The Bill Simmons Podcast - Deep Thoughts w/ Russell Wilson, Plus Daryl Morey’s Exit, NFL Picks + Cooper Raiff of ‘Sh*thouse’

Episode Date: October 16, 2020

The Ringer’s Bill Simmons shares some thoughts on Daryl Morey's resignation from the Rockets, before he is joined by Super Bowl champion and Seattle Seahawks QB Russell Wilson to discuss the nail-biter Seahawks-Patriots games in recent years, his rookie season, ‘The Legion of Boom,’ the importance of mental performance, the immense potential of DK Metcalf, joining the “Madden 99 Club,” Seattle sports legends, Russell’s new podcast, ‘DangerTalk With Russell Wilson,’ and more. Then Bill gives out his Million-Dollar NFL Picks for Week 6. Finally, Bill talks with Sean Fennessey and actor-director Cooper Raiff to talk about his new film, ‘Sh*thouse,’ winning SXSW, working with a minimal budget, generational storytelling, and more. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Coming up on the Bill Simmons podcast, a very famous quarterback named Russell Wilson and a director who might be famous someday, Cooper Reif, plus million dollar picks. What a pod. Here we go. This episode is brought to you by my old friend, Miller Lite. I've been a big fan of Miller Lite, man, since college days when I was allowed to have beer. I think nephew Kyle is a fan too. Miller Lite keeps it simple for us. Undebatable quality, great taste. Picture this, it's game day, all the gang's here. You're tailgating outside the stadium. It's a great time for beer. Or how about when you're standing at the grill and the smell of sizzling burgers is in the air? Moments like that. Or when you want a light beer that tastes

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I wanted to talk quickly about Daryl Morey, who stepped down as the Rockets general manager. He had been there since 2006, was running the team since 2007, and presided over some really good Rockets teams, a team that he inherited Yao Ming and Trace McGrady. And they got to pretty deep in 2009, second round, lost to the Lakers in seven. And then Yao fell apart. They had to rebuild that.

And he was able to rebuild on the fly. He made the famous Harden trade. Somehow landed Dwight Howard summer of 2013 when it seemed improbable that a team like Houston would end up with a free agent superstar, which Dwight was at the time. They came pretty close in 2015. I don't think they were going to beat the Warriors, but they got to the Western Finals. Then in 18 and 19, went toe-to-toe with those great Warriors teams. In 2018, this is the kind of league it is. You need some luck. Chris Paul broke down game five after they, I think,

went up three, too. Yeah. And he got hurt at the end of the game. And it's a great what if. Darrell came on the Book of Basketball podcast. We talked about that Rockets team and that what if of what happens if Chris Paul doesn't get hurt. You can make the counter argument, well, they were playing him too many minutes because they were pretty thin at that point. And he just couldn't make it at the level that they were playing at,

at his advanced age, all that stuff. But he came really close. I think the coolest thing about the Rockets reign for me as somebody who's known him for a long time, even before he got to the Rockets, was he's at the forefront of pushing the league into a different direction. It wasn't just about shooting more threes

and the Harden trade and how they used Harden and the spacing, the small ball, a lot of the things. I don't want to say he pioneered, but really took advantage of. But you go back to the Sloan Conference, which started at MIT in a bunch of classrooms. I'm talking about Darrell like he's dead. He's not dead. He's going to do some great stuff, as we're about to talk about.

But I called it Dorca Palooza. I loved it. They were in all these different classrooms and talking about advanced metrics and basketball, which I really wasn't a believer in those first few years. I wrote a piece about it in ESPN Magazine in 2009. I called it Dorkapalooza. I nicknamed Daryl Dork Elvis, which he did not appreciate that much. I think he eventually grew to like it.

But I was very skeptical. If you go back and you read some of the stuff I wrote in 08, 09, 2010, 2011 about, I just didn't feel like basketball could work like baseball did with the advanced numbers. But I was allowing the possibility like, hey, if we can figure out the lineup piece of this and combinations, that would be cool. If we could isolate, what does this guy shoot from here? What does this guy shoot from there? If you go back and you read some, not that you would,

but if you go back and read some of the stuff I wrote, there was a curiosity to all the numbers and stuff that was really neat. It was like, wow, what if we could figure out this? What if we could figure out that? What if we could figure out who the best low post defender was? And it seemed like this great unknown. And the reality was there were smarter teams like Houston and some other ones were collecting all the data constantly.

And I think when Michael Lewis wrote that piece about Darryl and Shane Battier, basically, that Shane Battier trade, which on paper didn't make sense to a lot of people. Why would you trade Rudy Gay, the seventh pick in the draft, who had all-star talent potentially for a role player, a glue guy, who does that? But that trade was really smart, and it helped them build this really, really good late 2000s Rockets team around TMAC and some other stuff.

But at the time, it seemed crazy that you would think about basketball that way. How would you value a glue guy more than a potential all-star? And that's as the numbers changed over the next, I would say from 2009 to 2013, 14 range. And I remember when I was still writing for Grantland at the time, really starting to take advantage of them and really opening my mind up for, wow, there's this whole other world happening here. And then as basketball started to change with

the 2013 Heat team, all the small ball they played, how the Rockets built around Harden, that crazy Atlanta-Indiana series in 2014 when Piro Antic was 25 feet from the basket pulling Hibbert out. And then all the great stuff Warriors and Klay Thompson, all those people did to just push the sport into a different direction. And now we're here. And I think Daryl has to be mentioned

in the first paragraph of that. Again, he's not dead, but that Rockets team didn't win a title. But I think for this decade, the 2010s, I think they became the critically acclaimed team. I remember I wrote this column about the Nash's sons in the 2000s about never won a title, but critically acclaimed. we'll remember them. You'll remember those Rockets teams too. You might not have liked watching them that much. I know I didn't. I certainly battled a lot with the style and the spacing

and just watching Harden dilling and dallying from a million feet from the basket, the free throws and threes thing, all that stuff. But it was successful. And I look at what Daryl did the last 10 years and to build that Rockets team without ever having a top 10 pick is unusual. And he was just basically doing the Danny Ainge strategy of just accumulating assets,

hoping it would be enough to grab a superstar, potentially out of nowhere at the right time. And it's what happened with Harden. And then it led to them contending. And he said in his press conference, they ran into some really good Warriors teams. It's true. They did.

They ran into especially 2017 and then 2018, not as good as the 2017 team just because I don't think the chemistry was the same. But that team had a deep reservoir of talent and know-how, all that stuff. And it was just a really hard team to beat. So, you know, I think we judge people by titles a lot. I have written about this a lot over the years. My opinion of Charles Barkley certainly doesn't change because he came within an inch of beating Jordan in 93, but he didn't. I still feel like that guy was one of the great players I've ever seen. With Darrell, certainly one of the best front office executives of the last 20 years, hands down.

Really respected, I think. I think there are people out there that probably thought he was a little arrogant, that he was probably not shy about grabbing press for himself and things like that. But I think when you're successful thinking outside the box like that, nobody's ever going to be rooting for you, the people you're competing against. So people are asking me today, what do you think he's going to do? Why do you think he left? I have not talked to him yet, to be clear. I'm sure I will at some point, but I've not talked to him. But as soon as the team changed hands, it reminded me a little bit. I remember when John Skipper took charge of ESPN in 2012

when George Bodenheimer stepped down heading into 2013. And I was in a great situation there. And the best situation I've had in my career. And now Bodenheimer's stepping down and Skipper's moving up and everyone's telling me, this is going to be great for you. He loves you. And I'm thinking, it was great the other way.

I don't really want to change. I don't know what I'm walking into and what you're walking into when things change. Guess what? Things are different. And all the things that you thought you knew, now you don't know as much. And now there's new people in your life. And now the person that you were counting on maybe isn't there as much. And you just, there's all these variables you can't control. I think with Daryl, he was in an awesome situation with the old owner. The new owner came in and as we've seen a million kajillion times, the new owner, you know, they're going to have their own ideas of what to do. They're going to bring things to the table and they own the team and Darryl is in such a powerful position there

Rosillo has convinced me of this over the past year that the Westbrook trade was not totally Darryl's idea I don't know I don't know the answer to that it was certainly the most atypical trade he made over the last 13 years but my feeling all along was that at some point, Fertitta was going to want his own guy because that's how it goes. Just study the NBA. Study

every time a new owner has come in. They always want to bring in their own people at some point. So, you know, Ballmer just did it with Doc. It took six years, but he's going to finally have his own group of people. So I didn't think that was great for, for, for Tita has, you know, just honestly not great buzz. I would say he was Robert Sarver 2.0, but I actually think that's insulting to him because Sarver was so cheap that he literally cost Steve Nash a title. You know, when you look back and you think all the picks that they sold or traded down on, all the ways they cut costs. He's not at that point, but it's no secret that he's

struggling financially and God only knows what's going to happen over the next year with that team and cost cutting, things like that. The surprising thing just a year ago, Daryl thing, just a year ago, Darryl signed a pretty massive ironclad deal

that seemed like he was going to keep Houston there a while. And he's been honest about it. He almost went to Philly. And Fertitta talked him back into staying. The China-Hong Kong thing happened, which unfortunately I think is going to hang on Darryl a little bit that moment, pretty unfairly in my opinion. But after that, if you'd give me an over-under of two years, I probably would have gone under. I don't think Daryl's going to necessarily jump to another job. He's always been somebody that has been interested by the outside world.

He's got a lot of weird people in his life, a lot of rich people, a lot of hedge fund people. He's somebody that would go to different conferences from time to time, things like that. And I think he's really respected in Silicon Valley circles just because of the way he thinks outside the box, which is how a lot of those guys think. So I remember last week there was an article, these new SPACs that people are forming, which I got to be honest, I barely understand. But there was a big thing about Billy Bean getting involved with the SPAC with John Henry

and the Fenway Group. And it just seems like this is a pretty accessible way, if you're somebody like Billy Bean or Darrell or whatever, to dive into the financial world. Being a part of a bigger group, you can invest in things. You're not putting up all the money, but they're relying on you for your expertise and wisdom. When I saw the Billy Bean thing, the logical next guy to be potentially involved with that was Daryl. So I always thought if he left the Rockets, it would be for something in the financial world,

at least for a little bit. So that would be my prediction. And again, I've not talked to him. But I just think he can do more than basketball. It wouldn't be surprising if he went into baseball. It wouldn't be surprising if he became part of an ownership group of an MLS team. I don't know. I don't know what he's going to do, but there's a chance we might not have him back in the NBA as a GM. I think it's in play. The smart move for him is to wait a year. And as we saw this year, there's these big jobs come up, your marketability only goes up, your leverage only goes up, and he's better off

if he wants to get back in the NBA, wait a year, have refuel, spend time with your family, which is he's a huge family guy, and do things that way. We'll see. We'll see how it goes. I do not expect him to be back with the NBA this year. And I got to be honest, the NBA might be okay with that too. I think we'll probably at some point

learn more about that story. We certainly don't have all the information, but the hullabaloo that came out of his tweet definitely cost the NBA money. There's no question. So we'll see. We'll see how that all plays out and whether there's residual resentment, whether another owner slash franchise would want to bring him in and give him the kind of authority he's used to and

things like that. But it was a great run. I was not surprised to hear the news today. I will say that. And I'm really interested to see what he does next. There's just not a lot of really special, smart people you meet in your life. And I really think he is such a smart dude and one of the most interesting people I've talked to. And I just love people that think outside the box like he did. And it didn't work with the title, but you got to respect the success that he had and the way the league advanced

and he was a small part of it. And you're going to think about that era and he's going to be one of the first 12 to 13 people that will pop up after you go through all the relevant players, and Adam Silver and a couple others. And then you start thinking about what Darryl did, even the process, as much of a failure as it was in a lot of ways. But just that was another thing, thinking outside the box.

