SmartLess - "David Duchovny"

Episode Date: November 3, 2025

Ok with the pretzels; it’s David Duchovny. A ship of fools, Dads’ novels, making music, and finalllllly teaching Jason how to read. “I mean, dishwashing liquid is pretty good.” …on an all-new SmartLess. Subscribe to SiriusXM Podcasts+ to listen to new episodes of SmartLess ad-free and a whole week early. Start a free trial now on Apple Podcasts or by visiting siriusxm.com/podcastsplus. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Hey guys, this is, welcome back. This is the first time, this is the first time I've done this that we're doing the show since we made the, well, no, we made a, didn't we make a blood pact? I mean, did we not, not that I know of? Did we not make a blood pack? Who did I make a blood pact with? Oh, no. I'll figure it out later. All right.

In the meantime, let's go to all news form. I love it. Smart. Hey, you know, J.B., somebody said to me the other day, you've become like the Jack Nicholson of the Dodgers. Oh, yeah. You're at the Dodgers. You're on the broadcast.

What a high compliment. I know, I know. And, Shawnee, you were there with them, and the guys were like, somebody said that the guys were like, hey, there's two-thirds of the smart list crew, and where's our money? We had such a joy.

I mean, Willie, if I had three tickets. I know, sure, sure. This was last week, it was dinner. This week, it's the game. I mean, most people would be like, hey. And, Sean, we're still good for Rome, right? Yeah. Oh, this is what it is.

This is a, you're getting me back. for all the holidays that Sean and I went on. I mean, the stamps on your passports. No, we missed you, Willie. We really did have a nice time, didn't we, Shawnee? Oh, my God. It was so easy, breezy. We haven't done that in ever.

And, you know, it reminded me, Willie, of, I took you to the, was it game one of the World Series last year when Freddie Freeman hit that walk off Grand Slam? How good was that? We were jumping around, like what was the last game contest uh the last game of what is that where is that was that the famous last game last year where it was the last game i believe it was the first game it was the first game and it was a world series yeah where he just like got a bases loaded home run like yeah and then

the series continued for the uh the yankees to go ahead and they kind of dropped the ball on the whole series get it Yankee fans will know that pun oh gosh well you just you alienated 50 million people so Listen, the yanks are going to get another chance. Well, who knows when this is going to air? But it seems like they might get a good chance. I also look at what I just fucking did, like five minutes before we came on. Playing with the dog outside and I ran inside and I fucking tripped over him. And to break my fall, I grabbed the door.

And my fist finger went all the way back here. Oh, God. Really? Yeah, just like five minutes ago. I was like, oh. Wait, so you're on ice right now? Well, just in case, yeah. Well, luckily, no joke.

Luckily, you're done with the play. I know. Could you imagine? No. Couldn't play. Wouldn't be able to play. I know. Oh, that Ricky.

It would be good night Oscar if that were the case, you know. Incredible. Wait, Sean, why have you asked me and then my wife separately if my dogs are good with other dogs? Because I want to bring Ricky over, but I don't want to bring him if your dogs are going to attack. Why would you be bringing Ricky over? because I might come see a movie this weekend. Okay. But you spend three hours plus over at Jens every week you don't bring Ricky.

Look at the judging face. I just don't understand like what's going on. Is Ricky having separation anxieties lately? No, no. It's just a thing as a dog owner. I just don't like to leave him alone for like three, four hours. Jamie, I would describe your face as a scowl right now. It's a scow.

No, but I would like to bring him over to Jens, but they don't get along. Well, yeah, but. So I was like, oh, it's. if your dogs get along it'll be great i could just bring him over and if not by the way that's fine too but i but the bigger issue is why why do you and scotty feel like ricky needs so much constant like dogs can be left alone and by the way you just spent almost a full year out of the country i know i don't know how he fed himself he fed himself i don't know how he drove himself around listen this is going to be controversial but but we live in an era where people bring their dogs over to

other people's houses a lot and i don't i'm not judging you shan on this but people do it they And they were like, I got my dog with him. I'm like, what do you mean you got your dog with you? It's not okay. Yeah, and I'm a dog. I love dogs. I've had lots of dogs. I have a dog.

But you don't need to bring your dog with you when you go to somebody else's house. I like the dog. I'm not saying that you don't. Then continue having more morning playtime with them then. People show up, I got my dog with me. Oh, you've got your dog with you? What if everybody brought their dog everywhere? It would be mayhem.

This is what I love. This is what I love to see. I'm a dog person. You must be a, you're a monster. Oh, sorry, he peed. Where are you paper towels? No, this is what I love. That's not what I'm going on.

I love the conversation that I know happened this morning and Jason's face as he was having it with Amanda. It was a couple days ago, and I've been really stewing on it. Sean, Amanda's like, Sean just texted me if our dogs are okay with other dogs. And you turn with your cup of coffee or just sludge, your cup of sludge. And I said, fucking what? By the way, you know where he is? He's in his chair, in his little study, with the fire going and he's watching MSNBC.

And then he barely moves and he looks at her and she's at the door because she's too scared to come in because she sees the pre-scow. She knows the pre-scale. Who knows what stage of gummy he's at? You know what I mean? Yeah, I will scratch. He's afraid of dad. Yeah. You know?

She does a very tentative little. Yeah, a little knock. Yeah. Sorry. Are you, sorry, are you not on commercial? Is it not commercial? I guess, I tell you what, tell you who's not tentative is our guest today.

Nice. Oh, let's get into it. Yeah. Uh, hang on a second. Check the, check the chat. Hang on in one second. Oh, yeah. Oh, by the way.

Yeah. Yeah, sorry, before we go, before we get into our guests who we want to talk to immediately. Yeah. Tickets to the Hollywood Bowl, November 15th. Oh. For Smartless live.

Wait, do I need to buy tickets for that? I'd really like to go to that. Do I need to buy tickets? No, we're giving you two cops. We're going to give you two comp. One for you and then plus one. I'd love a stage. I'd love a stage seat.

If you have a stage seat. You go to smartlist.com slash live. So you go to smartlist.com slash live for the Hollywood Bowl show on the 15th of November. Guys, this is going to be, it's going to be very nerve-wracking for us. Because what are we doing up there at the Hollywood Bowl? We can barely do this. We're barely doing this. I will tell you that my guest is one of our biggest stars in the movie industry.

So it was my guest. Really? Yes, my guest also is one of the biggest stars out there. Let's have a little side bet. You and me. I can't wait. I'm going to have a single up on a camera. We're going to single up on you.

J.B, when my guest comes out gets announced. Oh, and you'll know why. Oh, yeah, it's going to be great. It's going to be great. It's going to be a guest that's going to make me nervous? It's going to be so great on so many levels. I can't wait. All right, Shawnee, you can be the judge between Will and I's guest.

