The Bill Simmons Podcast - The Next NBA MVP With Ryen Russillo and Kevin O'Connor, Plus John C. Reilly | The Bill Simmons Podcast (Ep. 426)

Episode Date: October 10, 2018

HBO and The Ringer's Bill Simmons talks with Ryen Russillo and Kevin O'Connor about who will be the Most Valuable Player in the NBA in 2019 (2:40) before Bill sits down with actor John C. Reilly to discuss his journey from the South Side of Chicago to the silver screen. Then they talk about working with the great Paul Thomas Anderson, 'Step Brothers,' 'Boogie Nights,' Reilly's new film 'The Sisters Brothers,' and more (32:30). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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with Kevin O'Connor and Ryan Rosillo. Who is winning in 2019? I have no idea. And then after that, John C. Reilly. I don't know how we got him. Been trying to get him for years. He finally came on a really great conversation about his career, Paul Thomas Anderson,

working with the Step Brothers crew, McCain Farrell, what it means to be an actor in 2018, all that stuff. That is all coming up next. First, Pearl Jam. All right. Hey, it's Bill Simmons. It's Kevin O'Connor.

What's up? We borrowed Ryan Rosillo. How is everybody? We're taping this for Wednesday's BS podcast. We're just doing MVP odds. 2019. This is the first year, fellas, in I don't know how many years that I have no idea who's going to win the MVP. I don't even have a really strong opinion.

But the last 24 hours, I feel like I'm forcing myself into one. But KOC, you start with us. Are you forcing yourself into Giannis? I feel like I'm forcing myself Giannis' way. Talk me out of this, Rusillo. into one but koc you start with us are you forcing yourself into yannis because he seems to feel like i'm forcing myself yannis's way talk me out of this riscilla it depends on what they do you know it's like when i started thinking anthony davis like anthony davis somebody the last couple years where i go you know what i really want to pick him i'm going to go on mike and mike and really stir the pot and then golic picked him and i was like oh maybe i'm now i'm not going to pick

him because it was like i thought i was doing he picked him this year no it was two years ago so then but then I started thinking about it like there's no way he's going to win as a seven and eight seed he's just that's not the way the voters work I think the most important thing to do when you try to figure out who's going to win the MVP MVP voters vote for the story over everything else and once you're kind of old news they're just not going to vote for you again when curry and those guys blew the 3-1 lead i was like he'll never i said it immediately on the radio show i got he's never going to win an mvp again it's impossible too because you'd have to compare him against an insane 70 plus one season so when i go through all this if we start with just yannis

good narrative is good story good story who else we're sick of these other guys okay fine but the bucks like they've got to be pretty good i'm not saying they have to be a one seed in the east but they have to be contending all year long at top for him to win it you know what he was just talking about this happened i did a whole chapter in my book about mvp and some of the biggest travesties they've had people get tired of people the voters get tired i one of the best examples ever was jason kidd remember that year it was like did my phone just do that yeah that's a cool noise though how do i like that noise i'm gonna get rid of that what alert is that remember that year jace it was like jason kater duncan who's the mvp and it was clearly duncan but people were making the jason

kidd case kidd finished second then the next year he was like ninth with the exact same season. Right, and they went to the finals again. Another one was Karl Malone in 97. That's what happened with James Harden this year. Where everyone talked themselves into Jordan, and then in 98 people were like, F Karl Malone, he's out. He's out of the family. We're not voting for him again.

Yeah, that was another example last year. That could be James Harden this year, right? I mean, he could put up essentially the same exact statistical season that he did last year, but i think there was hardened fatigue even before he won mvp i have hardened fatigue right now and he hasn't even played basketball in four months you know what i don't want to watch this here is four guys spread out as he does this thing for six months no watching it live is both incredibly impressive because you can't believe how efficient he is on shots that are still contested shots you don't know he's going to do but also watching it live is so boring because

you just go i'm incredibly impressed with what you do it's exceptional but it's also just like all right here we go i mean here's the thing i can't believe every vegas odds that have come out and i think the ones you sent us to us they have harden as the second favorite behind lebron i wish i could I wish I could I wish I could short that because there's no there's no way now it took him longer than people thought you know this whole argument that he should have you know won it against Westbrook I understand the one against Curry I don't side with but the last thing we saw from him was missing shots for four straight hours of game time yeah they're they're the voters are not going to vote for

him again after they just gave it to him so Hard is way too high on all these vegas odds for mvp he's fourth for what it's worst he's fourth it's lebron davis yannis harden hardens yeah the way it's formatted is oh yeah all right they did it left to right fourth is still too high so i should be ahead of him top five right now is lebron is basically plus 333 which is weird anthony davis plus 450 yannis plus 500 harden plus 650 kawaii plus 950 duran is it is 10 to 1 kawaii should be ahead of harden like that's my first one every time i've seen it i go no way kawaii should maybe be second or third because, as you mentioned earlier, the way voters vote, narrative matters. And with Anthony Davis, at best, what are Pelicans?

Six, seven seed at best probably, whereas Toronto, if Kawhi stays healthy over the course of the season, Toronto could push for the one seed. So one thing with him, changing teams. I can't remember somebody changing teams and then winning the MVP the next year. The furthest I go back, Moses Malone. Barkley.

And Barkley. So those are the two times in 35 years. You're talking about... Was that part of the kid narrative, though, of him coming? That's obviously part of why he finished second. It was a little bit. Also, that wasn't a good year.

There weren't a lot of good candidates. But Moses was the 12th best player of all time. Barkley's the 19th best player of all time. So for Kawhi to do that, you're talking about peak years from two of the best players ever. So Kawhi would have to go to Toronto. They won 59 games last year. That would have to bump up to like 63, 64. He would have to be first team all NBA. Right there I have an issue because is he a better forward than Durant or LeBron this year? Is he going to be first team all NBA over either of those guys?

If everybody's healthy it's hard to imagine that's going to happen. Can't imagine so 10-1 I think is nice value but you're betting on Toronto going like 67-15. And on him to stay healthy. No guarantee. There's a case to be made that Toronto actually could be better this year.

I don't personally see it, but I've heard the case. You think the win thing, though, would play into that? Like they have to have more wins and be the one seed for Kawhi to win it?

I think that'd be the one seed. Yeah. Or maybe even home court. Just think how 80 games plays out where if they just, it's the same record, but they're good. And we're like,

man, there's a toughness about them that they've never had before. Like we'd start saying some of that stuff. And I like the way I would look at this first is I would start with how,

you know, I don't, whatever direction you guys want to go in, but I would start figuring out like the narratives. I think we should cross off. Yeah.

And the narratives of how we'd eliminate guys. Like LeBron wins it if they're a higher seed than we expect. There's all these awesome stories every week. It's like, he's such a great teammate

and all these things. Josh Hart said he's changed his life. LeBron evolving his game, playing more off ball. Beasley's eating kale. Here's the case for LeBron. This is the most athletic team he's been on, maybe ever. You'd almost have to go back to the first heat season,

just that he had Bosh and Wade in their prime still. And that, you know, on fast breaks, remember some of those three-on-twos? And it's like, pfft. But for the most part, the last six, seven years, he's been surrounded by these shooters who aren't athletic. He doesn't have, like, guys who are above the rim, guys taking off.

I think they're going to play with pace. And he's got all these toys. He's got Lonzo as kind of his passing sidekick. Ingram running the floor. Kuzma running the floor. He's got Rondo out there thrown. I think that team's going to run and be fun. And that might invigorate them.

So I think that's the case. I mean, we've talked about this before. I think the Lakers are going to be really good this year. I do too. I think they could crack 50 wins. Their over-under is 48 and a half, which seems just... I almost feel like LeBron would have to get hurt for them not to get that. You know that you just said something, though, about them playing with pace

and how they keep saying it as if LeBron's been this guy that the offense is... Didn't want to do it. He wants to run this dissecting slow offense. So whenever I see this stuff of, oh, they're going to run, they're going to run, they're going to run this dissecting slow offense. So whenever I see the stuff of, oh, they're going to run, they're going to run, they're going to run. Okay, but he has to initiate that. I mean, that's on him. He's been really good at doing it the way he wants to do it.

But I think you would agree when you look at everywhere he's gone, he'd rather back it out and just figure out where you're helping. So far, though, this preseason, so far at least, he's been really an example of how to push the pace pace really moving the ball up the court either with his dribble or with the past outlining and when he doesn't have the ball actually sprinting up the court will he continue doing that we'll see but it's so maybe so far though he is as i so often do i'm gonna bring larry bird into this ryan you remember this You were a young pup in the streets of New Hampshire, wandering, looking for an Equinox, Vermont.

Where in New Hampshire or Vermont? No, back then, Connecticut or Mass. All right. So Larry Bird, last two years of his career, Chris Ford comes in and they're like, we got to get more athletic. We got to go fast. So they bring in, they drafted Brian Shaw.

