Quick Question with Soren and Daniel - Quintessential Fictional Artists + The Day Cracked Died

Episode Date: February 6, 2024

The guys discuss quintessential fictional artists - the bands, comics, and artists of all kinds that are good enough for make you believe they would actually be that famous in real life. But before that, they also talk about their differing approaches to the day that Cracked died and share some thoughts on the current state of the podcast landscape.Follow the show on socials: https://www.linktr.ee/QQPodcastSoren Bowie: https://twitter.com/Soren_LtdDaniel O'Brien: https://twitter.com/DOB_INC

I've got a quick, quick question for you, alright? I wanna hear your thoughts, wanna know what's on your mind 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 favorite? Who did you get? When will I be remembered? What's it all about? Where did all that go? Did 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 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 am one half of that podcast. Author of How to Fight President, senior writer for Last Week Tonight, and before that held a number of job titles at comedysitecrack.com from intern to assistant editor to columnist to head writer to

head of video to director of content development right up until the very moment my department was dissolved to trick wall street into believing our parent company was good at business all told i have been writing comedy professionally in some form or another since 2008 daniel o'brien joined as always by my co-host mr soren buoy so Bui. Soren, the Florin is your ins. Thank you, Daniel. My name is Soren Bui. I am a writer for American Dad. I was also held most conceivable positions at Cracked. Not had a video. That was exclusively Daniel. And I also, I was the one who cut and run early. I didn't get destroyed in the massive layoffs of Cracked because I saw the writing on the wall and ran away. You saw what was coming.

While I stood atop couches saying I'm unfireable, you very much saw which way the wind was blowing. Yeah, I feel a little bad because, well, I feel a lot bad about everything that happened, but I feel a little bad for this very one specific thing, which is as people continue to talk about Cracked and like the day that it died, according to them, I get lumped in with that a lot where people are like, I can't believe that they fired all this, like all these people worked together at one time and they fired all of them.

all this like all the all these people worked together at one time and they fired all of them and uh i don't have like it's not in my heart to like fix the story for them but i'm like i they deserve this like they deserve your credit like they they did get fired and it was painful and it was bad for them uh i ran away there's there's some things that i that I just sort of let the narrative be imperfect. Like Michael, on principle, quit when our parent company fired our two directors, Abe and Adam. Mike was just like, I can't support this company anymore. That's bad. So he left on his own accord. You left for a different job.

And almost immediately after that, like within a month or so, everyone in our department were, what was it? Two months. Two months. Everyone in our department and other departments were laid off. And so to, as far as like even diehard viewers and readers were concerned, all of this happened at the same time because everyone was working and doing things and very very visible and then suddenly a million people on twitter were saying that they no longer worked at cracked and also uh after hours which had been running consistently for 10 years just stopped existing so it really seemed like all of their their people and their their favorite

things just ended at the exact same time right uh the details aren't important enough to yeah uh they're they're and like people would be like i can't believe like they there was soren michael katie dan they all got fired at once and i'm like well one of those people got fired one of them people got fired. One of them never worked there. And then another, the other two quit early. Yeah.

But no, you're right. I mean, it is bad. It does feel like all four of them were fired when Daniel got fired. It does. And certainly, even the people who didn't have like a nine to five salaried position at Cracked the departments got dissolved the work disappeared for those people the other familiar faces to viewers uh they work did stop for them and a source of income dried up for them as well that's true yeah i mean even the ones that didn't technically work there still worked there it was also you know it's it's an internet company so it was i i for for the amount of time that I actually had a column and that I was doing stuff for the site, I didn't work there for like the first four years of that.

Correct. and you're not like, they're not technically employees. So you've got a bunch of people that you, it's like the burgeoning of the freelance, the gig economy. And so a bunch of us never worked, or didn't work for crack for a very long time. And then eventually, because we were indispensable, they were like, okay, we'll make you an editor. Right, the option is hire this person,

or suddenly the site falls apart because they've made themselves a brick in the wall. It's, yeah, I mean, it's the way that creatives have been exploited since the beginning of time and will be and will continue to be exploited forever. I don't want to suggest to anyone that I was like aside from those apart from that. I mean, I participated into the exploitation. I remember. I know. like aside from those apart from that, I mean, I participated into the, in the exploitation.

I remember. I know. That's what, that's, that's what's so insidious about it is, is that it it's, you wanted to work at Cracked. You wanted to, to write comedy and the, you know, it's not, it's not always like a sinister guy with a mustache who is, who is like bribing you with exposure or, or trying to make you plant a seed in your head that you should be grateful for the opportunity to write comedy and have a platform. It's like ingrained in us as artists and creatives from birth. The thing about this ridiculous career that I've dedicated my entire life to is it takes a very long time to recognize the work that you do as labor everything else before you get to that point you just think

i am so lucky to be here i should be grateful for any and every opportunity well it's it's something that you're doing because you can't help but do it so like you're not it's just gonna keep coming out of you right and and so like to be like and you should pay me for it too it's like well no you're just gonna keep doing it like and you understand that implicitly like you're like well you're right um i just have to make it so good that you will then pay me for it and so like they're yeah they built into being an artist is like i don't deserve money for this i'm gonna do it no matter what right because it's i can't think of any of my other jobs where it's like well you better pay me to sell shoes at

