The Bill Simmons Podcast - Here Come the 76ers, Plus Jerrod Carmichael | The Bill Simmons Podcast (Ep. 357)

Episode Date: April 25, 2018

HBO and The Ringer's Bill Simmons talks about some NBA story lines, including the 76ers undoubtedly being playoff-ready, the Pacers-Cavs series, and Russell Westbrook's impact on the Thunder (6:25), Then Bill is joined by comedian and television star Jerrod Carmichael to talk about about music, Twitter, making TV shows, streaming services, and more (30:00). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Today's episode of the Bill Simmons podcast on the ringer podcast network is brought to you by ZipRecruiter. We have been trying to get the Knicks to use ZipRecruiter to find their next coach because the list of suspects they have been bringing in are all people that should not coach the Knicks. Mike Woodson, Mark Jackson, Jeff Van Gundy. We've seen all these people. They need a new coach.

They need new blood. They should use ZipRecruiter. 80% of employers who post a job on ZipRecruiter get a quality candidate within a day. My listeners can try it for free at ZipRecruiter.com slash BS. Meanwhile, SeatGeek, the best app for buying and selling tickets to sporting events, concerts, and more for $20 off your first SeatGeek purchase on any game or sporting event, NBA, NHL, baseball, music, whatever you want. You know what to do. Use promo code BS. Special thanks to SeatGeek for hooking my daughter and her friends up to Sunday's JT

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Download the SeatGeek app or go right to SeatGeek.com. We have some Ringer news. Oh yeah. On the Ringer Podcast Network, the Dave Chang Show. You can subscribe to this right now. Our friend David Chang, the world's greatest chef. He's been on this podcast many times. He's been on Joe House's House of Carbs many times.

And now, finally, he has his own podcast. It is launching on Thursday. This week, you can hear the Dave Chang show. We're going to try to do it every week. He's a busy dude. You might have seen him on Netflix with his Ugly Delicious show. You might have heard him on our podcast. You might have gone to one of his many great restaurants,

including the one in LA, Major Domo. We've been talking about this for months and months and months. And here's how that's a fact, because as part of this show, we taped five episodes from December through April that we called the pre-opening diaries, which was basically me and Chang talking about what it's like to open a restaurant.

And it's really cool how it turned out. And it's not going to be the whole podcast. It's just going to be five of maybe the first eight or nine episodes we're going to run. The first one we taped, it was in mid-December when he was about a month away from launching Major Domo in LA. And we taped three before it launched and then two after. And in the third one, it's about a week before the restaurant's launching and he's like melting down and freaking out and has every neurosis you can possibly have. I think it's really cool how it turned out. And that's also not eventually going to be what the podcast is. Eventually he's going to have guests and chefs and celebrities and talk about dishes

that he's fascinated by and restaurants he's fascinated by. It's going to go in a whole bunch of great directions, sports. He loves everything. He was meant to have a podcast. He's one of the best guests I've had. I get hungry just talking about him. People have wondered how his House of Carbs and the Dave Chang Show are going to coexist. First of all, their bellies have coexisted for years and years. Second of all, Chang's thing isn't going to be as much about food. I mean, food's going to be a part of it,

but it's more about culture. House's thing is just like, I'm hungry. It's just overwhelming. You can feel a saliva breathing through the microphone. But we love food at The Ringer, and it's something that I think we're going to keep pushing into a little bit. We have Danny Chow on the ringer.com who has written some really great food pieces for

us. And I'm trying to convince him to write a food column. And I'm basically gonna have to beat him up to convince him to do it. I really want Danny Chow's food column. Just write 800 words about some sandwich you liked. Gotta, gotta, gotta force him to do that. We got to find a couple other writers, but we love food. We love food here at The Ringer and we're going to keep kind of dipping into it. The Dave Chang Show, subscribe now on Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. I think this podcast is going to be really, really good and it's a great addition to our network. So check that out. Check out all the great stuff on TheRinger.com. We have Danny Kelly's last mock draft for the NFL.

We have Chris Ryan writing an orgasmic piece about the Sixers. I can only describe it as orgasmic. There is a Philly-Boston where one went away from a Celtics advancing to round two, playing Philly, Eagles-Patriots, the sequel. And we have like eight Philly fans at the Ringer and not nearly enough Boston fans, which is my fault as a boss. I really did a bad job on that front.

But we barely got through the Super Bowl. Now we're going to have seven games of the process versus the president, Brad Stevens. There might be fisticuffs. I don't know how it's going to play out. Last thing before we get to today's podcast, tomorrow night is an awesome TV night. We have a couple huge playoff games. We have the NFL draft. We even have some hockey. We are going to tape a podcast late tomorrow night with a very special guest in my office. We're going to watch the games.

We're going to tape about 1030 Pacific time. It will be in your, however you get your pods. It'll be right there waiting for you. Either late night if you're a night owl or if you have a cocaine problem. Or the next morning when you wake up and you're going to the gym or you're going to your commute or you're going to your commute or you're doing more cocaine, whatever you're doing, I don't judge, that podcast will be up and it will be ready to go. So check all that out. Coming up, I'm going to talk a little bit of basketball and

then we're getting to Gerard Carmichael, who him and I have been circling each other for years to do a podcast and it finally happened. That's all coming up right after our friends from Pearl Jam. All right, I wanted to hit some basketball really quick before we get to Gerard because there's some storylines in play that I think have an expiration date before we get to tomorrow's going to be when we do the Thursday night podcast. It's going to be all basketball and NFL draft. There's some stuff in play right now that I wanted to talk about really quickly, partly because it's going to expire and partly because I just feel like these are storylines that people are going to start talking about. And I just wanted to get my two cents in before they kind of balloon.

You've heard me talk about the Sixers and how this happens maybe once a decade in the NBA, where you have this team that seems like they're too young and everybody just assumes they're not ready yet. And really the only reason people underestimate them is because of age and youth and a lack of experience. And there's no other good reason. It became clear down the stretch in April that Philly had the most talented team in the East. What we didn't know was how they were going to respond in the playoffs when the stakes were higher. And I was looking at somebody like Ben Simmons and thinking to myself, this guy didn't play in any big games in college, really has only played one NBA season. The biggest game he's played in this whole year

was a Friday night game at home against LeBron and a pretty mediocre Cavs team other than LeBron. I want to see what it's like in the playoffs. I want to see what it's like when Spolster's throwing the kitchen sink at them and Miami's got their weird teams and they're getting all chippy and they're taking cheap shots at them. I want to see what that's like. I want to see what it's like, how Embiid and Simmons coexist when Embiid comes back. I want to see how some of their young guys like Covington respond. I had some questions. By the middle of game three, I was in. And I think I even tweeted during that. I was like,

Philly's making the finals. It's going to happen. The things that impressed me about them, other than just they have more talent than everybody and they have two of the best 15 guys in the league the the confidence is really really unusual i think the toughness and the confidence specifically their inability to get rattled their kind of fu edge that they have miami took a bunch of shots at simmons during this series and he responded, I don't know how much of it was the Australian in him and how much he's just a bad MF-er, but really carried himself with a certain arrogance that as you keep going in these playoffs, especially if they end up facing somebody like LeBron, you have to have that kind of irrational confidence and that kind of swagger and just that toughness. This team definitely has it. The other thing that's

interesting about them, they added Ilya Sovin and Bellinelli at the deadline. Bellinelli would have been on my team in December if I was a contender. He was making like $6 million a year. That was outrageous. This guy's been in big games. He's a good three-point shooter and he's feisty and he's not afraid and is exactly the type of guy you should be looking for in the playoffs. Philly was able to just steal those guys. To Brian Colangelo's credit, coming off one of the dumbest trades in the last five years when he traded a really, really juicy Kings pick, which also was a Lakers pick partly at the time, and to do the false upgrade when he just could have taken Jason Tatum

and kept the pick. That's a really bad trade. He salvaged it a little bit with Bellinelli and with Iliosova. And if you watched last night, especially, I knew they were going to win last night because Dwayne Wade basically gave the exit interview after game four and talked about how great Philly was and how he was so impressed by them. Once he is not searching for an edge anymore, the series is over. But if you noticed last night in crunch time, they had Redick, Bellinelli, and Iliosova out there. His team is older and more experienced than I think people realize.

And that's why I want to talk about comparing them to, I think, four other teams that remind me of this team. And all four had the same, they're not ready yet, they're too young. We've talked about the below on the pod, but I wanted to go into them. The 77 Blazers, which if you remember when I had Mike Franceson a few weeks ago, I threw their name out and he reacted just completely disagreed. And, you know, sometimes he's right and I'm wrong. But this time he's wrong and I'm right. Congrats to Mike, by the way, getting back in the action on WFAN. But 77 Blazers, they were 49 and 33.

And they were a three seed. Now, this was a really weird NBA season. It was an unusually stacked league. I wrote about this in my book of basketball, which I hope you read, but it was the year after the ABA NBA merger, all of these great young players moved into the NBA. And at that point, I think they only had 21 teams and the league was just stacked. It was probably the weirdest, rarest year they've ever had, where it was just everybody was good. Nobody won more than 53 games that year.

So the Blazers won 49. They were three seed. Bill Walton was 24. He played 35 games as a rookie, 51 in his second year, and only 65 that year. Sounds a little familiar, right? The injury plague center. It sounds like Embiid.

Maurice Lucas, who was their all-star power forward, he was 25. Lionel Hollins, 23, who ended up having a really nice career as just in a lot of playoff games and was a really reliable guard. Johnny Davis was their fast guy. He was 21. Bobby Gross was 23. So this was the core of their team was 25 and under, and their best player was 24. They did not have home court in round two or round three, which might be how it plays out for Philly. They won't have home court in Boston if Boston makes it. And then in round three, if Toronto makes it, they won't have home court either.

