Quick Question with Soren and Daniel - Who Invented the Cougar Room? | Ep. 292

Episode Date: July 23, 2025

Daniel and Soren reunite after a long break you didn’t notice to talk about movies best half-watched on airplanes, why Michael Clayton still rules, and what it means to “gang up” on a punchline. They get deep into terminology of their respective writers’ rooms—Bone Pile, Cougar, TK, Alt Sim But Diff—and debate whether their podcast is normie or alien. Plus: Jason Statham as Buster Keaton, Kelsey Grammer’s punctuation tyranny, and the existential horror of watching young people react to you saying “skibidi toilet.”To explore coverage, visit ASPCApetinsurance.com/QUESTION.  The ASPCA is not an insurer and is not engaged in the business of insurance.

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 can talk tonight So what's your favorite? Who did you get? Who will I be? Do you remember? Words without words, words without words Who are you going on? 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 We're back, it's Quick Question, the podcast. It's been a long time. We're back from our commercial break that lasted two weeks. Our listeners don't know how much time goes in between episodes. To you there hasn't been a break, but I haven't seen Soarin' in a very long... It's been so long! You know that one? Uh, no.

Is that a song called It's Been So Long? It's just called Been So Long. I think the song drops the it's. It's cleaner that way. Thanks to ASPCA Pet Insurance for supporting Quick Question. To explore coverage, visit ASPCAPetInsurance.com slash question. This is a paid advertisement. Insurance is underwritten by either Independence American Insurance Company or United States

Fire Insurance Company and produced by PTZ Insurance Agency Limited. The ASPCA is not an insurer and is not engaged in the business of insurance. I think parentheses it's and then been so long. Parentheses it's been so long. I'm not surprised you don't know that one. It's an unrecorded Lunch Money Criminals. Oh, there we go. There it is. Lunch Money Criminals making another appearance on the

podcast in which I made to feel silly for not knowing what their songs are. I know. Surely I could go listen to them and I just have not. Not even this one though. This one, there's no C's throughout to know it. Like even I think of the nine fans of that band who listen to this show, I'm not positive that they will remember parentheses, it's end parentheses, been so long, parentheses, exclamation mark, end parentheses.

Brackets, close. Yeah, okay, so it's a real deep cut. Thanks. I was thinking of the lyrics to that song that my brother Tommy wrote while I was explaining to do this bit in the podcast. Some good lyrics. He's a good songwriter.

Yeah. Well, he should have made a career out of it. Oh, he did. Yeah. Soren, it's the Quick Question Pop Culture podcast. Let's get into it. It's the Quick Question Podcast. You know.

Yeah. You want to do another take? No, I think that was, I nailed it. Okay. It's a quick question podcast. You know? Yeah. You want to do another take? No, I think that was, I nailed it. Okay. What was it? Let's get right into it. Soren, you seen any movies lately?

Oh, this is a quick question. Yeah. It's summertime. Time for movies. Yeah. If you're thinking like, is there a movie past 2019 that I've seen recently? The answer is no. Although I am gearing up, have been for a while now to watch Sinners.

Is that helpful? That is now available to stream at home for you. That's why I'm about to watch. I have a lot of movie thoughts and I'm gonna, I'll start on your wavelength, which is, it's summertime, my wife has been getting up so much earlier, because that's just like a natural thing that happens in the summer.

And she takes her fitness classes in the morning. And it's between that and the heat, she is zonked out and ready for bed by like 8.30 PM. And this summer has unlocked a new thing for me. Cause I'm not, I'm a pretty early to bed kind of guy, but not at 30. So when wife goes to sleep, it's like, it's hubby's movie nighttime,

where like there's no compromise. We don't have to watch something that we both like. And I don't have to, I can pick all the things that she doesn't wanna watch. And she just like sleeps on the couch. And so the other day, right down Soaring Alley, I put on Michael Clayton. Ooh, what a film. So good.

Oh my God. Tilda Swinton's a dream in that movie. So wonderful. It's just great. Just smart. Just a good adult movie. Like a movie for adults, not pornography. Just a fantastic film that is just like riveting.

And you know, it's, I can't, there's no way I'm gonna get Shae to watch a 2006 Michael Clayton, Tony Gilroy movie. But she's like, I'm falling asleep, put on whatever you want. And I speak into my Apple remote, Michael Clayton. And they're like, you can watch Michael Clayton, but you have to pay to rent it. And he was like, boss is asleep.

I'm going to pay the 3.99 so I can watch Michael Clayton as many times as I want in the next 30 days. I'm going to treat myself. It really felt like I was getting away with something, whispering Michael Clayton into the Apple remote. That's so, I mean, just the idea of sitting down right now. Did you have snacks with you? Did you, did you like really do that for a year?