Will, let's you and I have a little side $10 bet of who is the bigger guest. And, Shawnee, you get to decide. All right. We'll just do it, let go. We'll do 10, 10, 10, 20. That's a big reveal. I'll do it 10, 10, 10, 20, and presses. Automatic presses.

Okay. All right. I tell you what we are. We're pressed for time because we want to get into our guest who is. Get this, award-winning, actor, writer, director, New York Times best-selling author, a podcaster, singer-songwriter, multiple albums, multiple Golden Globes,

multiple Emmy nominations, SAG Awards. He's known for his, an iconic TV show, which was his sort of breakthrough, even though he'd been doing it for a long time. He's got a degree from Princeton. He's got a master's from Yale in literature. I'm sure he still has an unfinished PhD that I want to ask him about. He's one of the all-time great things.

You guys, it's David Dukovny. Oh, David DeCovny. Yes, yes. Hey, David. Was that not who you were going to guess, Shoney? No, I thought it was David de C.C. Oh. Wow.

Often, often, often mistaken for one another. I don't think Louis has a master's in literature, all due respect from you. Yeah, but you said Princeton. You said Princeton as well. And Princeton first. Is that true? David, welcome. Christ, David.

Is it true? Yes, it's true. Thank you. God. This is so wonderful. David, why would you, you're such a, you know, I remember the, we spoke about a year ago where you had dinner. Let me just say, I don't like the tone of that.

Why? Immediately. Why? Why? Why would they give you a degree? No, no, no, no. It wasn't that. It wasn't that.

Why? It wasn't that. Go ahead. Why would I what? The why would you, because you graduated, you were, you were head of your class in high school, and then you go to Princeton, and then you go to Princeton, you go to you go to, Yale. And then I feel like you lowered yourself to come into show

business a little bit. You know, a little bit. Why would you do that, David? Well, clearly I have a gaping hole. A gaping hole inside me. But yeah, he decided to slum it. You slummed it with us, morons. Yeah, what is that?

What did you? Go ahead. No, that's it. No, I want to, I just want you to walk me through your academic prowess. I'm fascinated with all this stuff. Well, at Princeton, I majored in English literature and I wrote my thesis on Samuel Beckett's novels. Come on.

Wow. Because, well, let me tell you why I wrote on the novels because nobody writes on the novels and I didn't have to do that much work in research because I could just make the shit up myself. All right. This is nothing to compare it to. No chat GPT cheating.

It was an open field. And then what happened that was Princeton or that was Yale? That was Princeton. And then I took a year off and I traveled and I didn't really know what I wanted to do at all.

I just knew I wanted to be a writer. And then I applied for a Mellon Fellowship which I got from the Mellon Foundation which they were trying to lure people that might go into money-making businesses and steer them towards academia. So it was for people to get PhDs

who might not be able to afford staying in school. So I got one of those and I went to Yale and I thought that I'd become a professor of English literature and then write novels in my summertime. That's the plan. And forgive me, have you written like a hundred novels

and I'm an idiot? I've written four or five novels. Wow. Yeah, and I just had a book of poems come out. Oh, that's cool. David, this is... And then, by the way, he's also... He's omitting the fact that he's put out a number of records.

He just finished a tour. Am I right? You just finished a tour in Europe. Yeah, yeah. Oh, no, this was in the States, this one, but go ahead. But last year you were on tour in Europe. Yeah. And I listened to your records.

By the way, your music is great. Oh, thank you. Sometimes, and I mean this, I'll do you say, sometimes when you see people who do multiple disciplines, they're like, I'm going to put a record out. You listen to you're out? Yeah, it's pretty good. Your records are really good.

I mean, they're very, these aren't just hobby records. And I'm a music lover. Really, really good stuff. I mean. I love that tune, Hell or High Water. I think that's a great tune. Yeah, it's super good. What type of, is it rock and roll?

Yeah, I guess it's... I'd say it's rock and roll. Yeah, like 70s rock, you know, late 60s rock. Like yacht rock? Not quite like yacht rock. I'm not very jazzy. I stay off the water. I try to stay off the water.

No, it's kind of like indie rock in a way. I mean, sorry to forgive me for saying that, but I'm a 90s indie rock dinosaur myself. Well, the 90s was kind of like the garage vacation. of 70s rock in my mind. Oh, interesting. And so I think 70s and 90s have a lot in common.

And you're playing the guitar there and you're singing as well? I don't play the guitar on stage because I'm kind of self-taught on the guitar, so I have an inability to play it the same way twice, which is not very nice for my band. So I write the songs. And do you sing them? And I sing in my fashion.

So on stage, you have no guitar. as a crutch for... I think that's going to say... I think that's where you're going. You just kind of work the mic and the core. You know, you hold on to that fucking mic stand for dear life, that's what happens. I wouldn't know what to do. It's like a life jacket.

You're like Liam Gallagher does that, you know, with the... Oh, yeah, it's amazing because, you know, when I first started performing live, I just thought, well, I'm like the emcee. And I want people to have a good time, you know. And I'm dancing around and making a fool of myself. And then it was actually my wife said to me, you know, you don't have to move around someone. Oh, no.

And then I saw, you know, then I saw Liam. And Liam is just still. You know, he's just still. He's got his hands behind his back for the most part. Yeah, kind of leaning up in a way. And it's really powerful to be still. Yeah. Do you close your eyes a lot?

Sometimes. Sometimes I close my eyes. And then I go, this isn't good. There could be shit happening out there that I need to keep an eye on. Do you ever go full Sia and just turn your back to the audience? But David, David, I just want to say, so you were, David, you were self-taught on guitar. I think you only started playing guitar a couple years before your first album. Is that true?

True, yeah. So you barely start, you basically teach yourself how to play guitar for a couple years. Then you have the audacity to be like, all right, well, I'm going to write a record. And how are you, do you know how to read and write music? How did you do that? How was that process? No, I don't know how to read and write music. But here's something that you guys might appreciate as actors. When I decided I wanted to learn guitar, I'm not 100% self-taught.

When I decided I wanted to learn, I was doing Californication at the time. And I said to Tom Capone was the producer, I think Hank Moody should learn how to play guitar. So I could get the free lessons. That's amazing. The intelligence permeates everything you do. I know, I know. He's playing four-dimensional chess, if that's a thing. So I, also with singing, I'm not like Sean.

