The Bill Simmons Podcast - Ep. 94: Keegan-Michael Key and Jordan Peele

Episode Date: April 26, 2016

HBO and The Ringer's Bill Simmons talks to Keegan-Michael Key and Jordan Peele about their new film, 'Keanu'; writing comedy sketches (20:00); the state of edgy improv (37:00); and impersonating Presi...dent Obama (53:00). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Starting point is 00:00:32 Today's episode is also brought to you by Untuckit.com They make shirts that are specifically designed to be worn untucked. It's the only choice for the untucked man. Visit Untuckit.com and learn why GQ called them perfection. You can even use the promo code BS15 for 15% off all of your purchases.
Starting point is 00:00:53 That's untuckit.com, promo code BS. And three other housecleaning things I want to mention before we get to Key & Peele. First, the second episode of After the Throne starts streaming on HBO Now at midnight PT on Sunday night. So that's two hours after the West Coast version of Game of Thrones finishes airing. And then it reruns on HBO, the actual HBO, at about 1 o'clock a.m. on the following night. Second, don't forget to subscribe to The Ringer's new newsletter at TheRinger.com. We've also been posting additional Game of Thrones content and NBA playoffs content on our Facebook page. Check that out. Facebook.com slash Ringer. Some good stuff on there. And third, last but not
Starting point is 00:01:39 least, we have a title and a date for my new HBO show. It's called Any Given Wednesday with Bill Simmons. And it premieres June 22nd on HBO. One more time. Any Given Wednesday with Bill Simmons. June 22nd, 10 p.m. Wednesday. Because that's in the title, so it has to be Wednesday. And it's going to be on HBO. That is right after the NBA Finals ends and right before the NBA Draft.
Starting point is 00:02:07 So I think it's a pretty safe bet we'll be talking about the NBA in that first show. Very, very excited. There's been a lot of work and a lot of blood, sweat, and tears going into this thing. We're excited to finally have something to show you and to officially really be part of HBO. So I'm looking forward to that. And now, without further ado, Key and Peele, let's roll. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:02:32 Clearing off for you. Yeah, right. Yeah. Well, this is exciting. All right. Keegan-Michael Key. How you doing? Jordan Peele.
Starting point is 00:02:42 Hey, Bill. How are you? We're doing great, man. Great to see you. Great to see you. Great to see you. Great to finally, yeah. I spent last night, at least part of last night, in the bathtub watching your movie on my iPad.
Starting point is 00:02:52 No. Wow. Does that make you feel- This is weird, so I got out of the bathtub. You got to get out of bed. I was going to say, does that make you feel alive, though, watching it in the bathtub? Yeah. At any point in time, I could drop this in here and either electrocute myself or completely
Starting point is 00:03:02 ruin this expensive piece of equipment. Either way. Either way, no. There's a fear factor to it. That was good no it's it's i had no idea what to expect i intentionally tried not to read anything oh and so you saw it green initially it was like keanu and when i when i first heard about it i'm sure a lot of people told you guys this i was thinking like keanu reeves like are they what's going on and And then it's like, now there's a cat. I'm like, all right, I'm staying out. I just want to be surprised, which is the right way to watch it.
Starting point is 00:03:30 We like to piggyback on the name of a bigger star. Smart. Stand on his shoulders, get everyone's attention, then hit him with the kitten. Then lastly, we say, and Key and Peele are in it as well. Yeah, yeah. Have you heard from Keanu Reeves about this? Has he said anything? Has he mentioned anything? We have, we say, and Key and Peele are in it as well. Yeah, yeah. Have you heard from Keanu Reeves about this? Has he said anything?
Starting point is 00:03:47 Has he mentioned anything? We have, we have. We have. What did he say? Well, first, he loved the trailer. He loved the trailer. Yep, he loved the trailer. And then he said, these guys are wacky.
Starting point is 00:03:58 These guys are wacky. Yeah, so that's what he said. He goes, these guys are very good, and they're totally wacky. They're just whacked out. And he kept on saying, which is not a word I would ever expect to hear come out of Keanu Reeves' mouth. So I take it as a real compliment that he said we were wacky. That was the word he used. Debating how much we should say.
Starting point is 00:04:18 I don't want to spoil too much. But I will say this movie was a tiny bit on John Wick's corner you know it's somebody who's watched John Wick maybe I don't know 27 times I think I've seen John Wick maybe 26 times
Starting point is 00:04:31 is there a more rewatchable it's just a lot of murders it's a super rewatchable movie anytime Lance Reddick appears in the movie I go oh here we go here's another Lance Reddick part
Starting point is 00:04:38 I don't know what it is about that movie but it's got super rewatchability to it yeah but this movie was no joke had nothing to do with John, but it's got super rewatchability to it. But this movie was no joke. It had nothing to do with John Wick.
Starting point is 00:04:48 No. You were like years ago. We wrote the script. When John Wick came out, I was like trying to get my lawyers involved. I was like, who let my idea leak? Somebody took the comedy out of my idea and made an awesome action movie out of it. And they beat me to the punch. But no, it turns out it's this happy accident.
Starting point is 00:05:11 And I kind of wish the movie was a parody off of that. Because I feel like that's actually a cooler story. I mean, it's about as early of a parody. As you could possibly do. I'm still digesting John Wick. We'd be bending time to make that parody yeah it was like a pre-cog parody he said it i love it but that's a pre-cog so yeah this must be an insane like 10 days for you guys because i mean your show was so popular
Starting point is 00:05:41 but you know when your tv your cable youtube views all that stuff you can kind of gauge all that stuff but when you put a movie out into the world it's just totally different it's different process you're just being judged solely by rotten tomato scores and grosses and first opening weekend all stuff that's pretty foreign i would guess right yeah there's a real weird there's a not weird but a strange feeling of with show, I felt that for the most part, it was a big show, little business. Because Comedy Central left us alone. And with movies, it's definitely little show, big business. That you get all the metrics and you get all the diagnostics and you're getting all these vital statistics.
Starting point is 00:06:21 And you kind of go, I don't really even know what to make of them but the tour has been good but even on the tour you're in isolated cities i mean we've been in i think six cities in 10 days and um and you're seeing the support but there's no possible way for you to see millions of people at the same time and go oh that's all the fans that are going to and then of those people who are going to go pay for the ticket and all that kind of stuff. It's a little overwhelming in how different it is.
Starting point is 00:06:52 I think we kind of feel like we already won in that we got to make a movie we wanted to make and we like this movie. You get somebody to pay for your movie. Somebody pay for our movie and we love it. And so, you know, there's an element of like if I think it'll do great,
Starting point is 00:07:11 but even if it takes people a while to find it, you know, like and it becomes more of a cult hit or success. I mean, either road I think is, is, uh, is a win. And, uh, but I think the, the vibe we're getting is people are going to come out. Yeah. And I think you're going to be fine. Yeah. I mean, I, and I hear what you're saying, Jordan, like if it's, if, if, if a few select people and I've heard other artists say this, if a few select people who you respect deeply find the work that you did beloved, that can be a big thing, you know, and you can go wherever, however the success lies.
Starting point is 00:07:48 But from what we've experienced, I feel like it could be a great, this could work out to be a great word of mouth project so that people go, oh, no, you've got to see it. It's not what you think it is. And then somebody else goes, oh, no, I saw it. You'll never believe it. It was this and I thought it was that and it was better. That's, you know, that's your hope. But if it happens organically, that would be nice to know.
