The Bill Simmons Podcast - Bill’s NBA Midseason Tournament Plan. Plus: Jason Concepcion on the Knicks and Kyrie and a Tim Robbins Interview | The Bill Simmons Podcast

Episode Date: December 4, 2019

HBO and The Ringer's Bill Simmons shares his idea for an NBA midseason tournament that could shorten the NBA regular season (3:05), before he is joined by Jason Concepcion to discuss the Knicks and Kyrie Irving getting booed in Boston (20:00). Then Bill sits down with actor Tim Robbins to discuss some of his films including 'Bull Durham,' 'The Player,' 'Mystic River,' and 'The Shawshank Redemption,' as well as his new film, 'Dark Waters.' They also talk about political activism, legendary New York sports moments, and more (1:02:20). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Tonight's episode of the Bill Simmons Podcast is brought to you by State Farm. Just like football, life can be unpredictable. That's why State Farm agents are there to help with over 19,000 agents. A local State Farm agent can be just around the block, whether you talk in person, by phone, or through the app. State Farm is there. Go with the one with coverage and agents you can count on. State Farm.

Talk to an agent today. Meanwhile, the Drinkworks Home Bar by Keurig, much like a premium espresso machine, but makes cocktails instead. Over two dozen different drinks to choose from. There's literally something for everyone. Even nephew Kyle, who's tried a few of these. Good mojito.

Yeah, good mojito. You can get it with exclusive savings plus free shipping. Drinkworks.com. Use my code BS at checkout to just save $50 and get free shipping. Remember, please enjoy responsibly. Drinkworks Home Bar is currently available in California, New York, Florida, Missouri, Pennsylvania, and Illinois, with more states available for presale today at drinkworks.com. We're also brought to you by the Book of Basketball 2.0 podcast, where we put up a new one this week, Dirk Nowitzki and the Pyramid. How high did he climb? He was the one that if you read my 2009 book, the analysis of him probably aged the worst

because he hadn't won the 2011 finals yet. So we had to redo that one. Mark Stein came in, and we talked about Dirk's incredible career and broke down all the what-ifs and everything else. He goes to that in the Book of Basketball 2.0 podcast. Also, we put up a new Rewatchables this week. I'm not on this one, but I was replaced by Ryan Rosillo, who is my muscle-bound extra

when we need a New England guy at a Rewatchables. But it was Wolf of Wall Street, him, Sean Fennessey, and Chris Ryan. It's the longest Rewatchables we've ever done, which I had some issues with because Fennessey is a big proponent of the Irishman was not too long.

So now he's taking it out on us by making the Rewatchables too long. I'm going to have a talk with him after this podcast. But you can listen to Wolf of Wall Street on the Rewatchables pod. And you can listen to the Book of Basketball 2.0 podcast wherever you get your podcasts. Coming up, I'm about to fix the NBA schedule and the mid-season tournament and the play-in thing. I have a whole strategy for it. I'm going to talk about that at

the top. Then Jason Concepcion is going to come in to talk about what the hell has happened to the Knicks. How did they do it again? They struck out on KD and Kyrie. They wasted all their cap space and they're the worst team in the league. How did they do it? So we're going to talk about that. And then best for last,

Tim Robbins, finally on the BS podcast. I guess I just missed my friend. It's all coming up first, our friends from Pearl Jam. All right. So I was dying to talk about this over the Thanksgiving break. Big story by Zach Lowe and Adrian Wojnarowski on November 23rd, the beginning of last week, about the NBA. I was talking with the Players Association, with their broadcast partners, about really shaking up the league calendar, which is something, as you know,

if you've read me or if you've listened to this podcast, I have been passionate about for the last 12 years. I, way back in the day, called it the entertaining as hell tournament, which was basically, I think it was 14 teams made the playoffs and then the other 16 had a single elimination tournament for the last two spots. Since then, I've tweaked it, changed it. Last year in this podcast, had a whole bunch of new ideas for it. But this story really made it seem like this is something that could be happening where they're shortening the regular season to 78 games, where you're talking about reseeding teams in the semifinals based on regular season record, talking about a playing game for the seven, eight, nine, and 10 seeds,

trying to get the last two seeds hitting in the playoffs, all of these different things. And one of the things that was in here was a mid-season tournament, post-Thanksgiving, extending into mid-December, something like that, or late January, February tournament that would head into All-Star weekend. One of those two, the idea has been batted around and it has never worked. All right. So why hasn't it worked? Why hasn't this idea caught on? Here's the problem. There's no incentives for the players. I've heard money getting thrown around. Well, that's these players already make a ton of money. That's not, it's not

going to excite them. If there was a $20 million prize for the winning team. I don't know if that, I know it sounds crazy, but I don't know if that is enough of an incentive for some of these guys to do the wear and tear of a tournament like that. I've heard people talk about a lottery pick. Well, if I'm Kawhi Leonard, what do I care if the Clippers get a lottery pick? That's just somebody that can take my job or force me to get traded or who knows? Like these guys don't care about anything other than getting through the playoffs and winning the title. And in my opinion, that's how you would have to incentivize them. All right.

So how do you do that? Well, here's my idea. And I should mention, I think this story getting leaked out was a half bullshit move by Adam Silver. And I mean that in the most endearing way possible. I think something Stern was really good at, and I used to make fun of him about it all the time, was late September, early October, he would do some crazy thing that got people talking for two weeks, whether it was like the dress code or God knows what.

I think Silver was trying to do it with this story, especially heading into Thanksgiving. From the people I've talked to, this was something, they talked about all these different alternatives two months ago, the Board of Governors meeting, and it hasn't really had any momentum at all since then. And I think some people in the league were a little surprised that this story came out. But look, this is a good thing ultimately, because this leads to an idea that I actually think would work really well. I'm actually excited about this idea because it solves a lot of issues. All right, what are the issues? One, the season is too long. We can all agree on that. Ideally, you want the season to be 70, 72 games, something like that. Everyone I've talked to in the NBA, they've said,

we can't lose 12 games. We can't replace the money. We just can't. It's too much money. We could lose maybe two home games where it drops to 78. You could maybe lose the two if you replace it with some other source of income. But these guys are all rich for a reason. They're not just going to give away money if they don't have to. So you have to incentivize it a little bit differently. My first goal is to get to 72 games for the regular season. I think that solves a bunch of different problems. For one thing, the schedule, it works out perfectly. You'd play everybody in your own conference three times. You'd play everybody in the other conference twice. And you're done. Great.

72 games. Well, unfortunately, we're lopping off a lot of money with that. We have to replace it. How do we replace it? How about a mid-season tournament? Okay. Well, what are the incentives? How do we get these guys to care?

Here's how you get them to care. At the 35 game mark, we have the Russell Cup in New York City. You like that idea, Kyle? The Russell Cup? It's a good name. Named after Bill Russell, not Russell Westbrook. Of course. The top 14 teams, by record,

are invited to the Russell Cup. And the top seeds in each conference get a bye. They are automatically advanced to round two. So now we have three against 14, four against 13 on down the line. All right. So first round, it's worth one win. Now we get to the second round. There's only eight teams left. That's also worth one win. We get to the semifinals. Now there's four teams left. That's also worth one win. We get to the semifinals. Now there's four teams left. It's worth two wins. It's a double game. We get to the finals, the last two teams standing. That's worth four wins plus the 31st pick in the draft. That's a little out of bonus. Okay.

So what do I mean by four wins, two wins, all that stuff? I'm saying we take the regular season record of these teams. So let's say the Celtics finish 50-22, but they win the Russell Cup. You add seven wins from the Russell Cup

because winning the Russell Cup is worth seven wins. You add that to their record. So instead of 50-22, you really become 57-22. Now, you're going to their record. So instead of 50 and 22, you really become 57 and 22. Now you're going to say, this gets complicated. Now nobody has the same things.

You know how hockey, you look at the hockey standings and the hockey standings are like 10 columns long and there's all these different records in there and you don't know what the fuck's going on. That's kind of what we need to do with the NBA. So the Celtics go 50 and 22. We have the regular season. We have

that whole standings the way they would normally look. And then you have a separate thing to the right of it where it has your tournament record for the mid season. So you'd have seven points. The most you get a seven points. The second most you get if you made the finals, but you didn't win is four points. So you'd have those points next to it with a total number of points for all your wins. So Celtics have 50 wins. Then you have the next column in the standings. It's seven. And then total points, 57.

That becomes their regular season, quote unquote, record. And that's how we would decide who would make the playoffs. In my opinion, this would force these guys to actually care and take this seriously. So I'm taping this on a Monday right now. The Bucks are 17-3. The Celtics are 14-5. But if the Celtics won this mid-season tournament and you added 700 hypothetical wins to their record, and that 14-5 suddenly becomes a 21-5, that's a pretty good advantage over Milwaukee, especially if you have the winning percentage.

Now Milwaukee would really have to catch up. The point is, I think these teams would actually care about the cup because they only have to win four games. And if you space them out, it's over like the course of eight or nine days, however, however long it has to be. Um, there's, there's real reasons to win it. And maybe you throw in the cash thing, $10 million or $5 million, whatever it is like it, you want to wet their beak, so to speak, a little godfather two term.

But I think this would actually work. Now think about we're at like the 30 game mark. Only 14 teams can get into the tournament. We'll be talking about it. There's going to be some teams on the bubble. We're going to be wondering who can get the top seed in each conference so they get the buy-in round one, which is basically a free win. It'll be a conversation starter. That's right around when we start getting bored with the NBA about just the narratives and

stuff around game 28, game 29, where it's like, all right, who's, who's on the all-star team. And then everybody writes their all-star game column and does their whole thing. Now we'd actually be like, holy shit, the Russell Cup is coming. Who's going to get the one seed? Who's going to make it? What are these matchups going to be like? And by the way, if you think this is stupid, you're full of shit. Because if this was on TV, you're watching it.

If we spread this out over the course of a week, and this is on all the time, and it's all leading to the semifinals is the Clippers and the Lakers in one bracket and Dallas against Milwaukee in the other one. And Dallas has upset a couple teams and all these wins are at stake. And this could actually affect the standings. That's a real thing that I think would work. All right. So what do we do with the other 16 teams? Well, they're playing in the Chamberlain Cup. You know why he named it the Chamberlain Cup? Because he won nine less titles than Bill Russell. Yeah, that's why. The bottom 16 teams by record, first three rounds are worth one win each. And then the finals are worth two wins plus the 32nd pick. So that could actually, you know, you get a high second round pick

plus the chance to gain a little momentum. These games, in my opinion, you know, you get a high second round pick plus the chance to gain a little momentum. These games, in my opinion, you'd take these and you sell them to like the zone or ESPN plus. This is like just perfect content for these streaming services that need content. Maybe HBO max gets involved to the Disney plus. Oh yeah. Maybe you should get involved too. Somebody's going to want these, even though they're the worst teams. You stagger them in ways so that they're never competing against the Russell Cup. And we just do this for like 10, 11 days. And now there's real stakes and there's double wins and quadruple wins. And I don't know. I think it would work. Now here's the other wrinkle because we want people to care about this entire season and we want real stakes.

Russillo's going to hate this idea. I don't care. You know that playing tournament where they talk about 7, 8, 9, 10? I want to go deeper. I want higher stakes. How about this? Only the top five seeds in each conference

are guaranteed playoff spots. And if you're not a top five seed, guess what? I got a little thing called a play-in game for you. You want to make the playoffs? You're the sixth seed. You're on the cusp. You didn't quite get in. You didn't get one of those top five spots.

Well, you got to play the 11th seed to get in. You get to host the game. That's the fun part. Six versus 11, seven versus 10, eight versus nine. Six games total, single elimination. And that's it. Guess what? If anybody who watches the challenge on MTV,

still one of the great institutions in television history. Everybody is very focused on not ending up in the elimination thing at the end of the show because you know what can happen in the elimination thing? It's 50-50. You never know. You might get clipped by a puzzle. You might be in some game where you have to,

it's a physical game. You go against somebody bigger than you. All the strategy, all the drama of the show is avoiding that 50-50 contest at the end. And that would be the same thing for the playoffs here. If we're only guaranteeing five playoff spots in each conference, people can't fuck around the regular season anymore. I'm sorry. The Clippers, the load management thing, you can't do the load management as much if you're worried about,

oh man, we might not be a top five team because who saw this Dallas thing coming? And now there's six good teams in the West and we got to get our shit together. Kawhi, I'm sorry. I know your knee hurts, but you're going to have to play tonight. I think it would completely change the mechanics

of how the teams in the top five or six operated. I don't think they'd be able to rest guys as much. On top of it, it's a 72-game schedule anyway, so we'd have less games. I think the quality of play would go up. So that'd be one good thing. And then the other thing is, from a tanking standpoint, instead of just eight playoff teams in each conference, and then basically, if you're not going to make the playoffs, you just throw your season away and you start losing games intentionally and doing all the other terrible stuff we've seen. Now it's like, if you have a chance to get a 9, 10, or 11 spot, which is really a group of about five or six teams in each conference, they'd have to take that seriously. Why wouldn't you try to make it?