I can't, I'm not that kind of a singer. I'm not either. Yes, you are. And it's been a journey to try and put over the song. Because I can hear melodies that I can't necessarily sing, which is weird. I never thought that was a possibility. Well, you know, I'm just really quick. Sometimes the best singers are the, quote, untrained singing,

because you don't think about it. You're not in your head about it. You know, David, we had Michael Stipe, our friend from R.m. on here a while ago, and he was talking about that. Wonderful singer. He was so good. And that first record that he made

when he was down in Athens, Georgia with those guys, Radio Free Europe, I think, was their first single. And he was talking about, he basically was singing gibberish, and he didn't know how to sing. Do you remember that guy's? He was talking, he was like, I just kind of winged it. Yeah. Because he didn't know what he...

And he kind of taught himself how to... And he got better as he won. I think the correct term is wung. He wung it. He won't. Sorry. Sorry, Jason. I don't mean to embarrass you.

I'm so sorry. Stickler. He got an answer to English from a school bus. So, hey, hey, Sean. Hey. Yeah. Okay? Really, speaking of music, struck a chord with...

Now, David, this is... I don't... I don't read. And I'm not proud to say that. you strike me as a reader though i'm surprised i appreciate he reads scripts he doesn't read a lot of this it's the glasses um it's just the glasses but it to be an english major and to and to say you want to be a writer and you are a writer and to be a perfect it just it sounds like a lot of reading a lot of sitting down can't get anything by you nothing else going on

there's total silence in the house maybe there's a little bit of classical music or something nothing with lyrics because that'll distract you but like and Will I wanted to ask you about this too at times and then I just said fuck it I don't want to talk to Will how do you do that how do you just say of all the things I could

be doing I would rather just sit in this chair and shut out the world and stare at this stack of paper and go left to right top to bottom word after word after word after word So I'm not reading Hebrew at all is what you're saying.

I mean I just I wish my parents for all the good that they did I wish they had somehow tricked me into really loving that process because there's so much that I'm missing. Are you talking about writing or reading? Reading.

Writing I've got but it's the reading that's I don't know. Have you ever loved reading a novel or reading? I have had a back into a couple of those but it was, you know, it wasn't by choice. I do not read for pleasure.

All the jokes, J.B., that I make about you not reading, I will say, of the handful that I mentioned that you have read, you've always said you really enjoyed reading them. So that's what's surprising to me. I'm like, well, why don't you double... It is the time allotment. It is the decision to go sit in a chair in a quiet corner of a house and shut everything out and do that.

There's so much discipline that I have for other things, but I just don't have it for reading. I'm so envious of that. Yeah. I think it's just, it really just comes from my parents, I think. On my mother's side, she was a, from a small town in Scotland, and the only way to advance for her family, which were generations of, I did that 20,

I did that Root, Finding a Root show. So I found out that I come from a long line of fishmongers. Oh, yeah. Wow, that's wild. So the only way out of the fishmongering business In fact, one of my ancestors' occupation was widow of fishmonger. I didn't even know that was a job. I was like, how does that pay?

How does that pay? Not well, is my guess. Well, you need the person to die, first of us. You need to be included in the will. And so the only way out of that place in society was education for my mother. my mother was the first woman, first person in her family and a woman in the 1940s to go to college. And so she was very much just somebody

who believed in the power of education and of reading and writing as a social climbing tool. Is also the appeal of reading sometime like the pure escapism of, because I do remember this one book, I really enjoyed reading once. I was once on a job that I didn't enjoy. I didn't like where I was.

I was on location somewhere, and I was lonely. And it was great to just like, I was dying to get back into the book, any chance I could because it would travel me from where I was. That feeling is amazing. Yeah. Well, it used to be, you know, I think the place of books has been taken by, you know, TV and movies,

you know, that escape. But before there was that technology, you know, this is what you had. You had the book, And people used to read books on set, I think way back in the day you did. But, J.B., I would say that you, as somebody who travels a lot, you're on a lot of, you're on planes a lot. Yeah. That's such a great time to get that escape where you're not watching. Can I send you one of my books?

Yes, please. Yes. I'll send you one of my books for a plane ride. It's baseball contingent. Is it? It's near baseball. It's called Bucky Fucking Dent. I made a movie of it.

I made a movie of it. But I want you to read the book. I'll send you the book. Now, well, that sounds like nonfiction. No, no, it's fiction. Is it? It just uses that moment in time. Okay.

And then does that make you a big Yankee fan? I am a big Yankee fan, and I heard what you said earlier. You got a big day today. Big day today. So David, so David, all of this to say. So then my father, my father's family, his father wrote for the foreword, which was the only Yiddish daily newspaper. in America, the longest running one.

And he wrote kind of, in a Dickensian way, he wrote cliffhangers for the paper. He wrote stories about Little Nell or whatever, somebody being tied to the train tracks, that kind of a thing. And my father, his entire life, my father had to work kind of a 9-to-5 job, but he always said he was a novelist. He always said he was a novelist.

And at the age of 73, two years before he died, he published his first novel. So he was a hot young novelist. at the age of 73. So I'm coming out of that kind of history of respect for the word, respect for the efficacy of the word, respect for education.

Just it was all, it was all, that was part of my growing up, that was part of my foundation. And we will be right back. And now back to the show. That's funny, David. My dad also, who worked forever, but he's been retired for a while,

but since COVID has written two novels. Amazing. And he wrote his last one and came out when he was 86. He's just written it last year, yeah. What is the name of it, and where can purchasers find it? Yeah, well, his latest is the Monmouth Manifesto, which is an interesting novel, and it's sort of historical fiction, if you will.

I love that. This is about when Caterpillar's change into... No, it's about, it's sort of pre-eastern, It's about the American Revolution in a way, Monmouth County, New Jersey is the reference about loyalists going to Canada based on one of my ancestors and about really at the heart of the revolution.

I was just trying to do a moth joke. Okay, sorry, you don't want to get into it. Not really. This is why you're Canadian. Let the readers buy it and discover it. What's his name? My dad's name is James Arnett. You sure?

Yeah. Emerson James Arnett, if you will. Oh, my dad. My dad wrote. uh me off so oh no shan oh god it would be it would be funny if it wasn't so true he wrote me off no no he wrote a goodbye note his way wrote see ya that's where bye came from by the way came from sean's dad bye wait wait david david david so you so i do want to so so you get in you you graduate you go to

I kind of want to stick with Sean. I know, I do. We've done a lot. Anytime you have a question on Sean, please. Interrupt me. But you decide, and you're studying English-lit and you get a master's. And then what's the moment you go, like,

all right, I'm going to put this down for a second. I'm going to dip my toe. What was your first acting job, and why did it come about? I was at Yale. I was getting my Ph.D. or so, I thought. And Yale is famous for its drama school. and they have a lot of productions going on all the time. So I decided I was going to start trying to take classes over at the drama department,

and they were very loose about it. They would just let me walk in and do writing classes, because I thought maybe I'm going to write plays because the idea of writing novels or poems seems so very lonely to me. And I was 22, 23 years old, and I was just sitting in a room all day long alone trying to write. It's like, this is fucked up, you know, this is not. you know i like people not as romantic as you thought no but i liked i like collaborating i like so i thought okay i'll write plays in that way at least i'll i'll get out into the world and so i met

these all these actors and they're always looking for bodies because there's so many productions going on around and you know and they said hey you know come and do this this thing there's arthur schnitzler play we're doing um which name escapes me but you can play the count de la tremway or something. I had one or two lines. And I liked it. It wasn't like, oh, this is a revelation. In fact, I thought, oh, well, I'm comfortable, and I was so comfortable in between the first and the second performances, I smoked a joint. Have the second one go. Yeah. Yeah. Not so good. That's really funny. I was so cocky. I was like, I got this.

