So True with Caleb Hearon - Lilly Wachowski is Hosting Thanksgiving

Episode Date: November 27, 2025

Welcome! This week’s guest is the legendary Lilly Wachowski! Lilly and Caleb talk making a movie together, living in Chicago, the lasting legacy of The Matrix films, the importance of queer art in this day and age, stew, and so much more! Join our Substack for ad free full episodes, early access to merch, our community chat, and more! https://calebsaysthings.substack.com/ Lilly has no social media! Happy Thanksgiving! Follow the show! @sooootruepod Follow Caleb! @calebsaysthings Produced by Chance Nichols @chanceisloudExclusive $45-off Carver Mat at https://on.auraframes.com/SOTRUE. Promo Code SOTRUE Philo’s where all the best TV comes together! 70+ live channels, unlimited DVR, with access to HBO Max Basic With Ads, AMC+, and discovery+Sign up to start watching now: https://bit.ly/4oiweFq Listeners can save 30% on their first order at Cornbread Hemp! Just head to https://www.cornbreadhemp.com/SOTRUE and use code SOTRUE at checkout. Head to https://www.squarespace.com/SOTRUE to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain using code SOTRUE. Stock up on sustainable cleaning products for yourself or to give a beautiful gift to your friends by going to Blueland.com/SOTRUE and get up to 30% during Blueland’s holiday sale! About Headgum: Headgum is an LA & NY-based podcast network creating premium podcasts with the funniest, most engaging voices in comedy to achieve one goal: Making our audience and ourselves laugh. Listen to our shows at https://www.headgum.com. » SUBSCRIBE to Headgum: https://www.youtube.com/c/HeadGum?sub_confirmation=1  » FOLLOW us on Twitter: http://twitter.com/headgum  » FOLLOW us on Instagram: https://instagram.com/headgum/ » FOLLOW us on TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@headgum So True is a Headgum podcast, created and hosted by Caleb Hearon. The show is produced by Chance Nichols with Associate Producer Allie Kahan. So True is engineered and edited by Nicole Lyons. Kaiti Moos is our VP of Content at Headgum. Thanks to Luke Rogers for our show art and Virginia Muller our social media manager.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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It was so funny. so hilarious but so true nice nice sweet we'll be clipping that Lily hi hi Caleb I'm so glad that we're here yay me too I just love you I love you too I'm so excited to have you here I we have been friends for a while now yes and I can work in Progress days. Back in work in progress. How did you get involved in work in progress? I actually don't know if I know that.

This is the Showtime show with Abby McInney. Yes. Well, Abby lives seven minutes from my house. Yeah. And we're old friends. After I transitioned, I went through this searching phase where I was not sure I wanted to be in the movie business anymore. and I started, I struck on this idea to do stand-up comedy. I didn't know this, but I'm loving it.

And I took comedy classes when I was in college and I liked it. And it was, I thought it was like, I think it was like part and parcel of like the trans experience where you have to, you know, build up that cal. of being out in the public. And so I started doing this. And because Abby worked in Second City and I.O. Theater here, I went and had coffee with her because she was friends with my partner, Mickey. Yeah, who you know. And we went and had coffee.

And, you know, I started asking her about doing stand-up and stuff. And she didn't know who I was. And then we, you know, we started, we started hanging out and we became super fast friends. And, you know, some years after that, like a couple of years, she started working on this show with her friend, the co-creator, Tim. And they cooked up the, basically the open of the show where the therapist dies. Yeah. And they shot it. and I said, oh, my God, this is brilliant.

I sent it around. And I was still, like, not sure what I wanted to do. I was painting at that point. I left comedy for a second time. And I started painting and really enjoying myself. And then Abby and Tim made the pilot of this show. So a year after I had sent it out, the little teaser, they made the pilot, came back to me and said,

do you want to executive produce this? And I said, yeah, you know, executive producer, you don't have to do anything. And I hopped on. It was like the first thing that brought me back to film and television. Yeah. Yeah.

That's so interesting. Yeah. How, I'm curious, like, when you transitioned, and that big feeling of like, I don't really know. know if I want to do this anymore. Yes. What made you decide to keep doing it and how, what were, what were those feelings?