sports start it could but if you don't i'm still gonna do it somewhere else i'm gonna do it i'm gonna do it in my free time yeah um yeah it's it's weirder in that respect but i mean we also once i was a part of crack that i when i was a senior editor at the site and we could have interns, we had an intern that, I don't want to use his full name, but we had an intern named Dan. And I remember he was very eager and very excited about the site. And at one point his internship was coming up to an end and he pulled me aside and he was like,

so do you think I'll get a job here now? And I was like, oh no, you've been here for, you've been here for like, and I was like, I laid it out for him. Like, you've been here for like two months. You, this is the way that the system works is that you will, if you want to continue to work for the site, you will do it as basically a freelancer and you'll do it at the whims of like what hours this site actually needs and like what, and finding you have to basically, you have to decide what the site needs. You have to be like, Oh, you know what? There's no presence on Instagram and Instagram is

blowing up. Let's like, let's blow out their Instagram. And so like, then once you do that and you prove yourself, then, then you get a job. And, and like, he's, I could just like see it wearing on him that like, that was the case. And I was like, oh yeah, man, this sucks. This totally sucks. This system is bad. It's a bad system, bad business model. I think about, uh, not our podcast necessarily, but like the podcast, uh, ecosystem in general because because our podcast is like it's our business that we're buying into right so like you and i whatever time we put into this is like this is this is our choice we are investing in this show and this podcast empire i think it's fair to say because this point yeah because we believe it'll it'll it'll

it'll pay off but i think about um how similar like the current podcast landscape is to uh early exploitative internet days because we're we're there are so many podcasts out there run by so many funny people and a lot of them have very funny and talented friends. So, like, you can't, everywhere you look, there's a funny person guesting on another funny person's podcast. Most of them don't get paid for that because you're, again, you're creatives who are being sold this idea that, like, it's just fun.

You're just talking to your buddy and wouldn't you be doing that otherwise? Wouldn't you? It's the same thing as a column essentially where it's like, yeah, you're creating it. You're hanging out. It feels silly to get paid for this. You're just doing jokes. Yeah, but it's jokes that you have at your disposal and like a quick wittedness and whatever other strengths you bring to a conversation that you have at your disposal and like a quick wittedness and uh you know whatever other strengths you bring to a conversation that you have because you've spent years in improv classes or writing or consuming comedy this is still like it took effort to give you this level of expertise and even if it feels like you're just having a phone call that's filmed you're on you're on

doughboys talking about del taco or whatever you're creating two hours of content that someone is consuming and someone is getting paid for. And it worries me to see the podcast industry now. I know some people pay some money for guests. Shout out Daily Zeitgeist. Shout out Secretly Incredibly Fascinating. But a lot of podcasts out there, because they seem so casual, they're ignoring the fact that

there's a reason that such and such comedian was booked on such and such a podcast. There's a reason that people listen to it. It's because there's value there. And it's creatives at every step of the way have been tricked and self-tricked into thinking that there's not, or again, that we're lucky to be here. And it's a bummer. I mean, every piece of content that exists is a financial contract. Labor is traded for money, and forgetting that creates the conditions for exploitation.

And we all need to remember that. Can you tell that the, that being on strike for a summer radicalized me? I have a, I have a buddy, Sam Bergen, who shout out to Sam. He,

when I was first doing like Friday night shows at this, in this alley in Santa Monica where I was doing sketch or, uh, even improv. Um, we would try and get our friends to come obviously, cause who else is going to come see you? And part of that was that you could get comps for people. You could get them comp tickets. And so like when I found out he, I just, one day I know he was coming to a show and I was

like, I'll get you tickets. He's like, no, no, no, I'll pay for them. And I was like, no, I can just give you tickets. He's like, no, I want to support my friends when they do something creative. And I was like, oh, damn it. I do too. From like that day forward, that was like 22. And from that day forward, like I won't, I won't, when Jason, Jason will oftentimes ask us, do you want a copy of my book?

Like, do you want me to just send it to you? And I'm like, no, I will go buy your fucking book. I know at this point, like it's already, we devalue ourselves enough. And then for our friends as well, like we're giving our friends like, no, you should get this for free. That's not the case. I want to, I want to pay you for what you do. I want you to have the money because you deserve it.

Yeah. We just went through this. My oldest brother and sister-in-law, they run a music school and they had their, like a big recital with all of their kids playing music or a lot of them were singing. And so my brother put together like a pit band, essentially, of my other brother on drums, me on bass, and a friend of ours, Sean, on guitar to play as like the the backing rock and roll band for any of the kids who wanted to sing a rock and roll song and it was very fun uh shout out to five melody music check it out it's a great if you uh if they can fit you in for lessons because they're really booked pretty solid then you should and if you're in the new jersey area take lessons there um but we were like playing this show and it was so fun and and heartwarming and inspiring and uh we got paid for doing it the pit band and we were like no you like we're we're family and like it's fun to

to play music and my brother was was very very firm about this because he he's been uh playing and touring musician for his entire life like no this is this is time that you're putting in it's effort you you're learning the songs on your own you went to a practice and you went to performance the performance was a couple hours musicians get paid period and it's the thing that uh everyone who does any kind of creative work even if it's something you would do anyway, and even if you think you're just having fun, you should recognize that it is labor and it is work.