And then I was like, oh, I don't have anything. I got people looking at me. Did you then sign up for acting classes? I started taking classes in New York with a woman named Marcia Hauffrecht who taught Strasbourg Method. She was associated with the actor's studio. And that was wonderful because she was completely supportive.

It was all about the interior world. All the things that are so difficult to work on when you're actually a working actor. But were you thinking about it in terms of like informing your playwriting? Was that part of it? Yes, that's what I was telling myself. So it wasn't like this is going to be my

This is going to be my future occupation. No, I thought if I'm going to write plays, I should probably know what it's like to say these, whatever lines I'm going to write, see if they're sayable up on stage. Yeah. And so that was my approach. And then at some point I was just like,

I liked, I'd played sports my whole life, and I liked the team aspect of acting and of making things. I liked the high wire kind of put up or shut up feeling. Did it ever frustrate you that it didn't hold the same sort of academic rigor that because it is not with all respect to our

colleagues that are actors it is not the it doesn't have this sort of highbrow sophisticated reputation that that a playwright It's just a different game

it's just a different game it's like baseball and basketball whatever it's just I look at life as a series of games or setups and this was just another game and I knew it had different rules and I know that I would have to examine different strengths in order to...

Yeah, and probably less constraints, too, than writing. Because it is such a different discipline. It probably started exercising a different muscle creatively that you're like, oh, this feels good. Yes, it was the emotional aspect of my life, which had been neglected because I was, you know, I was in academia, which doesn't really prize, you know, being volatile. Right.

So the emotional side of it and the teamwork side of it is being satisfied, but do you feel like this fucking academic superhero that you have inside of you has been satisfied, has been utilized properly in your life thus far?

Yes, now, now that I, when I started writing novels, about 10 years ago now. And, you know, people, I go on good reads and I'll read, I'll read, you know, people's suggestions. Yeah. Oh, you will.

You will? stupidly yeah I will I will be accused of showing off my learning when in fact I don't write with any books around it's all in my head

if I'm quoting something or if I'm referencing another a great work of literature it's coming from my head it's coming from my memory so I'm not doing it just to show up but it's part of me and I really feel like

I finally joined in the conversation with these people that I grew up reading and loving and feeling like this is the conversation I want to be involved with and I'm sure you guys have had this as actors where you're like okay now I'm in conversation with the with the people that I want to be in conversation with that's true that's true and then what about did you ever sorry shiny did you did you ever end up writing any plays or any screen plays have you kind of married the two yeah yeah yeah in fact the novel writing came out of not being able to make a screenplay.

Bucky Fucking Dent, I wrote as a screenplay probably in 2005 or six. And then I couldn't get a made. Usually my soul goes towards, like, we're independent kind of stories. And so, Bucky, I couldn't make. I got close, I got close, I got close, I couldn't make it. But then I finally did. And then I was like, I'm going to write it as a novel, and then I made it as a movie. So you flipped it.

You went the other way, so you read a screenplay. Because Will always talks about it. It's IP now. Because now your book is IP. So they love that, right? I don't know if they love that. Reverse engineering. I mean, no, Hollywood loves that.

Was it a book first? Then we'll make it. I'll just say that as a director, you know, writing the novel of the screenplay was the best preparation I could have done as a director. Yeah, sure. Because I just knew. So, now I'm not suggesting that you have to do that next time

to direct guys. No. No. Yeah. I'm just saying, for me, that worked. Is there a genre that you like writing more of than not? Oh, I mean, I'm just of the, I guess, you know, I go back to the movies when I started acting, you know, like James Brooks,

just these movies that can live in a real, in terms of a deemant, you know, sobbing, but also laughing. Yeah, great. David O. Russell stuff. Yeah, yeah. Just like real emotional stuff. emotional but fucking funny yeah

flips back and forth yeah so that's that's always the balance that I'm looking for as an actor too it's always the balance I'm looking for that's just where I live

so what ended up because so to go back to my what ended up becoming the first professional acting gig that you had that you went up for and you got

professional's a funny word well you know that you got a paycheck that you had to fill out a W4 or whatever you know well I'll tell you about two The first one I got paid for

And then there's the first one I did Which was even better But the first one I got paid for I believe was a Mickelow beer commercial Wow And I got on set And the guy told me

Okay you're at the bar here The guy, the director Said you're at the bar here That's the guy Yeah that guy Some guy said you're at the bar And so okay this guy says I'm at the bar And you run into an old professor of yours

and you guys have a conversation and you're happy to see him and I was so fucking tight I was so nervous I'm 26 years old I mean I'm not young young and I had kind of staked my life on this path like I wasn't

I wasn't going to get my PhD I wasn't going to be a professor and I just thought okay I'm going to do this thing and I'm going to be good at it now I get on set and I'm like I'm just tight because you feel like you need Did it do so much?

I just didn't know. I didn't know it was going to be so fucking tight. I know exactly what you mean, man. You needed that joint. It wasn't that way. It wasn't like, you know, oh, I'm in the right place. Yeah, right. It was like, no, I'm in the wrong place.

Yeah. Cameras pointed at you. What? What? What? I can't do. I can't go on. I can't lie on the ground and go, ha.

Huh. Right. So there's pretzels there, and I start, I toss one up, you know, catch it in my mouth. And the director's like, that's, I love that, I love that. Oh, no. And I just remember, again, that was my lifeline. And I was like, so I did it for like 10 minutes. And then I just remember the director going, okay with the pretzels.

We got the pretzels. I thought you were going to say you could never get it in your mouth again. No, that I could do. Yeah. So that was the first paying job was Mickelow. The first job that I remember was my acting class went and my acting class put on a night of one acts and I decided to adapt this Charles Bukowski short story

called The Copulating Mermaid of Venice, California. Sure. Sure. As one does. Sean's always referencing that. It's a painting, Sean has. I just call it mermaid. Yeah. Yeah.