They had Dee Brown. They had Rick Fox, Easy Ed Pinckney. And like, we got to get more athletic. We got to go fast. So they bring in, they drafted Brian Shaw. They had Dee Brown. They had Rick Fox. Easy had Pinckney. And like, we're going to run. We're going to run. We're too slow. It was like UNLV at the pro level. And Bird embraced it.

Bird's like, this is great. I have all these new toys. Let's go. And meanwhile, he's playing with like a 35-pound back brace. I think LeBron kind of wants to play this way. And this is the natural evolution of his career is easy baskets versus constantly doing this with the shooters around him. I don't think that makes sense for him. I totally buy it. I mean, LeBron had a pretty good quote recently where he said, you know, you look at all the young guys in this roster, it would be stupid

if we didn't play fast. So you still think he's full of crap. I've just seen so many athletes, not that I'm going to out Celtic you here, but do you remember how bad the last stretch was offensively with Pierce and Twan? Just how bad it was. It wasn't just their three-point shots and not so much the ones Pierce took, but like go back and look at three-point attempts all time in a season

and how many times Twan was up there before we had this explosion. Like Antoine shouldn't have had, but the other thing he did. He was the real seven seconds or less,toine but it was 28 shooting from three and the other thing is that like he and paul early on were big time complainers yeah so one of the bigger issues was is it never felt like twan was getting back or didn't want to push like he didn't want to push it as much even though he was this oddly talented player that's

if you looked at his paperwork now you'd be like anybody like this guy and he did not survive the advanced metric revolution very well so when he got traded back remember how weird that was they brought him back i liked it it was back for this little stretch he was going to be super up-tempo guy for a really short amount of time i remember watching it immediately because he was saying all the right things and even after a make he'd grab it run to the baseline and like inbound it to whoever and then just get and start running you're like what are you doing yeah this isn't it was this concerted effort to do that and i just think even though lebron's saying all the right things and it makes sense with that roster all that stuff i still think when he gets back to his comfort zone he's the guy that wants it 30 feet away

from the hoop do you think it's always work too so i'm not knocking it it's just i'll wait to see comfort zone like that because of the teams he was on because you gotta think how many different coaches though all the different coaches it's still always what he wanted to do but did he always want to do that or did they not have any other choice i guess is my question because initially it starts out wade and bosh and no other teammates and then they have to start adding these role players. Like they had Mike Miller initially, then Ray Allen and James Jones. And it's just easier to get those Eddie House types than it is to get athletes. Sure.

Goes to Cleveland. They bring in Kevin Love. They have Kyrie already. And then they're just bringing in vets because they're trying to win a title. This is totally different. To me, this is like maybe the kind of team he should have been on. And then you go back to the mid-2000s, late-2000s on Cleveland. They were always going old.

They're always like Antoine Jamieson, Ben Wallace, Big Jack, El Goss. Wally. He never had the right teammates. But in the All-Star game, it was always fun to watch him. Or even in the Olympics. Like, oh, man, look at LeBron having a great time. I think that's part of the commitment he made to LA, where he's allowing them to continue building with a young team

by not doing the one-on-one contracts where, yeah, they do have these young legs on the roster where they actually can play fast. But I do think, to your point, Ryan, LeBron has liked to play slow. It's always been his preference. But I feel like watching preseasonseason you can never read too much in the preseason but he is playing fast and he's made a consistent commitment after turnovers after rebounds and even after some makes to push the ball and play fast tempo and even in the half court he's playing at a fast tempo they're running him through off ball screens at times using him in

unique positions he's playing differently with this roster and that's been exciting to watch. Less power cleans. Less. He's been doing too. Right, no, he's slimming down. Okay, so I think we've nailed what the LeBron thing. He doesn't have to be a one seed. It just has to be fun.

It has to be deemed a success. That's pretty much it. I think he needs to get in the high 50s to win the MVP. You do? I think he has to be. I'd say four seed or higher. So I don't know what that'll be.

I think three seed, like 56 to 57 wins. Well, then I'm out. I think this season could be a year where we have an MVP that wins 48 games. Just feels like it could be that type of year. You think if the Lakers go 52 and 30, that's enough to win the MVP? What did Westbrook win that year? That could be the three seed.

Like 54, 55? What, the triple-double season that we cared about? The other one we didn't care about? God, remember those triple-doubles? I remember that one time in Memphis. Just was wanting him to get that 10th rebound so bad. They were up 28. He was just throwing it off the backboard against himself.

So Anthony Davis, we don't think he'd be high. The good thing that Davis has, I used to always think the Heisman we were growing up because there wasn't any. We just didn't have access to information. The good thing that Davis has, like I used to always think the Heisman when we were growing up because there wasn't any, we just didn't have access to information, is you had to have some sort of campaign. There had to be a carryover that you were on the radar

for you to even win the Heisman the next year. And now what's happened with all this information, and if you come into the season and college football is the favorite, then you're never going to win the Heisman. It's bad. Because the expectations for you, you're held to a different standard.

It's like a star is born right now in the Oscars. Absolutely. Yeah. You don't want to peak in October. Don't ruin the end. If I hear one more person say, oh my God, it's so... See? I almost did it to everybody here.

Millions. I keep hearing it too. It's like, geez, what a lost movie, man. What if Davis was awesome in New Orleans for three months and then got traded to the Lakers or Celtics and then took off even more? Nobody's ever won the MVP trading teams in the midseason i would say it's more realistic for him to get traded than it is for him to win the mvp

there's nephi kyle over there he's here in the flesh uh so i think we're all on the same page but at least he has the carryover hype from people starting to suggest he's he's one of the top three if not at the time when he's playing against portland everything you know we started throwing around stuff like he's the best player in the league if not at the time when he was playing against Portland and everything. You know, we started throwing around stuff like he's the best player in the league right now. Well, the stuff, the 45 and 20s,

the 47 and 17s, like that was insane. All right. I don't want to do Giannis yet. Harden, we're crossing off. We did. Are we writing off AD

too early though? From a statistical standpoint, if he's a defensive player of the year candidate, did it have to be a four seed? and if he's putting up ridiculous offensive numbers, he's going to. I mean, who else is scoring on that team? In a year where maybe, let's say,

the Bucs aren't what people expect them to be, or maybe the Lakers are like a sixth seed, I think there's a way for Anthony Davis to slip into that. They're breaking one of my rules, though. They're top four. I'm not sure three of the four can play together. I don't know if Meritage,

Randall, and Davis can be on the court in the last five minutes of the game together. Like who guards Jason Tatum or Brandon Ingram

in that situation out of those three guys? They're going to have Drew Holiday tackle that guy. Drew Holiday's going to have two by four. In the two games they face the Celtics

this season. I just think the West is too good and I think that Pelicans roster is too weird for them to get to a four seed. I got to say, I'm crossing them off. I'm crossing off Harden. I can't cross off Kawhi.

Kawhi should be higher. I think that's a good number there. If he's plus 950, I think that's a good bet. KD is 10 to 1. I don't see that hunger from him to win a second MVP. I don't see that hunger from him to win a second MVP. I don't. I see a hunger for him to be a huge global business person, to be a great player, to be on a great team.

I think he's doing five, six, seven different things. I don't see any of those seven things like I'm trapping myself in a gym and I'm winning the MVP this year. I don't see it. Do you guys see it? And not to mention last season, KD played hardcore defense for maybe two the MVP this year. I don't see it. Do you guys see it? And not to mention, last season, KD played hardcore defense for maybe two weeks.

For two months. Yeah, that's about it. He did it in November, December. He was going for defensive player of the year and then it stopped. And it's not only that, it's the fact that

Stephen Curry is on the roster too. Yeah. And those guys kind of cross each other out, I think. I think it's almost too cushy. That team. How are you comfortable six and a half months of it.

How are you comfortable enough? The guy turned 30 a couple weeks ago. Yeah. You are already ready to say that he's ready. I mean, just because he has the other interests, you think his focus, his hunger is not there. No, no, no. You feel comfortable saying that.

No, I'm not saying the focus, hunger isn't there. I'm just saying when you win the MVP, like when he he won in 14 he was like you're the real mvp when he went in 14 it was like i want to win the mvp that's the only thing on my mind right now this is like you're on this team that everything's things gonna make the finals you're out there you're doing all these different shows and you're traveling the world and all that stuff meanwhile yannis i just look at him compared to yannis it's like the beginning of rocky three yannis is just in the gym yannis is like i'm winning the mvp this year this sounds familiar it sounds like a montage he's like clubber lang he's just by himself

and then this doesn't sound like when the nerds clean the place up and paint it it sounds like a different 80s movie. He's got a real coach. He's got a real coach. He's going to play with pace. Did you see those pace stats? Oh, yeah. I put those in my article today. You put those in your thing.

