The Bill Simmons Podcast - Are the Warriors Done? Plus, Taylor and Travis, Belichick’s Future, ‘American Fiction,’ an 'Entourage' Reboot, and Week 15 Picks With Nora Princiotti and Cord Jefferson

Episode Date: December 15, 2023

The Ringer's Bill Simmons wonders, "Is Golden State dead?" after watching the Warriors fall to the Clippers live at Crypto.com Arena (2:07). Then, Bill is joined by Nora Princiotti for a Travis Kelce-Taylor Swift check-in and a Bill Belichick hot-seat temperature check (28:25), before running through their favorite NFL Week 15 games (57:47). Next, Bill makes the Million-Dollar Picks for NFL Week 15 (1:23:02). Finally, Bill is joined by writer/director Cord Jefferson to talk about his directorial debut film, 'American Fiction', the state of TV and film, as well as an incredible pitch to bring back HBO's 'Entourage', and more (1:28:50). Host: Bill Simmons Guests: Nora Princiotti and Cord Jefferson Producer: Kyle Crichton The Ringer is committed to responsible gaming, please checkout theringer.com/RG to find out more or listen to the end of the episode for additional details. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Coming up, has Draymond killed the Clippers? Football, a great entourage story and a lot more next. This episode is brought to you by my old friend, Miller Lite. I've been a big fan of Miller Lite, man, since college days when I was allowed to have beer. I think nephew Kyle is a fan too. Miller Lite keeps it simple for us. Undebatable quality, great taste. Picture this, it's game day. All the gang's here. You're tailgating outside the stadium. It's a great simple for us. Undebatable quality, great taste. Picture this. It's game day.

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Gambling problem called Win 100 Gambler or visit RG-help.com. We're also brought to you by the Ringer Podcast Network. Hope you checked out the rewatchables this week. We did the Pelican Brief and we have Christmas Vacation coming up on Monday. So stay tuned for that. I have an action-packed podcast, so I just want to get to it because we have a lot of stuff that we did in this one. Top of the podcast, came home from Warriors Clippers. It was a pretty memorable game just from where two teams are going

and everything that happened this week with Draymond. So I wanted to talk about that at the top. And then Nora Princey-Adick comes on. She's our Taylor Swift expert at the ringer. Is Taylor Swift ruining the Chiefs? I'm kidding. She's not. Really, she's not.

But we talked about Taylor Swift. Talked about Bill Belichick. Nora used to cover the Patriots once upon a time and whether he's actually out as coach. And then she helped but it's called American Fiction. It's fantastic. And it's probably getting nominated for an Oscar, but we've known him for a while. He's been in my life just through extended acquaintances and friends. So it's been interesting to watch him kind of rise to where he got to with this movie.

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Great podcast coming up. First, our friends from Pro jam all right i'm taping the top part of the podcast here. It is 10.23 Pacific time. Just came home from Warriors Clippers. I set the land speed record trying to get back so I could tape the top of the pod. I apologize to everybody on Olympic Boulevard. Watch the Warriors lose again to a Clippers team that is starting to make me nervous.

I might have to eat some crow considering after the Harden trade, I did a long segment and then we did a YouTube video and the title of it was The Clippers Are Dumb. They did not look dumb tonight. They looked really good

and James Harden looked really good. Hold that thought. I want to talk about the Warriors. Are the Warriors dead? That's what I was thinking sitting in my seat. I was sitting next to Mike Tolan who I've been sharing Clippers tickets with since God knows when.

And we've seen a lot of Steph Curry games. 2012-13, that was the first Curry season when it felt like something maybe a little bit magical might be in the works. And he had a nice little rivalry with Chris Paul, who coincidentally he was playing with the shadow of Chris Paul tonight in the Warriors. But we watched him come in year after year after year. And probably around the 14, 15 season, the Warriors jerseys started populating the arena. I was like, this is

interesting. Is this something happening with this team? Is this starting to feel a little like MJ Bulls-ish, like all these Warriors jerseys. And then it just kept growing. Then they had the 73 win season. And by the mid-2010s, every time the Warriors came in, it was like a home game for them. And it was all centered around Curry and him being a generational talent, but also the teamwork of Klay and Draymond and just the way the guys played together. Durant shows up. They go to a whole other level. They're the best team in the 21st century. I still believe that.

And it starts to fade a little bit. Then it comes back two years ago. They have a resurgence, and they end up winning the title against my favorite team, the Busts and Celtics. And it seems like this is just going to keep going and going and going, and then all of a sudden it stopped. And it stopped pretty abruptly

in the Lakers series last year. I remember talking on this podcast during those games because I was going to them just like, man, this Warriors team, the spirit of this team is broken. They have real issues. You can see it on the bench. They made some trades. I was bullish on them heading into the season. I thought maybe this is a 48 or 49 win team at least. And then Draymond just basically loses it during the entire season. I mean, I think he has almost as many ejections and suspended games as he has games played.

It was really interesting reading the coverage about this this week because, you know, Doc and I talked on Tuesday before the Tuesday night game when he swatted Nurkic. And Doc was saying that he thought Draymond looked really good, as good as on the court as he has in a while. And I said, I think he's gotten too erratic. I watch these Warriors games and I always feel like he's on the precipice of either crossing the line, getting suspended, something bad happening. And even in games where nothing bad happened, it still felt close to something bad happening. Like there was that in-season game

against Sacramento and he got mad at a call and he just started like karate chopping Malik Monk. And it seemed like he wanted to get kicked out. And it just felt like something was going on with him. The Nerkich play happens. The dialogue about it over the next two days, which I think just would have been completely different 20 years ago, if you compare it to the next two days, which I think just would have been completely different 20 years ago if you compare it to Ron Artest, Rasheed Wallace, the way we talked about some of the kind of on the line players. Everybody seemed to be horrified by Draymond and confused by why this keeps happening. Then once we got into the sports talk shows, which I watched a few of yesterday and today,

I watched Sniptoots' stuff. I watched First Take. I watched Steve Aday try to pull off, and I think he pulled it off, an incredible take of maybe this has something to do with Steph Curry's leadership too. And if this was a LeBron team, this never would happen. I didn't agree with the take.

I just admired how he spent a minute on it. I was like, all right, you landed the plane on a ridiculous take. But there was a little bit of a kid's gloves-ish thing here with Draymond because we don't really know what's going on with him. Because the stuff has been so erratic and so self-destructive. I think in the mid-2020s, I think we have learned, I think social media, there's been a lot of mental health awareness stuff that's happened over the years

that we just look at this stuff trying to just be more fair to the person who's involved when really, I feel like we probably should have been a lot harsher because Draymond not only murdered their season, and I think he did. I actually think he might've murdered their season, but did not seem remorseful really after any of this stuff. He didn't really seem that remorseful after the pool punch last year. And just in general, he kind of carries himself as like, hey, this is part of the package. This is what you get when you have Draymond on your team. And it finally crossed the

line. And you know it crossed the line because he got indefinitely suspended, which I can only remember happening a couple of times in the history of my life with the NBA, usually in the 80s with drug stuff. But then Steve Kerr had a really interesting press conference where he moved into the, we have to figure out Draymond long-term as a human being. Like the basketball this season, not even as important as trying to figure out how he can fix himself.

And when you start hearing stuff like that and you start hearing some of the quoted stuff on TV shows, it makes you think he's going to go get actual help. And he probably is probably going to go get anger management counseling. Maybe there's other stuff. I don't want to speculate, but it seems like he's going away for a while. And that was part of how you get the indefinitely with the player suspension. Windhorse made this point. Andre Godala is now running the Players Association.

The Players Association is going to be involved in any suspension like this. And the question now is, can Draymond change? And I just don't know. I don't see it because you're changing what fundamentally makes somebody the player they are, which is this crazy passion that he had, right? Rasheed Wallace had it too.

Rasheed Wallace was an incredible basketball player who couldn't stay out of his own way. He had 41 technicals in the 2000-2001 season. I wrote in my basketball book, I thought it was one of the 10 greatest records in the NBA, like the 10 most unbreakable records. I thought 41 technicals, I don't think we'll ever see that again. And I still feel that way. He couldn't stay out of his own way. He was one of those players that

he just was a volcano. You just never knew when the lava was going to start pouring out of him. Then other players knew how to bug him and get to him. The referees, they had had it with him. It just got worse and worse. It never got better.

With the Draymond piece, there's two problems here. One is that that was part of the package of how he played was, I'm a bad man. I'm a badass. I'm larger than life. I might be 6'7", but I play like I'm 6'11". I am the biggest bully out here. You felt it last year in the Lakers series and I talked about it in the podcast because he's so tight with LeBron and Davis. I thought I'd heard how he played in that series because he didn't have that same swagger. He wasn't trying to kick everybody's ass. He was just a little more subdued and subdued Draymond is not ideal Draymond. So I wonder if he comes back from this and it's like a softened Draymond, that's going to be a different Draymond.

That might not be better. No, it'll be better than the Draymond that continually gets kicked out of games and suspended. But part of what made him him, I think about game two in the 22 finals, Celtics win game one. Game two, things are going pretty well. And Draymond has been taking a lot of shit during the whole playoffs that maybe he's on the other side of the mountain,

all that stuff. And he had a little stretch there. And he had, if you remember, he had that moment with Jalen Brown. I forget, he stepped over him or he, you know, almost it was a borderline could have been kicked out, but it was a man against man moment.

He was trying to assert some sort of alpha dominance and it worked because if you look at that moment, it was when the series started to flip a little bit. The defense that he brings, you know, he's defensive player of the year.

I'm not breaking any news with this, but he was the quarterback of everything they did on defense. And the way he played with Curry is one of the reasons Curry has been able to extend his prime. And one of the reasons he was so awesome last year, he was so awesome in 22. That was the thing that jumped out to me tonight, watching the Warriors. First of all, I was in multiple conversations with Tolan about who's the second best Warrior. We couldn't figure it out because Klay had a really good game,

but I'm not positive he's the second best warrior. He's been so erratic today. It was probably the best game of the season for him. It used to be Wiggins. Wiggins was a guy in 2022 that swung the finals and cost me a title. Not just the Celtics, not just the players and the people that work for the team.

Me, I wanted another title. I don't like taking shit from Laker fans, Celtics, not just the players and the people that work for the team. Me, I wanted another title. I don't like taking shit from Laker fans, but Wiggins was so great in that series and played bigger than he was. And he just doesn't do that anymore. I don't know what happened to the guy. Started last year. I know he had some off the court stuff. We still don't know what happened, but he's just a different guy. And you watch him in the game tonight. He just looks like the Minnesota Wiggins that you had to attach with picks in a trade to get rid of. That's the guy who he is on Golden State. That's the guy he's been. And that's one of the reasons they're struggling. They are 10 and 14. They are three games behind Phoenix, who's the 10 seed, right? They are, if you look at the

big picture in the West, Minnesota, Denver, OKC, Dallas, Sacramento, Lakers, Clippers. That's your top seven. Then you go to Houston, New Orleans, Phoenix. Now I'm at 10. Only 10 can even make the play-in or the playoffs. Golden State's at 11. I'm 10 or 14, and it's not going well. And what I saw in person tonight confirmed what I felt when I was watching them on TV.

They're too small. Forget the second star thing for a second. They just don't have enough length, you know, over and over again. It's offensive rebounds. It's hands around the rim. It's somebody like Kawhi was who's been great for two weeks and is the biggest reason. If you're going to buy Clipper stock, it starts with Kawhi. Kawhi was who's been great for two weeks and is the biggest reason. If you're going to buy Clipper stock, it starts with Kawhi. Kawhi was just big and strong.

He guarded Curry in the fourth quarter down the stretch on one end and on the other end, he's just felt longer and more impactful than anyone the Warriors had. And the Warriors, they were playing hard, which is what scared me if I'm a Warriors fan or if I work for the Warriors.

They really wanted the game. They got their asses kicked in the first half. Harden was tremendous. They came out, the Warriors came out in the second half and they were full tilt. They were flying around on defense. They were getting loose balls. They were getting second chance points.

It was about as well, or at least as hard as they could play. And they still lost. And that's happened a lot. And I've watched them a lot this year because I love Curry. Like, you know, Curry and Jokic are my two non-Celtic guys.

And there's been games, they lost two to OKC. They lost a dumb Clippers game on a Saturday. They lose games down the stretch because they're not good enough. And it's not like, oh man, at this one play, they're just not good enough.

And I guess if you look big picture, you go, well, how, it's not that different of a team than it was in 2022. Well, there's a couple of things. One is, as we talked about in previous pods this season, the league got bigger, which is bad for them. The 2016 small ball model, that doesn't work anymore. Curry's a little bit older. Clay is a lot a bit older and is

turned into, I call him a once a week guy. When you get old, you can be good once a week. But if you're relying on him over and over again, it's going to be a little tougher. And none of their young guys, I like Moody. Moody was good tonight. I actually think with Draymond going away for a while, this is where you find out what you have with Kaming and Moody, either on the Warriors or as trade bait for somebody else. But they need to get taller and they need more length and they need to change this team. So the two pieces that don't really work are Wiggins and Chris Paul.

Down the stretch, they're playing Curry and Chris Paul and Klay and Looney and Kaminga. That's a first routed out at best. It just is. And Curry was bad tonight. Part of it had to do

with how the Clippers guarded him and just made him work and they were putting longer guys on him. But the other piece why Curry was bad, this is the part

that did not get mentioned. Admittedly, I didn't consume all the Draymond content this week. Admittedly, I didn't consume all the Draymond content this week, but to me, when people talk about what they're losing with Draymond, when he gets ejected, suspended, whether he's getting older, the whole thing, it's his connection with Curry on offense that is the biggest thing you notice when he's not out there. Curry had this shorthand with him that was so great and had gotten to such this crazy IQ level. There's only been a couple of partnerships like

this in the history of the league. Stockton and Malone had it. MJ and Pippen had it. Bird and McHale had it. Shaq and Kobe intermittently had it. But when they had it, it was usually in the playoffs and big spots. That was when they would always kind of begrudgingly figure out how to work each other, but they did have moments like that. Duncan and Parker and Janobi

all together, they had it. You know when you see it, and I think Curry fed off Draymond all the stuff, all the little like pass and the handoffs, and then all of a sudden he's getting the ball back

or he gives it to him and then he cuts this way, and Draymond always knew what he was going to do, and the thing that jumped and the handoffs. And then all of a sudden he's getting the ball back or he gives it to him and then he cuts this way. And Draymond always knew what he was going to do. And the thing that jumped out tonight with the Clippers game, nobody totally knew what Steph was going to do on the Warriors. Right. They 90% knew, but it was just like, it was a whiff off. It was like watching a tennis player that just his serve is just like just off. He's still hitting it the same thing, but it's like out or it's on the line.

His forehead starts just, you're watching. It's like this guy, he's just off today. And the reason he was off was because he didn't have Draymond. So when I hear this stuff about, there was a lot of stuff about this is it for Draymond. He's going to leave the Warriors. Don't be surprised if he's done. They might trade him. What could they get for him?