What's wrong with trying to make the playoffs? It's not going to affect whatever your lottery record was because that's still done by record, whatever. But now you have this little carrot at the end. Think about LeBron James and the Lakers last year. LeBron could have come back. They could have been a 10 seed or an 11 seed potentially, maybe even a nine seed.

But he just shut it down because what was his incentive? Well, if there was the carrot of, well, you could actually make the playoffs and be in this play-in game. First of all, what a nightmare for the six seed where it's like, holy shit, we got to play LeBron one game, winner takes all. But it also makes it really hard to shut guys down

and it makes it much harder not to do the right thing. So that's why I would guarantee the top five seeds in each conference. I would really weigh the wins in these mid-season tournaments. And you'd put real stakes because the goal of all of this is how do we win the

title? How do we not beat our players into the ground? How do we space the season out in a really fun way that keeps everybody's interest? And how do we have these little breaks and hiccups? I think it would be really fun. I think this is the only way you could do a mid-season tournament. I don't think paying the players, rewarding them with lottery picks, all that stuff works.

But if you weigh the wins in the tournaments at mid-season, that has some great benefits. And if you cut down the number of guaranteed playoff seeds, people can't just shut it off when they want to. That would be the goal of it, right? As always, I'm happy to hear your thoughts. You can email us at themailbag at theringer.com. I feel pretty strongly about this idea though. Kyle, would you rather go to the Russell Cup in New York or would you rather go to the Chamberlain

Cup in Vegas? A little seedier. Vegas, huh? A little seedier, lower stakes. Yeah, I had a great time at Summer League. So I'd say I'll go to the Chamberlain Cup. Chamberlain Cup will be, the Russell Cup will be where all the establishment is. Yeah. And the Chamberlain Cup will be kind of the underground. Might run into Oak there. It's Vegas.

There's probably something bad will happen at some point. There'll be some incident. So that's my idea. The Russell Cup, the Chamberlain Cup, mid-season tournaments at the 35 game mark. Only five playoff spots guaranteed in each conference. 72 game regular season. And I think we're good.

Thank you. And please drive through. And now it's time for the State Farm Safe Bet of the Week. The team you can count on. Just like football, life can be unpredictable. That's why State Farm agents are there to help with over 19,000 agents. Wow. A local State Farm agent could be just around the block,

whether you talk in person, by phone, or through the app. State Farm is there. Go with the one with coverage and agents you can count on. You know who I can count on right now? The Tennessee Titans. They've done really well for me the last couple weeks. Since they've replaced Marcus Mariota for Ryan Tannehill, they lost 16 to nothing to Denver in week six. And since then, they've been a house of fire. They've only lost once. They beat Kansas

City. Last week, they go in Indianapolis. Everything's going wrong for them in the first half. Henry fumbles on the first drive. T's going wrong for them in the first half. Henry fumbles on the first drive. Tannehill fumbles later in the first half. Doesn't matter. They come back at 17 to 17 after the third quarter, and they just take over the game in the fourth. They win by 14.

I think they're a playoff team, and I think they think they're a playoff team. That's the thing that's been startling to me. They have a lot of confidence right now, and you can make a case. Not only should they be one of the wildcard teams, but you can make a case. They have Houston week 15, Houston week 17, that they can still steal the AFC South. So you look at this Raiders game this week, possible trap game. Raiders have looked terrible the last two weeks. They've gotten killed. They lost 74 to 12 the last two weeks. They have only scored 29 points in the last three weeks. But here's the thing. They were six and

four a couple of weeks ago. They're still kind of in the wildcard hunt. It's hard for it to be a trap game if it's also a meaningful season on the line game for Oakland. I think Tennessee shows up this week. I think they proved to everybody that they are a playoff team. And I think we're going to look at those Houston games, week 15, week 17, as games that Tennessee could take the division in. So there you go. State Farm, talk to an agent today

and trust the Tennessee Titans. All right. You know things are bad with the Knicks when we bring Concepcion on. Jason Concepcion. That's right. Host ofcepcion. That's right. Host of NBA Desktop. That's right.

For The Ringer, as well as co-host of Binge Mode, plowing through Star Wars. Mallory is like between Lamar and Mandalorian. She's out of her mind. She's never had it better in her life. No. This is her peak. It really is. It feels like apex Mallory.

It's unbelievable. She's walking around on a cloud. She had members of her coaching staff of her favorite team walking through the halls on Friday. It was amazing. And she gets to watch Lamar crush the world. After Game of Thrones ended, we all worried about her physical well-being,

her sanity, all these things. And now she's just rejuvenated. Now I'm worried about your physical well-being and sanity. The Knicks. I've been through this. It's fine. Let's talk about it. People act like, they get on me on Twitter. Hey, you can't say anything because the Knicks have been terrible for 20 years. It's never stopped me from saying anything before. I'm fine. I've seen this before. We did for the book of basketball podcast a couple of months ago, we taped it. One of the last great Knick moments ever. We're going toball podcast, a couple months ago, we taped it.

One of the last great Nick moments ever. We're going to run it in a couple weeks. LJ's four-point play, we did a rewatch about that game. 20 full years ago. Crazy, crazy talk. And arguably, since then, there's only been a couple highlights. But I want to talk specifically about just what happened the last two years. Because, you know, you win 54 games in 2013.

You have a puncher's chance. That Pacers series goes sideways. The next year, it drops to 37. The year after that, it drops to 17 wins. 32 wins, 31 wins, 29 wins, 17 wins last year. But it was all leading to Durant and Kyrie coming. And then they didn't come. And the way the team responded is what I want to talk about, because it's not just about

not getting those guys. It's not just about a culture of fear and incompetence and losing and all that. Sure. Sure. All these moves are related in this crazy way They're all related Let's go back a year ago They stretched Joakim Noah's deal

They do this and people are like Oh they're getting KD and Kyrie Why else would you do this? Well He could have been a 2020 expiring this year Would have been nice It would have been fine Does it move the needle that much? It Would have been nice. It would have been fine. It doesn't move the needle that much.

It would have been nice. Yes. It's all part of this bigger picture. Yes. He counts on the cap 6.4 this year, 6.4 next year, 6.4 in 2021-22. So now you're already operating

with 6% less of cap in the year that you're trying to get Giannis and all these guys allegedly. Then you trade Porzingis, Hardaway, and Lee to Dallas for two firsts, Dennis Smith Jr., and some expiring contracts. Couple issues here. You badly, I say you like you were the next GM. It's fine. I get it.

You overate DSJ and really overate the part where- Well, I mean, sure. Go on. Sorry. Well, you overate Dallas's desperation to get rid of him to start the Luke era. Yeah. I think that, listen, I was against that trade. You were unhappy.

I was unhappy for various reasons. One, you know, I'd like to see somebody actually. I'd like to see someone actually sign the qualifying. With the Knicks. Yeah, I'd like to. And the number one thing I think that you're getting at that I want to cut right to the heart of is this. The Knicks are not a free agency destination for top tier free agents. They're not a place that top tier free agents are looking to go.

Last summer should have absolutely proved that in anybody's minds. If people are looking, if Knicks fans and the Knicks front office are looking ahead to Giannis, what they need to do is show that they can be a normal team that drafts good players, develops them, and then molds those players into something like a cohesive team that doesn't necessarily need to set the world on fire, but needs to show that the basic building blocks of a good team are there so that good players can come in and it's like plug and play.

The Knicks aren't doing that. Top tier free agents don't want to come here. So you have to start from ground zero and build the team up from the bottom level. And the only real advantage you would have in that situation is lottery picks. Yes. Where they were in this situation with Porzingis, but they weren't because they traded him before they even got in the situation. You have this window with young guys where it's like, we're the only ones who can make you rich here for about a year. And if you don't take our money, now there's risk. You might get hurt,

all this stuff. But here's a lot of money. Just take it. And now we have you for at least a couple more years. They squandered that with the Porzingis thing. And the real issue is they really under-evaluated Luca because you have an unprotected 2021 pick and you have a top-protected 2023 pick. But now it's like, well, the Mavs are one of the top eight teams in the league. I mean, to be fair, Luka was obviously an elite prospect as a teenager coming out of the second-best league in the world. That said, what he's doing now is like

unheard of nobody thought he had this gear in him maybe not right away yeah not in his not this early but as a rookie it was like all right this guy's definitely something i agree i think i think the the trap you kind of get um into as a knicks fan is like you can take some of these moves out in isolation and go, oh, this training Porzingis makes sense considering the environment and the chaos surrounding him and the fact that he wanted to go. And he hated it there. But it's like, you need to go to the root. Why did he hate it there?

You know what I mean? It's like, yes, I wish he didn't do that and act like such a scumbag and forcing his way out, and I wish the Knicks also would have held the line a little stronger and been like, let's, you know, try and at the very least extract more resources from Dallas.

But the bottom line is, why is it that players don't want to be there? Let's figure that out. Because that's the problem from which all the other problems stem. And everything else is just trying to basically patch the hole in the boat. And all that stuff makes, yes, okay, Julius Randle and other players on short contracts. Yeah, that makes sense for right now. Develop our young players.

Okay, that makes sense for Fizdale, who is liked by LeBron and others. Yeah, that makes sense right now uh you know develop our young players okay that makes sense for fizzdale who is liked by lebron and others uh yeah that makes sense right now but like as a whole it doesn't make sense and it doesn't make sense because they're still thinking of themselves as like this top tier free agency destination big market because it's new york because it's new york and but meanwhile 2010 2014 2016 2018 just whips galore except for amari who because it's New York. But meanwhile, 2010, 2014, 2016, 2018, just whips galore except for Amari, who showed up and his knee was gone in 40 games. Because we would take him with an uninsured knee. So it's like...

I hated the Porzingis trade when it happened. We did an emergency podcast. We all killed it. We were like, what the fuck are they doing? It's actually worked out worse than we thought because at least you had the sliver of hope that Luka wasn't going to be what he is now for a couple of years.

But now he's that right away. So that, even that 21 pick, it was like, well, at least that'll be a lottery pick. That's now not going to be a lottery pick. That's tough. All right, so you have that. Last summer, they strike out on everybody. Part of the problem with that Porzingis trade

is you get all the, you dump your other two contracts. It's like, well, now we got calf space. This is the Porzingis thing is leading to Katie and Kyrie. You don't get any of those. Then another thing we killed on the ringer all over the place, they just spend all the calf space.

They get, here's what they got. Bobby Portis, Taj Gibson, Julius Randall, Marcus Morris, Wayne Ellington, Reggie Bullock, Alfred Payton for $77 million. Again, in isolation, I think if you look at it as a response to, okay, we struck out on the free agency. No big deal. Here's what we're going to do.

We're going to reload with guys who are pretty good on contracts that are not egregious. And then all of a sudden, hey, you know, if a contender or a bowl contender comes around later in the season and they need a guy, we got all these guys. And also it's not hurting us long term with these. But like the knock on effect is you got all these guys who are playing for their next contract. Right. who are playing for their next contract. So players who already had a tendency to just be out for their numbers are now incentivized to be out for their numbers. And then what's going to happen in a couple of years?

Now we're just going to be hoping that another free agent comes? It's like, concentrate on the draft, develop Frank, Mitch, young players, RJ, and... Knox. Knox, and hope that... Knox, who got a DNP last week. I mean, Knox has been tough.

So I had so many issues with how they spent that money. For one thing, Randall... On four power forwards. On four guys who basically play the same position. And there was like some... There's some weird Knicks defenders on Twitter, and they were like, well, actually, Bobby Portis can play center,

and Randall and Marcus Morris can play small forward. It's like, okay, actually, Bobby Portis can play center and Randall and Marcus Morris can play small forward. It's like, okay, fine, but that's not going to work. Randall and Morris, I would say, are two of the top seven ball stoppers in the league. I had to watch Morris the last couple years. He's competitive. I liked him. He gets the ball, the ball stops.