And you're doing it for everybody else. You're doing it for everybody else who's in the same position. You accept it because otherwise the system becomes exploitative if you say, no, I would do this anyway. No, you have to understand that there has to be an exchange for everybody else as well yeah um but anyway that's that's not what i that's not what i thought we were going to talk about today no i had no plan of doing that either i it is nice that we're talking about artists right yeah my whole thing

my plan going into this was oh you're trying to steer us into the actual topic. I am, but you've got more to say, so that's fine. Yeah, my whole thing was I'm going to change things up and do a really long introduction. And then I was going to throw it to you for you to do an introduction that was also long. But then as I was writing out my intro i i realized that i i stumbled upon the gem that is soren the florin is your ends yeah and like that's fun that's i should have done that instead of like that should have been the game of this episode how it took me fucking four and a half years to find that one it is really i mean it's so funny when you can trace that in

somebody's writing like just sketches you could always see it. But even in like episodes, when people turn in a table draft and you're like, oh, I see, but you sort of found out what this episode was halfway through. You found out like the really fun thing. Like that's where the fun is. And people will still be like, well, you know, like you need all the lead up. You need everything just to get there. And you're like, yeah, no, I agree with you. But like, that's clearly where all the fun was, was right there.

Yeah. I think one day the next book that I turn in, I'm sure it'll be around chapter four that the author will address the audience and be like, hey, I didn't really figure out what this book was until now. And now it's going to really start singing. I should have gone back and revised the first three chapters, but. It's a lot of work. But I put the work in already.

And they're not bad. I mean, some parts of it are good. It doesn't fit, but like... Solid. You'll like it. Solid B writing right there. Somebody will get something from it, I bet. Yeah.

So let's get into the show, though. Now that we're done with the radicalized pro-union i don't know the communist manifesto brian part of the show no we were just we were touting capitalism just now dan we were saying you should get paid for your services oh yeah that's true go capitalism perfect system no notes uh soren you want to talk about movies yeah i do i've been i've been thinking about this lately uh you're gonna help me come up with the the best phrasing of this because we're using artists pretty broadly uh but the thing i'm i'm trying to figure out are what are the best uh depictions of artists in movies and tv shows where the artist character is supposed to be very good

at what they do. And you as a viewer believe that in their, in their performance. I can, I can, it gets stronger when I explain what I'm talking about. I think the platonic ideal version of this is the band, the wonders from that thing you do that is i was just gonna give you a quintessential version but go ahead i've got another one for you but go ahead the the plot of that movie is there's a band in the 60s that writes a uh pop tune and it is such a great tune that the band starts touring around to county fairs and then they get huge they do they tour all over the country they got screaming fans their their song races up the charts and then they perform on that world's version of the ed sullivan show big hit from this band the buy-in is so high

for movies and shows like this because you need, the audience needs to, the modern audience who's watching this needs to agree that the song is good enough to justify their success. That's like my platonic ideal because I think that song, that thing you do fucking rocks. It's written by the late Adam Schlesinger from Fountains of Wayne and it like performs its job so well of sounding like it's written by uh the late adam schlesinger from uh fountains of wayne and it like performs its job so well of sounding like it's of that time sounding like it would be a hit and also not for nothing a song that you you better be prepared to hear 700 times every time you watch

that movie and not get bored of it and it ticks all all of those boxes. And it's like, yes, I believe this band is as good as the movie wants me to believe. Right. Yeah. It's such a tall ask in a movie. Because already you're creating this piece of art. You're creating a story. And so it's got to have all the elements of a story. It's got to have arcs for everybody.

And your characters need to learn something. And the story has to be entertaining and good the whole way. And tight. And then additionally, you're adding another piece of art within it that has to feel like real art and it's like well i if i just created that i could sell that instead yeah well and and it and so it's very difficult to do i think marvelous miss mazel is an example on the opposite side where it's like here's this woman who does stand-up and like you're supposed to learn about her life at this in this early time period where women were just starting to do stand-up it's like people really love the show but they're like yeah the stand-ups kind of sucks

it's like yeah obviously because if you wrote like really good stand-up sets like you could use that independently that could be its own creature outside of this movie so you're basically throwing away a piece of art inside your bigger piece of art yeah stand-up and writing i think are ones that are very difficult so hard to translate like the the uh i don't know that i've seen a movie or show where there is a character who is supposed to be very good at stand-up and then they do stand-up and i'm laughing as much as i would be laughing at an actual comedian that doing stand-up i i like doing stand-up millennia so hard um or whoever the closest i think i've seen is there are like moments in funny people where i'm like i'm like yeah that is stand-up where but it's just like a couple of jokes

the whole sets, I mean, most of the stuff you see is not supposed to be that good because it's a young, struggling stand-up. But when Adam Sandler's up there and he's doing it, there are moments where you're like, yeah, okay. Okay, I'm buying this. There's one moment that Seth Rogen has where Aubrey Plaza says to him,