Their big break that year was that the Lakers beat Golden State in seven. And that was a really good Warriors team because they had Rick Barry, who was at the tail end of his apex. And then they had this young core of Jamal Wilkes, Gus Williams, Robert Parrish, Phil Smith. It's just a team that was probably the most talented team at anyone that year. And LA took them out. Did I say Robert Parrish? Robert Parrish was on that team. The Lakers took them out and it was really a Parrish? Robert Parrish was on that team. The Lakers took him out and it was really a one-man Laker team. And when we got to the next round,

Walton had a whole Kareem thing. Walton always did great against Kareem. It was just the best break they could have gotten. So they ended up making the finals. Walton averaged an 18-15-6, three and a half blocks in the playoffs. And then in game two in the finals, I think they might've lost the finals

if not for this fight that happened at the end of game two with, with Morris Lucas and Daryl Dawkins. And Daryl Dawkins flipped out afterwards, destroyed the bathroom, was really mad. His teammates didn't defend him. And I spent a year with Doug Collins, who's my personal coach, my mentor, not my mentor, but my, my, my, my mentor, not my mentor, but my rabbi. And he said the fight

ruined that series for them, that from a chemistry standpoint, they were never the same after that, and really wonders what would have happened if that didn't happen. So anyway, they caught every break. They actually won the title. The next three teams I'm going to mention did not. The 86 Rockets, 51 and 31. So these are two teams in a row that are right in the win range of where the Sixers were this year. They were a two seed. They were basically a two man team. Samson, Ralph Samson, 25 years old, had not gotten hurt yet and was considered a franchise guy and a top 15 guy. Hakeem Olajuwon, 23 years old, also a franchise guy. And they had two of the top 15. Nobody thought they were ready yet. Their point guard was John Lucas,

who had a really up and down career because he just had drug problems for the first decade of his career, but was an amazing talent. And when they had him, they were really good. And unfortunately for them in March, he disappeared and that was it. He didn't play again because career, but was an amazing talent. And when they had him, they were really good. And unfortunately for them in March, he disappeared and that was it. He didn't play again because he had a relapse. Everybody thought they were done. They beat Denver in round two. They lucked out a little bit because the West wasn't that good. Then they played LA in round three and it was a strange LA team. They had kind of gone for speed over a mix of size and speed. And they were this kind of run and gun team. It was their way of moving away from Kareem and toward Magic, but they did it incorrectly. And they were too small. And Hakeem and Ralph just destroyed them on the boards, just destroyed them. And the Lakers won the first game, the Rockets won the next four and they clinched it in game five. And it was like a tsunami watching it. By the end of the

series, like, oh my God, the Rockets are going to win the next 10 titles. And I think that's how people felt about the 77 Blazers too. The next year, the 77 Blazers were 50 and 10 before Walton got hurt. And as I covered in my book, one of the great what ifs, one of the great what if teams ever, right up there with the 2012 Thunder and a couple others of, man, if Walton stays healthy, that Blazers team could have won five or six titles, which is why you should read Breaks of the Game by David Halberstam. This Rockets team ends up going against what I think is the best team of all time, the 86 Celtics in the finals, takes them to six,

lose. Next year, their backcourt, Lewis Lloyd and Mitchell Wiggins, both get busted for drugs. Team falls apart. Samson gets hurt. And within a year, it's over. Not saying that's going to happen in the Sixers. Just saying that's what happened. The third team, by the way, with that 86 Rockets, it was like, oh my God, where did this team come from? Which is kind of what it seems like people feel like about the Sixers team now, and they shouldn't because we could see the signs for this in early April. The 95 Magic, I think they had a little bit more pedigree than the Sixers team. They went 57 and 25.

They were the one seed. They were the one seed. They were the first in offensive rating. Like the Sixers, Shaq, 23 years old. Penny, 23 years old. They also had Dennis Scott, 25. Nick Anderson, 26. So the core of their team was young, but they also had two really good vets,

Horace Grant, Brian Shaw. And this was an excellent Magic team that we kind of thought might make it. Riley's Knicks were still involved. We had Reggie Miller's Pacers, but more importantly, Jordan came back from baseball in mid-March. And when that happened,

everybody was like, oh, Jordan's going to win the title again. But their big break was that Jordan was in baseball shape, not basketball shape. And he was just rusty. And they were able to beat the Bulls in six. And subsequently, the NBA destroyed

all of the tapes from those games. And they're never on television because God forbid we ever see Michael Jordan in a moment of weakness. But they whooped their asses. And then it goes to, they beat Indiana in an awesome series that's also never on TV

and by the time they got to the finals Shaq was one of the five best players in the league and Penny was probably somewhere between six and ten and it just seemed like they were going to be in the finals for the next 20 years and Nick Anderson misses

the four free throws famously in game one. They blow it. Everything spirals. Hakeem sweeps them. Also doubling as one of the great gambling moments of my life because I had Houston at like plus 500 or something.

And that was it. The next year, everything self-combusted. Shaq left 13 months later and they were done. And then the last one is the 2012 Thunder. They went 47 and 19. They were two seed. KD was 23. Russ was 23. Harden, 22. Ibaka, 22. KD and Russ averaged 52 a game that year. Harden off the bench was 17 a game. They were just really good. They were young and we still didn't totally feel like they were ready. The big break they got for them that year, it was a very strange season because it was a lockout. All the games were condensed. And I think having young legs really

helped them. They ended up playing San Antonio, who was the one seed. Well, first of all, the first big break they got was that Dallas didn't keep their team together and they let Tyson Chandler go. Because I actually think Dallas could have made another run that year and OKC ended up sweeping them. Then the second big break was just young legs. And they go to the San Antonio series in the Western Finals and it's 2-2 going into game five in San Antonio. And then they just basically beat them up the next two games and that was it. And all of a sudden OKC was in the finals and none of us could believe it. It just seemed early, but it made sense. KD was at that point, one of the five best guys in the league and Russ was probably in the top 12 and Harden was the best six man

and Ibaka was a great role guy and it made sense. They go to the finals. Really those first four games against Miami were way closer I I think, than people realize and easily could have been 3-1 OKC if a couple of plays had gone differently. They lose in five. You know what happens next, the hardened trade, and it's not the same after that. So I think the Sixers are in that group and I think they're going to make the finals. And Vegas finally agrees. The Sixers are plus 160 to win the East, which makes them the

favorites. We have some concerns, I guess would be, it actually made me nervous that they celebrated like they did after round one. That was the first time I was like, oh yeah, this team really is young. They're really celebrating that they beat Miami. They should already be looking ahead. Keep your eyes on the prize, fellas. But at the same time, I get it when you go through the process and being shit on and all that stuff. I think they are by far the best team in the East. I really do. I don't even think it's like, oh, they have a slight advantage. It was like, they have the most talent and they should win. And they have an incredible crowd at home. And I'd be very surprised if they were healthy for these next two rounds and did not make the finals. I think they're the best team.

Vegas agrees. Other than that, we have these game fives tonight that I just wanted to go through quickly. And unfortunately my computer, I hate when it does that. Okay, there we go. Wizards-Raps, Raptors favored by seven. I don't even know how you put lines on these games because the Wizards are so jekyll and hyde. Like they could totally win.

They could totally lose by 20. Stay away. Don't gamble on this. Pacers-C Cavs shocked me. The Cavs are favored by six and a half. Actually, the Pacers are better off playing on the road than at home. Don't ask me why. It feels like at home, they're almost too jacked.

Oladipo looked like he was too revved up. He's got to figure out a way to settle down and be a little more in control. He was out of control in those Indiana games at Indiana. I don't trust this Cavs team at all. They basically lose game four unless Kyle Korver just starts making crazy shots. They don't have a second scoring option at all.

And the stuff they're doing on defense to hide how many bad defensive players they have is really gimmicky. And there's also a history of LeBron with these game fives in Cleveland when he has a shaky team, kind of blowing the game five and then either rallying back to win the series anyway, or kind of fizzling out. It happened in 2010. It almost happened in 2012. I like the Pacers plus six and a half on that one. I think the Pacers are pretty good.

Wolves Rockets. It feels like that series is over. The Wolves had their chance in game four. Jazz Thunder, I wanted to talk about really quickly. It's shocking to me how discombobulated the Thunder were in this series. And I was expecting it. I really thought, not only did I think they were going to lose to the Jazz, I bet on the Jazz.

The Jazz were like two to one underdogs. I just thought this was the dream matchup if you're the Jazz. You have a team that has a point guard who is a little out of control and loves going to the rim and you have the best rim protector in the league and a good bench and a great home crowd and a really smart discipline, well-coached team going. It's a team that just jacks up shots and relies on somebody who's playing 200 miles an hour. Russ was out of his mind in game four in mostly a good way. The competitiveness he showed in that game, I thought was really breathtaking. It was like watching a crazed running back playing for his life and carrying

the ball like 58 times and just taking on tacklers every time. He was awesome, but he also wasn't awesome because he was out of control. He did not really know how to run the team. They kept riding Carmelo, who's just washed. It really seems like he might be done. And Paul George got his ass kicked by Joe Engels. And that team did everything you do when you know you don't have the right team. They just fell apart

and got super chippy and acted petulantly. And as somebody who loves watching good basketball, I really enjoy watching the hero ball teams go down in flames. I would much rather watch a team like Utah. And I would much rather watch the much maligned Rick Rubio, who got called out by Westbrook and then proceeded to stick it to the Thunder yet again. I could see a scenario where the league kind of does a wink wink and the Thunder shoots 58 free throws today. That worries me. I think you can referee Gobert any way you want, and you could basically call him for touch fouls on every play if you wanted to. So that part worries me. But I think that series is done. And whether it's done tonight or whether it's done in game six, they are not winning game six at Utah.

And it'll be interesting to see if the thunder just completely break tonight. One thing I wanted to mention about Russ, and you saw it in game four specifically, his career, you know, in high school, he was a late bloomer, like a really late bloomer. He was barely even on the recruiting scene and then kind of shot up at the end. He went to UCLA. He was a guy that rose up the ranks because he was such an unbelievable

athlete. I loved him in college. He was not the best player on that team. They had Kevin Love, they had Darren Collison. I think they had Darren Collison, but he was not the guy on that team. And then he went to the Thunder and he was not really the guy in the Thunder the entire time Durant was there, except for the one year Durant got hurt. And the team didn't do that well either. And you saw this happen last year against Houston in the playoffs and you're seeing it happen against Utah.