I had Ben & Jerry's dairy-free ice cream. Holy shit. Yeah, I mean I would say to that, I think that this is like my dream day. And I didn't, usually for my birthday or for Father's Day, I get one of these days, which we've talked about on the podcast, which is it's my day, I'm gonna have the sandwich that I want, and I'm gonna watch a movie while I eat my sandwich. TBD, like we don't know what the movie's gonna be

until I get there because I wanna feel it out in the moment. I wanna know what like I'm vibing with at that time. And I have a lot of issues with technology and algorithms specifically and their recommendations and like the amount of information they have and the amount of control but but brother when you finish Michael Clayton and then you scroll down to their like if you liked Michael Clayton, you might also like oh, I'm in fucking heaven I Love a list of movies that are like Michael Clayton. Oh my god. Honestly, that's when I might have even come on the podcast hot one day because I was like,

we don't make movies like The Firm anymore. We need these movies again. And you know what? They just don't do well internationally and that's fucked. They only live in a carousel under Michael Clayton on my TV's menu and it's like if you like Michael Clayton You might like I don't see if I can guess what the other movies are under there. The Pelican brief might have been no, you know It's on stream. 100,000 percent. I just checked it for a bunch of channels and I couldn't oh no you rented it Yeah, absolutely. Okay. All right

Pelican briefs there the The Firm is there. A Few Good Men is probably there. I haven't seen that yet, but I don't think... If that's available for free, I'll watch that tonight. But if it's not, that's what I won't pay for. I won't pay for that because it will be on TNT at some point. I will come across it. Yeah.

Well, I did watch a movie recently, Daniel, on my plane ride, because this is the first time that my kids were really just autonomous. Like my son was playing at his Switch and my daughter fell asleep. And I was, I had a little bit of time to myself on a recent plane ride. And I was like, well, let's see what's available

on Southwest. Oh, live TV, excellent. Let's go take a's see what's available on Southwest. Oh, live TV, excellent. Let's go take a look at what's going on there. And on live TV, I got to watch John Wick 3, I'm pretty sure. Have you seen any of the others? I've seen one. I've not seen any of them because I'm not like a huge gun guy. And that's like-

It's a big gun movie. Yeah, It's a very big gun movie, yeah. Yeah, it's a lot of like deaths and guns and I understand that that's like the selling point is like look at how many guns there are. And I watched it as it was meant to be watched on my phone, on a plane. Fantastic. Glitching out every once in a while,

missing about 15 seconds of dialogue. Yeah, it was wonderful. Everyone, when Keanu made that movie, he's like, look, what I really want is for the movie to every once in a while pause so the captain can tell you where you are in the sky. And, and because people need breathers in movies. I was surprised in this movie. I don't mean to derail whatever you wanted to go

to, but I was surprised in these movies. And it would be a thing that you would notice if you were to watch them, is that he's not just shooting guys. It's gun cotta, you know? It's like from equilibrium. Like it's a lot of ninja fighting and then shooting at the end. Unnecessarily, I would say.

He's fighting, every once in a while he's got a gun and a guy's approaching him. And he's like, oh, I'll put my hands up in a karate chop position instead of just shooting the guy. And then they fight for a little while and then he twists them around and then he shoots him in the head. He just like gets people in like the right position. He's like, and now a gun in your face. And I don't really understand that, but it looks cool. Yeah. And I did see an out of context scene where he is like killing a bunch of people in what seems like but can't

be a knife store. And it was just like, this was what my coworker Owen, cause I was like, I don't like John Wick movies because of all the guns and violence. And he was like, no, no, no, watch this scene in the knife store. And I watched it and it is like, it made me understand these movies a little bit better because it's not just like, look at all the violence we can do. It is like a celebration of choreography and stunt work and just like creativity of this set piece that involves a bunch of knives. And I'm getting more and more interested in this kind of thing because I've been watching a bunch of this current Jason Statham

oeuvre of The Beekeeper and The Mechanic and A Working Man. Where they're all like- You were on a binge. Roughly the same kind of thing. And I've just been studying these movies as like a different, because of where you and I come from creatively and like what we studied and everything, we are very like comedy focused and like dialogue and character focused and story focused. And for me, like that's why you make a movie.

That's why you write a story is like, what are some funny things that I could do? What are the funny bits or what can I say about things? And like in my narcissistic heart was like, that is the way that movies should be. But as I'm getting older, it's like that is one of the ways that movies can be. And another way is this Jason Statham style where it's like they,

the movies are vehicles for like creative ideas they have for fight scenes that they haven't seen before. Like they like, like Jason Statham is a fucking genius and his sub team and his choreographers and his director are just like, this is a thing that I can do. Like I want to, you know, it's, I don't think it's, people will be upset by this, but I don't think it's wildly different from like what Buster Keaton was doing and what Charlie Chaplin was doing, where it's like we are making a movie

to house these incredibly impressive feats that I have come up with. Like all of these Jason Statham movies, and it sounds like the John Wick movies too, are like, we are going to show you something you've never seen before in the stunt world or in like the using the visual choreography of fights.

We're going to show you something that hasn't been presented before. And the movie around it is like, whatever. And we don't care if you don't like that because the meat of this thing is like, we guarantee you between five and eight incredibly choreographed, inventive, new fight things. And that's a way for a movie to be too. And I don't mind that. I'm not mad about it. Yeah.