Starting point is 00:08:09 I mean, what sucks, it sucks when you make something that you don't like. And, you know, watching something like that is painful in success or failure. Do you have an example? Like, is there something that you look back now and you're like, God. You know, there's always a sketch that didn't turn out right here or there. I mean, this is our first movie,
Starting point is 00:08:33 so yeah, this is all new. I meant more like some sketch you guys just, oh, man, we blew that. Yeah, I mean, it's hard to remember. You literally, like, if a sketch, if you don't like a sketch, you bury it in the deepest recesses of your mind. Like me, like with a bad column or something. Oh, sure.
Starting point is 00:08:53 Why did I write that? Why was I pandering? It doesn't even exist anymore. Yeah. But, yeah, I mean, it's, you know, sketch is so weird and tricky. You can predict it to a certain point and then there's something that you felt easy to us that will take off enormously. And something that feels extremely difficult that, you know, for whatever reason, it just won't resonate. Right.
Starting point is 00:09:19 You can put your everything into it and say, we you know this was meticulous and it was edited perfectly and everything went the way we wanted it to go and then it just yeah just duds and you're going huh and then we've had sketches where on set bill we didn't know the ending of the sketch we just kind of meandered and then the editor puts it together and it's like it was magic and and you would never know. Because when you're watching it as the viewer, you're going, that's brilliant. Look at these choices they made. And we're just going, oh, whew.
Starting point is 00:09:53 It's not a science. There's craft, but it's not a science. But for you guys, dude, with sketches, it's almost more fun for you guys. If something doesn't work, you learn from it and you apply it to the next thing and figure out and you're taking chances you know your batting average is going to be a thousand but with a movie you can't do that right that's right
Starting point is 00:10:13 you actually have to get on base in the movie exactly and then so that's striking the balance of finding the finding everything that you want personally to be in the project and have that somehow meet commerce. It's a, that's an art in and of itself.
Starting point is 00:10:29 Right. And, and, um, so you take three years, you said, is the three years because you didn't feel like you could get this movie funded or you needed to reach a certain level of success and fame to get it
Starting point is 00:10:40 funded or it just took three years. Uh, it was the, it was the second one. Yeah. We, we wrote the script and we wrote it
Starting point is 00:10:47 knowing we were going to write our favorite movie here. Our favorite movie that doesn't exist. And we also knew we had Key & Peele. At some point, there's going to be, someone's going to get hip to the idea of Key & Peele should do a movie.
Starting point is 00:11:04 So we had a script. We had our favorite script ready when New Line came around. And then they loved it. It all fell into place. There was never a point where this was a real trial. We had to put this up against the fire or go through any process. We really found its home very organically. So you start out with the idea
Starting point is 00:11:30 and then you have to write the movie. Did you have two, three things? You're like, all right, we're doing a movie. Let's start with these three things. We'll go from there. I mean, the thing was, and the script was penned by myself and this guy, Alex Rubens, who's a Key & Peele writer. And very early on, we were like, OK, we know we want to make a movie, write a movie for Keegan and I.
Starting point is 00:11:54 You know, Keegan, Alex and I are huge fans of a type of action comedy we don't see made as much anymore. It's the kind I grew up with, right? It's like the midnight runs in my top ten. It's a little bit of a midnight run. It's my top five. Yeah, yeah, yeah. A little bit of Pryor and Wilder.
Starting point is 00:12:13 Pryor and Wilder. And these are the things that we talk about. So we knew we wanted to make something that was very Key & Peele. So we said, all right, what if we put Key & Peele characters very close to ourselves
Starting point is 00:12:25 in uh the the genre of a movie from the late 80s early 90s and your new jack cities uh you know your speed yeah movies like that but movies that have that sensibility of you know if you think of a movie like speed dennis Hopper in the most delicious way is chewing up the scenery. And you get laughs organically from the way he's playing the character and you might even be able to read that script and there's not necessarily
Starting point is 00:12:56 laugh lines in it. It's not a Mel Brooks film. Or a movie like The Last Boy Scout, which is commenting on movies like that that have catchphrases in them. Nobody got it. Everyone was like too serious in 1990, 91. Yeah, yeah.
Starting point is 00:13:10 The Last Boy Scout was a better movie than I think we realized when it happened. Oh, yeah, absolutely. Everyone's like, what is this? It's a classic. Because they were making that, they were winking in the best way. But once again, the bullets are real. And the violence is real. And the people are really getting hurt.
Starting point is 00:13:24 It's not like, it's not like Stroker Ace. It's not a Burt Reynolds movie where the punch is kind of like guys just recover and everyone's throwing each other around. It's not that schlocky thing that happened in the late 70s. It was a reaction to that late 70s to late 80s thing where you kind of said, let's make a movie. Like Bad Boys. Bad Boys is a movie. And tracking shots and jibs. But it's still hysterical. It's a great movie. And you're right. Speed is
Starting point is 00:13:54 now a comedy. 22 years later, Speed is now a comedy. 48 Hours is an action movie. Marty Brest happened to cast this comedic genius named Eddie Murphy to play Reggie Hammond. Who they almost fired. Who they almost fired.
Starting point is 00:14:12 And that movie is, and Nick Nolte is hilarious in that movie. Jack Cates. Jack Cates. But there's no jokes. They're just hilarious. And so there's this wonderful tonal balance between comedy and action. That's my favorite movie of all time. And every year, I feel a little more guilty about it because it's ridiculously racist.
Starting point is 00:14:33 Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. I thought Jack Cates was funny. And now I watch him like, Jesus. He's like the jungle bunny. Oh, these terrible words. He's great in it, though. I was flying on a plane because we've been flying so much recently. And the other morning before I took a little snooze on the plane, I watched 16 Candles.
Starting point is 00:14:52 And something one of our writers had said a couple years ago, I'd forgotten what Colton had said. It's very human. It's just that there's certain things that have changed in the society. The movie stands up. The movie stands up as kind of a teenage romp or a teenage comedy. I do feel like 48 Hours is kind of a reaction to a little bit of the prior Wilder movies. Merged with the cop movie. And then 48 Hours ends up influencing 10 years of movies. Absolutely.
Starting point is 00:15:17 Lethal Weapon is basically... There are all these different movies that came out of that. But what you guys did... one movie that brought back a little of that and it's weird because there's four people in two but i thought the hangover had some of that where it's like normal people just dressed in a situation where it just goes horribly wrong without giving up too much of kiana that's basically the movie is it starts out normal real people in a heightened situation yeah because Because I thought about 10 minutes in, I'm like, is this going to be a parody
Starting point is 00:15:48 on people who love their pets too much? Right. Interesting. I was like, oh, this is good. This is a whole commentary just making fun of all these crazy weirdos who talk to their dogs and kiss their dogs on the mouth. And in some ways it is.
