The Bill Simmons Podcast - NFL Nuggets, 'A Star is Born', and Celebrity Divorces with Robert Mays, Amanda Dobbins, and Laura Wasser | The Bill Simmons Podcast (Ep. 408)

Episode Date: August 31, 2018

HBO and The Ringer's Bill Simmons is joined by Robert Mays to run through some NFL thoughts as the season approaches (3:20), then Bill sits down with Amanda Dobbins to discuss the highly anticipated film, 'A Star is Born' starring Bradley Cooper and Lady Gaga (25:10). Finally Bill talks to Celebrity divorce attorney Laura Wasser about prenups, conflict, and changing the face of divorce (1:03:17). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Today's episode of the Bill Simmons Podcast and the Ringer Podcast Network special Labor Day weekend edition is brought to you by ZipRecruiter. Guess what? ZipRecruiter's technology and tools make hiring more efficient and more effective. Like this podcast where we're going to dance through football, a star is born, and divorce. Those are the three topics today. It's efficient, much like ZipRecruiter. They're powerful technology scans thousands of resumes to find people with the right experience for your job. 80% of employers who post on ZipRecruiter

get a quality candidate through the site in just one day. And my listeners can try it for free. All you have to do is go to ziprecruiter.com slash BS. We're also brought to you by SeatGeek. It is SeatGeek season right now. The best app for buying and selling tickets to sporting events, concerts, and more. And we have a lot of sports coming up.

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We're also brought to you by the Dave Chang Show. That is a podcast on the Ringer Podcast Network. I went on there this week and it was with our friend David Cho, the street artist, who I've gotten in over the last year. Chang's been friends with for a long, long time. He's a complicated man.

It was the most intense podcast I've ever been a part of. It went on for over two hours. Two of the three people cried during the podcast. I can't even describe it. Cho is one of a kind. He has a lot of demons and he has exercised most of them and we talked about all of them

and I don't know. I've never been on a podcast like that. So check that out, The Dave Chang Show which has been very cool. Check out all of our Ringer Podcast Network shows. Check out the Rewatchables where we are dropping Taken, me and Shea Serrano. We're

going to drop that on Monday. It's a little Labor Day present for you because there's going to be no BS podcast that day. On Tuesday, Cousin Sal and I are back. Guess the Lines, week one. If you missed it, we did over-unders for the AFC on my podcast and on Against All Odds on his podcast on Wednesday. Check that out. And don't forget to check out Ryan Russell's new podcast, Dual Threat. I made an appearance on that one too, along with Todd McShay. That launched this week. That's going to be dropping on Tuesday nights during the extended football season, all the way through the beginning of January. Really good feedback for the first one. Keep the feedback coming. And coming up, we have, I'm excited for this one.

Football with Robert Mays, talking to Stars Born with Amanda Dobbins, and then the Disso Queen herself, celebrity divorce lawyer, Laura Wasser. This is a really fascinating interview we did a couple of weeks ago. All that's coming up first pearl jab all right on the line right now the one two-2-3 kid, Robert Mays from TheRinger.com. He hasn't been on really all summer.

I don't know what you're doing this summer. You just disappear. You're in Chicago. Chicago during the summertime is one of the happiest places on the planet. How are you, Mays? You must be in a good mood. Football's starting. You doing good?

It took you 17 seconds to mention that I don't live in Los Angeles as we started this podcast. It's pretty good. You almost set a new record every time we talk. It's impressive. You left me. You were like the Carl Lewis of bringing that up. I'm really amazed. You left me. You left. You went back to the Midwest. You left your mentor, Bill Simmons. You left him behind. That's all right. We still stay in touch every once in a while. It's great.

Somehow I think you're going to get by. I don't know. It'll be fine. What are you most excited about with football now, less than a week away? What are you most excited about? I just feel like there are so many offenses that are going to be a blast to watch.

I mean, you look at so many teams around the league and just the level of quarterback play. I mean, consider the really good guys. I mean, we know Rodgers and Brady and whatever. Getting Rodgers back is so great. The Saints are going to be high-flying again. And then just that second tier of guys. If Wentz gets back healthy, if we get Watson for an entire season

and he's even part of what he was a year ago, what Mahomes can be in Kansas City. There are just so many guys who are just like, God, there are going to be a lot of points in the NFL this year. It just feels like that's not a place we've been recently. We spend the first month usually complaining about how bad the quality is, and this time it just seems like we're going to have some decent offensive football from the get-go,

and there are a lot of teams that I just cannot wait to watch every Sunday. You're contractually obligated by the new Ringer bylaws. You didn't mention Xavier Sam Darnold. You've listed off. Or Jimmy Garoppolo. Or Jimmy G. Two missed opportunities there for me. Hey, I'll throw both of them in there.

We have a new rule at the Ringer. If you list more than seven quarterbacks in any sentence on a podcast or in a calm, you have to mention savior Sam Darnold. Cause he's the savior. The only thing Sean cares about. Well, we have, yeah, we have a couple of jets fans on staff and they've kind of taken over our NFL slack last year.

The Eagles fans took it over and now it's the jets fans and the same Darnold thing. It is like watching your buddy who has never had a girlfriend in his entire life all of a sudden getting laid by a supermodel and just in disbelief the entire time that his life has turned the way it has. That's how it's starting to feel with these Jets fans. What's the preseason version of a supermodel though?

It feels like we have to knock that down a peg because a supermodel would be like if he were winning week eight games against New England. He's not, though. This is not what's happening. I think he's going to be good. I've been very impressed. But I also think we have to take it back like two steps, all things considered.

When the real games start, I'll get very excited. Yeah. So I'm with you. I think the quarterback, the new wave of quarterbacks, combined with the fact that the old wave of quarterbacks just doesn't seem to be declining. We have all the same guys we've had this whole decade, Brady and Breeze and Rogers and Phil Rivers and Big Ben. And these guys are all still kicking. But now you have the class underneath them that are, you know, that Alex Smith kind of era. And now you have all these new young guys. And I do think that's the best part of the season. The worst part of the season is all this new rule stuff. And I I've been very careful about not reading too much, not overreacting, not getting all fired up,

not losing my mind about it, but it really does feel like we're hitting this crossroads of how do you play football? Are we there yet? Or are we two seasons away? I don't think we're hitting this crossroads of how do you play football? Are we there yet or are we two seasons away? I don't think we're quite there yet. I feel like people may have overreacted a tiny bit from the first couple weeks of the preseason. As I watched those games last week, I mentioned this on our show.

There was a hit that Vontae Davis made in a game that was pretty bang-bang and it was violent. And they didn't throw a flag. And that's the type of hit in the week one of the preseason. They absolutely would have penalized. So I think that they're kind of understanding how to call it now. I just don't feel like it's going to be a huge, devastating problem the way it seemed early on. You know, guys have been able to adjust to the rules they put in before. And I think we're going to be in the same boat here.

People are going to overreact to it at the beginning, and then they're going to understand that there's a way to play the game in the margins, and it's going to be in the same boat here. People are going to overreact to it at the beginning, and then they're going to understand that there's a way to play the game in the margins, and it's going to be fine. Well, we know we're going to overreact to however Philly Atlanta plays out on Thursday night. The Thursday night game is notorious now for you see the Super Bowl rings and then just the parade of takes right afterwards as people try to figure out what it meant for the big picture of the season and overreacting to the

team that lost and overreacting to the game being ugly. And we just go nuts. And then by Sunday, there's 12 more games and we completely forget about the Thursday game. So I'm not going to do that this year. I'm just going to enjoy the game and be happy about it. I really have to make a conscious effort, even like three or four weeks into the season to just say, do not react to what's happening. Do not react to what is going on right now. Remember when the saints were just absolutely garbage for two weeks at the beginning of the season? Yeah. I mean, there are just so many things that happen in those first two to three weeks that have no bearing on what goes on for the next several months. And it just requires some self-control that I don't always have because the season is

so short and we've waited so long for it to start. And we have a week between each game that each time there's a result, we just want to have it be such a tell-all about what's going on. But that's just not how football works. And as I've covered the league more and more, it's not become any easier, but I've realized that it's more important. I guess that's what I would say. The one thing I would say is pretty consistent year after year is somebody we don't expect gets off to a good start because of an easy schedule and they win one lucky game or one game they shouldn't have won

or surprise win or whatever, and all of a sudden there's three and oh, or four and one. And, and usually that does carry, I would say maybe four out of every five times you will see like that, that just feels like we saw it last year at the Rams. It's just, at some point it became pretty clear. The Rams are going to be good. Who do you think that team is? Who do you think that team is this year? That's a good question.

I was listening to you and Cousin Sal earlier today. I don't know the schedules inside and out solely because when I do my power rankings each year, it's more based on the quality of the roster and how good I think the team is, not necessarily where they'll finish. But it just seems like, I don't know. I mean, the teams that could take a really big jump just overall in quality because of the new coaches or whatever i mean i feel like the bears have a chance to be better than we thought at the beginning just because they were so bad last season if i'm trying to find a parallel

with last year's rams yeah i don't know who the hot team is just based on schedule alone you guys you've done those over-unders who has the the easiest schedule coming out? There was a couple. I think it really depends on the division. So you look at a team like the Jets, and you know they have four games against the Dolphins and the Bills, and they're playing a last-place schedule and that whole thing, and maybe there's a roadmap for them. I think Chicago seems to be the consensus sleeper for a team, like a team that parallels the Rams in a lot of different ways from last

year. But the fact that they're a consensus makes me not a consensus, but that they're getting a lot of buzz for that. Usually that's not how this works. It's usually, it's really usually a team that nobody sees coming. Like even the Browns are getting sleeper buzz in that, by the way, that's absurd.

But even that, they're getting buzz. So it's got to be somebody we don't see coming. So maybe flip it around the other way. Which five teams do you feel the worst about? Buffalo, I think, is probably my worst team. Just because I think that the infrastructure there is such garbage. I mean, that offensive depth chart around Josh Allen, whoever plays quarterback, it's ugly, man. There's nothing to like about that. And it's kind of makes me worried about Josh Allen's development this year. I don't think he's very good period, but he's shown some flashes

in the preseason. I just don't think he'll have any help. Yeah. Receiving core is just barren. The line is maybe the worst in the NFL outside of Houston. So that team is just really hard to get excited about. Their secondary is fun. I like Jordan Poyer. I like Micah Hyde. I like Jadavious White. They take the ball away.

That's a really good group. But outside of that, that team is not good anywhere else. Staying in the AFC East, I am not excited about Miami. I mean, you look at what happened with the Dolphins. They probably lost over the last couple off seasons. They're best players. Yeah. Six and ten last year.

However you feel about Indomitian Sioux and Jarvis Landry. And I do think that Jarvis Landry is limited. And I do think Indomitian Sioux is overpaid, whatever. That was a six and ten team that arguably lost their most talented guy on each side of the ball. Why will they be better? What did they do this offseason to say, oh yeah, that's definitely going to be a better team

than 6-10 in 2018? I think they're going to take a step back, if anything. So those two, I'm extremely worried about. I just did these. I don't know why they're not on the top of my head. I'm not as down on the browns as you are i think that my hesitance there is 100 about the coaching staff yeah i just feel like this is going to be one of the years where we watch that team and you see guys like

joku pop and maybe peppers playing closer to the line is better garrett turns into kind of a star you know they've got some solid middle-of-the-defense players that were really good last year, too, at linebacker and on the interior. It's like, man, they have some decent players. I just wish this was a real coaching staff. It's going to take me like three weeks before that just becomes the thing

that annoys me most about this NFL season. So like you said with Cousin Sal, I think that the Colts are definitely a wild card. I mean, in terms of overall roster quality, they're definitely near the bottom, but if luck is healthy, then I think that he might be able to pick them up a little bit. The other team that's not far away from that, that I think could 100% have the year from hell is Seattle. If Russell Wilson misses three or four games, if this is the year where he gets dinged up a little bit, that guy has been able to avoid serious injury in a way that makes absolutely zero sense

when you consider the pounding he takes. And if he misses time, we're going to see just how bad that roster is because outside of him, it's right there near the bottom of the league. I mean, the offensive line may be better this year. They have a different offensive line coach, which I guess is a step in the right direction.