Coach Buds. Top 10 almost every year. Look, if you tweet one more time about how excited you are about Buds' offense, be honest. Like, Bucks are going to get a restraining order on you. I've only tweeted it once. Retweeted it a couple of times. Really? Well, it was impactful. A couple retweets.

When you sent it out, I was like, hmm, that's something to think about. There's some stuff to like about the Bucs this year because Middleton's in a contract year. They went from the worst coach in the league to an above-average coach. Giannis is saying and doing all the right things, and they're in the right conference. They're in a conference where one of these teams is going to jump. And they're the best candidate, I think, to get to like a three seat.

Can I propose a conspiracy theory? Yeah. Double agent. Giannis? Eric Bledsoe. Oh. Clutch. LeBron.

Ooh. Like, hey, don't pass to Giannis a ton. We're one of the MVP. Oh, scale it back a little? Yeah. Double agent. Ooh. Like, hey, don't pass to Giannis a ton. We're winning the MVP. Oh, scale it back a little? Yeah. Double agent. Yeah. I like...

Can you rule it out? I like that you urinated on my KD is spread too thin with all these different things and now you're calling Eric Bledsoe a double agent for clutch. Bucks fans last season might agree with you.

Just saying at the end. Yeah. Here's Curry Durant probably it's just too they're both the best part on that team it's too hard to split I don't see either of them standing out over the other to a degree that one would win the MVP but the other wouldn't

like the Pac-12 vote Embiid you have to play 72 games they'd have to win 60 I don't think it's a terrible call i mean it's healthy there's other ones i have a better argument against i mean if he continues to be the guy and i think when you factor in the hunger the they should be really pissed off about last year because that was ugly in the playoffs they should be pissed off that people are counting them out this year

yeah so i i actually look at mb as somebody that I can, in my head, figure out that storyline a lot easier. There's less challenges there for him. He's not going to be held to a standard that he's already achieved. Okay, that's one. There's still a newness to this Sixers thing that's fine. Even though they won all those games, especially at the end of the year when everybody's trying to lose.

The fact they ended up being a three seed, but they didn't go far enough in the playoffs that you go, okay, this is this. I don't look at any part of them as any kind of disappointment because I was incredibly wrong because I just didn't think young teams that have never played together would have their kind of success. I thought they were sort of ahead of schedule.

It's still his team. The other superstar is a very passive, not to say that Simmons is like a beta guy, but he's willing to defer to Embiid because we don't really know what his offense is right now so i think there's a really easy way to figure like if we're sitting here halfway through the season going and beads dominating this league and he's totally healthy and they're a top two or top three seed in the east that's totally realistic from a talent standpoint you go down the rest of

this list and it's like westbrook ben simmons donovan mitchell damon lillard towns old depot i don't think westbrook will ever win another one. No, none of those guys. No, make the case for Kyrie, Ryan. So here's the thing. You look at Kyrie not playing, getting hurt, coming back. He's going to put up sick numbers. I understand that Tatum's development

will take away some of his opportunities. Hayward being back, that's fine. Horford might not take a shot the first month of the season. Right. So there's a lot of other guys that I know that can get in the way of Kyrie's numbers, but he's still going to be getting you,

I would imagine, 20 plus a game. It's Kyrie Irving. Yeah. And if they're the clear number one seed and it's this redemptive Celtics, because even last year

with them, you know, having the seeding that they've had the last couple years, all of us knew it was a really fluky Celtics team as far as like, wow, this is a great story. This is incredible. Are they really this good? If they're a juggernaut version of everybody being healthy and they're the number one team in the East

and it's clear like we all think they're going to come out of the East and the LeBron run is over and that Kyrie ended up winning the LeBron divorce in a way, which you could even argue he has. Well, no, he has to get out of the East for that to happen, so I don't want to go too far. But for him to be the ninth best odds, that to me is selling a Kyrie, the best version of the Kyrie story short. Well, and also if they're in one seed and they go 66-16,

and they're just the best team, somebody from this team is going to be an MVP candidate. He's the best bet. If there's a legitimate thought, whoa, this Celtics team could actually be golden state. Then he can be the narrative MVP. If there's no other stand.

So what does a Kyrie MVP season look like? Because I think part of it has to be the Celtics just rolling through the league, which is possible with their depth. I think they're going to potentially be up by like 25, 30 and a lot of these games, they also have the Rozier smart thing where they could just be like, Kyrie,

you're off tonight. Just take, take the night off. We'll see you two days from now. But I think the right season for him, it would have to be super efficient. It would have to be like 25 a game, but a 50,

40, 90 type or 50-40-85, something like that. Not a lot of shots, gets to the line. Just everything is just at the highest level. He's not going to average 30. He's not going to be like a high volume, whatever. I think it would be almost like that LeBron season in 13,

which I thought was his best season when he was flirting with 60 percent field goal for two three months remember that yeah it would have to be something like that where we're looking at the math of the kairi season going holy shit look at kairi shooting 55 he's a point guard other than that i don't see it i'm just not sure that's going to be enough because you know voters care about the win total of course as you mentioned earlier but they also care about numbers and if he's if he's 24 and 6 with super high efficiency, yeah, that'll be impressive. But I'm not sure it'll be enough to earn votes. So let's go back to Giannis because that's the last thing. What if Kyrie, though, helps get voter registration up?

That would help. And a good DVD commentary on the, what was that movie called? Uncle Drew? Hilarious DVD Blu-ray commentary. No, whatever the... When they kidnapped Damon Wayans? You don't talk about that movie a lot. You should do the rewatchables on that.

It's not great. I'm happy to do it with you, but it's not a great movie. No, I want to do Fear. I'm serious. You guys are laughing. It's a great one. Why are you looking at me weird, Kevin?

I'm totally serious. I'm good uh yannis five to one what's the roadmap so he averaged 26 a game last year or 27 right 27 10 and 5 almost something like that yeah now if they boost the possessions up by i don't know if he's getting six seven more possessions a game potentially is Is that too many? Three? That's too many. Four? Call it four. Two more shots a game could he get? Depends on how the offense runs.

I think it could be more. Can he get to 30 a game? I think it's for playmaking with him. Okay. I think that's what it could be. They're running more pick and roll. So you'd be shocked if he had 30 a game? Better space.

I wouldn't be shocked, but I think the gains could come in the assist column more than anything else. 30's tough. We see 27 a lot. 30 is another animal. It's really hard to get to 30 a game every night, night after night. It's 2,400 points plus. It's doable, though, because with the floor spacing,

it's going to be easier for him to get to the rim, easier for him to draw fouls, easier for him to finish, but also easier for him to kick out to shooters, to Brook Lopez, to Ursan Ilyasova, to Middleton. They don't have a lot of knockdowns. Why didn't the Lakers sign Brook Lopez? Did we ever figure that out? Why isn't he on their team?

Lopez is fine. He's a fine player. Would you rather have him or the freaking weirdos that – would you rather have him or JaVale McGee? Probably rather have Brook Lopez. Yeah. Every time. Have you seen JaVale McGee in the pre preseason is that a good thing or a bad thing he was incredible that one night

is he better than kajer brown in 2003 he has been pretty good i think with mcgee it's you know he still can't make that pass on the short roll i'm looking at you know some of the not to stay on on kairi here but I wanted to double check, because I think whenever you guys are referencing the PER numbers for an MVP, there's another tier. Yeah, it's high 20s. Yeah, high 20s.

And Kyrie last year in 60 games was at 25. And the numbers are pretty good. I mean, he was at 25 a game. He was at almost 50%, 40% from the field in threes. 25, six assists, four but like there's some decent numbers there but like that's where Giannis has the advantage here because I'm sure if I go back and find Giannis exactly well the P.E.R. stuff yeah it's going to be I don't think Kyrie can touch that in defense we've seen it over and over again with the best players. I will definitely defer to Giannis' defense over Kyrie's.

Well, KOC, you think they'll play him in center? Although Kyrie played better D last year, I thought. Giannis? Yeah. I think we'll see him in more lineups this year. A little small ball five? But there's also, the necessity to do that isn't there as much either. That was one of the points in my article today where it's like,

well, with Lopez and or Iliosova, you can play big but continue to space the floor. Whereas last season with Milwaukee, the only way continue to space the floor whereas last season with Milwaukee the only way they could space the floor five out was the honest of the five they can continue to play big with the honest of the four he's 27 and 10 five already yeah one and a half boards one and a half one and a half blocks one and a half steals the field goal percentage thing like if he starts hitting like does he have to hit an acceptable level of threes for us to like that 32 percent is that that's all you need but does it even matter though what if he just doesn't Does he have to hit an acceptable level of threes for us to like on his voters? 32% is that's all you need.

But does it even matter, though? What if he just doesn't take? That's the thing I wonder about with him and the voters. If he just doesn't take threes and we're all so obsessed with it, if voters would hold that against him. Which seems stupid if the other numbers are this good and heading on that arc. Could he get to 30, 12, and 6? It's not unrealistic. I think so.