Starting point is 00:16:02 It is. We like to make, we like to make we like to hit a bunch of but you hit way more my point is at 10 minutes I was like and then I was like
Starting point is 00:16:13 oh oh it's this oh yeah but the other thing that's interesting in the movie I think in the beginning
Starting point is 00:16:20 is that Alex and Jordan have infused so much heart into the movie it all hangs on Keanu. And so you're watching a guy who's in a lot of distress and you're watching another guy who's trying to work through something just like anybody, just like anybody. And I think that stuff stays intact throughout the movie, which I don't know if I've said
Starting point is 00:16:40 this to you, but I just think it's done with Jordan so deftly, how you guys have managed to just work it through so that the humanity never goes away. Even when some of the behavior is weird or uncharacteristic of a person maybe you know, the humanity never goes away from the story. Ever, ever, ever. And you hang it all, you hang it on this kitten. And it's really, it's just really well done. Yeah. I mean, yeah, it's like hang it on this kitten and it's really it's it's just really well done yeah i mean yeah it's like it's crazy it turns out that the the hardest thing to do with with writing a
Starting point is 00:17:12 movie is keeping the uh the drive of the audience keeping the the the audience uh but believing that the characters would do this thing, would put themselves through this, believing believing the motivation of the characters. So, yeah, that was that was that was a tricky. It's a tricky tightrope walk. But you crack the nut, man. All right. That's cool. Yeah, I feel it, too.
Starting point is 00:17:38 Yeah. So as an actor, it was it was it was something you could play with relish you know how like when do you get involved when they're working on the script and they're like slaving away in some office somewhere do you come in like are they sending you segments are you just out and then you come in late how does that work your partnership fascinates me well yeah we i mean i we were working on other things i was acting in films and i would come you know I would leave during a hiatus and come back for work. And then one day Jordan asked me, he said, look, Alex and I have been working on this thing.
Starting point is 00:18:11 Like he said, it was spec. It was just a project. It was a project that they were working on together. And he asked me, can we do this table read? And so we did the table read. And after that, it was, I mean, I guess I would say it was relatively Hands off
Starting point is 00:18:26 I have some I have a deep deep deep respect For his mind And so I know when he needs Something from me he comes to me Otherwise he's I mean especially him and Alex working together They're like a power duo
Starting point is 00:18:43 They're like force multipliers to each other. Like a nuclear reactor for ideas. So I just knew if you, when it's time for, what do you call it? The razzmatazz? When it's time for the razzmatazz, then I'm going to call Keegan for whatever this thing I need here. Because also, I come to every project, every project, as a performer. My degree is in performance and that's what
Starting point is 00:19:08 I've always studied. I study performance and work at performance and see how an audience is reacting to performance or a viewer. And so, I feel like that's where
Starting point is 00:19:18 if Jordan feels he needs that insight, he'll come to me. Now, in certain aspects, like when we were when we're writing the sketches some sketches would just flow from us organically yeah you know there's an idea and we just start using all of our improv tools so you guys are all spitballing with writers somebody throws out an idea you go and then do you guys go off together do you go off separately that when
Starting point is 00:19:40 you were writing that stuff how it happens all different ways yeah it's all all sketch specific sometimes a writer will have an idea and we'll say yes we love that go write that um sometimes i'll have an idea or keegan will have an idea and we assign it to a writer sometimes i'll just write it myself sometimes we'll write it together together it's it's all over the place sometimes it's a group of people have to write a sketch together yeah um but it was very you know it's it's extreme it was extremely collaborative there were many sketches that every everybody got their hands on in some way yeah a bunch of different paths to the same place like all right so take i don't know black ice so you guys like take me from the beginning of that to when it becomes ready to go. Black Ice, I believe, was the brainchild of this guy, Rich Tallarico.
Starting point is 00:20:32 Okay. Had the nugget for the idea, which was just the bit of the scene. And then from that, I'm sure we told him to do it. He submitted it. And then we go through it. We make notes. We figure out what's wrong with it, what's right about it. It gets put through a couple of drafts, and then we have the sketch.
Starting point is 00:20:58 And then always on set, there's going to be more adjustments made and improv yeah and we we would very often take um packets of sketches a collection of sketches from different writers and sit down and read the sketches which we think i think is very invaluable because once you feel it when you read it it's um uh that gives you uh such a trevor trove a treasure trove of information as to go, oh, God, if I had never read it, I would have never known that that word or that phrase was awkward in the mouth and that nobody would say that that way or a character wouldn't say that that way.
Starting point is 00:21:36 Let me change that. You can see as the people are reading the scripts and assigning characters to other people and you're interacting with each other, you can see the writer furiously writing notes going, that's how it sounds oh i didn't think it would sound that way did it always make sense which part each of you should play in the sketch or were there times where you're like yeah like up to the very end you're like there's a couple that got swapped at the very end really um yeah um but i think it was more, it would usually have more to do with something like balance than anything else.
Starting point is 00:22:10 Like maybe there's a character, maybe there's some kind of thing where it's like, well, I've played a woman twice this season, so I think we should be, that kind of thing. Right, right. But for the most part, it's pretty straightforward. It's pretty, it just makes sense. Yeah, especially the deeper we got into the seasons. Because then, especially, you know, we don't do what, we have a different style of sketch than, say, the Nick Kroll show. Which, where the Nick Kroll show, you would see there would be, there were probably about seven storylines and he would always visit two to three of those storylines per show and then also write individual sketches that were standalone. With us, we had way less recurring characters through, I think, the entire body of our piece.
Starting point is 00:22:57 So maybe every three episodes you'd see recurring characters. And so but we still had we still had a stable of recurring characters. And so, but we still had, we still had a stable of those characters. So that allowed us to know who was gonna be cast in those. Or sometimes I think if we wrote a similar sketch, we'd say, well this one we're gonna have Keegan do this and Jordan have this. And then every now and again we go, you know what,
Starting point is 00:23:21 why don't we make that sketch, let's make that sketch for these characters that already exist. So when it's a partnership like that, I mean, everybody's got an ego and you guys are always just, you know, can't peel, can't peel, can't peel. At some point, do you start feeling like, I kind of want to be my own person a little bit while also having this thing when do you hit that point well you know I mean we we definitely have we have a world of projects that we want to do outside of Key & Peele right but I think I mean I think part of the the secret of Key & Peele is that where we and the writers we have this improvisation background. And there's, you know, one of the things you work at hard in improvisation is to lose the ego in the creative process.
Starting point is 00:24:14 It's built into the fabric of the process. Yeah, yeah. So, and, you know, throughout our careers, it's, you know, any time you forego those those the feelings and that that the the the the negative feelings and um sidestep the ego that was my idea no i said it first if you get rid of that yeah if you get rid of that then it just uh it makes you can make something much greater than any single person could make. It's just this. You can bicker all you want about that was my idea or who had that line.
Starting point is 00:24:51 Hey, guess what? Is the sketch funny? That's all that matters. All that matters is if the sketch is funny. The team is called Key & Peele. All the writers, the producers, the crew. That's Key & Peele. It's not this guy and that guy. we're winning like we're winning you know everybody's winning and yeah the ego plays
Starting point is 00:25:12 tricks on you uh if if you allow it you know because the ego will would have you yeah compare yourself to somebody you know it's like if I were to compare myself to Keegan and how he's doing ego wise you could get so wrapped up in that that you could never get out of it
Starting point is 00:25:38 so I mean yeah you really do have to Jim Henson had this whole philosophy about, look, it's, your ego has to be replaced with the ego of the show. Yeah. You know, we have to be, we'll all succeed if we make this thing gold, like he can say. We had that at Grantland. You had it at Grantland, yeah.