But that defense is just not that talented. We're just going to pencil them in because they're the Seahawks, but that's not right. If they have any sort of hiccup with Wilson, then I feel like that team could cruise to 4-12 in a top three pick pretty easily. And yet that's the case for them to be a sleeper. Everybody has written them off completely,

which, as you know, that's one of the them to be a sleeper. Everybody has written them off completely, which as you know, that's one of the signs you got to look at. And I I'm, I'm fascinated by the punter. I haven't, I haven't Googled deep dive a punter. I can't even remember the last time. The, the pinning is like the best player on the team outside of Wilson.

It's amazing. He's the best player in football. I think he might be the best player ever. He's just painting 60 yard punts inside the five yard line. Like it, like he's playing d player in football. I think he might be the best player ever. He's just pinning 60-yard punts inside the five-yard line like he's playing darts or something. It would be really funny if they were just terrible but continued to pull out these weird games because of Wilson and the punter and the coach.

And we're just all looking at each other like, the Seahawks are 6-2 and they're awful. How is this happening? I could totally see that. You could talk me into that. The same thing for the Colts. I could see if luck just comes back and he's really good and he has takes his garbage team and you know, they're seven and four after 11 weeks. We don't know what's going on. Is there a, is there any other, you think Seattle has a chance to be really bad? Is there another NFC team other than maybe Tampa that you think has a chance to be really bad. Is there another NFC team other than maybe Tampa

that you think has a chance to just stink? Arizona. I think they're in such a transition. I don't know how that defense is going to look. I really like the coordinator they used to have there, James Boettcher. I thought that he did a great job post-Bowles. And they've really lost a lot of talent on that side of the ball. I'm just penciling them in and just saying,

that's going to be a solid to above-a average defense. That's what the Cardinals are. I think that's too fast. And offensively, what are they going to be? I mean, it's Sam Bradford, Larry Fitzgerald, David Johnson, and what their offensive lines already hurt. It's a group that's not good to begin with. So that team is very much in flux, and they could absolutely be a disaster. Tampa is the easy one, though. I mean, there's so much going on with that team. If I had to pick my four worst right now, in some order, it would probably be Buffalo, Miami, Tampa, and Arizona.

Interesting. I think I have three of those four. I'm not positive Miami should be in there, even though I don't think they're good. I think there's... I think I have three of those four. I'm not positive Miami should be in there, even though I don't think they're good. I think there's... I think I got to say, I think there's an outside chance Dallas could crack that top four.

They're right up there for me. I'm in the process of doing my power rankings right now. They will be surprisingly high. Or surprisingly low, considering how you think about it. There's year from hell potential. I also... That division might be pretty good.

There's a chance, you know. Who do you think is the strongest division? If you had to rank, give me your number one, your number two, top to bottom divisions, who would you have? I feel like the NFC South is pretty good. I mean, those top three teams are really solid. I think that Atlanta and the Saints

are up there with anybody in terms of a one-2 in any division. The NFC North is in that conversation to me. Minnesota is arguably the strongest team in the league when you consider their 22 guys on both sides of the ball. I think that their defense is going to be really good again. Their offensive line concerns me, but hopefully Cousins can make up for whatever they lose with having some issues at center and guard. The AFC South, I don't know if it's the strongest division, but I know that there's no easy wins in that division if luck is right. It's just going to be an annoying division where all those teams beat each other up.

Because I think Houston has a chance to be really good. I know that the line is just a mess. And with a guy coming back from a torn ACL, that gives you pause. But they were a mess last year. It may be hard for them to be worse than that. And he was able to kind of mitigate that with the way he moves around, the way he extends. I just am all in on Watson.

If he's healthy, then that has a chance to be a dynamic offense, period. And the defense is going to get healthy whatever you feel about what and i think that even if he's 85 of what he used to be that's one of the better defensive players in the league you bring him back merciless clowny and i honestly think if tyron matthew can get some time there and really put in a healthy season he's going to be a game changer for them. So if they go back to like a top five offense, the same way they were two years ago,

and then Watson is what he was last season or something close to it, even if there's some statistical regression, that's a borderline playoff team. Tennessee, I think, is really talented. Me too. I think they did a really good job of assembling that team. I like the guys they got in the first and second round. I think the past, the Harold Landry, the guy they got from Boston college has a chance to really affect some games. They're deep at that spot. They got in, they

brought Rashad Evans or Sean Evans in their secondary is expensive. I mean, they've spent a lot of money on that group and even losing Cyprian. I think that their corners are solid enough. So if that defense plays the way I think it can, and the other part underrated part of them, they brought in Dean Pease, who's the defensive coordinator in Boston or Baltimore for years. And I really like him. I think he's a fantastic defensive play caller and him just walking in there and taking over a very talented group that has a chance to work out really well. And then it's all about the offense. If they can somehow get the most out of Mari Mariota if they can bring Matt LaFleur in he can run that

kind of Shanahan-y McVay play action based system that seems to really fit Mariota's talents pair that with the receivers they have that could that team could take a huge offensive jump very fast but they weren't a total mess last year so we're not talking about them the same way we're talking about the bears or a team that just desperately needed a new coach but i do think they were so mismanaged yeah it could be a similar sort of leap i haven't final we did all the over-unders i did the ones i was leaning for and the ones i thought were locks but we realized as we were almost done with the NFC pod that we were running it back too much, which we talked about in the pod.

We were like, we have the eight division champs. We all think they're going to be good again. And I'm really trying to, I want to end up with a couple of new division champs. And even though I like Jacksonville, I really thought Tennessee was talented last year. And I'm with you. I thought they were one of the worst coached decent to good teams that we had,

maybe even the worst. And I really like Mike Vrabel. I think he's going to be a good coach. And I think I've talked myself into that's my AFC South team. So a lot of it depends on Mariota being healthy. I could see them winning the division. Them and Houston.

I could see both of them winning it. Jacksonville's tough for me I love the defense they're so fun they were one of the best parts of watching football last year but we've just seen this before even when you're that talented it's hard to maintain defensive dominance year in and year out you know really the guy who can stave it off is a coordinator like Wade Phillips and he's not there I think they're good I think Todd Walsh is a coordinator like Wade Phillips, and he's not there. I think they're good. I think Todd Walsh is a good coach, but two elements there. One, again, it's hard to just maintain

that sort of level defensively, and two, they were unreasonably healthy on defense last year. I believe they missed two starts combined from their 11 starters, and that was Telvin Smith's concussion. That does not happen from year to year, and it's not as if they went out

and had all these depth signings because they don't have any money to do that this is a team that's pretty up against it so if they get hurt on defense a little bit more this year which seems likely then there's no way that defense can carry the offense which i feel like is going to struggle you know i know last year they were fine they're going to run the ball as often as they can. But we really saw in that second half of the AFC championship game where Bortles can take you if you really make him beat you. Yeah. And I just feel like that's exactly what a lot of teams are going to do. Their ceiling is so limited. And if the defense can't control games, then I feel like they're going to struggle to get to that 11-12 win mark that some people

see for them. I will say as somebody who rooted against them in that game, because they were playing my team, I did feel like the Jaguars were afraid to let Bortles take them, and that was why they lost. The Pats were basically like, our last chance is for them to say, we have a chance to put this game away with Blake Bortles, and you're going to have to do that.

God bless. And Jacksonville just wouldn't do it. They just didn't trust him. And they were so predictable in that second half. I thought they gave the game away. I thought that was one of the luckiest Pats playoffs. I said that at the time. I just don't think that Pats team was good enough

to make a Super Bowl. So maybe they missed their window. The Marquise Lee thing, it's not like he's Antonio Brown either, but the fact that he was important to them kind of tells you where they were from a weapons standpoint. It's going to be tough for them to score. Hold on. We're going to take a break. Hey, did you get the Yahoo Sports app yet? Are you ready for live football on your phone? With the Yahoo Sports mobile app, you get live, local, and primetime NFL games all season long. Never miss your local game. Never

miss a big national matchup. All you need is the Yahoo Sports app. Seriously, go get the app. It's your ticket to watching live NFL games wherever you want. That sounds like something I'll be doing at various soccer fields in Southern California on Sundays this year. No subscriptions, no fees, all football, all yours at the tap of an app. Watch live NFL games on the Yahoo Sports mobile app. Check it out. And since we're here, I wanted to mention my friend Jalen Rose, who has had a school, the Jalen Rose Leadership Academy, for the last five or six years. I can't even remember how long it's been at this point. He does good stuff for his community. The Ringer is actually sponsoring four students of JRLA for this school year.

He's one of the best people I know. He really gives a crap about where he came from and just how to help kids and all that stuff. There is a JRLA annual online auction right now. You can place your bids. It expires on Friday at 7 p.m. ET. So you'll probably hear the podcast by then. All you have to do is go to jrla2018.givesmart.com. jrla2018.givesmart.com. And there's a bunch of cool stuff on there, a bunch of sports memorabilia,

all that stuff. And if you're feeling good and feeling charitable, give something to Jalen's school because he is giving a bunch of kids in the Detroit area a chance to get a real good education. You've seen LeBron. He opened the I Promise School in Cleveland this year. This is something that athletes give him back. This is something Jalen has been at the forefront of. He's one of the founding fathers of this whole thing. Created his own school, launched it, runs it,

and it's doing great stuff. So check out that website. Congrats to Jalen. Love you, buddy. Miss you, buddy. All right. Back to the podcast. All right. Let's blow through this really quick, Mace. Jimmy G, you believe or no? Yeah, absolutely. I do. It's a combination. I believe in him and I believe in Shanahan. I feel like that pairing is just something to bet on. If you had to, like Scotty J with Dirk Diggler's Corvette and you asked another man to kiss them on the mouth and it had to be QB, Jimmy G or Aaron Rodgers? Rodgers.

You know how I feel about Rodgers. It's a whole different. For all my Jimmy G love and for as good as I think he's going to be there, I think Rodgers is an entirely different plane. And I've long believed that. So you would get, if Rodgers got a red Corvette, you would also get a red Corvette. You'd get a matching.

Absolutely. Okay. That outfit he was wearing yesterday with like the cowboy hat and the mustache. I'm actually wearing that to a wedding this weekend. Smart, smart. He's going to make $67 million this year. You might as well. I like, you know, normally you're a Bears fan.

Normally when somebody like Rodgers is in your division, just kicking your ass for 10 straight years, normally you resent, hate that person, wish them ill. You've gone the opposite way. It's like you're Jedi mind tricking him with your respect and love and admiration. And I don't think it's working. What am I supposed to do?

I don't know. Maybe more hate. Maybe, maybe a couple of hit pieces. Maybe start some shit. Yeah. There's no way I could do that in good faith. I mean,

he has, he's swayed me. I mean, the guy is undeniable. I, there's, it would be just completely, I don't even know how you could muster that level of delusion

to look at that guy and say, yeah, he's not that good. I've just leaned into it because there's no other choice. Yeah. It's tough for me to look at it logically because the greatest quarterback of all time has been on my team. So looking at the other mortals, it's been hard. But I do respect Rodgers. I think he's probably the most all-around talented quarterback we've had. I think he's been, uh, he's, he's probably the most all around talented quarterback

we've had. I think he brings the most to the table. If we, if, if you and I created some checklist and we put like 20 quarterback traits on there and we had to rank the quarterback from one to 10 and whatever the 20 traits were, I think he would score the best, right? He is the most physically gifted quarterback I have ever seen. Yeah. I've never seen a player do what he can at quarterback. Put the ball where he can, the arm strength, the mobility, the accuracy. I mean, no one has ever played the quarterback position

the way that Aaron Rodgers does just from a pure spectacle standpoint. Yeah, and he's won five times less Super Bowls than Tom Brady, so suck it Aaron Rogers yeah that's the thing the fact that the number one just thing in Aaron Rogers resume like that which should be on his hall of fame bust is that he drags Mike McCarthy to 10 wins every year there's nothing you could say about him that's more impressive I I actually have one more thing to say that's more impressive than he he threw, he completed two hail Marys in the same season. I will never get to see that again.