They have to make this work because Steph is 35 and this is his guy. This is his binky, right? This is the guy that makes Steph. This is what turns him from the ninth best player in the league to like in the argument

for the best player in the league or one of the best players or the best offensive player, whatever you want to say. You pull Draymond away and you have games like tonight where you look up with four minutes left in the fourth quarter, he's got 15 points, he's playing hard. So they have to figure out the Draymond thing. And we'll see, you know, Kerr mentioned his legacy and here's what the legacy looks like. We, I'm old enough now that I've seen generations

of these guys, right? I think about Rasheed Wallace. It's like, he was a hothead. He was, he was more talented than what his career panned out,

right? Ron Artest on Indiana. I wrote down season murderers. I just made a quick list because I think Draymond, this will go down as a possible season murderer. Draymond and the 2024 Warriors. Ron Artest is the all-time season murderer with the Artest melee in the 2004-05 season because Indiana would have won the title that year. I feel very comfortable saying that. They had the best team. They were kicking Detroit's ass that night. Detroit was the team they had to go through. It was a San Antonio team that was the weakest of all the Spurs title teams, like Parker and Manu. Manu was pretty good in that, especially in the finals, but Parker wasn't quite there yet. And Duncan had a lot of miles on him from all the

playoff series from the previous years. Plus he'd done the Olympics in 2004. And Indiana should have won that year. And our test, and then also pulling Steven Jackson out, murdered their season. And it's the all-time season murder. But there's been others, like Kyrie in the 22 Nets. That has to count. Ben Simmons in the 22 Sixers. I don't know if they would have won the title,

but him just saying, I'm not playing and missing four months of the season, that wasn't great. Dennis Rodman in the 95 Spurs. Ironically, Doc Rivers told a story about them on my podcast on Tuesday, but that was an up for grabs season. And that team was pretty unhappy, as Doc described in the story,

where they're all yelling at Greg Popovich and Rodman and everybody's just screaming at each other. It was an unhappy team and you could feel it when you're watching on the TV, even on the square, uh, by square, like crappy 1995, whatever TV I had back then,

you could see there was something wrong. Rodman would take his shoes off during the game and do crazy shit. And he murdered them. And then he went to the bowls the next year and was awesome and won three straight titles. And then you had another, another kind of underrated one was Gus Williams. Now, he's holding out for a new contract,

but he sat out the 80-81 season in Seattle when they just had this really nice run. They'd made two finals in a row. They were good in the 80 season. They just traded for Paul Westphal. And he sat out and kind of killed that whole run because he was going for a new contract, which ironically he got.

This has happened a few times. John Morant last season, borderline season murderer. But Draymond, what he did to the Warriors this year, the fact that they're 10 and 14 in a really deep conference and now they have to scrap just to make the play and now they have to put in just an incredible amount of miles on Curry and he's the biggest loser of this. It's not Draymond. to make the play. And now they have to put in just an incredible amount of miles on Curry.

And he's the biggest loser of this. It's not Draymond. It's not the Warriors. It's Curry. Curry is one of the 10 best players of all time. Curry is still really, really, really great. And now he's on this team where he's got to keep his fingers crossed that one of the young guys comes through

or Klay Thompson is going to have a game like he had today, or maybe Wiggins will miraculously become the guy from 18 months ago. He has too many variables, too many what ifs, too many I don't knows, and it starts with the Draymond thing. The reason they gave Draymond $100 million for four years was because of Curry. It was his relationship with him as a leader, and as a co-leader. It was his relationship with him as a leader and as a co-leader. It was his relationship with him offensively and everything he did defensively. And that's why he's coming back. But are the Warriors dead? It kind of felt

like it tonight. I've seen a lot of great teams at the tail end. even the Celtics in the early 90s when they were a contender, but you just knew if they played Jordan, they were probably losing. You saw that 0-4 Lakers team. It just felt like it was coming to an end, but those teams were still contending for titles. This team feels miles away. You're just taking Denver over them in a seven-game series, all seven games. Minnesota has way too much size for them.

Oklahoma City has too much athleticism, and Shea is the best guy in that series at this point. Dallas has Luka. you have the Lakers who have the size of Davis and LeBron and the pedigree too and then you have this Clippers team that I wasn't taking seriously at all I thought the Harden trade

was completely idiotic am I going to be wrong let's wait Harden's done this. He was super happy on Brooklyn for a couple months. He was super happy in Philly for a couple months. We're still in the honeymoon phase with James Harden, but I'll tell you what I saw tonight. Even though he doesn't have that burst around the rim anymore, the gate management with him was outrageous. He was so good in the first half. He was so unselfish. He was setting everybody up. He was the was outrageous. He was so good in the first half. He was so unselfish.

He was setting everybody up. He was the point guard. This was the guy when Doc was talking on my podcast about when he was talking about pre-All-Star break last year, Harden, how great he was and how unselfish he was and what a facilitator he was. And he wasn't looking for his own stuff at all. And then he didn't make the All-star team and changed how he played and it

kind of screwed up their season. You saw it in this Clipper game. First half, unselfish. I think he had like a 14, 5 and 8. He seemed super happy. It seemed like the chemistry was good on the team. Even Westbrook seemed happy playing 10 minutes. And then the second half, it was kind of the old school heliocentric Harden. And that's how the Warriors got back in the game. Now, no Paul George tonight. I still want to see how all this looks when it's Paul George and Kawhi and

Harden, but it's going better than I thought it would. And they have found something with the man Zubach, George, Harden, and Kawhi line up, which the advanced metrics, I tweeted about this the other day, they're like plus 17 when they play together and it's over 200 minutes now. So you throw that in with Powell, I'm sure they'll try to get some sort of big guy.

Plumlee comes back. I wasn't taking them seriously and I thought they were going to be horrendous defensively. They're better than I thought. I'm not admitting defeat. If I'm wrong, I'm wrong. I've been wrong before. I'm not going to be like,

oh my God, I hope the Clippers aren't good because then I will be wrong. If I'm wrong, I'm wrong. I think Harden has revealed who he was over the last five years and I find it hard to believe he's just going to end up on this Clippers team and just all of a sudden go back to 2018 James Harden.

But it's going better than I thought. But the biggest reason it's going better is because Kawhi, for whatever, and this is what I was talking to all the Clipper fans in my section, and I was at halftime talking to Lenny and Jesse, a couple die, die, diehards. And they were like, whatever happened to Kawhi, we don't know, but in the last 10 to 12 days, he looks like Kawhi again.

And you could see it tonight. I think this is my fourth Clipper game. This was the first one where I was like, holy shit, Kawhi looks incredible. So for that alone, I'm taking the Clippers way more seriously. And you just look at the game tonight, Kawhi, Paul George, and Harden, if Paul George had played, would have been three of the best four guys in the floor. And that's the real problem with the Warriors

over everything else is it's Curry and then a bunch of other guys. Draymond was the one that held everything together, at least defensively, plus with the Curry connection. And that might not come back. I don't know when Draymond's coming back. As you know, I know people. Nobody seems to have an answer for this.

Nobody seems to know how long he's going to be gone. It's very cryptic. And there's a sadness to it too because I think the general feeling seems to be like, this is a guy that is actually in a little bit of trouble here. He's got to figure some stuff out, and I thought what Kurt said in the press conference tonight about he's got to repair some stuff here,

not just with him personally, but whatever his legacy is going to be as a player. You know who understands that more than anybody? Guess who played with Dennis Rodman for a bunch of years in Chicago? Guess who played with Rasheed Wallace? Steve Kerr. He's seen all kinds of head cases and weirdness and guys going through stuff. He was the GM of that Nash Suns team for a while. He's been in every possible basketball situation. I'm pretty sure he's never seen this.

But he's aware enough that this isn't just about this season and Draymond and can he come back in time to help them make the playoffs. This is like, this just follows you the rest of your life. You become, oh yeah, you were this great, awesome player who won four titles, and then you kind of lost it down the end. And that's how people remember you. So they got to fix it.

My vested interest in this over anything else is Curry, who him and Jokic are my favorite non-Boston players. And I don't like the situation he's in. They're going to probably make a trade would be my guess. And then keep your fingers crossed Draymond comes back. The situation sucks and it's unfortunate, but hey, this is what we get for following sports. I'm going to take a break and we're going to come back and we're going to talk to Nora Princiy-Addy about football. Score early this NFL season with FanDuel, America's number one sports book.

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Nathan Hubbard, a podcast that started as a text. When I put the two of you on a text, you didn't know each other, but you both love Taylor Swift and were fascinated by her. You started arguing. At some point we were like, what is this? Could this be a podcast? What the hell are we doing? And now a couple of years later, it's still going with the Summer of Taylor. She infiltrated the NFL because that's what people do when they're the most powerful people in the world. They have to go to the most powerful sport in the world.

She did that. And we're now two months in. The Chiefs are reeling a little bit. Where are we with Taylor and Travis and the Chiefs? Just give us the update. I mean, Taylor's fine. Taylor's killing it. Taylor just had her birthday party in New York.

She's hanging out with Blake Lively. Everything in the Taylor world is great. I personally am a little nervous. I'm holding my breath that she is going to start getting blamed for the Chiefs' struggles, which are not her fault. They're not Travis's fault either. But I wonder if the tide is going to turn from the NFL side. But I don't think she really cares about that.

She's just living her life. Well, first of all, everybody's afraid to criticize or even look cross-eyed at her for two seconds. So you got that piece. Did you see Bailey Zappi talk about her? Because he said that he used to like her when she was country. And the way that he backtracked was like, it is like the Kremlin. It's like, no, like I like country music and she used to do country music, but now she's pop and I'm listening to pop music. But like really so much respect

for her. And it really everyone is really afraid. I noticed when that Time magazine cover story that you and Nathan broke down, which got an emergency is the first ever magazine piece emergency podcast

I think we've ever done at the Ringer or Grantland. I was really proud of both of you. She just does a drive-by shooting of Kim Kardashian at one point. Much deserved, by the way. Absolutely no lies in that statement. No lies.

It had been brewing for seven years and she's wired like Michael Jordan where she remembers every slight, every time her feelings have been hurt by anyone, it's always, she's always going to get revenge at some point. And what was interesting was,

I don't think Kim said a peep, right? She just was like, cool, I'm out. Well, Kim had been sort of like inching towards sort of trying to see if there could be forgiveness. Like she was using, she was using Taylor songs in her Instagram stories. And she said something in an interview maybe last year about how

Kanye really made her do it with the video and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. So there hadn't been any sort of direct overture but there had been you could tell she was trying to creep back into the good graces and Taylor just slammed the door. I hope she never ever gives her

one second of the time of day because when the world reversed and Kim had a little more power and a bigger platform in some ways and Taylor was a little bit vulnerable, Kim sees. She jumped on it with that weird edited. I just thought the whole thing was just lousy. I didn't like it. Well, she never Taylor never should, because the problem for her with Kim and Kanye always was that they could be messy in a way that she can't be messy. Like you've bought it. If you buy into the Kardashians, you're buying into drama. But Taylor takes a reputational hit if she's like nasty or rude or anything. So she can't like she can't get dirty in the way that

they can they are bad i mean obviously now the kanye conversation is completely different but just anything in that orbit is bad news well i mean her documentary and she's one of the people that kind of ushered in the era of the infomercial documentary it's a documentary but not really the artist is in charge of it we're only getting little snippets of real real stuff that is interesting because they're controlling most of it but the most interesting part of that documentary was was the 2009 the video awards kanye coming on stage and just how traumatizing that was i i'd never really thought about it since it happened and it made me feel terrible for her well the thing that the thing that I learned from that for the first time,

I think anybody who followed her learned for the first time, is that she thought people were booing her when they were booing him, which I do think was a massively moment of psychological damage. The most interesting part of the Miss Americana documentary to me

was when her father compared her career to Bob Hope's. That to me was really eye- eye opening. What does that mean? It was about her like talking about politics. And he was like, Bob Hope never did this. And her mom is just like, what the heck are you talking about? It is the most illuminating just like look at her inner circle. But the time profile was exactly like the documentary. This is a Taylor thing. She doesn't talk to the press. She doesn't need traditional media.

She doesn't need to do profiles all the time. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. She turns everything down. And then every three or four years, she just does one thing and she gives some comment on every topic people have cared about that relates to her over the last couple of years. So it's not like- It's like the notebook dump, but for as an interview about her life.

She just does a notes dump and there's no like detail about exactly what happened or it's all very planned and thought out and strategic, but she just will tell you exactly what she thought about Scooter Braun and the Kim stuff and going out more in public and just like everything that is a big Taylor topic. She will just address it. So I saw a lot of parallels between the doc and the time thing. I'm going to give you a Taylor Travis take. This is great. I never get to talk about this stuff

in my podcast. I'm sure there's like 20% of the people are like, are you fucking kidding me? Can you just get to whether Belichick's coming back or not? Dad's Brad and Chad, as Taylor would call them. Let me cook. I got my apron on. Let me cook. So I read this thing because I talked with my wife and I were both kind of fascinated. We like celebrity relationships in general. And Taylor's been in our life for a while. I'm fascinated by the concept of fame. She's the most famous person I think we've seen as an artist, really, probably since Michael Jackson. I think that's fair.

And you got, you and Nathan talked about that a lot. And Michael Jackson did not handle that well. And fame is also totally different now too. True, true. And you have to monitor it 24-7 constantly in a way that maybe Michael Jackson didn't. The thing that concerns me about the future of their relationship. So I saw he was planning a birthday party for her. Travis Kelsey, he's making like 11 million a year playing for the Chiefs. He's making money from his podcast. He's got some endorsements. I'm going to say he's in the low 20s, but you're dating Taylor Swift or you're dating anybody that famous. It's not like he's like, hey, Taylor,

I got us two first class tickets on Delta to fly to Kansas City. You're private everywhere you go. You have handlers everywhere you go. You're in the penthouse suite everywhere you go. There's a lifestyle thing that I think only a few people could date her, but also have the money, which then means she's paying for most of the stuff. And then that gets into a whole, oh, this is weird. You're paying for stuff. I just don't know how that plays out. There's a TikTok that I love that I have saved where, I don't know, it's just two random people. But one of the guys is you know he's a mid-40s like guy and somebody is explaining somebody is saying guess Travis Kelsey's net worth and then guess the net worth of Taylor Swift's cat Dr. Olivia Benson or it actually might be Meredith I forget

which cat it is okay one of the cats is that like 93 mil and travis is around 30 or whatever one of the cats is that 93 mil i mean i don't know but yes allegedly because she's done commercials and she's endorsed some products and the guy is just is just sort of like processing this information and he starts laughing and just asking the right questions as in so so people know, like Taylor Swift's fans can identify the cat in a commercial fast enough so that Fancy Feast would blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And it's a really special, it's a special moment. So I hear where you're that famous and that rich, can you only date other people who are in your kind of network of wealth? Or maybe she, maybe she's on the flip side. Maybe it's not about that. And she's such a great,

I don't know. I'm just, I'm monitoring it because there's lots of different reasons. These go sideways. Is it easier in some ways? Because there's no question about who is orchestrating the logistics of everything. Oh, Irating the logistics of everything. Oh, I like the Oprah Stedman. Yeah. She's if they're going somewhere, she's saying,

Travis, you know, go to the airfields at this time. Plane's going to be there for you. Get on. Come to me. I've got the car. I've got it under control. I don't quite understand what happened with the birthday party because on her birthday, she went to Zero Bond, which is a club in New York that she's been going to for months and months and months. So I don't think he, I'm not sure I buy that he was planning anything and then he didn't go because he had to stay for football stuff. Yeah.