Starting point is 00:26:01 There was a selflessness, which is really hard to get to with writers, because writers because writers are precious about their work their dna is always going to be they it's their bio and they want the credit and you know by especially by like year three we were able to get multiple writers just to write we call them shoot arounds but you know get people to contribute to oscars reactions and collaborate and got to a point where people just felt like if the site wins we win and that's why with this new site we're building it's got to be the same philosophy like you all win if the site's good you know the hence it's a hard place to get to yeah no it is it it is if uh it it it it is if people won't buy in like you have to figure out there's another ingredient and the ingredient is what makes you buy in and um i mean, I think the sports analogy, like the Jim Hintz analogy for me was Larry.
Starting point is 00:26:49 Oh, boy, his name just flew out of my head. Who was the head coach of the Pistons when they won the last championship? Larry Brown. When Larry Brown got there, he had some relationships with those guys. So everybody else bought in. And when they went to the finals against the Lakers, it was, remember, it's five against two. There's no way we're not going to win the championship. It's five against two.
Starting point is 00:27:08 They're a mess over there. We win because Shaq and Kobe have Achilles heels, and they're their egos. We're a team. Every night, it's five against two. And that's how they won that championship. So for us, I think everybody understood, it's almost like they're serving Key and Peele second,
Starting point is 00:27:30 and we were serving the god of improvisation first, which is I'm a heel if I don't yes and the other people here. If I'm holding on to what I think my idea is, and I'm not open to anybody else's ideas, and I'm not going to let go of the reins, then you're, not to get too lofty but you're dishonoring del close you're dishonoring uh uh viola spolin you're dishonoring uh the masters of improvisation who are very sacred and important to us these people have passed away and gave us these traditions
Starting point is 00:27:59 so don't you know it's like you know don't hey make make an effort to do the best you can for the great spirits you know it's like that you know, don't, Hey, make, make an effort to do the best you can for the great spirits. You know, it's like that feeling. And that was almost more important than key and peel. It's what makes key and peel work. There's a great book about the first five years of Saturday night life. First 10 years, actually, that came out like, I think 30 years ago before people realized that they shouldn't be that candid in the interviews.
Starting point is 00:28:22 I think it was Saturday. I can't remember. Doug Hill and Jeff Weingrad, I think, were the writers. But a big chunk of it is about those first couple years. They had that same spirit, that same camaraderie, but then Chevy Chase took off.
Starting point is 00:28:40 And everybody's backs got up. And Belushi went crazy because he used to kill Chevy Chase for years in the National Lampoon, all the different things they did. He was the best. Like when Belushi was on stage, you looked at Belushi. And when Chevy Chase left, that's when, at least for a little while,
Starting point is 00:28:58 they were able to become a team. And then, of course, Belushi and Aykroyd took off and then it happens again. It's really hard in comedy because eventually somebody's going to, when you have an ensemble like that, that's why I thought what you guys did was pretty rare. It was five years of it.
Starting point is 00:29:11 What Jordan said too is true. I mean, somebody, I don't know who this is. It's an anonymous quote, but comparison is the thief of joy. So we're not, the other thing is recognizing what the dreams of the other people in your life are and yes-ending those dreams or supporting and booing up their dreams. I'm very excited, extremely excited to see this horror movie that Jordan wrote, that he directed, that you produced it as well. You're a producer on the movie. It's such a passion for him.
Starting point is 00:29:47 And having spent so much time with him in my life and seeing the glint in his eye, because he has an encyclopedic knowledge. He's a connoisseur of horror as a genre and the sub-genres therein. He knows all of it. The way Mike Tyson knows boxing lore, this guy knows horror movies. And to see that...
Starting point is 00:30:03 Don't do anything like mike tyson to see those dreams to see that dream come true for him that's my joy it there's no joy in going why didn't he cast me in the horror movie there's not a part for you in the horror movie keegan yeah let he he supports your dreams right you support his dreams. What do I get from not supporting his dreams? Like, what positive thing do I get? What benefit do I get from that? Quick aside. Where are horror movies going?
Starting point is 00:30:33 Because horror movies always go up and down, up and down. And, like, Halloween launches this whole five, six-year genre of the babysitters dying. And then they go to the different. And then Scream brought some stuff back. And then you have like the grizzly then you have the blair witch era i mean there's all these different areas so where are we now um it's a good question i i predict a good amount of uh sci-fi horror blend i think we're interesting special effects yeah we're definitely we're at an era where i think people are really interested in science fiction and the ai and and uh uh you know the internet and where where's where is this all headed because we you know it's been it's been crazy i mean the last 10 years have just been a
Starting point is 00:31:19 complete you know technological revolution in a very creepy way yeah yeah and it feels very like we're headed to some or in this weird dystopia dystopia do you see unfriended i did i did see unfriended it's on it's on cable uh unfriended it's good but it's basically they're just all on like this google chat yeah but somebody that they had made fun of who killed themselves enters the chat and starts messing with them. Oh, that's what it's about. It's good. It's pretty good, I gotta say. Let me ask you two guys this
Starting point is 00:31:52 because I haven't seen it. What is the appeal or what do you think made the film It Follows a good film? Oh, interesting. I mean... Actually, I think you told me that you had enjoyed it
Starting point is 00:32:05 you were captivated by it I thought it was excellent and you thought it was excellent too and I've not yet seen it and I wanted to know because I'm not horror really gets me I get
Starting point is 00:32:13 my imagination gets a little too crazy and so it's a little harder for me but he knows enough to recommend certain types of horror movies to me like the Babadook I loved
Starting point is 00:32:23 you loved the Babadook but but anyway I'm sorry, I digressed from my own question. It follows a really great, in the spirit of the throwback, it's doing this early 80s thing, it's this John Carpenter thing.
Starting point is 00:32:36 That's why Halloween is in my pantheon, so that's why I liked it. It reminded me of modern Halloween. Totally, the soundtrack. Oh, interesting, okay. It had the theme of like, if you have sex with somebody in high school, you're gonna pay for it. Totally. The soundtrack. Interesting. Okay. Had the theme of like, if you have sex with somebody in high school,
Starting point is 00:32:47 you're going to pay for it. That was in there, which is a horror movie staple. Total horror movie staple. Moral staple. Yeah. And it's beautifully shot too. It is.