Um, I guess I was, uh, I walked away because I felt like I was, uh, I wasn't, uh, there was a grind, number one. I was, I had made three things back to back to back to back. So, uh, posting one and. prepping the other at the same time. So we made Cloud Atlas and then Jupiter ascending and then the first season of Sensate. So right in the middle there, my life was falling apart. And my partner, my wife, who I had been married to for many, many years, like almost 20 years.

she was like um i think we're breaking up i said okay i think i'm going to go on hormones she said good and then uh started hormones on sensate and i was uh i was exhausted and uh extreme like emotionally just uh down to a nub and uh i came out of that experience and i was just like i didn't the stuff that we were making was fun and cool, but it wasn't like I had lost a little artistic spark for myself. And so I like had started hormones on Sensade and then got to post, came out to everybody on post, started full time as my, you know, as a woman, trans woman. and then kind of went through this like beta stage and I would be in my little my little gerbil run where I could like, you know, go to work

and then get in my hamster habit trail, go to my home and then go back to work. And it was like this little thing that I was like, you know, doing a test run of my transness. And came out of it and I was like, I was like, okay, no. I can go do the next season of Sensate, but there was no manna left. I didn't have any juice.

And so I was like, you know what, I think I'm going to say so long. And I walked away, and it was like it was a good time for me because my mom and dad's health were declining. I got to, I started painting with my mom, who's a painter, going to her art class, and then when she couldn't do that anymore, I would go and just bring her to the studio. And we, I would paint with her and my aunt, and we'd have this, like, fun, like Thursday, where we'd just paint all day. And, you know, I started, yeah, it started sparking something for me as an artist again. and I began to enjoy creating.

And so work in progress came in, like, right as my mom and dad, they died. This story is taking a turn. And it's also very long. So mom and dad, my mom and dad both died. They both decided that they would go off their meds simultaneously. They got the kids together and said, your mother and I decided that we would stop taking our meds

and we were all like what? And we were like, how can we help? And so that was like in the spring, by the fall they both died. They died like five weeks apart. And then work in progress

was like kind of like tumbling around in there and you know, they brought work in progress to Sundance they got some buzz and then off of that

I went with Tim and Abby to L.A. and January had three meetings Showtime bought it and by that spring we were writing the show being on that show was a

revelation for me because the thing that like I was missing like that had kind of been fulfilled for me as an artist was that I had um I had like satisfied a lot of stuff for myself as an artist but getting to work on that show and like hiring the people that we hired you know queers and trans people and like the crew looked like Chicago it was like completely diverse and the show was too and i was like okay there's something that's left for me to do in this business and that is to try and like you know bring underrepresented voices to

the forefront and get them you know uh in positions that i was typically in and so i said you know I've been doing that for the last four years trying to do that. You might want to edit that one down a little bit. Not sure where you're going to cut. We're going to put some air into it, actually. We're going to find a way to... Nice. Yeah, it makes total sense to me.

And I really... I was a fan of your work, obviously, because I'm a living, breathing person. And then I really fell in love. with you working on work in progress because of how warm and generous you are right when I'm saying something earnest you're going to open the sparkling water you really didn't I saw the care and the carefulness but I yeah I you were so warm and so generous and you and Abby and everybody who worked on that gave me two of my first shots at TV and Abby McAnney who is so brilliant is somebody who I met because I was working in the box office at I oh in exchange for free classes

and no money. And Abby was just so warm and lovely, and you really got to know what performers in that building were playing at being warm and lovely and who it really was. Yes. And luckily, a Chicago comedy scene in general,

it was mostly people who really were. Yeah. And R. And Abby invited me to her birthday party. Oh. And as like an intern at the box office, and I felt like so excited that someone who was like so talented

and so, kind of like a, I mean, Abby was and is like a stalwart, like a pillar of the scene. And I feel like, oh my God, I'm invited to her birthday party. That's crazy. Those parties were bonkers. They're crazy. And it's like, it's such a testament to what kind of person, Abby is that it would be like, it would be like some random intern from the box office that half the people didn't know, be friends that she knew her whole life.

And then it would be like her mailman. Yeah. Like it would be the most random. UPS guy, yes. Like beautiful. And so, yeah, working on work in progress, I was so excited to go and do it in general, but then when I found out you were going to be involved and I got to meet you, and then I brought Trash Mountain to you and was like, would you ever consider slumming it

and working on this movie that I wrote about my dad dying? And we just finished making it and we really only got it made. Not only, but a huge part of the reason we got it made is because you believed in it and championed it. and yeah, I'm, I'm, uh, there's, it's funny because I have gotten a lot of DMs about like, you were on as the director originally. Yes. And then things, we lost windows and things shifted and it was circumstances and you executive produced the film, thank God.