Who's doing three. First of all, like two is going to be the record for the rest of our lives, but whether we even see two again would be amazing, but nobody's doing three. And I think two will stay in the test of time. We'll see two hail Marys in one season. The Rams you buying or selling.

I'm buying. Again, I believe in McVay. I just think they're so well coached. I love their offense. They put those guys in such a position to succeed. They brought the whole group back. I was talking to Les Snead about this when I was there, and we were just discussing kind of the thought process

behind the Brandon Cooks trade. And they essentially said, we needed to go out and do something that brought our entire offense back piece for piece from last year. And that's what they saw with Cooks. It's like, all right, he's going to do a Watkins did just better. And that's the priority that they put on it because they knew how important it was to get that group back in its entirety. So if you think about that offense being sustainable, even if you have concerns about

how good golf is in a vacuum, we don't do this in a vacuum. He gets McVay every week. I think the defense with Phillips, with the guys they brought in, has a chance to absolutely wreck games. More like... Sue is... We forgot how good he is. We forgot how good Ndamukong Sue is,

and now he lines up next to Aaron Donald. Like, that is going to be unfair. Yeah, the sexiest narrative to pick right now. And I'm, I'm fighting it off because I do not believe in the chargers coaching staff at all, but S and somebody will do it. Somebody's gonna be like, it's time. It's going to be an LA versus LA super bowl, baby. I'm on the record right now. And they'll play it up and they'll write a big piece about it. And it's just a smart, it's a smart angle to then hope that it happens. And then you can tell everybody, I told you.

So the LA versus LA, I tried to tell you it was going to happen. But it does seem like it's in play, which leads to my next question. Are you believing the Chargers hype machine? To a degree. I guess that's what I'd say. And here's what I'll... the caveat of that is I agree with you. I mean, you look at some of their numbers last year with tendency predictability. I mean, they ran the ball on first and 10 at an alarming rate. Yeah. And you look at some of the

best teams and what they do. I wrote about this today, you kind of the traits and the characteristics that the best smartest offenses in the league have. They don't do that. I mean, they're throwing the ball out of those heavy formations in order to just get easy chunks. The Chargers don't put themselves in easy scenarios on offense, and that worries me. But I do think their talent is such that they can overcome it at pretty much every turn. I mean, I looked at last year and I said before the year, I thought the Eagles had the best roster in the NFL top to bottom. Just overall talent.

I thought they were number one. And I think right now the Chargers are in that conversation. Wow. There are so few parts of that roster where you sit there and say they're just not good there. And even with the injuries

because you lose Jason Verrett, but their corners are already good. They didn't play with Jason Verrett last year. Yeah. If Bosa's healthy, you have Bosa and Ingram. I think that the linebackers are fine. Getting Derwin James and just dropping a buzzsaw into their defense is huge. They have the deepest group of receivers in the league.

Melvin Gordon is pretty darn good. I think their line has a chance to be a lot better with getting Forrest Lamp back, bringing Pouncey in. And Rivers, I know you have your issues with him, but I've always thought he was really good. And I still do. I just think he masks a lot of issues on a team. I do think he's really good. I just think he has a tendency to snatch defeat from victory. It's just that's been a recent thing with them. More likely to stumble this year in a surprising way, the Pittsburgh Steelers or the Minnesota Vikings?

The Steelers, I think. I mean, you have a first-year play caller, which even if you think the guy's going to be good, that's something to consider. And it just feels like Roethlisberger's getting up there in age. It's Bell's last year there. It could go off the rails. I don't think it will, but that's the type of situation overall

where it's like, eh, I don't know. I mean, there are elements there that could be complicated. And then with Minnesota, it's two things. One, they're in a similar boat that Jacksonville was. They were extremely healthy on defense last year, like to a ridiculous degree. I think it was a similar thing sindejo might have missed two games and that's it so if you assume they're going to be

a little more banged up they're not that deep again because they've had to pay everybody and then the offensive line worries me you know if that group just starts to crumble we've seen this year in and year out nothing makes a season go south faster than an offensive line falling apart. And when you're going into a season and you already have injuries and concerns there, when you're making trades for the Giants' backup center two weeks before the year starts, that's the type of stuff that can be a red flag.

All right. You're a Bears fan. There's some Bears sleeper buzz. It seems like even you're buying into this. I actually have a stopwatch out. Nephew Kyle can see the stopwatch. I'm giving you 45 seconds to make the case for the Bears. Ready, set, go.

The defense is going to be what it was last year. It's a solid group. Vic Fangio is an excellent coordinator. They brought all the corners back. I really like Akeem Hicks. Their safeties can really change games. Amos and Jackson are guys that can just swing a half on a single play. And those are the type of guys you need when maybe your pass rushers aren't as

solid as you would hope. On offense, there's only one way to go, and that's up. Mitchell Trubisky, they're going to run a ton more RPOs. It really fits his style. Allen Robinson is a star when healthy. They completely retooled the receiving core. Tariq Cohen fits right into that role that Tyreek Hill filled with the Chiefs last year. Eight seconds.

Trey Burton has a chance to emerge. Three seconds. It's just an entirely revamped receiving core to what it was a season ago. Are you going to miss Jan Fox? No. Good Lord, no. I'm not sure I've ever enjoyed a Chicago sports coaching figure worse by the end than John Fox.

Good luck, John Fox. Good luck, sweet Prince. You love football, I think as much as anyone I've ever met. And especially you love really mundane shit like pull blocks from left guards and you're studying the line. I remember one time we were watching. It's all true. We were watching football.

You'll let out like these orgasmic squeals because somebody got pancaked. Give me your top five just favorite players right now. The Robert Mays all-stars. Marshall Yondo when he's healthy. Okay. I mean, in my opinion, he's the best guard of his generation. He's been a stalwart for the Ravens for years.

He missed most of last season. He'll be back this year, which is so fun. I mean, Watt when he's been a stalwart for the Ravens for years he missed most of last season he'll be back this year which is so fun I mean what when he's right I just feel like there's nobody that plays the game on on the defensive line quite like he does I mean playing inside playing out Donald's there too nobody makes me yelp at this point as often as aaron donald does i wrote last year during the playoffs that he was the best player in the nfl at any position and i maintain that i just don't think people affect the game from the defensive line like he can and watching him do it week in and week out and having phillips just unleash him has been so incredibly fun jalen ramsey's up there for me i know that's a different kind of guy, but I just feel like, again,

we have a shortage of players in the league that actually make this enjoyable, and he's definitely in that list. And staying on non-linemen, I've always loved watching Keenan Allen. From the time he got into the league, I just think that he's such a pure player. He's, in my opinion, the coolest route runner in the league. He ran a 4.7 coming into the league. I just think that he's such a pure player. He's, in my opinion, the coolest route runner in the league. He ran a 4-7 coming into

the NFL, and he's somehow been dominant just because of how good he is at manipulating the game in the margins. So those are like my all-stars. That's tough. I mean, those are the five I'd rattle off instantly, but that's a list that I would have to spend some time curating. That's not easy. That

feels like I just gave you a column idea. It would take me like six months to write. Cause I'd never be able to cure, like whittle it down to the five guys. Who is your best, who's your best up and coming awesome blocker that you're super excited about? That's a really good question. I don't know. You put me on the spot. I'm not... There's no new guy? There's no new 330-pounder that you love the way he's pulling out? Oh, Quentin Nelson. Oh, Quentin Nelson. I'm sorry. Yes. That should

have been easy. Oh, my God. The guy that Colts drafted in the top 10. The guy from Notre Dame. I cannot watch. I cannot wait to watch him every week. That dude is going to ruin people. Yeah, he's number one by far. All right. You can hear you're going to be on the Ringer NFL show Sunday

nights right after the Sunday night game, you and Kevin Clark. And then once again, what's the other one? Thursday mornings? Thursday morning and then we'll put it out a little bit Thursday, a little bit later in the day on Thursday. Wow.

You're doing great, Mace. By the way, pizza day. And we did have the Chicago pizza piece. So we're looking out for you, even though you don't live here. I know. Nibs wrote about Giardiniera. And that night I actually ordered pizza

with Giardiniera on it. I couldn't restrain myself. That's how good of a job she did. I do think we raised the pizza spending, whatever the normal Tuesday would have been. I think we must have raised it by 12% because it was hard to read those articles and then not want pizza.

Every single ringer staffer I talked to ordered pizza that day or the next day. In New York, they ordered it the next day. It's just really hard to read about pizza like that and then not want to have pizza. Mace, thanks for coming on, buddy. Talk to you soon. Thanks, bud. See you.

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and I'm about to do a four hour ringer fantasy football draft. I'm taping this on a Thursday. You know what I'm going to need? Energy. I need the Starbucks double shot energy to do things you actually do. Find it in your local convenience store. And speaking of stores, check out the ringer.com slash shop. A bunch of our t-shirts, stickers. You can put kids going back to school. You can put stickers of our different podcasts on your laptops, on your trunk. People still use trunks going back to college. We have sweatshirts, a whole bunch of great stuff. If you love The Ringer, show us some love. It's not like we're trying to make a kajillion dollars here on Ringer merchandise. We just want that stuff out there. We want you guys to wear it. We have a great site.

We have had an awesome summer and trying to spread the word a little bit. So check it out. The ringer.com slash shop coming up right now. Amanda Dobbins. All right. Amanda Dobbins from the ringers here. She runs culture for us. Every once in a while we get excited at the ringer and you can feel it building early in the slack. You know, something's going on. This happened with the Star is Born. It went from parody and disbelief to, oh my God, I can't believe this is happening to a little curiosity to all of a sudden something shifted and now it's our most anticipated movie of the year. We don't know what's going to happen.

It might be a train wreck. It might be fantastic. I can't remember a movie like this. Yeah, that's true. I think it's certainly the most anticipated movie of the fall for us. It's important to note that that anticipation still does contain skepticism,

curiosity, fascination. Humor. There is so much going on here and it's only August. We have like a full month before the movie is actually released.

I don't know if all of this was intentional on a promotional standpoint, but it's been brilliant. Lady Gaga, no makeup. Bradley Cooper with the hair that we don't know hair extensions, right? I honestly have no idea what to make of that hair situation. Because once it's combed back like that, I don't know.

It could be like a long plug comb over. I don't know. Who knows? Might be a wig. It's great. The little morsels we've been able to hear about how Bradley Cooper studied Eddie Vedder, spent time with Eddie Vedder

and modeled his character after Eddie Vedder. I just have, that should have been its own documentary that should have accompanied the movie, Bradley Cooper and Eddie Vedder hanging out. I think it still could be. That's the other thing to keep in mind is like we're literally,

we're on day two of their official press release tour. Yeah. And it doesn't come out until early October. So and by all accounts, they're going for it. They clearly both won Oscars. I think you may well get your documentary. You honestly could get a documentary series. Bradley Cooper.

I was going to go look it up online, but I can recite it almost from memory at this point. Can't wait. He did this really fascinating interview. We talked about it a little bit when we did the rewatchables with the Wedding Crashers. But did this thing about how he always knew he wanted to direct. Yes. And he talked to Clint. He called Clint, meaning Clint Eastwood, one of the great actors of all time.