So in this story, these two guys kind of, unemployed guys watch the hearse unload at the Venice morgue this is not a true kind of geographical thing but they can see it from the beach and they know the timing of it they know when the guys are going to come around they know when the body's going to be unattended and they're going to steal a body so they do they steal a body and they you know and here's where you know it's Bukowski and it's like the logic kind of fails you but they open it up and it's a beautiful woman and I decide I'm going to have sex with her and then I'm so ashamed of myself that I forced my buddy to have sex with her and then I'm sure you have this on your wall Sean I'm not

yeah no no it's it's how I should see the poster it's bizarre so then I I said we go what are we going to do the body I don't know I swim her out to the ocean to get rid of the body and then I come back and I say she wasn't dead she turned into a mermaid she was beautiful she swam away so it's this like beautiful not beautiful after this it's this gross horrible necrophilia and then coupled with this high romantic it's just Bukowski so we decide we're going to do it

and I ask the class which of the women in the class is going to be the corpse and everybody's like yeah it'll be me it'll be me but then when the time comes to do it nobody shows to be the corpse and we're stuck and we had been the place where we were

making these plays was a it was an S&M dudgeon sure Well, you know, of course. They're not used during the day. No, they're not used during the day. And we got to use it for two nights by cleaning up.

We had to clean up. That was a whole other different story. Yeah. But there was the madam there was named Magda. And she heard that we didn't have a body. So she said, why don't she use one of my blow-up dolls? Oh, my God. This is how things happen.

They're at Yale. So, oh, she, yeah, right. And I'm thinking, maybe I should have stayed at you. So I had always put up like a bulwark on front of the stage to lay a body down so nobody could see the body. They couldn't see what was going on when I was supposedly making love to this body. And so I had this blow-up doll and I hadn't been able to rehearse with her. Sure. She wasn't available.

So as I was copulating with her, her arms and legs started flying out. Because she's only made of air, right? So the audience sees this. Like a used car lot, the things that you did are lots. I'm trying to do this most intense scene, young actor. Like I'm really like, oh, I'm fucking edgy. And the audience is laughing and laughing.

And so in between performances, I went to Paragon. I hope you know it. It's a sporting good store. Sure, very well. And I got four ankle weights, and I weighed down her wrists and her ankles. So the next time, she didn't have as much mood out. But you still had the squeaky. The other part of it was when I walk through the audience and I go,

I put a pail of water off stage where I was going to go, because I swim around, and I come, you know, got to be wet. And so I walk through the audience. And I'm sure the audience is like, oh my God, this is the worst thing I've ever seen. And I'm thinking, yeah, that's right. I'm an edgy motherfucker. And I go around the corner to, and I realize it's totally quiet. There's no door. They can just hear me sponging myself down back there. They can just hear me. Oh, my God. So that was my first play. How long did it last? Those two nights

Okay, great Those two nights Two full nights Two full nights So you do So you do the Bukowski Where you're As you described

Making Love to an inflatable doll In an S&M dungeon You do the Mickelow You threw away a PhD at Yale for this That's what I hear my mother saying Yeah, your parents At this point They're beaming with pride

And so then But then what's the sort of the first Because I'm leading up to X-Files So I want to get into X-Files a little bit We'd be remiss if we didn't get into X-Fellus because I was a fan of Xbox and I watched it. Yeah, same thing. So you get that, and that leads to what?

Because what was the first film you did? An old girlfriend of mine whose name is Maggie Wheeler. That's her married name. She's a terrific actress. She was on... I'm going to give an address? Friends quite a lot. First and last, okay?

She's on Friends. She was Janice on Friends. Oh, yeah. Chandler's... Yeah. Yes. Oh, yeah. Yeah. So Maggie was doing this film with Henry Jaglam, who just passed last week. And Henry's this Maverick independent filmmaker.

Yeah. And Maggie was going to be one of the three stars of this film called New Year's Day. And she asked Henry, you know, can you, David's acting now. Can you see if you can put them in? So Henry did. And I had a couple scenes in the movie, and they were good. They were kind of notable enough to kind of get me going. going here in LA and get an agent and you know at that point it was like it wasn't like

get your sag card was like how do I get film on myself you know yeah how do I show people that I'm not a vampire and I don't disappear when well people didn't have you didn't have phones and you couldn't put shit on YouTube the way kids can now and create their own stuff right so it was really this one it was one long scene in New Year's Day that really kind of opened it up for me in LA and then I you know I auditioned forever here and didn't get tons of stuff and would get you know so you move You moved to L.A. You moved to L.A. to do it, to go all in.

Exactly. What were you doing to pay the bills while you were swinging and missing? I was doing commercials. I would get commercials. So no waiting tables, no bartending, no typical. I bartended. I catered. Where did you live when you were here in L.A.?

I lived on 4th Street in Santa Monica. I got a sublet there. An efficiency apartment, which means it didn't have a kitchen, which means I did my dishes in the shower. when I had my shower. David. Yeah. Wow.

I mean, dishwashing liquid is pretty good. Wait, fourth and what? I lived on Ocean Park in second for years. Fourth between California and Washington. Yeah. Right by the stairs. That was my gym. I'd go to the stairs.

I catered to a wedding at Anthony Edwards' house. When I just moved here and I was like, oh my God, it's the guy from ER and I'm in his kitchen. It was so wild. And then you were shooting pretty much next door to him when you guys were doing Will & Grace, right? It was crazy, yeah. Oh, my God.

And you did a lot, Shoney, you did a lot of commercials too back in that. Tons, yeah, it's the only way to pay the bills. We talked about, I remember you had those commercials that you were doing, like when Will and Grace was on, some of them came out. Yeah, I know. Yeah, isn't that where? Yeah. That was wild.

I had two commercials two on the Super Bowl in 1998. What were they? one was a bud light commercial i did a bud i did a bud light commercial oh really when 87 88 well you did miller light and bud light yeah michelope look at you no michleove and bud light i was all over the beers i was king of beers wait so david so when did you i mean because i was a i'm a big sci-fi nerd so so x yeah so x files how did that's what you're getting to right johnny how did that how did x files i know you're sick of talking about i know you And forgive us, forgive us, we're just fans.

I didn't ask. But I'm ready to listen. Jason read the books. Yeah, it was just an audition. And I remember at that point, I was not wanting to do television. You know, at that point, there was a real divide between television actors and movie actors, which has been erased in the past few years. or the past 20 years.

So it was really, you know, I'm not a TV actor. That was my sense. Who was your North Star and film? Who did you want to be? Well, I mean, I didn't want to be Brando, but he was my North Star. Gotcha. Right.

Did you ever write any of the X-Files? Yeah, I did. You did? I wrote and directed two or three of them, yeah. One of them's a baseball one, Jason. I can't believe. I can't believe we haven't made this. I know.

we'll be right back and now back to the show so wait so you get this gig and and you sign you sign the five year or seven year standard thing before you go in and you test um so you know that if you get this you're stuck with something that you're not really kind of excited about then you get it was your yeah are you excited when you get it because of that yeah well you know you're not not excited to think it's going to go forever, which is a blessing when it does, but you get competitive, you know?