Yeah. Something seemed fishy about that. So I wonder if why this has worked out so far is that it gets to be really on her terms. I've lived through a lot of celebrity relationships. I think this is one of the better ones. I like the two different worlds that they come from. It seems like they like each other. They're around the same age. And they both kind of get something out of it, which is always a key to the celebrity relationship, right? Like when Jennifer Aniston starts dating Brad Pitt, he's this on-the-rise movie star about to be an A-lister. She's on Friends.

She's an A-lister. And it's like, look at us. Now it almost is like the one plus one equals three, which is what it feels like here. I mean, for what it's done for him from a career standpoint has been kind of jaw-dropping. But she also seems pretty cool to date i don't know like kudos to him i'll be interested do you think they get engaged

i have no idea i just simply have no clue she is at that stage of life it seems like they're moving very fast but i also don't know. She has that celebrity thing where you're sort of frozen. And she said this. I think she said this in the Miss Americana doc. Where you're sort of frozen at the age you get famous. Yeah. So I think in her brain, there's a part of her that's just still 15.

And I think it makes it very hard to figure out, you know, is she really ready for that? Does she really want that is all of the stuff with the tour gearing up to take a step back and maybe start a family and blah blah blah blah I assume she wants that but the tour is going to be ongoing for another year plus yeah and how does

that work it's like why the movie actors break up because one of them is doing a movie somewhere for nine months the other one's somewhere else for nine months. She's in Singapore and she's in Germany and she's in Edinburgh and she's all over the world. So there's definitely some sort of logistical questions, but it even feels like that's starting

to happen. Some phone calls? Yeah. They'll do a lot of FaceTime. I'm sure she's used to that, but then again, not really, because the relationship with Joe Alwyn started when she retreated from the world because everybody hated her and she was a snake.

And then the pandemic started. So they were sort of inside together for like six years. And now she won't even, she won't say like the United Kingdom out loud in the time piece. One of the little funny tidbits was she said, I moved to a foreign country. Like she wouldn't say I moved to London. I moved to the UK. It was just like that place that I will not name and that person who I will not name.

It got that acrimonious. She also might be still like going through it too. So I don't know. They're having fun. So what was the first year she became legitimately famous? 2009. 2009 was her rookie year of fame? Yeah, I think there's sort of three levels to it.

And one of them was fearless. The VMA is that, that kind of moment, which was love story and you belong with me. And then the second one was 1989, which was like 2014. Cause that was the squad. And that was the bringing the U S women's national team out on stage. And that was huge.

That was her first. Also. Also, that was really when she hit Zoe Simmons in the, in the biggest possible way. That's when she got on my radar. So that never gets mentioned in that phase, but keep going.

And then the third one is just now. The third one is the last year plus and coming out of her owning the pandemic with Folklore and Evermore brought her to a new stratosphere. So there's sort of,

it's like there's a three-tiered thing to it. Yeah, so if you take Michael Jackson, he's famous in the mid-70s with the Jackson 5. And then that goes all the way to when he becomes a solo artist with Off the Wall, which is around like 79, 80, 81 range. And then Thriller is 82, 83. And then it keeps going really for another,

I would say 12 years. And then he becomes, where all these artists end up going, where they become the greatest hits version of themselves. But she's not even close to being the greatest hits version. And then if you look at her versus female artists, it's like basically her and Barbra Streisand, I think for keeping it together

as an A-plus lister for this long because Barbara Streisand not only did she have the music but she became one of the biggest movie stars in the world for like six, seven years which is a piece Taylor I don't see that in her future Taylor hasn't really done that yet

no, I don't see it happening Cats didn't exactly open up a new chapter I don't see that one happening. But yeah, she's in pretty crazy air where she's in the second part of her second decade of being massively, massively famous. And then all of the things are almost like decisions AI would have made for a superstar, even dating a famous football player. It's just like a really good career move. Not to mention she seems like she likes him. Here's the thing.

Here's the thing about, I think sometimes the, Nathan and I were talking about this recently. The comp to me is LeBron in the sense that a superstar who's been around for so long and we have such a public history with.

Yeah. And at a certain point, you sort of, you get to a place where it's like, okay, I know this person rubs some people the wrong way, but if the worst thing that you can, if they've managed early fame and all of the success

in a way where it's like, look at other people, like look at other people who got famous and successful and rich that young, they're not doing well. And the worst thing you can say about Taylor Swift is like, I don't like the faces she makes at awards shows.

She seems a little annoying. Like that's a pretty high bar at a certain point. And that's sort of, I mean, I ride very hard for her for a lot of reasons, but I think that's one of them. Yeah, that's a really good point. Like how many female artists became famous either in their late teens, mid-late teens, or in their 20s, and it started to go sideways within five, six years? And it never one inch went worst thing that she's ever done is that she didn't speak up politically in 2016 and came to regret it. And,

and you know, it's, I mean, I think she regrets that it's, it's probably unfortunate to a lot of fans, but I don't know that there's, there are worse indictments out there than that. Well,

also the, and you saw with the concert tour, the amount of songs that she has at this point that people have like genuinely connected to, there are worse indictments out there than that. Well, also, and you saw it with the concert tour, the amount of songs that she has at this point that people have genuinely connected to, and you're talking three generations now of fans that different songs mean different things. It's really, it's a little Springsteen-ish because this is what Springsteen was like at his peak

where he had enough of a catalog and enough albums. And people argued about what the different album, which was the best one, what was his best song. Everybody kind of had their three or four favorite Springsteen songs that were their songs. And it's very similar to it. It reminds me of that. I want to know how long it'll last. like I wonder when I'm because you know if I have kids I will definitely be in the car at home or whatever going like you gotta listen to this this is Taylor Swift like I love Taylor Swift Taylor Swift was the biggest thing when I was growing up and blah blah blah blah will they roll their

eyes at that and be like whatever or will it be cool will it be like oh yeah I want to get into the classics or she's such an icon. I have to know like what in however many years where she'll be because she's really captured. I mean, she's captured young, young, young people now. And what kind of staying power that leads to, I think will be be fascinating. Well, and she also ruined the Chiefs. No, I'm just kidding. I didn't really mean that. He is an adult man. He is an adult man who can make his own decisions.

You know what ruined the Chiefs? The fact that Travis Kelsey is 34 and plays a position where you get the shit kicked out of you every week and tight ends usually last 8 to 10 years. You know what ruined the Chiefs? The fact that they have a wide receiver group that can't catch and doesn't know where to stand.

Right. Right. And drops big plays. And they're one of those where they could easily have three more wins. You did three more plays, three more wins than they would have. I am like really flirting with being just completely out on them. It's they're two Mahomes throwing to wide receivers. Mahomes throwing to running backs and tight ends is like as Mahomes throwing to wide receivers, Mahomes throwing to running backs and tight ends is like as Mahomes as ever.

Mahomes throwing to wide receivers is in like Desmond Ritter territory statistically. I just, I don't buy it. Like you can't win a Super Bowl like that. You know, one of the bets I was looking at for million dollar picks, you can bet the Jets first half Jets game against Miami. That's like plus 500 on FanDuel.

So basically you're saying Tyreek's going to be limping around. Dolphins are super banged up. The Jets' pass defense has been really good. Maybe they have a 3-0 lead first half and they win. But then if you put that with the Pats' first half

Pats game against the Chiefs, it becomes 34-1. It's an insane bet. But I actually think the Pats are going to hang with the Chiefs because their defense has been good for like five weeks. No Pacheco for the Chiefs.

I don't think they're going to be able to run the ball, and their receivers don't get open. So it just feels like it's going to be this ugly Foxborough. You've been to those games. It's like 22 degrees outside. The weather sucks. It's cold, and it's like 7-3 in the fourth quarter. Yeah, I like the

halftime. What you worry about with the Pats is just like a three turnover game and all of a sudden the Chiefs have extra possessions to do something with. Yeah, you think they'll steal it. Yeah. You buying all the Belichick stuff? Yeah. I think I am too.

I think it's done. Actually, I was talking's done. The thing that, actually, I was talking to one of the guys from NBC Sports Boston the other day and the thing that I was, that I've gone back to

this season is after they lost that Saints game and there were a couple of moments when, a couple fourth downs where Belichick was really conservative

where it seemed like they should have gone and they didn't. And he got asked after that game, why weren't you more aggressive? And his answer was, we're not good enough. We're not fundamentally good enough on third and fourth down to have earned my trust to go for those fourth downs.

Yeah. And that was, in hindsight, that was the moment to me. Because they are not a good team. They don't have a good roster. And when you don't have a good roster, you have to roll the dice sometimes. You have to do kind of the Brian Flores thing in Minnesota right now with that defense where it's just like, let's make it chaotic.

Let's make weird stuff happen. And then maybe we get a few lucky bounces. And we need that because we're not that good. I think Belichick's still a really good coach with a lot to offer, but I don't think he's a good coach for a bad team. And I think if they're going to get better, they have to just sort of admit that they're a bad team. And I don't think he can do that. So I don't know how it happens. I don't know how they work out the money and who cares about saving face. But I don't think that they can keep going. The biggest thing they have to work out is that if it is time, the exit where we all feel good about it,

where there's the statue outside the stadium and there's Bill Belichick Day in two years, like this can't be acrimonious. This was... But does he care about that? Does Bill care about that? I think he does. I'm sure Robert Kraft cares about that.

I think Bill, I think Bill cares about legacy history way more than people realize. I've said this over and over again. He's like a real student of everything. I think he cares about that a ton. But I think he also knows that. I mean, it's it's it's proven true with Brady, right? Like two years from now, Bill Belichick Day is going to go off without a hitch. Bill Belichick Day is going to be fine.

But in January and February, when there's a difference between, okay, can we come up with a mutual parting of ways where everybody's happy and maybe you work through a trade offer where he might be willing to take a little bit less money and everybody ends up looking good and he goes to a contender. That type of sort of communication and everyone being on the same page, I'm a little less confident that that's how it's going to go. Because if the crafts pull Belichick into a meeting right now and say, look, Bill, it's time. We have to talk about how we're

going to do this. Yeah. Isn't he going to give the blank press conference stare and say, do what? What are you talking about? I'm just here to get ready for minicamp. Or it could be what Tom Curran said already that they decided he said it on a pod he hasn't written it yet but he mentioned it on a pod that he thought after the Germany game they all decided

this is going to be a wrap at the end of the year and they've kind of kept on the wraps I don't know what's true or not true I will say this though I thought Chad Finn

wrote a good piece in the Boston Globe this week about Belichick the coach like just like this is still a good coach. Who are you going to go out and get that's a better coach? The question for me, A, if he wants to shop for the groceries, the famous Parcells phrase,

and coach the team, he's proven that he can't do that anymore. He's unfortunately too old. He has seven years of drafts and free agency that suggests that he's not capable of doing that and coaching the team well. So is he going to admit that, A? And then B, if he's just going to be a coach, why couldn't it still be with the Patriots? Go get him a front office person, have him work with the person. My question with this whole Belichick thing, if he leaves, he's not going to retire. Who is going to say to him, here are the car keys, do everything for us. That would be insane. How do you not just go

on pro football reference and look at the last seven drafts? Who is going to be insane to do that? Nobody. It would be insane, which is why I offer you Jerry Jones. Jerry Jones? They might win the Super Bowl. I know this is totally like the harebrained, but this is my theory. And I have heard from people that they don't think it's the craziest thing. Cowboys get bounced early in the playoffs. I think that team looks great.

I wouldn't bet on it based on just like the eye test on the field, but it's also the Cowboys. It's Mike McCarthy. You never know. Early, embarrassing playoff exit yet again. Jerry Jones is distraught. He's drowning his feelings in Johnny Walker blue.

And he just is. He's he's the guy. He is the guy with the job to offer that Belichick could count on being able to continue to collect wins, get closer to Shula, have a path to beating the Shula record reasonably quickly. Jerry's got the money for it. It's prestigious enough that it doesn't feel like a personal L. And I think Jerry Jones would do it. I think there is like one guy in the entire league who I think is sort of crazy enough to do it.

And I think Jerry would do it. Plus the roster is good enough. Coach and GM, except for the fact that who runs that personnel department? Steven Jones. Someone with the last name of the owner is the other person there, which I think is a that's a unique element in terms of the power structure. Right. Because Bill can't, I mean, he certainly couldn't say,

I'm not doing what you want me to do in the same way that, I mean, what? Like Matt Groh is who he's currently bouncing ideas off of and having to come to decisions with in New England. It would be really different. It just doesn't seem quite as crazy as it sounds.

It's a good theory. I was thinking Chargers would be the only other team that would be panicky enough to be like, all right, here's everything, because their coach is going. I just don't know how they'll pay for it. I just don't. I mean, maybe in a trade.

If they could do a trade where the Crafts are still on the hook, at least for next year, maybe then it happens. You know, you know, crafts getting something out of this. There's no way he's like, yeah, Bill, thanks for everything. Unless I mean, but we don't. The problem is that the Belichick contract is such a black box and what it says about what they can do. And if he is owed a job where he has personnel say like, I just have no idea. And I think the people who, who do have any idea,

there's three of them and two of them have the last name craft. And the other one has last name Belichick. And you covered the path. So, you know, like they're kind of secretly cheap with this stuff. And I wonder like if his contract is as lucrative as people seem to think.

I think there's one. I think it is. I think there is one contract that is a massive exception. And then the rest of the time, they hire people who are still being paid from another team and try to get around that. But I think Bill is owed a lot of money for next year. And if you are the Chargers and you've paid your last three coaches like four million bucks a year, that's a real thing to work out. So if it was via trade, I could see that happening. But I think there's a larger hurdle to making that happen than it seems like there would be. We have a guy at the ringer. I'm not sure if you've heard of him, Ben Solak.

I have. You've heard of him? Okay. He did a podcast with Sheil last week and he threw a takeout that Bill Belichick will be a playoff coach next year somewhere. No matter where he is, he will be

in the playoffs. And I thought Sheil was going to like have a conniption as he was listening to it. It was really good. It was really good. It was good content. The craziest part of that

was that it encapsulated if he stayed in New England. Oh yeah, that was part of the take because he was like, they already have the defense. Gonzalez is coming back. Judon's coming back.

They're going to have like the third or fourth pick. I was like, I'm in. I'm in on the 11-6 Belichick. I'm in too. I'm in too because I think there's basically zero chance he stays in New England and that would be the hard one for me to wrap my head around. Dallas?