He hasn't been in a lot of, I'm the best player on the team. I have to problem solve. I have to figure out what to do situations. Whereas even you take a guy like Donovan Mitchell, that guy's probably been the best guy on the team. I have to problem solve. I have to figure out what to do situations. Whereas even you take a guy like Donovan Mitchell, that guy's probably been the best guy on his team since the sixth grade. And he's been in all kinds of situations. A guy like Durant has been the best guy on his team since basically he grew to six, seven. And for years and years has been in this situation of, okay, I know what it's like when I'm the guy. Westbrook, we've seen him in the regular season, but in the playoffs move at a different speed.

Teams are throwing crazy things at you and mixing defensive looks and trying to take you out of your game. And the pattern with him, which I think we can officially call a pattern is he's not a good problem solver as the team's best player. He's not somebody that can kind of ride with the flow and go, oh, you're doing this. I'm going to do this. I think you look at somebody like Kyrie, who was a monster in high school that lost the college year at Duke and then was in a situation where he had to carry some bad Cleveland teams for a couple of years. LeBron showed up. He had reached a point where he could take the car keys from LeBron when LeBron wanted to give them to him. Goes to Boston before he got hurt, really kind of had a feel for how to run that

team and when to step up, when not to step up. And I think if we had gotten the playoffs, that would have continued. With Westbrook, not really seeing it. I'm not seeing a guy who solves problems as the team's best player. I'm seeing a guy who is like a one man wrecking crew that can't really change his game. I don't think somebody like Carmelo who just cannot get going in this series, Russ isn't going to help him get going. He might do slash and kick open three, but it's not like he can really push Carmelo to another level. It is what it is. I just don't think the one man wrecking crew routine works in the playoffs.

I think you have to have more to your game, but that's what makes Russ such a compelling guy. There's really been nobody like him that fills up the stat sheet like he does but doesn't seem to be able to pull his teammates into it and pull the best possible performances out of them. And we've seen that last year. We saw that this year too. With all that said, this would be a

great time for him to make the leap right now, down 3-1 against a superior team, against a team that provides all these different challenges for him. And I feel like this is a little bit of a fork in the road moment for him. I really do. He's been in the league now since 2008. This is his 10th year. You kind of are where you are at some point. So I'll be very interested to see what happens with him tonight. Hey, with Google Assistant, you can complete over a million actions on your phone, in your car, around the house. It's perfect for movie night. You can get movie info and show times directly from your assistant just by saying, hey, Google, what movies are playing? Google can even flip a coin for you. Watch this. I'm going to have Google flip a coin for me. So heads, I'm going to tell you the best parlay for game five.

And tails, I'm going to tell you the best upset pick for game five. All right, Google, flip the coin for me. All right. You got tails. Ooh, tails. Okay. Best upset pick for game five. Going money line Indiana

Plus 240 In Cleveland I just think that's I think I look I always look at odds this way If they play this game Three times Does Cleveland win Or if they play

This game ten times how many does Cleveland How many does Indiana win I actually think do they play this game 10 times? How many does Cleveland, how many does Indiana win? I actually think Indiana would win this game four out of 10 times. So if I'm getting plus 240, perfect. That's it. Thank you, Google assistant. Thanks for flipping that for me. Thank God. I don't know what else I would have done, but it's pretty amazing that they can do everything for you. They can tell you the weather, they can flip a coin, whatever you want. Go get the Google Assistant right now. All right. Coming up, our interview with Gerard Carmichael. We taped it Tuesday afternoon. He's my favorite guest because he had nothing to plug. He just wanted to come and shoot the shit. Here's what happened. All right. we're taping this Tuesday afternoon.

Gerard Carmichael finally here. It's been over a two-year odyssey to get us together. We've been trying for a really long time. You're a busy dude, man. I don't know what I'm doing, man. This is fun. This is really, like, every poster in here is, like, incredible. It's really, really incredible. I can't stop looking around.

We love when people appreciate the posters. Yeah, no, it's great. Ali and Frazier and Andre the Giant. You were saying you got into fraser and andre the giant you were saying you got into nirvana never mind late yeah because you're only a year and a half ago yeah i it just certain things you just miss you just miss it yeah i remember calling my friend like a year ago like have you heard lithium oh my god what is that yeah it's. Then I just went down a hole. Where Did You Sleep Last Night on Unplugged is one of the best live vocal performances I've ever heard.

Unplugged is one of those things that went away and I'm not exactly sure why. I thought it was always a great test of a band being able to give a different look and resonate with the audience. And there were some great ones. It's difficult. Live instrumentation isn't the most popular thing right now,

just by nature of where music is. So it's like, it's only, I can think of a lot of artists that would really crush and unplug. I agree. But I can't think of a lot of, I don't even know if people use the term top 40 anymore, but like of those artists that would,

that it would make sense for, like, you know what I mean? Like it's not a lot. So it used to add a way, it had a way bigger impact. And I don't know whether it was just, we had less channels, but I remember when Mariah Carey did hers

and she had Trey Lorenz came in. Yeah. And they did the cover of I'll Be There from the Jacksons. Which is great. And he became a star overnight. It was like, who's this guy? He's a star. And I don't even think he had any hit albums.

That one was incredible. Lauryn Hill's Unplugged. Oh, my God. Top five. Yeah. It's my personal favorite one. It's so, it's incredibly soothing and thoughtful. And again, her voice, she has like kind of a raspiness to her voice.

That's like, it's just, and these are all new songs. These are all new songs and she's just like performing them and it's beautiful. And even times when she, there's a song called I Just Want You Around, where she ends it saying, I don't even know how this ends. It's one of those songs that would fade out if you were in the studio. Yeah. You know, and she just stopped it. And it's just beautiful, like natural, beautiful moments. She, I look at her from that decade.

Like if you compare the musicians to athletes, she, for me, is like the Penny Hardaway of that decade. That's interesting. Had a really nice, nice great memorable four or five year run but it should have been like 25 and then i don't know she got kind of enigmatic and she would show up super late to concerts and show up super late to gigs and everything it's crazy because i listen she has i counted as two a lot of people say one but i count the unplugged as one thing that's fair as a full album this is all new songs yeah it's it's strange to me people don't count it but it's all new songs recorded you know

there's an audience but it's incredible um and maybe that was look maybe she will again i mean she's still recording and maybe she like she will again want to release like a full body of work but like that's kind of she's more effective in those two than a lot of you know artists are like six or seven albums in like i play those consistently like if you go to like the you know 25 most played songs like songs from it's gonna be yeah it's gonna be up there so it's like it's funny like it's people with larger bodies of work that aren't as uh meaningful the first great one i remember was the eric clapton one which i think was an important but they released that as a as a cd back in the days was that what baby face changed the world on that one yeah yeah yeah he did uh he did a like a very very slow leila and all this but it was just a great album.

Yeah. And it kind of gave him, it rejuvenated him in the late 80s a little bit. What are you listening to now though? See, I listen to playlists now. Like just like friends? I don't listen to albums. Yeah, I just make different playlists of different,

you know, have them all labeled in weird ways or let's either artists or like different moods. And what's the last out like full album that you last full album I've listened to or enjoy not even just listen to the mid 2000s that you, that you enjoy, like really a complete album. It's been mid just from, no, just from listening repeatedly from a start to finish, start to finish. I've listened to them once, but like, I've never i'm gonna put this album in listen to him once and then i pick the

songs i like and put them in a playlist yeah what about you i mean there's a couple there's like uh frank oceans blonde i think is i think he did he did two endless which is like almost you know certain songs are so short to the point of almost being samplers yeah right and then he also did uh uh two days later blonde and i can listen to both of those start to finish start to finish consistently i do it like a lot i listen to both of those start to finish see my generation i'm in my late 40s now and the albums especially like you'd have to flip them over halfway through

and stuff like that but we but that kept you mindful of it right 100% like when a record was on a record was on

right and you had to physically you heard everything and it was a pain in the ass to move it ahead it was a pain in the ass you had to really want that album

yeah and you would kind of get Stockholm syndrome with some of the songs where you would, it'd be the eighth best song on the album, but after you heard the album 50 times, you'd be like, ah, that song's kind of growing on me. And they just weren't good songs, but you just heard them so many times,

you love the beats. Yeah. And that's what I wonder whether that happens with music anymore, whether people listen to the eighth best song on whatever 50 times i mean that i mean there has to be you know like there has to be that i don't know if it's as popular because nothing is um nothing things aren't as slow as they were yeah right so like you have to catch

up to it's like television uh the what's the um the docu series that came out on netflix recently wild wild country i haven't seen it yet i'm just catching up to like the jinx yeah and like everyone's like wild country and then you're like oh wait six hours that we're going to talk about for two weeks and then we're going to move on to the net so you just kind of have to choose your own pace and so listen to a song if you're keeping up on music, it's like so many new, I mean, you can go to SoundCloud and hear complete, there are artists that are huge on SoundCloud that have complete things that you can hear. It's just hard. It's hard to give things the time that they need to like discover the nuances and discover everything about it's just culture

moves really really quickly yeah albums 25 years ago i mean i remember when all the albums came out and you always listen to them and they all kind of captured some sort of vibe that i think seems to be happening still in hip-hop to some degree yeah but in general like taylor swift definitely tries to do it but i always feel like with her it's this calculated choice like she meets with a bunch of people and she's yeah well i'm coming out what should i what should my theme be and then she tries to tie the songs to that theme but it's not everything's calculated when you add money to it oh my god because you got now you have 10 new job positions open and 10 people that try and justify the six figure salary. And they are going to tell you, give you a sheet of things and numbers and very smart people.

Right. You know what I mean? Like really smart people. But it by nature of money, it brings more calculation because now it's a you know, how do we get more? How do we capitalize on this and how do we, you know, maintain it? How do we grow? You know, it becomes a corporation in a sense. Yeah, I don't, I like the old way, but that's where I become an old guy. Like Springsteen would just put out an album

because he was getting too popular. So he was like, I'm putting on Nebraska. Really? I'm driving off half of my fan base with this. Here's some songs about serial killers. Kanye still does these shifts. I was thinking about Yeezus a lot today. Yeah.

And just the fact, just the true feat is to be in that space, whatever that space is. Yeah. Create in that space, feel confident enough to release in that space, have people have such a crazy reaction to it, and then release another album without... It doesn't... We applaud just like every swing that he makes. That's such an amazing place to be in.