Starting point is 00:32:55 Okay. It looks gorgeous. And I heard it cost nothing. Yeah, it cost nothing. But one of the keys with horror films, the ones that I've worked is, usually the ones
Starting point is 00:33:03 that are well done have a better chance and it sounds stupid, but halloween's a really well done movie you watch it's like the shots he does the way he uses shadows and lights there's a confidence yeah too a knowledge that this it's when all the pieces are put together it's going to be very scary and it's i mean because he's just he's stringing together images it's not it's not a movie about revelation it's not a movie about um you know jump scares it's it's all this pace and this creepy monster it's like it's it's uh it's one of those movies that sometimes i don't like when directors or creative people give interviews because sometimes the mystery is better than the
Starting point is 00:33:43 action yes you read the john carver it's like yeah i mean we initially thought it was going to be this and we were doing stuff on the fight and you realize like he was just 20 20 days to make this movie about babysitters getting murdered basically and probably stumbled into some of it it's and this is why we we love improvisation is because i think it's such an important piece of anybody's creative process to be able to adjust toward the end, especially, and be able to sacrifice things that you thought were important and find new things. And so that's that with what we do as Key & Peele, along with our director, Peter Atencio, who also did Keanu. It's like, that's
Starting point is 00:34:25 part of our process is, you know, we set ourself up to succeed, but now let's get in there and let's find some, some more. Before we go on with key and peel a quick word about our friends at Squarespace building website can be pretty daunting, whether it's a business site, a portfolio, a restaurant, whatever else in this day and age, there is a ton of pressure to represent yourself in a way that looks good online. So thank God for our buddies at Squarespace. They build gorgeous websites for normal people who do not know how to build websites. Like my buddies, Louis K and Joe house. They both have Squarespace websites. Uh, Squarespace makes it easy, regardless of skill level, no coding needed, easy to use tools,
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Starting point is 00:37:14 Where is improv in 2016 in the world of if you go one step over the line and you get the outrage culture maniacs after you and all that stuff, you could get in a heap of shit. Do you feel like people are more walking on eggshells a little bit now, or do people not even think about it that are in and do what you do in regards to to improv I mean the beauty is we can go anywhere and it'll be edited in in a in a movie or something yeah but you could also be like on stage just fucking around with somebody and yeah no no oh you're saying in an improv scene if somebody comes and sees a show
Starting point is 00:37:45 and go how dare you say that yeah or anything or even like some sketch that you're trying to get I mean your show's done now but you're trying to get these things
Starting point is 00:37:52 and it's up and maybe you could've spent one more day thinking about whether you should do this and then it's out in the world and everyone lines up on you
Starting point is 00:38:00 we've been doing improv for a long time between the two of us and I wouldn't say that we're in a different era necessarily than when we started, which, you know, because I agree with that. I agree that we're not. I agree that we're in the same era.
Starting point is 00:38:13 Good. Yeah. Yeah. You know, but, you know, there's a politically correctness. The whole thing is you got to get the laugh. If you don't get the laugh, any place you go can be put up to scrutiny. And, you know, you don't want to go blue or go with something that's upsetting or topical and not get the laugh. Or otherwise, you fail. If people laugh, they will figure out why it was okay that you told that joke.
Starting point is 00:38:39 Right. And that you have to make, how shall I say it? Like make assurances that what you're doing and the choices you're making, even in the, this is hard, but even in the moment on stage, the choices that you're making, you're not making out of fear. So that very often you will see a comedian, whether they be a standup or making a choice out of lack. And what I mean by that is I thought maybe i'd get some giggles or some love from an audience that doesn't know me maybe they'll give me a little leeway yeah and then there's a lack and so then you start saying you start doing like just delivering blue material for no reason or offensive material because if i can get some reaction from them so you're making decisions
Starting point is 00:39:21 out of fear instead of instead of penetrating your partner psychically so that everything comes from them. They're the entire well that you're pulling from. Don't worry about the audience. Mesmerize the audience by having this amazing connection with this person you're staying across from. That will never change. That hasn't changed since the 50s. That hasn't changed since Viola Spolin wrote her book, Improvisation for the Theater. But I think what happens is people make these adjustments on the fly
Starting point is 00:39:48 out of ego. And that's when you get in trouble. That's when you get in trouble. In improv, yeah. Absolutely. Part of our job as comedians, you know, when we talk about sketch movies, all of it, is what our heroes, our comedy heroes did, which is, yeah, you push the line, but you value of comedy is helping people, you know, reconcile all the horrors
Starting point is 00:40:30 and the dark things about the human condition and humanity in a fun way. Yeah. My friend Wesley Morris, who wrote for Graham for a long time, he wrote a great piece about you guys last year. Wrote an amazing piece about us. It was really... He's one of the best.
Starting point is 00:40:46 Kudos to Wesley. Yeah. He found things, in my opinion, he found things about Negro Town that I hadn't thought of. And I went, oh my God, that's amazing. You know, the man, he's so... He's great.
Starting point is 00:41:01 Observational. It's... I know it was about us, so it's hard for me to say, but it was an outstandingly written piece. It's so thoughtfully written. So one of his themes was basically that the way you guys approached race on that show was almost like the legacy of Chappelle's show,
Starting point is 00:41:18 like the torch had been passed to you. So who has the torch now? You know, that's a good question yeah there whoever whoever uh wants it really i mean we we we don't we don't approach race very i mean we we do we do the racial humor because our heroes did it our our black uh comedic heroes did it. Our black comedic heroes did it. we look at, from our specific perspective, I think we look at
Starting point is 00:41:54 all the racial material that hasn't been done yet because it hasn't been seen through our eyes. It hasn't been explored. It's a very personal thing i guess there's a better way to phrase that question is there's just kind of a void because there's especially look at this election right now yeah your show would have been uh
Starting point is 00:42:18 valuable not just funny but i think it would have been you would have had some really important moments on it you know i i wonder how i wonder if one way to look at it is hopefully if because of the void there may be a sense of yearning yeah from some young comedian and my hope or comedians or uh my hope is that the comedians have some set of tools that allow them to comedically look at the situations we're dealing with presently in a responsible way um you know what's filled the void a little bit and the only reason i know this is because my kids love one of these shows and then i have a 10 year old and eight year old but my kids love blackish and blackish and carmichael show yeah yeah absolutely they've kind of brought back what we grew up with in the 80s,
Starting point is 00:43:07 the very special episode, but it's much more well done than that. But Black-ish really goes a couple places. Yeah, those are great shows. It does, and it's thoughtful. Both of those shows work. No, that's a good point, Bill, yeah. And I think that both of those guys, Kenya and Gerard are being very brave,
Starting point is 00:43:23 and they're doing it in a bigger arena. That's broadcast television. Yeah, almost like a higher degree of difficulty in a way because it's so hard to just be interesting on network TV. Yeah, on network. So many obstacles. You have 40 executives. I mean, how many people gave you guys notes by year four?
Starting point is 00:43:40 Did you even get notes? We got barely any. They just let you go, right? Yeah. They just let us go. I think one weapon, it's not to uh weapon one tool yeah that you can use to is that those those 40 executives look everybody wants to keep their job and everyone's trying to do the best and they want the show to be good um but they're giving the notes and i think i've said
Starting point is 00:44:03 this before i said sometimes you can just, you just show your holster. Yeah. Just show your holster. So if Kenya and Anthony in the most discreet or the most positive way can just show their holster, which is the way of saying, you know, I'm not going to pull my race card. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:44:19 I'm just going to make everyone aware that I have one. And then let's work out what your, what your concerns seem to be about this page of dialogue. And I think that's what they're doing. As opposed to there being any kind of outrage. And for some reason, they're writing episodes so well that the executives have to go, this is good. It's funny. I mean, you know what I mean?