I can't remember how it comes up in conversation but she says that she has a skinny vagina and he says she should try feeding it carbs and i'm like yeah there we go um but yeah it's man it's stand-up is really really hard i think writing writing is tough um and i think there's a lot of like ways around it like you can like your you can have your writer be into like ways around it like you can like your you can have your writer be into themselves too much or like you can like tell a story of the writer through the writing but to just have purely good writing is i think next to impossible yeah i think if i still worked

a crack.com style list that i would do if that site still existed and was paying fair wages i would like to go through seven to ten uh versions and movies where an author character is reading an excerpt from their book and just and like try to genuinely figure out is this actually uh do we think this is a good book do we think this is good writing book? Do we think this is good writing? Stripped completely from the context of what the movie or show is telling us. Like, because that's the part that I don't buy. And the two that jump out at me right now, because they specifically have sections in the movie where the character reads

an excerpt from their book, Ant-Man Quantumania, Paul Rudd's character reads, like does it's, it's readings in movies are very funny to me because i've done them and i know what they're like and it's very strange the the the movie opens with him giving a reading from his autobiography or his memoir or whatever and he reads the end of his book he reads like the concluding thoughts that that wrap everything up in his book and uh i have three things to say about it one i understand why it's there because it like very effectively sets up the movie completely separate from the book is this is if if

you want to play catch up on what ant-man has been doing this is a really good uh not very elegant way of letting him tell you i'm an avenger i did this i saved the world i did that here are my thoughts on everything all right look out for the little guy it's very effective narration to set up a movie a terrible way to end a book is thought number two. It's a really bad way to end a book. Thought number three is awful choice if you're giving a reading of a book. You don't- Don't read the ending. You don't read the end. A book reading is- It's just my favorite part, so I thought you'd all enjoy it.

A book reading is when you're like trying to get people to buy your book. And it's such a silly, strange thing to do. You're not like giving them the meatiest part. You're not giving them anything intriguing. You're just like, you're wrapping everything up and completely, not at all giving anyone a reason to buy your book. Yeah. Go ahead.

I was going to say, not to like, at this point we're giving bad examples because I'm really washing the balls of this question and being like, this is such a good question. It's really fun to think about. I have one more that I want to get to that's like, I think they're doing it wrong. Do you know who Mike Flanagan is?

That sounds familiar. The Haunting of Hill House, Blythe Manor. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. He's Midnight Mass. wrong um do you know who mike flanagan is um that sounds the haunting of hill house blight oh yeah oh yeah yeah he's he's midnight yeah he was like dominating all the the netflix horror stuff with his troop yeah yeah every year he's got something new uh it's a very different way to do horror where there's like a lot of it's a lot of um trauma like personal trauma that gets turned into horror throughout each story. And I mean, horror was always kind of doing that, but he's doing it very explicitly. And he's the in so the haunting of Hill House, I don't know if you ever watched it, but like one of the family members that grows up in this haunted house grows up to be a storyteller or to be a storyteller, he comes up to be an author, and he writes a book about this house that he grew up in.

And so there's a lot of narration happening throughout it. Like to like get from scene to scene, all the connective tissue is just this guy reading his book and they really try, man. They really try to make this sound like a book and making it sound like a horror story i think they are successful in making it sound like a good horror story i think is is not as good i think it's i think they're like missing the mark quite a bit uh but they're they're really trying to make this guy sound like he really knows what he's talking about and i didn't realize that until the movie and the movie until the show ended where i was like oh we were supposed to think that was all really good

i thought it was just this dude like pontificating about his youth and with this purple writing that was so so purple that he like you just gotta light on take a nap after reading it it's so much easier and safer uh if you just decide that your artist is kind of a hack. It's like the... Yeah, totally. It's an obvious two sides of the same coin example, but everything that 30 Rock did right versus everything that Studio 60 did wrong in the two shows that came out at the exact same time that are both about a Saturday Night Live-esque variety show.

two shows that came out at the exact same time that are both about a saturday night live esque variety show 30 rock was smart because right off the bat they decided this is a show that exists our our girly show is a sketch show that exists but uh critics don't like it and viewership is down and there's a chance it's not very good because all of us are hacks and so every sketch that they show from the show every like glimpse of a sketch is allowed to be stupid and bad because it fits in with the world they've built. Studio 60 decides right off the bat, this is the best comedy show in the world that we're making. And it's important and it's controversial because it pushes so many buttons.

You really set yourself up for failure when you decide the show within your universe is that good because how could it be? Yes. Yeah. I mean, like the tallest order I think for on television is if you've got a narrative show or a scripted show is writing characters that are funny and know that they're funny. Like it's so, so hard to write somebody who's being fun. Like they can act funny but like not intentionally and like that adds the humor but when somebody has to be funny on purpose it's like oh man it's so there's so many elements that have to go right first of all

the the performance has to be good spot on but like the jokes have to be good and a show that did it really well i think was roseanne like the early scenes of Roseanne where the two, you just want to see the two of them in love, like Dan and Roseanne. And the way that they bicker and like fight with each other in like a very joking way is so good and like on the nose and fun. And like they're very good at it together. But like I think any other time, I had an episode where I had to write where Francine was like way more compelling and charismatic than stan and so i needed examples of that so she was like at his work at like a cia soiree and she's holding court there and i was like writing that first scene where she's holding court i was like oh shit how do you be charming oh fuck it's always purpose it's very uh terrifying whenever i'm working on a pilot and uh a character has to like successfully flirt with another character yes it's like i don't know

how this goes i don't know i need the fake woman in the tv show i i can make her like with this guy selling but the audience needs to buy it too and i don't totally if i knew what successful flirting was my life would be very different yeah if i was really good at this i wouldn't have this job i would be doing something else um i the quintessential example in the right direction that i was going to give and just in case anyone has lost the thread because we've been talking for so long it's like performances that are in which somebody is an artist and you really buy them as the artist because that what they're producing is so phenomenal um the other quintessential example i would give is kirk lazarus in tropic thunder yeah um who is he's he's like an Australian actor who dives into a character like Daniel Day