Bill Belichick would make the Chargers a playoff team. I feel good about that. I feel really good about that. I don't care about the curse and blah, blah, blah. I don't care about the curse and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. What the curse needs is a little bit of Bill Belichick. So if they could make it happen with the contract and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, I would be excited about that team. I just get concerned when people at their 70s having jobs that usually require 70 hours of work a week. I just know you met my father. My dad, he got pulled off by Netflix

because Netflix is checking all the accounts. He was on my Netflix forever. Yeah, that's been a whammy in our household too. It's easily been the most traumatic thing that's happened to him in 2023. He has no idea how to get Netflix now. I've explained to him, just sign up and then you just follow the instructions

and you pay for it. And it's like, I'm asking him to land an airplane because the pilot passed out. And I just think of that when like he's around Belichick's age, but maybe like three, four years older. And I just think of Belichick trying to put together a draft and my dad not being able to do Netflix. Worries me. Just a tiny bit. Not afraid to admit. All right, we're gonna take a break and we're gonna talk about the week 15 slate. This episode is brought to you by Movember. The mustache is back with a vengeance.

Look at Travis Kelsey. Before he rocked that Super Bowl ring, he rocked that super soup strainer. Grow a mustache for Movember. You'll do great things too. You won't win the Super Bowl, but your fundraising will support mental health, suicide prevention, and prostate and testicular cancer research. And if you don't want to grow a mustache, you could still walk or run 60 kilometers, host an event, or set your own goal and mow your own way. Do great things this November. Sign up now. Just search Movember.

After decades of shaky hands caused by debilitating tremors, Sunnybrook was the only hospital in Canada who could provide Andy with something special. Three neurosurgeons, two scientists, one movement disorders coordinator, 58 answered questions, two focused ultrasound procedures, one specially developed helmet, thousands of high-intensity focused ultrasound waves, zero incisions, All right.

So million dollar picks. I've been red hot. I'm a little nervous. I've been red hot. And I asked you to bring one pick. I'm going to tell you a couple games that I really like. And you could just give me your instant Taylor Swift reaction. Like almost like you hear the Taylor Swift song.

You know in two seconds whether it's a hit or not. I'm going to throw these picks at you. The game I like the most is the Bears at Cleveland. The Bears are three-point underdogs. I think they've been a different team the last five, six weeks. Just in general, they're fourth in rushing. Their defense has been a little frisky. It's second against the rush for the year.

But their big thing for their last five, they beat Carolina by three. They should have beaten Detroit, beat Minnesota by two. They should have been Detroit beat Minnesota by two. And then they beat a Detroit by 15 last week. Those are last four. I feel like the arrows pointing up with them. Then you go to Cleveland. You can only start two offensive tackles. They've lost three.

They're down to tackles number four and five on their offensive line. Their centers hurt. He might play. It might not. They have two defensive tackles that four and five on their offensive line. Their center's hurt. He might play, might not. They have two defensive tackles that are now out for the season. And then a third one has a concussion. They just gave their safety grant up an extension. He's immediately is out for the season. Jerome Ford has an injured wrist.

Denzel Ward was hurt last week. Their best cornerback might play this week. And Amari Cooper has been hurt for two weeks. This is like one of the all-time most banged up teams. And I don't think they're going to be able to hold on against a Chicago team that's playing pretty well. What do you think? I love it. I'm so on the Bears here. They've had the sweat trade worked out in a way that I did not imagine it would have mostly because of value, but that's been a top 10 defense. You mean the much ridiculed sweat trade, including by me?

By myself as well. But they've looked really good. The other thing is you just made such a good case for all of the component parts mattering. Here's mine. Is Joe Flacco going to keep doing this? Right. They're going to keep having Joe Flacco

throw 45 passes a game and not get burned because of it? In front of no offensive line. Totally. This is, yeah. No, I love, I'm glad you picked this one. I love the Bears here. Okay, good.

Because I thought that line still seems off. And I wonder when we get to game time, whether this goes to like Bears plus one, something like that. But for now, I'm grabbing it. So that's, that's one. Next one, you mentioned the Cowboys earlier. In this Cowboys build, they're at Buffalo. Buffalo needs the game.

The lines drop to Buffalo is now minus one and a half. And Buffalo's offense is really good. And if you look at the numbers, it seems like Buffalo is going to be able to move the ball against Dallas. No question. Dallas, some of the road steps, a little iffy with them. They're definitely a great team at home.

A little iffy on the road. They've had, you know, the last Arizona, they've had some shaky ones. It's going to be in Buffalo, probably cold. But I just think they're, this sounds like a Collinsworth, but I just think they're bigger than Buffalo's defense. I feel like they can overpower them. And I'm thinking about them in a tease because if it's plus one and a half, I can take it to plus seven and a half,

make it a two-score game. I think it's a close game. I'm not positive who wins, but I think they're big enough that they hang around and maybe they steal it. I like the tease idea because I would not want to pick this in a close one. In a straight up, yeah.

Yeah. The Bills do not actually need to win this game to have a really good shot at making the playoffs. If they win the last three, which is Chargers, Patriots, Dolphins, they probably will get in. They're not guaranteed, but they probably will still make the playoffs. So it's not, they don't absolutely have to do it. I agree that I just, I don't like,

I don't like trusting Buffalo to do really anything, but I also think that they have a lot of offensive power. And if they don't turn the ball over, which is always the story, they could absolutely hang with Dallas. I could see Dallas actually beating them by double figures and I could see Buffalo winning the game, but I don't see Buffalo beating the hell out of Dallas. No, because they're hanging on by a thread defensively. I actually, I mean, look, Sean McDonough is not having a good year, but if there's anything to say for that guy right now, it's that I would have expected this defense to collapse

in a way that it just hasn't. But I don't. I mean, against Dak, the way he's playing right now, if anyone wins in a blowout, it's definitely the Cowboys. But weird stuff happens in Bills games. Like, just, I don't want a piece of it. So I was going to tease them with the Rams, who are minus 6.5 against Washington.

Washington's defense, they're 32nd in yards per play. They're 32nd against the pass, 23rd against red zone. And I think this Rams team healthy, I genuinely like their offense. I think they can move the ball against almost anybody. I wouldn't want to see them in the playoffs as long as I know they're healthy. McVay, I think, is legitimately in the coach of the year. And this is just a game they should win. Riverboat Ron is not Robot Ron,

as we've all discussed in our pods. Robot Ron is just rowing toward the end of the season before he gets fired. The team has no incentive. They've gotten worse every month and I don't see how the Rams don't beat them. So that was a tease I like. Rams-Cowboys. Yeah. So this is the game that I love. I don't think there's a world in which the Rams don't score

more than 30 points in this game. And if you're telling me that Matthew Stafford has to kind of light him up, I'm very confident that he can do that. This Rams offense, when they have had their playmakers healthy, is easily top 10

and is sniffing being a top 5 offense. What's really hurt them is that they're 32nd in special teams DVOA and obviously that's what lost in the game against the Ravens. And the seven holding penalties. Right. And they're young. They're blacks on the backs. They mess stuff up like that. But also, Sean McVay

I think has been putting on a clinic this season in terms of just sort of reaffirming that he's committed to football, he's still got it. And I think he cares about beating Washington. I still think that every one of those guys, when they've worked somewhere, it does kind of matter to them.

So I think they'll be motivated. And I just don't think that the little margin call stuff of them being young and making mistakes and special teams and penalties, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Against the Ravens, that totally matters. Against the Commanders, I don't think that matters. Plus, you're looking at, they got four games left. They win this, they're 7-7.

They got the Saints at home next week. God only knows who's playing quarterback for that crap Saints team that's gotten worse. Another team that's gotten worse every month. The Saints are like fighting each other on the sidelines. The Saints are, yeah each other on the sidelines. Like the Saints are, yeah. That's in trouble. Then they're at the Giants on New Year's Eve

in a 10 o'clock game, which is like, oh, the Rams, eight and seven. Nobody wants to play them. And then I could totally see them losing that game. And then they play the Niners last week of the season. But to me, I'm with you. I don't know if it's a top five offense, but it's definitely sniffing

when all those guys are there. If you just look at their starting running back and their two best receivers, that's in the vicinity of anything anybody else has, right? It's like a top three. I really like them.

And Stafford is the perfect quarterback for a team like this because he's not afraid to be in a shootout. He's not afraid to need to... If you need to score 35 to win, he's perfectly happy to do that. The health stuff has been the question there, but I still think that when he's on the field, when he's healthy, he's playing really, really, really well.

So I love that pick. Well, I have two more that I like, but do you have a pick or did we already do it is there something you really like on the slate so i liked i i'd liked the rams um i'd liked commander's rams but let's talk about so here's here's one that i want to see how you feel about because i'm tempted but feel a little stupid. Okay. Could the Lions stop the skin? Could the Lions look a little bit better defensively playing a quarterback in Russell Wilson,

who at this point just doesn't have the mobility? And I think that's when that defense has been extra soft is when they face a mobile quarterback, especially, I mean, you saw it in the Bears game. They just fold. But I don't think they have to deal with that. And I think that's when that defense has been extra soft is when they face a mobile quarterback, especially. I mean, you saw it in the Bears game. They just fold. But I don't think they have to deal with that. Denver.

And they're home. They're in the dome. Golf is going to be a little bit more comfortable, I think. And I just wonder if I wonder if everyone is off the scent with the Lions. And it's making me a little bit tempted, which makes me feel really dumb because I don't want to trust that team. I don't trust that team at all. But it just seems like minus four,

I think it is, feels a little low. Yeah, you think like five, six weeks ago, this is a minus nine. Right. Or minus nine. Right. Or minus nine and a half. Man, I was with you. I was like, this is the week.

Everybody's off the Lions. This is the week they bounce back. And then I looked at their last seven. So starting with the Ravens killed them 38-6. Vegas, they beat 26-14. That's right as the McDaniels thing is imploding, right? Chargers, they barely beat 41-38. They give up 38 points to the Chargers.

That seems so bad though in retrospect. They barely beat Chicago and should have lost 31-26. They lose to Green Bay on Thanksgiving by seven. They barely beat a New Orleans team that hates each other, 33-28. And then they got waxed by the Bears last week. So this is their last seven. We're talking,

it's like more than a month and a half now of can you play a good game? And you look at their, the big picture stats, like their defense, their 29th and red zone, their 26th and sacks, their 23rd and creating turnovers.

Like their defense just doesn't do anything. Yeah. So that, that would be like, is that actually a good fit against Russell Wilson? So here's, I do think that they especially struggle when the quarterback has some mobility and Russ in some ways I think plays they especially struggle when the quarterback has some mobility.

And Russ, in some ways, I think plays into that because when he screws up, it's because he thinks he's got some left and he just doesn't. He's pretty that that Denver offense is actually at its best when he stays in the pocket. One, always a always a coin flip if he's going to be willing to do that. But two, I think they're probably a little bit more capable of defending an offense like that. But look, bigger picture with the Lions, I am not there.

I don't think this team is good. I don't think that defense is going to be able to do anything against real playoff teams. But I think the Broncos hype is high and the Lions hype is low. Yeah. And it just, I wonder if the line is a little reflective of that. hype is high and the Lions hype is low.

I wonder if the line is a little reflective of that. I was trying to figure out a good Saturday special parlay because I like the Colts against the Steelers. Not enough to bet on its own but to throw in a parlay just because the Colts offense can actually score

regardless of their defense is terrible, but they always are going to be 20 points or higher. And the Steelers just, I don't know if it's Trubisky. I've seen Mason Rudolph play quarterback, whoever it is, it's going to be bad. And we know they have a bad offensive coordinator. So how do they score more than 20 points against anybody? And the Colts can just score more points. That would be a pick from the heart for me because I like watching the Colts play. They're not great, but I like watching them play. And I hate watching the Steelers. It is just, it's like, you got to do one of these with your eyes and hold them open. And then the other Saturday game is Bengals-Vikings

where it seems like all the smarter, sharp people are on the Vikings. Bengals, you're buying high on them because they've looked good the last two weeks. Browning was like 50 for 60 his last two weeks. But the Minnesota defense, which, I mean, they're

50 on yards per play. They're third against first down. They really seems like they found something with the blitzing thing, but it's like what you said before. It's almost gimmicky. And part of me is like, oh, I see the Minnesota case. They're getting three and a half points. The other part's like, maybe Jake Browning's good. And we do this every

year with like, we don't trust the out of nowhere quarterback, but it's like, maybe he's just good. Maybe he'll pick apart their blitz. We also do this three times a year where it's like, oh, maybe Josh Dobbs is really good. True. A lot of times we're wrong. Yeah, that's fair. But you have a feel on that game?

I would rather trust that the Vikings can make life hell for Jake Browning than trust that Jake Browning is actually a good quarterback. He has been good against the Blitz. I think he's... This is from memory, so I might be wrong on this, but I think it's like 12 for 19. Yeah. I just don't really buy that that keeps up. And I do think that if there's a defense

that just for a quarterback who doesn't have a lot of experience can just freak out, that's a pretty good one. So I don't think the Bengals, I think credit to them that they've been able to do this the last couple of weeks, but I think it probably ends this weekend.

I'm not a Nick Mullins guy, just in case anyone asks you over the next four days. Like, hey, I was just wondering, is Bill a Nick Mullins guy? The answer is not really. Yeah, I'm... The only case with the... I was trying to think of narratives coming out of this weekend. And, you know, the Vikings have no running game at all.

They have Jefferson who's going to play this week, but had this horrible chest injury that he immediately had to go to the hospital. So even if he's playing, that dude's not 100%. And then I don't know who's playing quarterback. Like if it's Nick Mullins, is it him for all four quarters? What if he's not good? Do they go back to the BYU kid? What do they do?

Ruiz wants a platoon. Ruiz wants, have Nick Mullins do the, do most of the game, but use Dobbs' athleticism. There's a Cincy Indy Denver money parlay is plus 706. So I was looking at that one.

All right. Couple more. So the Niners are playing one. All right, a couple more. So the Niners are playing the Cardinals. They're huge favorites. But if you take Niners' first half, which has been money as a bet all year because Shanahan, like David Fincher, is scripting out his storyboards.

He scripts out his first 20 plays. So Niners to win the first half, Niners to win the game against a team that I think has the worst defense in the league. It's either them or Washington. That's minus 280. And the question is, what minus three team do you put with that

to get a nice little parlay of plus? And I narrowed it down to the Ravens just to beat the Jaguars. Just money line, Ravens over Jags. Or Atlanta to beat Carolina. Oh, Atlanta. Atlanta.