The 2014 Spurs, there were certain things that moved basketball for better and worse to where we are now. And the way it's played, the way people value certain players, and he was at the forefront of it. So anyway, I was sad reading the articles today, but also happy for him because I'm sure he's got something good going on. So, all right, we'll take a quick break

and then we're going to get to Russell Wilson. This episode is brought to you by Movember. The mustache is back with a vengeance. Look at Travis Kelsey. Before he rocked that Super Bowl ring, he rocked that super soup strainer. Grow a mustache for Movember. You'll do great things too. You won't win the Super Bowl ring. He rocked that super soup strainer. Grow a mustache for Movember. You'll do great things too. You won't win the Super Bowl, but your fundraising will support mental health,

suicide prevention, and prostate and testicular cancer research. And if you don't want to grow a mustache, you could still walk or run 60 kilometers, host an event, or set your own goal and mow your own way. Do great things this November. Sign up now. Just search Movember. All right, everybody likes this guy right now, Russell Wilson, getting a lot of MVP buzz. He's hurt my feelings a couple times.

One, he's a rival podcaster now, and two, he beat my favorite team, the Patriots, a couple weeks ago. So I'm not going to kiss your ass like everybody else is. I'm kind of mad at you, but it's nice to have you on anyway. Well, Bill, I'm pissed at you still. You still took a Super Bowl ring from me. That's true.

You and Tom Brady and Butler, but the reality is that we've edged you here the past couple times. We've played the Patriots. I know you're a big Patriots fan out here. Why are these Seahawks-Patriots games always classics? I don't know what it is about the

matchup. It's always an epic one. It always goes down to the wire. I remember my rookie year actually was one of my biggest, most clutch moments because I think it really woke people up to, this guy could possibly play for us now and do some things special in this league.

And it was probably, I don't know what game it was of the year but it's probably the sixth or seventh eighth game of the year and uh we were actually down by quite a bit we came back and won the game with like one minute to go in seattle which is epic against tom and great matchup and then obviously we put you guys in the super bowl that was a crazy game down the wire unfortunately we didn't win that one um and then we then we then we went to foxborough and played you guys i think a year or two later. And that one came down, and it was back and forth, back and forth.

Tom and I battled back and forth, back and forth. And then we had actually stopped you guys on fourth and one on the one-yard line in Foxboro. And then this past time, we played you guys with Cam Newton now, which was a different change and an amazing game. And going up against y'all's defense had so much special players and we were able to one-up you there, but barely. They've always been great games. I think Coach Belichick is just such an amazing coach.

He understands the game so well. He has his players prepared. I think Coach Carroll, same way. He has us prepared. It's pretty fascinating. Well, and Carroll has the little... He was on the Patriots, got fired after three years.. Well, and Carol has the little, you know, he was on the Patriots,

got fired after three years. So I think he always has a little extra for us too. Yeah. I think he's still probably pissed at Robert Kraft. I don't know. I remember that first Seahawks game, you know, going back to your rookie season, I felt like that game put you on the map.

Cause that was also not just cause you did well, but that was afterwards when, um, when Sherman went at Brady a little bit in the post game. And there was like a real swagger with the team. And I remember being really conflicted because I picked you guys to make the Super Bowl that year. I liked all the stuff I was reading about you in the training camp. And sometimes you can... I always like to look at this stuff when the coaches and the teammates are talking about new guys. There's like this different level when somebody is obviously resonating in a real way and you can kind of pick it up from the quotes. All the stuff

about you guys, about you back then was like, hey, this is different. This is something special about this guy. And I was trying to come up. So I picked you. And then you came in New England and beat us and had this swagger. And I was like, oh, this is really happening. This team. And then you guys were in the mix, basically, from that year on. Were you surprised that it happened that fast?

Because you were right out of college. Yeah, you know, I think for me, was I surprised? No. I think, was the world surprised? Yes. I think, you know, me, to be honest, we have 5'11", you know, black quarterback out of Richmond, Virginia, you know, went to NC State, went to Wisconsin. And I was going against the odds a little bit and I'm barely reaching 5'11".

Right, right. But, you know, and I think that I got the opportunity, you know, I came in, you know, to the league, third round pick 75th pick overall and I think I had all the attributes besides the height you know and everything else and um and you know so fortunately for me I was able to play around a great you know group of guys that were teammates that that were just great players that guys could make some plays on defense and offense and be in the backfield me and Marshawn you know and yeah you know and just making plays and then and then also you know all the players that we had, you know, obviously

on, on defense too, as well, we had some hall of fame type players on defense, you know, and that was, uh, we had so much attitude. We had so much swagger. We stepped in, you know, with, with so much, you know, energy, every practice. And that really prepared me as a rookie, you know, you know, you know, Bill, it really helped me me as a rookie. It really helped me prepare as a rookie. I think that really helped set the tone because if I was going to fight, if I was going to be great, if I wanted to be where I am today,

you have to be mentally tough every day at practice. You're playing one of the best defenses of all time every day. You get prepared fast. How much shit were they talking to you back then? Your defense and the scrimmages and stuff. And you're the new guy trying to prove yourself.

It was all the time. Not just to me, but to everybody. I mean, it was, I mean, guys, you know, guys talking so much stuff. The borderline, you know, fighting. And if not, we had, I feel like we had a fight every day. If we didn't have a fight at practice something was wrong right but uh but yeah you know I think that that was uh a good way to set the tone because I think we're all underdogs we're all guys who were late round

picks or whatever it may be you know and I think that was the thing that helped set the tone for us yeah that was a good chip on the shoulder team. Even to the coach, you know, because he comes back to the NFL after being at USC and it's still like, ah, really? We already saw this guy as an NFL coach twice and everybody on that team had something to prove. There's so many strong personalities that, you know, you have a football locker room and you have like 10 alpha dogs in there, right?

Like in retrospect, that's a little unusual, right? Cause you feel that at the time, especially you're supposed to be the alpha dog. You're the quarterback. Well, I think that we definitely had, you know,

alpha dogs in every position. The thing that made that team so great though, Bill was really the fact that we had so many great backups. I mean, our, our, our second string of defensive line, our,

our, our, our second and third and fourth corner, Nichols and guys who, you know, we could all play, you know, and I think, you know, as a rookie class coming in that year, me and Bobby Wagner and Bruce Irvin and guys like that, we came in, they gave us an F grade, first of all, and so we were pissed off. We were ready to roll. We wanted to set the tone. We wanted to change the circumstances. And I remember my teammate, my roommate, Robert Turbin, who was one of my best friends in the world,

he was the backup running back. It was one of those things that we always talked about, where we're going and the work ethic that we had. And so Bobby and I still to this day, still to this day, we said, don't get bored with consistency. Don't get bored with consistency. Don't get bored with consistency. And so I think that's been a big central part of, I think, our success, especially with guys like Bobby and I, is just the work ethic, the consistency of it all. And nothing's changed. Well, you had a huge advantage that I don't think people fully realized what an

advantage it was until you were succeeding in the Seahawks. You're on this rookie contract. You're pretty cheap, right? You're this cheap asset, but you're one of the best quarterbacks in the league. Everything comes together for them because now instead of spending a huge amount of money at the quarterback position, they can put that in other places. And you had this four-year window of like, holy shit, this is an aberration. It's a little like when Durant went to the Warriors that one year the cap spiked in the NBA. And it was like, oh my God, this is really unusual. You guys had that too. That four years there, I would say the over-under for Super Bowls you should have won was probably one and a half. And it ended up going to one.

But you think the Patriots came down to one play. But that team was really realistically could have competed every year in a Super Bowl and maybe even won three, right? Yeah, I think we could have won three. I think the second one, obviously, we were actually winning with six minutes to go by 10 or 12 or 13. I don't go back and watch the game too much. But we were winning by two scores. I know that.

And they came back and won the game. But I think... Well, your rookie year, they came back and won the game. But I think, you know, that game was just... Well, your rookie year too, that was another one that you guys easily committed. Yeah, we actually

had a great game against the Atlanta Falcons actually and came back. We were down 20, came back in the fourth quarter. I think we were down 20 with 12 minutes to go. And you went ahead.

Didn't they? They got like the last minute field goal, right? Yeah, I think we went ahead with 31 seconds to go and got like the last minute field goal, right? Yeah, I think we went ahead with 31 seconds to go and they got a last second field goal with no time on the clock. And we felt like we could have won the Super Bowl that year. And then really, you know,

so my third year, obviously, that's the year we lost. My second year, we lost my third year. And then the fourth year, we actually had a really good team there. But I think what really happened is we got a lot of, you know, some significant injuries and, you know, that year and unfortunately, and things kind of changed there. But, you know, now where we are now with the team that we have,

I think that everybody's so clicked in, locked in, zoned in into what we're doing and how we're doing it. And guys like Jamal Adams, you know, special player, guys, you know, like DK Metcalf and Tyler Lockett and obviously Bobby and KJ Wright's playing great football. So I think we've got a chance this year. We just got to stay the course, you know, this whole COVID thing, you know, changes a lot of things in terms of, you know, your worries and you have to really take care of yourself. You know, it's bi-week right now. And, you know, for me, you know, we can't really go anywhere. I can't do

anything. And so just, you know, I never know when things are going to change. You don't know if they're going to shorten the season. You don't know that. So every game's a the pandemic. And it was interesting talking to him, like when we're wrapping up probably like the last two was like, Hey, what's going on? When do you guys go back? And he's like, you know, we're having these giant zoom meetings where we don't know what we're start practicing. They're claiming the season is going to start on time. And it really did seem like it was happening by the seat of everybody's pants just this season, which I imagine like for football is probably the worst possible sport to do that, right? trainer that travels with me everywhere, you know, works with Sierra too. I got a same Decker Davis. I have a full-time PT, Amy. I have a full-time, you know,

mobile person and it's working on me as making sure that I'm moving, you know, the right way and everything else. I have a, I have a full-time massage person. You know, we have two chefs, so we have a whole performance team. And the reality is. It sounds like LeBron. You have full LeBron on us. Oh, yeah. I've been doing it for five years or so, six years now. Do you have the hyperbaric chamber?

I got the hyperbaric. I got everything. I got all the toys. I got the hyperbaric. I got two hyperbaric chambers. I got two hyperbaric chambers. I got a little bit of everything. But I think the thing is, and I get in the hyperbaric, for example, I don't know, four times a week, three times a week. Um, I get treatment every day. You know,

there's not a time. Somebody asked me, my quarterback coach asked me the other day, Austin Davis is great. He goes, you know, he played in the NFL and you know, and all that. Now he's my quarterback coach, but he said, Russ, how many days do you think him and Greg Olson, how many days do you think you do, you know, body work? How many days? It's more so how many days I don't. I said, I do 365. Yeah. 365. The only time I don't, I probably do, I probably do 363, you know, really, really the reality is Christmas, depending on, depending on the circumstances. And usually I do, because we usually have a game around then and Thanksgiving. So it depends. I'm in between 363 and 365 amount of work that we do every day. Um, something around the body working and because I'm trying to play till I'm

45 at least, you know, and then for me, my mentality is, is that I'm going to leave it all in the field and do everything I can to take care of myself. And, uh, I think that's such a critical thing because if I feel good, I'm going to play good. And I think, you know, and that's, that's why I've been able to be out in the field every time. Well, your generation is learning from the generation right ahead of you, right? So you got the LeBron Brady guys who were the first guys that have just basically demolished what our perception was of somebody's prime, right? LeBron's been in his prime. He won MVPs in 09 and 2010, and he's still in his prime now. It's a 12-year prime. Brady, he's probably past his prime now because he's 43, but his prime extended all the way

through those second run of Super Bowls. And it's all the same lessons, right? It's take care of your body to a level that nobody thought was even conceivable. Dieting, sleep, hyperbaric chamber, and you have to commit to it every day, right? It's not you can take July off. It's this every single day thing. And I think that's what people miss with the stuff that LeBron's doing. I remember somebody told me he probably spends like 2 million a year on his body, something like that, just to be able to recover. Because the recovery is the biggest thing, right? For you, it's the same thing, right?