Starting point is 00:44:41 Let them do their thing. And then when they get feedback for it, then now you can go because it's like, oh, people love that. Okay, you guys should keep doing that. But they have to actually see the results. I mean, we had, and our guys, they were great. I mean, they had things that they wanted to do. I mean, really, wouldn't you say, Jordan, the big thing was they wanted us to have such a specific voice. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:45:02 And we're like, we promise you that's exactly what will happen and um and they and they pulled back a little bit and watched it and then the data came in you know was it do you feel like you were fortunate because you you were able to get some reps on mad tv which was still a network show but not kind of the same profile as your own show with your own name on it right essential yeah i mean i mean i think the the best thing about mad tv for me was was the learning i i got to do you know really kind of really kind of got to figure out what uh what tv was about how to how to sell it on tv how to write for tv um so yeah it was it was then, of course, that's where we started
Starting point is 00:45:45 working together. Keegan and I started working together. So that, it was a very, very important... That was for Tudis. Yeah. Oh, yeah. It was our proving ground. And I was very fortunate to have a front row seat
Starting point is 00:46:01 to watch his development. Yeah. And watch him turn into the right there and there are sketches and the other thing i really admire about jordan is there were sketches that he wrote and put a lot of time and energy and thought into that you know the powers that be at mad tv were not responding to but he's always striving to be better so i don't think i can't think of a single sketch that you wrote for mad TV that didn't go or wasn't made or produced that you repeated at Key & Peele yeah he just moved on to the next step he's like that
Starting point is 00:46:33 was what that was that was part of my maturation process now I'm on this now I'm on this and and and so it makes me excited to see like where's he gonna be in ten years what happens to you guys if in like 2008 lauren michaels is like let's get those guys from from mad tv we'll get both of them we'll bring them here and you're just on snl from 2008 on we'd host we'd love to host we'd love to host it yeah had we but you're saying if we had been on the show i'm saying if he had hired you guys to be in the cast. Oh, back in 2008? Yeah. I mean, we'd have a very different path. Trajectory.
Starting point is 00:47:12 I'm not sure we'd be here talking with you right now. Yeah, we'd probably still be on the show. Yeah. They got them long contracts over there. Or they get them long contracts. The other weird thing is, yeah, you're're right we'd still be on the show um we even without you're right even without a uh renewal probably but uh the the who knows in an alternate universe if we were on snl in 2008 about we may be we may be the the next blues brothers right you know who knows Don't get us wrong. It's like we both got into comedy. I think the goal was SNL.
Starting point is 00:47:50 Let's get on SNL. Before we knew each other. I was going to say, that's everybody's goal. I don't think that ever changes either. No, no. If there's 20-year-old kids now, that's probably feeling the exact same way.
Starting point is 00:47:59 When you teach improv classes, that's what you're always... I just finished making this movie and I'm just starting to do press for it. It's mike berbiglia movie called don't think twice and this is exactly what it's about and like you said it's about chevy skyrocketed to to stardom and then what's the rest of the group do and do they start feeding off of each other or eating each other you know and that's the exact thing it's that you you're in this environment where you're all supposed to be supporting each other and then someone gets plucked out of the environment and then you can't
Starting point is 00:48:31 do that comparison thing that jordan was talking about which was like so what are they saying they're saying he's better than we are once that virus gets in there that's a problem the only time it got so thrown out of whack it was actually like it hurt the show in some ways was with Eddie Murphy because he's the best cast member they've ever had. He was like the most overqualified person
Starting point is 00:48:51 you ever could have put on that show. I don't even know how somebody else could have been on that show with him. The guy was like he was a cross between Michael Jordan and LeBron and Barry Sanders.
Starting point is 00:49:02 It was like anything you'd ever put into one person he had. It's interesting that but if you look at people's paths that was his moment and LeBron and Barry Sanders. It was like everything you'd ever put into one person. And isn't it interesting that if you look at people's paths, that was his moment and his moment lasted for a very long time.
Starting point is 00:49:11 But look who one of the greatest female comedic voices of all time is right now. Buried on that show. It's Julia Louis-Dreyfus. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:49:17 And buried on that show. And she was like 20. 20 years old. And remember, she used to do sketches all the time with the guy, his name was Gary Kroger. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:49:24 Remember Gary Kroger? It was her. It was those two and brad hall right and kazarensky yeah all got pulled up from chicago and like just it's the worst time it's like oh yeah i've got my surfboard i'm ready to hit the water snl and they're and then you didn't know there wasn't a guy named eddie murphy he was the tsunami He was the tsunami that just, his talent just couldn't be denied. It was ridiculous. Incredible. And also, you know, the timing was just perfect, too. I mean, there was this, and, you know, when we talk about race, it's like, we need black voices out there because there's a lot of comedy that white voices can't can't do right
Starting point is 00:50:06 and so you know eddie murphy coming out and all of a sudden sort of making fun of culture making fun of the culture of the the way that that generate the baby boomer generation grew up you know with like you know there's a comedic take on on buckwheat you know it's like that's the kind of thing that was just stretched like a rubber band and ready to pop off. And then here we go. We got all of a sudden the best stand-up comedic actor
Starting point is 00:50:33 comes along, gets the shot and it's just murder. Oh, I mean just straight Khmer Rouge. I wrote a giant piece about him when Tower Heist was coming out. It was supposed to be the Eddie comeback. And I thought one of the reasons he succeeded was,
Starting point is 00:50:52 like when I was growing up, I'm a little older than you guys, I think. I'm 46. Oh, you're older than me. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So there was this whole run of television shows with black families and black characters. Yeah, the Norman Lear stuff. By 81, it was over and like the only black people on tv were basically george jefferson
Starting point is 00:51:11 uh arnold and isaac the bartender and that was it yeah yeah and it was like the networks were like here you go black america here are your three characters and then eddie shows up on snl and it was like a tsunami and it was like like, he's not being denied everything. Well, the whole vibe of that show was so rugged and, uh, you know, not ready for prime time.
Starting point is 00:51:31 So when, by the time they got him, it's like, this is the, this is the black guy. He's not ready for prime time. Watch out. He's gonna,
Starting point is 00:51:37 but, but he was so ready for, but he was already ready. And he was talking about the timing, right? You were, you were so fortunate that he never got plucked by a multicam.
Starting point is 00:51:48 That would have destroyed him. That might have, or actually, he was so undeniably talented. I don't think nothing would have stopped him. I can't imagine one thing he wouldn't have.
Starting point is 00:51:56 No, yeah. Although Best Defense stopped him. That was, I guess, the only one. Best Defense, that did stop him for a little bit. He just did that for the money. I don't blame him for that.
Starting point is 00:52:03 They cut him a nice big check. Yeah, never in the same room with Dudley Moore. Oh, that's right. That's what the thing was. Never in the same room. They paid him late, right? Just he shot all these different... I never saw this one.
Starting point is 00:52:12 It's terrible. It's a bad movie. I think Eddie paid to destroy all the clips. Did he really? I think it's one of those. I believe he did. I believe any rich actor, like if there's some bad movie they made,
Starting point is 00:52:20 I think they just buy it out. They just buy it. There's no side of it. Clooney has a couple I think he just bought out. i wonder i i almost i challenge all three of us or anybody in this room we should go online and see if there's a best defense clip like did he get them all you think he just cleared one on youtube and then and that's when there's a clip from best defense he was like a tank i went i paid i was, I don't care if there's Eddie's in it. And then you just became sad. This is bad.
Starting point is 00:52:47 He came in trying to do Eddie's stuff. It's hands down the worst movie he ever made. It's terrible. Ever made. And that's saying something with that guy's career. The 90s were rough. The 90s were rough, but I think Best Defense was even worse than some of the other ones. Did he ever reach out to you guys?