So the other thing is you bet Atlanta straight up. That's the other one I can't figure out. You just bet Atlanta straight up because they're so weird. Don't tie them to another team and just take Atlanta minus three against Carolina's crappy team and depressed Bryce Young

and this coaching staff that... Jim Caldwell's now involved and helping to run practices. I don't know what's going on with that team. So you like Atlanta more than the Ravens? Yeah, just because, I mean, the Jags are a good team with a good quarterback who's still coming back from injury, but Trevor Lawrence could throw four touchdowns in the first half

and all of a sudden the game is, is just a totally different situation. Carolina is a terrible team. Atlanta is so discombobulated and finds every possible way to lose, but they still move the ball. Uh, they out gained, I'm trying to think of what it was. I think they outgained. They had something like 144 more yards in their game last Sunday. And I think Bryce Young threw for 139 total. Oh, Jesus. They're just a wildly better team than the Panthers. I know it's the Falcons, but that's the only reason anyone would even pause, I think, is just all the weirdness around that team. They're way

better than Carolina. One thing I like about the money line in that is you don't have to worry about Atlanta playing these stupid games where somebody misses a two-point or there's a few extra point got blocked and it's like 15 to 14 and you're like, what's happening in this game? Why aren't the Falcons covering? So I just like the money line with them. I think that's probably for the best. I do think that if there's any week to feel confident that you don't need to worry about that, it's when

they're playing the Panthers, but it's probably a sound strategy. The only thing that worries me with the Panthers is that they literally have nothing to play for because they don't have their pick. Those teams always scare me. You can't count on the coaching staff or the owner to be like, Hey, can you sit that wide receiver? Uh, last one. I really liked this one. I'd like the slate again this week. I'm feeling confident. I like the Seahawks against

the Eagles to either be closer to win because I think they are going to be able to move the ball offensively on them. And honestly, I'm just, I don't think the Eagles defense is be closer to win because I think they are going to be able to move the ball offensively on them. And honestly, I'm just, I don't think the Eagles defense is good. Like I think we have a big enough sample size now. They're 28th on first down. They're 32nd on third down. They're 30th in the red zone.

They're 28th against the pass. Like we have a 13 week sample size that their defense isn't good. And JSN got going for the Seahawks the last couple of weeks. They have three receivers who can get open. Walker's coming back. Charbonnet,

he got going. Walker was out and they have this two headed monster running back. I just think they're going to score points. And I was looking at, you can adjust it to Seattle plus four and a half with the over of 42 and a half. And that's plus 140. And I thought that looked pretty tasty because I think this is a close game with some points.

I think this is the only one so far. I've really been with you, but the Seattle offensive line is so banged up. And if I look at this Eagles team and I think about what they must be talking about in that building this week, they have to get their pass rush going. They are not going to be able to fix their secondary.

They're not going to be able to fix their linebackers and their safeties for the playoffs. But if that defense has any hope in the next couple of months, what has to happen is they have to start pressuring opposing quarterbacks. And I think this is an opportunity for them to do it. And they still, you know, essentially it is the same group from last year. You swap out Hargrave for the draft picks. That's fair. And they should be able to do it.

And I think this is the week for them to try to start really focusing on that. And Seattle being able to protect worries me. What if I took the Seahawks to plus seven and a half? Okay. Yeah. That's that. Seattle plus seven and a half with the over 42 and a half is basically even

odds. One score game. They can move the ball. I was impressed by Seattle against Dallas. I thought Dallas was going to be able to demolish them, demolish their line. And they, I don't know, they moved the ball. And I think with those three receivers,

I think they're kind of hard to play now. Well, and the way that they've handled Geno's health has indicated that they have been targeting this game and going, we just, we got to be ready for the Eagles game. He's got to be as healthy as he can be for that game, and that's what we've got to prioritize. I'm good with that. I like that. Okay.

Jets, Dolphins. Jets are getting eight and a half. I think the Dolphins are decimated with injuries now. They're officially past the danger point. Collin's hurt. Armstead's always hurt. Tyreek's going to be limping around. It's bad weather.

It's just all that. Watching that Titans game and having them in a Moneyline parlay and just like, oh my god. I had to hedge at halftime. It completely beats me why the Jets defense is still playing really, really hard, but they are still playing really, really hard. They found a way to care about this team. Um, it that's yeah, that line is too big because

that defense is really, really good. And Miami is so banged up and the Tyreek thing. I mean, it's, it's when he spaces them out, the offense works and it's so simplistic, but I feel like when he's not himself or if he's on the field, it's just, I mean, we saw it in that Monday night game. It just does not work. It's a downright bad offense when he's not playing. They can't block.

Tua turns into Scott Mitchell as soon as Tyreek's off the field. He just can't move. He just becomes lefty. If he's not going to run the ball in two seconds, he seems like a different guy. And I thought that was the weirdest injury I've ever seen in a football game. Hurt his ankle. Then he's just standing on the sidelines. They're not working on it. There's no electroids on it or anything. Then he goes back in. Then he's out again. And it's like, what? Are you hurt? What is this? he's just a very strange guy yeah strange well and it's there's always

there's always like a lingering thing and then they're there he does go and get the it's not a theragun but like the weird uh um sideline treatment and then it helps and then it's but it just feels like that's going to be a thing for them for the rest of the season and the the defense is too good i mean i don't you know I don't buy any of the Zach Wilson hype, but that line is too big. They look good last week. I mean, their pass defense is about as good as anybody in the league now. Like you really can't throw on them anymore.

So I think Miami, I don't know. The Jets are an interesting something in that game. That first half Jets game bet is plus 500. You can do Jets plus eight and a half with some sort of under. There's some plays. I'll figure it out when I do million dollar picks. Nora, is Ruiz, when does he admit defeat on Brock Purdy? Never?

Never. Never? This is just it? He's entrenched? We might have to. I mean, we have to. We've got to talk some sense into him on some level because he made a promise to stop covering the sport,

I think, if Purdy won MVP. And I personally, that would be bad for me because he's my pod partner. It would be bad for all of us. Yeah, you just have to walk it back. So we got it. We're walking that back a little. But he makes a good argument. That's all I'll say for the guy.

Do we have to do like an intervention like they used to do in 90s teen soap operas where I asked to talk to him on a Zoom, but when he shows up on the Zoom, there's nine people there. They're like, Stephen, we need you to give up this Brock Purdy thing. He's been really good. All those studies about why political media is so broken because when people receive counter arguments to things, they hold true. They just triple down on their own arguments. I think we might create a monster.

All right. You can listen to our ringer NFL show. You can listen on every single album and you can read it on the ringer.com. Good to see you. Good to see you. Good to see you. We are supported by NFL Sunday Ticket on YouTube and YouTube TV. Don't change your team when you change your town. Get NFL Sunday Ticket on YouTube and YouTube TV, where it's easier than ever to keep up with all your favorite teams on Sunday afternoons. And right now, you can still get the mid-season price starting at $79 for the rest of the 23 season. The biggest stretch we have, the biggest fantasy stretch we have when bundled

with YouTube TV. I mean, you think of all the fantasy implications. I have a buy in the fantasy league I care about the most where we vote out somebody else. And it's going to be weird for me watching my fantasy guys wondering, wait a second, don't use up all your good fantasy points this week. Save it for next week. Even though they don't even know they're all on the same team.

But we got all the fantasy guys. There's a couple of sneaky home dogs. You got the Jets and you got the Chiefs. Who knows what those... I think it's going to be a crazy week 15. I'm just... I just feel it in my bones. I think weird it's going to be a crazy week 15. I'm just... I just feel it in my bones. I think weird stuff's going to happen.

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Get NFL Sunday Ticket starting at $79 when bundled with YouTube TV where you get even more football. Sign up right now at youtube.com slash BS. Lowest price on YouTube TV with base plan, rest of 2023 season, terms and embargoes apply, no cancellations. Million Dollar Picks, week 15. Just happy times here at the Million Dollar Picks headquarters. Last week, we won 1.822 million. For this season, we were up 2.626 million. There's a time we got to a dark place here on Million Dollar Picks. I think I was down over 2 million. You can cave, you can blame

other people, you can finger point, or you can say, you know what? What am I doing wrong? I'm not going to blame other teams, bad quarterbacks, dumb coaches I bet on. What am I doing wrong? And I rededicated myself to the process. And also I got super lucky with a couple of games. Week 15, yet another week, I really liked the slate. We talked about Bears and Browns with Norm Princiati. Bears plus three in Cleveland. The Browns are just incredibly banged up. The Bears are on a little, I'm going to call it a hot streak, but it's a warm streak. And they're starting to look like the sneaky second half team, at least in the NFC. I love Bears plus three. I think they could win this game outright and probably will, but I'll grab the points. Bears plus three, $300,000. Next one, we're doing a tease. Mentioned this with Nora. Rams teasing them down against

Robo Ron to minus 0.5. And we're putting them with the Cowboys. Everyone's on the Bills in that Bills-Cowboys game. It's the Bills time. Here they come. I had somebody texted me today about how they like Josh Allen for MVP at 14 to 1. If they win this game, here comes Josh Allen. I'm still in on the Cowboys. I think their offense, their offensive line, how big and powerful they are, the protection that Dak has. We haven't seen it a hundred percent translate on the road yet, but I think it will in this game. I want to tease them the plus seven and a half. I don't know if they're going to win this game, but I think it's a close game. And I don't see either defense really

a hundred percent stopping the other offense, which is fine. Let's go back and forth. But Cowboys plus 7.5, Rams minus 0.5, put 300K on that as a tease. Next one, Seattle is playing Philadelphia. They're getting 3.5 points at home. Did you see the Dallas game? Seattle can move the ball.

Seattle's got three receivers and two good running backs and Gino's up and down. But from what we've seen from Philly's defense, the stats are absolutely alarming with Philly's defense. I mean, you go through it and it's like they're 28th and third down. Everything is 26, 28, 29, 30th, and whatever category you want, first downs, anything. And I think Seattle's going to be able to throw the ball on them. So I want to do Seattle plus seven and a half. That's adjusted with the over adjusted to 42 and a half. So I think it's going to be a close game. Maybe Seattle wins, but I think they hang around. And I think there's

some points that is minus 102. We're putting 300K on that. And I actually think Seattle could beat Philadelphia. I'm not buying Philadelphia's defense at all. And they have an easy stretch. They'll be fine. By the time we get to January, I'll be back in on Philly. But I think this is the last week where we're going, wait, what's going on with Philly? Also, it's a fantasy week and there's a lot of fantasy guys in this game. I don't know. I'm just feeling over. Last one. It's a parlay. It's a half or they win by 0.33 points. I've seen them do it. We're just going to take them, the Atlanta money line parlayed with San Francisco playing the terrible Cardinals defense and San Francisco winning the first half of games is about as reliable of a bet as you can get. You can parlay San Francisco winning the first

half of San Francisco winning the game is minus 280. Put that with the Atlanta money line. That is plus 111. That sounds magnificent, my friends. We're going to grab that. We're putting 300K on that. And then last but not least, got to bet on the Saturday games. I like Cincinnati against Minnesota. Everyone's on Minnesota. They can't run the ball and they're playing Nick Mullins, a quarterback. And Justin Jefferson is questionable because he got hit so hard in the chest, they had to take him to the hospital. I'm staying away from that. I like the way Cincinnati's playing. I'm a Jake Browning guy. I believe in the guy. All he does is throw accurate passes to his teammates, which is one of my favorite qualities of the quarterback. Taking them, taking Indianapolis over Pittsburgh because Pittsburgh's either playing Trubisky or Mason

Rudolph or both. I'm out. Taking Indianapolis. They can outscore them in Indy. And then last but not least, in a parlay here, Denver Moneyline in Detroit. I'm not buying the Detroit. Here, they're going to reset it. Detroit's been bad or mediocre or forgettable here for seven straight weeks. And defensively, I just don't think they have it.

So the three of those together, that's plus 749 for the three. And we're going to put 50K on that. And then last but not least, we're going to do a same game parlay that I'm going to put on my Twitter feed on Saturday or Sunday. That's either going to be with the Ravens-Jaguars game, because I like the points in that Ravens game. So looking at something like Lamar, Odell Beckham, 60 plus yards, Odell Beckham scores a touchdown and then something with the over and you can get it to like 10 to 111. Might do that.

Might do something with the Jets game. I didn't, I was afraid to put the Jets in this because Zach Wilson is their quarterback, but I like their pass defense against a banged up Miami team. I think they can hang around in this game. The line is plus nine and a half. You could have the Jets plus three and a half,

get that at plus 210 on Fando. So I'm looking at one of those two for a same game parlay. Either way, those are the million dollar picks for week 15. All right, our friend Corey Jefferson is here. He has a new movie called american fiction that is doing very well and i think has been screened at how many different places do you have to go to

these screenings when it's like every part oh yeah man oh yeah every i'm going around the world i'm leaving to london tomorrow i was in london a few weeks ago i'm leaving to london tomorrow and then paris it's uh yeah it's been a run we've we premiered it and then Paris. Yeah, it's been a run. We premiered it on September 8th and it's been kind of nonstop after that. What's your screening strategy? Do you leave? Because some people just leave and come back in the end. I leave.

I haven't watched the movie all the way through. We had a cast and crew screening in Boston like a month ago and I sat through that one, but that's the last time I've seen it. I sort of mostly just leave these days. I can't, I can't, it's watching it as painful and that like, I love the movie. I'm very proud of it, but you know, I just see all the mistakes that I made in every scene and I just, I can't bring myself to sort of sit through that anymore. Are you

constantly surprised at people laughing at parts you never expected them to laugh at? And, um, that's always the weirdest thing for screening that documentaries are different than movies but i'm always amazed what gets reactions versus what we thought we get a reaction yeah but it changed it also changes everywhere you go that's the that's the fun i mean i really do think that i think that we've we need to treat the cinema experience like live music. I think that that's the joy of going to the movie, isn't that you have a big screen. It's like, whatever, big screen's fine.

You can get a big screen at your house these days. But I think just being amongst hundreds of people who are having sometimes similar, sometimes different reactions from you is part of the fun of, especially a movie like this, that this is a movie that people are going to feel differently about different aspects of it. And so being in a room

with a bunch of people who might feel differently from you is nice, I think. What's your promotional strategy? Because I know you pretty well. We've known each other a while. We have a lot of mutual friends and it's been incredible

to watch the ascent that you've had, but you're not really a, let me go on 25 podcasts and 17 TV shows type of type of person. So I'm sure they're asking you to promote it. Like, I know you hate this. No. Yeah. The, you know, you don't become a writer to be on stage in front of a bunch of people. You know, I, at least I became a writer to be on stage in front of a bunch of people you know I at least I became a writer because I like being alone in my room with my thoughts you know on my computer so this is all new to me but I'm so proud of the film I'm happy to do this but yeah this is this is a little unnatural for me it's it's I don't I don't feel like I'm good at it yet I think that I think that I'm learning how to be a salesman

because that's part of the job. And it's a part of the job that I hadn't prepared myself for. If you are going to make movies, then you need to, part of the job is to be out there supporting it and getting people to go see it. And so I'm now realizing that this is just going to be part of my job for the rest of my life

and I need to find ways to do it. I can't just hide from it and say, I'm not going to do this ever. I think that I need to become better at being on stage. So I've been trying to do that slowly. I've taken some media training. I'm getting better at this. Media training? Oh, my God. Oh, yeah, man. Oh, yeah.