I mean, you came up in an English classes because they were important to you, expecting there to be a hero's journey in basically every single story. And at some point, your character has to learn something. And you realize, no, you know what? All this time you were allowed to make stories that weren't about that. The character doesn't have to learn anything. The character can be an expert from the beginning

and an expert at the end, and nothing changes for them. And they just are awesome the whole time. And you're like, oh, oh, that sounds great. Yeah. Yeah. This is the part of the ad where I talk about my pet Jackson. You know, I love my dog Jackson. I love him so much.

We took him to a park yesterday. He was such a good trooper. We took him to a dog park first where he hung out with the big dogs because he thinks he's a big dog at heart. And then we took him on a mile walk on a trail in the woods and he was so happy. When you have a pet you love taking care of them and giving them special days because in their own way they take care of you isn't that the truth but even if you're the best pet parent in the world unpredictable things

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Was it you that was telling me that the Tom Cruise Mission Impossible movies are, they come up with like a set piece? They come up with like six sex pieces and then they're like, now let's get a writer to combine these. Simon Pegg in interviews, because he's been doing the Mission Impossible since MI3 and he has said in interviews that they don't even have scripts anymore. And I don't know how hyperbolic he is being, but I certainly buy it because it does really seem like this is the movie where we have, we've learned how to ride Tom Cruise on a motorcycle off a cliff and skydive into this beautiful thing.

So that's what we're doing. And he's also going to do this stunt and this stunt and we're going to have a scene where he runs and a car chase in Rome. And then on the day, once the cameras are right before the cameras are rolling, we're going to be like Simon Pegg, why are we in Rome? You got to figure out why we're in Rome. And they just sort of figure out together. That's why those movies are so, so much of the dialogue is like slow zoom on a general who is like that crazy son of a bitch, he did it. And so much of the exposition is like inscrutable because it doesn't really need to mean anything.

As long as it conveys the idea that this is a mission with a lot of moving parts and it's very delicate and we need to get the thing before the bad guy gets the thing. And it's like, all right, yeah, great. I am not surprised that those movies don't have formal scripts at any part of the process. It can just, the connections between scenes has to be, it can be as tenuous as possible. Just get enough that people aren't going, wait, why?

If there's even like the hint that they knew kind of why this might be, they're like, well, I just wasn't smart enough to figure it out. Go on movie, please tell me more. And I think that that's certainly seems true of these, whatever John Wick movie I watched, which was I'm pretty sure three. Because he would be in the United States

and then the captain would come on just to be like, here's our cruising altitude, here's a bunch of other bullshit you don't care about, back to your shows. And I would come back and he would be in, I think, like the Sudan. He'd be in the Sudan. Like he's in he just was jumping around. I'm like, well, I guess it doesn't really matter other than he's fighting with knives.

Now, I was fighting with scimitars instead of instead of guns at this place. And then this whatever when I watched Halle Berry was in it and she had some dogs and they did fights. She fought with dogs That's cool. Yeah, she used her dogs as weapons and it was like nothing I'd ever seen. It was so cool That's the thing about these movies that they're just they've got like fucking as as much as I want to say like Tony Gilroy is it Genius about making a little clockwork universe for Andor or Michael Clayton, the only things it sounds like I watch. There are different parallel geniuses who get in their own room and they're like, what

are some new fights? We haven't seen Halle Berry fight with dogs as weapons yet. Let's see if we can make that happen. And I think that's cool and neat. It's pretty neat. But Soarin'. Yeah, go ahead. The movie that I saw, I saw two movies recently.

Superman, awesome, go see it. Rules, our friend Beck is in it. And he does great great back stuff. And the other one that I saw recently was, we went to go see F1, the film. Yeah. Brad Pitt car racing movie in theaters. And it's good.

It's a sports movie that does exactly every single sports thing that you expect a sports movie to do. Enough times that you're like, there are some beats where I think like, surely they'll subvert this in some way. There's no way these two characters are gonna hook up. It's impossible. We've seen it too many times. It's 2020 whatever, someone's going to put a stop to this and they just don't

and I'm fine with it because it's a movie that is like hits all the beats that you wanted to hit for a sports movie. And we saw it in theaters on a Monday night and it was, it just so happened at about 10 minutes before the movie was done, a fire alarm went off or was pulled and the theater was evacuated and at no point did either of us think we should get free tickets or we need to go back and see this. Like the alarm went off with truly 10 minutes left of the film and I walked out and I was just like, and see this, like the alarm went off with truly 10 minutes left of the film. And I walked out and I was just like, I have seen the right amount of movie. I'm satisfied with the experience of, you know, it would be even better if the alarm

went off 20 minutes before the end. That's the right amount of movie to me. And just like truly feeling, if this were Daniel 10 years ago and a fire line went off, I would be in the theater the next day to watch the movie from start to finish. I saw Iron Man in theaters twice opening weekend and stayed for the end credits scene both times because I was such a completist.

But now I've seen two hours of loud car noises and it was like, great, good, another movie that I can say I've seen two hours of, of loud car noises and it was like, great, good. Another movie. Yeah. I'm full up. I can say I've seen. Yeah. I've, my tank is full.