You give Randall the ball, the ball stops. And if you watch the Knicks this year, one of the reasons they're 4-17, it's just guys standing around. Who's passing? I mean, that's a, it's a huge issue. And it's like, not really any of anyone's fault. It's just, you have that many guys who are already ball stoppers who are now playing for their next deal. What do you think they're going to do? And it's like, you have them, it's like, it's man, if you have any of those guys on the floor at the same time which you have to have sometimes it is it's tough it's tough to watch them they

will just iso out and dribble it out uh and it's like listen rando just everything stops and i i actually like rando i just think on the right team he could be a real asset on this team it's bad yeah you can't have like three other guys like Randall all trying to do Randall stuff on the team. And then it's like, listen, I don't love Fizdale. I have issues with him as well. But it's like, what do you, they handed him the squad

and they're like, go win with this. Four point guards, five power forwards. Yeah, like, and it's, that to me is insane. Like, who convinced Jim Dolan that this was a competitive good team? Like, on paper. Yeah, and that to me is insane. Who convinced Jim Dolan that this was a competitive good team on paper? Well, the Peyton thing was underrated

bizarre because they already had so many point guards. So short term for this year, and we were saying this last summer, you can listen to anything we did. The one advantage they had once these guys burned them was like, okay, we're your way station now.

Are you worried about the luxury tax? Do you have to get rid of a contract to accommodate trade? We're here. Park your money here. Park it here. You're talking about stuff like OKC's. They trade Westbrook for Chris Paul.

They get two first round picks for it, but they don't want Chris Paul. It's like, well, what do we do with this guy now? And the Knicks could have had 80 million to be like, we have an idea. Just give him to us. We'll take him. Throw in a pick too.

That'll be great. So you have that. You have Miami's trying to dump Whitesides last year. I'm not a Whiteside fan. I'd rather have Whiteside than Bobby Portis and Alfred Payton, especially if you're throwing me a pick. The Chris Paul thing is interesting just because, like, listen, are you trying to rehabilitate your image in the league?

Why not get one of these players who, yes, he's old and don't expect to compete with him or be relevant. But if you can just kiss his ass for the length of his contract so that he's like, you know what? The Knicks treated me pretty good. Yeah. That is, you know, you're killing a bird with one stone right there. You're getting a good player and you're hopefully rehabilitating your image. You're getting a leader.

You're getting a leader and you're rehabilitating your image with amongst good players in the league, which is like, could not be lower. Good players don't want to come to the Knicks. So the Knicks fans would say, Chris Paul, that's stupid. He's got three years left on his deal. That last year is 38 million, 44 million, whatever it is.

Legitimately a lot of money. Guess what? You're not signing a free agent anyway. Guess who's not coming to the Knicks? Giannis. He's not coming. He's not. Stop.

I can already sense it coming, you know, like where it's, by the end of this season, all of a sudden, it's going to be the drumbeat of, oh, he's coming. And like,

oh, like they're going to, they'll sign one of his brothers or something. Like, you know, like one of those, like the DeAndre Jordan signing from last year with the Knicks where it's like, oh, he's close with Kyrie.

Let's get him on the- Yeah, that worked out great. Yeah, it worked out great. They'll sign, you know, his brother and maybe one of his friends and then like hire his personal chef and give him a restaurant. And it won't work again. But I can see it coming. Here's my advice on that.

Do the opposite. Don't hire anybody who knows the players. Because I think part of the problem with having DeAndre last year was the Knicks are so effed up that he was there for two months and he's probably in the phone with Katie and Kyrie going, they're in a group FaceTime. He's like, don't come here.

It's terrible. There's no question, but I will say that they boomeranged on them because I think, you know, I think the reason that they insisted on him going to Brooklyn was they didn't realize he was washed. It was like, Oh,

he's playing on the Knicks. He's probably, he was probably just coasting. And then they get him and they're like, oh, I think he is actually washed. It was the DeAndre tax. Yes. On top of no KD for a year. So you can end up with the enigma that is Kyrie. One of the few things that I am taking solace in right now in New York area basketball.

Yeah. Is that occurrence. So you had, I mean, here's some other ones you could add. Phoenix had to dump TJ Warren for reasons that remain unclear. They were just giving him away for free. Could add him for 11 million.

I agree. But it's like, that's another thing where like, at least take on guys who aren't like maybe have problems. Like I, the Knicks culture is so bad already. What's his problem that he scores 26 points against good teams? I don't know.

How about the Clips got Moe Harkless for nothing? They got him for free? That would have been nice. The Lakers, they had to dump Moe Wagner. They just gave him to the Wizards. Here, take him. KOC fan Moe Wagner. I do like him. Minnesota would have panic dumped Wiggins last year

if anybody wanted him. Well, the Wiggins thing, let's let it go. Let's let it go for a little longer. Just throw it out there. He's available. I know. I need to see that happen a little longer. I need to see that continue throughout the season

before I believe that it's not like a Flip Murray situation. But what's crazy to me is we have now like a 15 to 20 year track record of how to do this. No, not even with the Knicks. Just for teams. Sure. If you strike out on free agents and you have some good young players,

bottom out, use the cap space to take other teams' problems away and get some assets. This is what normal teams do. This is what normal teams do. That's what normal teams do. Normal teams. And they've been doing it a long time. It's not flashy. It doesn't get headlines.

But it does work. And I just wish the, you know, it's like when will they start acting like a normal team? It's hard to say. I thought we, you know, Knicks fans really thought that last season, oh, they're kind of normal now. This is, you know, Knicks fans really thought that last season, oh, they're kind of normal now. This is, you know, like, okay.

Perry and Mills, they seem like they know what they're doing. It's like they're level-headed. Maybe they're just going to build, and it falls apart once again. One of the issues, they didn't even clear out the, there's this misnomer now that all these contracts are one-year contracts. It's not true. Randall, Ellington, Gibson, Bullock, and Payton are $48.6 million next year. The only ones you're getting rid of after this year are Portis and Morris.

If you throw in Noah's dead money, that's $55 million for all of those guys. They're at $92 million guaranteed next year. So people are like, well, it's fine. It's only this year. It's like, no, it's not. You're also screwed next year. It's a two-year, they're at 92 million guaranteed next year. People are like, well, it's fine. It's only this year. It's like, no, it's not. You're also screwed next year. It's a two-year, you're screwed. But again, you're not getting them anyway. We're not getting them anyway. Let's figure out deals to get draft picks, to get

assets, to get assets that you could flip for draft picks because that's the only way you get out of this. Let's say you had all the cap space now. Sure. Let's say you only did Randall. Okay. And you just had a bunch of young guys.

There's going to be some dump trades. Like for instance, San Antonio, at what point did they look at DeRozan and be like, who wants DeRozan? We just want to get rid of him. Here, take him.

That'd be great. That would have been a good pick. And then give us a couple of picks for that. Yeah. I mean, that would be great. OKC needs to... So there's five teams that have to deal with the luxury tax. OKC is a million over the luxury tax.

They love paying the luxury tax. Miami is 3.8 million. Golden State's 5.9. They don't really have a way out on that. Houston's 7.6. And Portland's 13.7 over the luxury tax. So Portland's a situation where if you had had the cap space, they would have been like, Hey, can you, can you just take Kent Baysmore? Here's our number one pick here. Take both. Cause we don't want to pay the luxury tax.

And that's the problem when, when you don't keep that flexibility and everyone's like, no, you got to spend the floor. It's like, no, you got to spend the floor. It's like, you don't have to spend the floor until the end of the season. You can be under the floor all season. Again, all this makes sense. And I just,

and I, I think that the main problem is again, just stop thinking about yourself as a free agency destination. Does it stop doing it? Does it make sense to have that ability to sign a major free agent when they come on the market yes i guess that's responsible and you should do that at the same time look at the track record now and look at the teams that major free agents go to and why they go uh you need to show that you have something there that can be built on either by giving a player some kind of stake or agency within the organization that they can have a voice.

They feel like they can have a voice in there or show that like we're we're a team that's run. In a competent, organized way, we know how to draft. Nobody thinks that players. Nobody thinks that about the Knicks. They don't, like, they're worried that the owner might go on the radio and see something wild

or have one of the, like, legendary players of the team thrown out of the garden and, like, whatever the, whatever the circumstances around that are, it's a terrible look. Like,

James Olen just needs to disappear for a couple years and not say anything Knicks related in the press for a while. Like disappear, like move to another country? Just like go on the road,

play music, but don't talk about the Knicks right now. He tried to do that when they hired Phil Jackson and that also backfired. I think part of the problem is he just hasn't hired

the right person to run the Knicks yet. Yeah, I mean, this I think part of the problem is he just hasn't hired the right person to run the Knicks yet. Yeah, I mean, this is 20 years of the wrong people. Remember when you thought Scott Layden was as bad as it was going to get

as an executive? Right, then Will and Isaiah. And then Isaiah was like, hold my brewery full of beers. And then Phil Jackson's like, I'm putting in 20 hours a week. Watch this.

Well, I think you've hit on a good... He can't hire people. That's it. You've noticed something which I think is important, which is the tendency, certainly under Dolan, to look for saviors constantly. The guy who's going to save it now.

Man, if we get Masai, offer him $20 million a year, he can turn this around. And by the way, I'd be in for that. I think Masai's great. But we also recognize that this is the kind of thinking that has got you. Oh, this is going to be the person that turns around. No. Okay.

Isaiah, he's going to be the person that turns around. He can't turn around. And he can't. Maybe if he coaches NGMs at the same time, he can turn around. You know? And it's like constantly. I forgot that happened. Yeah, that happened.

I forgot he coached. Yeah, because Larry Brown drove them into a hole in the ground. And I was like, well, Isaiah, why don't you coach also? Well, I have bad news for you. There's another savior coming. It's good news for people who maybe want to see their broadcast teams get mixed up. No, I think they're Mark Jackson waiting to happen. I think it's going to happen.

I think that that is, you know. And I got to say, it's not completely illogical because think about two things. You could, I'm just saying. You're hurting me. Okay. Yes. Go on. Yeah.

By the way, I think it would be a bad move to do this, but I'm just saying like, I'm trying to, I'm in James Dillon's office right now, listening to the case for it. And the case isn't awful. So it's like, Hey, he was in there from the beginning with Clay and Curry. He saw the Draymond thing. He was on the record earlier saying this could be the best shooting backcourt of all time. He's a diehard Knick. He gets New York. He's going to know how to deal with the media. ESPN loves him. They'll be much nicer to us because Mark Jackson's here. There's this whole case for bring this guy in and people will like us more. Who cares about being liked? No, no. I agree with that. That's the case.

Here's my rebuttal. I think the reasons, the basketball reasons to not hire Mark Jackson are many. You know, like, many. But I'm not even going to go there. He is a New York basketball legend. Okay? Let's not tarnish another one. You know what I mean?

Let's leave him pure. Don't do this to Mark. Don't put that on him. Don't bring him back to the garden and then slowly watch the crowd turn on him don't bring him back to the garden and then slowly watch the crowd turn on him and then he becomes the next sacrificial guy and then he is thrown out again and now mark jackson's career as a coach is irrevocably ruined of course you know like again the reasons that he has not

been hired as a coach in the league, there's many reasons. Including the two assistant coaches who left the team during his last season. Many, many reasons. Mark doesn't deserve it. He is a New York legend. Don't tarnish him by making him

coach the Knicks. I have a request for you. Maybe you need to be a little less selfish. Maybe you need to be a little less selfish. Maybe you need to think about all basketball fans. If Jackson leaves ESPN, we get more Doris Burke. Maybe the Knicks should just take one for the team here because you're screwed anyway. You might as well make our TV broadcasting experience better. We get more Doris. I mean, that is an opinion that I heard. Maybe more Richard Jefferson. I am just, I'm I would just humbly say please no. Please don't. Please don't let that

happen. I mean like, it's please don't. Please don't make that happen. Can you just tell me quickly on the bright side. Sure. Somebody says on the bright side with the next Jason dot dot dot. What's the bright side? RJ has shown flashes that he can be good.

I like RJ. I think Mitch, listen, he can't stop fouling, and that's a problem. But he is a difference maker defensively, and when he's in the game, he cleans up so many mistakes, so many mistakes just by his defensive activity and his length.

Do you think they'll increase the limit to 12,000 game right now? If that'd be great, then he could play for a half of basketball. And I think, and, and Nilekina, you know, like has shown flashes of late of certainly defensively. He's a difference maker. His offense is not good, but it's shown flashes of coming along. And I just, you know, he's, he's an impact player on the, on the defense. Like he's a player that like, I could, it's like Trevor Riza. Like I could see him going to like a good team and being like,

oh man, he's like an important piece on a good team. I told you last spring, if I was a GM, I already would have traded for him. He's going to be on a good team at some point in his life. That Dallas game, you beat Dallas twice. One of the reasons you beat him was he was in Lucas' jersey the whole game. He's an absolute dog. And so those are the silver lines. But the funny thing is, if you just had RJ, Knox, Smokes, and Mitch, and not signed any of these other people. I think the fans would have liked that team.