I mean, he'd be my pick. So then he becomes this statistical thing approval ratings through the roof like there's no anti-yana stuff first team all defense this is early durant now yeah when durant was so popular because he was awesome because he was durant but my theory i don't think it's a theory it's fact is that because he was the anti-lebron then we all rushed to be like, man, Durant gets it. Durant gets it. And Giannis is- He's loyal.

He loves OKC, man. Giannis is- First of all, there was a lockout coming, so no one knew what was going on. He never did the decision. Right. Everybody decided to go, just I'm going to take every extension I possibly could.

The only choice Durant made was the one you had to make at that time. He loves to hoop, man. Yeah. He just loves his city and basketball. Four years, 100 million. Slight discount. Yeah, we like discounts. that time um he loves to hoop man yeah he just loves his city and basketball four years 100 million slight discount yeah we like discounts um there's just no anti-yana stuff out there there just isn't so that's a huge advantage for him so we don't know who's going to win the mvp but we do

know what we think is the best bet i say it's yannis plus 500 KOC what's your final pick for best and Ryan you go Kyrie plus 1500 or no I'll go Kawhi I'll go Kawhi at plus 950 that to me there's again to get caught up in the beginning when I screwed up the way this was formatted but I'd seen Harden fourth everywhere so Harden should not be ahead of Kawhi as an MVP odds fair you're completely ruling out the fact that those voters that flirted with it before maybe voted for him thought they were wrong. Finally, he gets his MVP,

and then we watched him miss shots for two straight games. What about Blake Griffin, 225 to one? A lot of value. Detroit gets to a three seed. All right, check out Ryan Russo on Dual Threat, his new podcast on The Ringer. Check out Kevin O'Connor on Tuesdays and Fridays on the ringer

NBA show you named your Tuesday show the mismatch oh yeah that's probably gonna be the name I think we officially named it you guys approved it I just sounds like it just happened named it right now cool

that's it the mismatch is great we don't have a Friday pod yet yeah we got and then check out the ringer MLB MLB show this week me and Jack will be on that one talking Red Sox Yankees. So until then, thank you guys.

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So glad we did this. Here he is. All right. John C. Riley is here. What an honor. You were always on the list. You don't do that much.

Yeah. You don't do that much. Wow. I was, I think it's always funny when people say like, we wanted you for our movie, but we went with the John C. Riley type instead. And I was like, wait, we wanted you for our movie, but we went with a John C. Reilly type instead.

I'm like, wait, I was available. It would have come a long time ago. Thanks for having me, Bill. Oh, I've been dying to do this with you. I remember at Grantland, we did a Boogie Nights Oral History, and we tried to get a hold of you. And it was like, yeah, he doesn't really keep it unless he keeps it low profile. I read it. It was good. It was. Yeah yeah it was fun sometimes i feel like it's it is just best to let the work speak for itself yeah and

yeah i don't know especially paul's movies he and i had such an intent we still do we're very close friends but making those movies was such an intense personal uh almost like a family effort you know yeah so to talk about it after the fact outside of it i don't know every once in a while i'll tell stories or something from from my experiences on those movies but well now now that all these years have passed it must be like uh almost nostalgic i mean you see boogie nights was now 22 years ago i know heartache was 24 years i must be old i haven't counted lately but uh you know the funny thing about boogie nights actually is that movie seemed like uh nostalgic when it came out yeah you know because the way paul shot it and had this 70s

look to the film and stuff it seemed like an old movie already when it when it was a new movie when you did heart eight with him and that that was he talked about it when he was on here about you know you this dream to make your own movie and then the studio's messing with it doing all these things but could you see the talent with him right away? Oh, yeah. I can see the talent just from reading that script. Yeah. I mean, it was really apparent.

I was like, I remember sitting down to meet with him because he actually asked me to go to the Sundance Filmmakers Workshop with him, which is this thing they do at Sundance in the summertime where they give up-and-coming filmmakers a chance to work on a few scenes on video with professional people and sort of get their feet wet with the filmmaking process um so I remember meeting with him when I was considering to do that my first reaction was like I'm not going to filmmaker boot camp like I already make movies like I worked really hard to be able to make movies. I don't need to go to summer camp for filmmakers,

which was a really stupid attitude to take. And then I read Paul's script, and I was like, oh, my God. The guy's a total natural. And I sat down with him in Studio City when we first met, and I was like, you don't have an agent? He's like, no, no. I was like, don't have an agent he's like no no i was like man wait till you get ready yeah wait till people start you know checking out your work and that was before we

shot anything it was just what he'd written but he's it was really clear from the very first time i met paul and the very first time we worked together that he was a total natural. He already had everything operating, you know, all the different aspects of filmmaking. And I don't know if he told you about this, but he wrote this. He had an assignment when he was a little kid. I think he was eight years old. Yeah. And the assignment was go home and write what job you want when you grow up and why you should be hired for that job and he wrote in amazing handwriting for an eight-year-old actually it's like cursive

writing it says my name is paul thomas anderson i want to be a writer a director and a special effects man hire me i'm the man for the job when he's eight i mean i didn't i i was still like wondering what i was going to do for a living when i was finishing college but yeah yeah so paul's a real natural for sure that's i mean that's one of those cases where that that cliched term unnatural really really applies where did you grow up where are you from chicago i'm from the south side of Chicago. And then where'd you go? You went to DePaul, right?

Yeah, I went to DePaul. Right after basketball kind of turned for them? You weren't there for Ray Meyer, right? No, I think Ray Meyer Jr. might have been there. Oh, Joey Meyer. Oh, sorry, Joey Meyer. Yeah, but that was a whole other world to me. That whole DePaul. Actually, I went to a thing called the Goodman School of Drama,

which was like a – they later changed the name to the theater school at DePaul University when the Goodman family decided they didn't want their name associated with a Catholic university because it used to be at the Art Institute, the Goodman School. But anyway, yeah, so I went to this sort of conservatory program that was similar to like a Juilliard or one of those real professional training programs for actors. And we were our own little campus within DePaul. So we would go and take academic classes and stuff there in order to get our degrees. But I was as far from DePaul basketball as you could be while attending DePaul University.

You weren't wearing the Mark Aguirre jersey around classes? I wasn't really interested in sports at all when I was a kid. I wrestled when I was young. Occasionally, if a Chicago team was doing well, I would pay attention. But when I was in college, I was all acting all the time. I was studying theater history. And I was just really immersed in trying to be an actor. Did you want to be a theater actor or a movie actor?

That was my plan. That's what I thought. Because I didn't have any reference points in my life. I remember being a kid and going to see movies and just thinking, wow, Gene Hackman is Popeye Doyle. I would watch them. I didn't know any actors. I didn't know any actors, let alone theater actors or let alone movie actors.

So when I would watch movies, I'd be like, wow, just completely by the illusion. I didn't understand how it was all done and how it was made and that these people were pretending. I just kind of went there. And then I kept doing theater. I did a lot of musicals when I was a kid. And then all through high school, did community theater and that kind of thing.

And then when I went to college, I was, like, ready to try to be a serious actor, a dramatic actor, try to learn some of the stuff that – because where I grew up on the South Side, it was all musicals and that kind of thing. No one was doing Shakespeare or Ibsen or whatever, even any kind of dramatic plays. It was all sort of feel-good sort of stuff.

Were you doing improv there too? Because Chicago is such a big improv city. Yeah, that's exactly. My first acting class at the Goodman was, or at DePaul was an improv class. And it was really when I really came to life and I realized like, oh, like it can be this. And it's funny because my first,

the first acting class I ever went to when I was eight years old at the park near my house, Marquette Park, where I grew up, was improv-based too. The teacher was just having us do all these theater games. And then we took all these kind of improvised sketches that we'd done and turned them into a show called Comedy Tonight. And so he did like sang songs from other musicals and like did these sketches. So it's funny that like these linchpin moments for me as an actor were through improvisation,

which is another way of saying like feeling empowered enough as an actor to feel like you have a voice and what you have to contribute is just as valuable as a script or whatever you know yeah that's a big leap to make in your mind and some of my best work has come with people that believe to me in that way i remember lasa hallstrom was one of the first people brian opalma my first movie he used to let me improvise all the time um oh yeah casualty of war yeah he would let me kind of like add this or that you know like not wholesale improvisation like i was doing later but loss of holstrom when i did what's eating gilbert grape he just let me go off he was it was so freeing and then by the time i met Paul Anderson, I realized this is a great way to work.