That Monday, you have to recover. Yeah, I mean, I probably spend a million, if not more, a year just on recovery. You know, because it's not just the recovery part of it. That's huge, right? And getting that. But, you know, for me, the biggest thing, you know, you mentioned the body, the, you know, all that stuff. And the biggest thing for me is the mental game. You know, the mental game is so important. You know, I actually even created

a business called Limbless Minds around it, but Trevor Moad, Trevor Moad and I, he's, he's number one, you know, mental, you know, coach, sports mental coach in the game. He's worked with Alabama, Florida State. He worked with Nick Saban for years. He works with Georgia. He works with OKC Thunder, the Clippers. One of the best teams, Michael Johnson. I've known him for 10, 11 years. He was the director of performance at IMG for a long time.

We talk about this idea about, listen, I'm a positive person by nature. I believe in positivity. I believe in that, a know, a lot of stuff. Um, and I'm definitely that by nature, but the reality is that when you're down by a bunch, when you're down by 16 or whatever it may be, and it may be the, you know, NFC championship game, you know, and you're down to the Packers. And the reality is, is that there's only two minutes and 50 seconds to go. It's really hard to be positive to guys. Hey man, you know, and being super upbeat. But the reality is, you know, being negative is never, is never going to get you anywhere. A hundred percent of the time, negativity is always going to work. So for me, I always think about this idea around, you know, being neutral. You know,

you know, you think about a car when, you know, you downshift to neutral. Well, for me, I always think about, you know, shifting to think about shifting to neutral because in the midst of everything, I want to have a neutral mindset. I think the greatest, and one of the things that Trevor and I and my brother Harry and DJ have studied with Limitless Minds and working with some of the best companies in the world is that the reality is that the best players, the best companies, the best CEOs, the reality is, and they may not even know it sometimes, but it's being neutral in the midst of chaos. And so when we're playing, you know, on Sunday night against the Vikings and things aren't going great and they just made an interception, unfortunately, and now our defense

gets a huge stop on fourth and one, I go straight to neutral. I've been neutral all day. And so I'm letting the guys know, this is what we're going to do. This is how it's going to get done. This is how we're going to win the game. And it gives guys vision. It gives guys vision. I think the same thing in life, you know, and you get cancer, somebody gets cancer, right? The reality is, is that, and I've, I've seen this a thousand times over again, because I, you know, Sierra and I go to Seattle Children's Hospital every Tuesday. And one of the things is that all the rooms, when the, when the rooms are super negative or just overly positive, we're like, oh, we're going to be okay, you know, something.

It's very hard for that young child to overcome it. But when the kid's like, you know, I have cancer, but we're going to get through this. And how I'm going to get through it is 0.1, 0.2, 0.3. Boom. And it is 0.1, 0.2, 0.3. Boom. And it's amazing. It's amazing just seeing how the families come together and just they keep their faith and just keep believing because of that. And I think the same thing when COVID happens and everything else is going on in the world. Well, it's not just happening to you. It's happening to everyone. Now your circumstances

may be worse than the next person to your left or your right, but somebody always has it worse. So how are you going to respond? How are we going to respond? How are we going to overcome this situation, relationships, everything else? All that, right, is how do you find the best version of you? And I think that's something that I've really, really invested in and spent a lot of time on and just really believe that not just my body physically being great, but also my mind being at the highest level

that I can possibly be at in the midst of chaos. Do things slow down for you in big moments where, you know, like take example, Monday, Sunday night, Minnesota, fourth and one, they could kick the field goal, go up eight. What the way, tangent, what are you rooting for them to do in that situation? Because this is a big nerd argument in football about whether they should have gone for it or kicked the field goal. I bet on Minnesota, which was my mistake betting against you. Come on, Bill. I thought you did better than that. No, they covered them.

But my thought was like, just kick the field goal. They still have to score a touchdown and a two point. If you don't get the fourth and one now, Wilson's definitely beating you if he's down five. He's going down and scoring. What do you want them to do as you're watching from the sidelines?

Well, two things. One, if they go for the field goal, I want them to miss it. A lot of times field goal coaches have missed it. And we actually have history. Because it's raining, too. Yeah, it's raining. And who knows?

So if they miss it there, they're in trouble, too. But also, if they get it there, if they obviously get the first down, I think the move by the coaches is honestly a sign of respect and just saying, hey, listen, we got to end this game. Right, they don't want you on the field. Yeah, but I think that I have great confidence in our defense making a play if they go on fourth and one.

And sure enough, we were able to make the play. I mean, I think Cody Barton and Bobby Wagner made an unbelievable play. And so, I was like, here we go. And then you're fired up, but then you're trying to stay neutral at the same time, right? Because you got this chance.

So you zone out. Do things slow down? Because that's the thing. It does seem like for you and for Brady and a couple others, when there's moments like that, it seems like you lock in in almost a different way, but I don't know. Does it slow down for you a little?

And if it does, how do you make it slow down? Things become still. They just slow down. Things become still. Then just slow down. Things become still. You know, I think that, you know, for me, how it happens is because I've already trained my mind on it every day. I mean, every day I'm working on something around my mentality and slowing down. I even try to slow down. I try to slow down my heart rate physically.

Really? I really try to slow down my heart rate physically. Really try to slow down my heart rate physically and just, you know, try to make my heart rate heartbeat, just go slower, you know? And, um, and so for me, I think the, the, the ability to slow the game down in the midst of chaos while everybody else is moving fast and everybody's talking fast and try to talk slow. And that's something that I've really captured, I think. But also I think that when you do speak, you speak vision, give vision to guys of what's going to happen. This is what's going to happen. You look guys in the eye. I'm, I'm old school. You know, I, I'm a romantic by heart, Bill, you know, uh, you know, when I, when Sierra and I go, go on dates and stuff like that,

I try to do my best to put my phone down and really look her in the eye. You know, I'm going to stare in her eye and seduce her by looking in her eye the whole time.

I'm not going to come off of it. You know, it's one of those things that it's the same thing when I'm in the huddle with guys in a different way. I'm trying to get something done

in one way with Sierra. The other way is just trying to win the game. But, you know, I think the reality is, is that you try to give guys confidence of, Hey, this guy's,

this guy's aware, you know, okay, here we go. And then all the studying, I've been, I've done hours and hours and hours of film work and preparation. I mean,

in the midst of all that, I already feel like I've been here. I already know what they're going to do. I already, they already know what we're going to do. And meaning that they're like, oh shoot, they're going to probably win this game. And I want them to feel that every time I walk in the field. I think when you play guys like, you know, Tom, you know, just as I watch him on TV or whatever it may be, it's like, you feel like he's going to win the game every time he's in the game. When I watched

Michael Jordan, when I was a young kid, I mean, you knew who was getting the ball and you knew what was going to happen. And he may pass it, whatever, but he's going to make the right decision. But the reality is that if he gets a chance, you believed he was going to make it every time. Same thing I feel about Tiger Woods when he was at his height of his career.

I mean, that clutch putt, you just knew he was going to make it. You just felt like he's going to make this. The other thing is I think about Derek Jeter. When he comes up to the play, I think about two plays with Derek Jeter. One, when the ball goes down the right field line, he goes and runs down. He's not supposed to be there, but he runs and just instinctually goes and gets the ball and flips it behind his back and tags the guy out at home.

Posada tags the guy out at home. Yeah. That was some of my favorite memories when Derek Jeter comes up to the plate for his last at-bat. And, of course, he gets a first-pitch base hit and wins the game. I mean, that's because he's already played it through his head. And so, for me, I've already played it through my head. My dad used to always talk about visualization when I was young. Visualize where you're going to be. Son, this is, you're 26 years old. I was nine years old. Son, you're 26 years old. You know, what are you doing? Where are you at?

Talk to me then. And I would start off like, well, dad, I'm here. No, that's not good enough, son. Take me there. Take me there. And so for me, I think that's always been something that I've always believed in is, you know, I want to feel the ground. I want to, I want to, I want to feel every dimple of the ball. I want to be in that moment so in tune that, you know, and, and, and remaining Russell in 2012 ironically in Seattle because he lives in Mercer Island and he was talking about what he went through mentally before games where like five six hours before the game he would just spend all that time visualizing how he thought the game was going to go and what moves different. Like if they're playing the Lakers, like just thinking about all the different ways Jerry West might try to attack him offensively and what he was going to do. And he was like, by the time the game started, I had already played the game in my head and it was actually kind of easy to do it. And he was like, one of the reasons I had to retire was I couldn't keep that

energy in my head anymore of being able to carry that for five hours and bring it into the game. I was just like too, too tired from it. It's the same thing, right? It's, it's almost like half of the battle is that five, six hours before the game or whatever to, to imagine what's going to happen in the game. Then you're ready. It sounds like what you're saying. Oh, 100%. I'm actually really close with Bill Russell too. And he lives, you know, five, 10 minutes away from me.

Yeah. I've spent a lot of time with him. He's an amazing man. Amazing. He's super funny, by the way. He doesn't say anything. Bill cracks me up. But, you know,

one of the things that make Bill Russell, you know, listening to my grandfather and my dad so much about him was, like you said, he knew the game so well and he understood his teammates so well too as well. Yeah, he said he used to scout them. That transfer. Yeah, I mean, he just understood the game so well, the ins and outs of it.

And I think that visualization is a lost art in this generation. I think it's the work ethic and the mentality is a lost art. You know, the guys who really study the game and fully understand it and work at their craft, those are the guys who are the most successful more times than not. And history shows that too. It's a good lesson for younger athletes too. Like even my daughter hadn't played soccer for nine months because of COVID and then had a tournament last weekend. And she was like, I haven't had contact in games since March.

And I was thinking about the Bill Russell thing. And I was like, you just got to think in your head, remember what to do, visualize different things and where you go and where you're supposed to be. And just concentrate on that the couple of hours before. It is weird that people don't think that way where, you know, and I'm sure LeBron does it. I'm sure all the great ones do it. And as you learn, when did you, did you know how to do that instinctively when you got in the league or was it something you realized like four or five years in? No, I know how to do that instinctively when you got in the league or was it something you realized like four or five years in no i knew how to do it instinctively i did it since high school and college honestly my dad was he had always kind of had me doing it but i will say my craft has grown you know you you've always building your craft you know and the more

you practice it what i found out in the pros though was not just doing it on game day or the night before the game, but I do it daily now. Daily gift. It's a daily craft. And how many times throughout the day, it's not just trying to do it once a day, it's how many times can I visualize throughout the day that get me prepared? And how many times throughout the day can I remain neutral throughout the day? And so there's so many highs and lows. There's so many pressures playing this position, being one of 32 men in the world and all the responsibilities that it carries and in the face of a franchise and being with all the things going on in America right now, being African-American, playing quarterback, all the things that come with it,

family too, kids and worry about your family and kids and everything else too as well. And just all these things going on, COVID, COVID's going on, all these distractions, all these real things that are life scenarios, it all has played into this year in so many different ways. And so the one thing that I knew, really two things that I knew was football, the ball's going to be kicked off at some point. Yeah. And Russell Wilson's going to be ready when the ball's kicked off. That was the thing I told my performance team. It doesn't matter. I don't care when the ball's kicked off, we're going to be ready. And that was the first thing. The second thing was, which is probably the most important thing is, is that adjusting in the midst

of the chaos and knowing that there's going to be changes. And how will you adjust to the changes? See, greatness is not just, it didn't just happen you being consistently great and things are great and good and easy. It's really about being consistently great when there's adversity. And how fast can you change in the midst of adversity? And I think that's really what I've understood.

And I think that I've really learned in the process and I've obsessed over over the years. how he learned to prepare for being in a Super Bowl and how different a Super Bowl was than any other game because of the lead up to the game and then how long the halftime was. And he was saying basically, the first time he was in against the Rams, he was so hyped. And there's that famous video of him before the game, like headbutting teammates.

