all. And it wouldn't be that hard. I think maybe you could also do all the good acting and be nice.

Yeah. I brought him up earlier, but I do think Sam Richardson fits that bill as well. And we worked with him at Cracked before he was the famous and beloved person that he is now. He was just like new and doing sketches with us and we loved him so much. And he is someone that was just like, we didn't, we didn't book him constantly, I think, because without talking about it internally, we were like, we don't want him to stop liking us and stop, because we could tell early on, like, we are not the only people, we're not the only people who are going to notice this guy's a star.

So let's bring him in for, like, projects that we think are going to be good. and he's going to want to say yes because the script is good and let's bring him into like environments that are going to be fun and not like a grueling shoot and let's not book him too much because if he spends more time around us

we will poison him and so we just work with him a few times a year and it was always just like we were funnier being around him we were all happier it was just like a better time brought the level up.

He was just like, he's going to show up, he's going to know all his lines and be professional and also just playful and do bits and be ready to like, you know, I would come to set with an energy sometimes, whether it's after hours or something else, where it was just like, this is not, this is not my day. I'm good some days. I'm bad today. Like, I have something going on in my personal life. And so I'm going to keep to myself, I'm going to read.

And then I'm going to come out and do my lines the best I can. And then I'm going to go home. he is someone he and benchboards both I feel like these are two guys that you don't see them on their bad days again maybe because they never have bad days or maybe because they're they're they're acutely aware that like part of the job of actors is giving is not having bad days yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah Sam would do a thing where he would go and like wherever we were sitting and hanging out has always ended up being wardrobe too because that's you you double up space when you don't have any money and uh he just like put on a jacket from wardrobe and he'd be like kind of deciding on like a character it had nothing to do with the shoot it was just like he was doing it for us

he was like put a wig on and decide like what does this character sound like what does this character sound like and then just start being that character and he started finding it and it was always like perfect and it was flawless and it was so funny he'd be like yeah he put on a wig once and he was just like

he was a dad with a kid who he's like very excited that his kid was doing sports except this kid was doing soccer and the dad didn't quite understand soccer and he was like really tried to be supportive but didn't understand it and it was so funny

you had a character I will not do the do the voice because it's his but it was in our Western sketch that Soren wrote

that we did where I sweat my mustache off I don't know how you would find it on YouTube but it's like cracked Western if Wests were honest if the old west was honest i think we all have wigs and and facial hair and stuff and uh we're all doing characters in that sketch before it happened i think sam just had like the cowboy outfit and this long brunette kind of flowy wig and he didn't have facial hair put on

yet i don't know if we ever got it on and like you can see in the sketch he's doing like a a proper western like now you get on out of here like a Yosemite Sam kind of voice but when it was just him with his like feathery wig

he did this there's no other way to say it pimp cowboy character he just walked around doing it for hours while we were before we're filming this stuff

in the desert it's a million degrees I'm sweating my spirit glue off my fucking face. Something that can't happen. Something that is physically impossible to do in the costume mat.

Whoever's doing costume and makeup is like this can't happen. This can't happen. Getting mad. We can sue the company because they said this would never happen. And as like tense and frustrating as that is.

And then Sam would just start doing the little walk and doing the little voice of this cowboy pimp that just had us all rolling on the fucking ground. Yeah, he's a real treat. He's a treat to have around. Ben Schwartz is a great choice. I think that's wonderful.

Based on people that I've actually worked with that have come on the show and, like, we've done records with. And when they come, I get very excited because they bring such a good energy. And, like, they understand that the job is bigger. Like, they understand, like, how to make it more fun. There's two people that immediately come to mind. One is Paul of Tompkins. I knew it. I was hoping.

every time he comes in it's such a it's so fun like the shot that you know it's going to be we're going to have a good time the other one is is and i've only ever done him over the phone but or like records not in the actual booth was uh jason manzukas jason manzukas comes in with such a good energy and like comes in like i don't want to say he's like ingratiating himself to you but like he comes in he's like hey i love this script or like he's like talking to the different people and he's like i think i remember you from this and this and like he's trying to make it personal all the way around and then like he wants to do so well he's like he's not somebody who's there who's getting like he does it and then you're like he's getting notes and he's getting notes again and people and some people in those circumstances are going to be like what the fuck what just what do you want give me a line read what is it that you're asking for here and then but he he's just like he wants to do it to the point where you're like okay we've got it we can move away he's like no no wait I got hold on there's somebody else I want to try that I think you guys will like and like you get another one and he's so great yeah