I'm happy to go. I texted my friend on the drive home, my coworker, Chrissy, who also saw it. I was like, Hey, there's a 10 minutes. What, um, does, does he win the race or does he die? And she says, do you really want to know? So yeah. And she just like, she really want to know? I said, yeah. And she just like, she texted me the last 10 minutes of movie plot and I read that out loud to my wife

while we were driving home and we were both like, okay. Got it. Good, that's, I don't need to see that. That's just how it ends. That's, we're gonna close the chapter on another movie. My apologies to the screenwriters and crew. I don't know, man. I think that there are a lot of movies that are designed now to be essentially seen like

on TNT where you're gonna watch some of it. That's the beekeeper, man. That's like all of those. It's like you're gonna watch some of it, but you're probably not gonna be able to see all of it because you're in a hotel room and you gotta start getting ready for the wedding you're going to or whatever. And so you're just like, damn, well, I came in 45 minutes late and I'm gonna miss the last 10. I feel pretty good about what I saw.

I feel like that movie was, that's off, that checked off the list. That was good. I enjoyed what I saw of it. I think I can pass a lie detector test that I have seen this movie and I feel comfortable in a court of law saying, of course I saw the producers. Of course I saw it.

Well, yeah, so I did watch John Wick recently. I also watched a movie that is very, was very out of character for me and doesn't play by these same rules. Have you seen Shiva, baby? Oh yeah. I loved it. I thought it was so great,

but I was just sitting there one day at lunch at work and I was like, I'm just gonna put on a movie. I'm gonna put on the first thing that like even feels like something I wanna watch. And that one came up and I was like, yep, please, this one. And it was great. It was really wonderful.

It takes place entirely at a Shiva. And it's tense, it's a little scary, and it's pretty dark, but it's really, really, really good. And I think the thing that glued me to it immediately was in the trailer for it as it started to autoplay was the woman from the second season of The Bear, and I was like, oh yeah, I love her, let's do it. Oh, is that Claire Bear?

Yeah. Is that who's in that? Oh, I thought that didn't even- Her nemesis, basically. Clicked me, yeah. Yeah, I watched the movie a couple of years ago. I think there was, I think it's a great important movie for anybody

who either currently or is about to feel like who is Rachel Senna and why is she everywhere? Because she was, she has been like right at the cusp of being gigantic for the last couple of years. She was in bottoms with Iowa debris, which was the funniest movie I've seen in 10 years. And she was in, uh, that, uh, uh, the idol on HBO max, the dog shit show from the weekend that, um,

Oh, yes. I did not watch, but I can confidently say was very bad. Um, and she's got an HBO show coming out and it's, if you see her popping up everywhere and you're like, who is this person? Where did they come from? What's, what's their thing? I think Shiva baby is like, go see like an incredibly strong, different performance from a shockingly young actor who is just very, very good in captivating. I totally agree. Yeah. It was also, it felt like I was, this was the first movie that

made me feel like, oh, my finger of youth culture is completely off the pulse at this point. I'm no longer, I no longer feel the beat. I don't know what's going on here. I don't like the things that they are interested in, the things that are happening at every single moment of the movie. And I know that they're like designed to be compelling and shocking.

I was like, is this what the kids are doing now? Is this what the kids are doing now? Yeah. Yeah. You know what's occurring to me is that you don't have, your brother doesn't live near you and I don't think your wife has siblings, her sister is not near you, correct? No, neither one live in the same state as us. Yeah.

So, a privilege that I'm afforded that you are not is that I've got a bunch of nieces and nephews around me between the ages of five and 17. Yeah. So I don't, it doesn't take stumbling on a movie to realize that the world is not for me anymore. This reality came crashing down for me at a family gathering a year or so ago when the nieces

and nephews for a TikTok or Snapchat meme, they gave me a bunch of slang that they allegedly use and had me read it into camera, like cold reading of just like, say, skibbity toilet, say whiz, say these phrases. And they are, are behind me reacting to me saying it. I'm, I'm a prop. I'm the old man prop in this. Like the purpose of the meme, if it wasn't clear to our listeners, the purpose of the meme if it wasn't clear to our listeners the purpose of the meme is watch this whole fuck Try to say yeah Wouldn't it be crazy if grandpa said Riz watch here it is Funny right?

Idiot yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I get that. I was, when I was coaching, well, assistant coaching my son's baseball team, I was saying those things with the intention of getting a rise. And boy, did it work. Like calling plays skivety or like calling Ohio Riz or like everything around me. I was like, anytime I hear them say anything, I was like,

oh, logging that one away and I'm going to start using it while they're out there on the field. And they would lose their shit because it was- It's taken a few steps- It's taken a few steps- Context. A few steps off second, that kid is being low key sus. At least he's being sus, man.

They do not like me using it. I mean, they do, but I'm guaranteed, even if I think the context is right, they're like, no, no, it's not because it's coming out of your stupid old mouth. Yeah, so anyway, I loved that movie. I thought it was very good. That movie came out within like the last four years, right?