They go out, they take a 14-3 lead. By the time he got to halftime, he was like wiped. You know, it's like he played the Super Bowl and it's like, no, no, there's a 35-minute break and then there's a whole second half. So by the time he got to that Atlanta game when they had the famous comeback, he was in what you call neutral,

where he's just like, he's trying to save it. He knows it's a different game. He's trying to pace himself so that he peaks at the right time. You must have felt the same way after your two Super Bowl experiences, right? If you get back there, similar philosophy, right? Yeah, a hundred percent. Actually, the cool thing is my rookie year, I was fortunate to get rookie of the year and do all that stuff and go to New Orleans. The Super Bowl is actually in New Orleans. And I actually went to go watch the Super Bowl there. And it was the famous Super Bowl between the 49ers and the Ravens. Oh, yeah. I Michelle are out there. And next thing you know, the lights cut off. They shut off. Boom. And I knew the halftime was about 30 minutes.

Next thing you know, it's a freaking hour and a half or whatever it was before they started playing football again. And I'll never forget that in my rookie year. I was sitting there. I was sitting there in the box and I was watching the game. And I was like, okay. I got there two, three hours before I had done, I think, the broadcasting before. I think it was for CBS or something. I was sitting there with Bill Cowher and those guys and talking to them.

And I was asking those guys about the Super Bowls. And one of the things they said, well, Russ, one thing when you get here, man, it's a long halftime now. So just know that. So I was paying attention to that in pregame. Everybody's excited. But just it'll be interesting to see quarterbacks and how they come in and how can they remain calm. Well, fast forward, the halftime happens and as I'm watching the game just play out, guys are gassed, guys are tired, guys are getting injured, this and that. And so I'll never forget, you know, going, coming back home to Seattle and I got back to Seattle

after that. And I told coach Carroll and I told Tater, my quarterback coach at the time, I said, well, guys, I got the secret. And then they're like, well, what is it? I said, I think we should take a shower at halftime and just restart again. Just take a restart again and just, you know, be fresh and be ready to roll. Well, like really? I was like, well, think about it. Halftime's 35 minutes. I mean, just to put new pads on, restretched in the locker room. And sure enough, that's what we did.

When we played the Broncos in New York, it was supposed to be snowing like crazy and everything else. And it was a perfect night. I mean, at the full moon, Joe Namath comes out in his mink coat and everything else. And, you know, he does the coin toss

and he says, the ref does the coin toss and they flip the coin toss. And meanwhile, it's Joe Namath, Peyton Manning, and Chant Bailey on the other side. And it's me over here. And I think Keith Farwell. And I think Red Bryant, the captains. And these Hall of Famers on that side. And the ref gives the coin toss.

You know, we're the weight team. He gives the coin to Joe. And you have the honor to flip the coin toss. And Joe flips it. And, you know, and, and he doesn't give me a chance to say heads or tails and the ref catches it midair. He goes, Joe, Joe, Joe, Joe, you gotta let Ross say heads or tails. And Joe, Joe, Joe Namath looks at me, leans in with his mink coat and Peyton's laughing and everything else. He leans in, he says, you know,

Russ, I always had a quick release. And that's when everything broke. The ice broke for me in that moment. I was like, man, this is amazing. I'm here. But what I understood about that game is we went back into the locker room. We were up at the time. We went back in the locker room. I showered up. I put my pads back on. I just felt like I was prepared then. So when we played the second time, we felt like we were prepared. And unfortunately, we didn't win the game. But I think preparation,

the separation is in the preparation. How you prepare, how you get your mind right more than anything else, especially for those moments. And I fundamentally believe it's really important to play with great emotion,

but not being emotional. And there's a difference. And there's a difference. And there's a difference. And to be able to balance, that's key. Do you feel like you're better this year than you've been before or they're just letting you throw more?

I think I'm playing the best, you know, that I've played. I think, you know, just seeing everything so clear. I mean, I've definitely had great years before, you know,

I think, but it should be a progression. You know, when I was, you know, I was a rookie. And speaking of Peyton Manning, I was a rookie right before I actually became a rookie. You know, you fly to every team and I'll never forget this. It was my last team I got to go see. And they had just, Denver Broncos had just signed Peyton Manning. I was in the locker room. I went to the locker room. He was in there. It's just me and Peyton. He goes, don't I

know you from somewhere? And I'm like, well, Peyton, my name is Russell Wilson. I went to NC State. He said, oh yeah, I coached you at my passing academy. I said, yeah, yeah. And he had picked the top 12 guys and I was one of them. And I have a picture of it. It's pretty cool. And so anyways, Peyton, I'm looking at him and I got there. The first thing I noticed is he was taking notes and highlighting and it's just him sitting there in the locker room by himself. So the first week he had gotten it, he had all these notes and things. And so I think that one of the things that I noticed about it was the amount of study and preparation that he put into it, right? And so when I got back on the plane to fly back home to Virginia, I started writing out my goals and my goals, I wrote down everyday goals and I wrote down legacy goals and I still

have in my locker to this day. And one of the goals that I, that I kind of wrote down was treat every day, no matter what year it is, if it's year one or year 12, treat every day in every play as if you've never heard it before, if you've never heard it before. And so something that I really took time to understand was you got to trust the process and you got to respect the process along the way. And I think that was a big thing for my career early on was that I wanted to come in as a professional. And then today, I think because I've treated every day as a new day and as if I never heard it before, I've learned and retained so much information and experiences and visualization that the only way is up. The only way is up. And I think that's good fortune, good health and all that stuff, but also it's having great

teammates and leading those guys too as well to giving them the vision and expertise and showing them this is who you can be. This is what we're going. This is the expectation and having those high standards, whether it's during the season, playoff time, or if it's out of season. I mean this as a compliment, not an insult. I think you're the same guy you've been for the last few years. I think two things are different. You're throwing the ball more and Metcalf is special. He really is. And not like you didn't have other good receivers, but he's special. And Collinsworth said something on Sunday night's game that he said he was talking to you about Metcalf and you said, this guy has a chance to be one of the best receivers ever. He has a chance to be Jerry Rice and I get to be Montana. Like, I can't believe it.

Did you say that? And do you feel that way? Yeah, I do. I do. I think that he's bigger than Jerry. He's bigger. He's probably faster, but he's got the, you know, Jerry had such great work ethic. When I said that, what I meant by that was, is that one, I meant it. I mean, number two is, is that I think that Jerry Rice had the work ethic. He had the work ethic every day. I've seen cut-ups of Jerry. I've seen cut-ups of Jerry Rice's practice film. Obviously, everybody knows the hills and running the hills and all

that. He's different in that way. But also is that his work ethic at practice, every ball that he caught, he was running to the end zone. Every ball. And he set the tone at practice which right behind him here comes Terrell Owens playing behind him and learning from him and and then you know all these other great receivers as he was you know number 80 for the for the 49ers

and meanwhile Joe Montana's spinning the ball to him and you know I think that that quarterback receiver relationship it starts with vision. It starts with work ethic and the relationship, the amount of time that you spend together, and also just being clutch. I don't think I know that DK and I have built a real, pure, strong relationship and spent so much time together. We spent so much time together this off season. I mean, we spent time in Mexico. We went down there for a week and a half right before COVID kind of blew up. And we kind of just got in isolation there and just got to train down there in the heat, a hundred degrees, and just the amount of reps that we took to perfect it and perfect it and perfect it and perfect it.

I mean, two and a half, three, four-hour throwing sessions and working out and swimming. I thought she taught him how to swim. He didn't know how to swim. So it was just all the time that we spent together. And then we went back down. I also live in San Diego, too. So we went down to San Diego and just we spent time there for a couple weeks. And he kind of lived with me for a little bit there. And so it was, uh, you know, there's no mistake

in it. And, you know, my challenge to him every day is let's set the tone every day. Yeah. Let's push, let's push the envelope. Let's try to be the best version of ourselves every single day. And let's try to be great every single time. That 4th and 10 against Minnesota. Just watching, I'm like, he's throwing it to Metcalf. They should just put seven guys on him. You threw it to Metcalf, he ends up making the play anyway. I think

the Rice point is really key though. To me, he's like the lost great, great, great football player. He's the best wide receiver I've ever seen. To me, it's not even an argument. In football, we could argue about Brady or Manning and all these different things.

It's not like basketball where the hierarchy is so obvious. With football, it's really like Jerry Rice was the best receiver ever. Lawrence Taylor was the best pass rusher ever. Everybody kind of agrees on those two things. But Rice, all the stuff he was doing was so far ahead of his time with how he worked on his body, the repetition, the practice. People weren't doing that in the 80s. Now everybody's

doing it. And you look at DK and you're like, all right, this is like Rice. If you put rice back into a lab, you added 30 pounds of muscle. You made them bigger. Maybe more. Yeah. Gave the work ethic, but it's crazy. It goes at the end of the second round. I remember talking to Pete about it, but when we were doing one of the podcasts, I was like, I don't understand. How did you get this guy? Like, how good is he? And he's like, he's special. Pete just like goes nuts talking about him. But when did you like he's special he's peach just like goes nuts talking about him but when did you know he was special immediately yeah when we actually had the facetime as soon as we got drafted he was passionate about it he said when we working when we working and uh that's as soon as you as

soon as you land we'll be ready you know so I think that he had that, that was the first question he asked, you know, when working. And I think it wasn't about the flash and the glamour. Yes, he's, you know, he's tall and fast, big muscles and all that kind of stuff. And he's all the things

that you could put together on a video game. But the reality is, is that, you know, he's about the work, about the work. And a lot of guys aren't, you know, and, you know, not on our team, our guys are, but, you know, he's, he's about the work, about the work. And a lot of guys aren't, you know, and right, you know, not, not on our team, our guys are, but you know, he's, he's about the work and he loves

it. He loves the game. He loves being physical in every way. Um, you know, in terms of, you know, blocking and catching and everything. And so he wants to be great at his craft. Speaking of video games, you got to 99 and Madden, I think they announced today. You're a night, you're a 99 club guy. Pretty sick, man. Yeah, it was pretty cool. Yeah, DK surprised me. I was doing my podcast,

Danger Talk with Ken Griffey Jr. Actually. Yeah, I'm sitting there. I'm sitting there with Junior. We're talking about, you know, the Seattle legacy, life, his success, his beautiful swing

and everything else. The next thing I know as a middle of my podcast dk comes in i don't like surprises but i hate surprises i don't like next thing i know dk walks in i'm like what are you doing here he interrupts the podcast he's like man i gotta tell you you're part of the 99 club and so we got 99 on the one side of the phone with ken griffey jr and then yeah i get to be a 99 dk's gonna be the next 99 so it was pretty cool man just uh you know dream come true i remember playing mad when i was a young kid Jr. And then I get to be a 99. DK's going to be the next 99. So it was pretty cool, man. Just

a dream come true. I remember playing Madden when I was a young kid. Oh, yeah. And just throwing my controller and everything else. I've been playing my friends all day, all night. But to get there, I think is a

blessing. It's about staying there. It's about continuing to put the work in. You mentioned Griffey. So there's like the Seattle... I have a real soft spot for Seattle. I love the city. And I'm also still outraged that they stole the Sonics. But there's a Seattle hierarchy.

Griffey's in it. You're obviously in it. Who else is in it? Who are like the icons? Oh, man. Well, Griffey for sure. Griffey's in it. You're obviously in it. Who else is in it? Who are the icons? Oh, man. Well, Griffey for sure. Griffey, I mean, Griffey was the coolest

baseball player for the entire 90s. Well, he brought swag to the game. He changed the game of baseball. I mean, how he hit the ball was just... But one of the things that we talked about on the Danger Talk podcast was that he loved defense. He's like, man, I loved hitting home runs, but he hit 630 home runs, 630. And, you know, but the thing he loved is he loved diving for, but for balls and throwing guys

out at home and, you know, jumping the fence and making plays and robbing those home runs like that. And so, you know, he loved that part of the game. He, he was sitting there, you know, in the podcast, he's sitting on the podcast with, you know, his 12 gold gloves. He, he, he has like 10, but like really 12 behind him. And, uh, I think he's gotten 12 or whatever. It's a lot, a lot of gold gloves. I, all I know. And so, um, you know, he just, he's the epitome of success and what it looks like. And, and, uh, you know, I was, you know, 17, 18 years old when he got drafted and played with his dad when he was

19, 20 years old and back-to-back home runs, all the success. But in terms of Seattle, you know, Junior for sure, number one. You know, Sue Bird, you know, she's right there. She's amazing. Largent? Is Largent in there still or no?