And yeah, I'm curious, um, I'm curious how you felt about the script and what you thought of the movie and how it feels now that it's over after like years of us trying to get it made. How was it for you? I mean, that script was a perfect example of the types of films and television that I'm trying to get made. It was so funny, so hilarious, but so true, nice, sweet. We'll be clipping that. Anyway, it just like, it had so much heart in it. And I could tell that it came from this absolutely hard and real place.

So immediately I was drawn to it. And, you know, getting to work with you and Ruby on the script was just, was just a blast I'm curious I haven't read like the latest draft so I don't know what the shooting draft is like but every what I appreciated about the writing process

like even after I kind of like sort of took a step back was seeing how you and Ruby kept on making these like improvements in the script and it's um it's something that i think like a lot of writers don't understand that like once you write something that writing is rewriting yeah that you can constantly make something better and you

will continue to write actually now that it's shot because you will write new lines that have to fit into people's mouths and like you know trim up ADR and stuff so um it's not done until it's super done. But yeah, I can't wait to see it. You know, I'm I love Chris Ray so much. I think she's wonderful and I was sure that she could

make something not not just bring the page to the screen, but bring all that heart that was in the script initially. Yeah. She directed the hell out of it. We got so lucky. Andy the

DP, like everybody who worked on it. It was so, it's just so good at what they do. I feel like we, I feel like we pulled off like a heist or something.

Yeah. It's interesting. I feel a bit of, I'm so excited. I'm so glad that it's done. It was so difficult and fun and awesome and exciting and cool.

And also I have this weird kind of like anxiety about, not anxiety, but this interesting feeling of like, it was based on my experience of my dad dying.

And there are still many kernels of truth in there. But like, I actually never wanted the character we called Caleb because I was like I know we're going to change things I know that making a movie is negotiating and you know like there are characters that are invented for the movie and there are conflicts that are invented and I say things to my grandma as this character that I would in ways

I would never speak to my grandmother you know and we created conflict and we added things that need to happen to make a movie compelling because you can't just meander through a personal experience you had for a whole film I guess I mean in some ways we do but yeah there are things we changed about it to make it a better script and I really believe in the changes we made but now I it was interesting in writing it I only ever felt like we're making a great movie inspired by something I went through and I feel really passionate about all the changes we're making and I fought for the things that I felt had to stay and I did other things that I felt needed to happen to make it an interesting movie and then while we were filming it I had this weird sensation several times when

I had to film some of these scenes of being like for the first time thinking about what the audience is going to think of me. And I try not to create from that place ever and not think about like, what is the perception of me as a person going to be when I say this? Because that's not a good place to create from. But for the first time, I got real anxiety filming this movie about like, oh, God, are people going to think that that's how I talk to my family or how I acted when I was grieving my dad in some places that is true? And then other places it's fabricated. It's an interesting thing because it was the most challenging role I've ever done, not only because I was in every scene of the movie, which is probably a choice I won't make again.

I think this will be the last time I do that. But not only that, like the rigor of it, but then also this interesting thing of like, when I've performed characters in the past, it's never really mattered whether I, Caleb, would do that because I'm playing a character. But then when the press around it or the idea around it is that this guy is me, all of a sudden I'm having these like conflicts. Do you know what I mean? Yes.

well, I mean, like, I don't know how to address, I don't know how to address that feeling. I do know that when I write nowadays, I try to write from a place of a very conscious place. So, like, I am specifically looking for my writing. to be of service to me, right? And specifically, like, I will look for ways to, you know, heal holes in my heart. And you can do that unabashedly through, you know, fictitious characters. You can draw on stuff. There's this moment in the second season

and work in progress, where me and Abby have this commonality that, you know, both of our moms are the dead mom club. And like her character in the story is going through all of this, carrying a lot of grief about her mom and has her ashes. on this shelf and she will carry the ashes around in the show a little bit. And because my mom had just died, I was like all of those scenes were very intense but purposeful to write. And so there's this scene where she's going through it. It's like, you know, we're in the height of COVID, the height of the protests in the murder of George Floyd. And Abby character is like, you know, completely spiraling down this, you know, doom chasm.

And there's a painting that my mom did that I'm using for set dressing. So there's this moment where it's like just the room is just filled with all of this grief and some of it is real grief and some of it is, you know, grief expressed through storytelling. And so I would never want to like write something that isn't coming from that kind of perspective, that it's not like, I want my work to have a level of catharsis for myself. And so to do that, I need to put myself into my work. And, you know, if people want to read into it, you know, you just got to go, well, do whatever you want you. You have to let go of your work, too. You got to let go.