I did a whole day of media training before we started the press tour. Well, you're like, is it fair to say you're a naturally suspicious person for the most part? What do you mean, suspicious?

Well, just like people acting, people like maybe you've met in the past or people maybe who wouldn't have been as nice to you four years ago, but now you have this big movie. People are like, yo, Korn! And you're like, where were you in 2017? Yeah.

I definitely recognize that there's people who are all of a sudden following me on Instagram. Oh, Jesus. I definitely am recognizing that that all of a sudden following me on instagram like oh jesus like i definitely am recognizing that that there's all all of a sudden there's people who like definitely i think had a different opinion of me for four or five years ago than they do now yeah yeah that's uh you know but but so i i'm not i don't think that that makes me sort of like suspicious or skeptical

but i think that you know the greatest the greatest sort of like suspicious or skeptical, but I think that, you know, the greatest, the greatest sort of like grounding moment and all this. So at, at Toronto where I, where we premiered the film, yeah, I signed,

I signed my first autograph. That was very strange. We were walking out, walking out of a press thing and somebody was like, would you please sign this? And then they had a picture of me. I have no idea where they got this picture of me. So I signed it.

And then we went to another thing and there was more people asking for autographs and people were asking for selfies and stuff. And I was like, wow, this is, look at this. Like people know who I am. And right before I got in the car, this one woman ran up to me and she goes, Corey, Corey, can I get a photo of Corey?

I love your work. And I was like, oh, she doesn't even know my name. But this is like, this is, this person actually has no idea who I am. she just she's being sort of like she's been drawn into this like frenzy around me because she assumes that I'm somebody that like this is going to be a picture that she wants to have on her phone but she actually has no fucking clue who I am and it doesn't matter so I think that that to me was like as soon as I heard that I was like oh this is this is all like I don't need to

pay attention to this stuff and I just need to focus on what's important which is like the movie is important you know and getting the work out there is important. You grind it for a while so that makes it easier to appreciate all this stuff. It's been funny just anecdotally hearing about the movie

it's like Kord's making a movie. Oh that's cool. And then it's like Sterling K. Brown's been funny just anecdotally hearing about the movie. It's like, Kord's making a movie. Oh, that's cool. And then it's like, Sterling K. Brown's going to be in it. Jeffrey Wright is like, oh. East is in it now. Whoa, wait. And then he's making it. It's like, Kord, supposedly this movie's really good. Oh, that sounds good. I hope it works out for him.

No, this movie's going to be really good. It's in Toronto. It's like, it's in Toronto? That's cool. And then it's like, the movie crushed in Toronto. This is going to be really good. It's in Toronto. It's like, it's in Toronto? That's cool. And then it's like, the movie crushed in Toronto. This is going to be a thing. It's like, what? But it was just kind of these emails and texts watching the arc of it. And then all of a sudden it was a thing.

That's how it's been for me too, truly. I could not have anticipated any of this. We are in many ways the little movie that could. This is a... We have a small budget. We had a limited amount of time. This is... I don't think anybody had any dreams beyond just getting the movie

made. I certainly didn't. Because this was a year that... I remember when we submitted it to Toronto, I had people saying, listen, temporary expectations. This is, this is like a competitive year for like this year,

every single huge director in the world decided to release a movie in 2023. Right. So it's like Scorsese and Fincher and Nolan and Greta Gerwig and Alexander Payne. It's like everybody in the world had a movie out this year. And the 92 dream team movie out this year. It's like the 92 dream team of directors. Truly, truly. Just all trapping them.

Truly. And so people were like, you know, it might not even get into Toronto. So don't get your hopes up. And so when I found out that the movie just got into the festival, I was literally jumping up and down in my kitchen. I didn't even allow myself to dream beyond that. Just because I was like, well, this is, you know, this is a movie that we made for an incredibly low budget compared to all

these other movies. And it's a movie that, you know, um, I love all the actors in it, but it's not like, you know, it's not like it's Leonardo DiCaprio or,

or, you know, these like massive movie stars. It is, these are really, really great actors. Um, but it's all actors that people like. When I was watching the credits,

because I intentionally, I watched it last night and I intentionally didn't want to read anything about it until I watched it. And the names were popping up. I'm like, oh, oh. It was like a lot. And then it got to Keith David

and I just lost my mind. Yeah, man. People know, that's my guy. He's like, Keith David is, just lost my mind. Yeah, man. People know that's my guy. He's like, Keith David is I was I really wanted him. When we first started making the movie, there was a bunch of flashback scenes and

I wanted Keith David to play the father in the flashback scenes and then the more we worked on the script, I was like, we don't need the flashbacks. And so I cut them all and I was bummed because we weren't going to go to Keith David. But then we had this really, you know, I don't want to spoil it, but we had this smaller role show up and I was like, we don't need the flashbacks. And so I cut them all and I was bummed because we weren't going to go to Keith David. But then we had this really, you know, I don't want to spoil it, but we had this smaller role show up. And I was like, I would love to get Keith David in here somehow. Do you think he would consider this?

And we sent it to him and he called me the next day. He FaceTimed me and we just chatted for like 15 minutes and then he agreed to do it. And I was like, so, so, so delighted because I've been such a huge fan of his forever. I mean, I've been a fan of everybody in the movie forever, basically. I felt like you were involved with the casting. Oh yeah, deeply. Pretty prominently.

Oh yeah, I got to work with people, from Jeffrey Wright to Adam Brody, like every single person. These are people whose work I've loved for a very long time. Well, me as well. Yeah Adam Brody. We did Mr. and Mrs. Smith, and we were talking about how that was the year of Adam Brody, because it was year one of the OC. And then this massive Brad Pitt, Angelina movie. Jeffrey Wright, really fascinating career. I remember the first year I

wrote for Page Two, Ali came out and I went to The Junket. It's the only time I've ever done a Junket. I got 10 minutes with each person and he's in that movie. And I remember talking to him for 10 minutes, but always thinking like, oh, this guy, he's always in stuff. He's always really good. But he never had a movie like this, right? This happens sometimes. It happened to Richard Jenkins late in his career. It's like, oh, I love that guy, but he wasn't the focal point of a movie that had a chance to really be seen by a lot of people.

But what did you see about it? Was that always in your head as you're writing this, as you're adapting the book? It was in my head as I was reading the book, not even writing. While I was still reading the novel for the first time, I started, for whatever reason, picturing Jeffrey Wright in all the scenes. I was like, oh yeah, this is Jeffrey. This is Jeffrey. This is Jeffrey. And so he was the only person that I went to with the script when it was first done was Jeffrey. It was like, he's got to be

the guy. And so I just saw, I've just loved his work ever since I saw him in Basquiat when I was a kid. I was in high school. I saw that movie in high school. I think I fell in love with it and fell in love with his performance in it. And I just watched everything he did since then, you know, he was in Shaft, uh, the, the, uh, he was Peoples Hernandez and Shaft. So good. He was an angels in America. So good. And then I just, he was in Syriana, I believe. So good. Like he was just in, he good. And then I just, he was in Syriana, I believe, so good. He just started racking up these insane credits, but he was never

the center of anything. I never saw him as a lead except for in Basquiat. And so I just, I like, as soon as I started reading the book, he just has this professorial quality about him. The character Monk is a college professor and novelist. I just feel like Jeffrey's the kind of guy who you don't have trouble believing he's the smartest guy in the room. That's the gravitas that he has that he carries with him. It just felt like he's the perfect dude. When did you start adapting? I don't

want to get in the nitty gritty of this because everyone's going to ask you this, but when did, when did you start adapting the book and what was the process from your writing drafts of it to all of a sudden you're making the movie? How long did it take? Three, it'll be, so I found the book in December of 2020 and the movie will be in theaters in December of 2023. So that's a three year, December, 2020 deep COVID. I know, I know I was,

well, I was in a real bad place. I had, you know, we were all in a bad place, I think, but I had also had this, I was about to get a show on the air.

I was very, very close to getting a television show on the air. Um, and then at the last minute they pulled the plug on and that was like September, October of 2020 so I was in a bad place creatively, emotionally I just had no idea what I was going to do next and I just found this book

through just happenstance and fell in love with it immediately and felt like oh, I just have my creative energies again and I really wanted to focus on making it so I wrote to the author is it's this guy named Percival Everett who has since become a really close friend of mine and Percival gave me the rights for free he heard how passionate I was about it wow yeah and he just and he gave me the rights for free and was like yeah you get the rights for free for six months and go write a script and if something comes of it then you can pay me back then so I just went and wrote the script on spec and we sold it. I finished it in like

April or May and then we took it out to producers and we sold it to T Street and T Street and MRC in May of 2021. And then you're off. Yeah, and then it was just after the races. We got Jeffrey attached, then we

got Orion attached, and then it was just after the races. We got Jeffrey attached and we got Orion attached and then it was... We started shooting it in August of 2022. And Issa was super late, right? She was near the end. Issa was like the last person we cast. That was a hard role to cast.

It was... We were sort of... Yeah, we were coming very close to when that part had to shoot. And so I think we had, it was like a period of four days between us sending the script to Issa and then Issa having to be on set.

So she sort of, she came in and- By the way, great career move by her. This is exactly the type of part, she's not in it that much. What is she in, like four scenes? Yeah, yeah. Probably in it for like 20 minutes, but she's really good in it and she's a good actress.

And the scenes are integral. You know what I mean? That's the, I feel like this is, that's the thing we've got. We've gotten some great actors for these smaller parts, you know, that there's not a lot of screen time,

but I think the reason we're able to get the Issa's and the Keith David's for these roles is because, you know, the, these, they just, everybody said to me like, these are just good parts, you know, the, these, they just, everybody said to me, like, these are just good parts, you know, like they're, they're, they're not necessarily the most screen time, but they're good roles. And like, they're really lived in characters who are doing interesting things and saying interesting things. And it's an interesting movie. I just

think that I was very fortunate to obtain the people we obtain. And I think the way that you did that is like, you know, a lot of the, especially black actors, you know, everybody's like, how did you get, how did you assemble this tremendous cast? And it's like, well, this, you know, we talk all the time about how black actors aren't getting the roles that they deserve and sort of like feel underrepresented and underutilized in films. And so I think that, you know, when you actually give them real parts and sort of like, even if it's not a lot of screen time, but these are real characters who are, who are saying and thinking interesting things, then you sort of like people are hungry for that. I think particularly black actors are hungry for that kind of role.

You think this movie happens 10 years ago? No, no, definitely not. I don't think this movie happens, uh, even like five years ago. You know, I, this is, this is like a movie that 98% of the people who read this movie did like passed on it. You know what I mean? Like this was, this was a, this was a movie that the vast majority of people who looked into it were like, Oh my God, I love the script. I had people tell me this is one of the best scripts that they've read in years. Um, and then I'm like, great, let's do it. And they're like, eh, too risky. Like we can't,

we can't, we can't do this. And it's like, what did they think was risky? Like what, how did they explain that? They never explained it. Right. That's the most frustrating part about Hollywood is that they never tell you why they pass. They never tell you the truth about why they pass. Right. It's like, they're just, I have a buddy who said that Hollywood is the only place where you can starve from all the compliments. And that's a hundred percent true. It's like, everybody's just like, Oh my God, this is wonderful. And then they,

then they never tell you the truth. I think that it was either, you know, probably it was, I'm an inexperienced director and they were worried that I was going to blow it. Uh, they don't think we have like bankable movie stars or they, uh,

think that the material is too risky or all three of those things. You know, I have no idea that they would never tell me the truth about these things. They would just say, we just can't get it made here. I really wish I worked at a place where we could make this movie. We just can't get it made here. And it was like, you know, fortunately, we had Orion MGM step up and say, you know what? We're going to we're going to do this.

We're going to trust you and take a risk. That's a that's the thing that I sort of knew that Hollywood was risk averse. I didn't really understand how risk averse Hollywood was until I took, took this out. I had never, I had never, I'd never had such effusive praise about a project about the creative, um, ever in anything that I've worked on. And then, you know, nobody willing to sort of to actually back up that phrase with money.

The only thing that makes sense, just trying to think from their side, is that you hadn't directed a movie before, right? Exactly. It's not like they were giving you the X-Men sequel or something. Exactly. It's not the most expensive movie.

Dude, this is a drop in the bucket for them. Yeah, but this is the kind of movie that they would have made without even blinking in 1982, right? We always talk about that on the rewatchables. These types of movies that got made basically all the way through the 90s. And then they slowly stopped.

I watch so many movies now that I'm like, this would never, ever get made. I bet you Shawshank Redemption doesn't get made today. If somebody took out Shawshank Redemption and was like, I want to make this movie that's not a franchise. It's a non-rape Shawshank.

It's not a franchise. It's not a Big Ten superhero movie. I just think that people aren't really in the market for that kind of thing, unfortunately. I wonder if that's going to come back, though, because this has been such a fascinating movie year. Part of it is because we just had awesome directors, and we had some

really good lower-budget movies come out. Just in general, I think there was a logjam with projects, and then they're all coming out now. I can't keep up. I haven't even seen the Alexander Payne movie yet. He's one of my favorite directors. Yeah, man.

I think that what's happening, I think that what you're seeing is I'm talking to a lot of people now who like me had had a really hard time getting TV shows made and had a really sort of like, it's like impossible. It was so hard to get TV shows made

for a very long time. I have no idea how that scene is going to look on the other side of the strike. But I've talked to a lot of people who are just like, oh, I just want to make independent film because even a small budget series, like let's say it's 3 million an episode for 10 episodes, that's $30 million.

Nobody's given a first-time director $30 million. I mean, maybe somebody is, but certainly not me. I would not have gotten $30 million to make this movie. And so I just think that if you write a good script and you get some good actors, you have an easier time, I think, convincing people to give you money to make a movie than you do a TV show, just because a TV show is just such a bigger commitment to people. And so I know a bunch of people who said, who are saying like they're writing their own movies right now and trying to get funding for like an independent film. Yeah. But what's flipped the most, and I agree with everything you just said, is up until really this year, the money was in the TV shows.

Oh yeah. And it made more sense for somebody like you, who's an up and coming writer, who's been on some stuff, who's ready to make like the leap to the next thing. Like you said, you lost out on a TV show because your brain was, I got to do a TV show. That's where the most creative latitude is going.

That's where I can make the most money. That's like the kind of the safest bet exactly now it feels like as the tv stuff post strike where we're going from like 600 shows to maybe 200 shows yeah i think a lot of creativity is going to drift back to movies which is super exciting for me because i missed that era me, man. I think that to me is... I don't know. I feel like we're going to... It always waxes and wanes. There's always... I listened to that Quentin Tarantino interview where he's like...