I would say Steve Largent's up there for sure because he was like the only great Seahawk for 20 years basically yeah they've had some they've had some good ones you know Steve Cortez Kennedy

unfortunately he's not here anymore but they've had some really good but in terms of the best in the world that in the world you know you got Sue Bird King Griffey Jr. I think Steve

Largent was amazing but you know you have sue bird king griffey jr i think steve largent was amazing but you know you have had some special and then kevin durant should have been in there he should have he should have been there and then and they stole away our our signs we gotta get the sonics back but you know it was cool listening to to junior talk about you know just his success and his family and how his mom was super competitive. His mom always pushed him and, you know, his mom would cuss people out, you know, and just get him going and just be so competitive. I learned so much from him, you know, on Danger Talk just because it was cool talking to one of my idols that I've always loved

and a guy that I've always learned from. So that was awesome. I need to ask you a question. I just started, you know, my Danger Talk podcast and it's been, it's been awesome along the way because, you know,

I've had some special guests. We've had Shaq talking about his relationship with Kobe and just the success over the years. You know, we've had, that was the first episode on Danger Talk. We had second episode was pretty cool. We talked to John David Washington. Third one was, was actually Randy Moss talking about Bill Belichick, your boy. Yeah. talk we had second episode um was pretty cool we talked to john david washington third one

was uh was actually randy moss talking about bill belichick your boy uh cussing out him cussing out him and and uh and tom brady at practices we had chris paul talking about the nba bubble and and candace parker you know and you know what women's sports means to the world and all the amazing things and what she learned from kobe And, and then, uh, we just, I, as I said, we just had Ken Griffey Jr. And I think Matthew McConaughey is coming on next week, but along the way, yeah, it's gonna be cool. It's gonna be fun. I'm excited to get Matthew McConaughey cause, uh, you know, he's, he's so entertaining. He loves that Texas football, obviously, but you know, I, for you, I want, I want to get some advice from you just in terms of, you know, your podcast and how, how I can make my podcast as special as yours, man.

You've put so much work in. And what was your vision when you first started yours? First of all, I appreciate that. Well, I started mine in 07. We didn't even really understand. I just thought it was cool. It was like radio on demand. I had no idea it was going to kind of turn into what it became.

But I think the cool thing that I eventually learned probably around the second year was the long form conversations, what an advantage it was. Because I think podcasts are completely authentic. And if you're not authentic over the course of an hour, you're probably going to get exposed. And I think that's what stood out to me is you really get a feel for what somebody's like. I think for you, with some of the people that you're going to have on, I'm really fascinated. Your stuff on what your routine is and how you approach things, and you're talking to other people about how they approached their craft,

that's probably would be the number one thing I would want out of that. Because that's like a whole separate secret club you guys have, right? Like if you had Brady on, you can do two hours just on shit you guys are doing that nobody else is doing. And that would be the advantage you have, right? And whether you're doing an actor or a singer or anybody, like approaching how they do their craft

versus how you do it I think would be really interesting yeah it's been fun for me because like I said I've been able to interview some of the best

of all time and I think the cool part about Danger Talk has been I think people not just getting to know the guests but also people getting

to know me because I've been to be honest with you I've been more I wouldn't say a shell, but for my first few years, you're just trying to get ready to play the game. You just want to play and be great and be young and do your thing.

But now I think there's a responsibility for me to affect the world and affect young kids and to use my platform to, for greater good. And I think God's given me vision and the ability to talk about what I get to do in my craft. And I've learned it. I've been able to, you never fully master it because you're always working it. You're always working on your craft. And so for me, what I love talking about in Danger Talk is just, you know, people's crafts and, and, you know, that's what I'm excited about along the journey. So I've always listened to your podcast.

I've always loved it because, as you mentioned, it's so genuine and authentic when you listen to people and get to have those one-on-one conversation. That's always been the part that I've really loved because I get to do, you know, five-minute, ten-minute interviews every week. And it's like, okay, you talk about football and I try to be very straightforward. I don't want to give any information away. You do that. But this is really these conversations is what I really love and getting intimate

and hearing all that. Well, the big one, you need to get LeBron on and just talk about what he does to his body and all that. I haven't listened to that for like five hours. We had Jared Dudley on and he said LeBron had two hyperbaric chambers in Orlando. I mean, LeBron, that he has this whole process. It was like, well, just because I'm in the bubble, I'm not wavering from what I do every day for my body. I'm not going to be able to recover. It's so true, just because I'm in my own little

COVID bubble here at home. Yeah. You got to have everything, you know, prepared. I'm getting people tested every single day and, you know, people who help me and Sierra. It's a process for sure, but you have to adjust to it. And I think that's been part of the cool conversation.

I think, obviously, on Danger Talk, you know, having, I think, Conway's going to be cool talking about his career, not just in acting, but just his life in general and everything else. We have some pretty cool guests. I think Tom's going to come on at some point, I believe. And, and LeBron, LeBron, somebody, you know, he had the NBA playoffs. I wanted him to do his thing, but at some point, I think it'd be a great conversation talking about just preparation and what it looked like. And with the COVID stuff, the best way to approach that is just to not think about it at all, right? You just be like, worry about the game I have this week. Who knows what's going to happen

to the schedule? Try to bank some wins because this might end up being a 12-week schedule. Who knows? There's no way to predict it. There is no way to predict it. We talk about it though. You know, us, you know, for the Seahawks, we talk about it all the time because it's so important to keep guys' awareness levels high. You know, and when you're getting tested every day, your awareness level's high naturally.

But it's easy to get comfortable. It's easy to get comfortable. And the thing is, is that we can't get comfortable. For all NFL players, we have to take care of our families, our loved ones, and our friends, and our teammates, and our coaches. I worry more so about the coaches than the players, even.

Because, you know, the coaches are the ones that are 50, 60, you know, 70 years old sometimes. You know, Coach Carroll's 60 years old. So, you know, and so taking care of himself is really important. So we have that responsibility as players to do that, too. Okay. This was fun. responsibility as players to do that too. Okay. This was fun. I enjoyed talking to you. I've enjoyed watching you. I've learned never to bet against you.

You and Rogers are my two. I'm never betting the money line on the other team for a significant amount, guys. Because it's just not fun to be, especially that Sunday night where it's like, oh man, they didn't get the first down, really? Russ is just going to go down and take it.

But it's been fun to watch you throw more. I feel like you're the same guy. It's the equivalent of James Harden can score 35 points a game if he has more shots. You're throwing more and you're going to have better stats. But it's been awesome to watch you over the years. And I enjoyed having you on. Good luck with your podcast. Let me know if I can help in any way. Yeah, man. It'd be great to have you on sometime. Let me know. I'm here. You're the best in the world at what you do. I'm grateful for you. I'm grateful you're having me and we'll have to get dinner sometime. I'll get the tab. I'll get the tab. Well, we should have dinner and figure

out the Sonics thing. Because that could really be your legacy in Seattle other than the Super Bowls is bringing basketball back. I know. It's a top seven NBA city. It's an outrage. Top five.

Top five. I mean, the place goes nuts. But we'll make it happen over the next five, ten years, hopefully. And they have the money for the luxury suites. That's the part I can't figure out. It's like Golden State, basically. They would have all the rich people in the Seattle area would want to get courtside luxury.

That's how you pay for the teams. Well, the state of Washington loves basketball. So Seattle loves it. We got to bring the signings back. Post-football season, we'll talk. All right. Thanks for coming on. Appreciate it.

All right. Thanks, buddy. Always a pleasure. Go Hawks, baby. Thanks so much. That was great. It was an honor, man. Thanks for having me. We got to do it again. Anytime you want me, just, just tell me. Okay. Well, we'll make sure it happens. All right. I hope I see you in the Superbowl. Cam Newton versus Russell Wilson. It'd be great. Let's do it, man. All right. I'll see you. Okay. All right. We're're gonna do million dollar picks in a second

remember FanDuel did not put me in charge of their sports book but if they had I would've come up with same game parlays for them I'll tell ya

you can you can do so many different things you can do player props point totals money lines giddy just thinking about it the best part

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So here's why I like that. Daniel Jones loves to put the ball on the ground. And I think Washington has a pretty good defense. So if Washington is going to beat the Giants, odds are they're probably getting some sort of weird touchdown, right? Defense special teams plus 1136. If you like it, go ahead and bet it. You'll get 10 bucks back if we don't win. Do it all season long. Remember, FanDuel, the only sportsbook app where you can play same game parlay. Sign up with promo code BS so they know I sent you all of it. It's risk-free and it's all season long, only on the FanDuel Sports app. Don't forget to use promo code BS

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All right, it's time for Million Dollar Picks for week six. Just terrible luck last week for me. If you remember, I did a whole long shot parlay of the week. I had four long shots that I absolutely loved. The Vikings, the Chargers, the Jaguars, and the Dolphins. The Dolphins won. The Vikings just completely, completely blew it last second. And then the Chargers completely blew it on Monday night.

So three of my four, I parlayed them six different ways. So really, if the Vikings, Chargers, and Dolphins all won, I would have won three of the six bets. And they were all ranging from plus 13.44 to plus 16.16. So I was bummed. I mean, granted, it's fake money and who cares, but it was a bummer. I felt like I really nailed last week.

This week's a little harder. Some lessons that I just wanted to apply really quickly. We are no longer ever allowed to put Phil Rivers in a tease or trust him in any way after what he did to us last week if he had the Colts. I just don't trust him. And he's going to come up later in one of our bets.

And believe me, he's not going to be on the right side. So I really like that Colts team. And until they figure out the quarterback thing, I'm just, I'm not betting on them. I'm not trusting them. I thought he single-handedly murdered them last week. He really did.

And then the Patriots, who seem like an obvious... If Cam Newton hadn't just come back from COVID, and God knows how healthy he is, how good he's feeling, I probably would have thrown them in a seven-point tease or a parlay because I think they're better than the Broncos. But I don't trust any of these people coming back from COVID. I think we've seen really mixed results. He hasn't practiced.

It's not just the practicing. You're not conditioning either. You're not working out. You're just taking it easy. So that game worries me. I actually thought about the Broncos who are plus 9.5 as a possible underdog parlay with somebody just because Drew Locke's coming back and their defense hasn't been bad. So we're staying away from that.

Here's what I'm looking at. Panthers-Bears. Panthers minus 1.5. You've heard me the last couple weeks. I really like this Panthers team. Matt Rule has been great. This team's really well coached. We won money with him here last week.

The Bears are weirdly overvalued. I think people like their defense. I think people are overvaluing that weird Bucs game that they won a little bit on Thursday night. They're third in defensive DVOA, great. But a couple of the other numbers aren't as flattering for them. The Bears are 23rd in DVOA

right now as a four-in-one team. And if you watch them, they had no business beating Detroit in week one. They barely beat the Giants in week two. They won a ridiculous Atlanta comeback in week three with Foles. They had no business winning that. Lost to Indianapolis, scored 11 points, and then barely beat Tampa on a Thursday night. I'm just not sold. And then you have Carolina, who's seventh in offensive DVOA, but 25th defensively at DVOA.

I'm okay with that, because I don't think this Bears team can really move the ball. Not sold on them. I don't like their run game at all. I thought they should have signed Le'Veon Bell today. It came down to him between the Chiefs and the Dolphins. And I'm looking at it like, man, if he went to the Bears,

he'd be like the every down back for them. So I like the Panthers. I'm in on Bridgewater. I love their receivers. And the good thing about them is, unlike with the Colts, when the Colts go down by 10, you just give up because there's no way Rivers is going to get it back. The Panthers can throw the ball

and they have two receivers that can make plays. And again, Christian McCaffrey, Ewing Theory. So we're going to mark down Panthers minus one and a half. Second one is the Rod Tidwell classic, Cowboys Cardinals. Although this is in Dallas, not Arizona. You know, Dak, terrible injury, breaks his ankle. And everybody writes out the Cowboys. A, the Cowboys weren't that good to begin with.