When Clint and him did Sniper. Yeah, of course. Not American Sniper, Sniper. It's shortened now because it's been a part of their life. Talk to Clint, ask when it's time to direct. And Clint had done Play Misty for me in like 1971. He was like 43. So Cooper filed that one away. And he's like, Clint was 43 when he directed.

That's when I'll direct. Yeah. And it was both incredibly arrogant, but I like the confidence. The familiarity. Him and Clint just in the same sentence now, apparently. But maybe they should be. I don't know. We'll see. I don't know. I think we don't know yet, which is the really clear thing. Cause it seems like the trailer. What are your feelings about the trailer? So I have a lot of feelings. Yeah. Let's go backwards.

OK, let's hold this current A Star is Born and go all the way back. Oh, boy. My parents both like Streisand. OK. I love Streisand as a kid. I'm so glad we're going to talk about that. Yeah. So what's up, Doc?

Yeah. The the way we were. A classic. What was the other one they did? Funny girl. Well, funny girl. I wasn't funny girl. I was too young. The what's up doc was my first favorite movie, which I don't know if I've ever confessed to my pod. I made my mom take me to it like four different times. I just loved it. And I liked the cars and we had a car, like one of the cars in there. So we love Streisand. And so that movie came out in like 76. It's like right when I'm old enough to start remembering stuff. And I remember feeling like this was this huge movie. I had no idea Chris Christopherson really wasn't that famous. The movie kind of made him famous,

but it was during this time when they really were able to push stuff out with this whole mechanism, People Magazine and Rolling Stone. And you could do a Saturday Night Fever and Rocky and all these different movies. And this felt like a huge movie. And I remember thinking at the time, I think we actually, I saw it in the theater, which is kind of weird because it's a little racy. But it's been on recently, which is why I bring this up. It's on Netflix. I watched it this week. So I watched it a week ago.

It was on like one of the HD movie channels I get on Comcast. It's both really good and it's one of the worst movies of all time. And there's kind of both at the same time. I had to turn it off. You couldn't stand it. I was like, this is a disaster. I think that I had seen at least clips of it before, but I had not watched it as an adult. And I a couple of things that I should clarify. Really, really showy singing

makes me physically uncomfortable, which we'll come back to with Lady Gaga. She has some heat checks. Babs has some heat checks. Yeah, especially like that scene when she's playing this song for him for the first time and it doesn't have words. And it's just honestly four minutes uncut of Barbra Streisand strumming and like humming soulfully. That was hard for me to sit through. And that's a personal preference

as much as a comment on the movie. See, I thought that stuff was hilarious. I think I enjoyed it because like some of it was so bad and she produced it herself. She's the most powerful woman in Hollywood when she makes that movie. She marries a hairdresser, John Peters, who becomes this huge studio executive. And they basically make this movie and nobody in her life is going, don't do that. You should probably take that out.

Right. This doesn't need to be your cabaret show for an hour and a half. And the movie has this song that becomes like one of the biggest songs of 1976 that's somehow not in the movie. She sings like nine songs. Her ending song, it's Evergreen, which is like one of her famous songs. And somehow they don't fit that in the movie, even though she filmed the scene with Evergreen. And then they kind of rammed it in the closing credits. So I think the movie was really successful, but was also critically panned. It was.

I think I looked this up and I think it was like the top five movie of the year. It was like the sixth best movie of the year. And was not, no, most people didn't care for it. But so for those of you listening who don't know what the premise is, it was actually from a movie like in the 20s or 30s originally. Yeah. And then it was remade again with Judy Garland in the 50s. Older singer, older male singer finds finds a female up-and-coming prodigy.

He's on the, you know, his career is ending. He's got drinking, drugs issues or whatever. And then this younger person kind of invigorated somebody as a self-destructive. So it's actually a really good idea for a movie. Unfortunately, this movie was so bad that they decided not to remake it again right for 40 years here's the biggest problem though i i turned it off at some point because it was not to my taste and i felt like i got the sense of it but i watched about an hour and a half and while being both astonished at how much i did not like it i it was just also so abundantly clear to me why

bradley cooper and lady gaga were like yeah we need to remake this movie. We can do this. We can do a better version of this. And also, I felt like that movie kind of is the best argument for a star is born is going to be a disaster. That's what I'm concerned about. Because if they fall into the same traps of Lady Gaga really being like, this is my moment and I need to be a movie star and sing 12 songs. And Bradley Cooper being like, this is my moment as a director. If it's all egomania, then I think- Maybe that'll be good.

It could. Maybe that'd be good for the movie. I mean, there's a thing. I like when celebrities aren't self-aware because celebrities are so self-aware now that they're almost too self-aware. And here's a rare case of two non-self-aware celebrities who are really convinced this

is going to be a massive blockbuster. I totally think that's true. And I think there's a chance that it could honestly, they could just pull it off and they could make this totally self unselfaware, but really earnest and exciting movie. And it could actually work. I think the first two minutes of the trailer make it look like that.

The trailer's awesome. And I'm like, oh my God, it's going to be incredible until you get to the point where Lady Gaga is just, whoa! Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. And suddenly it's a Lady Gaga movie

instead of them living in this world. Well, no makeup with her, though. Right. Which was the big, almost like when Kiss took their makeup off. Did you read the LA Times piece today? There was a piece.

It was kind of the first Lady Gaga profile. And it starts with an anecdote where Lady Gaga showed up to her audition for A Star is Born. And Bradley Cooper was holding a makeup remover wipe in his hand and just hands it to her and says, take it off. And then she has to wipe her face clean of all her makeup. And he made her do that in the audition. He is having a heat check. This is, it's wild. This is amazing.

God bless him, man. Ever since he was doing Sniper with Clint. I know. He's really ready. Where are you on his skin in the trailer? I think he looks pretty good. The thing with Bradley Cooper is he's not that old. Yeah.

Like he really might be the next Clint Eastwood. We don't know. He's only like 43. He's done a lot of good stuff already. That's true. Like when he did it, when he hit with Hangover, he was 30. I was shocked. I feel like he's like 50.

He certainly looks 50 in that one shot in the trailer when the limo window rolls down and they got the lighting wrong and his face, he's quite orange. Right. Yeah. Well, the thing is though, Christofferson was such good,

was such good casting in that movie because he was really like that. He was falling apart in real life too and was drunk in all the scenes and he was really a mess.

And Bradley Cooper is this carefully kind of public, constructed public persona. Very controlled, yes. You would never think of him as like, man, this guy, you know, it's almost like you, it should be like Johnny Depp.

It couldn't be Johnny Depp anymore, but somebody who their personal life should bleed into the movie. And he's the, Bradley Cooper's the opposite. Right. He does have a little bit of, he's very controlled and there's something under the surface

that I think lends to his to all of his performances so he's like controlled but you don't really he's not sharing yeah he's one of the most famous actors or actresses that we have that I have no feel for as a human being

at all like I don't think he would ever come and sit on this couch and do a podcast with me for an hour and a half so you should ask but yeah I'd be right he's ever come and sit on this couch and do a podcast with me for an hour and a half. You should ask, but yeah. I'd be right. He's invited. Yeah. Bradley, come on. It'd be great. Do it. I'd love to talk to you. Yeah. But I think I will say this. I think his singing in the trailer is pretty good. Am I supposed to think that? I think it is. The thing is, it's not far fetched because when you think about all the people who act for a living, a lot of them probably did theater in high school and have skills. So, yeah, it is always shocking when somebody who doesn't normally sing sings well.

But it also isn't completely illogical. I was more stunned that Lady Gaga is actually like attractive. I thought she had all that shit in her hair and like the crazy outfits is usually stuff you do and you don't want people to see your face. Right. And she's really pretty. I thought. I agree with you.

And I think she's already been talking about and has talked about the idea that that was why she was doing it. She was insecure about the way that she looked. And she also, frankly, there are a lot of unkind people in the music industry who told her, we like the way you sound. We, we like the way you sound. We don't like the way you look.

You got to hide your. Yeah. And so she's talked about that, that the, all of the performance images were a response to that. Don't you feel like that's the biggest asset this movie has? It's like, we have no history of this version of Lady Gaga.

Yes. It's almost like an entirely new human being. And if you do a movie like this, you can't do it where it's like Bradley Cooper. I'm trying to think of a massively famous actress. Who's in their like thirties. Even if it was Bradley Cooper and Jennifer Lawrence. I was like, I have too much history with Jennifer Lawrence.

Now I feel like it's Jennifer Lawrence playing a singer. Whereas Lady Gaga, I feel like this is like this new human being I've never seen. I completely agree. And I Whereas Lady Gaga, I feel like this is like this new human being I've never seen. I completely agree. And I think for me, the biggest or one of the biggest dangers of the movie based on the trailer is that if Lady Gaga becomes too much a part of it,

I'm going to associate, you know, a fame monster with this movie. And it's, you want a completely new person. But so she's still singing like Lady Gaga. I don't know how you get around that. This is a rare movie that is not a comic book movie. Right. It's not a thriller based on some book. It's not some sort of Oscar drama that you have

to see because you want to know what happened in the Oscars. It's not a phenomenon like Get Out. It's not a horror movie. It's like an old school organic movie that doesn't really happen anymore that has big stars in it being stars and a big budget and there's actual

anticipation for it. It's kind of like in a weird way a unicorn. I agree. It's going to make money. It's going to do well. Yes, totally.

And part of the reason we're so excited for it is because we don't have movie stars anymore or we don't get them regularly and it's it's their faces it's none of the makeup like we were just talking about

it is funny it still is do we count it as a sequel it's a remake I guess it's a remake it's a remake it's a reimagination it's funny that even a remake feels so new just because it's been 30 years if he pulls this off I think this is crazy,

but you could make the case. He's the biggest male actor star in the world. Probably. Cause you, now you go look, he was in one of the biggest comedies ever. American sniper is one of the biggest, most successful pure action movies ever.

And he won the Oscar for it. Yeah. He's done a whole bunch of other dramatic stuff and has his chops there. And now he will have starred and directed in a super successful movie. I'm assuming it's critically reviewed well and assuming it does well.

It's like Leo DiCaprio, who I think is probably in the driver's seat now for that conversation. Probably among that generation. Has not directed. Yeah. Has not done comedies. Does not have kind of the body of work.

He's done mostly like dramas and really cool inventive stuff and action stuff, but not like that. I'm not saying Bradley Cooper is the biggest star in the world, but he'd at least be in like the discussion, which is also hard to believe. Sure. I guess the question is, after this, do you think of him as a movie star or a director? Because the other interesting thing about this movie is that I think

it's really going to be about Lady Gaga and the story is, without spoiling anything, sorry, it is about Lady Gaga and it's about- Yeah, her rise.

Yeah, her rise and his decline as a star. But he has to be good in it though. Both of them have to be awesome in it. He totally has to be good in it. But I think if he comes out of this as a star. But he has to be good in it though. Both of them have to be awesome in it. He totally has to be good in it. But I think if he comes out of this as a success, I feel like it's likelier that he will get directing accolades than actor accolades.

Like the Ben Affleck Argo syndrome. Exactly. It seems like a real Affleck Argo to me. That's a win for him though. Totally. He seems like he's in the phase now where he's in the mountains somewhere or in the in the mountains somewhere and like or in the hills and like Pacific Palisades or in Hollywood Hills

and he's inviting friends over to screen the movie like I want like an ego out of control Bradley Cooper I think you have it having a small screening tonight I'm going to show the movie again and he's watching it for the 480th time and gauging like Ben Affleck's reaction everybody has like a cam on their face for two hours for all reactions.

Yeah. No, I think people show up and the crew is like Steph Curry. Yeah. Ben Affleck. Oh, David Lynch. It's just all these fucking weird people that he invited. I really want him to go a little haywire. I think that's good for us.