That said, I really like it when a script is really well written and a director insists on the script being the script. When the script is not well written and people insist that you do the script, that's kind of a nightmare. But most smart people, when something's coming out clunky or it's hard to memorize, that's always like a little canary in the coal mine thing

with dialogue. If you can't memorize it for some reason, it means that it's not written right. It's not written in a rhythm that's natural to human thought and speech. So I get all that, but what's thought and speech you know but what's so i get all that but what's weird is that you can also dive into this mckay farrell world yeah mckay is just like riff riff riff go go go which is complete opposite from sticking to a script oh right

yeah the opposite of that yeah uh because there's not that many people who can do both at the highest level. Name one besides me. So, Catherine Hahn. She was on here. Yeah, okay. She's a friend of the pod, but she's another one. She can do, she has this whole path and she can do the improv and the whole thing. I'll never forget when she came in to audition for Step Brothers.

And they asked me to come because i had to be so intimate with her i have these crazy sexual scenarios with her and stuff uh they asked me to come in just make sure that you know the chemistry was good and stuff and i would just remember like my hair bits being blown back yeah i was like i hadn't hadn't met a woman other than molly shannon up to that point who could do what will and I were doing you know who who was willing to be as chaotic right and just jump in both feet and just who cares it doesn't matter what you know like it doesn't matter what was planned we'll just find something you know and she was just dazzling Catherine was dazzling that first audition I was like holy crap

and then she just her ferocity you can see it in the movie she's so intense like she would attack these ideas and oh my god it's it's pretty hard to shock me with like with that kind of stuff and she blew me away man and she makes my performance in a lot of ways in the movie that that she's so intense it gave me something to play off of right so i just saw her she was in this netflix movie about this couple trying to get pregnant with paul giamatti just a dramatic movie and it's like she's doing the dramatic route and then like you stepbrothers will come on two hours later and she's uh a maniac but i was i've always been impressed when people were able to do that. What's more fun for you?

Because it seems like you love theater, too. Oh, what's more fun between film and theater? Just like, what's your favorite thing to do? Because you have these three paths that you can kind of veer down at any time. Wait, what are the three? Well, you have theater. Film, comedy. You have comedy.

And then you have these serious dramatic movies. Oh, right. Well, it's all the same to me. I mean, I'm just trying to be as honest as I can be from moment to moment and really plug in and believe the circumstances that the character is in and really make it feel personal and real. So it's all character-driven? Pretty much.

Or it's basically the same thing I was doing when I was eight years old in that improv class. You just suspend your disbelief and you and then if the circumstances you're in are ridiculous then you're in a comedy and if they're not ridiculous then you're in a more dramatic thing but in terms of what i'm doing to get myself to feel like i believe what's going on it's really similar to like i remember like in that first acting class, there's this amazing guy named Jim Morley, who was my very first theater kind of teacher or whatever when I was a kid. And he's like,

okay, everyone lay down on the floor. Now we're all going to be pieces of bacon. Okay. Everyone's on the floor. You're just an uncooked piece of bacon. Okay. Now you're in the pan. I'm turning on the floor. You're just an uncooked piece of bacon, okay? Now you're in the pan.

I'm turning up the heat. What happens to bacon when the pan gets hot? And all of a sudden we started like bubbling around like pieces of bacon. And I remember like it was literally the first thing we did in that class. And I remember going, my people, like I found my people like that.

I looked around the room and I was like, oh, everyone's into this as much as I am. I found my people. This is what around the room and i was like oh everyone's into this as much as i am i found my people this is what i'm supposed to be doing because before that i was i was kind of i don't know i was sort of this like zealot character i would kind of shift between groups from the burnouts to the jocks to the you know and mostly i was just really mischievous like kind of breaking windows and whatever drinking wine on the railroad tracks at 11 years old and yeah stuff like that and theater and and acting gave me like a way to be mischievous that was positive and productive and didn't involve getting arrested was there was there an energy chicago in the 80s because it was like the belushi murray like the decade before

that belushi and bill murray were more like people who were more into comedy. I mean, of course, I revered those guys as much as anybody. You know, Animal House and Meatballs and all those kind of stripes and all those amazing movies those guys did. But by the time I got into college, like in the, in the eighties, like I graduated high school in 83. By the time I got into college,

I was like, I, I saw improv as a thing that was, that had infinite possibilities. Yeah. It wasn't just about getting the laugh. And there was a whole kind of movement in Chicago at second city and improv Olympic and places like that with very talented Tina Fey, Adam McKay, and there was a whole kind of movement in chicago at second city and improv olympic

and places like that with very talented tina fey adam mckay steve carell like you name it stephen colbert like all these people yeah and so i'm not saying i'm not saying it as a criticism but those guys were more chasing the laugh their job every night was get the audience to laugh and when i got involved in improv and acting school it was no just go there even if you end up crying or you end up in an angry thing or whatever just improv is a improv means like really letting go not knowing at all what's going to happen next so um the people i was revering at that time were like john malkovich, Gary Sinise, all the Steppenwolf guys, Billy Peterson, who was at the Remains Theater at the time. Those were the titans in my world.

I remember Malkovich just being so inspiring. He did this production of Curse of the Starving Class, the Sam Shepard play, which I also did in college eventually. But I remember the rumor was like malkovich peed on stage every night for real because this is one part where the brother in that play deliberately pees on his sister's drawings to mess with her and when i did it in in college i had this little bladder thing inside my pants so i could fake it and that we were just like malkovich did it for real malkovich peed on q in front of an audience every night like it's amazing like so that was like my lawrence olivier so your first movie it's brian de palma it's john penn and it's michael j fox like those were three titans

this is your first job yeah it was the first time i been on an airplane it's the first time i left the midwest first time you've been on an airplane yeah really first time i time i been in an airplane it's the first time i left the midwest first time you've been in an airplane yeah really first time i'd ever been in a movie the first time i've ever been in an airplane um i actually met my wife who i've been married to now 26 years on that movie wow she was working for sean penn at the time um yeah and so sean between sean brian de palma and art linson the producer of that movie that those guys are really the famous he wrote a famous book art linson yeah he wrote a book about like his whole experience it was one of the better hollywood books yeah he's an amazing guy um

and those guys believed in me you know i was originally cast as a just one day's work on that movie and then someone got fired and they moved me up to a cameo part, which was like a whole big, nice scene. And then someone else got fired and I got moved into the, one of the leads of the movie because I had been so committed in rehearsal, you know, like a lot of the guys in that movie were trying to out macho each other and, and trying to out Sean Penn, Sean Penn, Penn you know and I was like you're out of your minds like this guy's a brilliant actor why would you want to be more what aren't we aren't we like playing make-believe here why are you guys trying to out drink you know and out

out macho yeah like this is just stupid like let's just so a couple of those people got fired and um and yeah and and based on my commitment and really my theater background, because when we were doing these rehearsals in the room for that movie, when we first got together in these conference rooms in Thailand, I was just like, yeah, well, you know, I got this tiny little part. But if you need me to do anything else, I'm like, yeah, yeah, here. There's this old Vietnamese man who we don't have an old vietnamese man here today so john here you just read this part and i would just fully commit to it as if that was my part you know like

and i guess it was pretty funny the commitment of it was pretty funny but then i really it really uh i don't know i've never really talked to Sean directly about it because I was always kind of really grateful that Sean gave me that leg up and he vouched for me. When Brian made the decision to, we need someone for this part now, we fired this other guy, who are we going to put? Should we cast John Reilly? Sean said, yeah, he can do it. He didn't insist that I get the part, but he made it possible for me to get the opportunity. And then I did my second and third movies with Sean also. So I was- Which ones were those? I can't remember. We're No Angels and State of Grace.

Oh, yeah. So those movies, I also had to audition for and get. And I was just, I don't know, I'm a proud guy from Chicago. And part of me was like, I don't want anyone to think that Sean Penn just gave me this as a favor. Or he got me in and made people. I want to be there on my own merits. So I was always really careful to keep my relationship with Sean just professional. And I realized with Sean, I was either going to be his peer you know and we were working with people like robert de niro and you know like so i realized okay i'm not

going to be his peer i'm not robert de niro like but i also didn't want to be like his bitch yeah you know i didn't want to be like his boy his lackey that yeah so i just sort of kept my distance and did my thing and stuck to my guns and did what I knew how to do as an actor and tried to, you know, it was important to me to feel like I earned my spot, that it wasn't given to me. But that said, I'm so, I'm just, I wouldn't be sitting here if it wasn't for Sean. I wouldn't, I wouldn't, I wouldn't. He taught me so much about acting in those first three movies and acting in movies in particular. Was he one of the, like in Casualties of War, was he acting in movies in particular you know was he one of that like in casualty is aware was he like in character even when you guys weren't filming

he's one of those actors yeah he lived in another hotel from everybody you know he took this sergeant role which is a leadership role you're not meant to socialize with the men you know there's all these military dictates about the way you're supposed to behave if you're a sergeant and he he definitely kind of he changed his face a sergeant and he he definitely kind of he changed his face and his voice like he he definitely tried to transform himself yeah he does that almost every movie i think but um yeah i remember we're doing this scene where we were demanding to leave the base because we wanted to go to the whorehouse it's kind of the the engine that creates that whole story and we're doing this scene where the guard stops this is no you guys can't go to town