I mean, they would have enjoyed the 10 minutes Mitch was in the game. I agree that, yeah, I think that there is, listen, the Knicks fans will always get behind the team. And I think there would have been a significant segment of Knicks fans that would have been like, yeah, let's roll the young guys out. Let's get them minutes and let's mold them

into like a cohesive basketball team. And let's worry about the wins later. let's mold them into like a cohesive uh basketball team and let's worry about the wins later that said i think that there are i i get where where the front office after striking out on two free ages that they really thought that they were gonna get we're like we're coming to new york oh what do we do now like we have to plan b it and we need to figure this out like in the next 20 minutes, or it looks like we didn't know what we're doing. Maybe the good news is that you didn't get those guys. I mean, in a way it kind of is. Let's hold that thought. Cause I want to talk about Kyrene one second. We're going to take a break. Quick break to talk about SimpliSafe, my choice for home security, comprehensive professional home security at a fair price right now. It's the

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So Kyrie gets booed at the Celtic game. Yes, he did. There's some Kyrie sucks chance. We knew that was going to happen, right? Everybody knew that was going to happen. That's a normal thing that happens in sports. You leave a team under acrimonious circumstances, be it trade or whatever,

you're going to get booed. Especially when you tell the fan base that you're coming back and you don't. Especially when you position yourself as the leader of the team and give crazy, bizarre press conferences all year that bum everybody out and change the tenor of the team.

And then you say, just wait for the playoffs on playoffs, Kyrie. And then in the Bucs series, all you do is shoot bricks and stumble around for five games. You can't wait to leave. Just as an aside, that was so, like, thinking about it now. It's crazy.

Some of that was so weird, like, the way he was like, there were defensive possessions where he's like, I have Giannis. Why? What do you do? Like he would wave guys off and be calling like these defensive like realignments and stuff. It's like, what's happening out here right now?

It was like shit that happened in the movie Above the Rim. It was wild. It would have been like, what was Avon's name? Motaw. Motaw. Like if he had to shut down Shep. He's like, I got this.

He's waving people off. That was Kyrie. Tommy Shepard. Now the wizard champ. All right. So Kyrie does his Instagram post. And he's acting so erratically and bizarre just for the last year or so that now people are like afraid to even be like, all right, that was really lame.

Why'd you do that? Are you going to read the whole thing? Because I feel like I didn't know I was going to be here this long if you're going to read the entire Instagram post. Let's change your nine words. I'm not going to read the whole thing.

I'll just read the end. Sure. Because he seems very angry about the fans and the infrastructure of the sport that he loves. It's a meta commentary on the relationship between fans and sport. So one thing he writes is, it's all about doing it for the fans and organization

that love you so much? Think again. It's a game. And it's promoted as a fandom experience for ticket buyers and viewers at home while defacing who people truly are as people. And then at the end he said, this game isn't meant to be

controlled or shown as a drama. It's meant to show the love. All caps. Love for the art is the only damn thing that keeps the purest people in this giant sports entertainment circus. Don't fall for the game that's played in this giant sports entertainment circus. Don't fall for the game that's played in front of you as entertainment. It'll never be as serious dealing with life.

I mean, I go ahead. What do you have? No, go ahead. I'll let you go first. I don't necessarily know what Kyrie's point is, although I do kind of think that he diagnoses the kind of like reality of big time sports in a kind of accurate way in that you know the players are out here doing a job and they are commodified for profit certainly I guess the bottom line is like yeah of course it's yeah that's how the NBA makes money. That's why you make millions of dollars.

That's why that's that's kind of what the business is. And I think if they're so what is do you have a specific problem with it? What is it? Also, like, I'm not sure. I think he uses punctuation like just however he wants. Like sometimes the question. I kind of like that part of it. It's like it's like watching a great poet.

Here's my issue. Sure. You said the key point. This is how everybody makes money. Yeah. The league and the players make money because of the fans. The fans buy tickets and they watch the TV that pays for basically everything. They buy the jerseys.

They pay for everything. They buy hats in China. They're paying for LeBron's trip there. He's been every year for the last 15 years. The fans are the reason these guys make money. So Kyrie's basic point is like, I just want to play basketball. I have this love for this game. Like in a Buddhist monastery. Yeah. I just want to play basketball. I have this love for this game. Like in a Buddhist monastery.

I want the pure experience. And unfortunately for me, the fans and the media keep getting in the way of my true pursuit, which is just basketball. I love this game. KD has said forms of this as well. He made Uncle Drew just for the love, the pure love of basketball. So that's where it falls apart, right

there. He made Uncle Drew! He made Uncle Drew commercials. He's got Kyrie sneakers. It's only for the love of it. All he's done is commodify the game as egregiously as anyone. So what is he complaining about? All he's done is grab checks left and right

off of the fact that fans love basketball. And now he's like, fuck you guys. I wish I could just play basketball. If you want to play basketball just to play basketball go play pickup don't get paid anymore just go go to the rucker league and just play there for free because you love basketball you would never do that because you want paychecks so stop with the fucking double standard i i 100 agree with you i will never will never know the pure aesthetic delight of being an elite basketball player. I don't know what that does

to like a person's psychological makeup when they're just so good at something that it's like unreal. That said, it's like fans are going to boo you. They're going to cheer you. They cheer you when you're doing great. When they don't like you, they boo you. That's just kind of what it is.

You know, like if they boo you. Let's leave aside like the more antagonistic stuff that can happen sometimes that's like over the line. Fans will boo players that they don't like. That's a reality of sports.

They'll also cheer you. They will also cheer you. They will also love you and buy your shoes. They will do all of that stuff. They will buy your Kyrie 7s. Absolutely. And they will go see Uncle Drew because they like you. So you can't then go on attack because a situation didn't turn out the way you thought it was going to turn out in Boston where the fans do not like you.

Sorry. It's a reality of the situation. It is a reality of the situation. And if you don't like it, here's an idea. Retire from the NBA. He won't. And just play pickup. Because you love basketball. I just hope he continues.

Kyrie, please continue to post. Continue to tweet. Continue to post to Instagram, on your stories and on your main feed. Continue to let us in and let us know what is on your mind. I find it fascinating. I find it interesting. I would like to know more.

And I hope you continue to do that. When you're playing and when you're not playing, let us know what you're feeling. I want to know. If fans can't cheer and boo, and now you're going to say, like, what crossed the line with the Kyrie stuff? I guess two people put the coward stuff outside on polls.

Sure. All right. I wish that hadn't happened. I also think like, it's not like the worst thing that's ever happened. It's not the worst thing. It was like, oh,

that sucks. I wish somebody hadn't done that. But in the actual arena, they're just ch and Kyrie sucks. They were mad that he wasn't there. They wanted him to play. They wanted to root against him. And to watch the kind of, you know,

the narrative that's emerging now around Brooklyn, where it's like, you know, whispers, oh, they're concerned about his moodiness and his emotions and the way he's acting when he's down to the court, et cetera. And yes, he seems beloved by players when, you know, when he's,

when teams are hugging after games and, et cetera. Yeah, because they respect him because he's really talented. But it is, it's interesting to watch.

I do wonder, you know, like, he can't go to another team after, like, he needs to figure this out. Oh,

he's going to be in like three more teams. What are you talking about? But he needs to figure this out right now. He's not figuring it out. He needs to, he kind of does need to figure it out. He's going to be in like three more teams. What are you talking about? He needs to figure this out. He's not figuring it out. He needs to figure it out. I just feel like

man, the next if you go to your fourth team that's wild. He's a wonderfully talented player. He's incredible. When he's playing it's unbelievable to watch him.

He's just incredible. Yeah. He should not try to be a leader, which I think he's slowly figured out. And what he really shouldn't do is attack the whole infrastructure that he's made incredible amounts of money on. And if he doesn't like it, he has options because he can play basketball on his own time. He doesn't have to be in the NBA. If you're in the NBA, there's deals you have to make. One of them is you are now a public figure. You're going to be dissected. It's the same thing like when LeBron goes to China every

year, which he's gone every year for the last 15, he's got to reconcile whoever he feels about the Chinese government and some of the shit they do. And he looks at it and he goes, that's fine. I'm going to take the check anyway, which is what the NBA does, which is what a lot of people do. It's what we do when we buy products from places that are making these different things. Kyrie has to reconcile the fact that if he's going to behave erratically, which he has been for the last four years, he's going to get booed.

He's going to get dissected. And that's just the way it is. If he doesn't like it, retire. I would, my thing is this. I think that, again, I do think that he kind of diagnoses the reality of the NBA ecosystem kind of diagnoses the reality of uh the nba ecosystem kind of accurately i just would like him to be a little bit more

like what's so what is the actual criticism how do we change it then that's that would be interesting to me i don't think that it's i don't think that it's changeable i think that like he's essentially complaining about a thing that is the state of affairs and kind of like the base level of what you have to deal with. Wait, you understood what he was complaining about? Not really. I think he was basically pissed that people were booing him essentially and that like

Well no, it seemed like he was basically saying get a life. Yeah, sure. It was a roundabout way of like when you're in a fantasy league with somebody and they forgot to set their lineup and somebody else in the fantasy league is like, what the fuck, dude? You didn't set your lineup. It's like, sorry, I had to work this week. It was kind of like a condescending.

It was a little matrix. Like, don't you realize that we're all you're trapped in this mindset where like players are playing for me for you, but like they're being dehumanized by the system and the fans are all caught up in it and blah, blah, blah. Just like what is the actual can you bullet point it? I just wish it's like maybe break it up into paragraphs better. So I just so I can understand. I want to understand. That's all. Like so maybe bullet point your points and and don't just do a whole block paragraph of text.

Cause it's hard for me to discern where we're going. That's all. Well, he said, he said, uh, it's promoted as a fandom experience for ticket buyers and viewers at home.

Of course it is. Well, the facing who people truly are as people. I, I think things a strong word. I, so I interpret that as being Kyrie is saying there's, they're commodifying him in a certain way that is not,

that does not comport with who he is as a person. If that is the case, then I mean, like again, just as an editor, can I, what are some specifics here, Kyrie?

Can we get some like under that? What are some examples?, Kyrie? Can we get some, like, under that, what are some examples? Because you're laying out a fascinating case and an idea here. But what else? I'm just really, I want to know more. I just want him to continue writing. Do you think he was upset about the reviews of Uncle Drew? Is that when all this started?

I think that- He thought he was an Oscar winner? I think his team did everything they could do to shield him from every written review of Uncle Drew to the point where I bet you they photoshopped fake reviews and sent them to him. Created an entire fake Rotten Tomatoes website that he could log into and be like,

oh man, Uncle Drew, it's the movie of the century. No one's ever seen anything like this. Roger Ebert died several years ago. Roger Ebert says, Uncle Drew changed my life. So we're not going to see Uncle Drew 2 is how it's starting to shape up. We might see it. No, I don't know.

He feels like he's been defaced. We might see it. I just, I guess, and we should wrap up, but I guess I was watching, my dad and I were watching on Friday. There was this ridiculous 12 o'clock, what was it? Nets Celtics game?

Started at 12 o'clock. So the pregame show was on and it was eight o'clock. We're having coffee, West Coast time. Tommy Heinsen is on. Three whiskeys in. He's talking about the Kyrie thing, and you can just see he's reining himself in. And he wants to do the whole speech of,

when I was playing, they would throw the quarters at us as I'm shooting free throws. You know he wants to say it, but he's not. But he and the host were both basically like, Kyrie treated people terribly here. They're saying it in roundabout ways, but they don't want to say it. Then it goes to Scalabrini.

And Scalabrini is like, you're making excuses for what happened in Boston. The reason people react that way was because of what happened on the court and what happened off the court and how you treated people here. Kyrie needs to reconcile that part. I would advise against the Instagram post.

He needs to think about how he treats other people. Start there and then worry about how he's being treated. That would be my advice. I hope he posts about it though. NBA desktop coming Friday. Yeah. Yep. Binge mode,

Star Wars going full steam. Thanks for coming on. Thanks for having me. All right. We're getting to Tim Robbins in one second. First, if you're like most millennials, you know you should be investing. You're not sure where to start. Getting your money right doesn't have to be hard.

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at square.com slash go slash BS. Loans subject to credit approval and issued by a Celtic Bank member. F-D-I-C. All right, here he is, Tim Robbins. All right, the tallest actor ever to win an Oscar. Tim Robbins. There you go.

It's pretty good, right? Are you worried somebody's going to break your record? Kevin Garnett's in Uncut Gems. You might take it. Or Shaq playing Hamlet. That could happen. If KG gets nominated for Uncut Gems, you might be in trouble. You think so? Six foot five.

Who are the five tallest actors? You and Clint Eastwood. Who are the other three? Jimmy Stewart was pretty tall. Yeah. They're not a lot of tall actors. Costner's like a solid 6'1". 6'1", yeah.