That's good for the ringer. It's really good for us. Part of again, again, part of the reason we're so excited is that it's August. It's late August. The movie's not coming out until October. And they're already telling the stories

about the makeup wipes and the, you know, all of the preparation that they did for the movie. They're so in and there's a full month of this left. Yeah, that might have

peaked too early. I don't think so. I just think there's going to be even more of it. Random podcast about it right now in August. No, I think think there's going to be even more of it. Random podcast. No, I think it's just going to keep going. So who sees this movie? You and Zach Baron, your husband.

Yes. The GQ's talented writer, Zach Baron. Yes. You definitely see this movie on a date. This is like Friday night dinner and a star is born. Oh my God. That's wow. We sound so old and sad when you put it that way.

Yeah, I think so. I know my wife's going to make me go. I know my daughter is going to want to go. 100%. Yeah, because I think the Lady Gaga. I think this movie is going to make a lot of money. I think it checks all of these different boxes for people who don't really go to the movies that much anymore,

but will go for this one. I think that's very true. Because you'll get Lady Gaga fans. You'll get- Yeah, you have the whole Lady Gaga army, right? Like that is not a small group. And that's, that's her dedicated fan base. Then there are a lot of people who just kind of, Oh, Lady Gaga, I liked her music five years ago. And it seems like this would be a movie that I would like to go see. And I do think you're right. People are actually looking for movies that they would like

to go see for a reason to go. Do women see this movie together, like in groups of four? Like do four friends go to see this or is this a date movie? I think, I don't know if it's like, you know, book club or crazy rich Asians or one of those things where all the women are like making plans together.

The set when the sex in the city movie. I remember that was a big one. Yeah. Or 50 shades of gray or whatever. I saw that movie, I remember that was a big one. Yeah, or Fifty Shades of Grey or whatever. Oh yeah, Fifty Shades of Grey was a good one. I saw that on opening night, which was Valentine's Day, hilariously, with a friend.

But I don't know about that, but I think people will just kind of make plans if they're curious. I just think there'll be a lot of curious people. Does Zoe Simmons, do her and her friends get excited for this movie? I mean, you know better than I. I don't know if it's on her radar yet.

Was she old enough for Gaga? She's all about these Netflix movies movie? I mean, you know better than I. I don't know if it's on her radar yet. Was she old enough for Gaga? She's all about these Netflix movies now. I mean, I'm with her. I will say Netflix, they win all the awards. The Netflix algorithm is incredible. I talked about this on the Take and Rewatchables that Shay and I did that's not up yet. What they've done, what they've figured out, that people like my daughter, who their number one stop is Netflix, What they've done, what they've figured out that people like my daughter, who are their

number one stop is Netflix. And now they have direct programming for them with love triangles and people their age are close. And it's just genius. Let me just go ahead and say, Zoe's not alone on that. It's also direct programming for me. Yeah. Set it up.

Yes. How about my wife? You're talking about a 40 year age range of this is catnip. Because it's just they don't make movies like that anymore. And they're easy and pleasant to watch. Uh-oh, these people aren't supposed to date. Right. Oh, no.

Now they like each other, but he doesn't know. It's great. I wonder if he's going to find out in the wrong way. I watch that story every time. Oh, my God, he did. The history of movies is based on that. Make them forever. This might not work out.

Uh-oh, there's a dance. Maybe it all makes sense. It's the best. I love it. You just do it 19 different ways. Yeah. Amanda made a list at work of all the employees that she thinks are attractive. I didn't do that.

The list got out. I didn't do that. HR, I didn't do that. The intern saw it. Actually, it would be Nephew Kyle. Make a list? No, Nephew Kyle rom-com. Oh.

Nephew Kyle makes a list. If I found your list, I wouldn't tell anybody. Thank you so much, Kyle. Kyle, you make a list of your favorite ringer employees. It falls out of your pocket at the dark room. Oh. A bartender sees. The list gets in the wrong hands.

They think it's somebody else's list. A girl thinks somebody else. I mean, how many times can we make this movie? Every time my wife watches it's somebody else's list. A girl thinks somebody else. I mean, how many times can we make this movie? Every time my wife watches it. I watch them too. So many people do. This is the thing. It's that sometimes you just want something easy to watch. And for a long time, TV didn't figure that out and movies didn't figure that out or they figured out in a certain way, which is like action movies or superhero movies. And those appeal to certain people, not to others. And so Netflix figured it out. I feel like- Set It Up was really the turning point for them. It was like clearly the algorithm

sped out the script from some supercomputer. And they were just like, fine, two young stars. Here's the premise and just go. And we need this in nine months. Yes. Bang it out. It was great. I loved it. It's been watched. Set it up, Kissing Booth and To All the Boys I've Loved Before.

Yeah. It's like the holy trilogy in my house right now. My daughter's just throwing it on. I'm taking out in my house. It's set it up To All the Boys I've Loved Before. And then you're going to roll your eyes at this. But for the adults, they basically made a... It's a World War II British one, but a love triangle. So it's Glenn Powell's also in that one.

And Michelle Wiesman, a.k.a. the really hot guy from Dario from Game of Thrones. Oh, okay. And Matthew Goode from The Crown. Yeah. And then Lily James, who was in Mamma Mia 2. This is a World War II love triangle? World War II love triangle.

What channel is this on? This is on Netflix. Oh, my daughter would watch this in two seconds. It literally goes from To All the Boys I've Loved Before straight into, it's called the Guernsey Potato Peel,

I don't know, Guernsey Potato Peel something. Find it on Netflix. Glenn Powell's also in it. Wow. All three this month. It was incredible. Netflix could spin these movies off into a sub Netflix channel

and probably get an extra $4.99 a month from my family. Probably for me as well, yeah. If they just produce one new one a month. I was going to say a week. If you want $4.99 a month from me, you got to set it up once a week. But you could do it. How hard is it to pump out rom-coms? You could do it.

I mean, it was very hard for Hollywood for a long time, apparently. Well, because they didn't make money anymore. No, I know. But they're making money for me. Now it's thrillers, action movies, and rom-coms. Yeah. Just keep making them. Somebody's kid got taken.

Right. Something's wrong. There's a chest in the attic and somebody shouldn't have opened it. Somebody's in love with somebody at work and somebody else found out. It's like, you can do this all day. My friend Tendo just got the job

running films for Netflix. Oh, right. And I'm going to take him out to lunch at some point and just write down on a cocktail napkin the three premises. Just be like, dude, just bang these out for six years. You're good. Can't wait.

Just do it. Anything else? So Stars Born is our number one favorite movie that we're most excited about. Anything else this fall? I'm excited about First Man. You know about that one? No, what's that? Damien Chazelle of La La Land fame.

Okay. It's about Neil Armstrong. Oh yeah. Starring Ryan Gosling. It feels Oscar-y already. My girl, Claire Foy. It's Claire Foy season. Okay yeah. Starring Ryan Gosling. It feels Oscar-y already. My girl, Claire Foy. It's Claire Foy season. Okay.

Claire Foy from The Crown. Kyle Chandler's also in it. Oh, coach. Corey Stull. Do you remember him? Yeah. He's in it. House of Cards, dude.

From House of Cards, yeah. He's in it. I don't know. It looks great. The trailer, there was a new trailer this week. First Man, good title. First Man, yeah, very good. It got great reviews at Venice.

I'm most excited for the Halloween remake, but that's a form of sickness that's been in my life, you know, my entire life. I think that's good. Listen, it's good to have things you're excited about. Yeah, I can't wait. I'm so excited. 40th anniversary, Jamie Lee's back. Very exciting. Amanda Dobbins, a pleasure as always. Bill, thank you. You're a star that was born in the ringer offices. That means so much to me. Thank you. Let's talk about MyBookie. People always ask me for advice. Usually it's what team to bet on this week or what team not to bet on sometimes. In my case, when I'm ice cold.

The truth is, I don't know who's going to win. But if you think you know, check out MyBookie. Trust me, they're the best bet for this season. They've been in business for years. They have great reviews online. Their mobile site is easy to use. Not to mention, they have in-game live betting and the most rewarding player perks in the business. Plus, for you fantasy guys out there, We'll be right back. the promo code Bill Simmons when creating your account to claim up to 1,000 in free play. That is my bookie, MY bookie. And don't forget to use the promo code Bill Simmons when creating the

account to claim the bonus. You play, you win, you get paid. All right, Laura Wasser is here. I have no idea how this is going to work because you can barely say anything, but I'm going to make it work. I'm good. I have 12 years of podcasts. You'll be surprised. I can say a lot. I put in my 10,000 hours of Gladwell training for this. You're the Disso Queen. Evidently, that's who I am. How did that happen? How'd you get that nickname? You know, I think that Harvey Levin, the guy from TMZ gave me that nickname. Was it flattering or derisive? No, I think he meant it to be flattering. There's so many other queeny things I feel that I could be, but I'm the so queen. So you are a, you're the most famous celebrity divorce lawyer, I would say, but you are also

a famous lawyer. There's a couple in New York guys that are like pretty famous. I don't know. I don't know. Do you have competition? Again, that's a dubious honor. There's a couple of New York guys that are pretty famous. I don't know. Really? You have competition? Again, that's a dubious honor. It's like being the most famous embalmer of dead people or something. Who wants to be the most famous divorce lawyer? Well, that's mostly what you do, though. Here's what I aspire to do.

Are you ready? Tell me how you want to be presented. I don't even care how I'm presented. What I want to do is change the face of divorce. I want to change how I'm presented. What I want to do is change the face of divorce. I want to change how divorce is presented. And I don't want it to be like, I'm coming in going, divorce is great, rah, rah, get divorced. But I do want it to be like, if this is happening, let's do it in a way that's a little bit more amicable and cost effective so that people can co-parent, move on

with their lives. So it's not so debilitating. Divorce has been going on for a really long time, four or five generations. Why is it still stuck in the dark ages in terms of how we perceive it, in terms of our legal system, in terms of the court system? I mean, I was there three times last week on the same case. We never got heard because it's so clogged up. It's that clogged up? Is that just a California thing? I don't think so. I think that it's worse here than it is in other places, but I've heard of it happening in other places as well. And then you do get heard by a judge and you get some decision. And again, these judicial officers are brilliant, wonderful people, but with 15 minutes to read a

file, how do they know what's best for your kid or your finances? And so plenty of times people walk out of the courtroom going, how did that just happen to me? I totally got screwed here. And I had to pay you, lawyer, to sit there for six hours before we got heard and through lunch, and nothing even happened. So I figured there had to be a better way.

So maybe you're a divorce guru. Maybe that. How's that? You like that better? Yeah, the diso guru. Maybe that. You like that better? Index card. What made you get into this field? Are you a child of divorce? I am a child of divorce, but my parents didn't get divorced until I was like 16 or 17. But my dad's a divorce lawyer. He was like the divorce lawyer. So I actually- Oh, he's from previous generations? Yes. Surprisingly, I went to work for him, which I never thought I would do.

I mean, I never thought I'd be a lawyer, let alone be working with my father and now working, you know, being the managing partner at his firm. Yeah. But that happened. So it happened actually because I got divorced. And that's what made you get interested in it? Well, I mean, it was more of a necessity than an interest. I was 25. I have been married for a year. My ex and I were still really good friends, but we were probably

way too young to ever get married. It was a hell of a wedding though. Yeah. Johnny was there. We had a lot of fun. We just forgot to talk about things like religion or finances or children or anything like that. Yeah. Like at one point we were talking about maybe getting back together and he goes, oh, when we get back together, you will change your name. And I was like, what? We never even discussed that. It bothers you that I kept my name. So again, as I say to all of my clients who are getting divorced, as I say to the users of It's Over Easy, which is the website, which hopefully we'll get into at some point. But communication, you have to talk. If you want to get married, you have to talk. Talk about the things that might go into a prenup. And if you don't need a prenup,

talk about them anyway. Talk about what's happening during your relationship, your marriage, so that you communicate and it doesn't get like pushed down, resentment, resentment, resentment, and you go out and do something stupid. And then if it doesn't work, then communicate. Because again, maybe you'll be a better communicator with the person that you are raising kids with, even if you're not sleeping with them every night than you were during your marriage. I was just on the phone with the father of my 13-year-old

because I called him and I said, I need to have my back here. My 13-year-old just told me this and he said this and da-da-da. Oh, they're such liars at age 13. I know. They're the worst. Middle of doing this podcast, he took a tone with me.