Like every swing that he makes, because you know it's thoughtful. You know he really lived in this space. Yeah. You know, and then he just released from whatever that was. There's some tiger woods like how when tiger woods when people think he has a chance to come back and be good in the masters

and people are just so happy he's back yeah they really want it there was a moment i do feel like yeah it was and i do feel like a little bit that way with this kind of announcing who's gonna do more music i think some people were really worried this wasn't happening i had scooter brown on a couple months ago i was like is he gonna make another album yeah and he's like oh yeah yeah he's gonna make it and i didn't totally believe it because you you could have told me he was just gonna do like design stuff and make shoes and then he would have been happy for 10 years i i i don't think he can i don't think he can stop making music i i really don't i i don't know him that well i don't think he would stop making it

i'm saying releasing it oh really you think you would just sit on it i can just see him like sitting on music for six years i'm so glad to hear he's like actually putting stuff out maybe i mean but but maybe like you know i'm sure there's a vault you know like with just like a lot of unreleased things you know but like i i think i i think kanye releases this is me i mean we've talked a few times about creative stuff but not you and me to speak for yeah yeah i can't like i can't speak for what his strategy is but i would say just as a an observer he releases with everything in mind right the the album the visuals for the album are as important as the album and what the concert's gonna look like what the concert looks like is as important as everything

is it's so thoughtful and again it all comes from that space that like you know you have to release that you can't hold because even if you sit on music like with this idea for like the rollout or this idea for like the live production of it is you have to do that. Yeah. You know what I mean? I think just as an artist, you have to do it. I thought what he did with the last album, I was so fascinated by. Yeah. He just put it out and kept messing with it and changing it and tweaking it.

And it was just like he completely flipped the art form on it on its head yeah no it was i like this song oh now it's a week later it's different that made me that did make me want uh records again yeah cds or some physical copy because you know there was there was a couple changes that i. Like, the original ultralight beam, I love a little bit more than what you can currently immediately get. I'm sure I can get on YouTube. But I think that's the reaction that he wanted, though. He wanted you to be wistful for this version from a week ago. Yeah, I was like, what happened to the week ago version was perfect.

It gives him this weird power over people, even his consumers. Like, I'm going to change that again. He changes his catalog just remotely, like the whiz, just changes the colors we're dancing to. And now he's tweeting again. I'm so fascinated by him. He is our most fascinating celebrity. He's probably the most fascinating individual, yeah. He's very fascinating.

He's very honest. All of a sudden, he's tweeting like a maniac. And he's tweeting all these fortune cookie sentences. You're like, what's he trying to say? Did he have these for two years? He's just going into a document and putting them on Twitter? He probably has a draft. I think he has a document. Or not even that, but just in notes.

Yeah. Do you do that? Do you tweet a lot? I tweet probably like, I don't know, seven, eight, nine times a day i tweet probably like i don't know seven eight nine times a day but probably half promotional and then if i'm watching basketball i've learned how to yeah how about you i'm not on i'm not on any you're not on at all no no no so you're not on twitter and you don't have a podcast yeah i don't you're basically different than any uh comic based dude out there i I think. I mean, God bless the podcast. It seems like it would conflict with the art itself, the thoughts,

because if you just constantly put it out, then they can't incubate and grow and change. You're putting out a rough draft of your thoughts. Kind of. I mean, even Twitter, even any post of just like that's how i that's how i feel about it there are people i'm sure that can just go and go and go but i don't know it just seems like a lot of output i use it for like in the moment reactions that are going to die quickly and promotional stuff yeah but there was a time when i probably used it for more than that.

I was like, I can't wait to make this joke. Now it's like, I'll save that for something else. Do you think we contribute to the death of moments like kind of lingering and lasting because we kind of jump on it?

Because it's too fast? Well, it's so fast, but we all want to kind of throw out, it's kind of like a, just kind of like a circle of just like people jonesing or riffing or whatever. It's everyone throws their joke in, and then we just go circle around something else.

I think what it's shown story before in the podcast, but when I was in college, we used to love the killer from Silence of the Lambs, James Gumm, the guy, did you ever see Silence of the Lambs? The guy who keeps the girl in the dungeon, but he was like, he had the deep voice.

And we used to think he was the funniest person ever. And we were the only ones who thought, we thought this was funny. We were like, this is it. This is our little group of people who enjoy the hell of this guy and then when the internet comes around i'm like oh everybody thinks he's oh well and it and it felt totally not special at all yeah but i mean i guess the silver lining is you know we all have the same experiences yeah it was kind of humbling but at the same time oh we weren't weren't weird. Yeah. You thought you were weird? I mean, he's really interesting.

I can see being really fascinated with. I laughed in the theater when I saw it and I was on a date and like a couple of people turned around and stink eyed me. Because I was like, this guy's the greatest. Get this guy hit more. It was like this very tense. Yeah, just breaking. Yeah.

Yeah, but Twitter though, I think I have noticed the whirlpool gets faster. Like last week, Allie LaForse, the Sideline reporter, asked LeBron James about Greg Popovich, his wife, who just died. And the game ended and then LeBron came over and instead of like, what was it like out there today?

She's like, hey, you know. But she had actually given him a heads up that she was going to ask him. In the interview, it seemed like she blindsided him with it and people on twitter reacted like she set off a bomb oh really arena and they were so upset with her and it was just rushed to judgment let's murder this person really and then it came and then lebron was like yeah she asked me beforehand for you know she gave me a heads up that it happened and then it then the moment just dies and it's like what about this whole 75 minutes when everybody was just crushing this person

and we didn't even have the facts yet. You mean I'm missing fun stuff like that? Oh yeah, that's what you're missing. Oh my God, I missed that. Oh, you're missing the outrage. Outrage culture is the best. People just getting bent out of shape. Oh, I mean.

It's people very protective of other people's feelings by then attacking the person who hurt the feelings we're getting weird we're getting weird we're super weird we're getting weird it's it's fun to watch it but it's we're getting weird it's uh um because a lot of news is becoming reporting on things that we saw on social media. Yeah. You know, it's just like, and guess what's on Twitter today? Right. That's what, like, everybody's becoming. Sports TV shows like that, too.

They just throw up tweets. You just throw up tweets and Instagram posts and everything. And now they're like articles and op-eds being written about a thing and a tweet. And there was this guy who was a writer who was mad at a joke on Roseanne, you know, and it's just, then he's like writing an article in the Times about his tweets about his anger at a joke. Right.

You know, he was wrong about, but he had an outlet and that's good, I guess. You're not missing out on much. He's very silly. I get a lot of info from it. I found out about it. Like, I just looked on Twitter just now and I found out that Meek Mill got out of jail and he's going to be at the Sixers game tonight.

Oh, that's great news. So that's Twitter. I found that out on Twitter. Oh, that's great news. One of the Philly owners got him out. Really? Yeah. So I think he's going to be, we're taping this

Tuesday, I think he's going to be at Game 5 tonight. And he'll probably get a bigger ovation than Embiid and Simmons. It's going to be insane. It's going to be amazing. That's amazing. I didn't know that. Yeah. You might have to get on. I got to get on Twitter. What you could do is you could, there's this app called Nuzzle. So you can follow

these accounts and then just go on the Nuzzle app and you just get all the news from the people you follow without their thoughts and tweets. So you can follow these accounts and then just go on the Nuzzle app and you just get all the news from the people you follow without their thoughts and tweets. Wait. And you can find out news though.

I'll show it to you after we're done. Okay, wait. What are you filtering out? You're basically filtering if I'm tweeting a story, like I'm tweeting the Meek Mill story,

that would show up on your Nuzzle feed. Yeah. But you wouldn't get my three accompanying tweets about here are my thoughts on Meek Mill coming back. Oh, okay. okay you just get the story itself is there reading out of humanity other than the information um is there an app where i can weed out uh sass about

donald trump yeah it's called the mute button just like just trump sass? Yeah. People love it, man. Do people know it's white noise? I think they know now. Does white noise know it's white noise? Does the tree falling in the forest know that it fell? At this point, I think people know. Do they know and they just contribute to it? I don't want to sound like a 93-year-old bitter whatever because I'm not. And I do think it's great that people have voices

and the writer who was wrong about the roseanne joke should have an outlet to criticize right but like but then everything becomes this should not happen and everyone pretends to be a uh civil rights leader from the comfort of their own couch yeah you know what i mean like it's like like very easy civil rights like the laziest martin luther's i've ever seen before in my life you know what i mean like just like it like can you imagine if anyway martin luther king in the 60s yeah we don't even have to go into the bit of we know the absurdity of it just like the but you know but you should have an outlet you should have a uh you know a place to voice yourself you should, but you should have an outlet. You should have a, you know, a place to voice yourself. You should be heard.

You should just also think about things for a second and maybe give it a week. But I don't think people know how to mobilize anymore. I think that's part of the problem. Well, because we have the illusion of being mobilized. All the time. While still. Yeah. You know what I mean?

Like we have the illusion of we are all united against this thing. Now, in reality, now potentially it does have our attention for the moment or and hopefully for real issues. You know what I mean? Like for very real things that are happening where people are dying and, you know, and whatnot. Then it is actual mobilization. But like, you know, a lot of it is, I mean, it's too easy. Well, like the marches, which I really respect and kudos to everybody who went out for those. That's people's way of mobilizing. It says some sort of statement,

but then the moment ends and it's just kind of over. Yeah. And then we're back to where we were the day before. You know, the only thing I will say, the only thing i don't understand about uh marches is i think uh you know it's almost too civilized well that's it's almost too but it's almost too and i know it's civilians doing the thing but it's i i i wish that they were more disruptive. Like it should be happening. You know, it should be, you know, let's stand on the streets and just block traffic for days. Right. You know what I mean?

Like, let's just like, you know, you think about, you know, you know, the marches on Selma and it being representative. And that's, you know, beautiful. And we try and echo that and we try and capture those things. But a lot of times we can let even even our attention to being in a good place, we can let how it's broadcast, turn it and minimalize it. You know what I mean? Like, make it a concert and make it a fun event as opposed to what it really should be and represent. As opposed to like if 25,000 people drove their cars to where the airport entrance is and just line them up so it would be impossible to tow.