James Cromwell. He's 6'7". He's taller than me. He's 6'7"? If he wins an Oscar, he will take the throne away from me. Do you think, because a lot of actors are short, do you think that's an issue sometimes with movies where they're like, he's just too,

Tim's just too taller than this other guy we were thinking? Could be. Or they have to just shoot it? Depends on the security or lack thereof of the lead actor. But for example, Tom Cruise didn't have a problem with it. No. When I was doing War of the lead actor you know but for example tom cruise didn't have a problem with it you know now when i was doing uh uh war of the worlds with him and we even had to get into a death match together and you know well he had to win but right he had to win that one but no certain people just don't have that insecurity one of my best friends is uh not particularly tall and

never comes up any hoops for you ever or no? I, you know, around hoop season, I was always playing hockey. Oh, yeah. You're a hockey guy. Yeah. So growing up in New York City, I played a lot of roller hockey. Wow. And a little bit of ice hockey.

Ice time was really hard to come by. You'd have to get up at four in the morning, play at six in the morning. That's still the case, by the way, in all areas of the United States. And then there's the midnight leagues where you're playing a game at one in the morning and getting home three, four, and you're still hyped up from the game. It's just not healthy. My son got into hockey probably right as he turned six. And there's no hockey out here.

There's two rinks. I know. And neither of them were anywhere near our house. I know. And he hit a point where it's like, all right, is he going to start doing this? And you start looking at it. It's like, well, that's an hour that way. That's 45 minutes that way.

It's five in the morning. It's six in the morning. It's like, that's not fun. Can you not do this? It's a big commitment. It's that the parents across America that are doing it, they know. All those road trips, too. It's like, that's not fun. Can you not do this? It's a big commitment. You know, it's that, you know, the parents across America that are doing it, you know, they know a little, there's road trips too. It's tough.

You got to get up super early and also just deal with the whole nature of it as well. The culture of it. It's, it's pretty interesting. It can be good. It can be bad. I always found, you know, that it was important to let the kids play and not to do too many drills. We,

we have, uh, we had a place, uh, we still do have a place in the country outside of New York. We built a little oversized tennis court with, and kind of put a curb around it so we could flood it in the winters and had shinny games there for,

you know, 20, 30 kids from the neighborhood play all day long get a fire going hot chocolate nothing better nothing better in the world especially when you're like the next like if it's a friday in your you're you're doing your sheet of ice you kind of handheld zamboni that i had yeah this is basically a hose running into a tea with and at the bottom of the T is a bunch of holes that lets out a little bit of water, right? And it's being down there at midnight after having shoveled it, and you got a little scotch,

fire going, and you're doing your slow-move Zamboni so that in the morning, you have this black ice. It's just the best. So it was a homemade Zamboni, or you got this? No, it's actually, you can order them. And I found it in a catalog. Mini Zamboni. Mini Zamboni.

It's like, imagine a T. Yeah. The T is the bottom. And there's a whole bunch of holes in the bottom. And then the hose goes into the top. So it's like a very primitive Zamboni, but it works. Wow. It creates this incredible black ice.

Why don't you get credit for the climactic scene in Top Gun more often? We just did a rewatchables about it a few months ago, and you're right there. You're the first guy, high fives, you take over for Goose, nothing. Yeah. It's been lost in the Tim Robbins history. That's all right. Merlin, how many lines did you have? Eight, but it was the best job. Because here, check this out. I worked down in San Diego for maybe a week to start somewhere in June or something like that.

And I got paid for the entire summer. Every week. I wasn't there. I got paid. So I went back to LA, produced a play, acted in it. By the time they had finished down in san diego they were doing starting to do the air sequences in full in these like you know machines uh yeah and um i worked for a week there and basically got paid for this was early in my career got paid for like 18 weeks wow Wow. For nothing, for doing nothing.

I said, wow, this is, that's a good way to make a living. Did you audition, you were like available for any part or did you, were you going for another part and didn't get it or what happened? I have no idea. It was just- You were just in. Yeah, I was just in.

How did Bull Durham happen? Well, that was, I think Bull Durham was after that. Yeah, it was two years after. Bull Durham happened, I was auditioning at the time. I auditioned for that part. I did well. And then I had to go prove myself with Ron Shelton. I had to go throw the ball.

Kevin Costner was there. And I had to pitch to him because he didn't want to have people that didn't know how to play baseball. Yeah. And I was also offered Eight Men Out. Remember that movie? Yeah, that was a good, both of those movies. Well, you made the right choice. I think so.

I think so. Who would you have been in Eight Men Out? Like one of the white socks? I forget. Yeah, one of the black socks. Oh, black socks. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Which was a great movie and a great script

and had a couple of friends that were going to do it. And it was John Sayles, just on matawan which i loved and but that this this was something about this script about that ron sheldon had written and then meeting him and then uh playing a little ball with kevin and then meeting susan and yeah i think i did make the right decision what happened what happened with your arm during that during that filming thing because you're throwing a lot of pitches my arm was fine i have pictures of me icing it. They had a trainer, and every time you finished, they iced it and did all the therapy things they do.

You know, I didn't realize. I played third base, so that was the extent of my arm. You have to have a pretty good arm. So I didn't know the mechanics. I had to learn the mechanics and you know how to push off and how the power power pitching comes from the legs and all that stuff um and uh it but it was a dream come true imagine you know you're a kid that always wanted to be a baseball player now you're an adult uh you're given a uniform and they tell you to go out on the field and have fun.

You know, it's like, that's pretty cool. Because I used to act out games, you know. We didn't have a television, so I'd listen to New York Mets games on the radio. And I'd put on my, you know, uniform that I'd gotten for Christmas and I'd pretend to be the pitcher. And I, you know, act out the entire game. And, you know, so it was, you know, one of those dreams come true. Costner was here a couple months ago.

We were talking about that movie. And he was saying, like, one of the things he remembered is just, like, all of a sudden, you and Susan Sarandon are falling in love as you're filming the movie. And just, like, the intensity and just everything about it. Everybody knew they were making a good movie. Your life's changing. Her life's changing. And just everything about it. Everybody knew they were making a good movie. Your life's changing, her life's changing,

and just everything. He said it was like really a memorable experience. It was. It was a beautiful time. It was a beautiful time. And I can still smell that air, the tobacco in the air. Were you filming that like North Carolina? Durham, North Carolina.

Yeah. Did you know that it had a chance to go down as like kind of the baseball movie because some people think there's like some people in the natural camp there's there's people in the bull durham camp there's people in the major league camp but bull durham i think is the consensus probably has the most votes i i really enjoy hearing that and i i i believe i believe uh so too yeah look come on the writing that film is so amazing you know when i first read that script you I really enjoy hearing that. And I believe so too. Yeah, come on, the writing of that film is so amazing. When I first read that script, the Church of Baseball,

all Annie's rants about Walt Whitman and the connection between what it is to be free and baseball, all these great metaphorical things that only a baseball player and a person that's interested in writing would conceive. Ron Shelton was a minor league player. Right. So he really knew the world and loved the world with respect for the world. And so we knew we were in good hands for a number of reasons.

Yeah. First of all, the insight he had in the script. No one knew whether he could direct or not. This was his first directing gig. But I was sold the second day of dailies. We're watching actual dailies in a hotel, which is what they used to do. And I hear this commotion behind me,

and I see Ron Shelton holding one of the producers up by his lapels up on a wall off the off the off the floor saying if you ever talk to my actor again I will fucking kill you oh my god I was like Kevin looks at me and he goes who Joe that became our nickname for Ron. Oh, wow. He basically was saying in his second day of work as a professional director,

I'm going to make my movie or you're going to fire me. Which I still remember. That's gutsy. It's the work of someone that is not going to be messed around with. And he's setting down the ground rules right from the start. Something I learned from Ron, that you have to, if you're going to be the leader of something, you've got to let them let you drive.

It doesn't help to have eight drivers in a car. It just doesn't. Also, three really richly drawn out characters that I wonder, now we're 31 years later, I think? 30 years? 31? If that's just like a Netflix show now, or like a seven episode HBO show,

or if they even think that Bull Durham is a movie. Oh, we wouldn't be able to get Bull Durham done. It would have to be a TV series, right? It probably wouldn't be. Apple TV would be like, hey, we're doing be able to get Bull Durham done. It would have to be a TV series, right? It probably wouldn't be. Like Apple TV would be like, hey, we're doing this minor league baseball show. And it just would be different.

Doubtful they would even do it. Right. Yeah. But the good news is we got it done. Yeah. Different era. We all got paid. Yeah.

But yeah, I'm really happy. So proud to be part of that film that was you know it's this is the thing um in the long run what you want is something that can still be seen right yeah and boulder can still be seen and appreciated there's movies that fade away fast and oftentimes those are the movies that are advertised a lot and become these hits while they're out, you know, make $100 million. But they just don't stand the test of time. And ultimately, at the end of the day, I'd much rather have Bull Durham's in there than, you know, something that was the, I don't know what beat Bull Durham at the box office at the time, but I'm pretty sure it's not still around. Well, what's crazy is there's a

timelessness to it there's no cell phones obviously there's no internet i'm not sure it matters no because when you watch it it's it's still i don't feel like we're in 1988 necessarily like some of the hairdos maybe but for the most part it's mostly a movie that could be made now it would have all the same beats yeah minor League Baseball certainly hasn't changed. It's still in the same rinky-dink towns and weird parts of America. So that part's not any different. The whole concept of Crash Davis, that still exists over and over again. There's a Crash Davis.

You always read about the real-life Crash Davis, all that stuff. And then what happens with Nuke with the meteoric rise, and you know he's just kind of passing through town before he gets to the majors. So all themes that still exist. Right. Before he blows his arm out. Right. Oh, yeah.

Yeah. When do you think he blew his arm out? I don't know. I'm thinking about four or five seasons in. Tommy John surgery, the convertible closer doesn't quite work. Doesn't work out. Yeah. He retires.

He's at trade shows doing autographs. Right. And then he meets Jim Boughton. Right. And Jim Boughton teaches him how to throw a knuckleball, and he makes this great comeback. That was my idea for the sequel. Would you have done a sequel?

Hell yeah. I think I'm a little too old now. But when I was 40 or 45, I thought that would have been a good sequel. You've had more than enough juice to do the sequel. Oh, sure. Yeah. Like semi-washed up nuke making one last run at it. 60 years old, throwing the knuckleball.

I actually got to know Jim Bowden, who passed recently. What a lovely man. What a great guy. He showed me how to throw a knuckleball. For the audience, the young ones out there, Jim Bowden writes the first great baseball, like behind-the-scenes baseball book before. Incredible book.

And nobody had ever kind of peeked behind the curtain in a book like that who played for a team. Completely de-romanticized the whole idea of the glory of Mickey Mant mantle for example i haven't read that book in a while i imagine it it reads super tame now i imagine too i don't know i did read his recent book uh that he wrote about this minor league uh uh you know he started a league of uh baseball a baseball league of like original baseball team, you know, like using the original ball,

the no gloves, like. Oh, I like those leagues. Like the baseball from the 1890s kind of thing. So, yeah. And he wrote a book about actually environmental pollution in New England. I'm curious to return to Ball Four. I remember reading as a teenager and just being,

just giddily in love with it. I remember the same thing with the Bronx Zoo when Sparky Liao wrote that one. And he had the Reggie Jackson, Thurman Munson stories. And it was like, oh my God, these guys didn't like each other. They just had no idea. They had to be separated in the clubhouse. People sitting on birthday cakes and all that stuff.

Yeah, yeah. But it's good that you have that perspective that this, Balfour was the first. Yeah. It was the one that was like, there's so many people got so offended by that book when it came out. It was how you broke the veil of the silence.

You know, you can't talk about that kind of stuff. You know, it was a different way. They were unveiled too, because they were like, I remember Bronx Zoo had an excerpt maybe in like sport magazine and it was just like a piece of it. And it was like about different Reggie Jackson's a dick. I was like, Oh my God, when's this book come out? I think it would be really hard to build anticipation for a book like that.

Like they would just release it sooner or it would just come out right away or whatever. Back then it was like, what's this going to be? Is this going to be like a nuclear bomb or the Yankees going to be the same? Nobody knew it was in the book. Yeah. Now it's different. Yeah. It's, you know, some, some, it's just like life, you know, there's, there are great people and there are assholes, you know, it's like life. There are great people and there are assholes.

Same on any sport team. I'm sure movies, same thing. Same thing. Did you ever think about writing a book? Actually, I've started to. I'm writing a memoir. Yeah. Look at you.

Yeah. You've been known to have some thoughts about some things. Yeah, and it will all come out in the book. Look at you. Yeah. You've been known to have some thoughts about some things. Yeah. And it will all come out in the book. I've been, yeah, there's a lot of things that I, you know, still formulating how to say, but, you know, things that been brewing for years about the way I feel about certain things. Well, you, I mean, you have some unique relationships with certain experiences, right? Like you become famous overnight.