You know, people are going to interpret it however they interpret it. You know, it's like I look at, well, you know, all of the crazy mutant theories around, like, The Matrix films and what the crazy ideologies that those films create helped create. And I'm just like, what are you doing? No, that's wrong. Yeah. But I have to, I have to let it go to some extent or else. I'm engaging in, you're never going to be able to make absolutely every single person believe what you initially intended. So, I don't know.

No, and I do actually know that at this point in my career, which is nice. It was just the first time I think I've ever had that much trouble with it. that I know that once you do something, once you put something out, it's not yours anymore. It's long as everyone else. I feel so sacred about the time in a creative process when something is yours.

Sure. When it's just yours and you've created it and it's just with you, then when you open it up, it becomes everyone else's. It was a very interesting creative process to, for the first time, like, grapple with that in any meaningful way.

I did, I was going to ask you, I'm glad you brought it up, about the Matrix and the specific, like how you've dealt with yeah these loser freaks like co-opting this thing to make it something yeah that just must be so crazy for you to be like why are members of the Trump administration like talking about the Matrix like it was made for them and their ideology when it came from you and you're not that's not you at all I mean what do you even do with that other than love it I know you voted for him

I did twice gonna vote for him next time too I don't know I don't I don't I mean

yeah I have no idea I have no idea when you make stuff you want your art let me back up I think it's a mistake

to want your art to let me back up I don't make stuff anymore with the idea that I wanted to reach as many people

as possible I make to make, right? It's like you just finish Trash Mountain. That experience is the reason you're there. Yeah. Not what comes after. And so as an artist, I try to be as present as possible now.

This isn't, you know, what I always did. It's like taken me a while to get to this point. of you. I want to be present and relish every single day of the making that I have because the beauty of filmmaking is that you get to come together in this community, all these different artists, and bring this thing that is in your brain into this new form. And that new form is, is a collective art piece. And so when I think about, like, the Matrix and, you know, the success that it had, I mean, that's something that I think like artists or filmmakers

or any artists, really, they place too much emphasis on those kinds of successes. And I don't think that that's necessarily a success. That's like, I don't know how the, okay, right-wing ideology appropriates absolutely everything. They appropriate left-wing points of view. And they mutate them for their own, for their own propaganda, for their own to obfuscate what the real message is. This is what fascism does. And so, of course that's going to happen. They do it with absolutely everything.

They do it with, you know, I mean, make America healthy again. It's like, are you, what is going, this idea of, you know, putting scientific gender in our, in our, in the words of our, I mean, where are they putting this, there is only two biological genders. It's, it's this, they're calling at science, but it is not science. Right. And that is what fascism does. It, like, takes these things, these ideas that are generally acknowledged as questions or investigations or, you know, truisms about, you know, humanity and life. and they turn them to something else so that they are, they remove the weight of what those things represent.

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amazing content, you'll probably never want to. Philo is where all the best TV comes together. Sign up at philo.tv to start watching. Yeah. That was a classic rambler, but... I don't know what you're talking about. I'm having a nice time over here. You said something to me

that I have thought about a lot since you said it during the initial stages of us working on Trash Mountain together that kind of recontextualized the film for me or added context to the film for me and also that I've thought so much about

in relation to my work since then that you said like oh, on some level this movie is about the way that queerness springs up everywhere and takes up purchase in any place even in the most hostile environments and specifically the way you said

that queerness takes up purchase in hostile environments and I hadn't thought about my work being about that really in those terms but it's so obviously true and so like so like one of my favorite things about us you know and so like what I love about us

and what I feel proud of about us and why I feel connected to us all of us any of us and I just love that and I think about it all the time and I think it's such an interesting time to put it lightly for queer artists

to like decide what we're doing right now and why we're doing all of this and I wonder if you have any as an artist that has benefited from your words and thoughts and generosity I'm wondering if you have anything to say to the like you know 22 year old painter or the 19 year old filmmaker

or listening to this about the purpose of making art right now and how to approach it and things are so fucking bleak. Yeah, they sure are. They sure are. Um, I mean,

one thing for sure that I always say is that, uh, we are in this period of, um, unmaking. And, um, I think that the, for me, I feel like,

the only way to counteract that is to make. You have to fill up that black hole, that widening void that is being fostered and is festering in front of all of us is to make shit. Make your art and because, I think, like, queerness for me is, like, it's about joy. And so queer artists in their making, that is really about those kinds of stories, those kinds of objects, you know, I think it's that that kind of stuff is so effective

because it gives us, like I've been, during this past year, I've been trying to, I've been doing this trans manna refill events where I just, I get together all of every single trans person that I know and that group is slowly expanding. And we just go bowling or we go see a movie together. We just have drinks. And there's something about just being in that space together that pulls you away from this portal into hell that we're all, like, looking at constantly. And it affirms each other bodily.