Starting point is 00:53:03 No. No? I don't think so. Never met him? Never you guys? No No I don't think so Never met him Never met him No Yeah I mean that'll be That'll be a real
Starting point is 00:53:09 Humbling experience To meet that guy When did Obama reach out to you? 2012 He was here for A Clooney fundraiser And then Cause he has a good sense of humor
Starting point is 00:53:20 I imagine he watched The Luther thing And was just like I like these guys Let's bring them in Yeah Yep Oh yeah The photographer man Pete The White House photographer I imagine he watched the Luther thing and was just like, I like these guys. Let's bring them in. Yep. Oh, yeah.
Starting point is 00:53:29 The photographer, man, Pete, the White House photographer is the person who introduced the president to Obama Luther. I remember he about tripped and fell down trying to get over to us. He was like, I'm the guy. I'm the guy. I'm the guy. I showed it to him. I showed it to him.
Starting point is 00:53:40 I showed it to him. He was just losing his mind. No, apparently they would play poker games and pass around the the phone with uh you know our bits and but the yeah the fact that he responded to the show i mean to us the coolest thing was that he sort of anointed luther as saying something that rang true to him yeah which is kind of you know more than we could we could have asked for bargain for never bargained for it. We had no idea that was going to happen.
Starting point is 00:54:06 He was the first president that nobody knew had a parody for basically almost his entire first term. People were like, what do we do with this? I mean, look what we did. What we did is he just does a dead-on perfect impersonation of him, and then we had another surrogate character. We had to have an alter ego. How else were we going to do it? Yeah, yeah.
Starting point is 00:54:25 The only other one who really, Pharaoh does a good impression of him. But I thought The Rock, when The Rock did basically The Rock as Barack Obama, that kind of tapped into how Obama can sound so lyrical sometimes when he talks and almost like a preacher. And The Rock did that. And I thought that did a nice job of hitting something. The Rock also has that kind of magic that magic yeah and they have a similar voice there's yeah that's what i like about it i was like oh this is good but uh yeah i would i had uh
Starting point is 00:54:54 we were shooting test shows for the hbo show and obama's speechwriter was on john favreau yeah he's a great guy and he was talking about how Obama would, you know, he's basically in this bubble. He's got all these people around him that are just doing jobs for him. Right, right. Very deferential to him, obviously. So the way he experiences real American life is through sports, through books, through TV shows. And he ends up, you know, kind of gravitating toward, like, he plays golf with the PTI guys all the time. Wilbon and Kornheiser.
Starting point is 00:55:25 With Wilbon and Kornheiser, right. They're just buddies because he watches them on the treadmill and he feels like those are his people. I did not know that. He just reaches out to different people that resonate with him. I can pretty much hang with anybody I want. Right. That's cool. All right, I get this.
Starting point is 00:55:40 I get it. This is the president, huh? Yep. Send Key and Peele over. Let's see. Let's talk to these guys. I get it. This is the president, huh? Send Key and Peele over. Let's talk to these guys. That Hamilton show I love. Let's bring those guys in.
Starting point is 00:55:53 Can we have Hamilton do the show in the bedroom? That'd be great. I noticed he's in a commercial now with Steph Curry, which was clearly Obama just being like, I just want to just have Steph Curry. I just want to hang out with him for an hour. Right.
Starting point is 00:56:08 Right. Can we come up with a commercial? Because Curry went to the White House and went to the Rose Garden. Yeah. And they played horse. Oh, yeah. Which is crazy. I think he just wanted to extend Curry's stay as long as he could.
Starting point is 00:56:20 As long as he could. Let's do a commercial. What about LeBron? What's going on with him? LeBron. Right long as he could. Let's do a commercial. What about LeBron? What's going on with him? LeBron, right, right. Exactly, yeah. I can tell you're kind of secretly a sports fan. I love sports.
Starting point is 00:56:31 Because you were rattling off the 0-4 finals. Yeah, I mean, and also just a Detroit sports fan. But I've always loved sports because sports, I've watched as a child. You watch how the big thing is how it brings sons and fathers together. Yeah. You know what I mean?
Starting point is 00:56:47 You have this disparate relationship, especially if you're my age. It's just fathers for the most part in general. But my dad and I, it was his friends and them liking sports. Literally, it's part of why I went to Penn State. Because one of my dad's best friends loved Rosie Greer and Jack Lambert and Jack Hamm and loved all those guys because he grew up in Pittsburgh. So all of the stars were Penn State stars. And then they went to the...
Starting point is 00:57:13 Like Franco. For Franco to be at Penn State and go to the Steelers is an amazing thing. So you saw the Ed Marinaro TV movie about the Penn State running back and his brother who was... Remember that one? Which one? Ed Marinaro was there. John Penn State running back and his brother who was, remember that one? Which one? Ed Marinaro was there. John Capoletti was there.
Starting point is 00:57:28 Oh, Capoletti, who won the Heisman Trophy. Yeah, yeah, yeah. John Capoletti. And his brother was like the, it was one of the original tearjerker TV movies. Before Brian's song.
Starting point is 00:57:35 Yeah, it was kind of like the Brian's song ripoff. Around the same Brian's song. I'm ready for more of those. Watching them connect in that way, being a little boy, and watching those two men connect that way
Starting point is 00:57:45 was interesting and then and then i'd say well i'll watch the pittsburgh steelers even though you know i've been a diehard detroit lions fan most of my life but it was because these men were you were i was watching grown-ups get excited about something and that's the same thing with this my son's generation is when i was a kid i just want to hang out with my dad and my dad watched sports so i love sports because my dad because you did right now my son's generation is, when I was a kid, I just wanted to hang out with my dad, and my dad watched sports, so I loved sports because of my dad. Because you did, right. Now my son's like, I'm going to go on YouTube and watch the 25 best wrestling finish moves. I'll see you guys in an hour.
Starting point is 00:58:14 But then he can also watch whatever he wants. Yes. It doesn't even have to be wrestling. It can be anything he wants, and it's not to right and it's not with you he'll stumble on you guys eventually right now he's still in uh he's at eight and ten he's eight so he's like two years away from you guys right now he's in the hole like he's banged out every kimmel prank you know because on youtube it's just like if you watch one of your any of your sketches like the next three are on the right side you just go for three hours
Starting point is 00:58:45 so the Kimmel pranks it's just one after it goes one after another eight-year-old's just like if you guys really want to make 700 million dollars you should just study all the beats of all the Sandler movies right yeah it's like people who have to take a shit but can't find a toilet and people getting attacked by a small dog and there's 20 beats. Like, that's your... That's your thing? Yeah, that's your $700 movie. There's the science. Just hit all the beats. Did you... The 10-year-old knows about us, though.
Starting point is 00:59:10 You used to be an 8-year-old and a 10-year-old? No, the 8-year-old boy is two years away from knowing about you. But do you also have a 10-year-old? The 10-year-old girl... Oh, I wouldn't see much... Almost ready for a couple. Gotcha, gotcha. I would say.
Starting point is 00:59:24 If you were going to show her... Starting to get comedy. If she's say. If you were going to show her. Starting to get comedy. If she's getting comedy, you were going to show her a Key and Peele sketch in this time of her life. Would you show her? What would you show her? Hats. I think she'd get soul food. She'd get soul food?