Lewis and doesn't resurface until the movie is over. And, and in, as a consequence gives the performance of a lifetime and Robert Downey Jr. Gives such an outstanding performance. Um, I know it's caught some heat,

but, uh, it's re he does a really, really good job. Yeah. My two sides of the actor coin, because I think acting is also a really hard thing to depict in a movie because it's spinning around in your head is like, there is an actor playing a character playing an actor. And you can say, the actor is doing a good job playing the character, an actor and like you can you can say the actor is doing a good job playing the character but i still don't buy the actor in the movie yeah as being like 100 super good um the the the two spectrums i have one is uh and i'm actually so the bad one

is entourage and like adrian grenier as an actor i don't think is very good i think he's likable i think he's he's very handsome i don't i i think it's not taking too many shots to say he's not the most versatile actor in the world case in point where has he been what does he do he did seven seasons and maybe two Entourage movies and a few rom-coms sprinkled about, but, but, you know, he's not primarily known as an actor. That's Adrian Grenier, the person, the actor. He plays in Entourage, Vincent Chase, and, uh, that show has a ton of problems, especially, uh, in retrospect, but something that I struggled with, even when I was watching it as like a high school and college student, when it first came out, was I don't understand if

Vincent Chase is supposed to be a good actor. Like if the point is, it's based on Mark Wahlberg's life. And I believe Mark Wahlberg thinks himself to be a very good actor. So if you follow that thread, then Vincent Chase is supposed to be good. But you get a couple of examples of him acting in the show and it's not very different than Atrien Grenier's acting, which I think we all agree is not very good. And that's something like, as I'm watching it as a 17 year old i'm just like if if the if the world of this show agrees that vinnie chase is just like hot and likable and good on camera then it's a very easy buy-in totally but now he's doing james cameron's aquaman and he's he's working with scorsese he's working with spielberg he's doing these like, like gritty, independent films and these and these biopics and like, I don't I and he's successful at it. I don't I don't know that they've really done a good job convincing me that Vinnie Chase is a good actor.

is too yeah uh but i totally agree with you yeah he's not he's not that like he does movies about like his where he grew up and stuff like that and so like queen's boulevard you wanted to be authentic and hard and it's like that's not it's not working man yeah the good version i have of acting in a movie is yeah i just re-watched the scene it's so fucking good i've got one for you as well go ahead oh good um the movie bird man which is the primarily the michael keaton vehicle and it's and it's it gets a lot of attention for how good he is in it and also how the movie is is essentially a sequence of wonders really long shots with no cuts it almost looks like the entire movie was shot with no cuts at all they're just like a few seams in there that you can tell. So that gets a lot of the attention. But something that's a bit undersung is there's a plot point in the movie where Michael Keaton is doing this play with an actor that he

thinks is bad. He feels like the actor is like, you could see he's acting and he wants something better and he wants something more naturalistic. and they get rid of that actor and replace them with uh edward norton's character and norton is like thrown into this movie as uh an asshole but also someone who is like supposed to be a very good actor like that's his whole thing is like this guy's supposed to be great that's why he's allowed to be kind of a prick is because he's such a good actor and there's a long amazing scene where ed norton and michael keaton are like about to do a scene from the play within the movie and they're just like working their way into it and ed norton is like being a bossy annoying actor uh and then starts acting as the character in the play reading lines that we've heard from the play before and he

is and he turns on a dime to just like embody the part that he's playing and he is so fucking good it's like the acting that he is doing in the play is in a weird way slightly better than the acting that he is doing in the movie. It's crazy. It's such, and like, I know in real life, Ed Norton is apparently very difficult to work with, but he's so fucking good in this scene. He's so good in this movie that it's just like, how dialed in of a performance that is, where it's like, I'm Ed Norton, and I'm going to be a good actor playing this asshole character. And now I'm going to playing this asshole character and now i'm gonna be this asshole character being a really good actor in this scene opposite michael keaton in a way that makes michael keaton's

character look like a worse actor than edward norton's character and it's just so damn good man that's awesome i i haven't seen that movie in a very long time i should watch it again the example i have is very similar and that it's somebody who's like whose performance in the movie itself is not as good as what they do in like they're acting within the the pretend movie within it um have you seen mahalan drive uh no well i've i saw a part of it a bunch of times when they find the corpse right yeah that's the one i forgot there was a lesbian sex scene in that movie yeah um okay when i was younger and no one was home i would track down that corpse scene yeah yeah yeah where they find the body it is really horrifying when they find it like yes um but naomi naomi watts in that movie gives a very stilted performance on purpose

i think to serve the narrative i don't i won't i won't pretend to fully understand moholland drive i think that this is some woman's memory a more happy memory of her coming to la to become an actress and so in her memory like she's not a she's not even a good actor in her own memory like she's just not very good so nummy watts is giving kind of like this stilted performance a little bit but then she has an audition that she has to do it's a real audition because she is an actress she goes in does this audition and she just turns like it's really yeah it's like flipping a switch where you're like oh oh my, this person is giving it all. She gives this amazing performance where she's telling this guy to leave, but she doesn't want him to leave.