We get to see each other. And, like, when you talk about, you know, finding purchase, I find purchase when I see another trans person. alive and in this world at the same time that I am alive and in this world. And I say, I see you. Here I am. Look at me. I'm here. I'm here.

I see you. And so that sort of stuff is amplified in our art and our stories. And it is a way to, you know, send out these signals to each other that we're not going any we're not fucking going anywhere and you know you can unmake as much as you want but our joy is going to you those voids are nothing compared to uh what we bring to the table here so yeah keep making art young queers young queers make some art yeah young queers make some art please yes yeah i i i do feel so inspired by queerness, especially right now.

And I think, yeah, I feel maybe naively, we talk all the time in the Tenet Union about the belief that things can and will get better. And I do think that it's radical to have hope. And I really do, even though it's really fucking hard, I really do think that we will win. overall. I don't know what path that takes,

and that's not to diminish at all how hard and awful it might be on the way there. I'm not dumb, but I do, yeah, I do have hope that things will get better. And if I didn't, I don't know that I could create anything. And, yeah, I just want our art so badly. And I hate that we have such a commerce-driven, like venture capital affected and mimicking industry right now,

that there's all this talk of like a contraction but i'm like there's no contraction they're making the money they've always been making they're just not using it to pay people for their art or make things um i feel i do feel discouraged by that but i think if anything and in making trash mountain really lit me up in a way that i'm like this is the kind of stuff i want to be making i actually don't personally have a desire to be making uh 7580 million 120 million dollar films, I really do want to be making this kind of stuff. I do want to make like sub five indies. I do think that at this moment is where the most exciting storytelling is taking place from my perspective. But I'm curious, how has transness affected, like coming out and living as a

trans woman, has it changed the way that you look at storytelling and the way you approach making art? yeah for sure for sure i mean uh you know like i look back i i say this thing where i look back on all of my previous work and um i see it um because i'm like looking at it from this higher place i see i see it from it's just like creates this different perspective from my own this point of view up here and I can see like you know bound the first shot of the movie is

a closet and it's like okay it looks like we're going to be working on some stuff and so it starts there and you know you go through Matrix and it's about

you know liberation and identity and, yeah, like freedom and, like, freedom, and like, I mean, all of those things are, are so definitely working on, as an art, this is a thing that's cool about making art is that you can you can will things into being that you need to see in the world to help pull yourself along. So like a lot of the things that me and Lana were also writing about was love that we needed to create stories that that gave us a grounding to see that love was possible. Like, as a trans person,

the dark question that every trans person, like, has, or not everybody, the dark question that I had as a trans person was, who will ever, who will ever love this? And it just, it's just, it's like an Edgar Allan Poe story where you're just like cementing yourself up in the closet longer and longer. Have you been looking for an way to relieve aches and discomfort. The CBD gummies from cornbread hemp are formulated to work

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Love is possible. These two people found each other. Corky and Violet, Neo and Trinity. And it gave us this... it gave us this reminder that we can't there was a future for us and so now i mean all of that is great i i wouldn't i wouldn't not make a story or put that in a story because we all need to be reminded that there is love out there. There is love in the world. And it doesn't have to be like a romantic love of between two people. It can be like just fucking love. But I think I don't

like have the things that I'm working on in my subconscious are probably a little bit different than the things that I was working on with my subconscious, you know, 20 years ago. Now I'm like, I think about, like I just wrote this script with Mickey. And it's just, it was just a way for us to process all of our trans rage that we have, you know, about the world. And so, Mickey's, he was, this project started before even working. progress for me where he was like he wanted to make something with me and he was like I was completely done with movies and he was like come on we can we can make a we can make a story and put some you know kick-ass trans people in it and you know they can kick a lot of ass and I was like well

I mean that does sound kind of good when you put it like that yeah and so you know this is in 2017 and we were, um, it was, everything was horrible. And we started, we had, we had no idea what the story was. We knew how it started. And we wrote about 30 pages or so. And, um, it became this, like, this way to just like, ah, I'm purging all this rage and horror out of the world into this page and um and it was great and then work in progress came along and i put it down mom and dad endless horrors fast forward to 2021 and the world is like way shittier for trans people so we picked up the script again and started writing again and i was like oh this is good i'm gonna oh yeah and then this happens and so like for me

me, that kind of catharsis that I got out of fighting back about completely creating caricature buffoons

of the right wing to create an idea idealized family, a network, a weather underground of trans people coming together and supporting each other and holding each other up, trying to create a story that is the best of us. That was like, that was, it gave me a new way to.

like think about what i want to put on the page now um and so i i try to like i try to be a bit more conscious uh as opposed to unconscious when i'm making work i uh would categorize you in so many ways but maybe my favorite one is midwest legend i'm just like this is a midwest legend dude you live in Chicago I do How come How come you're not off in L.A. or New York or somewhere? Why are you in the Midwest?