And then nobody could get in and out of the airport. Now they're affecting people's lives. A sit-in at a Woolworths counter in Greensboro is breaking the law actively. Actively breaking the law. They were not allowed to sit there. We're going to go in and we're going to sit there. Yeah.

You know what I mean? Like, and it broke the law. It was peaceful, you know, and it was civilized in that sense, but it was disruptive, you know, like just thinking about it from, you know, I think we have to apply, you know, that sense of, you know, a hint of anarchy, if you will, to like, is that great? That's not like a crazy thing to say into a microphone. No, I think you're right. And the danger is talk about this stuff now in 2018 is somebody takes the headline and says, comic Gerard Carmichael advocates for complete anarchy.

And then they turn their headline and they don't listen to the context of what you said. Yeah, and that headline will be 30% false. Yeah. Which is kind of where we are now. 30% false. I am 70% of me is advocating anarchy. Complete destruction in the streets.

Fires. 70% of me is advocating anarchy. Complete destruction in the streets. Fires. And then 30% of me realizes that- We can't do that. That costs a lot in insurance. I don't know. Why am I against that? I mean, it's a good point though. Disrupting something can take a lot of different forms.

Yeah. If you're marching for one day, you're basically announcing we don't like this we want this to change which is admirable but you're doing this for somebody who right now does not care what those people think and it's just bouncing off them and if anything it's he probably thinks this is great look at all the attention i'm getting today yeah so i don't know what that solves i just don't want us to substitute you know abby hoffman speeches on a campus for gratitude that twitter extended your character count you know to be like a tray trading those

things it just it feels false it feels like know, you're kind of being controlled more than you realize. Where'd you grow up? North Carolina. So North Carolina, where do things stand right now in general with everything? In North Carolina? Yeah. You know, I'm not really. Like when you go back there, do you go back there often?

I go, yeah, I go back. I have my family's there. And so like. So when people in like north carolina think about what's happening right now i mean listen i'm from a place where and it's part of reason you know me sounding critical over white noise and stuff like that is that i'm from a place where people have really focused attention and energy on a lot of like needs and necessities and a lot of the things that we and our bubbles of New York

and LA and it seems loud because we have the biggest microphones or microphones at all. Like they focus in North Carolina on, you know, real stuff, income, you know, like raising your kids, really specific things. And it's, it's, it feels good to be around that as like a reminder because focus is what calms outrage yeah you know to be like because then you know like i wouldn't describe you know malcolm x even as outrage it was focused on a specific thing focus on basic needs and focus on like you know uh like true things and like in North Carolina, it really is a sense of that. It is a sense of like, you know, it's, I mean the term regular people in a positive sense of just like, you know,

very honest, regular people. Quick break to talk about SimpliSafe home security. My old friends. I'm a big fan of SimpliSafe. They're ready for anything that gets thrown at it. If a storm takes out your power, Simply Safe is ready. If an intruder cuts your phone line, Simply Safe is ready. Say someone destroys your keypad or siren, Simply Safe will still get you the help you need. Maybe it's overkill. Maybe you don't need to be ready for

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I recommend SimpliSafe to everyone. I know you have to check it out. Go today to simplisafe.com slash BS. That is simplysafewith2is.com slash BS. Back to me and Gerard. I intentionally did not research this because I just wanted to shoot the shit with you. But the one thing I remember about you

is you just moved here to do standup and you hadn't even really done standup. Yeah. Yeah, I hadn't done it before at all. I just turned 20. You just hopped in a car and you were like, I think I can be a comedian. My sister bought me a plane ticket on cheapo air. Cheapo air?

I remember it was on the ticket, cheapo air. It was the sweetest thing ever. She bought me my flight out no return so this is 2008 so who were your big influences at that point who you're like i want to be this person uh that's a good question um i don't know my my influence is like when you think about like hollywood in general have always been kind of this mix of like artists and producers and you know like my infatuation probably i remember seeing like a documentary on sumner redstone yeah but you know and and being like oh i want to do that you know what i mean like i remember seeing uh uh that and uh puff

daddy's behind the Music. Wow. I remember those two things. It was a Dateline. I'm saying documentary. It was like a Dateline piece on something, the rest on Puff Daddy Behind the Music. And I was like, that was my,

the entertainment industry was like kind of through that kind of lens. And so I moved out. My heroes have always been, you know, those guys. And then, and comedy, you know, is just a, it was a fun art to try and figure out. It was like a real fun thing to just go to Mike's and. So what was your first move? You show up. You show up, you go to, I.

You get a, like, did you get. Went to the comedy store. Like a 30 day apartment. What'd you do? I, I, you know, it's funny. My first apartment is right around the corner. Really? From here on Gower.

And I remember this neighborhood's changed a little bit. It's nice. It's getting there. It's nicer. Yeah, nicer. It's definitely nicer. Yeah. Ten years ago, it was not as nice.

Yeah, my first apartment here, it was like a one bedroom with three people already in it and then you're just three people and then i moved to a studio on bronson yeah which was a studio with four people in it oh my god so it was like you know i upgraded and downgraded at the same time and you're just going to comedy clubs trying to work on your stuff yeah you just go to you hit open mics you go uh you to, I went to the comedy store first, so I shot my first special there. It was, you just kind of do it

until you figure it out. You figure out audiences. It's a fun thing. You gotta really do it if you're gonna do it. You know what I mean? Like, you can't kind of do it. So, like, it was fun dedicating all of my time to stand up. How'd you figure out your rhythm for how you deliver stuff because i think your rhythm is really distinct uh it's definitely like it feels

like the joke's over but you're waiting you're waiting and then you go in like a one more time and you just yeah you kind of move the audience it's just a little different than what people are used to and i think it's really effective oh well thank you well you want to keep it honest you know uh to like your natural way like you like silence you'll use silence as a friend yeah you'll kind of just wait out the crowd for four or five seconds and they will be like is he gonna keep going and then you'll go you keep going with it yeah i'm like i'm thinking sometimes it's like a thing will come to you in the moment you know sometimes you give the audience a second you know i say a couple things where you got to give the audience a second yeah you know like is that even uh uh laughter is just like wait okay

wait what right you know and so uh i the pauses are just a lot of times i'm thinking i'm like all right where are we going to go next? What do we want to talk about? Well, when you do like an HBO special, which you've done too, right? Mm-hmm. Is that all planned out or do you leave a little room in the act to maybe veer off? Or is everything just like orchestrating? A lot of it is planned out.

A lot of it is, you know, thoughts I've had before and done a bunch. You know, it's not quite, you know, Beyonce at Coachella, you know, nailing it on marks type of thing. It's just kind of like, you spend more time, I spend more time thinking about the thought itself than like the act does it make sense like do you still feel this way what does this mean what are you saying that type of stuff over then like alright this joke works and this tag and the thing it just

it ends where I think the thought ends what do you think like five years ago what were people expecting from you when they went to go see you if they had to describe you in a sentence in 2013 what were people expecting from you when they went to go see you if they had to describe you in a sentence in 2013 what were they thinking in 2013 i don't know just like that guy is a kind of young comic well when people hear um comic the the thought is this like court jester you know people have you know they all don't make a joke about me if you

go you talk to like non-comedians and they're just like are you gonna put this in your act and you're just like you you think you think this is what i'm that's what my life's like yeah but but like you know i think silly guy which it can be sometimes it could be the silliest thing in the world sure and that. And that's great. And there are people who've mastered physical, you know, like things that are like a bit big. And that's their taste and their point of view. And they're right. And that's great. But like, that's kind of the first thought that people think.

Yeah. You know, and so, you know, seeing me or anyone, especially if they don't know you and they're going to a comedy club or they're going to a place and it's like comedians. Prove it to me. Yeah. Part of my rhythm is so I have to adjust the audience perception a little bit of what this is. Yeah. You know what I mean? Like exactly whatever this is, you know, I, you know, a lot of comedy isn't. i don't know i i prefer to have a conversation with you but now in 2018 people know what they're getting i haven't really done it a lot so i have no idea what the expectation is like i i don't i haven't i haven't really done stand up in

a you're out of the loop completely i mean i i i hear about people that are really funny and like i hear about it from like friends and stuff like that but i you know and i every now and then i'll be like on a walk or something i'll like just go by the club every now and then but for the most part i i don't um interesting because most people that get into it it seems like um it's just part of their they they can't shake it yeah i gotta go do 10 minutes at the comedy store yeah no 10 30 at night it's just not where my focus is yeah no i i i love it and i think it's a great art form at its best yeah you know um but it's just not where my head is right now like it's because you just signed a new deal right do a whole bunch of stuff that's not even that's not But it's just not where my head is right now. Like it's. Because you just signed a new deal, right?

Yeah. Do a whole bunch of stuff. That's not even. Well, I've been working on television a lot, I guess. So that's part of it. But it's been fun. It's been fun, like kind of just producing, writing. Solving creative dilemmas. Yeah.

The show you did for NBC was like the kind of show that I grew up with in the 70s was the old school that's a very nice thank you was the old school network sitcom with a little heart well you want to you know Norman Lear did it great excellent he was the best you know and like uh and I know what that meant and what it felt like hearing some of those things said on television. And I just I just wanted to do that. You know, it seemed it seemed fun and more interesting. I'd rather just stay, you know, ground. The best thing you learned from that show?

It's a lot of things. I mean, a lot of things in production. You know, you know, it's funny. I've probably been in production in some capacity as long as i've been doing stand-up yeah you know so like you learn a lot about production and producing and uh balancing things and who you know so you can direct that You're ready to be a director? A little. You could do it. A little. Yeah, I have a thing that I'm going to do soon-ish that I'll direct. It is fun. If you can see it as a complete thing, you should do it.

You know what I mean? Like, you know, take as much control as you think you're worthy of. Yeah. If that makes sense. You know, it's like, well, I see this complete thing, thing so what was the biggest thing you would do over with the show i mean there are a couple episodes that fell through the cracks um that that just by nature of time you just didn't like too ambitious not even too ambitious but just i mean it's just time especially in production you know it moves you know very fast and every week you're shooting a new thing.