you know what's what's a fun thing we can we can do right now is um we're gonna tease um we will do the opposite of this episode where we talk about people we've worked with who are fucking terrible exclusively on the patreon ah ha ha yes absolutely yeah the people who i'm now afraid of like that i feel like that it didn't go great and they were angry and i don't I think maybe they burned that bridge. Or they burn that bridge, honestly. Right. People who are the opposite of Ben Schwartz,

where it's like, man, you really brought that whole fucking set down. We were having a great day. Yeah. And then your energy changed everything. That's going to have to be, man, I don't even know. I think my job has to end before I can do that. Oh, we can't even put that behind a paywall. I don't.

Maybe we could. I'm thinking of like the people. And I'm like, well, do I, are we going to work with them again? Yeah. that's true someone easily could spend five dollars once and listen to that episode and then write down every name we say yeah um and it's it's clear to me every once in a while it's clear to me that people are listening to this where i'll i'll catch somebody on even on staff who i don't even like independent of me will be like the people are talking about american dad for some reason on twitter x and generally it comes down to like somebody some fan is like it's better than family guy like that usually ends up being the fight and then like

everybody wants to fight about that like which is better because they can't just both exist they can't like be fans of both it just is impossible for some people and as they're doing it they're also like people are throwing in details that I know that they learned from this podcast

and I'm like oh oh man I got to watch what they say they'll like talk about like just recently somebody was like they're just they trust their audience they know that they can have so they can introduce a character's trait that they should have been there the entire time and wasn't like when Steve goes to the watering hole with his friend snot and like we just assume that that they've been going there every single summer even though we haven't seen them go once for the past 15 years of the show and I was like that's my episode I talked about that on the podcast oh fuck you're going to get some people on Twitter asking about Roger on the bang bus and It's going to get a lot of internal problems for you. People are going to be like, I don't think we ever did that. I think we just talked about it over and over.

It is really funny. In the room, when something like Bangbuss comes up, everyone will pitch on something. And like something just catches fire, right? Like all of a sudden, like there's a joke that everyone really loves. And it's not like they don't love it for the reason of like it's finished and we should put it in. It just tickles them in the moment. And they're like, I want to keep talking. about this and it's the funniest thing in the world when whoever's episode it is who's trying

to break the episode that means just like lay it out by the way like just like get the get the episode done they everybody else is like get stuck on a thing and you that person knows it's not going in their own episode they like they're going to just sort of tolerate this for a little while and it just keeps going and growing and this person has to just sit there steaming like we need to work on my episode but people cannot help themselves They can't, like they just keep pitching on this Roger character that will never exist. Yeah. And like going crazy for it.

You're not allowed to stop the fun in the writer's room. No. No, you are not. That's a cardinal rule. And then occasionally it does end up going in. There was an episode of our show where Stan and Francine open a trophy shop. I think it's called Trophy Wife, Trophy Life. and

they're like Angelina Jolie and Billy Bob Thornton kind of like hanging all over each other and like during interviews but they're like kissing each other

on the neck and stuff like that and like the trophy store has just like their relationship is ignited from this trophy store this is an episode of American Dad

that aired in 1998 what was it wasn't that long ago but it probably might have been 2018 and and

And there's a, at one point, like, it seems like she can't run the store because Stan is so all over her. And so she asked him to stop. And he's so taken aback by that that he tries to open a rival trophy store across the street and buys out this pickle business. It was a restaurant. The place across the street was like a giant pickle. And it was the pickle king.

And he bought it out to try and sell trophies out of it. But as we're like, when that idea came up, we were like pitching on the pickle. King so much and like what the Pickle King was like and like his whole backstory and everything and we couldn't stop and she did not want to do the the pickle stuff

but it just kept going and going and going and finally something clicked and she was like I know how to do it like I know how to put it in and she did and it was so funny that's exciting really really wonderful yeah I

self-pitched we did an episode of a show a couple years ago about this is going to sound like parody. Prison heat, about how prisons are too hot and we got to do something about it. It's a genuine problem. I'm saying it's parody and I'm using a jocular

tone when discussing it. But there are a lot of prisons in the South that like fully don't have air conditioning and you've got states where they're like, hey, legally you have to have air conditioning in this prison. And the wardens are like, fucking make me. We're not going to do it. Um, it's very bad. Uh, it's an incredibly, like one of the bleakest episodes I've ever worked on in

the show just because none of the raw material material that we're working with by design is going to lend itself to comedy or joy. You know, you're getting interviews with prisoners who are talking about, uh, how hot it is and how it's like torture. And these are just like people who are like describing torture on camera, which is, um, not as fun as your comedy writing job. Yeah, no, I would say not. Someone at one point in one of the clips talked about feeling like they were being roasted like a hot dog. And I'm going to say 45% of my script was alts on different talking hot dog jokes.