And how does the Midwest affect your work? I don't know. I spent some time in L.A. And I grew to love it. It took a little while. There's something about Chicago. Whenever I come back, it's always

I feel I feel because it's been here longer I feel like Chicago is just like it's got so much history there's so many people that have come through this town

I mean obviously there's like good and bad things about Chicago but the best of what Chicago is I think is that's the reason I'm here I mean

I think also because I was pretty young um as we got to start as we got started in this business, going to L.A. as a young person, I feel like the industry feels absolutely everywhere. And it really did back then,

because this is, you know, the mid-90s. And so this is like the height of like the film industry. There is, you know, it's before, like, there's been all of these, like, mergers happening. I mean, it was always box office based back then, but you still were feeling like you were walking amongst giants. And it was just, the industry was just felt like it was everywhere. I mean, it was everywhere because when we would go, we would be, like, hanging out with, you know, muckety mucks and stuff and they would just take us to their muckety muck places and so you didn't get a chance to see

anything outside of that um and uh to be that to feel that much saturation of the business kind of um made me scared and so i didn't feel that at all in chicago i was I could walk around in Chicago and be just another Chicago one, anonymous. And so I always came back here. I mean, my mom and dad were from Chicago. My sisters were here. And I don't know. It's beautiful.

I like the seasons. There's catharsis in the seasons. Seasons is a big one. Yeah. That was my biggest thing in L.A. I like L.A. a lot. I had a lot of fun living there. I just felt like time was like escaping me all the time because nothing changes.

Yeah. And I was just like, oh, fuck, it's Christmas and it doesn't feel like it at all. Or shit, I've been here for four years. What happened? Yeah. Like you just feel like you're in like a, I love L.A. There's so many beautiful things about L.A. It did not, in the time I was there, feel like the industry was everywhere.

I felt like the industry was nowhere. And it felt like, why are we all living here to work in this industry? but there's no work happening. But yeah, the season thing was huge. I was just like, God, I can't believe the weather's the same every day. Yeah, you know, you get autumn, the fall, it gets cold, and then it gets really, really cold, and then you go in your house, and you make stew,

and you warm up your house by, oh, my God, we're going to the polar vortex. I got to cook something, make some banana bread, and make that in the morning, And the evening makes some chicken stew or something like that. And, you know, a roast chicken, you know. And it war, like, warms up your house and your house smells good. And, yeah. And then you get to spring and the buds start coming out.

And everybody's, like, running around in shorts and it's 40 degrees. And that's just, you know, you get that, like, death and then birth and then life. that cycle is like it's a microcosm of what it means to be a human being. And I think like in L.A. that it's just different. You don't get that as much. And so

I mean, you get other things like you know, fire season and you know floods and just other stuff. Just other stuff that you get. Other kinds of death and birth and relight. I don't know why it's escaping me right now, but there's a poem about

spring that I love not even a poem like a maybe I would call it an article is it who the hell wrote this chances there's a it's called like the common toad like in praise of the common toad

or something and it's for the it's not Oscar why it's like the most obvious when I hear it I'm going to be pissed off is it some thoughts on the common toad by George Orwell yes of course it's Orwell yes have you ever read this I know it's so great

And I love, it makes me, it like really lights up my love for seasons. And there's a piece of it where he's talking about, even if they lock all of us away in prisons for ideas or whatever, they can't take away that like when it turns to spring, the birds are still singing and the trees still bloom. And we can still see that. And so there'll be joy regardless. And as much as they'd like to take that, they can't. And it's really, really pretty. I'll send it to you. What's inspiring you right now?