we have an agreement with the vc they get the whorehouse tonight you guys can't and we only have one day of leave and we flip out we're screaming at the guard and whatever and so we're doing the master shot of that scene and i'm just going for it like like full-on energy like full commitment that's how that's all i know how to do and sean after a couple takes he's like he just leans over he's like yeah you gotta save a little bit for the close-up just remember like this is just the master and i was like what what you're telling me not to go full out and i was like oh and then i realized oh yeah no we got like eight more setups of this scene yeah and if i just scream my head off and expend all my energy on this giant wide

shot then when it comes time to actually do the coverage i'm not i'm gonna be either horse or i'm just not gonna have that same inspiration as i had it's like an athlete like you don't want to burn out in the first five minutes of the game there's another sean penn trick that he taught me he was like if you aren't i just he didn't tell me this i just know it from watching him work we're doing scenes in state of grace and he's on the telephone and there was this whole thing like hold on we're not ready to shoot at the telephone booth yet because sean's character is calling somebody he's having this phone call and we're not ready to shoot we have to get the other line set up. Like, what do you mean, other line? What are you talking about? Like, Sean,

his assistant is going to be on the phone so that when he calls from that pay phone, there's someone on the phone. It's not the other actor who's in the scene with Sean, but it's going to be someone else on the other. And it's the greatest acting trick ever, because you can see it. Now, next time you watch a movie, look, when someone's on the other and it's the greatest acting trick ever because if you can see it now next time you watch a movie look when someone's on the telephone you'll know immediately whether there's someone on the other end of the line or whether they're faking it even the greatest actors it's very very hard because there's all this unconscious behavior that happens when you're on the phone that you're not doing intentionally you know yeah you're listening and you're trying and this information is coming in your ear and going your brain so and it's very very hard to fake and so sean just showed me like

just have someone on the other it's a little bit of a pain in the ass for production like it takes a little bit more time to set that up but it pays dividends like yeah you wouldn't believe yeah smart anyway so then you go from that a little free tip for actors out there. That's a good one. Let's take a break to talk about FanDuel. Football season is underway, and I already have major regrets about my daily fantasy performance this season. And it's getting that way too with my season-long fantasy teams.

Jay Ajayi went out for the year. What am I going to do? I don't have a running back. Well, the good news is I still have daily fantasy. I am so excited to be playing on FanDuel all season. You get the excitement of researching and building your team each week, regardless of the outcome. Plus, FanDuel has never been more fun or easy to play.

I've been playing in their Gridiron Pick'em Contest every week. It's a free contest. All you need to do is pick winners, no spreads, 10K split amongst the top pickers. I can't brag about my other fando performances in the single entry contest because i have been terrible all year maybe this will be the week it turns around i've tried other dfs sites before if you're not a fantasy expert fando clearly the place to play plus new users get a five dollar bonus when they make the first deposit come play with me at fanduel.com slash BS. Then you have Johnny Depp and Leo.

Yeah. Leo was 17 years old when we did What's Eating Gilbert Grape. Yeah. He turned 18 on that movie. He's amazing in that movie. That movie is really good. Oscar thought so? Yeah.

I mean, it's like, it was one of those movies between that and This Boy's Life. You just go, all right, Leo's going to be in my life now for 40 years. He's the only person, and he did it when he was 17 years old, the only person who's ever, in my opinion, done a successful impression of me. Really? Yes, and he just did it on the fly,

right to my face, around the set of Gilbert Cubs. Like, you little shit. Like, it was incredible. I mean, Leo is really, I don't even think people have seen half the stuff he can do he's got amazing moves he's an amazing mimic for human behavior and anyway i thought he was so good in the revenant do you see that oh my god just killed it in that movie well when when uh paul thomas anderson was here we were talking about the fork in the road where he was almost

the boogie nights the mark walberg yeah leo down was like listen man i know they're telling you to do this titanic movie but that movie is about a boat that sinks and everyone knows the boat sinks yeah but where's the drama no one's gonna give a shit about the people on that boat okay it's about the boat it's a famous boat story okay come and do boogie nights with us he's like i don't know i guess so i'm not sure and then whatever he we we all made the choices we made and i don't think leo has any regret it's definitely that he actually ironically enough he said he did regret it oh well there you go he said like a year ago no he said like a year ago it

was it was the his one regret with the decision now well i tried to warn him you try to tell him i think he has conflicted thoughts about titanic great things for him and allowed him to do all kinds of stuff you know boogie nights it could have done the same great things for him but maybe not you know like definitely a lot more people saw Titanic than Boogie Nights. Oh, hell yeah. I think he was kind of paralyzed by Titanic a little bit. I think that's why he was looking back like,

ah, maybe that's not a great thing. Cause that movie was so big. Yeah. It's almost like he became too famous from it and he had to kind of scale it back. Cause he's like you, he cared about doing the work,

you know? And it was like when you become that famous it's really hard to operate in the world well the next time i give him advice i hope he listens to me i think it would have been really interesting him i was totally wrong about titanic by the way i was gonna say yeah people were definitely interested in what happens in that movie and it wasn't about the boat. Yeah, but even when they were making the movie, people were saying that it wasn't going to do well.

Oh, my God, this is going to be one of the biggest bombs ever. Why are they doing this? It's so expensive. Nobody knows. Yeah. Nobody ever knows. Oh, well. And then you got to work with Mark Wahlberg,

who also became a giant famous actor. I know. What's my problem? I would say you get credit out of this. I keep problem what's my problem by the people i work with it seems like you're catching you caught a lot of people at the right times now like somebody like costa was already super famous when you worked with him but especially the first part of your career you you were hitting all these people at good points of their career which is nice yeah boogie nights um when did you know that was gonna i mean obviously the script was amazing super ambitious there's a million characters they're shooting it in like 60 days was there any point in that where you're going

i don't know this might this might have been too ambitious no by the time we did boogie nights i was so deep in paul's camp you know he and i were like thick as thieves by that point i was as true a believer you know the way reed rothschild is yeah with dirk digler in that movie that's the way i was with paul i would do anything for paul i still would i still would do anything for paul because i i believed and do believe in him so much. Like that was someone I could really be loyal to because he was just a genius. And I knew what we were doing was very difficult. And we had, look, we had a whole, almost a year of people saying, no, no, no, no, no. No one wanted to touch this whole porn idea. Oh, porn stars are, you know, that's dirty and

blah, blah, blah. Now the whole world has turned into porn right but back then believe it or not it was really hard to get someone to play that part because most people in hollywood the agents and those types were and i think including mark's agent or manager somebody was like yeah maybe you shouldn't do this and then paul and i had a kind of convince him we brought him in me and phil hoffman and mark all improvising together and stuff and it was clear it was going to be a lot of fun but i knew like that movie was so much fun and was felt so subversive and so crazy that i knew like we got something good here yeah that we better finish this before they realize what they

paid for because this is like and all my best work has always felt like that like hurry up and finish before they realize what they allowed us to do you know yeah and boogie nights was definitely that and then it was a struggle when it first came out to get you know and mark wasn't such a huge star then and you know it was burt reynolds was kind of distanced himself from it initially and then i think he realized it was yeah and then everyone's told him how great he was in it when paul was on here he was talking about the fight that uh that the the scene when when dirk degler and um jack horner the burt reynolds character when they have the fight in the pool it's like i'm the biggest star here and he was saying how some some off the set stuff spilled

into that scene because there was like some macho stuff going on with burt yeah and it was like one of the only times in his career the stuff that was happening off the set kind of ended up in the movie in a good way but um i don't know it seemed like burr reynolds was an interesting point of his career yeah you know god rest his soul man that guy what a run it was it was great reading all the if you look at how long handsome guys last in hollywood now like how many years do you really get as being like the sexiest man alive or whatever it's like eight to ten yeah and burt was like on top for like 25 years or something he was the biggest star when i was a kid it was great art you know i was smoking the

band and these kind of like popular popcorn movies but he was the women he was the guy women wanted to sleep with for a long time and with that you know when people tell you you're that you of course you you come to believe it because everyone tells you that you're a god you're you know you're macho you're sexy you you're the top of the heap you know like you have 20 a 25 year run like that i don't know if it's actually 25 years but it was longer than most. It was like 15, solid. So yeah, I would imagine it's pretty difficult to age when you've been living that kind of life. For me, I looked like a 50-year-old guy when I was 18 years old. So now I'm just kind of becoming the person I was always meant to be.

It was weird. I was just like an odd-looking younger man. Now I'm someone who looks my age so it's a little easier transition for me gene hackman they always said that about him too what said what about him just that he always is like what did young what did young gene hackman look like yeah you're right he's always had that french connection yeah he just always had that same kind of face i think think he started a little late, too. He did.