You're just like, if I'm going to do it, I want it to win. I want it to go. You do the pilot, you want it to get picked up and get picked up. Yeah, sure, every step of the way. Then it gets well received and you're like, well, all right, now fucking TV star. Can I just stop for Tracy? Can I just say, so the testing process, so you don't know,

Jason just alluded to, and David knows, we all know, it used to be, I don't know if it still is the way, But what would happen is you'd go in for a show, whether it's X-Files or Will & Grace or whatever it is, and you'd get the audition and you'd go through and then you'd get a callback and you'd read for producers. Then what they do is they sort of take, for any given role, they might have three or four people

who they decide that they're going to, as they call it, bring to the network. Yeah. And that means they're kind of their select pick, three or four people for each role. And before you go and do this final audition, usually like in a conference room, something in an office building,

the most uninspiring place you can imagine. Before you do that, for a day or two before, your agents in the show negotiate your contract, a five-year contract, and you sign it before you go in for the final audition, in the lobby. Right before you walk in.

So you got you. So you're broke, and then your agent goes, like, here's your contract. We've agreed you're going to get $25,000 an episode for the next five years. It's a lottery ticket. Yeah, and you're like, oh, my God, I'm so broke,

and I'm going to get $25,000. an episode for the next five years and you're doing the math and you're like, and then I'm going to buy it, I'm going to buy a new car. And if you weren't nervous before, you're petrified now. And you sign it, and then you go, once you sign it, they take the signed, executed contract. So that you have no leverage if they give you the job.

You go in and you then audition for all the execs at the network and then you're waiting and they decide whether or not you got the part. So. So nervous. They have you so over the barrel. You never realize you're never not over the barrel in that. in that process and it's really uninspiring and it's a very specific thing to get good at that to be able to block that part of it out to then go and deliver at the final moment it's you're you're

kind of torture yeah you're fighting out of a hole right what if after that david was like it was an offer but anyway it wasn't it wasn't an offer so so so david so david your process is you're kind of you're a little conflicted about doing a tv series but you want to do and it's a great great paycheck. So you go in and you sign the contract, you do the test. Now you, and then you do the pilot, right? And so now they've got the executed thing. And then the network, sorry, again, for Tracy, then they decide from all their pilots what shows are going to make it on the air next year. So you're waiting for a month or two for that. And then they go, great, your show is happening, you're in it, and we've got you for five years. And then what happens a lot

is you go, oh my God, this is so great. I'm going to make $20,000 or $25,000 an episode. And then two years in, if you're lucky enough that it's going, you're like, hey, man, I deserve way more than 20. I got to get out of here. I got to stay available for all the feature opportunities I think are out there waiting for. David, so you know that process, right? So you're there, and you're doing X-Files, and you guys come out of the gate pretty hot. It's a, it's kind of a hit. Am I right or wrong? It's a hit on Fox. And if you can remember that far back, Fox was really, like, not a real network at that point. It just started. There's like 93 when you guys?

They didn't have programming, you know, across the board all day long, really. And, you know, they had married with children and I can't remember, you know, they had made 9-0-2-1-0. Tracy Allman. Yeah, that's right. But they're really in the upstart network. They didn't have a big drama kind of like you guys. No, not at all. And we didn't need to get like huge numbers to be a hit for Fox, which was nice because we, Fox wasn't even in all the homes.

Who was running Fox at the time when you guys were there? Do you remember? Who was running it? Garthansier? Who? Was it Garthansa? He was at NBC, I think. Yeah, he was one of the starters of Fox.

Yeah, I can't believe you remember that name, Jay. Or was it WB? He didn't want me for a gig, and I had to re-audition. You ready for this? For my buddy Michael Malley's show, we did the pilot. I get the pilot. We do it. We shoot it.

It gets picked up to series, and then he didn't want me. And I had to go back. Sandy Grush out. Two months later. It might have been Sandy. I had to go back two months later and re-audition for a part and do a scene in a conference room, a scene holding up pages that I had already filmed that existed on film to get my job.

Terrible. That's crazy. In a conference room in Burbank. That's crazy. Wait, you don't need to see me do this in the room. Do you remember what year that was, Will? 1999. That's when I first met you.

Yeah. I met you at the upfriends. Yeah, that year. That's right. All the upfronts. Did you get it, Will? I did actually, yeah. Again.

Well done. I got it again. You imitated yourself. What a fucking victory. Do you think I had, I think I count it. I think I had a thousand beers that night. That's not enough. That's not enough for that.

Wait, David, were you a sci-fi fan when you got it? No. And are you now? Not at all. No. Wow, how about that? No, not really. So you get X-Files.

You go up to Vancouver. You guys start doing it. It's a hit for Fox. And then it really starts to, when's the moment you can feel that it's kind of pushed through to the general... Probably like the third. year just globally it felt just huge you know i mean it was it was a global hit yeah massive how did you

like relocating up into vancouver for so long well i loved it at first yeah um because i didn't really have any roots in los angeles you know i just uh i i'd come here to try to get work um and you weren't going to the blow up doll wasn't going to start crying i mean they they can perform a lot of duties but tears are not one I'm not going to speak for her she Jesus Christ but I will tell you

so I hear this is what I hear this is we hear yeah oh my God so I you know I don't know how you guys feel about Vancouver

but it's a beautiful part of the world and I've never been you've never been I've never been I want to go so bad how is that possible it's the greatest

it's so beautiful so I loved it And, yeah, I didn't mind being out of L.A. at all. Yeah. I just loved being up there. And in a way, we got to just focus on doing the work. There wasn't any kind of L.A. around us. There wasn't any kind of whatever heat that was happening.

We were kind of cut off from in a really good way. And in many ways, it was my education as an actor, having to go to work every damn day for 14 hours. I mean, these were really long days. And I really taught myself how to act. How soon into the run of it and the success of it did you start thinking, all right, good here, ready to move on and maybe parlay some of this into, you know, what did you have your eyes on?

Was it still features? Yeah, I mean, that was really, you know, I had that kind of bias, you know, that was kind of baked in from a young age. You know, the TV shows that I watched when I was a kid that was quantitatively different. the acting in it you know that it's not the way now but you you you so i just remember the the the you you had very much a um a movie um style of acting in other words you you're very subtle

well that's how i would not get that's why i didn't get i would audition and not get any roles in television right i would say he's a he's a movie star and i was like well fuck i can't i don't have a pot to piss in either so can you get good that you didn't can i please play puppet man, can I get that part? David, I want to ask you about time management because you're a musician. You literally write novels, which is amazing. You act, you do some other stuff, I'm sure you haven't mentioned.