What's making you feel good and excited and creative? Um, well, Thanksgiving is coming up. Yeah. So I'm, uh, I'm, it's, I'm hosting. You are. I am hosting. It's a small group and I, I don't have a, I don't have a big house. Um, so it, the group sort of just fits around my table.

so it's uh i get nine people and i'm pulling out all my old recipes mom and dad uh thanksgiving was always big in my house uh growing up we're we're good eaters um my grandma was an amazing cook and so all of those recipes get passed down and shared uh this knowledge past the sacred knowledge passed to all the family and so uh this meal is like uh it's super important and it takes days to prep and plan it so i'm in i'm in the throes of that um cooking to me is uh is something that i've really used as, um, lately as like meditative practice and like, um, so it's, there's something that's healing about it. It's, uh, when I make this, uh, I just made this chicken stew, um, for Mickey that he really loves. That, uh, is the Cooks Illustrated, uh, chicken stew. Uh,

chicken stew recipe and it's called the best chicken stew and it is um it is a labor of love but it takes it takes it takes me a good part of the day to make and so that's what thanksgiving is it's i've started i've um i've started buying my ingredients the gravy caleb is just it's just knockout gravy. Yeah, it's its own dish. What's that? You told me the other day, you're like, the gravy is its own dish. Yes, it's its own dish. You have to make this gravy stock that becomes eventually the gravy, but you need all of the drippings from the turkey to finish it off, to finish it all off. But you make the gravy like a day or two in advance. So, damn. Yeah.

I'm really, I'm jealous of these nine people. They're living, they're living my dream. They're over there. They're over there having this gravy that's been much talked about. Yeah. I love that. So we're inspired by Thanksgiving right now. I feel that.

I'm excited. My family comes to my house every year now. Oh, good. And they come on Tuesday. So are you having this in your new house that you just, yeah. And my new place is bigger. So I have room for everybody to stay. because they come my family used to be my grandma would host my whole childhood and we would all go to her house and stay for like four days like everyone's days we barely leave the house other than to get ingredients or go on walks or whatever like it's just like we're stationed at the house everyone's coming on Tuesday they're staying until Saturday and then on the night of Thanksgiving is one of my favorite I love Thanksgiving it's my favorite holiday of the year I love the way it started the politics of it everything and I wouldn't change a thing about the origin or the ideas

but I love it I do love it it's like just it's the one holiday that my family has always like gotten together for and yeah the night of Thanksgiving it's become this tradition

since I've started hosting that like a bunch of my friends in Kansas City will come over and will like play music have pie play cards sit on the porch until like two three in the morning

gossip my family is also still there so it's like but people just after they've finished their thing with their family or whatever they come over to mine and have dessert oh that's so nice it's the best and it's my organizer friends my artist friends my buddies from college and high school it's like this beautiful tapestry it's like one night of the year that i really get like the only time i come close to that is if i have a big show yeah there'll be many people from different areas of my life

in one room but thanksgiving it's like every period of my life i have somebody there and it feels so i just feel so happy that's nice i'm excited about it it's a very special thing and i it's like man if it only happens one day a year it's like that's crazy to think about like one day a single year where you get to do that um it's pretty nice i'm excited about it i love it uh lily what's so true to you okay um i wasn't sure i could come up with uh so truism but then i started um you know plumbing the depths a little bit with the process

well I mean I guess like when I think about art making it's like I don't like to I don't like to cast aside art of any kind

I think all art making is I think all making it can be art is art and if you sometimes it's like it's okay or it doesn't speak to me but i think it's all good for all out there doing stuff that's great um when i was um learning how to be a writer uh i read this one um uh how to book and one of the piece of of advice always like stuck to me it's a very specific thing and that

as the guy was saying, don't use, don't put smash cut in your scripts. Don't say smash cut to this. Just write the next scene. It's implied. What are you going to do? Are you going to hit the edit button harder than a normal edit? and that thing stuck with me for forever and so I've refined that into this other pet peeve that I have

that writers will do and that writers will put in their script though for a scene direction they'll put the word beat and that will be the only sentence in that line and they'll use it to break up two moments of dialogue and this this word beat I do not like it

because I think that it is a it is a it is it's lazy writing there's no you could write anything

You can give, there's so many people that read a script and are using that script to help bring the film to its final form. You know, your production designer, your sound designer, your DP, your actors. And so the word beat is a way for the writer or director to put in a placeholder, between two characters that doesn't tell anybody anything about what's going on. And I think it is like a very ungenerous

way for a writer to tell their story. Yeah. I like that. I like that. That's a good so true to me. That's a good so truism to me. yeah i like that i also i it falls in line with a similar thing that i look out for when i'm reading scripts now of if someone has written too much of the acting for me that they they're writing

like they go so deep into it that i'm like are you planning on not hiring an actor you trust like they'll write such granular little things that i'm like like what like they'll do like they'll be like he he like he takes a pause looks into her eyes cocks his head to the right and i'm like well, like, there are times when that level of detail is necessary because you're setting up something so specific. But when it's not setting up anything specific and it's just going towards an action you'd like to see, it's like, well, now you're dictating the acting to the actor. It gets to a certain level at a certain point. And it's a hard thing to like pin down that I'm like, there are times when that's called for and you can feel it in the scene where it's like, we need to see him look into her eyes because he hasn't done it so far in the scene or it's conveying a certain emotion. And that is always necessary.