And the script took a lot of time. It was just me and Ari in a room trying to really make sure the perspective makes sense and that it has enough of a clash. And certain episodes, just by nature of time, like it just kind of fell through. And, you know, it doesn't feel great to have anything out there that you don't, that you wouldn't fall on your sword for, you know. And so there are a few episodes that I, that I wish, you know, we could have, but for the most part, it was a great experience. It was really, really great. Were you influenced by the what decades 70s 80s 90s all of them uh yeah kind of all of them a little bit of all of them um

i was influenced i'm influenced by it's not even a i can't have nostalgia for it i wasn't alive during it but uh but like the it kind of the 70s a lot of content cut through yeah and especially in this landscape it just seemed like the thing that filled the void you know like that made the most sense we only had three channels back then yeah yeah i watched all those shows i was i was like seven in 1976 so like everything everything you would have thought i would watch i watched every episode of that and that and the shows were like you know you really felt like you were part of these people's lives. It wasn't like we had a lot of options back then.

I really felt like when J.J. Evans' dad died, I felt like a family member died. It was devastating. He's dead? Now, you would have read about the contract dispute. I would have known the whole thing. Over the summer. And then like you. John Amos is mad at Jimmy Walker.

It took a little sadness off of, yeah. Yeah. Well, I remember when Farrah Fawcett left, Charlie's Angels not understanding it. She's going to leave. She's going to go make movies. Like what? Yeah.

She's not coming back? Why is Suzanne Somers not on this season of Three's Company? Oh, my God. Patrick Duffy, why did he die and then reappear in the shower? It's great. We love sometimes- It's contract disputes. I follow this Twitter account.

Twitter, back to Twitter, this account called Retro News. And they'll pop some TV guide covers every once in a while. Oh, really? Or People Magazine or something. And that Three's Company dispute, the contract thing, that was covered the same way like Aniston, Brad Pitt, and Angelina. Oh, my God. It was like the, because like 30 million people watched that show.

Yeah. Think about that. It meant a lot to a lot of people. It was like the Super Bowl. Now you have these shows. I don't know what the peak audience is i guess game of thrones is probably the outlier other than that everything like you mentioned wild wild country earlier it's like i don't know how many people actually watch that show yeah i

and i i've been in new york and la around so i don't even know because sometimes things can seem really loud and then you legitimately leave new York, LA, a couple other pockets. And you're like, oh. Yeah, nobody knows. Wait, is anybody watching this? Yeah. Nobody. Nobody?

Killing Eve? Anybody? Yeah, yeah. Us and our shows. Yeah, killing Eve. Yeah, no. People can't sit here like, what? Killing who?

Nobody. Who's Eve? Nobody. You hit a little TV. Just just go by TV by the numbers, you know? So do you have an office? You have a company? What's going on? I mean, yeah, I have a company.

I mean, I'm kind of. You go in there? You have people working for you? Yeah. Get you coffee? I never use my offices. I, every, in, when you're like there till four in the morning. Yeah.

I don't use it, but like, you know, I work from home a lot and i work from uh from the studio on bronson or just hotels or like yeah i do a lot of hotels and stuff so what's that what's next for you what's coming are you being are you mysterious about all this shit i'm not even being mysterious it just seems uh that seems like the weirdest thing to talk about right but i don't know if you announced anything. No, I don't. Don't you hate announcements? I don't know. I intentionally didn't do research.

It's like, bro, let me just do the thing. And then the thing will be on. Okay. And then if you like the thing, then you'll announce it. There'll be more of the thing. Yeah, yeah. There'll be more of the thing. Are you based here or New York?

Or both? I'm mostly here. I just go to New York randomly for no reason. And I look for reasons. I'm very down on New York these days. Why? Well, one thing, I'm from Boston, so I'm naturally down on New York. But we had Desus and Mero were here a couple days ago.

We were talking about how New York is basically going to turn into escape from New York when the subway system goes down. Oh, that's going to be- And it's just going to be like, everybody's just stuck there. It's the L. What else is going down? The L is going down. Everyone in Brooklyn is just stuck in Brooklyn for 18 months. Lift, lift. You better get the fleet ready.

Better get about a million more lift cars. Yeah, yeah, yeah. How many accords can we get by the time the L- Well, a million more lift cars yeah yeah how many of course can we get by the time well it needs more it needs more like the high-speed ferries that's what they really need oh wait so it's ferries you go from like brookland across the water but how long is that i don't know i can't think of anything worse it really sounds like it sounds like a sylvester stallone movie yeah it sounds when i think ferry it just start images of ellis island started popping in my head.

It was just like, it's dark, man. It was dark. I don't want to get on a ferry to go, to go get brunch. Get on a ferry. Yeah.

For 40 minutes. And get on a boat for, that seems insane. During like 22 degree weather. It was like, I got on a boat, like,

it's like I came by, I came by boat. That's why it's nice out here. To prune. Everything's nice and's nice out here. To prune. Everything's nice and spread out out here. I feel like LA has the upper hand right now. LA's nice. I mean, New York is fun.

New York is, you can, I can squeeze a lot into one day in New York and I enjoy that. You know, I can see, I just saw like a four hour matinee, like Iceman coming. Then I still got some work done somehow. That would have been the day in LA. Yeah. Like four hour matinee. Like if I would have probably gone to a theater downtown, that would have taken like an hour.

Are you a sports fan or no? No, I'm like a real, when the playoffs hit, turns, the volume turns up. I like the, the theater. So you know what's going on now. What's that? You know what's going on now yeah what's that you

know what's going on i'm starting to i start to hear about then i'll then i'll be watching games you know basketball everything everything whatever it's like mostly football basketball this is like just a place to give your nba thoughts right now you probably don't get astro i have a lot of thoughts on nba lebr LeBron James? I mean, LeBron's incredible. That's a thought. Have you met these people? He's incredible and I've read about his investments and they're really smart. The investments are smart. Very good investments. He's done a pretty good job.

What happens when you meet these people? Is it just random? Some people go nuts. Other people are like, hey man, what's happening? Yeah, I mean, people are nice. Everybody's nice nice everybody's rich nice you got on soft sweaters soft sweaters yeah just like yeah soft sweat like you haven't felt discomfort in a while

you're nice everyone's felt discomfort yeah i mean sure there's emotional pain there's tons of emotional pain but enough stuff to numb it yeah well it's a good time to be a content provider i think you're in a good spot right now there's a thirst there's a a lot of people you probably have a lot of people asking for meetings hey come on in there's always meetings come on in can you come in it is kind of that scene from uh from annie hall yeah of him coming out it is kind of that especially now it's all these suitors tons of suitors supposedly there's 500 and something tv shows in production right now that's like 508 too much seems like a lot that is just too much people in kansas city i can't catch up to it i can't catch up to everybody's got an app i sound like an elderly man but you're like the

oldest 30 year old ever but it's just like i like here's the thing i think people actually feel this way they just don't say it in a you know gruff mildly jewish inflection uh i it's uh uh but you know everybody's got an app it's crazy I don't even know where stars is much less back stars I don't know how to find stars I'll get to you later crackle

where the fuck am I supposed to find these things dear god I bought an MTV for my dad my dad's never had a smart tv my dad's never had a smart TV. YouTube, Netflix. Okay. My dad's never had a smart TV, and I was explaining to him what Hulu was, and it was like I was explaining a UFO landing to him. He was so confused by it.

He's like, all the shows are on it? I'm like, yeah, all the shows. CSI? All the CSIs? I'm like, yeah. Hulu's gaining on them. Hulu's gaining. I also just recently sold a show to Hulu, so of course I would say that in this moment,

but they're gaining on them. They are. They are. They got to get, they got to get. Well, they, they have the TV library.

They're like, oh, I missed Survivor. I'm going to go. Like they just have a million. Yeah. And then Netflix makes all their own stuff. And then Amazon basically has everything else.

Let me ask you a question. How big are you guys on pauses? Cause I drank a lot of water before coming here and I got to. Want to take a break? Can we do that and come right back after these messages? All you have to do is press pause. Oh, that's perfect. Yeah, we'll do an ad right now. Yeah, I'll do an ad.

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unlike other loyalty programs where you're trapped in this thing at boring chain hotels. It's not like that here. Start scoring amazing deals at incredible hotels. Download the Hotel Tonight app right now. Back to Gerard. Well, let's talk about the NBC show, because you had people on that show that then their careers have taken off the last couple of years. I think that show is going to be looked back at 10 years from now, like, whoa, all those people were on that show. Holy shit.

Yeah, no. How did that only last two years? No, it's a show i uh ro was joking with me it was like um if we pitched that show and cast now we would get like a you get netflix and be like yeah yeah we would get an insane yeah no it's a lot's changed it i just you know it's people that i knew were great that i just wanted to be surrounded by. I know that's like the easy, but that really was all it was. Like, you know, wrote the part for Ro. You know, Amber, I wanted for a pilot presentation.

She couldn't do it. She came back around for the pilot, so I wrote it with her, for her. Haddish, who I've known for a very long time and you know has always been one of the most dynamic personalities i've ever met one of the most uh fearless people i've ever met like and and someone who's gone through a lot and has allowed that to turn into like a positive attitude somehow right and told me uh years ago she was like uh in the lobby of the laugh factor is like i'm gonna work for you you're gonna write a part for me and i'm gonna work for you like you know and now that the world knows her they know it that doesn't sound that

sounds like her yeah you know what i mean it sounds like her so um uh she's been described i know a few people who have either worked with her, interacted with her, whatever. Like I say, force of nature at all times. No, she's great. She's great. I mean, now, I mean, she just has the burden of opportunity. Yeah. You know what I mean?

And she's fantastic and honest. That's what it is. She's honest. You know when you're getting a real person or not it was weird that it took girl's trip for her to break through because she had a couple other at-bats where she was great well the thing is you one girl's trip well i guess it was a it did a monster did numbers right and so that you know that's that's really important it was a movie that essentially just showcased her with all due respect to everybody involved on it it may as well have been her real yeah you know to be like it was like tiffany haddish is real uh you know and and and someone like tiffany is someone that um it is gonna it is a little bit

difficult to get authentic authenticity through and she's a a really big example of that because she's someone that, I mean, I've had the battles with casting, you know, and, you know, people pushing back against her. What was the case against her? Just out of curiosity. You just haven't really seen her. You haven't seen her. She doesn't really, she doesn't fit a type because everything is so natural to her. We've seen the black friend that does a very surfaced version of Tiffany. Tiffany is just so honest and it's from a natural place and she knows how to maintain that while on camera.