Do some other stuff. How do you manage all of that on a daily basis or weekly or monthly or whatever? Do you pick a priority that you focus on or do you splice it? Whatever's like in front of me is what I'll do. songwriting can happen at any time pick up a guitar but with writing a novel everything has to stop and i have to work on that for a few months i write really fast and and but it's an intense experience of like eight hour days doing that and then of course i can't write when i'm acting

i can't write when i'm directing um so that do you have a do you have a a goal in your in your mind that is louder than all the other goals and that then informs how you allocate your time that's probably the problem that I have is I don't really have a goal except to satisfy some kind of itch or and that's a daily itch not a weekly or a monthly or no it's a lifelong kind of a thing it's just for instance like I want to make a series out of one of the novels that I've written and that's that's really my greatest ambition at this point but there's there's also a movie I'm shooting in February that I wrote but I'm not directing I'm just acting in so you've got a new series area now. I think that we're November.

Right. Yeah. Oh, really? Hey, thanks for not having me on the live show. I mean... Dude, that's for movie stars, bro. I'm pretty good on my feet. Yeah, malice. It's Amazon. I'm not sure November 3rd or something like that.

What's it called again? Malice. Malice. Okay. Yeah, it's coming in November on Amazon. And by the way, David, we'll get you a seat to one of the... We have these new stage seats that we're going to do on the live show. I was listening. I was listening.

But, you know, if I was wondering to this, we've had people on who have been part of something that sort of really struck a chord, you know, culturally, the pieces, as Sean would say, IP, but part of, X-Files, obviously, over a number of years, you know, had this, has this intense following and had a, and I was one of the followers. I used to watch it religiously back in the 90s.

And I saw the film, I saw the first film, I didn't see the second film. The first film was a big hit. Do you, is there, that thing when you run into people who are big fans of it, do you ever feel a response, weirdly? I'm just, like, a responsibility as the sort of the, as the caretaker of that thing of X-Files,

does that, I don't want to say there's a burden, but like, you're the guy, you're the front-facing face person of the X-laws. Do you feel that, yeah? Well, of course there was a time when I wanted to leave it behind, you know, and reinvent myself. But then over the years, you begin to, respect the kind of power of the show and the size of the show. And the meaning that it has for people, you know, at first when you're younger, you think, oh, it's not because of me, but it's personal.

And then you realize it's not personal. It's just that this thing has a place in people's lives and I represent that to them. And I'm an asshole if I don't respect that. I say that all the time. About you? No, I'm kidding. No, I do say that all the time. I said it before I here where you become famous for playing a certain role or in a movie or whatever it is. And then you spend several years trying to distance yourself that because you want to be able to play all these things. And in doing so, you alienate the fans that made you, kind of, because they are in love with you because of the thing that you just said, that you made them feel.

and you're doing a disservice and I always say that I'm an asshole if I don't embrace the character Jack from Will & Grace and what it did for so many people and all that character is that exactly

exactly you know and you're also depriving yourself the treat that you deserve which is like how lucky how rare it is to be a part of something that holds a spot for a real that's exactly it is rare and you get old enough to

appreciate that you know that you got to do something that was that was great, that did strike a chord with people. And when you're young, you don't think like that. It takes a few years to go, oh, I need to appreciate that more, you know. No, it's funny. I read somebody, I made the mistake, David, of reading a comment a while ago, somebody saying, like, he thinks that he doesn't,

that he should have had more of a thing or whatever about me. And I was like, no, motherfucker, I'm so grateful for any time that I was able to do anything that even anybody liked for a moment. What a joke. Yeah, right. Yeah, and I'm a guy, I don't even have my high school diploma. Like, the fact that I'm still like going to stop bragging. The world doesn't owe me a living.

We're so lucky that we've been able to do this at all. That's so not the way I think about it. Now, I'd like to ask a question that Sean's too shy to ask. Did you ever learn anything doing the X-Files? It gives you any sort of confidence that we are not alone. And Sean promises not to tell anybody if you could just tell us. It's just us for talking. I never learned anything, no

but I have the same kind of sense as when I went into it which is it seems to me that the impossibility would be that we are the only sentient life. I mean there's just too many galaxies too many planets, too many Goldilocks planets so the odds

to me are slanted way in favor of the existence of extraterraces whether or not we haven't we haven't advanced technologically enough to reach out to them and they might be all around us and we just don't have the technology to see it right they don't want us to

they're they're I always think look at it you know when you see all these things these congressional hearings and stuff about pilots you run into these shapes or things that are moving in ways that we can understand I always think I was thinking oh we're so dumb we think that they want to that we need to connect and they're like no no no

you guys we're good we're good yeah we're good we're watching you we're just watching you guys just want to have anything to do you. Ripping over yourself like a bunch of ding-dongs. Didn't we have, we had a guy on once. Oh, yeah. And I'm paraphrasing here, but he said something that was really sort of interesting

that it makes a lot of sense to me, that perhaps they are all around us in a way that we can't see just like our cell phone service or radio waves, you know, from like television with rubberty or whatever, it's just flying all around. You don't see any of that, that, that, that, that. all the ones and zeros of whatever the hell it is that fly around that make our phones. They could be all in that stuff. Yeah, they live in the space between the space.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. The dark matter. I used to say this thing with, are you aware of like the phenomenon of like a ship of fools? Do you remember that from the Middle Ages where... I think it was a great Robert Plant song, is that? Is it? Is it?

It could be. But the idea was that they would take their deviance and criminals, they're incorrigible criminals. And they'd put them on a ship, you know, because they didn't have space for them. They'd just put them on a ship out to sea. Floating Australia. Sometimes, well, sometimes, you know, you'd encounter a ship of fools, and it wasn't a fun thing, right?

Right. Well, they weren't armed. They shouldn't be armed. No, no, they made sure they were armed. But my theory about because so much of alien abduction testimony has to do with being probed anally and having their teeth drilled. my theory was that alien civilizations were putting their deviance and dentists

on a ship. Oh, I see. I'm sending it out into the galaxy and somehow they've come in Darien. We can cut this, we can cut this, but why are aliens so obsessed with anal? Okay, so. Why would you want to cut that? I don't want to offend,

don't want to get any comments from an ad. David, what do you do, so if you're not reading and you're not writing and you're not writing music, and writing screenplays and doing all this stuff. What is, this is sort of the Sean question that it has, what do you do in, is there anything you do in your downtime that you're like, what's your guilty pleasure?

We'd be surprised to learn. What do you do in the space between the space? Is it gardening? Nice. Anything dumb that you do, you go like, oh, man, I'd be embarrassed if people knew I did this stupid thing. I don't really. I'm, I'm, I'm so bad with hobbies. I really should have a hobby.