I would start with a thing that I'll do a bastardization of it but some kind of thing that was like that's awful you never want someone to feel what it's like to be roasted like a hot dog you only want hot dogs to go to feel that with one exception and then it would cut to like an animated hot dog talking to John

and I wrote a thing about like how it was a bad boy hot dog and I had a hole back and forth and I was like that was really fun to write it back and forth between John and bad boy hot dog. What are some other hot dog characters that I could be instead of a bad boy? Let's think outside the box. And I wrote maybe five different spins

on talking hot dog and John and talking hot dogs describing what it's like to be a hot dog who's cooking to death and why a hot dog would be in prison in the first place. A lot of like very inventive spins on this as I'm writing it and knowing like, this isn't going in the episode. They're going to play.

we're going to play the clip of the guy saying it felt like getting roasted like a hot dog and John's going to say that's awful and then we're going to move on to a new clip but I just kept doing it and something I've never done before in a script because the silent agreement I have with my bosses is that I think everything I write and pitch is good and should go on the show no matter how silly or stupid it is and this is the one time I violated that bargain where I wrote

two out of my eight hot dog jokes and then wrote a little note beneath it that was just like hey I got a lot more hot dog jokes I put him at the end of the script if you don't want to read them just like hey that's where I violate our agreement

I was like I know you're not going to do this so here's the part of my script you don't need to read sir a professional would just not hand in the part of the script that you don't need to read. But I'm just doing it. This is how I'm coping with watching 400 hours of people roasting to death in prison as I'm writing my protest jokes about talking hot dogs.

Oh, man. And do they say anything about it? Like, when they see it at the end. Oh, okay. You get a little. Yeah. We are, I'll say like something.

I'm like always hesitant to say how much I can actually or know how much I can talk about with American Dead. But we moved recently from TBS to Fox. And Fox has, is broadcast television. So the rules are a little different in terms of what you can actually do. And so like where we used to be able to get away with a shit, you can't do that anymore. You can't get away with bleeping a fuck You can't see

Oh You can't see the mouth of the character Make the F Like biting the bottom lip And then bleep it There's things that Yeah It's much more

It's harder than it used to be Because you've been I guess you've been bleeping fucks For a while, right? I guess you've been on TBS for A very long time For a very long time And it's possible that these rules have changed

Since we've been back Like, maybe this was not the case when we were previously on Fox. I also don't know that everybody who'd hear us to the same rules. I think that maybe family guy or Bosburgers and stuff, like maybe they have more licensed than we do, but we're brand new again. And so there's things that we can't do. And it's always funny. Like, you get these notes from standards and practices.

Do you guys ever get those, the standards and practices notes from based on your script? No, my God. Oh, great. Okay. All right. We only get legal notes. We only get very, like, incredible. incredibly safe legal notes.

And they don't even come to me. We'll get like research flags that I will see while working on it and we'll get legal notes that will go to John, Tim, and the research team. And we'll hear about them sometimes. But yeah, standards and practices. HBO, buddy. Oh, right. You're not TV. Yeah.

So we get, we get notes from them. We can't say certain swear words. And so we, well, I don't know that we, I will then put so many of them in my action lines. Sure. Stuff that will never end up on air. I'm going to just like litter that shit with swears so that somebody has to read it. At a table, it will get said at a table read, but it will never end up in the actual script. And it really helps me a lot.

It makes me feel a lot better to put all that in there. Now, standards of practices. we get a lot of notes that are like that seem at first maybe crazy but it's because they're so protective and I'll give you an example

of one recently I've got an episode where Steve is riding his bike and he almost gets in an accident with a truck and one of the notes was Steve needs to be wearing a helmet

it would be nice if the trucker was wearing a helmet what? And he's should be wearing his seatbelt. But part of the reason that they, like, almost get in an accident is that the trucker is, like, he's spilled his coffee and he's, like, all the way in the back of his cab, like, digging through it. And he's just steering with his foot and stuff like that. Like, it ruins the whole scene if all that stuff is in there.