And my ex was like, I'm on it. I mean, how great is that? So wait a second. Your 13-year-old took a tone with you? He took a tone with me. And that was like an unusual moment? It was. My 13-year-old is taking a tone all the time these days.

Is your 13-year-old a boy or a girl? She comes on the podcast and she's a sweetheart. Everybody likes her. They don't see the other side of her. Or they come, they go to somebody else's house and I get the text saying, oh, your kids, they're so polite. They're so wonderful. What kids are those? Just wait. I am a child of the worst. My parents separated when I was, I think, nine and a half. Okay. And how was that? That's a terrible age.

It's really, you find out later that's the number one worst age because you're just kind of smart enough to know what's going on, but just dumb enough to think everything's your fault. Yes. No, it's just you're getting into a certain time in terms of friends and socializing. That's a horrible time. People say to me all the time, should I stay together for my kids? And I always say no.

But again, maybe if your kid's nine and a half, you should maybe wait it out another year. Both of the kids I have, I, their dads and I split when each of them was two. That must be like my sell by date. And neither of them really know much else than having parents in separate homes and all that. And then again,

if your kids are older, it also is a little bit easier because at a certain point they become, as we were saying, teenagers and they're the center of their world and they don't really care too much about what's going on with their parents. Again, as long as the parents get along and as long as the parents are a united front, as long as the parents go, look, we're still a family. That's really hard to do though. I was actually pretty fortunate for the most part, but I think I can see how it would

go when the parents start using the kid to really try to hurt each other's feelings, which I'm sure is something that you've been dealing with for 25 years now. Yes. Yes. And it's the number one divorce issue, right? I think it's the number one divorce issue. I mean, then fold money into that equation somewhere. Most people come to me and say like the most important thing is my kids. And, and a lot of them these days, which is one of the reasons we came up with the website, come in and go, we already got the kids. We're working with a co-parenting therapist. We figured out the schedule. We just need you to kind of write it up. We need your help with the support and dividing assets and that kind of stuff. So I thought to myself, if people are doing this on their own by virtue of

mediation, if we give them a template for what might work for kids that are your kids' ages and what's going on with them, whatever, could they work these things out? And then could, if we gave them a template and the law and what works out for dividing your assets, for paying child and spouses, where could they do that? So it's almost like a form you fill out that anybody could do. Yeah. And so editsovereasy.com, that's the name of the website. But the reason this didn't exist is because lawyers made so much money from divorces. I don't think that's the only reason why it didn't exist.

It's one of the biggest reasons. Yeah, like I've like cracked the big code here. So the other lawyers must hate you. They don't because here's the thing. All of us have two or three calls a week from somebody going, hey, my assistant's getting divorced or my nanny's brother. These are lower income individuals. You can't afford to pay my $850 ridiculous an hour.

Okay. So now I have to find out. I don't have to pay that right now. You don't have to pay that. This is free. Okay, great. I mean, do I get like a water or something? Yeah, you get a water right there.

Nice fall and spring for you. It's almost like $850. That's a very small bottle of fall and spring. I saw your big bottle. Well, some people get intimidated by the giant smart waters. Not me. Okay. I don't. Are we going to get you a smart water? So, but in any event, yeah. So people can do it on their own. Why wouldn't they want to? Like in 2013, I wrote a book called, It Doesn't Have to Be That Way. And we had like a resounding response of like, thank you for telling us this. We just want the,

what to expect when you're expecting want the, what to expect when you're expecting of divorce, what to expect when you're divorcing. So that book did it a little bit. Then we created it's over easy. So people can go online. It's over easy.com. It's over easy.com. Not only can you go on eggs, not for eggs, not only can go on and like do your divorce and get the forms all done in a better way than any, there are some form providers out there. You can click and you get all the forms, but they're really hard to fill out. So we have me in like a pop-up that says like, hey guys, so you'll see on this form, which is the petition for dissolution of marriage, date of separation. I mean, most people will hopefully will know their

date of marriage, but the next one is date of separation. So then I pop up and I say in California, the date of separation is blah, blah, blah, blah. So we give them the law so they can apply it to themselves, fill out the forms, work through it, mediate their divorce themselves and do it for either 750, 1500, 2500. Now that's a pretty good saver. And you still get your high profile, big money celebrity clients. So you can juggle both sides of the business. I've been juggling. There's not a lot of sleep happening, but there is a lot of juggling happening. You're in the news every once in a while. I know.

There's like seven. You're not allowed to talk about it. We can't talk about your clients. We can't talk about my clients. It's not, they're not that interesting. Can you talk about your dad's clients? No, I'm not. I can't talk about any clients of the firm.

Would you want me to talk about you if you were a client? No, I would not. You'd be horrible. I would not. But let's go through a hypothetical. So a celebrity comes to you. Yes you and says, I'm getting divorced from this other celebrity. We're together. How do you keep it from A, getting out? How do you keep the documents from, because the

like TMZ place like that, they have the sources in the courthouse. The moment anything goes in, they just have the entire document. So what's your process for being discreet? My process for being discreet is one that I've worked of many years to develop, which is basically get everybody on the same page. We can kind of avoid the media if everyone's on the same page. I have had divorces where I've done the entire divorce before anything was filed. Then it's done. So the incentive for them to be on the same page is if they have kids. And especially if they have a kid

who's somewhere between 10 and 14 who actually can Google the stuff. Correct. That's when you can lay the hammer on them. I think that's- You don't want this to go this way. And I think that's part of it. But I also think, look, if they're a public persona,

even if they don't have kids, don't they kind of want to keep their stuff to themselves? I mean, do you really want everybody reading about every single thing that's going on in your life? No. So yes, for sure. With kids, more of a priority. Certainly, if you don't have kids, similar priority. If you've got any kind of partnership interest, a lot of celebrities will be co-producers on movies that they're working on or screenplays or whatever. You want to be able to facilitate that continued working relationship too. And it's totally possible. It's just a matter of, like I said,

not letting the media stir it up. So the issue for you would be if it's contentious. Yes. And if one side was like, F that person, I'm just, I'm going in for the kill. I'm going to start leaking stuff. And I'd like to get some more publicity for myself is also part of it too. So how do you navigate that? One person may be less famous. We do the

best we can. I mean, it's become pretty evident who's leaking stuff, which side it's coming from these days. Yeah. So that's part of it. And you know, the other part of it is, look, there's always going to be, we just did one article on the blog that I wrote called co-parenting with an asshole. There's always maybe the possibility that your spouse is not going to be so easygoing about it. You want to give it time. You want to do things at the right moment. There's always a point, I think in every case where there's the settlement point, you kind of know when that's going to be. And that's when you want to go in for the settlement. If it's right at the beginning and emotions are running high, or somebody just started dating somebody else, or somebody introduced the kids to the new boyfriend or

girlfriend, not a good time to settle it. But if things are kind of calm. Or if somebody's with the nanny. Somebody's with the nanny, not a good time to settle. Yeah, that's a bad one. The nanny's there every day. To the nannies out there,

because I've never said this. Really? Yeah, come on, nannies. Come on. I don't know, except for one instance where a nanny ever had like a longstanding relationship with the person after they got together. You are a pawn in this game, Nanny.

Don't go there. Bad karma. All pairs too. All pairs too, yes. So how do you think it happens where the court, where, how is it legal for a courthouse to have a document and give it to Harvey Levin? Because it's public.

I mean, it's Harvey Levin. I'm assuming he's not the one going down there. It's a public document. So he just has somebody in the courthouse. That as soon as something's filed, they get it. Yeah. And it's not illegal to give it to them. Now, there are some things in some cases, but only regarding custody that will be sealed.

So you can't get them, but they get those too. I mean, you know, you really have to be careful what you say, because if people are interested in reading it, they're going to read it. And what happens if there's, so I would assume more and more people have prenups, right? Or is that, or is still people don't get that? A lot of people don't get it. They're not very romantic. They don't want to deal with it. I am a big proponent of prenups, not because I make money writing prenups. I don't need that. What I need is the knowledge that people are having conversations before they get married, having that communication.

Like I said, with me and my ex, we never talked about kids. We never talked about religion. We never talked about money. People get married. They have a wedding, gorgeous big Hollywood weddings, right? And so you got your cake. They plan that.

They got, yeah, that's right. And they plan it and they have contracts. They have contracts for the venue. They have contracts for the band. They have contracts for the band. They have contracts for the for the dressmaker and the cake and all of these things. But they're entering into a contract with each other when they get married and they don't even know what the terms are. I have people that have been married 25 years and they come in and say, wait a minute, I have to pay him support or I have to split my pension with her or this screenplay that I wrote during our marriage.

She owns half of that. Yeah, dude, that's the law in California. You might want to think about that before you get married. You got your entertainment attorney reading every provision of how many two, you know, first class tickets you get to Austin. Right. No one's figuring out what the law is when you get married. And California is 50 50, but not every state is that. Not every state is that. I think there's only nine community property states we're're rolling out into, right now it's over easy. See, I'm bringing it back. It's only in California and New York. And we're rolling out into eight to 10 other states

by the end of this year, beginning of next year. And so we really are, New York's not community property. It's equitable distribution, California is. But there are still laws that attach to somebody in an equitable distribution state when you've done something or earned something during the marriage. What is the best state to get divorced in? Depends. Are you the person that has all the money?

Oh, that's a good question. I guess there's too many variables. Well, there's like- Everybody says California is the worst and California and New York are like the two worst, basically. That's because California and New York are the two highest in terms of child and spousal support payments. For example, I have a client who's sometimes here, sometimes in Nevada.

In Nevada, the child support is capped at like $1,300 a month, and that's for super high earners. We have people that come here specifically for the point of giving birth here. Let's say you get knocked out by an NBA player. Come to California, ladies. What, an NBA player would knock someone, what?

If you're here for six months and you can establish residency and you're raising that kid here, you're getting big, big money. Well, there was an NBA star, Blake Griffin. It just came out he was paying $3 million a year in child support, which seems high. It seems like that's not true, actually.

That seems like a lot of money. You don't think that's true? That seems like a lot of cash. I know that's not true. Because he's making like 30 million bucks a year. California has a reasonable need standards for high earning parents and children. And so you have to look at what the children's reasonable needs would be. And you and I have children. What are reasonable needs? Again, reasonable needs in California can be a lot higher than they can be other places.

I get that. But those numbers that you read about Mr. Griffin are just incorrect. My son, all he needs is a PS4, three pairs of underwear, those long cheese strings in the fridge. What else does he need, Kyle?

I think he covered it. Shoes and pair of shoes. Oh, Nikes. He likes Air Jordans. He's not like into Supreme or- No, I think he could get by with like 5,000 a year. My daughter would be a little pricier. She'd price it. Now, really amp it up and think about what a baby needs.

Yeah, that's tough. No. Well, you need the nanny for the baby. Not if you don't have a full-time job, you don't need a nanny. Well, I'm saying if you're married to a rich person. Right. But now you're not with the rich person anymore. And you're just the mom or dad. That's the primary caretaker of the child.

And you don't have a job, but you're getting tax free support every month. You still need a nanny? No. Okay. Just checking. I understand the no prenup thing. I do too.