Same with camera moves, too. I think like when you're telling the director how to direct, that's another thing. Push in on this person. It's like, all the side. I'm like, really? Are you going to, you're really going to push in? Yeah. No, it's like all the side.

It's like, maybe it's just a cut. I can just like cut into a punch in. Well, maybe it's a smash cut. Maybe it's a smash cut. Whiplash smash cut. Yeah. I love that one. Lily, we have a game for you.

A game? Yes. We've played this game with everyone who's ever been on the show. Okay. It's a storied tradition. It's one of the only things. We actually, it's funny when Chance and I were like concepting about this podcast, we had so many ideas for segments.

And one of the only ones that we have stuck with is this one. Yep. Not one of the only one. And people would kill us if we got rid of it. We tried once to maybe not do it on a live show or something. And I mean, the dismay. Yeah. It's a hit.

We're so excited to have you. play it's this is our true or false segment oh i'm going to read you 15 statements oh you're going to tell me as quickly as you can if you think what i just said was true or false okay and there's a prize if you get 10 or more correct we're going to give you 50 u.s. dollars for gravy 50 for gravy that's some walking around money for bread okay you ready i'll do my best okay the empire state building has its own zip code true true Winston churchill's mother was irish false false she was american the shortest war in history lasted 38 minutes true true speed racer debuted in japan in 1966 true it's true amazon's alexa is named for a french queen

false false it's named after the library of alexandria you're killing this okay did I get the 50 bucks yet I want that $50 Woodrow Wilson's face was on the $100,000 bill false true Chicago has a larger population than Iceland Chicago or Chicago

Land Oof, that's a great question It's just written as Chicago I'm going to say true It's true A cockroach can live for nine days without its head That's very specific.

I'll say true. It's true. Samuel Beckett wrote a streetcar name Desire. False. Yeah, false. It's Tennessee Williams. Carrie Ann Moss was born in Scotland. Oh, my gosh.

That's very specific too. But I don't think so. False. False. Canada. Yes, Canada. I knew that. Since 1912, Olympic gold medals are actually silver with gold plating. Oh.

That's very specific too. I'm going to say No, I'm going to say false. It's true. Oh, it's true. We got you on that one. Cheapers. Monster energy drinks were invented in 1989.

False. False, 2002. The space between your eyebrows is called the glabella. Wow. My eyebrows? Just yours. Just yours. We made one up for you.

I'm going to say true. It is true. A monkey was the first animal sent to space. false it was a dog false it was fruit flies technically i guess is the creature the being um michael jordan was that's in that lossy helstrom movie which is really nice oh i don't know that movie um i can't remember the name of it but there's this um my life as a dog it's called and the opening is the this kid narrating thinking about that dog that goes into space yeah it's very nice i need to tap in we have one more for you. Michael Jordan was drafted to the Bulls

in 1984. True. True. How'd she do? 13. Yeah! That's $50 in your pocket. Might be the best performance we've ever had on the true. Very good. Wow. We've never had a perfect 15. I know that. No. And we've never had a perfect 0. I did guess quite a few. I don't have an

encyclopedia. It was a beautiful performance. We're all stunned. We're all stunned by the performance. I would say our most common is probably like nine. is by far the most common. That feels like where people land. Yeah. Never had a zero, never had a 15.

I would look for, I think once we get a zero and a 15, we'll probably end the show. Yeah. A zero. Once we get both, we'll end the show.

Yeah. I want to know who that zero is out there. Oh, you will be, there will be someone. There will be a big deal out of it. Yeah. Uh,

Lily, thank you so much for doing this. Yeah. I just love you. I can't tell you. Thank you so much for having me. How much you mean to me. I'm so proud of you.

Stop it. Don't say that. Um, Thank you. I love you so much. Do you... I love you too. Is there anything that the people listening can do to support Lily right now? What can you do to support me?

I don't know. I think just like hold each other up. That's all we got to do. That's how we get through this. Keep getting into community and grab and hold of people and make sure they're staying on their feet. That's beautiful. Thank you very much for doing it. Yeah.

Love you. You too. That was a hate gum podcast.