And it's a lot. You look and you're like, oh, that's a lot. She's someone that people would have said and have said to me uh she's a little too this she's too whatever she's just very honest you know and you can see that i mean i know her you know what i mean like i'm not only a bonona for what but i i know her that that that woman yeah i know is my cousin you know what i mean like she's like i i grew up with her yeah you know and so it's like i saw you see her and you're like oh yeah we need her you know she you know without respect replaced an actress on my show because you you see it and you're like yeah

of course you know i had i had to you know she's great. But that, Rel, the same thing. Rel is one of the most honest performers I've ever seen. You know, just a very honest, natural ability to him. And just authentic. He's just an authentic person. You know, what, you know, what you see is him. So when you saw Get Out, were you like, yes? Yeah, I thought that were you like yes yeah i thought that was great yes i thought it was great i mean that was a a big yes for a lot of things yeah but but it was uh

yeah you're like of course i mean features, features are always the, just by nature, not even just the numbers of it, but by nature of marketing, always going to be the thing that kind of pushes you. You know, the difference between movie star and television star are marketing dollars and push. You're more likely to hear a name 15 times in a week because of a movie than you are for anything else right so having rel and tiffany like in in features is a really important thing you're just out by nature of promotion by nature of all going up to bat for one weekend the cool thing about those two was i thought get out was the best movie last year it's a good movie like i think it's a movie that's gonna stand the test of time 10 years from now i think people will look back and be like why didn't that win the oscar what happened

you know yeah yeah no i think it was you know what i liked about it was like it was interesting it was dark but it was fun i i describe it as uh the movie michael jackson was watching in thriller you know what i mean like that's kind of when it was like that vibe everybody's just in there you're eating popcorn yeah you know like just like it you take a date it's a full experience we did a re we do have this podcast called the rewatchables where we just break down movies that we like yeah and we talked about this one two months ago and I was saying, it's so rare to have the awesome in theater experience anymore. Yeah.

Reading a movie and just everybody's locked in and kind of moving with the movie. And then, you know, when he shows up at the end, my theater went nuts. Yeah. It was just cool.

It doesn't really happen anymore. It's hard to share that with 500 people. Horror gives you, you gives you more of that. It's not a lot of directors that take ownership over the material. And that really, a lot of times throughout the creative process, what I'm learning and seeing the pattern of is everyone trying to bend the thing to fit the form you know and mold it to fit it and just like you know the the every act is kind of structured based off of other things and horror gives you the ability to craft a bit more of a unique experience by uh by nature of setting a set of rules for the content itself. Like horror has a set of rules because every,

the villain or the monster or what you're up against, you know, has a way it moves. And so you have to set up rules around that and it gives it its own unique structure. I wish we saw that more in comedy. You, you,

you don't, you know. Comedy and horror gets such a lack of respect when especially around awards season. Yeah. I thought Tiffany Haddish should have been nominated

for Best Supporting Actress. Yeah. It's like there's no way that was one of the best five performances. Well, yeah. A dynamic performance that stands out

in a feature that... And also, who else could have played it? That's the thing. I was looking at it like, who else could play that part and own that movie like that nobody

not one person no but we don't judge the Oscars like that they look at it like oh The Shape of Water what a what an emotional performance

by the way I'm pretty sure 20 actresses could have played the lady from The Shape of Water I know he's great but not yeah

that's not wasn't my bag was asking for a lot nobody's nobody's like oh good the blu-ray came out I'm gonna watch it seven more times yeah Not, yeah, that's not, wasn't my bag. Was asking for a lot. Nobody's like, oh good, the Blu-ray came out. I'm going to watch it seven more times. Yeah. I mean, the Oscars, you know.

The Oscars are frustrating. Yeah, it's weird. It's always a weird thing. It's, you know, what were you saying? When you took your show to NBC, what were the reasons behind going with a traditional network versus going to cable or like a place that maybe you'd have a little more freedom um seemed like more of a challenge which is fun uh on a a challenge in what respect it felt kind of like uh going to boot camp first everything is every form of development is easier

than broadcast network yeah development like as far as television goes every form is is is easier and i wanted to do the reason i moved to la first because new york was closer and you do that because of that also a certain you know affinity for just growing up with it like you like growing up watching those types of things nobody from my generation was really doing it so it seemed interesting yeah to do like a multi-cam format like it just seemed like it seemed like the least cool thing you could do you know and then because we'd seen a million and we said, everyone was trying to do their Louis, you know,

or what they extract from Louis. So it was just a bunch of comedians looking pensive. Single camera. Yeah, with a zoom and some type of French horn. And so I was like, I don't want to do that. So I did something else that's pretty much what it was my apology I feel like I'm talking

a lot of shit I didn't find that shit that was funny I don't mean it in a negative way I didn't take it as shit talking did you Tommy? no but I'm just saying like just things that just felt you know I don't know I still like your idea of pitching the exact same show,

but with everybody in a bigger platform position. Just going back. Just bringing the band back together. We didn't talk about Dag. I mean, he's great. Somebody I learned from. I love being around. I thought it was, I mean, I still think it's fantastic.

I've known him for a while because for some reasons, he's very good friends with Adam Carolla so I've been at a lot of different functions with him and he's like one of the greatest hangs he's the best hang

he's just a good hang he is the best hang he's ready to argue and talk and all kinds of shit he's just ready to go he and Loretta together were fun

him and Loretta you know were just like getting into these arguments it was fun because they knew they've known each other for years and like they really it felt like having your parents right you know what i mean like it was like great and he's the coolest guy in the world i was thinking about him the other day because they're they announced their remaking boomerang which i have a lot of

wait what bt's remaking boom oh okay as a tv series which i have complicated feelings about but okay uh but i was thinking about how long ago that was when he's in that movie it's him eddie and his comeback movie is gerard uh and i'm gerard and we always uh yeah i think if they made boom right now probably gerard's gay i think would have been the wrinkle you think so yeah i don't think they're ready to go down that road in 92 his character then Hailey's character didn't connect. I don't know. Maybe. If they did.

God, if you put a studio in it, you know, probably, you know, Martin Lawrence's character is Asian now. You know, just like the, you know, their diversity. Because everybody's afraid of Twitter. So they just want to make sure that everyone's represented and dear god dear god oh man there's a flip side to diversity okay this is this is the one that ruins everything right this is a podcast we're talking about Bill. But there is. There's also a condescending version.

Okay. First of all. I don't know if I can articulate those thoughts in a way that won't destroy my life. It was funny, though. Oh, thanks. Listen. I get what you mean. People are very conscious of a lot of stuff.

Yeah, but you know. They're very, very conscious these days. Sidney Poitier, after he won the Oscar, he had conflicting feelings about how to celebrate it because he felt like he was being treated as a token. Yeah. Right? And that's a very interesting feeling. And sometimes I'm surprised more people don't share that feeling you know like even in the moment sometimes it does feel a little condescending like you know i don't even know how i got to this but like oh diverse it was like it's like you know use people because they're good

and not because it's in the moment my fear is that this thing becomes like this fad that we all try out and we're all... Well, what's interesting about the last few years, just watching from afar, is Hollywood discovering that there's this massive black audience for all kinds of creative stuff. Yeah. It just dawned on them.

Yeah. It's like, well, this blackish is successful. We should look into that. Yeah, Black Panther and, you know... Black Panther is a raging hit. Yeah. We should make more of this. From a business standpoint, remove any feelings or whatever.

And get out. Get out to another one. Yeah. From a business standpoint, it just, it made sense to, I mean, you, I don't know if you heard, but black people typically, I don't want to use the word dominate popular culture, but dominate probably sounds right. I mean, it, you know, have been just for years you know, been music

and entertainment like, it's just kind of, it was shocking from a business standpoint that it took that long. It was so enlightening to people that this was an audience that was sitting there? Did you know that audiences

come out in droves? Creed was another one. Yeah. It's like, Creed, oh, I can't believe I'm wanted. We should do a sequel. But also Ryan Coogler. Yeah, who's really good at his job. Yeah, yeah, is a brilliant director who, you know, he's good.

I mean, he deserves all the success that he's getting. So in a weird way, we go through all this stuff. And, you know, that Oscars a couple years ago and what was the hashtag? Oscars so wait. Yeah. We go through this whole era, but now we're in this whole other era

where Hollywood is now seeing the business opportunity, which is now going to bring all these opportunities for people. But yet it's such a basic common sense, like no fucking shit. Yeah, yeah. Oh, really? There's an audience for this? Do it's such a basic common sense like no fucking shit yeah oh really because there's an audience because things are good do things because you can make money from it to put it in the very it sounds gross terms but like they're just thinking about it for the money yeah it's

just it's smart if it's good it's a bonus because they were the tyler perry movies which nobody's gonna remember that finally 20 years from now. But all those things were pretty money. He's made like how many, 10 of them? So they knew the audience was there. Yeah, he's a really good. He kind of like started like the 1090 deal and the whole thing. Yeah. Is he another guy you respect these moguls?

Yeah. He's got to be on the list. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, if we're just being honest, I think he has one of the smartest. I mean, it's kind of like what Jason Blum is doing, right? Where it's just like micro budget. He's amazing.

Content that can exist broadly and on a small budget. And it's just smart. He puts it up. We had him on the podcast. What was that? Six months ago, Tommy? Smart dude, man. He just figured it out. Yeah.

He figured out this model. It's a good model. And guess what? In Hollywood these days, horror is the safest bet you can make. Yeah. If it's a half decent movie, it's going to do well. You just have to make sure it doesn't suck.

And if it's a good premise that you can explain, like you just said, truth or dare. My whole family watched it. It was great. Yeah. I love those movies. Yeah. It's like people, like you know what it is.

You know, a friend of mine was just talking about this. Anything with a clear premise, people can hold on to it. Yeah. You know, people look for clarity in it. You know, sometimes art doesn't have to be muddy. It doesn't have to be like, and you tell me what it means. Right. You know, it can be cool.

And so if you go through Netflix, they just have dozens of horror movies about something's wrong with the house. And it's just all variations of this same idea. Because they know it's like, I'm flicking through. Oh, something's wrong with the house. What's wrong this time? Oh, somebody went in the attic? I didn't know that was a subgenre. That's not even a subgenre.