I think Gene was older than some of his contemporaries when he started getting big work. Man, I remember him and the conversation. He's- So many great movies. He had like a run, and then he had another run, and then there was like a 90s run. And, you know, he always-

Now, I actually kind of miss Gene. I don't feel like we filled the gene hackman void there was like a specific type of part that he was always the best at and i don't know who that is i don't think that role is there anymore honestly maybe it's not like the enemy in the state with will smith like that role he played in that i don't know who's that person now i just i don't know who the man's man is now. Where is that role of that older guy with gravitas who's like, I'm not trying to be young and cute and hip.

I'm just a grown-ass man who has ideas and stands for ethical things and whatever. Like the way my dad was. My dad didn't want to dress like me. My dad was not interested in the music. I was, you know, like I have children now I'm really curious. What do you listen to? Cause I'm, there's this sort of pressure to look like a younger person than you are to be hip with music. That's younger than you to know what's, you know, otherwise you're a square or you're, you know, you're God forbid you're old. You know, my dad's generation is like, I don't give a shit what you listen to.

I'm a grown-ass man. I wear a suit because I have achieved this point in my life. I worked hard to get here. I'm not trying to be a boy. There's been a real shift in our mentality that way for men and women. We worship this idea. Everyone wants to be 24 or something or even younger. But this idea that maturity is something to be avoided

or there's no way to age gracefully. Like get surgery, get hair implants, whatever it is. Do whatever you can to fight the tide. But that was another generation of guys like Robert Duvall, Gene Hackman. Tommy Lee Jones. Tommy Lee Jones. One take Tommy. But that was another generation of guys like Robert Duvall, Gene Hackman, you know. Tommy Lee Jones. Tommy Lee Jones. One take Tommy.

All those guys, like, I don't know. It's interesting. Like, there aren't that many roles like that left. I mean, if you look at the amount of business that's done in this town that's cartoons and superheroes, that's about 70% of the business. Maybe 60%. I don't know what the exact number is. Cartoons and superheroes, that's about 70% of the business. Maybe 60%. I don't know what the exact number is, but there's no roles for Robert Duvall or Robert De Niro

or Gene Hackman in a superhero movie. Although, as I'm saying that, I realize Gene Hackman played one of the great villains. He played Superman, yeah. Yeah, he was Lex Luthor, like the greatest Lex Luthor. There's so much humor, though, you know? Like, now the villains in those movies are so, like, serious and overly dramatic. Trying to steal the movie.

Nothing can be funny. Yeah. Gene Hackman was, like, this wonderfully chaotic, and he was scarier for that reason, because he seemed like he was having a great time destroying the world. Anyway, so, yeah, the point I'm making is, like, an old man's point. I sound like an old fart, like, back in my day. Man, these movies, these things, they point I'm making is like an old man's point. I sound like an old fart. Back in my day. Man, these movies, these things, they don't care about quality.

It's true. We had Matt Damon. He was talking about how hard it was to make Manchester by the Sea. Yeah. Beautiful movie. And how worried he is about the movie that cost $15 to $70 million. And that was what was so interesting about a star is born, which I saw this weekend.

I thought it was really good. And it was, you know, it's a remake, but it's still not a superhero movie. It's sold on, on kind of the merits of their stars. Yeah.

Look, I say all, all power to him. Even if it's a remake, when you're making, we need stories that like tell the human story. That's what cinema or movies are supposed to do. Yes, of course, they're supposed to sell popcorn

and make you forget about your life. Yeah, sure. There's always a place for those kind of movies. But there should always also be a place for movies that affect you as a human being, that make you think about what it's like to be a human being and and grow and you know interesting ideas and stuff that's that's can be hard to watch you know things that are like manchester by the sea is a perfect

example you know like this poor guy's you know kid dies and it's uh it's gut it's not something that you go running towards like you'd run towards a superhero movie but it's vitally important for for the art form of movies that we that we can experience these things well i'm hoping netflix and amazon because even that movie i mentioned before with katherine han and pa Paul Giamatti the fertility movie that's a movie that just could not have been made anymore because nobody would have paid for it but now Netflix seems to be spending money well it's funny I have a little bit of a I don't know Netflix and those larger streaming companies it seems like I mean it's starting to become at first it was like well you could go to the movies or you could stay home and, you know, watch some of these like second run movies. Now these streaming services are becoming such, they want to be the front of it.

Yeah. They want to be the movie you're watching that weekend, an opening weekend, and they want to destroy the distribution business. They want to reset the clock with, they want to like eliminate theaters, basically. That's Netflix. I don't know. I can't speak for them, but it seems like that's their MO. Destroy, like have people not go to the movies at all.

Have them watch it all in their house. I don't think theaters can be destroyed. You saw it this weekend. I don't think so either. The Star is Born in LA, like you couldn't get theaters can be destroyed. You saw it this weekend. I don't think so either. But Stars Born in LA, like you couldn't get a ticket for it. You had to reserve it. I know.

I've got a movie open right now, by the way. I'm well aware of how much money Stars Born is making. No, but so the point I'm making is, I don't think Netflix believes that theatrical releases will go away. I think they want to do what Amazon did to bookshops. Yeah.

They want to sell what amazon did to bookshops yeah they they want to sell movies at a loss so that the streaming services become the way you see movies and they want to destroy those you know those uh you know the theater chains right and then once they're destroyed go in and buy them and now netflix will own all the theaters. Because it is true, I think, at least I really, I pray this is true, that human beings crave that communal experience of being together in the dark and experiencing, you know, that's why theater never died. You know, like, there's something to be said for us getting together. It's just like church, you know?

You get together, and we want to feel, we want to have a common experience. Sports is like that too. I think that's the biggest reason. So I just think we're in a bit of a reorganization of the world in a lot of different ways. Well, I don't want the $15 million movie to go away. So as long as- 15, that sounds like a lot of money to me.

20 or whatever, the 5 to 15. People these days, the studio guys, they don't want to spend 15. They want to spend 100 so they can make 400. Yes. But yeah, they think like big businessmen. When you did... This is not my area of expertise, by the way.

Yeah, but this is, you care about art and this is important because it's going to determine where we go. After Boogie Nights came out, did your life change at all or is it the same? Just going on the next roles? You know, every Nights came out, did your life change at all? Or is it the same, just going on to the next worlds? You know, almost every movie, including the first one I did,

Casualties of War, people would say like, well, get ready. Your life's going to change now, man. Oh, wait till people see this. Including the movies I have out right now. You know, I got Sisters Brothers, Stan and Ollie, Wreck-It Ralph 2, and Holmes and Watson. Like, each time people are like get ready and when this is you know but i know now after 75 movies or something that i'm

still gonna be me you know i'm still gonna have to hustle for work i'm gonna have to find the interesting work and this is a fickle world movies you know know, like even, no, you can't believe that you've attained some golden ring because as soon as you do, like the audience will remind you, Oh, by the way, we, we have short term memories for this kind of thing. Quick break to talk about our friends at proper cloth, finding a dress shirt that fits is nearly impossible. Something is always off, be it the collar or the sleeves. Thankfully, ordering a custom fit shirt has never been easier with Proper Cloth. You can easily create a custom shirt size in seconds by answering 10

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enter gift code Simmons, you save $20 on your first shirt. Once again, propercloth.com slash Simmons today. And if you enter gift code Simmons, you save $20 on your first shirt. Once again, propercloth.com slash Simmons, gift code Simmons. Back to John C. Riley. Well, I think your situation is a tiny bit unique because you've made all these movies that are part of people's life. You know, like Stepbrothers has only been on 10 years and I feel like that's become, and it was funny because, and this is one of the reasons we did the oral history about it on The Ringer.

You know, it did well when it came out, but then it just kind of gained steam. And I think the cable, the rewatchability, all that stuff just kind of shoves it to another level and people feel like you're in their life yeah well i'm proud of that movie i'm really proud of that one high degree of difficulty yeah basically didn't really have a story just trying to figure it out other than the basic story we had a good story we had a pretty good script too i mean that's the thing

we improvised a lot together beforehand when we were writing together. Yeah, that's what I meant. Yeah. So we had this kind of great improv-based script already that was very inspiring for other ideas. So, yes, we'd improvise a ton, but we always had this great game plan to go back to. But I'm especially proud of that movie because, number one, I put a lot of myself into it, a lot of my childhood stories and a lot of things that happened to me growing up in a big family in chicago yeah um a lot of them and uh and the other thing i'm really proud about with this with stepbrothers is people love it because it's really funny and it's a very broad comedy but the reason that it's i think the reason that it's so deep inside people now, that it's so ingrained in their kind of DNA, is that it seems true. It's subversive in that way.