No. Oh. I really don't think so. I hate looking things up when I'm supposed to know them, but okay, 2020, not terrible. Oh my God. That's a lot further than I thought though. Ah, it's not great. Okay, well, I am gonna watch Sinner soon

and I know that that came out within the last year. So that will be my movie of the year. Awesome. Daniel, think- It's not just bummer that you're not seeing Sinners in theaters. It's fine. Go on. I was thinking of, I would, if my wife is working today in the house, then I will just go upstairs and watch it on an iPad. Does that, how does that feel for you? I think that's great. Probably with subtitles on, cause I'll also be listening to it low enough that I'm not bothering her.

And I just want to, don't want to miss anything. Subtitles for songs. No better way to listen to a song. Sound is not important in sinners. Daniel, speaking of terminology that nobody else understands, I had a quick question for you. Okay. I wanna know about some of your office shorthands,

because I think every writer's room has their own shorthands for stuff. And a lot of it's based on logical things, like how to get through a script faster and stuff like that. But I wanna know what some of the things are, the glossary of terms that you guys are using in the office that other people, if you, and you're gonna slip, like you're gonna tell other people,

people are like, what do you do all day? And you're like, well, we break off into gangs. And everyone's like, I don't know what the fuck that means. And so you just can't even help yourself. Like that's the only terminology you've ever known. I wanna hear some of those. Got it. I used to actually have a glossary

that I would send to new employees, but I don't feel like pulling it up now. One of our, I think we've talked about gangs before on this podcast, which is not unique to our show, but gangs, so a couple of writers will write a script together, that script will get combined into one script and we write a bunch of different joke options and they take the ones that they like, the bosses take them when they're

assembling a script and if there's a beat that feels like a joke should go there and they didn't like either of the jokes from the two writers that we came up with. Yeah. Yeah. Then they will kick it to whatever other writers are available. However many jokes need punch lines, we'll get kicked to those. And we call that gangs because we're all ganging up on the punch line together and we write

a bunch of options. How many years like a good number of options. If you've got a blow that you've got, a blow for instance is another, we'll put a pin in blow, but you gotta finish a scene, you gotta have the last joke of something. And how many options are you gonna give?

We never fewer than 12. Sometimes if we have- Wow, wow. Uh, never fewer than 12. Sometimes if we have like, we do math that was never formally taught to any of us. It just sort of has become commonplace where, uh, if there's a gang that needs a punchline, the traditional math will be like, how many writers are available? Okay. Two per writer, basically. And then maybe one or two more. And that doesn't necessarily mean I'm going to write two jokes for every setup.

If it so happens that someone came up with four, whatever gets us to the number gets us to the number. So it's not like it's, that's why it's imperfect, weird math. So we'll look at something as like, all right, there's seven writers here. So let's say we need 14, maybe 15 minimum options for this joke. And there are some days where there's like five writers. So we'll say today we can do nine. And again, this is not, the bosses aren't in gangs when we're doing them.

It's really us sort of governing ourselves and just deciding from there. But it will, nine is probably the lowest amount of joke options I have ever seen for a single gang joke. Yeah, so to give you a peek behind curtain to our show, we do, there's gonna be same thing. We have joke rooms, which is like, a writer's draft comes in or we just watch an animatic of an episode and then we're going to,

our showrunner will go through and be like, oh, I don't feel like this joke's really working or like, I'm not, this one's just like, I feel like it could be better. And then those jokes get sent to a joke room, but that's called cougars for us. Like that room is called the cougar room. Why?

Great question. I've never asked. I don't know why it's called the cougar room. Why? Great question. I've never asked. I don't know why it's called the cougar room. I don't know why those jokes are called cougars. Like the jokes that we give them are called cougars, but that's what it is, cougars. And I can't help but say it when somebody's like, what are you doing all day?

I was like, well, a lot of times I get split off in the cougar room. And I'm like, oh, let me step back. Let me give you some more context. But anyway, we get those and then usually what those are gonna be is sometimes they're within scenes but almost always there's gonna be like an act blow which means that, or scene blow.

That's the last joke of the scene or however you're getting out of the scene. And for acts, they have to be big. That'd be really funny. And so a lot of times those get sent to the cougar room where you're gonna be blowing the act which just means That you're writing the joke for the last Moment before you go to commercial. Yeah, and I should

Amend something quickly. I have said we call them gangs because we're all ganging up on a joke I believe the actual etymology is gangbang. I know that's their explanation. Oh, yeah. Gangs is the term the Always Sunny Room uses as well. And I've heard them say in interviews that it comes from gangbang. And I have to imagine whatever fucking 90s sitcom writer wasn't thinking, let's call this gang because we gang up on it. I'm sure. Yeah. Like at that point I'm praying that it's gang bang. That is the correct origin and not something else. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. I don't know what cougars come from. I can't imagine it's not sexual in some capacity. And I just said that, and the meaning has been lost over time. I'm sure someone could tell you, but yeah, we call those cougars. And then a thing that really got me in trouble right away was we would have action lines. So, you know, in between your dialogue,

you write what the characters are doing. And that's the stuff that sits in between dialogue on the page. When we were at cracked, we all called that's the stuff that sits in between dialogue on the page. When we were at Cracked, we all called that Across the Page. Yeah. And it was just like the Across the Page. And when I tried to talk about it as the Across the Page at our show, people were like, what the fuck are you talking about?