Not really. Well, Durham though. Yeah. But I had been going for 10 years at that time. Yeah. But that movie was like a phenomenon. Yeah,

for sure. It was great. I mean, I'm not saying that, but, but yeah, I don't know about overnight success. I guess you were saying elsewhere when you did the arc on that.

I remember that was a big deal, but I didn't know who you were. I just knew you from, what were you, like a terrorist or something? Yeah, yeah. That was the first three St. Elsewheres. Yeah. And I was just, the reason I got that part was because, well, it was the first audition that really clicked for me

because I had such a bad attitude. And I guess it kind of translated into them thinking that I'd be a good terrorist. Like you're too difficult or something? Just I didn't, you know, I was like, it's like you know young brash punk rocker yeah going to auditions for what you know golden girls i'm like no like you know golden girls no it's not me playing the grandson he's got an attitude and so it didn't work out for the first year and a half that i was going on auditions. And then something about this clicked. And then I realized, oh, my God, this is pretty good money.

And I can produce theater out of this. I had a young theater company at the time called The Actors Gang that we had formed at UCLA. And I had produced the first play on delivery of pizzas in Beverly Hills, Jacopo's. And it's good tips, but, you know, I realized St. Elsewhere was a better paycheck. So I got my act together, got a better attitude, started working more, started producing more theater. Well, you talk about how some movies just don't die

and just keep going and going. And then other movies are a huge success and then they don't have that same kind of, they don't keep going for 30 years. I feel like The Player was like that because The Player was such a huge thing when it came out. And I felt like that was one of the defining movies of that year in a lot of different ways. And especially because Altman was a little bit older at that point. It was his comeback. And it was like a very, very LA movie about people in LA which people out here love

but I didn't know that I was living in Boston but it brought me into this whole world that I just didn't know and it's weird that that movie hasn't you know it's like that movie I never see on TV and I don't totally understand it sometimes it's who owns it

and what deals they've made this is a new thing that we're going to have to deal with. Who decides what is in rotation? Yeah. That's something I think we have to talk about. I'm frustrated that Bob Roberts isn't out there more. I think that movie is so relevant to now. But you can find it.

You can find anything if you do a deep dive. But it's what is presented on their menus that, you know, here's what we want you to watch, right? Right. Yeah, I agree. But when people rediscover it, the player's got legs. It's a really good film. I would say a top 10 L.A. movie.

It's definitely a top five behind-the-scenes Hollywood movie. And, I mean, Altman. Genius. la movie it's definitely a top five behind the scenes hollywood movie and i mean altman genius what was so what do you remember all these years later about him oh i just loved him so much um god i miss him uh everybody who works with him seems like they're just like revered him i tell you something uh first time i met him i was so nervous because you know i saw nashville when i was in high school and that was the first movie i saw that made me think oh my god movies i was a theater guy yeah and i thought oh my god this there's stories to be told in the way that he told stories uh was so fresh and innovative and so when i got to meet him i was you know i said to my agent you

know what do we is an? What are the sides? What am I supposed to say? He said, no, no, no. He just wants to meet you. And so I drive to this place that he was living in Malibu. And it's basically his house and his family and a couple of staff members. It's basically for lunch. And he just wanted to talk.

And one of the reasons he wanted me to be in his film was because of the theater work I was doing. He really appreciated what he read about. And he asked me to do this film. And I was, you know, at the time, I think Jacob's Ladder had just come out. I was broke. I had a baby.

And I was,. I had a baby. And I was anxious. And I got offered a million dollars to do this shitty comedy. And I really didn't want to do it, but I had to do it. And I'm just laying in my hotel room, and I talked to my agent. I said, listen, what's the chance that the play are happening? I don't know. They don't have the financing for it yet. I said, really? But it would happen when? Like in a couple months. Yeah. And this thing's going right now and it would conflict, this million dollar offer. And I just said, fuck it. I can't, I can't do it. I can't, I can't do

this. I can't do this shitty comedy. I'm going to wait with the faith that the player will happen right what I didn't know is in the course of that long wait over a couple months Altman had was offered uh the money to do it with another actor oh and he stayed faithful really yeah he said no I'm going to do it with this kid I talked to him you know and I told him I want going to do it with this kid. I talked to him, you know, and I told him I want him to do it. So I gave him my word and said, we're going to do it with him. So he waited for me to be acceptable to them. And you turned down a million-dollar comedy that probably disappeared after five weeks. Yeah, yeah. But here's what happened.

You know, being allowed into this world, basically Altman told me to come out for pre-production. He said, we're going to rewrite this. We're going to sit down. We're going to hash this out. So I got to sit at the feet of a master. Yeah. I got to observe everything about directing from him. And that was really...

So you're like going to grad school almost. Exactly. It was my film school. And it was right... So you're like going to grad school almost. Exactly. It was my film school. And it was right before I directed my first film, too. I did The Player in the spring, and in the fall, I was directing Bob Roberts. Right. And one of the greatest things I learned from him was humility. This was a genius.

This was what you could call an auteur, an artist. And I'd be in the office with him and, you know, department heads would come in, the prop guy, the costume person, they'd say, you know, Bob, I got a question, this and this and this and this. If they went on at all, he'd say, cut to the verb. And they'd get to what they wanted to talk about without all the niceties and he would say i don't know what do you think and what i realized is that yeah he did know the answer to these various questions about props and costumes but he wanted them to be contributors and he wanted them to feel valued as contributors. And then at one point he says to me, why would I cheat myself out of them perhaps maybe having a better idea?

Why would I cheat myself out of that? And I came to understand that the directing is really being able to, yes, be the captain, but also allow your crew members to do their jobs and also to be able to live in the unknown. Yeah. That you maybe don't know everything. And that isn't it great that there's all these creative people around that can provide answers to those questions?

And that's what the actors responded to. That's why actors loved him so much. Usually that philosophy works for, you see, with comedies. Like Adam McKay directs that way when he does his movies. He relies a lot on the ad-libbing and lading rope, but usually you don't see that as much in dramas. Yeah. Well, PTA has that too.

PTA is another one that does that, yeah. Because he came through that school as well. I would say Altman was probably the best possible person to spend a few weeks with. Oh, my God. Because if you'd spent like five weeks with Stanley Kubrick, I don't know how much that would have helped you. You'd be like, what's going on with that guy?

Yeah, that's the, yeah. It was almost the opposite, you know? Yeah. Yeah, and I did three movies with him. And, you know, I wish that I could have done more. So the player comes out and you're in LA. First we're in Cannes. And it's at the Cannes Film Festival

and it's a huge hit and I'm at the Cannes Film Festival. You won, right? I won Best Actor. And at the same time I also am presenting at the Cannes Film Festival my first film, Bob Roberts, which is getting a whole bunch of attention there and got a distribution out of there.

So yeah, this is two days after my second son was born, I got on a plane to go to camp. And I just said to Susan, you know what? If this baby doesn't come, I'm not going to camp. So the second I said that, the baby was born. I didn't think. But yeah, it was a heady time. It was, you know, I remember, you know, being there with both films. And, you know, it was, I was so happy to be there with Bob because it was his return. Yeah.

He had been out of, you know. For a while. Yeah. He was kind of still doing films, you know, out of New York and filming plays. And, you know, he's still creating, but wasn't in favor in Hollywood. Were people in LA like the agent community? Hey, that wasn't about me, right? Or hey, was there a lot of that?

I actually was in a couple of agents' offices to study this role. So I sat with a couple of, well, actually, let study, uh, this role. So I, Oh, I sat with a couple, uh, well, actually let me correct myself, not agents, executives, studio executives.

I sat and listened to all their phone calls for like four hours, five hours straight. Just to get a feel, just to get a feel of all the bullshit. And, uh, I was really grateful to those executives who shall remain nameless. But, but all of it was funny because Cannes, when it was this huge success,

I remember him turning to me and he goes, success, the success, you know, we must have fucked up because we were probably too nice to them. This is an accident, yeah. We were too nice to them. It was a success. I don't trust it. Why do you think Bob Roberts,

if somebody watched it in 2019, I mean, I know the answer, but I want to hear it from you. Why do you think people would be, um, so struck by some of the things that it right wing successful businessman running for the Senate. Also a big fan of beauty

pageants you know comes out of entertainment I don't know so you're saying there might be a couple parallels a couple parallels it's weird that it's not on TV especially like during an election cycle yeah you would think that would be popping on

yeah same thing for like Bulworth and from your different political comedies. From your mouth to God's ears. Get on it, cable distributors. God being the cable distributors. Let's take a break, talk about ZipRecruiter. Finding key players for your team can be challenging. Just think about Shawshank.

What would have happened if they didn't find key players like Tim Robbins and Morgan Freeman? God only knows what would happen. Think about all the sports teams that if one trade had gone differently, the whole thing would have gone down like a house of cards. Think about the Warriors, if they had traded Klay Thompson for Kevin Love a few years back. Did they win three titles? Who knows? Kathy O'Touris, COO of Dylan Miskiewicz could relate. He needed to hire a director of coffee. He posted his job at ZipRecruiter. He found the best person for the role in just a few days. Four out of five employers who post on ZipRecruiter get a quality candidate through the site within the first day.

Try ZipRecruiter for free at ZipRecruiter.com slash BS. I don't know how many times I have to tell you to do this. ZipRecruiter.com slash BS. ZipRecruiter is the smartest way to hire. You talked about the rewatchability and how some things go and some things don't and how people who knows who's controlling it. Shawshank's the best example of that, right? Yeah.

Turner buys it from, or merges with Castle Rock or whatever happened. And they just get Shawshank forever basically. And they're just putting it on TBS and TNT for four straight years. Yeah. I mean, I was in the group of people who remember where they saw it, what theater,

the whole thing. I remember my, we did a rewatchables about it a few months ago and I had my dad on it because he was the one who called me and was like, go see this Shawshank movie. And I'm like, really? The one with the weird title? He's like, just go, just go to the movie. And I went, I took my girlfriend and we were just sitting in the car after like in a coma.

But the rewatchability of that movie was what made it. Cause it didn't, yeah, did okay. You had to re-release it at the Oscars help, but it didn't really become Shawshank for a couple of years. It feels like took a while uh till people found it and you know that was a great experience to go through because it taught me you know which i'd already been through by the way with jacob's ladder which i knew that was a great i knew it was a great film that's a good movie it didn't have the audience when it came out just was the wrong time for it. That taught me not to judge a movie based on its first weekend box office. It's irrelevant in the long run.

It might make more money, but it doesn't mean the movie's great. So yeah, Shawshank is kind of the gift that keeps giving. When Turner did that, he sold it to himself for the lowest rate. Probably a little bit illegal, right? I mean, it probably hurt your residuals a little bit. Yeah, a lot. But I don't stress about that. You know, I've had even lawyers, you know,

come up to me, do you want to sue them? I was like, no, Shawshank is what it is. And it has this indelible, lasting reputation. And I feel that that's really the point of it. The fact that Turner did that actually created the space for people to see the film. Whereas if he hadn't, perhaps maybe we wouldn't be talking about it today. So I love the idea that it has such a wide reach and across all kinds of cultural barriers, political barriers. You know, I was in China. You know, I flew two hours out of Beijing into the countryside, then drove another three hours to the location where we were going to film.

And people there knew Shawshank. Seriously? Yeah. I was like, wow, this movie is really, you know. Well, it's another one that's even more time as the Bull Durham, because it's actually set in the 1950s. Well, it's another one that's even more time was the Bull Durham because it's actually set in the 1950s. So it could just go on 50s and 60s.

It could just go on for, you know, ever because it's trapped in this little area. I did, when we did the podcast about it, I did a lot of research about it. It's always tough to tell what's true and not true. But it did seem like it wasn't like the happiest filming. Which one? Justawshank like the actual like it was a little bit it was acrimonious not not acrimonious it's more that it took a long time a lot of takes a lot of takes uh and there was you know i loved uh morgan and clancy brown

and uh roger deakins on that on that film and a lot of the actors get together. And you're all stuck on a prison. Yeah. A prison. In Ohio. And no, we made it work. It's just, you know,

I think if there was any struggle on that film, it was that it was because everyone loved the script so much yeah that frank darabont had written i mean it was a genius script and so when you are part of something like that you kind of want to protect that what that feeling was that you had when you read that script yeah and if it's straying from that at all, because you care so much about it, you want to put your foot down. And that's not very often that you do that as an actor, at least for me, in my experience.

Because generally, you either are going with the flow of it, or you don't care. And that's the worst part. I think it has one of the great decisions to delete a scene ever. Because I remember a showtime a couple years later when he's chiseling through the wall, which you don't see until after he escapes. Initially, he's chiseling through the wall

and the thing comes out. And he kind of whatever. And that was in there in the structure of the film. So from that point on, you know he's thinking about getting through the wall. And he takes that out. But he makes it a flashback instead. So when he actually escapes, I remember being in the theater thinking like he killed himself.