B, Andy Dalton, by far best backup in the league. And C, Andy Dalton's never had receivers like this. He's never been on a team like this. Think about the teams Andy Dalton's been on. Like AJ Green, who was good for a couple years and then just got hurt every year after that. Other than that, did you want Bengals on your fantasy team? How many times did you have Giovanni Bernard and start him one week and he would get three points? Dalton's competent. The question for me is how much of a drop-off it is from Dak

to Dalton. I don't feel like it's a massive drop-off, which brings me to my Ewing theory case for Dak. I'm sorry, how many Super Bowls did the Cowboys make with Dak? Oh yeah, zero. So I don't know. I could see Dalton winning this week and starting this whole, people kind of looking at each other going, wait, Dalton looked really good with that team. Are we sure? Dallas just doesn't have awesome skill players? Maybe that's why Dak was putting up those numbers. I like Dak, by theovers. Obviously, a lot of them were their fault, but they're 16th DVOA. Arizona's 19th DVOA. I don't like the way the cards look. I have Kyler as my quarterback in both leagues. I don't know why they can't run the ball. I don't know what happened to Kenya Drake this year, but that was another team Le'Veon Bell could have signed with. I think they have trouble moving the ball when they need to. And last week it didn't matter because they were playing a crap team. This week it's probably not going to matter either because they're playing Dallas. But I'm skeptical of Arizona's ability to win a high scoring game.

And I think Dallas will continue to put up points with Dalton. So I'm marking them down. They're plus one and a half. Third one that I really like, Steelers over the Browns. Steelers are favored by three and a half. I'm going to knock them down to minus three, which is a minus 130. So if I bet 390,000 on the Steelers,

if I win, I win 300. If I lose, I lose $390,000. Usually it's a minus 110 line. Cleveland's plus six for turnovers. They've been super lucky on that front. Baker's hurt. He's got a ribs thing. Odell mispracticed today.

We don't know what's going on with him. Pitt's 13th in DVOA. Cleveland's 18th in DVOA. And I've got the chance to watch Cleveland pretty closely. They can run the ball very well. They have a, seems like a pretty good coach now.

I don't really like Baker. I think against a Steelers team, you're not just going to be able to run on them to win the game. He's going to have to make plays. I don't trust him. I also think this is a fuck you game for Pittsburgh

because of the Miles Garrett thing last year where that turned into a he said, he said thing. But I don't know. I think they followed it away. I think Tomlin's good at this stuff. I think Tomlin is a really good motivator, and there's going to be a fuck you edge to the Steelers thing, which these games have it anyway. They have the

fuck you edge to begin with. I think they're better. I want to knock it down to minus three to be safe so I don't get boned over by the late touchdown or anything like that. But I feel pretty good about this one. I think the Steelers, I was impressed last week. It really felt like that Eagles game was going to slip away from them and that they were just fucking it up. And they just kind of, they did their thing. They did like the

Tom and Era, we're just taking this game, we're pulling it out thing. Their weapons, Claypool's been awesome. He's really been more valuable than Juju in a lot of ways. I don't love how they run the ball. I haven't loved what I've seen from Conor this year. But I like

that Steelers team. I think they're better than the Browns. I think they're going to prove it. So we got that. Then we got two underdogs I'm looking at. So if you're looking for the long shot guys, the long shot parlays, like the Bengals, they're plus eight against Indy.

He's mildly intrigued by them. Darius Leonard looks like he's coming back for the Colts though. Broncos, they're, depending where you look, probably around nine and a half point underdogs against the Pats. Drew Locke is back. And then the Eagles are seven and a half point or eight point underdogs against Baltimore.

Thought about mixing and matching them, but Washington is plus 126 to beat the Giants. And then the Bengals, if you have the Bengals beating the Colts, which is just a pure, this is Phil Rivers going to hell week. This is like Phil Rivers last week as a starting quarterback,

Joe Burrow just goes in and sticks it to them and throws the ball all over them. And Phil Rivers can't match points with them. And this is the week we realized Phil Rivers is done. That is plus 804. Washington money line, Bengals money line against Indy. And I'm going to put a little down on that. I'm going to put a 20K, just a little tiny one on that.

There's another Washington long shot parlay I really like, though. And this is courtesy of our friends from FanDuel. It's the same game parlay, Washington money line, with Washington will score a defensive special teams touchdown. I talked about it at the top, that's plus 1136. So we're going to put it, we're going to sprinkle a little something on both of those. The last one I wanted to talk about is Niners Rams.

So I really liked this Rams team. I bet on them to win the NFC. Niners have looked awful, you know, and they're having the season from hell. I get it. Every instinct says stay away. Well, for one thing, the line dropped from three and a half to three. Interesting.

Second, everybody's written them off. They suck. Oh my God, Miami killed them. Well, they're starting to get dudes back. And Jimmy obviously wasn't right last week. He's, you know, playing on the bad ankle sprain. Mostert's coming back, who I really like. Here's the thing. To me, this is a kitchen sink game

because San Francisco's next seven games are Rams, Pats, Seattle, Green Bay, New Orleans, Bi-Week, Rams, Buffalo. They lose this game. Year season's in an official tailspin. So when I say kitchen sink game, we've seen this come up from time to time. These are the ones where it's like, we are winning this game.

We're running fake punts. We're doing reverses where the wide receiver ends up throwing downfield. We're going to send George Kittle on fourth and ones on 50-yard streaks. Anything it takes. Weird blitzes, you name it. I'd like them plus three at least. I think it's a close game. It feels like a three-point game to me. I don't totally trust Goff either. I still don't. You're never going to get me to trust you, Jared Goff. So I have that mark down. The only one I'm staying away from is Packers-Bucks. Packers are one-point favorites

over the Bucks. Every instinct I have tells me to take the Packers, Aaron Rodgers. I think the Packers are better coached. Tampa just lost their nose tackle. It was really good. Always seems like one of their wide receivers is banged up. You look at the penalties. Green Bay, one of the best run teams in the league right now, 43 penalties. Tampa, 74. Tampa just can't stay out of its own way. They're getting 12 penalties a game.

They're doing dumb shit. Their quarterback's frating with down it is. But something looks too easy to me about this game. And I know the Bucs are second in DVOA and there's some advanced metrics, but I thought the Packers were going to be favored by three. So I'm staying away. I kind of want to see this one. I think we'll know more about both of these teams

after this game, but my instinct is saying Packers will win this. So anyway, here's what we're doing. Million dollar picks week six, doing 300K and the Panthers minus one and a half over the Bears. And if you don't trust me on that one, just ask yourself a question. Are the Bears really going to go five and one? Get the Cardinals and the Rod Tidwell classic. Ewing Theory Committee is watching this game very, very, very closely. Going to put 300K on that. And we're going to put three. So this one, the other ones are 330 to win 300.

We're going to put 390 to win 300. Steelers minus one three. I'm sorry. Steelers minus three at minus 130 odds to cover against the Browns of Cleveland in what I like to call a fuck you game for Pittsburgh. And then we're going to put 20K, just a special FanDuel bet,

plus 1136 on Washington to beat the Giants and to get a defensive special teams touchdown. So both of those things have to happen. Plus 1136. And then we'll put another 20K on Washington and Bengals, both to win parlay for the long shot parlay of the week. That is plus 804. For the season, I'm down $296,000.

I have won three out of the four weeks. I won 240 last week. I would have gone into the positive if the freaking Chargers had just taken care of business. Damn you, Anthony Lynn. You always do it to me. Why do you do it? Why can't you just finish games? Anyway, that is the Million Dollar Picks for week six. All right, last but not least. So there's this movie called Shit House that is coming out on On Demand this weekend. It is starring and written and directed by Cooper Reif,

who is a very young filmmaker who made this movie when he was in college on a shoestring budget. And I just really liked the movie. And I thought there was something special about it. The Ringer does not have an investment in the movie, nothing like that. It's just the kind of movie that people stopped making a while ago.

Or if they did try to make it, it seemed like they're trying too hard almost. This movie is not trying too hard. So I wanted to have him on with Sean Fantasy, host of The Big Picture, a frequent host on The Rewatchables with me, to just talk to Cooper about how he made the movie and the legacy of these kind of coming-of-age movies of people in college or right out of college, which I think this is going to end up being on that list. So here is that interview right now. And if you want to check out Shit House,

again, it's available this weekend on demand. All right, Sean Fantasy is here. A young director named Cooper Reif. Not Rafe, Reif. It was pronounced wrong. We won't say by who, but Cooper Reif. We loved your movie. You're this young kid.

I love the legacy of young kid college movies or young kid just out of college movies. And they stopped making them because they stopped making any movies that aren't about superheroes or whatever. And yet you make this movie by the seat of your pants. And now it's out. Shithouse. Congratulations. Thank you so much. Thanks for wanting to talk to me. I really so happy to be here. Well, we wanted to help the movie. We have nothing at stake. Sean, why did you like this movie? I think it took me back to a time when I felt like I didn't know what I was doing. So yesterday or 20 years ago, whichever is more appropriate. But yeah, I mean, I think we just, it's not

surprising. I think the Bill and I both clicked with your movie and it just, it seems somehow both very mature and very innocent at the same time and really thoughtful about a critical point in people's lives. So like, you should tell us about it. Like, where did it come from? It came from just my sophomore year of college. I wanted to make a movie over spring break because I didn't have plans and I didn't know what I wanted to make a movie about, but I was just on a college campus. So I was like, it should probably be about college. That's going to be the easiest thing to make.

But I'd made it with my two friends who were not filmmakers or actors, and they hated my guts the whole time, didn't want to be there. But they're great friends. So we just made this movie in five days, and I put it on YouTube. And then I tweeted that link to J.plass of the Duplass brothers. And I said, bet you won't click on this link and then email me after. And like literally 12 hours later,

he said, my wife and I watched your movie. Do you want to get lunch? And I didn't say like what I wanted out of the tweet. I just said like, email me at my Oxy, my college email. But so then we got lunch and then we talked about making that movie into like

a bigger movie. And that's how shit house. That's like the genesis of shithouse we just did the rewatchable sean wasn't on it we didn't invite him kicking and screaming it's not your generation you don't fully understand it the way i did it's not cooper's generation either no it's not no he's like two generations after but that was noah bombach's first movie. And we were breaking down how it perfectly captured, you know, it's called Gen X now, but it was this pre-internet era where you kind of graduated and you didn't know what to do next. And you just kind of drifted and all of a sudden nine months passed and you're kind of like, wait, is this my life?

You're capturing this whole 2020 era of, you know, not just what college is like now, but also how important social media was and is. And that was one of the things that really resonated with me about the courting process and did somebody like your Instagram post and all that stuff. So all that stuff was so authentic. But did you even know going into making the movie, this has to be a piece of this? Like what, what's your thought process with that? No, I actually, the only reason why that part is in there is because I realized, oh, I didn't write a scene where he like gets her number. So he has to find out like how to communicate with her that day. And the only way to do that is Instagram. And there's like, I don't know how to do Instagram very well. and i'm very cringy on that app so i kind of wrote a cringy uh like i i don't think

it's a huge deal to like go and like someone's photos but like when i showed it in the theater for the first time people were screaming at the screen like what the fuck are you thinking but um but then i keep going too. I keep liking photos and I keep messaging and people, I think, blacked out watching. But yeah, I just got an Instagram two years ago. So I'm really bad at it and don't realize what's not okay to do on there. But there's a lot of rules that go unnoticed by me. Hey, Sean, let's talk, can we talk about the legacy of movies like this

and how they're tied to different generations, right? Because like The Graduate, I think, and listen, I'm not comparing Shithouse to all these different movies. I'm just, I'm talking about- It's better, Cooper. Yeah, it's better. You beat The Graduate.