And I was like, do people not call? And these people have worked on multiple shows. So I didn't realize at the time that that was not just common terminology for script writing. That that was something exclusive to Abe and our directors. In retrospect, I'm almost positive Abe either invented it or mis-repe-remembered it. Jesus Christ. Mis-remember remembered it. Misremembered it, Jesus Christ. Misremembered it. Yeah.

Because he is the only one I have ever heard use it except for all of the people who learned it from him. I guess so, yeah. That became our in-house team. I would be curious if Adam is also like, no, that's just how they talk about it in screenwriting class or something like that. Where like there's some origin for it.

Other than that they just made it up and made us all say it. Right. Which it made a lot of sense to us at the time. It was very accessible to like, here's the across the page and this is the dialogue. All of the words go across the page. No one ever questioned it, but it's not.

Really, I mean, the dialogue sits in the very middle. It's like these little blocks in the middle. Going across the page. Yeah, certainly different distances. We also have to write across the page in last week's night. You know, where you say that it's you write what the character is doing. Every couple of sentences, the writers need to write,

John continues to sit at desk talking. Cause otherwise we, people get up and start wandering. And we'd actually like, no, no, no, he's sitting and he's wearing a suit and he's looking at the camera and he's talking and there's a little picture over his shoulder. Okay, continuing. Here's what he says next.

Cause he's just looking for an opportunity. Oh shit, they didn't put it in. They didn't put it in. They didn't put it in. I'm gonna dance. Here we go. Simon didn't save. I've heard that Kelsey Grammer, when he would do table reads for Frasier, if someone put

an exclamation point in the script, he would shout the line as a way to punish them for doing it. He's like, well, if you don't want me to shout it, then don't put an exclaim there. I was so excited that you briefly paused before you said, Frasier. I heard when Kelsey Grammer was in Table Reads 4 and I thought, this is going to be Spike TV's Gary the Rat. I can't wait. I couldn't remember for a moment if it was Cheers or Frasier and I was like, no it was

Frasier. It was Frasier. And not the reboot either. Yeah, so he would shout the line just to punish them. Anyway, a big one for us is- What a cool guy to work for. is that when in a script, when we do have, we do have like a cougar that we wanna send, that room that's like sending the cougars, to mark that area of the script,

we do something that like I'd never seen before, but it's the easiest way to go through a script and find those moments, is we put three question marks together. Cause no one's ever putting three question marks together in a script. Are you guys writing gangs there or what are you doing? No. So we will write Joke TK, which when I started, I thought meant joke to come, and it was spelled TK for, I just assume like everything else, it was invented in the 90s and stuck forever.

But I did think it was joke to come because that makes intuitive sense. Here is a setup and then the punchline is gonna come later because we will see joke TK when we need to do a gang joke. And we'll also, if our research department is scanning the script, there'll be a line that is like, and then they filed a lawsuit

and a FOIA request was taken in year TK. And that's when we found out that number TK, people got poisoned by the weed killer. Michael Clayton vibes. It's when you need like a stat to cut, like we're missing the stat here, we're missing the joke here, we're missing the year here, we're missing the year here, we're missing the you know the the worst thing to see at the end of the top of show script top of show is terminology for like the before we get into our main story tonight we have quick recap of the week where we do like between two and eight minutes of stuff before we get into the A story, the main story. The worst thing in the world to see is a full top of show script and then ender TK.

Just the simple task of like, and now not a joke, but just like, you know, sum up the piece in a sentence. Make it funny. Wrap it all up, call back to something that happened in the beginning and lead us into the and now break. So we see TKs could be under a stat, a year of joke TK. I had always assumed again that it was to come. I have learned and I don't know if this is true.

I like it enough that I don't want to investigate it, but someone said that it's JokeTK because there are so few words in the English language, few but not zero, that have a T and a K next to each other. So it's very easy if you're looking at a script to do control F, a search for TK, and then you'll see like, okay, there are nine joke holes or there are nine gaps in this piece that need to be filled with something. That's exactly why we do the three question mark thing. But do the writers, when they're writing a script,

do they have the audacity to put that in themselves? Like Joke TK or are they writing something, somebody's reading the script and be like, we gotta beat this and then they're putting it in. I never put Joke TK in a script that I hand into a boss. That comes back when we have like the gangs document. The TKs are noted in there. I will, a couple of strange things have happened where my own personal notes in something, if I want like to get my own attention I will write TK TK TK like the way you do three question marks I'll do three TKs

together and that's like usually we'll have a punch-up draft where the bosses kick it back to just the writers on the piece and give them an opportunity before it gets sent to the rest of the team. Give us an opportunity to fix whatever joke holes we can. And there'll be TKs in there. If I want to quickly find a note for myself, I started writing TK, TK, TK, because that is like, there's joke TKs, which the bosses do. And then there's my personal TKs where that's something. It's usually like, um,

my personal TKs where that's something, it's usually like a line that I'd written that I know spiritually what it's supposed to say, but I'd written it very clunkily. And so I want to go back and fix it just like a little like note to self. If I see TK, TK, TK, that might mean that I have to fix a sentence that the language isn't there yet. It will also very often be like a part of the script where this isn't a formal joke opportunity that the bosses are expecting, but something made some past version of me think that there might be a joke opportunity there. So like TKTKTK will be a thing that I search when there's 10 minutes before deadline and it's like, all right, I've done all the things

that I was supposed to do. Now what are the things that I can only get to if there's time? These little like grace notes for myself. I'll search the TK, TK, TK. And then this is what I started doing my second or third year here. And then the darndest thing happened.