You don't think the escape part. You're just thinking the worst. You're thinking the way Red's thinking. And it's this Red Herring that, oh, no, he actually escaped. and if that's not in there it's a totally different movie it's a totally different experience now we've seen it a million times you know he's gonna escape but that first time i was like oh my god he got out yeah that was the play is that we what he's saying goodbye to his friends so the emotion that he has when he's saying the final things to red are, you know, steeped in that sadness. Yeah. But it's also a sadness that we,

we kind of wanted the audience to maybe believe that the sadness was going to lead to a suicide. And they cut out, he cuts out some stuff with after Morgan Freeman gets out about him adjusting to the new life that actually like, it's just, cause at that point you just want to get to the, to the hug in Mexico. And then that was the other thing Because at that point, you just want to get to the hug in Mexico. And then that was the other thing I learned,

that the hug wasn't initially in there. And they didn't want to have that. And there was like a whole bunch of, a couple of different endings filmed and they settled on him actually being on the beach, Andy and Red and that whole thing. But you need some luck when you make a movie, but it seems like every decision worked out. Yeah, yeah.

What happens to those guys after, in your opinion? They're on the boat. Red gets checked into Andy's hotel. What do the next 10 years look like? They run a business, have fun, live free, or die. You think Red's like the manager of the hotel? Maybe, I don't know. You know, of course, the absurd version of that is like,

you know, someone was like, what's the sequel? And I'm like, you know, Andy and Red, Girls Gone Wild, Zewataneho. Wouldn't that just kill everything you hold sacred about Shawshank Redemption? I always thought, I can't believe you guys haven't done a Super Bowl commercial where you're on the beach now.

You wouldn't do it? I wouldn't do it. I've been offered stuff like that. You've never done it? To go off of Shawshank. Would never ever do anything to denigrate or exploit that movie. I think it means too much to people.

So then you go and do Dead Man Walking next year. Yeah. Which was a trip. Intense. Yeah. Another prison story. And this was a, you know, while I was doing Shawshank Redemption,

I was writing Cradle Will Rock. And I wanted that to be my follow-up film to Bob Roberts. And then Susan found this incredible book by Sister Helen Prejean and wanted us to do that. And I read the book and I put the other one on hold and wrote the screenplay for Dead Man Walking pretty quickly. And I think I had the first draft in September and we were filming by January, February. It was very quick. Happened very quick. What do you remember about the whole Oscar stretch

for Shawshank and Dead Man Walking and that whole process? Was that in motion back then where you like it is now like now when you're trying to get a movie nominated or whatever you gotta do the podcast circuit and i think you gotta do late night shows you gotta do lap dances yeah yeah you kind of do though get it out there i'm not even sure if it works but that seems to be i don't think it does and i think it's gross and i think it denigrates everything. It denigrates the creative people. It denigrates the business. It's like a two-month, three-month lap dance, really.

I like it because I get to talk to people like you on the podcast. But this is a different kind of podcast than the five-minute, like five questions and then you move on to this. Well, listen, I'm happy to do that. I'm always happy to talk to people because part of what we do, we want people to know about, I want people to know about this movie I've done called Dark Waters.

I want people to go see it. That's all been part of the business forever. What I'm talking about is the extracurricular kind of things. Oh, the B.O., yeah, yeah, yeah. The people, the meet and greets, you got to be at this place. You don't want to be in shake hands because it could lead to a nomination kind of thing. And that's, I don't know.

I just find that I was really blessed to never really have to do that. For Mystic River, I was working on a play called Embedded at the time in New York. And I didn't have to go to, I couldn't go to all those, uh, those parties and events that people throw and I won anyway. So, you know, I, I, Oh, you didn't, you didn't do any lobbying at all? No, no, I didn't. What made you click with Sean? What made me click with Sean? Yeah. I had him on the pod, I think like maybe two months ago. I liked him. I mean, he's intense, but he's got, there's like a sense of humor underneath. I don't know. I like talking to him.

Oh yeah. He's an incredibly talented actor. He's a great person. I knew him early on. He, around the time I did a film called Five Corners, I talked to him for the first time he asked me to do a movie for him i couldn't at the time and then when i was uh writing dead man walking when i finished my first draft i thought about who would be the ideal to play him uh this part and i thought of of sean but i just read he had just done an interview saying that he was quitting acting and then many times and so i i kind of when i read that i my feeling wasn't that he was quitting acting he was i think what i got out of it he was quitting reading bad scripts uh which i can definitely understand right you know because that can be very frustrating. Anyway, I sent him the script, went and met with him,

and he agreed to do it. And he was great. And both he and Susan are amazing in that film. And the chemistry between them and the depths of emotion that they play. I feel they they really found the love story yeah in that movie and uh the unlikely path to redemption for this kind of contemptible human being kyle can you imagine me directing my wife in a movie kyle is her nephew definitely Definitely not. It would be tough, right? She would get mad at least five. Dinner service or anything. It's an interesting wrinkle to the marriage,

like directing your wife in a movie for two months. Yeah, yeah. It worked out pretty well, though. Yeah, I would say. She won an Oscar for it, and Sean was nominated, and I was nominated for director. What do you think, of all the movies you made what's the one that you're kind of annoyed wasn't appreciated the way you thought it should have

been you know Altman I asked him this question he says you know the one I love the one I love the most is the one that people it's like my kids the one I I love most are the ones that aren't paid attention to. Right. And so. What was his answer then? I think he loved Brewster McCloud. Really? The, I can't say that 100%, which was the answer, because I think he had appreciation for other things that were ignored.

And he went through quite a few of those. For me, it's Cradle Will Rock, a film I made in 1999. It's an epic film set in the 30s about art and what artists do to survive and what it is to state an opinion in a free society and what the ramifications are for that sometimes. It's a sprawling film, a huge film, and Disney dumped it when it came out. They hated it.

It was made through the good graces of a guy named Joe Roth. Yeah, I remember him. Yeah. Big studio head. Yeah, he was the head of Disney. He had seen Dead Man Walking. He had told me how much he loved it. He also said it's very rare for a second film to be that good,

and I know you're a good filmmaker. And so I want to know what your new idea is, and I gave him the script. And it was like one of those old-time stories. You walk into an office, the guy says, how much you need? Yeah, all right, kid, go ahead. The keys are yours. Go make your movie.

And so it was kind of miraculous that the movie got made in the first place. But then Joe left his job before it came out. And then the new person comes in and they don't care and whatever happened but i i you know what happened was it had a contractual obligation to be released in 100 theaters so what they did was they dumped it they put it in 100 theaters for a day that's all they needed to do and didn't even invite critics and i you know i did the research i went around no advertisements for that's so frustrating i never saw it i didn't even invite critics. And I did the research. I went around. No advertisements for various markets. Oh, that's so frustrating.

I never saw it. Well, that's why you didn't see it. And then I found out it wasn't released internationally in English markets. This had a cast with John Cusack, Joan Cusack, Bill Murray, Susan Sarandon. Oh, my god. Ruben Blattis.

Cariel was Emily Watson. Jesus. Bill Murray, Susan Sarandon. Oh, my God. Ruben Blattis. Carrie Elwes. Emily Watson. Jesus. John Turturro. Great cast. And wasn't released in Australia. Figure that out. On DVD or video.

So, yeah, that's the film I would really encourage people to find. And even if you have to find it illegally, just go ahead and do it. Don't pay for it. Just steal it somewhere. That's crazy. Steal this movie. You and your wife at the time, you started to take shit for being political.

And now you think like 2019, it seems like that has certainly changed with celebrities. Has it? I think it has. I think a lot more people are outspoken than it was when you guys were doing it. It's easy to say something negative about what's happening right now. Yeah. For sure.

And I'm glad people are talking about it. I wish that the stakes are lower. Well, yeah. I mean, listen, where it matters is when people are gonna start dying that's very clear in my mind when the people the powers that be are starting to cook up a war somewhere or

they're intervening in other people's conflicts and trying to create a war somewhere because of our business interests, that's when it's important to have freedom of speech. That's when it's important to use it. And the last big time that happened in the early 2000s when we went into Iraq. You were very outspoken. I was, but you know how many people weren't. I mean, it was just basically me, Susan, Sean Penn, and Michael Moore.

That was about it. Not a lot of people came out. And I knew a lot of these people were against that war and would come up to me privately and say, thank you for speaking out against it. I'm like, why are you whispering? You have a voice. You have a right to speak out about this stuff.

The more people that speak out about it, the less chance this is going to happen. Then we see in the two weeks before the actual war begins, a massive movement across the world, millions of people coming out on the streets in 500 cities protesting on the same day against a war that had not yet happened. That has never happened in human history before. And so I knew there was a huge movement. And I knew beyond that, I knew that we were being demonized for speaking out against it. And why? Because they didn't have the truth on their side. And they had to intimidate people into silence. And they were very, very effective in doing that. Not only people like me, celebrities that have access to a microphone, but even more scarily, people in the press whose job it is to ask these questions.

People in the major press, New York Times, NBC, CBS, ABC, no one's standing in the way of this deception that led to this war, that led to million people dying in Iraq, a refugee crisis that we're still dealing with now, a destabilization in that region that we're still dealing with right now. Huge, huge, huge, huge mistakes made, right? Guess what? Did we get any apologies for being right? Right. Did anyone ever apologize? Did anyone ever say, you know, sorry, we called you a traitor?

They were calling you a traitor? I don't remember that. Oh, yeah. And worse. This is a long time ago. Saddam supporter, terrorist supporter. Oh, my God. Because they wanted to intimidate other people into silence.

And they were very effective in doing that. Yeah. Because they wanted to intimidate other people into silence. And they were very effective in doing that. People in my profession that I knew personally that were progressive people that were silent out of self-interest, career survival. You shut up, you'll last a lot longer. Right. When it mattered most, right? Which kind of colored the way I look at when people say that Hollywood's a liberal place. Well, it's not liberal when it has to be. And so a recent incident of that is, you look at Chile right now, it's on fire with democracy. These people are, you know, they had 10,000 people, 20,000 people come out against a subway fare hike.

The government responds with the military, kills a couple protesters. Two days, three days later, there's a million people on the streets protesting in Santiago. And we had just been down there in January and done a play down there. The Actors Gang had done a play called New Colossus down there. Holy cow, those people are on fire. They're just, you know, they're really incredible culture, an incredible culture. One of the things that they are doing right now, they have these protests where they block streets.

And they have this chant. And they're playing music, and they're dancing. And they're saying, the chant is, if you dance, you can pass. If you dance, you can pass. If you dance, you can pass. So drivers, if they come up and they need to get through, they have to get out of their car or their truck and dance, and then the people let them through. And this is the spirit of this country.

But you're not seeing anything about this in the press here. It's not being reported at all. There's revolutions happening all over South America that you're not reading about. That of people that are indigenous people whose power was stolen from them, being kicked out of the legislature in Bolivia by a right-wing coup. We're not reading any of this. So for me, when people say liberal Hollywood, I'm sorry, I can't. I don't see it.

Or maybe that is liberal hollywood maybe i'm not a liberal maybe i'm do you feel like it hurt you from a career standpoint at all in the mid-2000s did you become like too hot to cast or anything you see i can't answer that question i don't remember i don't remember the chronology of all that i can't answer that question definitively that because i wouldn't't know. Right. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, those are not things that people wear on their sleeve. You know,

I, I proudly, you know, said that Tim Robbins couldn't be in this movie. No, one's going to admit to anything like that. If there is a black list now, it would not be in the same way it was in the past.

Do I feel, do I live in that space? No, I do not. I don't, I don't want to have anything to do with that kind of paranoid thinking, that kind of victimized thinking. I am so lucky to be where I am. I'm so blessed to have the career that I have, the life that I have. I can do things creatively with my

theater company. I have a blessed career where I can continue to work in this business and make money. So there's no complaints here. But the thing is, I get asked that question a lot. Do you really? Yeah. Has your involvement with various causes affected your career? Yeah. I don't know.

I don't know. I will tell you, I have not starred in a studio movie since I won the Oscar. No, yeah. Since 03. Since 03. So like they're making. I've done independent movies. I've done, I've had starring roles in independent movies.

But they're making like Marvel movie where they need a president. They're not looking for Tim Robbins. Well, yeah. Or maybe I'm not looking to be the president in a Marvel movie too. I mean, that's part of the equation here too. Although you got to be president in Austin Powers movie. Well, I'd definitely do that again. Austin Powers for sure. One million dollars.

How long did you have to work on the Boston accent before you felt good about breaking it out? Mr. Griver. So I grew up in New York City, so I already have part of that. Obviously, they're not the same. It's the attitude part that matters. That's the part everybody misses with the Boston accent. It's got to come from...