And so the way that it was eventually solved was that because they nearly get into an accident, Steve does get grievously injured. But the way they almost get into an accident is the consequence. Like, they weren't doing the safe things. and then we get to see the repercussions of them not having done the safe things. And so it's still, it's a teaching moment and so we can still use it. That's insane. We can't even, yeah. Like, you didn't put a helmet on Steve, right?

Nope. Yeah. So I'm complaining about theoreticals and hypotheticals that don't matter, which I shouldn't do. Like, we'll get legal notes all the time that'll make me so mad. and then one of the other writers will be like, we're not doing it. They don't control you. We were never going to do it.

But I was like, yeah, I know. But like, if the anger doesn't come out here, it's coming out at home and we can't have that. So I've got to put it here at work. And the thing that makes me mad about your situation is it feels like overreach. It feels like standards. Like put Steve as a.

helmet in a helmet is is bullshit stupid note that doesn't make any sense put the truck driver in a helmet feels like standards is trying to get a joke in because a truck drivers don't wear helmets but they do in cartoon shows and that to me feels like well then well then you shouldn't be working in standards of practices you shouldn't you you are not being objective um and maybe none of you are maybe everyone just wants to put their little fucking stamp on on everything i think what it is is that they are that they treat it like a negotiation because the same thing happens with nudity on our show now like pixelation you're really not supposed to do pixelation you're supposed to have you're supposed to cover it in tasteful ways like that austin power z way yeah where you're

like there's always something in the way um but then there's like you can't see so good you can't see bare hip either like bear hip is out even though it's not because it indicates that somebody is completely naked. And so, like, there's things like that. But you start there. And then as you, like, you produce new versions of the, you're doing like an animatic. You're doing a color model. Like, you're doing all these different things.

And along the way, they're like, okay, you can have three scenes of pixelation. But everything else has to be covered. And no, no buttocks or no hip. Like, you can't see any of that. And you're like, and so, like, they treat like, they're starting from a starting point that's like, it's not, hey, this is the end. This is everything. works to this line. It's like, here's where we're going to start from. We believe that all this should be taken out. And then it's your job to negotiate against that, basically, and then

eventually they'll give a little. You can't just say Simpsons has been showing asses since the first episode. So think about every time you've seen Peter Griffin. Yeah. Every time you've seen Peter Griffin naked. And he's naked all the time. And because the joy is that he's so fat that you can't see his penis. But he's naked at every angle, like, naked constantly on the show. Yeah. We're not allowed to do, yeah. You can't just, like, cite precedent? That's so bizarre.

I don't know. Maybe we can. I certainly can't. I can't go get in touch with standards and practices and be like, hey, you're messing up. Yeah. But I'm surely there's somebody on our show who is, like, fighting these fights. I think I actually know exactly who it is. and he's good. But it's still like, it is a negotiation.

So they're starting from such a staunch place because they know we're going to fight against it. Right. It seems like it could make their job mostly irrelevant and make your job much easier. If there was a list of things that you could do, that was consistent. Well, because writers are going to find loopholes around that. Well, sure. Yeah. It is very interesting to see the things that they come back with. I'm always excited to see other people's notes from standards of practices because it is always stuff that you did not anticipate where you're like, oh, I didn't even realize that they would be upset by that. Different uses of the word, oh, brand names.

Brand names are like huge. And the specificity of a joke often relies on brand names. So if Principal Lewis is going through everybody's lockers and it turns out that he's not, he's only looking for contraband because he wants. he's going on like a trip to Cabo and like he's like he's looking for swisher sweets in there you can't say he's looking for swisher sweets but it's funny to say i know swisher sweets can't do it what a hoot i know we've gotten it's occurring to me now not standards and practices but but a few like sensitivity flags have made their way back to me not through like not that anyone needs to run anything by me at all and this was years ago and it's not it's I think

we have a pretty open workplace where where like people are free to say like hey this might be a little bit tone deaf or this might be a little bit insensitive and I think some people have had have had different thresholds for what might be inappropriate and just one that sticks out years and years ago I wrote a joke about Pinocchio killing himself this was like a specific time capsule where I think it was the Washington Post who used to like rate the truthiness of certain

claims by President Trump based on how many Pinocchioes it got I don't know if they're still doing that fucking clown shit Washington Post would be like he said that the Mexicans are sending their rapists we gave that five out of five Pinocchio's

I was like, great, excellent journalism. But it kept coming up that the degree of Poconos, the amount of Poconos, the amount of Pinocchio's was like the arbiter of truthiness. And I think I spun that into a joke about, the Washington Post rated it, Pinocchio was left a note about having seen what your world does to people who are different. I have decided to leave it. And there was an animation of, like, Podokio swinging as if hung by noose and... Marinet strings cut into a noose. Yeah. Yeah.