But like The Graduate hit this specific point in generation, right? These clashes of these two different types of generations. And then you go through, I don't know how many others, Sean, you know this better than me, but what kicking and screaming men. And each time somebody makes a movie like this, it inadvertently is a snapshot of whatever is going on. What other movies are like that, Sean? John Hughes movies speak to that. Dazed and Confused speaks to that.

That kind of that chasm between the ages of like 17 and 24 when you're trying to figure out who you are as a person that I think you really tapped into in your movie. Did you see those movies? Yeah. Were you affected by them? Did you take lessons from them? I've watched all those movies. But the biggest thing I take from someone like Richard Linklater is not trying to do a similar thing. But he's just such a kind director.

And he just cares about... He's okay with making a movie about kids not knowing what they're doing. And thinking that that is what I should be making a movie about like kids not knowing what they're doing and thinking like that is what I should be making a movie about. And so he just like, I think he grants permission to, uh, certain filmmakers to like, yeah, that is what it's okay to make a movie about that. And that's what people really relate to. And, um, but yeah, I love those movies so much. I don't think I, I hate when people are compare shit house to before sunrise. Cause it is,

yes, it's two people walking and talking, but they're talking about huge ideas in Before Sunrise. Shithouse never talks about reincarnation. It's just two kids talking about their parents. But I think the inspiration with a guy like Richard Linklater is he's just such a nice filmmaker who's like, yeah, do whatever you want on screen. That's what I'm interested in.

How much ad-libbing was going on with as you're doing this because this was as we said earlier see to your pants a little bit yes but we didn't have any time to improvise so we don't have any money or like support to be like yes we can improvise now and also i'm not the confident filmmaker that like someone like jay duplass is who gets on set and he's like i think we can find magic here so i really try super hard with the script to write the likes and ums and like have those moments so that when we get on set we have that base for

like now we can play a little bit and bring different energies if that happens but I don't feel confident in my ability to like provoke we don't know what's going to happen because that Jay is someone like he's told me I like to not know what's going to happen because that jay is someone like he's told me i like to not know what's going to happen and that's not how i feel but i do like the themes

of not knowing what's going to happen so i try to write that for sure that makes sense what about starring in the movie yourself we haven't said i mean you are the star of this movie you wrote this part for yourself this character is does not a person who knows what he's doing really and and you're sort of unafraid to kind of look like a fool and look vulnerable and you know like why were you why are you the star of your movie i i really i knew that if i was going to cast someone they were not going to be someone who had been to college because for our age if the if the actor is good and successful they didn't go to college like logan and successful, they didn't go to college.

Like Logan, who plays my roommate, didn't go to college. Maggie, who plays Maggie, or Dylan, who plays Maggie, didn't go to college. And I also just wanted to own what I was saying about what college meant for me. And I think there's like an immediacy that comes through with me playing it um but also i uh really like to act and i didn't want to direct it and then it kind of came down to the wire and i realized oh i have to direct it too but uh i always did want to act in it because alex is kind of me stripped away like my first year, I was more like the roommate. I was turning my brain off and drinking way too much. And Alex was me trying to get to the core

of what I was feeling and going through on the inside. And I really wanted to do that. I was excited to do some of those scenes and feel some of those feelings because I'm someone who doesn't in my real life. And I wanted to get on camera and have the permission to do that. You know, I got an email about this movie. And I didn't know what it was, but I was just like,

that seems like a movie I'd like. And I emailed the person, the PR person. I was like, can you send me a link? I think I would like this. And watched it with my wife, who knew nothing. And we're watching, and we're halfway through. And I was like, you know, the lead actor, he also directed this.

And she was like, what? He's like a kid. How did he direct this? And I was like, look, I don't know. I just had a feeling about this movie. But when you're directing it, you have like all these 2020 advancements, right? Everything's cheap now.

If you're doing this in 1990, you're like the, all these 2020 advancements, right? Everything's cheap now. If you're doing this in 1990, you're lugging around cameras, you know, you, you have to worry about certain things, but in a weird way, technology came to your side to be able to make a movie like this, right? Yeah. And the first thing that we did, it was literally for $0 because we had just like a really crappy camera that actually like it's crappy camera, but it looked fine. Like there were some dead pixels, but it looked like it was very watchable and it wasn't distracting for jay to like sit through um but yeah we made the movie for nothing and a lot of it also is because i mean camera stuff is expensive but if you have like our dp is this like 28 year old girl with the

southern charm she's from dallas like we're both from from Dallas and we went up to Panavision and talked to this guy named Bob and just charmed his socks off and got really, really great deals for these like very expensive, very expensive equipment. But yeah, it was really easy to steal locations. We didn't have like any permits and like we didn't have a lot of stuff that we were lugging around so yeah the advancements are great in life this is by the way this is all

porn for sean he sean sean lives in fear every day that that people are just gonna give up trying to make a movie like this that's like his biggest fear in life other than the world ending yeah that's a big part of what i like about it and part of why I think it's such a cool success story for you. But I mean, obviously, there are more and more people that are your age and younger that are not as interested in filmmaking long term. They're interested in content, whatever that means. But the idea of making a movie isn't necessarily their aspiration. Like, was that what you had always wanted to do to be a filmmaker?

No, I never wanted to be a filmmaker ever. I like wanted, I acted in high school and I also started writing. And then my sophomore year of college, I had a lot of things I had written and realized no one's going to read this because I had like no friend in the business. So I just realized in order, I think in order to be an actor, in order to be a writer, you have to do all everything. You have to produce produce direct all all that um but i realized on set that directing is the thing that combines everything but i think you

think it's a crazy for people to be like i want to be a director it's like fuck you like that doesn't make any sense but um yeah i i think the reason why i think people do want to make movies but i think people are paralyzed by the fact that they come from a place of, I have to make a good movie. What's going to be good? And that was never where I... I always came from, like,

I really want... There's this girl in my life. Our relationship is interesting and says something, and I'm trying to figure it out. And that's what... I wanted to say something with the movie rather than make a good movie

that was going to be entertaining because that was not what this movie was ever really. Well, one of the- Oh, go ahead. Did that girl see this movie? Oh yeah, she's been with, yeah, she's in the next room right now. She helped me.

She should have a co-writing like credit on the script. She was, yeah. Oh, your lawyers would have advised you not to say that. We'll take that out. You're so young. You don't know the business yet. Right. Right. You know, one of the things I worry about with your generation, now I'm going to sound like the old guy. Um, here we go. It's so easy to get a claim approval, whatever from social media, right? Like you media. You look at all the people who become influencers now. You can go on TikTok and you can do some funny dance and then all of a sudden you

have 100,000 people following you. The bar is both low to be seen, but then the bar is also high in the sense that you can be replaced in five seconds. But the part that worries me is, you know, to really do good work, you got to like do the work. You got to, you know, really give a shit about it. And one of the reasons I liked your story so much is you're just like, fuck it. I really want to make a movie. If I have to do all these different jobs, I'm going to do it. And, you know, that's why, as one of the reasons I want to have you on the podcast, I want your story to be a story that people look at and go, well, he, that fucking guy did it. I can do it. Cause I do worry that

that's going to get lost when this weird social media era we're in right now. Yeah. I'll be your poster child. I think also it's, I'm not very good at doing things that uh can garner that immediate gratification like nothing that comes out of my brain will like entertain on the spot i would never go viral so i think i have always known that and like knew that i think i probably could have gotten some scripts read but i think i knew that no one was going to be interested in the scripts that I was writing because it's like, dude, don't waste my time. Right. And even now with the little success that Shithouse has had, I'm having all these meetings and they're like, what ideas do you have? And I'm like, here are my ideas.

And they're like, that seems tiny. That's going to be really, it reads really slow. And I'm like yeah did you watch shit house and so that's I'm never gonna like I think a lot of people are getting really really good at the kind of the Twitter comedy like that's like I all my friends are so so funny and that's very specific way and I'll never be funny in that way like I, I always think like the funniest things have the most emotional content and like that doesn't read very well. So, uh, I think I

sometimes wish I could be that person who gets viral. You're better off where you are. There's less people in the pool. You're swimming in right now. I would say that's very true. Yeah. It's very, it's it for so long, like not for so long, I'm very young. It wasn't that long. But it was like so isolating. And it was there was so many times where I was like, I need to get on the train of figuring out how to be funny in that other way. But it's been so, so emotionally fulfilling that I that people are watching shithouse and having some kind of reaction towards it do you know what you're gonna do now like you're going into these meetings you're talking to executives or people that make that green light things and are they like time for you to make the green lantern movie like what is your how do you make your don't do that no no no and they're not they know that i would not be good at that but uh i i so those things that i'd written before I'd made that movie, I still have. And I,

so I have so many things that kind of are already written and, but now I'm, I am working on, like I found, I took so many horrible meetings, but had the two good meetings and, and working on stuff that is in the same pool of shit house. Don't do the Ed Burns thing where you just remake the movie with a bigger

budget and better actors. Right, right, right. No, no right no no when he did she's the one which by the way i've seen she's the one 12 times but uh but yeah no it's not not bad but it's basically the same movie as brothers mcmullen with a bigger budget no this next like shit shithouse is uh very very very, very raw in a way that it won't be anything like Shithouse. But it isn't the same. It's very spiritually aligned with Shithouse and shares the same sensibilities. I was going to say, the next movie should have been

you should get with Blumhouse, you do Shithouse too, but everybody gets murdered throughout the movie. You just kill off all the characters until there's one left. That's what a lot of people expect with this movie. They're very confused when they watch it. Oh, they think somebody's going to die? No, some people think it's a horror movie.

It sounds like a horror movie. In a way, it is, though. It is horrifying at times. Is it risky to name your movie Shithouse? Is it hard to get this movie in front of people because of that? I've just realized this week,

honestly, IFC gave me no trouble at all. Like they didn't even, we didn't even have a conversation about should we change it? They always liked the title. Internationally, I have to change it though.

Like just recently, I found out I literally, they are not letting me not change it. So what do you have to change it to? Yeah. What are the titles? House of Excrement in German?

No. We were talking about it, but they gave suggestions that I was like, I don't think they've watched the movie. I literally, one of the... They want to call it Green Lantern. Yeah. Brown Lantern.

Some of the titles they've offered are just remarkably not what the movie's about. Well, you got, let's be honest, you got completely fucked with South by Southwest. I mean, on the scale of terrible things from the pandemic, it doesn't crack the top million, but it still sucked. You were going to have this triumph and victory lap playing it in the, in the same, you know, state that you made the movie and that would have been a really cool thing. And then now there's no festival. Yeah. Well, South by Southwest was the first thing I got canceled. So it kind of became

the face of like Corona devastated these people. And so I, so a minute after it got canceled, Eric Cohn of IndieWire texted me and said, can we talk about how you're feeling? And I texted my publicist and was like, are they going to throw me under the bus? And he's like, when South by Southwest just got canceled? No, they're going to make you look really good. And so they did an article four hours later that said, this kid missed out on this and this and this without having even seen the movie.

So it really worked out in our favor, I think, because people were so kind and really wrapped their arms around all of those South by Southwest. Yeah. But you missed a, it's still cool to premiere your movie and get the ovation and all that stuff. I mean, maybe you'll have that at some point in life, hopefully, hopefully if we ever can be in a movie theater together again in our lives but yeah but yeah that's that is a bummer though i felt bad for you on that well i think it would have been the right that's that was the right festival for your movie too oh yeah so many times people would have loved it there and that would have been exciting but that's actually like a good segue to what it means to be releasing a movie right now like how do you feel about that how do

you like how do you want people to see it given what's going on in the country well i wanted people to see it while at college experiencing college but then i kind of realized they don't even want to watch it while they're in it in that way but i really like the fact that i think a lot of people have a lot of time to meet a movie where it is and shit house is a movie where you gotta meet it where it is it's like very comfortable not being um seen and so i think people also want a bit of a warm hug and some comfort and that that's this movie and also people are stuck in a house with like one person right now or just like a couple people and that's all this movie is. It's just like two people talking. And so I think it kind of lends itself to it's kind of a perfect moment for it

to come out in a way. Sean, in a weird way, this is kind of the ideal movie for the video on demand era we're in right now, right? Because maybe this wouldn't have been a movie that took off in the theater either way. It was definitely one of those, oh, what's this?