It's a genre. Yeah. The house is the monster. Shouldn't have opened that chest. Shouldn't have brought that rock back from the Grand Canyon that your grandmother told you not to bring back? It's just funny because I'm imagining it like scrolling through Netflix and just seeing there's something wrong with the house as like a thing that you can scroll through. They should just do it. Just own it.

Because the thing is if you watch a couple of them they start suggesting them. You go to it and it's like what does this say about me? There's 15 straight, there's a row of 15 movies about something's wrong with the house. And I've seen 14 of them. And you enjoy all of them. I love them. I love horror movies. That's wrong with the house and I've seen 14 of them and you enjoy all of them I love horror movies

you can't listen to a complete album because you're busy trying to figure out what's wrong with the house that's why I need a playlist instead of a real album you gotta make a something wrong with the house horror movie I mean yeah you get the whole band together has there ever been a twist at the end of them

that it was just like somebody used to do that it's a bad septic tank it turns out you're a septic tank yeah there's a raccoon that's in there that's it it's fine couple lights light bulbs broke just cause they had been in there for a while we're all good

it's just like with the house it turns out it's just asbestos so oh that well that does explain the rashes so you're you're semi-retired from stand-up no i wouldn't even say retired i'm just not doing it let's make some headlines make some headlines yeah you're semi-retired from stand-up oh yeah no i mean no i don't think that's headlinable. Then I'll never come back. I just don't, I don't do it.

Last time I was on stage was at Largo, which wouldn't even stand up. I just got in an argument with this woman in the audience about Phantom Thread. What? Yeah, she didn't like it.

Oh, my God. Phantom Thread was amazing. Yeah, it was incredible. I saw it twice. I saw it six times P.T. Anderson was sitting right there on that couch

really oh yeah and love the posters you guys have something in common remember Tommy who loved the posters more P.T.A. or him

probably you P.T.A. did P.T.A. liked it a lot he did he liked this fast break poster oh wow he got all excited

about Gabe Kaplan Gabe Kaplan. Gabe Kaplan. Yeah. Just the Cotter. Yeah. I listen to that song, that theme song, realistically once every two months. The Welcome Back Cotter.

Yeah. It's one of the all-timers. The full song is good. John Sebastian. John Sebastian. Yeah. I'm trying to think what my hierarchy is for greatest songs from that era. That's way up there. That might be number one. Yeah. I'm trying to think what my hierarchy is for greatest songs from that era. That's way up there. That might be number one.

Yeah. It's a great. And I sing it when my friends tell me that they just landed. I sing it with, it just pops in my head a lot. The White Shadow had a really good one. The What's Happening, that was a good one. Oh, yeah. What's Happening was, yeah.

And people love the Different Strokes one. Different Strokes is great. And then the Jeffersons, obviously. I think that actually might have been in the charts. Jeffersons is a... Really? Yeah. I think that was like a real song.

One of them was a real song. I think it was a Jefferson. That was sung by... Wasn't it sung by the woman... It was sung by Winona. Oh, yeah. From Winona from Good Times yeah

yeah she was one of the two people that sang this weird crossover so good yeah it's such a good yeah

I love when it gives you get that euphoric feeling hearing like the first seconds of music how much time did you put into your theme song did you think about it

we sung it did you take it seriously it was a whole cast yeah we sung it we had uh uh there's an artist uh uh who uh worked with one of the creators that brought us in melodies and we went to the studio all together and uh and sung the theme song it was fun yeah we put we put thought of it and like just the movement my uh friend uh ian eastwood did the choreography for it. Yeah. I mean, because you're doing, you're getting paid to put thought into a thing.

Yeah. You know what I mean? Like. Even if it's the theme song. Especially if it's the theme song. Right. Especially if it's the art on your wall. You know what I mean? Like, just like these things look like, you know, a lot of shows and movies just look like crate and barrel catalogs.

So let's say Hulu hires you tomorrow to run Hulu. What are the first three things you do? I change the web design. I change the format and the colors. I don't like the web design either. It's kind of a pastel thing. And what really works if you have a big database is to lean into it. It's why Costco works and Sam's club and netflix you know really works as like a database and you kind of know how to yeah go

through the archives there so i think it's uh probably that's thing number one i by the way just to interrupt you i wholeheartedly agree yeah it's too hard to find stuff on hulu yeah netflix i can look at 50 things in two seconds. Yeah. Including all my favorite haunted house movies. Well, especially, look, in the race for, like, what's good about Hulu's, they have to make a decision between being HBO and be Netflix. And that is a choice that you make. Do you want to curate it? Because the design lends itself to like a more HBO kind of like curated experience.

But subscription growth is based off catalog. Yeah. And it's why Netflix is spending six billion a year on content. And it's catalog and catalogs need like catalogs, like archives. If you look in the record book of an archive, that's what Netflix looks like. And that's what, like, it kind of, everything. So the content you create will fall under that, right? It'll lean into, like, exactly what we're doing.

Look, they got a lot of smart people. I don't know why I'm just, like, trying to lay out. No, you're right. All right, so that's one. Two more. Two more. Two more things you would do if you took over Hulu tomorrow. I mean.

Or any streaming service. Well, what the. Give me the keys to each one. You can pick whatever. Yeah, I don't know. I mean, it's so many. Because there's so many base things before you even get to content. You know, Netflix, you know, sustainability, you know, the people, myself, and a lot of writers at the Wall Street

Journal question. And like, you know, I don't know, you would just kind of have to look at the mission statements of all these things and then kind of work according. Because the first thing, I don't even want to sound like just this like lofty, the first thing you do is like fix and change and then move in the direction so you like altering course is like trying to ship around yeah i would do like i wish netflix had more of a rotten tomatoes type model as one part of it like over on the right where it's just like because they have a popular on netflix thing but i wish it was actually like well they had the i wish i would like to see they got rid of it right i like to know like what are the 10 things people are fired up about right now yeah

i don't know how they do that but and they could probably rig it in bad ways but i will say from a you know a standpoint of like like when you enjoy knowing the consensus it it can be a bit frustrating it does make sense i don't want to get mad at the consensus. I just enjoy being like, really? That's number one? I bet you get a better distribution of attention by not having ratings because it's not that thing that we're just not going to watch because the rating is too low. I don't even think it should be ratings. I think it should be more like what people are drifting to right now.

Or what... Popularity. Oh, just like... Yeah, something. Because occasionally there's going to be some weird movie and they'll be like, why is that number seven? What is that?

Yeah, yeah. Like charts. You think it should have charts. Something. Something along the lines of what iTunes or now Apple does with podcasts where they rig the best podcasts aren't downloads. It's more like newer podcasts. So it's almost like here are the new ones we have. That makes sense.

But I do wonder if it draws too much attention. That's the hard thing. You know, like everything has to get kind of a similar push. You know what I mean? Like because you champion this one thing and then you have content that stands out far over another thing. And then you. Well, they usually push four things a week, it seems like. The latest Adam Sandler movie.

Some seven part docuseries about something horrible that happened um some new sitcom and then some movie that they're excited yeah and that's it yeah i'd be curious to see you know the first the real thing in that play be curious to see them having a the film that makes the big cultural splash the house of cards of features for them I'd be curious to so what are you doing 10 years from now other than our anniversary show that we'll do yeah yeah 10 year anniversary show other than that

20 year anniversary of you coming to LA I really don't know hopefully I think that's a great answer in LA? I really don't know. Hopefully... I think that's a great answer. Yeah, I just don't. Whatever I want to do, hopefully, not to sound like, you know, Veruca Salt, but I'm just meaning like in a sense of just like

you know, the thing that I feel the most passion toward. Well, what I'm intrigued by just talking to you the last hour is it seems like you're leaving everything wide open and you don't know what's going to happen and you're just going to drift toward what gets you excited, which I think most people reach that point when they're older. But you're young to reach that point, which I think is an advantage. Yeah, it's like mostly people who are 30 and under are just like grabbing stuff and then they realize, oh, I shouldn that i should be more careful but it seems like you're already out of that oh yeah don't grab anything yeah that's good though that's an advantage you know like makes it like i don't

know just make stuff do the thing like that's what you came here for you know like it every company in person can uh you know should always revisit their mission statement right you know to be like you know and I moved to LA to make stuff and that's what I like to do and that's what I'll stick to. And like, you know, probably won't be the black friend in a thing because I want to make stuff. The black friend. You know, like, that's just true to what my thing is.

Have you done that yet? Have you been in the rom-com where you're like the black friend who gives perspective? I'm sure I've been a black friend probably once. So you can't help? Have you been in the rom-com where you're like the black friend who gives perspective? I'm sure I've been a black friend probably once. It's like, yo, can't help it.

You're black and you're friendly. You're going to eventually be a black friend. Go to bar. Yo, man, you should go for her.

She likes you, man. Yo, bro, I bring the, you know, the ethnic dialect to the film.

Go talk to her. Where a director probably, they don't ask you to say the N-word, but they want you to say the N-word. ethnic dialect to the film. Go talk to her. Where a director probably, they don't ask you to say the N-word, but they want you to say the N-word. Put a little funk on it, as they say. I hope no one says that.

They look at you intently, hoping you'll read their mind. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Just like, is this the, every take, every take. Maybe just, is he gonna say it? Put a little extra in it, this take, maybe.

Is he gonna say it? You know what I mean? A little extra? A little extra. You know, put a little extra in it this take, maybe. Is he going to say it? You know what I mean? A little extra? A little extra. You know, put a little funk on it. You want to take a break? Would you like some Hennessy? That could bring out.

That could really get us where we are. All right, we're wrapping up. This was fun. I'm glad we did this. This was really great. Thank you for taking the time. My favorite thing is that you're not even promoting anything. You just came here to hang.

We spent years trying to figure out a conversation. You're busy. And then I was like, let's just do it. Yeah. All right, great. This was fun. I hope you had a good time. Thank you for having me.

Thank you for coming on. Thank you. All right. All right, thanks to ZipRecruiter. Don't forget to go to ziprecruiter.com slash BS. Thanks to the Dave Chang Show. Oh, yeah. Launching Thursday on the Ringer Podcast Network.

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