Starting point is 00:59:43 Okay. I do. Interesting. Interesting. Okay. I should get the food? Okay. I do. Interesting. Interesting. Okay. She'd get the ones where people are playing off each other. I don't know if black guys she would get. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:59:51 She would get the Obama one. The ones that are easier to understand because 10-year-olds still aren't that smart yet. Well, you know, I think one of the things we love about how our show was received and how it worked is because it was a family thing. Yeah. And there's a lot of sons and daughters and fathers and mothers that watch the show together or show each other things. Now, you know, for me,
Starting point is 01:00:15 I remember watching In Living Color with my mom. And whenever something, you know, first of all, you get a good, when she would laugh at something I wouldn't get, I would get a little bit of an education as to why that was funny um and then there were you know if something sort of crossed the line or it's basically a great way to have a a family experience but also kind of educate because a lot of things will warrant a conversation afterward. And it can be with this fun, not awkward tone because we've broken the conversation open
Starting point is 01:00:51 with this silly scene. Don't you feel like every funny person had one funny family member from them when they were like eight, seven, eight, nine years old? Because for me, my dad's family would always be around, opening presents for four hours. And my dad would always be around you know opening presents for four hours and my dad would always make fun of the people like his brothers sisters i was like someday i'm gonna make those jokes you know and you try it you're sick you would say that right
Starting point is 01:01:13 it's the little boy that it's playing eddie murphy at the beginning of raw the cold open and raw and the one uncle's like and you're, and that, that, I mean, getting that kind of feedback from an adult is magical. Yeah.
Starting point is 01:01:32 It's magical. You make the adults laugh. You've made it. Yeah. Yeah. Oh yeah. You know what I won't be showing my kids? Keanu.
Starting point is 01:01:39 We'll avoid that one. We want to, you know, there might be a TNT heavily edited version that might be sustainable in like a year and a half. You know, I mean, it's to each their own. I'm okay with that because I like the idea of making a movie that is kind of like a kid's. The kid gets to go download. It's like they sneak in when the parents are asleep.
Starting point is 01:02:02 They're having a lunch. That's like Amazon Women on when it was for me, you know, where it was like you were just getting to see something you weren't supposed to see. You'll have a lot of people who shouldn't be watching this.
Starting point is 01:02:12 Oh, no. I have a feeling that Keanu is going to go the way of Deadpool. Do you know how many eight, nine, and ten-year-old kids have seen Deadpool?
Starting point is 01:02:20 Right. Because their aunts and uncles and their grandparents are just going, you know, it's the superhero movie. I saw the commercial. Did some flips and a girl punched a guy across the...
Starting point is 01:02:29 We'll take Junior to that. And I'm working with somebody right now, and she's mortified because she let her mother take her son to the movie. To Deadpool. So she doesn't want her mother... In the final analysis. She wouldn't want her mother or her son to see the movie.
Starting point is 01:02:50 And then a colleague of mine and I said to her, whatever you do, don't see it. Because if you feel bad now, you're going to feel horrible. And you're like, oh my God, my mother.
Starting point is 01:03:00 She'll be more mortified that her mother saw it than her son because her son doesn't know some of that stuff. But you don't have a sense of it. I mean, Bill, we got a kitten on the poster. There's going to be 10-year-olds seeing this movie.
Starting point is 01:03:13 And they're going to tell their friends to trick their parents into seeing the movie. Well, you're going to get some pet people. Because we have this crazy pet fanatic on the Ringer staff, Mallory. I told her I saw Keanu. She's like, how's the cat? The cat doesn't die, right? She didn't care. She just want to make sure the cat was cool yeah we didn't we didn't have the the balls to kill a kitten in our first film
Starting point is 01:03:35 not even like you know that's our only spoiler there yeah the gun to the puppy's head we just we couldn't do that well I thought it was really good I really liked it I really enjoyed it thanks a lot that means a lot reminded me of uh some of the movies I grew up with way back when like a modernized version who was by the way last question then we gotta go the girl uh Tiffany Tiffany Haddish hi hi C hi C yeah yeah so where'd she come from Tiffany Haddish she's a she's a stand-up she's on the Carmichael show um she's just she's been grinding at it at stand up and developing this really amazing act and she's uh because that was a hard part hard part oh yeah yeah she has to
Starting point is 01:04:14 be grounded but it has to be a little sexy but it has to be like totally street yeah there's a whole bunch of elements to it i don't know if the movie works as well if that actor sucks in that part it was key it was key and i mean she's of course you know she's she's sexy because she is such a badass in the movie and it's like you know it's it's it's sort of like this there's this sort of role role reversal with her and i and our romance where you know she's kind of the protector. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I'm the... You're the... I'm the damsel of some sort. The damsel, right, right. That's the word.
Starting point is 01:04:49 She's also... She's great and light and goofy in real life, but she's also legit. You feel it come through the camera. I felt like a little star-making performance in that one. Oh, no, no. If your movie hits big, I think there'll be a lot of stories in there.
Starting point is 01:05:03 She's gonna skyrocket. She'll be on something. I imagine really good things are about to happen to her. And the other big winner, I think, is George Michael. Yeah, George Michael. Without giving too much away,
Starting point is 01:05:15 I think. Yeah, no, yeah, yeah. George Michael. I mean, did you have to, you have to make sure you could clear all that stuff before you? Oh, yeah, we did.
Starting point is 01:05:22 Yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh, no, we had to. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Without giving anything away, he's featured. Yes, he is is he's an important part of the movie yes he is the spirit animal of the movie yeah that's a great way of putting it yeah jordan yeah and of an animal movie so that's that's an achievement i think it's a good move for him to have allowed you to use all those you you never lose choices that you made you cannot lose when a person has a sense of humor about themselves. This could very well
Starting point is 01:05:49 be George Michael's, this could be his Tom Cruise Tropic Thunder moment. You saw Tom Cruise and you went, what? He can do that too? And then once he did that movie, you go, and now I even like him a little bit more. Because he
Starting point is 01:06:04 un-Hollywooded himself when he played that role. And George Michael, this could be that kind of turn for him. Good luck with the movie. Thanks, Bill. I really think it's going to do well. I'm excited. Thank you. It's going to be fun to watch it go.
Starting point is 01:06:17 I'll be checking the Rotten Tomatoes scores for you. All right. And good luck with all your other stuff. Thanks for coming here. Appreciate it. Our pleasure. All right. Thanks to Key & Peele. Remember, for coming here. Appreciate it. Our pleasure. All right. Thanks to Key & Peele.
Starting point is 01:06:26 Remember, Keanu opens on April 29th. That's a Friday. It's very good. You should go see it. Thanks to Squarespace. Whether you need a landing page, a beautiful gallery, a professional blog, an online store, or whatever else you want to do online, you can do it on Squarespace. It's all included, as well as 24-7 support.
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Starting point is 01:07:12 and Any Given Wednesday my new show June 22nd Wednesday night HBO thanks to The Ringer subscribe to
Starting point is 01:07:20 The Ringer's newsletter at www.theringer.com. You can also check us out on facebook.com slash ringer for a little extra content on After the Thrones and the NBA playoffs. And then finally, our Channel 33 podcast feed has a bunch of good stuff this week, including multiple NFL draft podcasts if you want to get ready for that. Channel 33, it is kicking butt.
Starting point is 01:07:43 I think we're in the top 20 in itunes yesterday which i was psyched about because we launched that thing a couple months ago and some great content to come enjoy the week anytime y'all want to see me again rewind this track right here close your eyes and picture me rolling

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