And I don't know how these things are contagious, but the bosses started writing TK, TK, TK. How did they ever see that shit? How did they see it? I don't know. Because they can monitor what we're doing at all times because they're bosses. And fucked up my whole system. So now if I ever want to either find one of my like last minute grace notes, I searched Daniel, Daniel Daniel Daniel

my name three times in a row because no one is ever going to type that except me and I'll use that it's- and weird for you to say it's- it's very weird and it's like it's a crucial thing it's not only like I'll use it not just for like hey this is a joke that I think you can add or this is language that I think you can tweak. Sometimes while I'm working on a script, I will write, I'll exercise my own demons where I will write something that I need to say for the sake of saying it, but I don't think it should go on television.

I don't even think it should go in a draft that my bosses see. It's just something that I need to say because I'm frustrated because the character of John Oliver, a man at desk, would never say, I'm going to fucking kill myself. But I want to write that into the draft just so I can spit out the poison and then move on. Whenever I write something that I know is not safe for bosses, I will write it with like Daniel, Daniel, Daniel next to it

because that's my safeguard. That's right before I'm about to send the script, I do a control F for Daniel, Daniel, Daniel and see if I left myself any landmines that need to be taken care of before handing it in. And like, because I forget, you know, it's sometimes you're writing a script over the course of a week and a half and I don't remember all the stuff that I do. Yeah.

I was like, all right, I'm feeling pretty good about the script. Let me just see Control-F, Daniel Daniel Daniel. Nope. Can't have John say that word. So I'm gonna rip that out of the script and thank God. I left a little note to myself. I'm shocked that it has to be three. It's very funny to me thinking of the origin of this, that at some point it was like, Daniel Daniel will be fine, no one will ever say that. And then it came up in the script and you're like, okay, this mayor of fucking Ottawa or whatever, it's not gonna work. It's gotta be Daniel Daniel. I'm gonna have to do three from now on.

Gonna have to do three. So that has, it's interesting to hear that TKTKTK has taken off there. Are other people using it other than your bosses? Yes. Yeah, so that's your contribution. That's your contribution to the room, man. For the first half of my tenure at Last Week Tonight, Scripto, which is the software that

we use to write our scripts, that was viewable to anyone in the office no matter what. There was no version of that that was private. So if you were another writer and you wanted to spy on someone's script while they were writing it, you could do that. The bosses could do it. Research and footage department could do it. APs could do it. You could look at a script that you knew

was not ready to be seen. That was like the first, probably seven years of the show and the first couple of years of my time there. Then they switched, they did like an update to Scripto software. So now you can have private Scripto documents. I don't know if other writers were seeing that I was doing TKTKTK and they started using it and then the bosses noticed it and then it became a thing.

I don't know. It could also just be like a case of parallel thinking or whatever, why ever anyone does anything. I don't think, I don't have the ego that I think multiple people were spying on my scripts and adapting their own writing style to the weird little shorthand that I did. And if they were spying on my scripts, not only would they see TK, TK, TK, Daniel, Daniel, Daniel, they would also see little notes to myself like fix this, you fucking idiot. You're such a stupid piece of shit.

Come back and fix this joke later. You know this is bad. All of my little notes to self, they would see. And if truly, if my coworkers were really spying, If truly if my coworkers were really spying, then why didn't any of them like help me? Negative talking that I was doing myself. Why didn't any of you say you're doing fine? Everything's okay, man. Yeah, I was going to ask the second part of my question. I was going to be, does any of this terminology yours? Like did any of this, did you infect the show with any terminology that will outlive you? Sounds like you kind of have. Oh, I.

I'll give you one to be while you think. When we are doing cougars or like jokes, then generally what's happening is we, someone will send the script to the joke room and they'll be like, hey, this was a Haley line that we don't really want to use. Like it, just something else. So you have the option to make just to leave Haley there and leave it a Haley line and change what she says. Or you can be like, a burden and nest is going to be saying this next line. Like you can make it,

anybody. Yeah. If you're going to make it somebody else, or you're going to make like some dialogue happen between two people, that's called you break that out. So that's like a broken out piece of the joke. That's like, now there's a whole new structure to it. Cause there's more than one person talking. But if you just leave the same person talking and you just have like this group of jokes that are going to sit under that one person, usually it's going to be

like 10 under that person's name. That was just like, it looks like just this one block of all these jokes in a row from this, and you're just just gonna say those all in a group. And so you can either break a joke out or you can return to that group of jokes. And that's got a couple different names. But at one point I called it the Bone Pile just to be like as a bit basically. Like that was the name that like everybody knows it's called. It's called the Bone Pile. And other people were like, what's the Bone Pile? I was like, dude, it's the bone pile. Like that's where everything goes. And people immediately caught on.