And she's like, her father's upstairs. And she's like, my father will hear us and you should go. And telling him to go the entire time, but she's like, really doesn't want him to leave. And it's so sexy and so like pitch perfect and auditions in general are never that so like it's all her it's just her in this stark hospital type room this clinical room in front of a bunch of other people giving the most amazing performance i've ever seen and it's so so good you also she she turns into it so like she starts the audition and just like

i don't know anybody else out there who's had the audition you it takes a couple they throw you in you come in you slate you give say who you are and who you're represented by and then they drop you into the scene and so like you kind of ramp up into the scene like you're not just like in it immediately and she does that in this like she's the first stuff she's doing in it is like okay this isn't going great and then at one point he puts his hand near her butt and she grabs his hand and puts it on her and then all of a sudden she's a different person and it's it's amazing to watch it's so dialed in i guess i should see the other parts of this movie or is it like so just based on the scene that i know and the the lore around this movie is how weird and confusing and dark it is uh and now the only other information i have is this scene that you're telling me about i truly had no idea

what this movie is about okay she's an actor? Yeah, she's an actress who comes to LA. We're assuming. That's the case. And there's this woman who's got amnesia who she meets, and they become good friends and kind of detectives together, and then they fall in love. Detectives? Yeah, because they're trying to figure out where her life was,

because there's people trying to kill her and stuff. All of this is a fantasy, I think, in Mulholland Drive. A fantasy of this young actress who had come out to LA. And we do see her later on and she looks very, very different and very strung out. And LA just chewed her up. And she did have a relationship with this other woman, but then like that relationship fell apart clearly. And that's when we see the corpse. Um, but it's, it's supposed to, I think it's a, it's somebody who was dreaming of Hollywood, then also dreaming her own story in Hollywood after it's happened and making it much better than it was.

I think, I don't actually know. Do you want another example? Yeah, I'd love one because I think the next one that I was going to pull is, well, I'll just do it anyway. It's another example of a writer in a movie that I don't think is good, even though the movie tells me it's good. And the movie has last five years, and the plot hinges on this 24-year-old to 29-year-old novelist who just skyrockets to the top of the book charts. And there's similarly to the other movie that I was talking

about that there's a scene where he does a reading from his book. And it's a very funny situation because like the, I don't know how I would approach this as a screenwriter either, but it's a screenwriter who has written a great movie and a great musical, Jason Robert Brown, who wrote this great story and knows how to write dialogue, knows how to write songs, knows how to write emotions and people and how they talk. And then it comes to the scene where it's like, all right, and now I need to prove that this character is a really good author who writes books that captivate the whole country. who writes books that captivate the whole country.

And the excerpt that he reads just seems like the screenwriter choked and forgot how words go and just wrote a bunch of things that sound like a book, which is the problem. And again, like I'm not, no shade to anyone who worked on the movie. I don't know what I would do either. If I was writing a movie that I thought was good, and then suddenly it called for a scene that featured good writing,

I have no idea what the fuck I would do. Oh, it's so scary. Just thinking about that makes my heart race. Now you got to write like something really good. Yeah. Oh. It's got to be better words than any of the words I've used in the rest of the movie and i used all my good ones i use my favorite words uh i haven't seen this movie i'm reading up on it now um last five years yeah it's a musical that like really uh

really affected me and all my friends growing up. We just loved it and sang all the songs. It's like really heartbreaking, fun musical, the way that it works and why it's called Last Five Years. It's very fun when it's staged that every, there's only two scenes where, it's two characters in the whole show. There's only two scenes where they're actually interacting together. The way everything else works,

where they're actually interacting together. The way everything else works, every scene that the woman, Kathy, is in starts at year five and works backwards from five to one. And their relationship is over in year five and starts in year one. And every song that the guy sings, every one of his scenes, Jamie, that goes forward in time.

So you just see, you get like the same story told frontwards and backwards. So it's like a year five from her, year one from him, then back and forth. They trade off. They meet in the middle when they're getting married. And then you just get to see like the two sides of this relationship and how it plays out. That's really cool and really well done. That's a really-

They made a movie about it. I like that. They made a movie about it. I like that. That's a really interesting, fun way to do a Rashomon, is change the direction of time. Oh, interesting. Okay.

I'll watch this musical. I hope you do. Because the other fascinating stuff that I want to talk about last five years to you about, or however that sentence goes, is there are a bunch of songs that are on the cutting room floor but that still exists that you can find because this was like very autobiographical by jason robert brown and the woman he wrote it about either like sued him or just like got early access and made a big stink over it because she was like, this is too much my life.