It's by decade. It's like the 80s were kind of fallow and then the 90s came and you had all these amazing directors come at once. And then the early 2000s like kind of fallow and then, and then the nineties came and you had like all these amazing directors come all at once, you know, and then the,

then the early two thousands are like kind of fallow again. And then he just, he just talks about sort of like the ups and downs in the industry. And so I'm hoping that I'm hoping that sort of like the world of independent cinema is, is coming back because a, I want to make more movies. I certainly,

I certainly want to start directing more, more independent films. And B, I just think that it is allowing for some more creativity. I think that we've gotten to a place when I think that TV is kind of stagnated as sort of like what the interesting things. TV used to be... It's really crazy because I think that I always say if you talk to TV executives and you ask them, what's on your Mount Rushmore of TV shows? They're all going to say basically the same thing. They're going to say Sopranos. They're going to say Breaking Bad, Mad Men, these kinds of the wire. The thing that I tell people is that go to those IMDb

pages for the pilots and name a single famous person involved with any of those projects, like superstars, right? Like name a single, like nobody knew who James Gandolfini was. James Gandolfini was like one of the heavies in Get Shorty, right? Like that was his biggest. True romance. Yeah, exactly. That was like his biggest credit. And all of a sudden it's like, he was born to play Tony Soprano.

Like he was perfect for that part. Nobody knew who Elizabeth Moss was. These are not bold-faced names when they start these shows. And TV was a place that made actors, made people's careers. And now it's like, if you wanted to make The Sopranos nowadays, they'd be like, okay, well, we need Robert De Niro to play Uncle Junior, and we need Scorsese to direct the pilot, and it would just be worse for it. I personally think that you'd have a worse product because it would be so dedicated to getting the most famous people involved, and it wouldn't be

dedicated to making the best TV show possible. And I think that that's really unfortunate. And I think that independent film, you're seeing people take more risks in that way, which is crazy because it seems like the whole thing has been inverted, right? That, that sort of like that used to be like that, that kind of like experimental, like let's find, let's find interesting actors and give them good roles used to happen in TV. And now it's happening in film more often. Yeah. No shots at Apple, but this is kind of the Apple strategy, right? Like the morning show, get the most famous actors possible,

spend a lot of money, put them on a show. And then you get, when you go to Apple TV, it's a picture of this really famous cast that you recognize. And that's not that, if you go back, it's like we did advanced metrics for the TV shows, like you mentioned, the greatest shows. It's always like one creator,

maybe two, but never more than two. A person had a singular vision. And then he cast people that we didn't really have a lot of baggage or history with. And it's like Edie Falco. I knew her on Oz. I didn't,

other than that, I don't remember. She was in Copland for 10 seconds. Exactly. Exactly. So yeah, I don't, maybe that'll come back, but I doubt it because Hollywood is pretty consistently... It'll come back, but it'll come back in like 10 years.

It'll come back when all the cool, interesting people have been drummed out of TV because they can't get anything made, and so then TV becomes stagnant, and then everybody is like... Yeah, exactly. Then TV comes back. It's just, you know, it's just always this,

it's cyclical, it's always cyclical. Well, part of the problem with TV is because they try to pad the episodes, so, and this has happened especially in documentaries, they pad the episodes to make more money and all that does is water down, you know, we went, you go back to The Sopranos where there was 13 episodes,

it was a little fat, right? Yeah. But they didn't, they, they also were competing as network shows that were 22 episodes and 25 episodes. They felt like they had a more, um,

exactly. And we found a sweet spot the last 10 years. It felt like, yeah. And I think that like, you know, yes to all of that. And I think that,

I think that, you know, hopefully we're realizing now think that, you know, hopefully we're realizing now that like, you know, I think that now you're seeing like six and eight episode seasons of TV. It's like getting, some people are doing like the British model where it's like, we don't need, we don't need, exactly. We don't need 24 episodes. We need six to eight episode seasons. And like, let's just tell the story that we need to tell and move on. We don't need to tell the story anymore. And I think that that is, you you know i'm hoping that one of the things that comes out on the on the other end of the strike as you said

is like going from 600 shows to maybe 200 shows and like you know giving audiences quality because that's that's another thing that i think sort of like has gone unspoken and in some of these conversations is like a lot of this stuff is made with a disdain for the audience like it's like yeah it is truly just like we are just feeding the content where this is just like the content trough and like we're inviting you guys to like the slop in the content trough and like they don't actually care that's just like pumping out shows as quickly as possible it's like an arms race you know it's like it's like the streamers have turned in like let's not make the best shows it's like let's make the most TV and sort of like that is what people are,

are, are, and then the people are going to binge it over the course of a weekend. And then they're not going to think about it ever again, but we'll get the numbers up. Like, I think that hopefully that model is going away and sort of like that. It's like,

let's not make these many, let's not make as many shows. Let's make a limited number of shows, but let's make them really good. Like, I think that hopefully that's going to be one of the things that comes out on the other end of the strikes yeah you could go into a streamer right now and be like 10 episodes the house is haunted interracial couple weird shit happens and they have two adopted kids that don't look like them

either and weird shit's going to happen. But I need 10 episodes to make sure I don't check. Exactly. Go backwards because it's so funny. All the people from the first blog era, which I think the blog era starts like

07. You're on the internet in the early 2010s. And all these bloggers, they're churning out content, they're getting burned out, but some of them, they decide they want to write scripts and in some cases even tried. And you were the one that made it. And now you're the one that this whole, this whole group of whoever would point to would be like, well, cord, like that's, I want to be like cord or, Oh, it worked out out for cord but it didn't work out for most people what was different about

you and your approach as you look back like not to brag but like what do you think made your path different than other people I think a lot of it is luck I don't like when people talk about their success without talking about luck,

because luck is a huge part of success in my mind. That is true. And so, and so one of the things that I got lucky, like, it is incredibly hard to break into the industry. Like the number one question that people ask me that I never have an answer to is like, how do you get somebody important to read your script? And that's just like, dude, I have no clue. That is an impossible question. There is so many roadblocks and obstacles and gatekeepers into this industry that it sometimes feels impenetrable on the outside.

My first stroke of luck was I was working at Gawker and this guy reached out to me one day and just said, Hey, Michael Malley, Boston, you know, my guy, your guy, you know, my guy. Yeah. So Michael Malley reached out to me. He had seen some of my stuff on Gawker and he just reached out and said, Hey, do you want to work on this TV show that I'm creating? And so he was creating this show called, um, survivor's remorse that was based loosely on LeBron James's life. And so he asked me to come be in the writer's room of that show. And so I had, I had never written a TV show before. And he was like, look, this may be a disaster. You may hate it. You may be bad at it, but like, you may love it. And like, let's take a risk on each other and

sort of like, you can come join the team and, and, and I'll take a risk on you if you take a risk on me. So you moved to LA for this? You did, right? I was already living in LA. I was living in LA for Docker. And so I was like, cool. And so he offered me the job on a Friday. Officially, I had to start work on a Monday. So I had to call my boss and say like, hey, man, I'm sorry to do this to you. But I'm going to give you 48 hours notice and then I'm going to leave. And so he very graciously said that that was okay. And we parted ways and I went to work on his show. And so that to me was like. I remember hearing about this anecdotally, by the way,

where it's like Cord quit blogging. He's going to write for a TV show that's loosely based on LeBron James. Like what? Yeah, exactly. It's like, wait, what's happening? Yeah. And then it worked out. And that was January of 2014.

So it was like, I think that's another thing. It was like, I got lucky that Michael Malley had seen some of my stuff and asked me to write for the show, despite the fact that I'd never written for a TV show before.

But your stuff was not so good, so you get credit for that. Thanks, yeah. And then the second stroke of luck was I think timing, like just being 2014 like it was like it was still a time when sort of like things were going well

in blogging and like internet media was still good and so sort of like a lot of people I think weren't necessarily trying to get out of the industry at that point because it was like, oh. Like when I left Gawker, I was like, look, if this is terrible, I'll just come back. I was like, Gawker is going to be around forever. So if I go to do this

show and I don't like it, I'll just come back to Gawker. And I was like, the internet media is going to be around forever. People think that I left because I was like, I see the writing on the wall and this isn't going to be here anymore. But that is not true. I did not see the writing on the wall. I thought everything was going to be fine forever. And so I just went just because I wanted to try something new. But I think that

I kind of, I kind of left at a time when people weren't necessarily looking for ways out of the industry. I think that sort of like people were like, Oh, this is, I'm comfortable. I'm, I'm going to be blogging forever. And so, um, I just, I think that I was a little ahead of the curve in that way. And so, and then once I just was in it, I was just in it. And then I really... The one thing that I actually do think that I did, the one decision that I actually made, I think, that really helped shape what my career became was

I was really picky with the jobs that I took after that. You know, I, I was like, I was like, I want to, I don't want to just sort of like rush into anything because they're going to offer me a bunch of money or because there's like celebrities involved.

Like I just chose work that I felt like was, um, well, I felt like shows that were trying to like take swings and do something that other people weren't doing. You know, I felt like even if it was like, swings and do something that other people weren't doing. I felt like even if it was the good place, it's like you're making a sitcom about

ethical philosophy and death and what it means to be in the afterlife. Okay, that sounds interesting. Succession, you're making a dark comedy about the Murdoch family. Like, okay, that sounds cool. And Watchmen is like crazy, right?

I was working on stuff that just felt like they were taking huge swings because the thing that I felt was that that was how you sort of broke through the noise. Because I had started sort of like at the time when it really was starting to become an arms race. It's like more, more, more, more. And so I always felt that one of the ways to sort of like make sure you, you, what you were making broke through was like, at least it's going to be a big swing. And it's better to, it's better to be on sort of like a big grand failure than like a mediocre sort of like middling, um, tepid success. You know, like, I think that that, middling, tepid success. I think that that is the thing that I wanted to do.

So I ended up working on a series of shows that were able to break through and were able to be part of the conversation in a way that other shows weren't. And so that is something that I do feel like... Again, that's luck, right? Taking those jobs is luck. But I think that I chose the right jobs to take. I think that, for instance, the way that I got the Watchmen job was I went to a dinner party at Mike Schur's house one night,

and I ended up sitting next to Damon Lindelof. And I was talking his head off because the Leftovers had just ended and I was obsessed with the Leftovers. The series finale of the Leftovers had happened three weeks before. And so I was just talking to Damon forever. And I was like, dude, Leftovers is amazing. And just chatting him up. And then he emailed me a month later and was like, Hey, do you want to work on the show called Watchmen?

So I just got that thanks to sitting next to Damon at a dinner party. So there's the luck. But then sort of, you know, not luck is that when Damon comes to me and sort of like has this crazy idea and like, I'm like, okay, you know what? I'm down with that. That sounds interesting.

And so that's the part that I think sort of like I made that decision. But it's always equal combinations of like hard work and dumb luck. Well, and also you did a good job of aligning with people who you could learn stuff from. Oh, absolutely. Damon Lindelof and Mike Schur are my two biggest mentors in this industry. I will work for those guys whenever they ask me to work for them.

And when I wrote this movie script, they were the first two guys that I sent the script to to give me notes on it. So I will, yeah, I'm always indebted to them. This is, I don't know how to ask this question. You are a good director,

but how did you know you were going to be a good director? Is it one of those things where you just don't know until it's actually happening? Because ultimately, if you've never done something, you don't totally know how it's going to play out. But you clearly are good at directing. Yeah, but you don't know that until you do it.

You don't know it. Yeah. So how did you know that you would be good at it? I didn't, right? It's like you just got to do it. I didn't know that I'd be good at it. I thought that I had good ideas, but it could have been a disaster. You know, it's one of those things

where you just have to trust your instincts. Like, how did you know you'd be a good podcaster, right? Like, you probably didn't know. I was terrible for like two years. But I mean, the other way you could have done is you could have gotten a director, right? And you could have been like, I'm writing this. And then let me put this in the calm hands of somebody else.

But you're like, fuck it, I'm directing this. Yeah, no, I just felt I, so here's what gave me the courage to direct this was that, so the first person who gave me the idea that like maybe I should direct is Aziz Ansari. And I was working on season two of Master of None. And we were talking, Aziz was like, have you ever thought about directing?

Cause he was directing a few of the episodes of that season. And I said, nah, you know, I didn't go to film school. I don't know anything about lenses or cameras or anything. So it doesn't seem right for me. And he was like, dude, he's like, I went to NYU for business school. And last year I got nominated. He was like, last year I got nominated for a Golden Globe for directing. He was like, it's not like I went to film school. He said, all you have to have is a vision in your mind and then be able to articulate that vision to the people that you hire to be around you. And so he planted the seed in like 20, that was like 2016. And then I found this book in 2020.

And the reason that I finally had the courage to direct was that I, when I read the book and then I wrote the script, I was like, I understand this material as well, if not better than anybody else in the whole world. Like, like I know these characters, I know the story in such a deep way that even if I don't know anything about lighting or cameras, like I know the story that I want to tell. And I have the, I'll use that as my roadmap, you know? And so I felt like, even if I don't know this other shit, I know the, I know the story that I don't know this other shit I know the I know the story that I'm going to tell and that can be my guide when I make all these other decisions that I don't know about and so to me that was the key like the reason I hadn't sort of like I knew that I wanted to direct for four years before I found this but I didn't really leap at anything because

nothing I didn't feel that passionate about anything and i knew that if i went there and didn't feel passionately about the story and the characters and didn't know the other stuff then i'd be sort of like really out of my depth and underwater and like i don't care about these people i don't care about this story and so uh that's going to make the story horrible and i think that you can see really i think that you can see a lot of movies and tv shows where it's just like you can tell i think we all can tell kind of like when nobody's passionate about something like when you like you watch a movie you're just like nobody actually care like this everybody who was coming to set every day was just there to cash a check like they were not there because they believed in what they were doing and i felt like I was worried that if I took something on,

that would be, you could be able to tell that. And this was the first thing that I found that like, oh, every day that I go to set, I will be deeply passionate about the story that we're trying to tell. And I think that helped guide our hands a little bit. I feel like Dirk Degler talking to Amber Waves and Boogie Nights about like,

Cord, you're like a director now. It's a real movie, Jack. It's a director now. It's a real movie, Jack. It's a real movie, Jack. I don't want to step on the movie too much because I really want people to watch this without worrying that we're going to spoil the movie. We should talk about the conceit of the movie.

It's just brilliant. The way you flip some stuff. You talk because I'm't i i'm afraid to say too much because i don't want to spoil it but there's a specific angle of this movie that i think is going to hit close to home to some people oh definitely in the right ways and maybe the wrong ways too but how do you think hollywood's going to react to this like what so the so the so the premise of the film is that

Jeffrey Wright plays this college professor slash novelist named Monk, and he specializes in contemporary retellings of classical Greek literature. People say your books are well-written,

but they're kind of academic and dense, and they always say, you know, why, why are you not like writing about like black stories? Like that's, that's what people want to read from you. Like you're a black American,

like write about black stories, write about the inner city, write about drugs and write about slavery. And he's like, you know, I like what I write. I think that my stories are universal. These are black stories because I'm black and I'm telling them.