It's from the streets. It's from the streets. Yeah. It's from the streets. And so I grew up with that street culture in New York City in the late 60s, early 70s. So all my friends were like, you know, this. So that voice in my head, you know, I can talk like this anytime. Yeah. Because I grew up with it.

And so Boston is just an adjustment you got to make, you know, which I, uh, and then I did a main accent for this, uh, dark, uh, this,

uh, thing called Castle Rock that I'm in right now. Oh, the TV show. Yeah. That's a main. People like Castle Rock. Yeah.

Yeah. That's a good one. What's a main accent. It's kind of a, I'm from Massachusetts. I don't, I didn't know. It's a little bit longer of an,

a sound slower, a little bit longer of an A sound. It's slower? A little bit more drawly. Oh. But you've got to be careful not to go into Southern. But it's a little longer. Longer. Oh, interesting. Than Boston.

Boston. Because Rhode Island was the one. Rhode Island's like the Boston accent on steroids and PDs. Yeah. It takes it to 19 other levels. But, you know, there's different variations of South Shore, North Shore. Like, I can usually tell for the most part Rhode Island stands out. Maine, I don't have a lot of familiarity with.

Yeah. Well, it's Pepper Chom or Membas. That's the main thing. Tell me about the new movie. Dark Waters. So, Todd. Uh, dark waters. So, um, Todd Haynes,

great filmmaker. Um, you know, he's made some amazing films. Uh, I get the scripts, uh, Mark Ruffalo is the star,

uh, read it. Um, I'm totally in, it's a story about this lawyer named Rob Balot, who, uh, was a lawyer, a partner in a very conservative Cincinnati law firm that represented chemical companies. You can't spoil the movie, though.

I'm not going to spoil it. I have a no-spoil-the-movie rule on my podcast. I will not spoil the movie. You can set up the movie. I will set up the movie. I have been programmed. I just saw a movie called waves. That was great. And I knew nothing. And it was so refreshing to just experience a movie and not know anything, but this is good. Okay. So he goes to his law, his he's approached by a family friend,

a farmer who's, this is all happening in the first 15 minutes. So, you know, you know, I'm not ruining anything, but his farmer has realized that his land has been, uh, polluted. And, uh, he wants to know why his cows are dying and he's got videotaped to prove it. And, you know, all these weird things that are happening to his cows. And so he goes to this lawyer who works for a law firm that represents chemical companies and asks him to sue a chemical company, DuPont. And I play Mark Ruffalo's boss, and I see the evidence, and I say, yeah, go ahead and sue them, even though it goes completely against the culture of this law firm. And what happens is you learn in the course of the movie the extent to which DuPont knew how toxic this chemical was

and didn't matter to them. It was too profitable. You seem really proud of this one. Yeah, I am. It is the chemical that is in Teflon. And I remember when this happened, I got rid of all my Teflon. I had young kids at the time, and holy shit, this is poisoning them. Yeah.

And what happens is over the course of the years, you have Rob Ballott, this lawyer, it took him 20 years, still working on this. But he had the most extensive blood sampling done in this local community in West Virginia, 60,000 subjects in this test, and definitively proved the link between PFOA, this chemical in Teflon, and eight separate illnesses, including cancers. Jesus. And definitive medical evidence. And still, Teflon, DuPont, reneges on the original deal they made and is making him sue individually in order to get settlements. And then eventually, after he did this five times,

this is now 15 years in, they eventually made a mass settlement. But still, this test, this blood testing they did that proved this connection would be effective for the lives of the subjects, right? So if they get sick later, they're still, DuPont is still liable. Well, guess what happened two weeks ago? The EPA secretly trying, the New York Times discovers this memo, the EPA is trying to throw out that medical study.

And not only that medical study, but other medical studies that have been done in the past 30, 40 years that show a link between pollutants and cancer. So essentially, what the EPA is now saying, the Environmental Protection Agency is now saying, is that you have to show me every subject that was in that medical test, and I have to be able to check to see whether that evidence is solid. Now, most of these people in this blood test that Rob Ballott did, did it under condition of anonymity because they were residents of a town

that was basically run by DuPont, and they didn't want DuPont to know that they were participating in the study because they would lose their run by DuPont. And they didn't want DuPont to know that they were participating in the study because they would lose their jobs at DuPont. So anything that's anonymous in the past, now EPA is saying you can throw it out. This is what's happened to our regulation agencies. This is the agency that's supposed to protect our air,

our water, and it's actually doing the opposite. It's incredible what's happening right now. Anyway, this movie is a great thriller. It's like, you know, in the tradition of those 70s whistleblower movies. Those are my favorite movies. I love those movies. You'll love this. Three Days of Condor.

You'll love it. It's really thrilling. Really thrilling. Three Days of Condor. Great movie. So we're coming to the tail end. So we got to talk about the 86 World Series. I'm a Boston fan. In fact, I got to ESPN in 2001. I was writing columns and I was comparing being a Red Sox fan to Shawshank and holding on to hope, even though there's no reason

you shouldn't have hope and all that stuff and the whole thing. But 86, it damn near ruined me. You're a huge Mets fan, huge Rangers fan. Yeah. Are you a Knicks fan or did you divorce the Knicks? They're a really hard to follow. They're a really hard. Tough one. So you stayed with the Mets and Rangers?

Yeah. 86 World Series, were you there? I was there. You were there? Yeah. I figured you were there. I don't know why. Game six, I was at a wedding in Los Angeles listening to it on a radio train.

Wow. And game seven, I flew back for you. And there's a rain delay. And I was, by the way, I was at the 1969 October 16th game where the Mets won the World Series. Really? On my birthday. 11th birthday. Holy shit.

My mom had traveled out on the subway, the seven train, like four o'clock in the morning to get World series tickets for my birthday, October 16th. Just so happened that was game five just so happened out of, you know, impossible kind of, yeah. And they take care of business and game five games against the Baltimore Orioles, you know, with Frank Robinson, Brooks Robinson, incredible team. And somehow we won it. And I saw it and I was there when they were tearing up the field and got some grass and part of the outfield wall on my way home in the subway for someone. Those are the days when you could win the title

and the fans could just go on the field and take stuff. Tear it up. It was complete anarchy. It ended in the late 70s. And I was 11 years old and I got to the edge of the field and I look back and my grandmother's looking at me like, please don't go. I'll never see you again

so you know it was a kind man on the way home on the subway gave me part of his one of the five most important people in your life Pete Alonzo no right now 54 homers

okay I've gotten to a place where I can't allow my emotional health be determined by the sports team I'm following. Well, that's probably smart. I've been through too many New York Mets seasons to get too connected to it. It's been really interesting for me because I have a lot of Mets fans in my life.

And when I was in high school, the Mets beat the Red Sox and I was going to school in Connecticut. So I was surrounded by New York fans. Yeah. And I felt like they had run over me for the next

however many years of my life. And now it's flipped and it's been interesting to watch the hope getting beaten out of the Mets fans. Really over the last 15 years, I would say.

Where now it's flipped. Where they're kind of where I was in 1986, where it's never going to happen because it's been 33 years. I know. And you guys It's like two generations.

Yeah. We have somebody one of the people that runs a ringer with me is a diehard Mets Jets fan who's in his he's probably like 36, 37. So he has no positive memory.

Special form of masochism. Oh my God. Yeah. Yeah, crazy. He remembers nothing good. I know. For decades. I got to see Joe Namath play.

Right. I saw the playoff game that led to the Super Bowl in Shea Stadium, freezing cold December. I think it was against the Chiefs. I mean, that's the crazy thing. We have 50 years ago, the Mets and Jets. Incredible, right? And I think if you told a Mets-Jets fan now, man, you should have seen when we won titles in the same year.

They're like, what? Yeah. Well, I just did this Castle Rock and I stayed in Boston and got to go to Fenway a few times. Oh, my God. It still has the magic. It's a shrine. It's a church.

It's a beautiful, beautiful place. Beautiful place. I was so sorry they tore down Shea and Yankee Stadium, for that matter. There's something about those old ballparks that is so special. And Boston is such a great city, you know. And I was really happy when the Red Sox won. Thank you. For me, it was, you know, I love it anytime a curse has ended.

I loved when the Cubs won. Who's next? Pretty much all the curses are getting crossed off in baseball. We have a couple like the now we're talking like the Mariners and teams like that, but like the Astros won, the White Sox won, the Cubs won, the Giants won. If the Indians

won? Indians have not won. They got to change the logo first. The Cleveland fans were so excited that any team won that I think they're riding the Cavs thing for all three teams. But yeah, the Indians are left. There's some good ones, but all the OGs have kind of taken care of business. Yeah, and I got to go to a couple games this summer in Fenway, and I really enjoyed that team,

and then they just kind of, they couldn't rise up when they needed to, but yeah, it's got, it's got, it's got a lot of potential. You know, it's funny. The Dodgers are start the Dodgers and the Mets where now you're talking about two generations of fans, basically that don't remember anything good or maybe even three, but the Dodgers, the 88 Kirk Gibson, but they've probably had the roughest decade of any baseball team by far. Because they get so close. Yeah, seven straight years of just, oh, this is the year. And then they get kicked in the nuts, which is the whole Red Sox thing.

Yeah, that's sad. Yeah, the Red Sox, it was like every year. I shouldn't talk myself into this. I'm kind of talking myself into it. And then we just get kicked in the teeth. Yeah. I kind of feel that way about the Rangers. They're getting close, and it's just not happening.

And, you know, I was glad, though, that the Blues won. That was a monkey off the back. That was a monkey off the back, yeah. And I know John Davison a little bit, because of the work that he had done at that franchise and then later at the Columbus Blue Jackets. So I think he's working with the Rangers now, and so I hope that we'll start to see the effects of that.

It feels like the fumes of the 94 Cup can go for another five, six years. No? I need it now. You need it now? I need it now. You know, I drank from the Cup that night. Seriously? Yeah, I seriously did.

Did they have you in the locker room? Well, no, no. I did not have an in. The reason I got tickets for that game was I had flown out to Vancouver for game six. Yeah. Because I was obsessed and I've been a Ranger fan all my life. And on the plane was Gary Bettman and Brian Burke, who were the head of NHL. So they got me tickets for game seven.

So I went with my college roommate. And we, at the end of the game, we heard this rumor that the Cup was going to be down at Tribeca. So we go down to Tribeca. We figure it's got to be at one of the popular bars down there. Nothing happened. And have a drink. Get in a cab and say, take us to Tribeca. We figure it's got to be at one of the popular bars down there. Nothing happened. And, you know, have a drink.

Get in a cab. Say, take us to the cup. Cab takes us to Upper West Side. Thinks he knows where it is. Drives around. It's like 45 minutes later. He doesn't know where it is. We say, let us out.

Get out of the cab. Now, hail down one more cab. Next cab. Take us to the cup. Oh, yeah, I know where it is. Takes us right over. And it's the east east side right we've been looking on the wrong side of town finds the police stanchions everything

we got a ranger gear on you know go up to the stanchion wanting to be recognized for the first time in my life by the cops you know i just like you know hey you know can i get past the guy recognized me says go ahead and get to the door of the club it's the bouncers that dress really well they say you can't come in here with that jersey on this is a fancy party and then the other bouncer goes wait a second that dude was wearing the ranger blue in vancouver i saw him on television you know we wore it we had worn our jerseys in vancouver had gotten pelted with stuff. Oh, yeah. Vancouver, vicious fans. Yeah, yeah. So that was my way in.

And so I got into this party with my friend, my college roommate. And an hour later, Messier walks in with the cup. And 20 minutes after that, I'm drinking from it. And 5.30 in the morning, I remember vague memories of the New York City Police Department bagpipe band playing in the morning. The sun rose over Manhattan. It was quite a surreal, amazing night. So you filmed Shawshank the same year you drank from the Rangers Stanley Cup?

That's right. That's unbelievable. Yeah. Yeah. It was beautiful. It was beautiful. Dream come true. That's a good way to end the podcast. Yeah. This was fun. Tim Robbins, good luck with the movie. I'm

glad we finally did this. Yeah. Thanks a lot for having me. All right. Thanks so much to State Farm. Thanks to SimpliSafe. Comprehensive, professional home security at a fair price. Right now, it's the best time of the year, especially for one of my listeners to get a SimpliSafe security system. My listeners get a free security camera plus a huge discount on your security system. Visit simplisafe.com slash BS. For a free camera plus SimpliSafe's holiday savings, limited time only offer,

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Coming back on Thursday with one more podcast this week. We'll do a little NBA. We'll do a little NFL red hot million dollar picks right now. Until then. I feel it's within On the wayside I'm a person never lost And I don't have to be