This is too much us in this thing that you're making, making money off of. So he had to like scrap a couple of songs. Oh, okay. That's for our later episode about like what is and isn't appropriate to write about if you're writing about your life dude that's actually a really good question i know um but my we have an old colleague anna roth who used to say that uh writing should cost and like by that she means it should cost you something in your life like really good writing should cost you something and no that's nuts and i was like oh but i don't want it to yeah um my i have an example from a movie that when you first pitched this idea to me i was like

this was the first movie that came to mind because it was so seminal for me when i was young the movie finding forrester oh have you seen that no i haven't but i've been meaning to for the last 26 years once sean connery died 11 years ago i was like damn i gotta do a rewatch now i gotta get really get into this guy's career um well the the premise is is that uh it's a young kid who joins a a prep school he doesn't feel like he fits in there a lot of it is racially motivated um and the teachers i think there maybe there's some like racist issues too like he's got an english teacher who's not very kind to him but he makes friends with essentially a jd salinger

analog this guy who lives alone is a hermit uh called forester. And he finds him and like, and then starts writing with this guy. And this guy really is taken with this kid because the kid is such a good writer. And so there's a lot of points in it where like there's a man who's America's author. I think the writer of the great American story is trying to teach a young kid how to write.

And then you get little excerpts of what they've written too. And as a kid, I was like, I'm going to be a writer. This is amazing. This is incredible. Like they're talking about it in such a great, grandiose ways.

So I rewatched some of these scenes and there's one in particular where- You watch Finding Forrester and your takeaway is like, even me, a white blonde kid kid i could be a writer too and it seems like it might even be easier for me than what this fellow's going through it was great to see representation in the film so i felt like i could do that too because i was also like 15 or 16 right and so was this basketball star i didn't have the basketball part right it wouldn't distract you so i could be an even better writer um but there's a scene where

he gets accused of plagiarism for a forester has given this young kid a prompt he'd given him like some of his writing and be like start just start typing what you see here on the page and then as soon as you're ready just go off on your own that's where you get like pound the keys dog. And so he turns that in as a paper, it gets immediately flagged for plagiarism because the first paragraph is from this great author Forrester. And this teacher can't wait to fucking punish this kid. He's so psyched that he caught him cheating. And so he gets pushed out of this,

like they almost kick him out of the school. Eventually there's this reading where everybody does of what they've written and he's not allowed to participate. But Forrester does show up and Forrester starts reading it. And everyone assumes that this is him reading his own stuff. And the teacher who is such a dick is like, I think we're all so inspired by your words. You have such a way with the English language. And he's like, those aren't my words. Those are the words of this child and uh him reading this thing he jumps in you don't get much of it you probably get a paragraph of it but in it you're like yeah

this is working like i totally buy this as an essay from the great american author it's a it's they're so successful in it. And so I rewatched it thinking, yeah, that's gotta be it. That's gotta be it. And I rewatched it and I was like, okay, divorce of context. You're not really, it is a lot of the right words. It's all like the stuff that you want it to be. It has the feel that you want it to have, but like anything, you take it out of context

and you're like, well, hold on. I don't know like how that ties in thematically to and you're like well hold on i don't know like how that ties in thematically to anything in the actual like i don't know if that actually works it's just some good words in a row and you think about like when you got questioned by the fbi and they split apart an article that you had written to ask you questions about and they're like why is this funny is this supposed to be funny and they just read a sentence out of context you're like well you're not doing it any favors you don't yeah you don't dissect the bird to find the song my friend like you gotta imagine if you were reading this and you didn't hate the author just pretend for a second you don't think the person who wrote this is a terrorist or a threat to the country you can see it's kind of funny so it's

like it's anything you just take completely divorce of context you're like and now just here's this moment isn't that perfect you're like well i don't know i guess um but you're right it had like all this it had the same sing-song quality it had like the lilt that language should have it had like it has all those elements in the four sentences or whatever that we get. And I'm like, okay, I guess that's good writing. There's a good example of it. I think I would actually, if I was ever writing a movie that featured an author character and the author was supposed to be good and they gave a reading, I think I would steal a trick from the Forrester playbook and I would have like an actual good author come in to just write that part,

to just write that scene. So that if critics afterwards were like yeah the author's supposed to be good the author character supposed to be good but the reading was bad i'd be like oh yeah gita tolentino wrote that and you love her so fuck you and now you look like a bad person that was margaret atwood you idiot you motherfucker though um i have another example where they did essentially that oh cool you want it yeah we got time okay the fifth element the uh opera scene oh the opera singer hell yeah yes so there's that alien opera singer who has to come out and it's she is known throughout the universe like she's known throughout the solar system as this i guess even further known as this beautiful incredible singer that is capable of things that a human couldn't do and then you have to watch the whole performance so like there's nowhere to hide like you watch all of it and i they do a really

effective thing in the movie where not only is it just like the poster says that she's a really good singer and like that, like all the idiots in the movie in anticipation of the performance are saying, oh, this is great. This is the best ticket to get. You have to you have to see this woman. uh future space cab driver bruce willis who this entire movie when faced with fantastical things is not impressed he meets a kick-ass alien not too impressed he's mostly like put out by her and then he he has been informed by the president that he needs to go and save the planet and even that he's like super reluctant to because he's just, he's very much, he's such a fun character. Just like, I don't really want to do this. It's not, it's saving the world. That hardly seems like it's my business. So he is at every step of the way, unimpressed and uninterested in the things that everyone else thinks is cool and important. And then we watch him watch the performance of this woman who is supposed to be the best singer.