And someone on staff who I have no idea who it was, but I'm pretty sure they don't work there anymore, um, flagged it to someone else as like, this might be, um, just like a sensitivity flag that like, people, people might think of suicide and it might make them sad. and like maybe the writer didn't know that when they wrote that and I was like and I was so mad that is now where I thought that was going I thought the noose was going to be the issue no it was just like like we can't let the audience think of suicide because suicide is a bad thing and it might make people it might make people sad and not only was I like huffy and puffy as a writer who had written it it was not that it's super matters but it was that like a A friend of mine had lost their battle to depression not too long ago, so it's not like I was, you know, writing in a fact, like I wasn't so detached from this that I was like, ah, everything's funny. I'm edgy. I was like, no, I'm like I'm, I'm aware of what the weapons of my hands are capable of. I know what the words can do. And I'm choosing to do what I'm doing because like I also know what comedy is and does. I was mad about those things. And also. mad because I was new enough at the job that I was still pretty bad at it and not getting a lot of jokes in. So when I got a joke in and I was like, good, this is, this is like jokes, density of, of joke, volume of jokes is how I can like keep my job here. I can at the end of the year point to the jokes that I got on. Yeah, it's any metric you can grab onto.

And then some person with, in my opinion, too much time on their hands was like, hmm, suicide's kind of a downer. I don't, I think we should never mention things that might make people sad. I was very upset about it. And this is the time that the other writers were like, this is the only reason you are aware that this note was given is because it had been passed around as like, look at this silly note. You can't get like, it's not going to change anything. you can't get you have no right to be upset about it and yet yeah and you found away yeah there are definitely times where i mean i was just this morning thinking about old articles that i had written for the site and i was like at the time someone would raise an issue or they'd be like you use the

word you use this word slut here and at the time i was like yeah it's a funny sounding word say it put it in your mouth and see how it feels and like I would like balk at that kind of thing and now like looking back on it I'm like they might have been right I think I used it as a punchline and it was like to hurt somebody who had been too promiscuous like it's like I don't think I was it is a fun word to say but it is the way I was using it they were right it was not the right way that thing to do it is and we we society has since like found new ways to use it that are that are fun. Yes, yes, right.

That we're also trying to learn the rules about everything. But I remember when the Jurassic Park, Jurassic World Rebirth trailer came out. And Jonathan Bailey was in it. And everyone was like, we're so happy to see Jonathan Bailey in his slutty little glasses. And it's like, oh, we're saying it again? Okay, cool. Great. But I understand different.

It doesn't mean we. We can say it all the time, about everything. Let me recalibrate. I'm going to keep not saying it. I'm going to keep it out. I'm going to use it wrong. I just want to say, I'm so enjoying that you're all using the S word. I will continue to not do it.

Yeah. So, yeah. Occasionally, those thoughts will creep into my mind when I get a stand as a practice note where I'm like, fuck them, fuck them. And then I'll like, be like, well, think about you in 20 years. Are you going to agree with this note? Is it possible that you will agree with this note? And sometimes that helps me deal with it a little bit better.

Yeah. All right, everybody. This has been quick question with Soren and Daniel. We didn't even get to the topic that we wanted to talk about. This flew by. We talked about some really fun behind the curtain stuff, both at Cracked and at our jobs. I hope you enjoy this episode.

Theme songs by Me Rex. You can find longer and possibly more. damaging versions of this podcast on Patreon if we ever get into the people we never want to work with again on our shows, the guest stars that we have on that we never want to work with again. I can't guarantee that we're going to do that

so like if you don't subscribe don't like do it like don't do it now because we're probably not going to do that episode. And Patreon, I did it all. No, there's video versions of this podcast on YouTube. Goodbye. I'm going to

quick, quick question. for you all right I want to hear your thoughts don't know what's on your mind I've got a quick, quick question for you all right the answer's not important I'm just glad that we could talk tonight

so what's your favorite who did you get when would I be remember what's it out to love it all that oh forget it saw a movie Daniel O'Brien

two best friends and comedy writers if they're an answer they're going to find it i think you'll have a great time here i think you'll have a great time here