Pay-per-view. Oh, and now you're just getting that right away. And I think there has been some success with that for minority. Like we think the Apatow Pete Davidson movie did really well on that front. There's been some other ones too. Like there's that certain type that movie that just kind of makes sense on a Thursday night in your house with whoever you're dating or you're with or you're by yourself whatever so could be an advantage i think it'd be an interesting test case

yeah how closely are you going to follow stuff like that do you care you interested in that part of the the work uh yes i'm i'll probably follow everything very closely, but I really am trying not to. I'm trying to drive to the beach or something. But I fucking read Letterboxd and I shouldn't. Hell yeah. Welcome, Cooper. I know. It's so awful, but I can't not read everything that's coming out. Can I give you some advice?

Well, you're not going to listen to me. I'm not, but I want to hear it. Just don't read all that shit. I don't want that shit to taint you. It's just... Can I give you some advice? Well, you're not going to listen to me. I'm not, but I want to hear it. Just don't read all that shit. I don't want that shit to taint you. That's true. Keep your head where it is. Don't worry about comments from people. Because especially if the movie becomes successful or really well-respected, then there's going

to be a backlash to it. And stay away from all that shit. Just make your next movie. Don't worry about that stuff. Yeah. The New York times wrote a very generic writeup about it. So just like, it's just people talking at college.

I'm like, yes, it is. You're right. But don't be so mean about it. That was, that was not a great review, but I wouldn't take that one seriously.

I always ask filmmakers about that though. When I talk to them, I'm always like read reviews how does it affect you do you think about it and half of them tell the truth and they're like you they're like I don't want to but I have to and the other half just fucking lie and say that they don't but everybody does because it's impossible to not be drawn into something like that but I guess is it weird for you I mean you know we've pointed out that you're quite young relative to what you've accomplished already but is it are you more comfortable getting feedback like that, you think, than maybe some older peers might be on a place like Letterboxd? Yes. I'm very impressionable right now, obviously. And I do... Yes. I'm very aware of...

When I see something really shitty that hurts my feelings, I'm like, Well, I'm only 23. I can get better. But at the same time i also have a uh not a confidence but i my initial reaction usually is like i'm learning so much about you right now like i i take that like defensive uh nature but but uh yeah the other thing is i really feel the need to tell people how much money it was made for. I feel this desire to be like, it's incredible and such a miracle that this movie is watchable. If you were on set and just saw the look in our gaffer's eyes, he did not think this movie was going to get finished, let alone be somewhat watchable. So for people, when we won South by Southwest, I felt this wall going up of like, I don't want people to watch it with this lens of,

let's see what this winter is all about. Because that's not what this movie is. It's like, it's so, I want people to know how wonderful it is that they can sit through it and not hate it. That's a key concept though, the degree of difficulty thing, right? Because we had that with movies and music too to some degree. But we did, I remember at Grantland,

we did a whole oral history about swingers. And that's another movie that seems like this really well done, polished movie. And then when you read how they made it, they were cutting corners left and right. They weren't getting permits. They were borrowing buddies' houses. There's one scene with Favreau. We just did a podcast about that movie where they're using, he opens the refrigerator because

the director needed the light from the refrigerator because they didn't have light in the apartment. And it's like, I think that stuff matters. If you can make a movie that stands with these big budget movies and you're doing it, scra know, scrapping for every cent, like that's really impressive. I think so too. And I really want people to know, like I want some of the crew members to be interviewed. Like, what were you thinking on set? Because they were, they like, I would, I would go up to them and say, hey, we need, because we're doing 12 hour days and we didn't have money for overtime. But I had to ask,

we need to go 14 hours today. And they'd look at me, professional people who have been on so many sets and they're like, fuck you kids. Like this movie is not that movie. And it wasn't that movie. So like those days I was literally told no, like we just didn't have, it was just,

there were so many scenes that we just had to cut because we didn't even get to like, there was, it was a shit show on set. And when I got in the editing room and saw that, Oh, I think it has that special quality. I was so excited. And then when we got into South by Southwest, it was like, I can't wait to have my little pocket and have that theater screening so I can, and then meet all these other filmmakers. But then when I won, obviously so grateful

and so lucky and I'm so excited, but it feels isolating in that way because it's like, it shouldn't be in that, it shouldn't be in a place by itself. It should be like with everybody else. And it is, but like, it shouldn't be in a place by itself it should be like with everybody else and it is but like it isn't yeah that's a bummer

I think the movie doesn't totally work without Dylan either can you just like talk about how she got involved in this very small movie and like you know it really it needs both of you it needs the it needs the Hawk and the Delpy I know you hate to hear that but you know, it really, it needs both of you. It needs the, it needs the Hawk and the Delpy. I know you hate to hear that, but you need them both.

No, yeah. No, I don't hate to hear that. I'd love to hear that. But I, so Dylan, we asked to, I care a lot about the small roles and the younger sister of Maggie was a little bit of a bigger role in the movie, in the script. And so we asked Dylan to play that role just to come in for a day. And she said yes to that because the person who was going to play Maggie is this girl named Abby Quinn who plays the girl who's doing the bottle, spin the bottle scene. She was going to play Maggie.

And then she got a TV show and couldn't do it. And so I immediately was like, it needs to be Dylan because Dylan is Maggie on steroids. And that's the way I described the little sister is like Maggie on steroids. So when she left, I was like, okay, I need to have that lunch with Dylan and ask her to do the main part. And when we had that lunch, I was really, really scared because we're so opposite in real life that I didn't know if it was going to work at all. But then I realized that Madeline, who that character is based on, when I first met her,

I was terrified in the exact same way. So I was like, I think this is going to be magic. And I was right. But no, but then I asked her to do it and she was like i think this is gonna be magic and uh i was right but no i but then i asked her to do it and she was like i need to read the script again to make sure uh i can do maggie just or so ever and part of me was like i don't maybe she didn't read the script like she just read her parts but she she probably did she's a professional so um but then she read it and got back to me and was like i do want to do this and she's amazing she's got incredible instinct she's super super smart and she's genuinely the funniest person that i've ever met is she gonna die at the beginning of

shithouse 2 when the cirico shows up or no no she's gonna be already dead and then the there's gonna be subtitles that explain her death all right that's smart right. Shit House 2 has to open with that big murder scene. That's how you got to do those horror movies. Somebody's got to get that right away. It's going to set the tone. Dylan would never do a Shit House 2. She probably has too much post-traumatic stress from that movie. Yeah.

It was a nightmare. And she was the leader on set because she was the one who was the most experienced. And the conditions were so crappy, but she was always so on it. And that was like, she's amazing in the movie and was amazing on set and off. So you want to act more than direct? Not now. Now I really want to direct because I really-

Oh, good. Yeah, don't lose the directing part. Yeah, I don't, well, acting, I just didn't have the confidence as a director and acting I just really would love to be directed by a great director. Sean likes

eight directors. I like probably 12. We're very picky. We are picky. It's not that low. If there was one person that you could get to see this film, one filmmaker, who would that person be?

That's a really great question. I have to say J.D. Ploss, but he's already seen it. He saw it. I don't know. That's a really great question. Link later. Sure.

Texas dude. I really want Sofia Coppola to see it. Oh, that's a good one. I stole everything. She to see it because I stole everything she'll see everything like I stole so many things from Lawson Translation and so I think the way that all of her little lines say something about

those themes in that movie and like all those little visuals like I really tried to do that with Shithouse and her like very specific sense of humor is the way it's played so straight. I think that's what I try to do with Shithouse. And so I really hope she likes it.

First of all, don't feel guilty about that because all new directors steal from the better directors before them. And the same thing is for writers. I stole my writing style from seven different people. I just patched seven people together and created a style. So I stole my podcasting style from Bill. So here we are, you know?

He did. No, that's how I feel. I feel like if Sophia saw it, she'd be like, oh, that's so sweet. And then she would have me co-direct the next movie that she does. Yeah, but you're not going to be surprised. I love that movie too. And I do feel like those movies aren't happening as much. And I know Sean and I, we've're not going to be surprised. I love that movie too. And I do feel like those movies aren't happening as much. And I know Sean and I, we've known each other for a while. We

worry about this constantly. A lot of the rewatchables ones that we do are from the 90s and just this era that we revere where from like 94 to 99, it was just such a creatively vibrant, awesome time to love movies. And every week there's something new coming out. And right around like 03, 04, all of a sudden the superheroes showed up and the sequel train showed up. And the money just wasn't in kind of rolling the dice with some of these smaller indie movies built around somebody's voice. And then all of that drifted to TV was the other piece. And I'm sure you're getting that now.

Hey, what if you created a TV series? People don't want you to make a movie. They want you to make a seven-season television show. Yeah. I also, I shouldn't say this, but it's just so funny. The Entourage guys were like, Shit House needs to be a TV show i was like watch it first

you have to watch it first um but yeah that's that that's a that's a whole thing that's happened too where i've had to uh so the thing is though i love tv like i i just think that i i love tv i hate every tv show because no tv show realizes that it's just about the characters. Like the shows that you do fall in love with, you should probably fall in love with them a little bit more because they just no one takes advantage of the fact that you get to see these characters for so long if you want to. So why aren't you just leading with characters? But no show does that because it's almost even more so with TV shows than movies. Like we got to get the best five minutes in that pilot like the first five minutes has to be so good

and that's all they care about and um well that's why some of the shows like Ozark and the ones that figure out that model of a really compelling story but then you're also really into the characters those are the ones that kick ass like that family is fucking yeah you just love

that family so much. Yeah. Do you think you're going to have to stay independent in terms of doing what you want to do? Or what do you have a feeling about whether you need to team up with a bigger apparatus to do what you want to do in the future? Yeah, I really want money.

I really want money to feel supported. So I want... Are you asking Bill for money? Yeah, I'll send it. You want me to send you a check. No, people, no, the thing is people, people like, um, people do, uh, have money and like smaller things. It's just, uh, having to really argue that it has to be a little bit under, cause I don't, as soon as they give more money, they give more notes.

And that's like just staying under that is really easy because like you don't need that much money and you can make a, so we made so much money with Shit House, so much money. And like being able to tell people that is really, they know that. And so there is a path for studios to give only a little bit of money. I think that's one. This is one of my big mantras, bet on yourself. The title of my book that I'm never going to write. I've just been betting on you, Bill. So that's what I'm going to call

shithouse internationally is bet on yourself. Bet on yourself. You got to do it. Listen, stay away from cocaine. Stay away from Twitter and Instagram replies. Cocaine and replies. Those are the two things you need to stay away from. And letterbox.

And just do your thing. And letterbox. All that shit. But just do your thing. Make your next movie. Don't give a shit what other people say. That people like us like that. That's all that shit. But just do your thing. Make your next movie. Don't give a shit what other people say. Just that people like us like that. That's all that matters. Forget the replies. Yes. You're fine.

Thank you guys so much. It really means a lot to me. Listen, we're on the front row of the bandwagon. So no matter what happens to you, don't big time us later when you're a famous director. Yeah. Oh, those guys had me on their podcast.

I was wearing a sweatshirt. I had a girl in the next room. I had no Zoom background. And now I've won five Oscars. Yeah, when you're doing the Green Lantern 3 junket, I'm getting more than 10 minutes. Okay, Cooper?

Just keep that in mind. Yeah, don't call him Steve. He's Sean. You did a pod with him. But yeah, congratulations. I'm really psyched for you. And I just think it's cool that your whole story and congratulations.

Thank you so much. I really, really, really appreciate it so much. All right. Thanks so much to Russell Wilson. Thanks to Cooper Reif. And thanks to Fantasy for popping on. Hopefully we do well in the Million Dollar Picks. We'll be back on Sunday night, me and the cuz.

And I'll see you then. I feel the air sweating on the wayside I'm a person never I don't have to be