It's beyond singing, just like performance artist in all of time. And he is so moved by her. And she needs to be that good to like rewire the brain of this, this, this seen it all, doesn't care about at all cab driver i well i think he's a really good representation of me in the movie where i was i'm i'm an idiot i don't know opera and i'm like well this shit better be good i don't know anything about it i am the worst audience for an opera to try to move me and even as a kid she starts singing and she does this and i'm taken with it i'm like so absorbed in the experience and so i was thinking back on that i was like how did they fucking do that um and they did it with

magic dan they i was gonna ask if it's fake some of it is so the woman singing it it's not actually the woman you see acting there the woman singing it is this woman named infamula who is she's albanian she's an opera singer like a really good opera singer, famous in Albania. But she, a lot of what they're doing with the voice is trickery. Like they're having her go from such a low range to a high range that like would be impossible for a human to do. And especially like, I guess just the jumps in octave and stuff like that. There are different things throughout it, especially when like the beat starts hitting. You know, when she's dancing around,

her arms are doing that weird thing. Yeah. A lot of that, that like, which sounds like a voice solo, like a lot of that is impossible. And so they composed a piece of music for this. It's based on an opera. The first part of it is a true opera.

And then the, when she's dancing around stuff that's composed they compose an actual composer did this they got an actual opera singer and then on top of the opera singer they were like and now we do these different things we change the range so that it would be physically impossible for a human to do and i'm like oh yeah you guys did it right you guys really put the work in that's absolutely perfect yeah and it works yeah it's really wonderful you have more uh i mean it's just because it it feels like a a cousin to the wonders in that thing you do the the band and josie and the pussycats the movie fucking rules and i totally

buy them as a real band that would take the world by storm i have not watched i'm not saying i'm not saying anything oh it's it's real fun okay is it really yeah it was a kid movie um well you're um well you're i now we're the same age but by the time it came out you were probably 18 or 19 2001 and yeah i was 19 yeah uh so it probably seemed like a kid's movie to you okay yeah that's that's totally possible i was also in college so i wasn't't, I was like, right. Why would I go to the movies? Well, you're the main character, right? Okay. I'll check this out. I will watch this.

It reminded me just you saying that like their performance and how they're doing it. That reminds me of, I was not familiar with Zac Efron. I didn't know anything about him until I saw Hairspray, the movie. And that song, Lady's Choice, that he does. I was like, this boy is going to be a star. This boy is incredible. Look at his performance. I was like an actor doing this, knowing how to be on stage like that.

I was like, he's so good. I was really hoping your first Zac Efron thing was going to be not a musical thing because that it's much more fun if your exposure to him is like baywatch or neighbors and then to see he has this completely other gear that he's really great at the singing and dancing gear but oh well yeah uh that's how my brother and sister-in-law were with jonathan groff because they only knew him as an actor in the mind hunter show not knowing that he was a broadway guy for years and then they put on hamilton yeah they put on hamilton they see he was like hey it's that it's that it's the guy from the cop show holy shit he's got some pipes that's how anna kendrick was for me up in the air was my first introduction to her and then you and I went and watched Pitch Perfect and I was like

oh they how did they know she could do this oh it's because she was nominated for a Tony when she was nine alright well maybe that's another conversation too where you didn't realize like certain actors had a complete second gear where you're like yeah what we're we're bagging a couple of good ideas for episodes.

Oh, it's going to be fun. All right. But that's it for this one, right? That's it. Hell yeah. Take us home, Sorin. Okay. I'm looking it up.

Hold on. I'm doing it slow, just in case you wanted to do it. No, I feel like I did the intro and I came up with the question. You're right. I'm going to coast for the next couple of weeks, actually. Hey, everybody. Thank you for listening to Quick Question with Soren and Daniel. But you knew that's the name of the podcast already.

You can find Daniel on Twitter at DOB underscore Inc. Fun fact, you cannot. Did you quit? Uh-huh. Oh, we should talk about that sometime, too. That's exciting. Three more episodes. God, I'm in the bank. Oh, you can talk about that sometime too. That's exciting. Three more episodes. God, I'm in the bank.

You can find me on Blue Sky, at least at Soren.Bui, or just search me on Blue Sky. There's like a thousand people there. You just look in the crowd and you'll see me. You can email us at qqwithsorenanddaniel at gmail.com. We have an Instagram, which is qqwithsorenanddaniel. I give that one out a lot now because there are some really funny clips that Gabe put together that make us look a lot funnier than we actually are because the timing is perfect and everything.

Yeah. Talk about somebody with a second gear. Our producer and sound engineer and editor, Gabe Harder, is also really great at video as well, it turns out. And we found that out. He just showed us. It was incredible. We have a patreon at patreon slash quick question uh me rex did our theme song you can find their music at me rex.bandcamp.com or just put me rex in spotify or itunes or wherever else you want to listen to your music lastly you can see videos of us doing this podcast at youtube

go to youtube.com slash at qq podcast that's it i've got a quick quick question for you all right i want to hear your thoughts i've got a quick quick question for you all right the answer's not important i'm just glad we could talk tonight So what's your favourite? Who did you get? When will I be remembered? What's it over? Where did all the good things end? 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