They sniffed it out right away. They're like, that is not, you made that up. And I, but I didn't stop. And I continued to call it the bone. Like put this one in the bone pile, please. And then I would do the joke. And so, cause oh, by the way, the way that I room it works is that you have a writer's assistant who's sitting there typing it all. My hands don't dirty the keys.

That never happens. I'm just sitting there and I say the joke out loud and the writer's assistant writes it down. And so, when I'm saying, like, please break this out or I'm saying, please put this in the bone pile. And so, bone pile I kept using, people were very frustrated with me.

I love that. I love it for you so much. And then it started to shift where people started saying bone pile by accident at first because like they're like, Oh no, not for the nut. Please don't break this out. This is a bone pile. No, what the fuck? No. Yes. And so, and now there's a, it's something- Hey! Yes, and so, and now, there's enough, it's been around long enough that people are using it, not to be funny anymore. People are saying the bone pile, calling it the bone pile.

And I know for a fact that it's gone to another show. This is what immortality looks like, people! It has, it broke containment, it broke containment, and people are using bone pile now. That's excellent. To describe the big joke heap. I don't have anything as fun using bone pile now. That's excellent. I don't have anything as fun as, as bone pile. It's, it's much more technical and dorky, but we will write when we're handing in a script, we will, um, you know, you, you,

you write anywhere between two, this is before gang. It's just like the writer's draft that I submit, uh, for every joke opportunity you're writing between two and infinity Options, it'll be like here's here's a joke that I write and then alt this joke you write parentheses alt and then another joke Parentheses alt your the training was just right alt when you're writing your other jokes. I would Would tag that a little bit. I would write alt when you're writing your other jokes. I would tag that a little bit. I would write alt sim.

Like alt is short for alternately and sim is short for similar. If I have a joke that I think was like, kind of like the joke that I just did, but like a couple of tweaks, I would just write sim, which no one else was doing. And why would you need to do? And then I would have,

that became like a running joke for myself and my boss Tim would be like, this is alt, this is alt sim, this is alt sim but long, alt sim but short. All these different like variations on alt and sometimes it would be completely inexplicably alt sim but diff, which is... alt sim but diff which is... Alt sim but diff? What am I saying at this point? And just using because I'm, I'm, let alts, I couldn't let, I had a hard time leaving any space on the page, uh, not potential joke real estate, even though the word alt is never going to

make it onto a shooting script. This is all just like, well, it would be, it would be a waste of space to just say alt. So now the alts are like room for me to occasionally do jokes that only Tim and John are going to see. Alt Sim but diff is just like, I hope you're laughing. I hope I've given you something new as you're reading 900 variations of the same Trump looks like a Cheeto joke. Here's something that is not that, that will make you laugh and cheer you up a little bit. I've seen alt sim and alt sim long

in other people's drafts at this point. And I don't think they're like, I think newer writers just saw that someone was doing it and I was like, oh, okay, I guess this is what you do. Cause I remember it popped up in gangs where someone wrote under someone else's gang, alt sim but diff and wrote their joke. And Sina, who is the only writer who's been there longer than me at this point, said, what the fuck does that mean?

One of the younger writers was like, that's just what, that's how you differentiate. And he's like, no, what are you talking about? No, it's not. No, we don't. No, we don't. Yeah. I think that's the only way to do it is to insist on it long enough that you, and outlast the other writers.

Yeah. You insist on it long enough to get new writers on board who then think that that's just like the way things are. And then you end up with something like Cougars where everyone's like, where did that come from? And so I was like, uh, I think it was a bit. And nobody knows, but we'd be like, it's too late to change it now. That's the dream. Yeah.

Well, we've been talking for a long time, huh? Let's end this. Yeah. Great. Thank you everybody for listening to all of that. I hope that that's interesting. It's always hard with Inside Baseball. It's always hard to know what's actually valuable to anybody or whether that's just like, who gives a shit? I don't care what you guys use on your show. Yeah, increasingly, I don't I don't know what people are supposed to get out of this podcast. To me, this seems like platonic ideal episode because it's if you came here

from movies, we've got some like pop culture stuff in the beginning and if you're here to learn about writing or the industry there's a bunch of that too but I was looking at the YouTube comments for our episode about hooking up and someone said some version of sometimes I think this is the most normie podcast I listen to, but sometimes I think Sorin and Daniel are aliens. Which was like, that was two hits for me.

Because it was like, oh, are we a normie podcast? Are we just, is it truly like, is there nothing? Are we really just two guys? Is there nothing unique about this? I think, are we really just two guys? Is there nothing unique about this? Nope, something pretty unique, but not in a fun way. Right. All right, everybody.

Well, thank you for listening. Gabe Harter, obviously. YouTube, great stuff. Apple subscriptions, Patreon, all awesome. What? This is the ending. These subscriptions, Patreon, all awesome. What? This is the ending. These are the things everybody already knows. Ha ha ha ha.

Me Rex, banger. Thank you, good night. Good, glad you got a plug for YouTube in. Ha ha ha ha. Hahaha Put your number, put it on there, oh forget it 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.