It's not a fun conversation to have. I don't have one. Okay. I never would have. I just wouldn't have at that point, like why get married? That was, that was my attitude. Like if we're going to, if we're already going to legalize what's going to happen, if this falls apart.

Right. Let's not get married. Well, then you guys have a good partnership and I hope that you stay together for a long time. Well, who knows? I mean, I get, I just want Kyle in Kyle. If we ever get divorced, I get it. You get Kyle? Well, Kyle's on her side.

Oh. Yeah, definitely Kyle. So you mean you want to give Kyle to her? No, he'd be a negotiating point. I see. He could be the mediator. Maybe he could. Yeah.

That would be good. No, but I don't know. I can see the case for somebody being like, we can't do this. We can't have a prenup. I'm not getting married then. And then the other person folding and then all of a sudden they're on prenup. That's actually a TV show plot. That does happen. You'll see that in TV shows sometimes. Okay. But then it'll always be the person had ulterior motives because it's usually like a lifetime movie or something. Right. I would say that if one person proposes the prenup and the other person vehemently is opposed, I would be worried. Kyle's shaking his head. Kyle agrees with me.

That's smart. Remember that advice, Kyle. I'm just happy you're not bringing up anything else. Yeah. Okay. Kyle, we had some relationships. And here it goes. He's not married though. Okay. We're trying to, yeah, we're trying to intervene. What is your life like?

Because you're in all these cases and you have all this information with all these famous celebrities. And you're at dinners and stuff. And that must be the number one thing people ask you, right? Like you were involved in the, we can say you were involved in the Angelina Jolie, Brad Pitt divorce recently. And you're at a dinner. People must bring that up to you every time, right?

And most of the time, people that I'm having dinner with know that I'm not going to talk about it. Luckily for me and more luckily- They're hoping after like two glasses of wine, maybe you start spilling. No, it'd be more than two, but I mean, that's happened, but I haven't spilled. The thing is, most of my friends know I'm, and hopefully my clients can rest assured that I'm incredibly self-absorbed. So I usually don't remember very much about their cases or their finances. And I certainly don't want to talk about them at dinner.

So it doesn't, you know, it really is, it is rather unseemly in my opinion to either gossip, which would be at a dinner party or capitalize, which it would be on your show or other television shows or interviews, on somebody else's difficult time. That's just not my thing. Do you feel like a divorce is happening,

but they haven't, and then they come to you, but you have this whole history just as a fan of the two celebrities, and the wrong person came to you, and you're like, I wish it had been the other one. Does that ever happen? That has happened.

It'd be like if Red Sox versus Yankees and I had to root for the Yankees for like a weekend or something. So that has happened. So then you just do your job. You put your head down. Sometimes. I mean, look, I'm really lucky.

Usually it's not somebody that just calls me. Their person, their representative will call the office. We have to do a conflict check. And there have been times where my assistant has said to me, so-and-so's manager called, wants to have a meeting. And I will say, wait for the spouse. Let's drag this along. Not drag it along. Let's just see. Has he or she retained anybody yet? I mean, I, you know, I'm lucky that I can pick and choose. So I would rather, you know, choose. So you have a cap. How many do you, how many, is there like a number where you're like, I don't want to go over this

number in terms of how many we take, how many clients you have? Yeah. Well, I mean, even right now I am absolutely inundated because I'm spending so much time with It's Over Easy. And we do a podcast as well, as I told you, called The Divorce Sucks Podcast with Laura Wasser. So that's really- I didn't know that. Yeah. I'm going to have you come on my podcast. The Divorce Sucks. I'm not getting divorced. I'd be a bad guest. You don't have to get divorced. I just talk about how my parents got divorced.

You could talk about that. You could talk about how to make the relationship work for all these years. It doesn't only have to be about divorce. When Johnny came up with the idea to have the podcast, it was like, let's have professionals in this area. Let's have normal people and let's have celebrities. You'd be in the third, just so you know. So you'd be talking about relationships, marriages, new chapters, child rearing, money, vacations, all those kind of things on our podcast.

Is it true that some people get divorced right before the 10 year mark in California? We've seen that with celebrities. Is that, I never know if that's an urban legend or not, where like they don't want to hit the 10 year mark. So they'd file it really quickly. It's not an urban legend. There is some truth in it. However, many of the cases you've heard it ascribed to, it's just a misnomer. Yeah. Yes. there is something in California that is not a bright line rule that says if you've been married for more than 10 years, that is considered to be a long-term marriage. Now that can sometimes be nine and a half years. And sometimes an 11-year marriage can be considered not necessarily a long-term marriage.

All it has to do with is support generally. And again, no rule or statute about this. If you've been married in a long-term marriage, which is generally about 10 years, then you will pay support for more than half the length of the marriage. But if it's like eight years, you get support for about four. Again, none of this is a bright line.

And some of the cases that you've read it about where one person either goes running in right before 10 years, it turns out that those people had prenups anyway. So the 10-year thing wasn't going to be an issue, but everyone likes to make a big deal about it. What about palimony? What about palimony? Because I remember when I was a kid, Lee Marvin. The Marvin versus Marvin. And then do you remember Billie Jean King? Yeah. That was one of my dad's case. I guess we can't talk about my dad's clients. That was Dennis Wasser did that case. Well, the good thing about

that case is that you could realize that same-sex couples have the same shitty issues that we have when it comes to breaking up. In terms of a Marvin case, people say to me all the time, oh, well, common law marriage. I've lived with him for seven years. I've lived with him for 10 years. There's no such thing as common law marriage in California. Living with someone for a certain period of time doesn't automatically make it so that you're married. There you go, Kyle. You're good there, Kyle.

But what could happen is you could find yourself in a Marvin case, which is a palimony claim, which has nothing to do with family law. This is a civil contract case where one person says he or she promised, made a contract, either oral or implied, that he would take care of me forever, that everything he earned was half mine, blah, blah, blah. And you don't even have to present any real evidence for that? To win, you do. So you can- They're not very well received by civil courts. You would need a document. Well, people, you'd need a document

or you need some real hardcore evidence just besides the fact you were living there. What would happen a lot was in the same-sex community, people would come in with palimony cases and say, we couldn't get married. So he promised that he'd take care of me. Now that same-sex couples can get married, you have less of those cases.

Because the thought is by judges, and these cases sometimes have juries, if you wanted to be treated like you were married, you would have gotten married. Right. So clearly the fact that- But the same-sex thing's interesting though, because if they couldn't get married,

then that's, now that's wide open for anybody. Yep. I don't like palimony cases. To me, it's kind of like, if you were going to get married, you should have gotten married. Don't come back later and go, oh, well, I thought we were married.

No, you didn't. So you just swat the palimony cases away? Well, I try- That's beneath me. That's beneath me. Look, I am just, I believe that adults make decisions and make deals and should be people of their word. I also don't love it when someone comes in with a prenup and says,

I didn't know, I didn't understand. I didn't know what I was signing. You signed the prenup. You knew what you were signing. You just don't like the deal you made. Yeah. How long is a prenup? What do you mean? How long is it? What is it? Do you just print it out on the internet or does a lawyer have to do that? No, it's one of the reasons that we don't have prenuptial agreements on It's Over Easy because even though we like people to be able to do it yourself, we don't have them because you must have an attorney

in the state of California. Both parties must be represented. So you do need a lawyer. You can print one out and take it to a lawyer and the lawyer can go, yeah, it looks good. Pay me X amount of dollars and I'll sign off on it for you. But both parties must be represented in California

to have a valid prenup. What is the thing they have now where you can get the judge out of the courtroom, you pay extra for a judge so that it doesn't go public? Explain that one. It's retired judges, okay? So you can't get one out of the courtroom. What is that whole side of things?

We do it a lot. You asked like, how do you keep it quiet, whatever. We do it in my office or in one of the arbitration venues, which people that know family law have been judges for family law for many, many years. They retire. So they take themselves out of the system and they bill an hourly rate to come and either mediate or judge your case. Then you don't sit around waiting all day. Then you don't have the public involved. the courtroom. So it's like TSA for divorce. Yeah. Or clear even.

Well, yes. You get to skip the lines. Yes, you get to skip the lines. You pay more money for it. And again, being in the system has a lot of things that go along with it. Some people enjoy being in the system. They want to be treated exactly like everybody else.

These retired judicial officers are fantastic in that they've done it for so many years and they can say, if they're like mediating, I sat on the bench for 30 years. Here's what I would do if you came into my courtroom. And then people are like, whoa, okay, good point, good point. I would imagine the internet has made this a thousand times more complicated than when you started

because so many things can get leaked and put out there. And also the line of what is publishable has gone way, way down and message boards and basically everything that makes the internet lousy. Right. Only from a media standpoint has it made it more difficult. Again, I'm a lawyer. I'm not a publicist. I can say to people like, I don't think it's going to be great for your image if this is online. But at the end of the day, our judicial officers, California is a no fault state. The fact that so-and-so cheated on so-and-so or was at a club drunk or whatever, it doesn't really matter for my case. It matters for them, but it doesn't matter to me. But if it gets more contentious, that's bad for you, isn't it? Or you don't care?

No, no, I care because I want to keep it. I want to keep it level, but it's going to be contentious whether it's media or not media. I think for that people are going through a hard time. My job is to try to get them to focus on the legal aspect of the deal that we're going to make and get them out of it. And that's why we have It's Over Easy, which is a good thing about the internet because you can go online

and you can read about other people going through your situation. You can have our service providers from the index come in and tell you what spray tan you should get if you're going to be dating again, what dating app you should use, who can help you get insurance now that it's not available to your spouse. It is kind of goop for divorce. Have you ever been at the 11th and a half hour and the couple got back together and

that was it? Yes. How often does that happen? I've done an entire divorce judgment for a couple. It was done and they got back together and they've been happily together ever since. I mean, and again, neither one of them was motivated by finances because they both were going to be walking away with a lot. Have you ever done a divorce? You know them. I know them?

Yeah. Have you ever done a divorce and the couple got back together? And got married again? And got married again? Yes. Remarried? Yes.

A second marriage? A Richard Burton, Elizabeth Taylor. Yeah. Like one of those. They weren't mine. I was a little bit. Yeah. You really went for that one. So that's, so that happens.

I'm always amazed by that. I am too. You hit rock bottom and then you just rally back and you're like, you know what? On second thought, let's spend the rest of our lives together. There's a saying that my dad always says, which is second marriages are a triumph of hope over experience. Now apply that to second marriages to the same person. Super hope over experience. Have you been in a situation where a couple you were friends with

decided to get divorced and it became a race to ask you who, which, so you almost had to pick a side. Yes, but here's the thing. I made an agreement a long time ago with my exes that more than just friends, anybody that we ever had dinner with and anybody that's in any of either of my kids' school class, I don't represent any of them. I will refer them to other people. I will counsel them if they need help with mediation, as I've done with many of our couple of friends, but I will not represent a friend or even, like I said, a school, you know,

because I don't want my kid to be in school with one of the parents is like hating on me. Has there ever been a case that had so much publicity that you actually were like, I'm out, this is too much for me? No, that wasn't the reason that I've gotten out of cases that I've gotten out of that had to do with publicity. It's not my publicity. I mean, I don't like it, but I, you know, they don't care about me. They care about the people. Has there ever been a case that it was so contentious, you actually worried for the safety of one of the people and felt like you had to talk to the police about it? Yes, to the first part, but I never talked to the police.

I worried about the safety. I worry about the safety of clients often. One of our clients is currently in jail because after a settlement conference, his wife was killed in a parking lot, stabbed by someone that had been hired, which is all I can say about it. You don't know the people, but they're not famous, but yeah. Jesus. Yeah. Never are you more frustrated and hateful and vengeful than when you're going through a situation with someone who you know so well and used to love so much. Right. I mean, think about it.