Not one. It's really a problem. Well, you have, do you do 25,000 things. It's really a problem. Are you playing basketball? You're playing golf from the cross-country skiing? I wish I was playing basketball. Yeah.

No, now I feel bad. I do it in a hobby. And when people like me, when dummies like me are watching television, you're reading, so you're not watching any like? No, no. I watch TV. I'm watching Black Rabbit. Come on. Oh, yeah.

Black Rabbit airing now on Netflix, starring Jason and J-Bla. Production from Aggregate Films brings you Black Rabbit. Two brothers. So it's not like you're not watching below deck or anything like that. No, but I do watch, I'll watch a Love Island. Sure, you do. But then I realize 45 hours. Yeah.

I mean, it's not like a 15-hour season. No. Somehow they make 45 fucking hours out of that nonsense. But so you watch baseball, is that your number one sport to watch? Basketball is probably not my name. Basketball. I hear the Lakers are going to be good this year. That it could be.

Okay. Who's your team? Next? Oh, the next. Yeah. Now, you're not in New York. Now, where do you live? I live in, I live in L.A.

Okay. Why the next? Because I grew up in New York. No. That's just... Were you not awake when we started the podcast? Well, there was, there was some doll fucking and stuff like that, but that just put you in kind of a state. You figured that was just like an hourly thing that you were doing in New York.

That ball was going to stay with you, huh? How are we going to say? This is terrible. I'm just glad he's not alive. What if the next time we watch Jason on TV at the Dodgers game is sitting next to a blow-up time? He was the other day.

With an X-Files t-shirt up. Wait, David, I have an idea for you. Okay. Come on. So because you write novels and you're not a sci-fi thing, you want to sell a lot of copies or something. Do like, you know,

Bucky Funk fucking Dent was baseball-adjacent. Do whatever you do brilliantly and just make a little sci-fi-adjacent thing. Just a little bit. right well well this is well that episode of uh of the ex-files that i wrote and directed that i want jason to watch because it's called the unnatural and it's a baseball oh i like that all right so you'll have to i i did that uh will for brimley do a cameo on that at all no but uh wilford brimmy at walsh wow wow that's pretty that's it that's wilfr grimly adjacent yeah i love m m at walsh by the way

It just is a quick aside. Yeah, he was fantastic. And he, uh, did he give you a $2 bill? He didn't. No, he does that, he does that with a lot of, or did. I had one. Then we just made David feel bad again. This is, this is before $2 bills were being made.

It's not hard to make me feel bad. But, um, he replaced an actor who got ill. Um, so he was a, he was a, he had short notice. And it was a lot of dialogue. His, his character, was really the exposition man in this episode. And at one point, he turned to me, because I only think he had a couple days with the script.

He got, you know, and he said, this isn't writing, it's typing. I was like, well, I did the typing. And at one point, he fucked up. It was so great. Instead of calling me Agent Mulder, he called me Agent McIver. And I kept it in. There you go.

Did you really? Oh, yeah. It was too good. That guy was so good. I just remember, what was the one he did with Michael Keaton? No, you know, the great cleaning sober. And he was also in Fletch. He was the doctor in Fletch.

He was a fantastic. Yeah, he was a fantastic guy. David, you're fantastic. You're fantastic, David. We've gone over. We rarely go over. We've gone over with you because we love talking to you. So, malice is out, Amazon Prime,

we'd be remiss if we didn't mention that again. Mm-hmm. Yes. And we've got a ton of... Can I plug Black Rabbit again? Should I do that? Please. Yeah.

What service is that on? And we have to... Where do we find that? Very, very nice of you to share some of your time with us, sir. Yeah, I'm so glad we did this. I'm so glad. What a joy. Thank you for coming on.

And thank you. Thanks for having me. You guys are great. Thank you, Dan. Actor, writer, screenwriter, novelist, It's an all-around, great guy. David Duke Covney, thank you so much, David, for your time. Thank you.

It's been enjoying having you. Thank you, David. Thanks, David. All right, bye, bye, bud. Double D. Double-D comes to the Smartless Studio, I guess, is what this is. Yeah. Welcome to the Smartless Studio.

Yeah. Smartless is shot in front of a live studio audience. He's real slick and cool. He's just, well, he's kind of. Always has been. When you're smart, you're confident. He's very confident. Yeah.

I didn't know half that stuff. That's amazing. Because you're not smart. You're not smart. It's true. I mean, it is true. I mean, think about it. He graduated, like, head of his class in high school.

And then he goes to Princeton. Then he goes to Yale. And he gets a master's in English literature. And then he starts to work on his PhD. And while he's working on his PhD, he's like, It's a mickleup spot. Yeah, I want to go to start doing some acting lessons, just to sort of see how that is.

Yeah, I mean. Well, wait. Could you imagine being his parents? You're like, oh, boy, baby, we hit the lot of. Look at this kid. We can't wait to brag about this with our friend, blah, blah, blah, blah. And then they go see his first job. And he's becoming an actor.

And he's fucking this goddamn inflatable. Yeah. Well, I mean, there's nothing more disappointing than just going. I want to be an actor. And you're like, oh, Christ. All right. Maybe he's good. Hopefully he's good.

And then they go see his banging this doll. I know. No. But he's, he landed on his feet. He did. You know? Boy, did he ever. Did he ever?

street a few times yeah he's such a we didn't even get into californication we just he's just done so much god he did some movies too he did a bunch of movies and he's just got this new show new show called malice malice what do you think it's about what do i think what do you think malice is about is it about is about is about a guy's girlfriend who and her name is alice and it's like it's like it's like it's like it's like it's about is about is about is about a guy's girlfriend who and her name is Alice and it's it's M apostrophe Alice Oh oh my Alice

Yeah No this is my Alice This is my Alice This is my Alice Yeah Maybe it's about that It could be Just to throw everybody off

Right don't we too Yeah Well Bennett suggests This is I'm calling Jason you said he landed on his feet maybe on his bipartite

sesamoids which is what is it the symptoms and treatment options are it's from the Melbourne podiatrist no

you're not going to take bipartite no no no no have you have you by the way have you seen the new show

have you seen the new show by chance by no no We're not changing that. How are you doing that? How are you overruling with that? With just like a...

I tried to tee you guys up with, you know, what do you think malice is about? I thought maybe one of you ding-dongs had a bio. Oh, you know, well, I thought maybe it said, is it a biopic? About it, guys. Girlfriend named Alice. Whose whistle was that?

Who did the whistle? That's great. That's really good. Oh, we got to start. adding the whistle. Yeah. Smartless. Smartless.

Smartless is 100% organic and artisanly handcrafted by Rob Armjarf, Bennett Barbico, and Michael Grant Terry. Smart less.