Why do you want me to do all this other stuff? And everybody's like, well, you know, suit yourself. And so one day in this sort of fit of rage, he goes home and he writes this kind of deeply stereotypical book full of a lot of tropes and ridiculous stereotypes about the black community. And he writes it as a prank intending to kind of humiliate the publishers and intending to kind of um humiliate the the publishers and sort of like and show them the kind of garbage that they keep soliciting from black writers and he sends it out under a pseudonym and it becomes like a huge bestseller it's like by far

the by far the most successful book he's ever published it's sort of like he's getting offered like all this money he's getting offered um movie deals and this insane book deal and there's stuff going on as in his personal life that I won't spoil that sort of requires him to need a lot of money fast and so the rest of the story is him sort of existing between these two worlds of needing the money that this this successful book is providing but also deeply resenting that this book is becoming as big of a success as it is. And he's trying to sabotage the book.

Yeah. And it's actually working in his favor. He tries to sabotage it with the title. None of it matters. It just becomes a snowball down the mountain. Exactly. It's like any great story about a lie. The lie becomes

bigger and bigger and bigger until sort of the person can't wrap their arms around it anymore. And sort of, you see what happens. How much of this was reflected in stuff that either you've been offered or just whatever since 2017 as people became. So much, man. Yeah. Like I got three months before I found this book, I got a note from an executive that I needed to make a character blacker in my script. And it was like, this guy has to be blacker. And that note came through an emissary. And I told the emissary, I was like, listen, I will indulge that note if this person gets on a phone with me

or sits down with me face to face and tells me exactly what blacker means. Like, what does it mean to make a character blacker? I'll talk to them if they sit down and talk to me about that. And, you know, that note went away, right? Because to have that conversation, they would probably have to commit a civil rights violation. So they're not going to do it. And so, but like that stuff happens. You know, I had a friend, I had a friend recently who, uh, this was a couple

of years ago, she's a black female journalist and she's getting into film and television. And she came to LA for some meetings and, um, you know, they were like, she sat down with one production company and they were like, you know, what, what kind of stuff are you interested in writing? And she said, you know, I'm a child of the 90s. I'd really like to write an erotic thriller. She said, I'd like to write a rom-com. I think that those have kind of fallen by the wayside. And they said, okay, interesting. Give us some time and we'll get back to you later. And so she left their office and they called her like three or four hours later that day. And they said, we've got the perfect project for you to think's uh it's it's called

blind tom and it's about a blind slave who thanks to a wealthy white benefactor uh becomes becomes a piano prodigy and like blows like like becomes this like this world-class piano player uh who's like despite the fact that he's a blind slave. And it's like, oh, okay. That doesn't sound very... That sounded like an idea from your movie. I know, exactly. I could have put it in the film and it would have been right in place.

It is something that... And like I said, this was two and three years ago. This was not 40 years ago. This was not 40 years ago. This was, this was very, this was, this was during COVID, you know? And so the, the reality of, of things like, like, look, things aren't as bad as they were in the eighties and nineties and the sixties and seventies. And like, obviously things are getting better, but you know, things are still pretty, pretty messed up.

And it's not, that's the thing. It's not just black people. I talked to Latino friends who were like, why does every story set in Mexico have to be about a drug cartel and have that weird orangey-brown tint on every shot? Mexico's been in a dust storm for 100 years. These are things that a lot of people are feeling not just people not just black people it's like that you know Hollywood still has a very limited

perspective on like what people's lives look like and sort of the the the stories that they want to tell often don't contain the complexity and nuance of like these people's real lives. And I think people get frustrated about it by that. It's funny. When did Hollywood shuffle come out? That was probably 35 years ago, right? Yeah.

36 years ago. And it's hidden. It's weird. Like in the rewatch balls, we do like, what movie would you watch as a double feature? That would be an interesting double feature of your movie. Fully,

fully. I think that I, I'm so influenced by that movie. That to me is one of the all-time classics for me. And also I think that that movie just really rewired my brain when I saw it. I was

thinking about this thing recently that when you're a kid... I saw that movie probably when I was nine or 10 and you know, nine or 10 is like right in that, right in that perfect age when you're learning about the founding of the country and you're learning about slavery and civil rights and stuff. And I was thinking that like the, the movies that they,

the, the media that they use to like teach you that stuff is like basically like horror movies. Like I, like I remember watching Mississippi Burning. That movie terrified. It was like I was watching Nightmare on Elm Street. It's just so

fucking scary. That is a lot of the media that you consume. It's just these stories of violence and bloodshed and people killing people. All of a sudden, I watched this movie, Hollywood Shuffle. And it was like, oh, these guys are talking about racism, but they're laughing every scene. And they're making jokes about it. And they're finding ways to not be

miserable, even in the circumstances that they're in, they're finding ways to like, laugh and still still find joy in the world. And I was like, Oh, and that that really, that was kind of a radical revelation to me. I certainly didn't know what satire I didn't know the word satire back then, probably. But I sort of understood what that movie did to me and what that movie felt like. And it was like, Oh, there's more than one way to skin a cat here. Like, the way the only way to, you know, terrifying people and making people feel guilty or making people feel like they should pity people, there's more than one way to build empathy. Another way to build empathy is to make people laugh. It's a more inviting way sometimes to let people into what you're thinking. There's this Oscar Wilde quote that I read inviting way sometimes to let people into what you're thinking. There's this Oscar Wilde quote that I read recently and he said, if you want to tell the truth to people, you better make them laugh or otherwise they'll kill you. I think that that holds

true a lot for media, at least for me. I've always really, and I've sort of loved satire ever since I saw that movie. Well, this seems like a good time to mention your next movie that you've been working on in the autobiography of Tommy Alter, the most connected person in America. I know.

Truly, truly. Like Tommy, we should do a doc on Tommy. I still don't know if I know Tommy's real age. That's something, that's something that maybe we could really sitift through the data

and figure out how old Tommy is. Somewhere between 25 and 54? Yeah, exactly. Exactly. It's like the best kept secret in Hollywood. Wait, you gotta tell one of the reasons we've been talking about this forever.

Your entourage pitch. Which I don't think you've ever told on a podcast. I haven't. It's one of the most important stories ever. I haven't told it anywhere really publicly. Okay, so here we go. This is Kord's entourage story. Take the floor. Okay, so in this age of reboots, I was like, we're rebooting all this stuff that doesn't necessarily need to be rebooted. It's sort of like you're only rebooting it like i think that part of my journalism brain right is sort of

that i that i carry with me in into film and television is like why now like why should this story be told now why in 2023 out of the millions of stories that you could be telling why should this one exist in the present day and i think that a lot of these reboots the frustrating thing about them is that there is no there's no answer to that question the only answer to that question is like well this was popular in the past now we're trying to sort of like squeeze every dollar out of this like piece of ip that we can't um but so entourage i was like there's a reason for this to exist right the reason for this to exist in the present day is because it's really funny to look at that show in the context of like how much the world has changed versus when it was on the air right like how how radically different sort of hollywood is in the

world and culture is and so i had this i have this pitch for entourage where it starts with Ari walking into his new agency, which he's founded with Lloyd, his old assistant. Ari and Lloyd have founded this massive new agency in Hollywood. Ari comes in and swaggers in one day, like the way that Ari

swaggers. Lloyd comes up to him and he's like, look, I got something to tell you. He's typically dismissive of Lloyd and says something racist and homophobic to Lloyd and like he's like he's like I can't talk now I gotta like I gotta go uh I got I got a call with Aaron Sorkin at 9 a.m so like I'm sorry I can't deal with it right now and Lloyd's like I really have something new important to tell you he's like it's gotta wait and just then like Ari's assistant goes uh Ari phone call he's like there he really have something important to tell you. He's like, it's got to wait. And just then, Ari's assistant goes, Ari, phone call.

He's like, there he is right now. And he swaggers into his office and he picks up the phone. He goes, hey, Aaron, what's going on, brother? And the voice on the other end of the phone goes, oh, this isn't Aaron. This is Ronan Farrow. I'm calling from the New Yorker. I've got some questions for you. And Ari goes, what?

And he's like, yeah, I've got some questions for you. And Ari goes, what? And he's like, yeah, I've got some questions for you about your career and some things that people have said. And so it starts and Ari Gold is getting me too. Is it Ronan Farrow playing himself? Yeah, it's Ronan Farrow playing himself. And he essentially starts asking Ari about all these things that we've seen Ari actually do he's like you know

is this true this is what we find out Lloyd was trying to tell Ari he's like is it true that you said this to your assistant is it true that you said this to your assistant is it true that like you said this about Carmen Electra is it true that you said like it just all of the stuff that we've seen happen in the show is coming is coming

to sort of like haunt Ari. Ari's getting Me Too'd. That's his story. E is now no longer really representing actors. He's representing TikTok influencers. He's representing

a bunch of teenage boys who beat the shit out of him when he goes to their like hype houses and stuff. And they're like constantly playing pranks on him. And like, they treat him like shit. But he's like, got to deal with it because that's where all the money is now. And then drama is no longer an actor. Drama has a drama has a Trump podcast, like a super like MAGA MAGA he's like dude he's like I'm making way more money doing this than I ever was as an actor and he's like selling shitty supplements on his website and he's like he's just like full conservative MAGA podcast Turtle is

dead of a fentanyl overdose but his ghost appears in every episode like every episode they talk to Turtle's ghost, so he's still with the boys. But there's a shrine to him in Drama's podcast studio. And he's got face tattoos. By now.

And his ghost comes back every episode, like Obi-Wan or something and then Vinny Vinny is trying to play Bernie Getz in this Ava DuVernay Bernie Getz limited series that's happening on Netflix and so he's like he's like finally gonna have a serious role and so Ava comes up to

him and she's like listen Vinny I really like you for the part but you know man like I can't like this Ari stuff is tainting everybody. So like, yeah, keep Ari as your agent. Like, I can't, I can't have you on the on the show if you're gonna if you're still with Ari. So sort of it's like, it's like a three to four episode limited series, like limited reboot, where we just sort of see these guys. And the story that I have built is like, you know, it becomes Johnny Drama. Johnny Drama's story is that his supplements start making people go blind. Because they jerk.

Because he started getting them from some shitty factory somewhere. There was no quality control. And so these boner pills that he's selling make people go blind. And it's like all of a sudden, he's got to figure out how to deal with that. But the final storyline is whether

or not Vinny's going to fire Ari. And he's got to... I'll just tell you, because this is never going to see the light of day. I've already tried to pitch this to people people and they have zero interest in even talking about it. The powers

that be have zero interest in rebooting Entourage. To me, it was surprising. I thought it would be very funny. The last shot is Vinny calling Ari to tell him that he's firing him. He's like, I'm sorry. He's his last client.

Everybody else has jumped ship. And he's like, Vinny, we've been through so much together. Please, please. And Vinny's like, I'm sorry, man. I can't do it. And so he's like, it's over. And Vinny hangs up. And so Ari's standing there in his like super

big office on Wilshire and he like he gets furious and he throws his chair through the window of his office and he's just like standing there like letting the breeze hit him and he's like standing there thinking and he's like so frustrated and his red faced and his wife has left him now and like

his empire's crumbling and like as the breeze is hitting his face you just see him sort of he just runs and leaps out the what does a swan dive out of the window and just lands on his lands on his back in the middle of Wilshire Boulevard and

just like you sort of like I have the shot like as the blood starts puddling around him like this camera like does a slow pull-up, and it just goes, Oh, yeah! Oh, yeah! As we're looking at Ari's bloody body in the middle of Wilshire. Oh, yeah! And then that's the credits, and that's the end.

It would be so good. It would be so good. It would be so good it would be so good it would be so funny and so good and like it is a reboot that like it is a reboot that deserves to exist because I think that there's a reason and like it would be really funny and like it would be just all about how

much this has changed like this show in a different context like what does it look like and yeah it's it's going nowhere I've tried I've tried to get in the room at HBO. They won't listen, but I'm happy to say it here. I'm really happy you've given me a platform

to talk about this because it is one of my favorite ideas that I've come up with. I think it would be great. I think it's the best idea I've heard in the last three or four years. Especially the ending is the best part. And if you do it as a limited edition series,

each episode could end with, you know, every Entourage episode ended where they were just kind of looking out into LA or looking out off a cliff or looking out onto whatever. So you could have the three of them looking out, but then Turtle's Ghost is kind of levitating. Next up also looking out. Yeah.

Turtle's Ghost is like on the horizon like Mufasa in Lion King. Like he's just like, yeah, boys, what's up? Because you have the end of the second to last episode. You have Vince. They say you have to fire Ari

and he's looking out by himself, right? He's looking out down the hills. Turtle's ghost is just lingering in a smoky bag. Hitting a bong. Turtle's Ghost is just lingering in a smoky pit. Hitting a bong. Turtle's Ghost is smoking a bong. But we, everybody still like we use all the actors, right?

For this? Oh, 100%. Jerry Farrar is playing Turtle's Ghost. 100%. No, this is like we get the band back together. I'm not giving up on this. Maybe this being on the podcast will help get some momentum. You've got a wide reach.

If the fans out there love it, let's bring it back. I would love to. No idea makes me laugh harder. All right, Cord, when is the movie, when can we see it in the theaters? If you're in New York, Los Angeles, or Austin, Texas,

you can see it in the theaters already basically, but it officially comes out December 15th. Then it'll go wider on December 22nd, and then it will be fully wide in the United States on January 5th. Then it goes to Europe, the UK

on February 5th, I believe. Then after that, it's the Entourage reboot and the Tommy Alter documentary. Because you'll be able to call your shots. The movie's great. I loved it. I was really proud of you that you pulled it off. Thank you so much.

These weird COVID times. Thank you so much for having me. It's been great to watch the whole ascent. So congrats, man. Thank you, brother. I really appreciate it. Yeah, it's been great to watch the whole ascent. So congrats, man. Thank you, brother. I really appreciate it. Oh, and by the way, last thing that I need to say

is one of the producers of the film is named Ben LeClair. He's a big Boston guy. He's from Scituate, Massachusetts. Oh. I would be where we shot. We shot the beach scenes in the film are in Scituate.

I would be remiss if I did not shout him out. He's a big fan of yours, and he told me that, uh, he would be upset if I did not mention that. So he loves Boston. He loves you. He just wanted to say hello. You know, what's funny. I was, I forgot to ask you where you shot that, but I was going to guess situate or Duxbury. Yeah. I just had that kind of vibe, but I wasn't, I wasn't church once. There you go. All right. Well, good to hear from him. Good to see you. Congrats on everything. You too, brother I wasn't church once. There you go. Good to hear from him. Good to see you. Congrats on everything. You too, brother. Thank you so much.

Alright, that's it for the podcast. Thanks to Cord Jefferson. Hope you get that Entourage reboot going. Thanks to Nora Princiati. Thanks to Kyle Creighton for producing. Thanks to Steve Cerruti as well. And I'll see you with the Cuz on Sunday. Enjoy the weekend. I'm a Bruce O'River Colorado, Iowa, Kentucky, Michigan, New Jersey, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Illinois, Tennessee, and Virginia. You can call 1-800-NEXT-STEP or text NEXTSTEP to 53342 in Arizona. Call 1-888-789-777

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