And then kids are involved. Kids are involved. Money's involved. People often say it's about the kids, but a lot of times what happens is the kids they know are going to be fine. Now it's how much money am I going to have? What happens if somebody got divorced like four times? What happens?

And they already cut their pie up and then they cut it up again. And then a fourth time, how do you cut the money up? No, you cut it. You get divorced the first time and they get 50%. And then the second time and it's divorced, they get 50% of the 50%. So that's down to 25%. It's like one of those kids things where you keep dividing it up or remember what were the commercials where I told two friends and they told two friends and they told, that's what it's like. So yes, if it's a very wealthy individual starting out on divorce one, unless he or she is continuing to generate more income

and divorces three, you know, two through seven, at the end, it's just going to be a poor guy that got married. So you want to be the first wife, basically. Yeah. Well, you don't want to be fourth. No, you don't want to be fourth. Although some people don't make a, they don't really kick in until later. Second wife is probably like the sweet spot. I'm going to say. Second wife is the sweet spot. What about when the role reversal flip of the woman has all the money and you have the dude who's like some dancer they met on the tour. It happens all the time.

The guy who holds the boom mic on their set. And then that person's just going after it full. Yeah, that happens all the time. And that's often the person that won't take it out of the system. That's often the person that's looking for a little more publicity. You have to worry about some leveraging there. But here's another good one. Couple, they get married right out of college or graduate school.

They're both superstars. Yeah. And for whatever reason, wife kind of shoots to unbelievable superstardom and husband decides he's going to be a musician or wants to write a screenplay and basically spends most of the day in his underwear on the couch. Now they have a couple of kids. He's not a stay home parent. They still have a nanny and the housekeeper and everything else. He's still on the couch in his underwear. So 10 years hence, she comes to me. She says, I got to get this albatross off from around my neck. Can you help me out? I say, absolutely. We're going to split

everything you made over the past 10 years. We're going to pay him child support because he's going to have the kids by the time we're going to pay him spousal support. We're going to split your retirement accounts. And she goes, what? I thought I was getting the albatross from off from around my neck. And I said, I'm sorry. Did you think because you had a vagina,

you were going to be treated differently than the breadwinners from all of eternity? This is what all the guys have been bitching about forever. Read the contract. This is the deal. The albatross remains. Have you, so here's my, I have a theory. Let's hear it.

About when actors get married, actor, actress, and they're relatively the same career side, but then eventually one always ascends the other a little bit. And if they start out equal or they start out way up here and then one drops or the other goes up, I don't think it can last more than five years. And why is that? I won't tell you who the theory

is named after because you might have represented them. Okay. I don't know. I just think, I think it's a total ego thing. And do you think that is-

I think actors are competitive with each other. That's because of the nature of being an actor, you think? Yeah. I think it's too hard to stay together if they were equal at one point, but then one went up.

I once had a therapist tell me that every relationship has one flower and one gardener. And I was like, oh, that's so lame. But it kind of makes sense. Like you have the gardener that's watering and nurturing, and then you have the flower that's growing. If you have two flowers, who's watering? Can flowers really water each other? I mean,

I don't know. Especially when they're not in the same place. Yes. On location. Kyle, are you a flower or a gardener? I like to think myself of a flower, but I think I'm probably a gardener in my situation. Wow. We think about that. In your situation. So if you were in a different situation, would you be more of a flower? I think you need to let your flower flag fly. Wow. I just don't want you to be a pot. Or a hex. What are, rank these from wow this people represent

for how crazy the divorce could get. Actors, rappers, athletes, musicians. Well, rappers and musicians are the same. I have to put them in the same thing.

I don't find that they, I really do. I think that my rapper clients and my musician clients, in terms of how crazy it could get, I'll put it this way. I can't rate that, but I can say this. My athlete clients are really good soldiers, okay? I don't meet with them. Because they're used to being coached. They're used to being coached. I text them. We text almost exclusively my, my, my athlete clients. They do what I say and they are,

they let me be their coach. One of them even called me doc because yeah. So that's what, they're great. My musician clients are definitely more emotional about things. I know everything about my musician clients, like weird sexual proclivities, who they slept with, what they did. It's like they, I don't know if it's the touring or the music. And again, it also varies between like drummers versus lead singers or whatever,

but very, very sensitive, but also like nice people and really do want to do the best. Actors, there's a wide array because there's a bunch of different personalities in acting. And also you never know who you're going to get. If someone's in one role, he or she can be totally different that month

than from another one. I like actors that are a little more seasoned because they know how to deal with media. Actors that are parents, I find more easy to work with because they really do prioritize kids. Once you become a parent, you kind of get the gist of like,

it's not always all about me. Some of them, maybe not. But for the most part, young actors, that's when it can get crazy. Have you, have you, what is the word? Represent? Have I represented? Yeah. Is that the right word?

Yeah. What's the right verb? Those are my clients. I represented. Yeah. Have you ever represented an actor who is gay, who married somebody as beard and then they broke up, but they had to keep it quiet that, that it was a beard relationship or is that all just stuff that's on the

internet? It doesn't actually happen. I don't even know. I haven't had a client. I know. Well, yeah. I mean,

no, that's never happened to me. I've never, I know what you mean, but I feel like that's something that would have happened like with Rock Hudson back in like, you know, I think it did happen. No, that's never happened to me. I've never, I know what you mean, but I feel like that's something that would have happened like with Rock Hudson back in like, you know. I think it did happen with Rock Hudson. It probably did. No, I've never had anyone come to me and go like,

by the way, I'm secretly gay and we just don't want anyone to know. What has been the biggest high profile gay divorce since we've had gay marriage? Has there been one? I feel like we haven't had our signature one yet. No, I will say this. Do you want this water?

Did you have any of it yet? I didn't touch it. Okay. I would have still drank from that. No, I want you to have it. Then you can take it home. That's my parting gift to you. Thank you very much. Yeah. I don't, I'm trying to think. It hasn't happened. We're due. It's going to happen. The reason, so. Do you think that trying to think. Hasn't happened, we're due. It's gonna happen. The reason, so.

Do you think that perhaps gay people, gay and lesbian people may have, A, more respect for the institution because there was such a fight to get there. And B, may even if they do end up getting divorced, may feel like they're not gonna play it out through the media like we heteros have done for so many years because they're just smarter than that it out through the media like we heteros have done for so many years

because they're just smarter than that? Is that too broad of a generalization? I think there's way less gay celebrities. Right. That could be the case. Yeah. I mean, in sports, there's really no high-profile one at all. There's no one yet. Actors, actresses, even if they were gay, I think a lot of them wouldn't even be public about it.

Right. So that's probably why, you know, it's interesting. I told some people you were coming on and, and I was like, but you can't talk about our clients. It's privileged.

They were like, how are you going to get a pot out of there? And I'm like, I think divorce is interesting. I'm a child of divorce. I think what, 50% of people get divorced. It's this thing that's in our lives all the time,

but nobody ever talks about it. It's just kind of over here and it's unseemly. i don't feel like it should be unseemly i don't either it's kind of like being i know i likened myself before to an embalmer but it's more like being and again i don't think i'm an oncologist i don't think i'm saving the world like oncologists do yeah if you have cancer you need to go to an oncologist it's not like oncologists are going out there hoping for people to get cancer. They want to help. If you are getting divorced, we at It's Over Easy and we at my law firm

want to help you do it in a way that saves you money and saves you aggravation. That's all this is about. And I think to do that, to change the face of divorce, what am I, the diso guru? Diso queen. No, but we changed that during this podcast. No, you're just the divorce guru.

Okay. Sounds professional. So to do that, people need to educate them. Separation guru. There you go. Separation guru. Because it's not always divorce. I wasn't married to either of my two baby daddies.

But it was still painful when we broke up and we still had to navigate and communicate how to co-parent and financial issues and all that kind of stuff. So communication is key. Education is key. Learn about this stuff. Go online. Come to It's Over Easy. Read about the people that you may be able to get to help you through it. And communicate with your co-parent, particularly if you've got

kids. Absolutely. I say to people all the time, this is not a fender bender where you're never going to see this asshole again. This person is going to be in your life forever, not just so your kids are 18. I don't know about you. I walked down the aisle when I was 25. Both parents were there. I had two kids. Both parents were there in the, in the delivery room. Everybody's there. You got to, we all have Thanksgiving together every year. Both of my parents, both of their spouses, both of the fathers of both of my kids. I mean, you got to make it work. My step parents and my parents all like when I graduated high school, college, we're all together having dinner.

I think some people thought it was weird. Some people thought it was weird and they think it's less weird today because what I say to people is. Everything's less weird today. The more people who love your kids, the better. Why not? Why not have a bigger tribe? It's just another person you can call up and go, hey, I got an early court appearance.

Can you come watch my kid for a couple of hours? With that said, being a step-parent is, it's a tough one. It's a tough one, but it doesn't have to be. Kids are mean. I know I did some stuff. You're not my dad. Right.

A lot of that stuff. Right, of course you did. Don't talk to me like that. I forgot to ask you this. If, let's say a couple, a couple is together, they get married before the person hits it big. Person hits it big. Person hits it,

it hits a big, buys a sports team, has the sports team for 10 years, has like the Clippers. Then they get divorced. Does the wife get half of the Clippers? Did they have a prenup? No prenup.

And he bought the Clippers with money that he made during the marriage? Yes. It's community property. So why doesn't that happen more often? Why doesn't what happen more often? Where somebody gets divorced and the wife actually gets like half the team. That was part of the whole, don't you remember the Sterlings? She was going to get the team for a minute.

Yeah, but it didn't happen. Because they sold the team. Right. Because the team was about to take a dive. But that's the thing. But we haven't seen the situation where the guy's like, I'm not selling that to you. That's your TV show plot. I feel like that was the plot of First and Ten in the 80s.

Remember that? Okay, no. Either it was a divorce or the husband died. It was this football show that HBO had that OJ Simpson happened to be on. Okay. But yeah, it was a female owner that took over. Well, we see more female owners these days. Yeah, not that many.

Okay. Maybe it would be more fun if we had them. All right, so plug your book from six years ago, five years ago. The book is called, It Doesn't Have to Be That Way. The podcast is called, The Divorce Sucks Podcast with Laura Wasser. And most importantly,

the website is called, itsovereasy.com. If you have any questions, interest, anxiety about getting divorced, please come check us out. We want to change the face of divorce and we want to help out and we want to be there for you. So it's over easy.com. Thank you for having me. Who's your biggest rival? I don't have a biggest rival. Who would you have been the most mad if I had on a podcast that's on your corner? You have to have one. I don't. I want you to have everybody. I'm not just trying to be. That's not even it though.

Even if there were. The dissing queen has no competition. Even if there were, I'd want you to have them on the podcast. Unbelievable. Thank you for coming on. Thank you for having me. All right.

Thanks so much to Robert Mays, Amanda Dobbins, and Laura Wasser. Thanks to ZipRecruiter. Don't forget to check them out. ZipRecruiter.com slash BS. Thanks to Starbucks Double Shot. Starts with bold Starbucks coffee, blended with milk for a smooth, creamy, delicious flavor,

enhanced with ginseng, guarana, and B vitamins. Listen, man, everyone needs energy from time to time. Nice to have in your fridge. Starbucks Double Shot, energy to do the things you actually do. Find it in your local convenience store. Don't forget about the Dave Chang Show with David local convenience store. Don't forget about the Dave Chang show with David Cho and myself. Don't forget about the rewatchables taken. Good luck.

Don't forget about that. Don't forget about football season. Guest Alliance coming up. Don't forget about the ringer.com. Drive safely this weekend. Labor Day. Don't go nuts. I want you to hear my Tuesday podcast. Be safe. Enjoy the weekend. On the wayside On the first side of the river I'm saying I don't have to ever