It tells the truth about family relationships and divorce and what it feels like to have to have a stepbrother and all that. All that stuff is just emotionally really true in the movie. And then we have giant gags, like making people kiss white dog poop or whatever. Right. But, uh, but it's a lot of really real emotional stuff. I have a mother who died,

you know, like it's like, it's very real. That's, that's not like comedy stuff. You know, you and Pharaoh seemed like at that point you'd been together on a few projects and you're just humming at that point.

Well, we've done Talladega Nights together. That was it. Those guys wanted me to do Anchorman, but I was doing another movie at the time. I kind of feel like you were in Anchorman, even though you weren't. It just seems like you should have been. I'm in the sequel. They should have CGI'd you into it later, to the cable. Yeah, no, that movie didn't need me.

It's a brilliant brilliant movie but uh yeah will and i we definitely hit our stride by the time we did stepbrothers together because we had been working together a lot building the story of that movie um writing it together with adam and um but i have to say molly Molly Shannon introduced me to Will. And I met Molly in a movie called Never Been Kissed, which is fine. It's not, you know, it's not like. First of all, how dare you. It's not my kind of movie necessarily.

I have a daughter and a wife who watches all those movies. They love that movie. Yeah. I'm not saying anything bad about the movie. It's just in terms of the kind of movies I like. Yeah. And I know that I took that movie at the time because I just had a kid. And I was like, yeah,

broke, you know, after 30 movies or something totally broke, which obviously did not get very much financial planning training when I was young. But, um, so I kind of took it cause I was desperate. And then like Molly and I became friends on that one and it ended up being a

really exciting time working on that movie with her. And then I met Will and I remember thinking uh wow like as soon as i met him we shook hands we're like around the west side and we're gonna go have breakfast with him and molly and uh and i remember looking him like oh my god like i did feel like related to him or something right away i was like i understand this guy and there's something like right away like literally the first moment i met him yeah i didn't know a ton of his work or anything before that i knew some stuff from saturday night live or whatever but it wasn't like i was some huge fan like i was i knew him to be a funny guy but i didn't know him very well and i just just remember just really clicking like, wow.

And I still feel that way. Will and I are still good friends. Could you have been a cast member? Because you hosted it once. Could you have done that? Could you have been on the Will Ferrell cast for three years? Or is that something you never would have wanted to do? It's not something I was ever interested in doing, but I don't know.

I, I'm a little bit, I'm kind of like, uh, I'm not a, you have to be like a loyal, really loyal, obedient person.

I think to be, to succeed on that show. Cause it's so structured. Yes. Because there's this whole legacy that comes before you. So it's not necessarily about you. You're filling a role within this legacy of this show. And this is how the show works.

And these are the people who control it. And you do your bit. And there's so much competition and all that. I don't know. When I did host it, I felt like, I don't know. I might not thrive in that. I always end up mouthing off or something. I don't know when to keep my mouth shut.

What was it like you did Chicago, which was a big hit, but that was a musical. And I think people like me were surprised that you were in a musical. But meanwhile, you had had this whole background with it. Yeah, I grew up doing musicals. So you flipped it on people. They were like, John C. Reilly? He's in Chicago? What?

I didn't know he could sing. What the hell? Yeah. I was really proud of that one because it took me a long, when I went to acting school at DePaul, my thinking was at the time like, well, musicals are not serious. Musicals are not what actors, real actors do. Robert De Niro doesn't do musicals, not what actors real actors do you know robert de niro

doesn't do musicals although he did yeah he did uh so i thought of it as this kind of silly thing it was less than dignified for a seat excuse me for a serious actor as that opportunity came to me i realized like oh my god not only is this what real actors do, this is an amazing art form. This is one of the few art forms that Americans can really call their own. You know, yeah, sure. It's maybe based on musical of England or whatever, but yeah, you know, or opera or whatever you want to call it but the musical the the contemporary musical was created in america and it's our opera you know we got jazz we got baseball we got musicals yeah everything else is pretty much derived from england or europe or now we have hip-hop i would add hip-hop yeah

yeah exactly that's true and in a way hip- hop is an extension of jazz to me. True. But yeah, definitely. So I realized when I got that opportunity with Chicago, like, wow, this is like, not only is this what real actors do, this is like a sacred opportunity to get to like. And it felt like such a great return to my roots. And I knew exactly what to do with that character. character and um yeah i just remember just so many emotional moments behind the scenes on that movie just becoming overwhelmed with uh emotion thinking about how how amazing that experience was and and what a gift it was and how foolish i was in college to think like serious actors don't do musicals stupid you've had well you've headlined a bunch, too, because there was a time there when it was like, oh, he's a character actor.

He'll be one of those guys who bounces around. He's like the third or fourth guy. Well, as a famous agent once said to me as I was trying to get to another level or get larger roles or something, I was asking this very powerful guy at this agency, what do I got to do? How do I get the shot to be a lead in one of these movies?

Meanwhile, I don't look like the kind of guy that a studio is going to cast in a lead, so there's that. But this agent looks at me and he's like, John, you're a very expensive character actor. I was like, damn. Like, sometimes when you get that bracing truth from Hollywood business types, you're like, fucking hell, okay. I'm an expensive character actor. You're like, well, that either means I got to lower my price or I have to, or I got to work on getting larger parts because there's not much future for an expensive character actor. I think Philip Seymour Hoffman was like that too. He was, there was this whole new class of actors that were coming up

that were being kind of typecast as the character actors. You know, the way I was just describing, like, where are those guys, those men? Yeah. You know, like with Gravitas who are like, I'm not a boy, I'm a man. And I have, you know, like, Phil was one of those guys to me. Phil was like, like a lion, you know, real, he had real Gravitas. And you did, was Boogie Nights the first time you worked with him?

No, he was in hard eight. Oh, that's right. Yeah, yeah. And I'll never forget, the first time I heard about Phil, Paul Anderson said to me, I met the next John C. Reilly. I was like, fuck you.

How dare you? And then I met Phil. I was like, God damn it. Here we go. I'm going to be chasing this guy for the rest of my life. And, uh, when you saw what he was doing with Scottie,

we were like, oh man, he's really going for this. Yeah. All of it. Even at hard eight, you know, he just had one scene at the craps table,

but you're like, wow, the bravado that he brought in, but boom, like no one knew who the hell he was. And he just like slayed in that scene um and then he and i went on to do true west on broadway together i was gonna ask you about that didn't you like alternate parts back yeah we switched the roles every three performances

so sometimes like we do a matinee one way and the evening performance the other way that was really fun it's like one of the one of my proudest moments of my whole life getting to do that with phil every night were you friends with him or you just work buddies yeah we're friends yeah i mean everyone who was in kind of paul's repertory company whether it was bill macy or yeah philip baker hall or phil hoffman we're all friends for sure yeah um that said sure uh phil lived prime i don't think he ever lived out here actually but he's always primarily lived in new york and i i eventually moved out here so it wasn't like we're spending a lot of time socially together but i i always held phil in the highest esteem like

he was an incredible incredible actor have you worked with anybody younger generation who you feel like has a chance to get to that? Like what we're talking about? Oh, gosh. Anybody in their 20s or something? This is when I sound really old and I tell you I don't know anyone in the younger generation. Well, you've been in a lot of movies. I worked with this guy, Thomas Mann, who's in Skull Island with me.

Kong Skull Island. The whole Simmons family liked that movie. Oh, yeah. Kong Skull Island, oh, yeah. I'm really proud of that one, too. I love that movie. You were good in that movie. I had to play a Cubs fan, unfortunately,

but I'm from the South Side, and White Sox is sort of in my DNA. Yeah, so Thomas Mann is a younger guy that I was really impressed with. Gosh, who else? Name some people. I'll tell you. I don't know. I should have brought a list. What happens to the Paul Thomas Anderson Repertory Company?

Because now he spends like two, three years making these. I thought Phantom Thread was incredible. Yeah, me too. But I still want to see him occasionally do the fun, not so serious movie. And I think he kind of wants to do it. He didn't like rule it out, you know, but he kind of just drifts toward these mega drama projects now.

Well, I think you just have to be honest with yourself and really do what you are interested in from moment to moment and can't do things because someone wants you to do work like you used to do or whatever. You know, you have to just do what you are honestly drawn to do work like you used to do or whatever you know you have to just do what you are i think he wants to do it though i think he wants to do like something with more although i i thought phantom thread was really funny but it wasn't like funny the way boogie nights was funny you know it was like two different types of yeah we'll see we'll see you know like i wouldn't i wouldn't counsel pa Paul to do anything differently. I think he, I mean, he's really up there.

When was the last time you worked with him? Magnolia. But, you know, when you look at what he did with Phantom Thread, not only did he direct that movie and write that movie, and he had to direct Daniel Day-Lewis, who is not a picnic to direct. He's a very intense guy. I've worked with him.

He did Gangs of New York with you, right? Yeah, he's an intense guy. You got to show up at 110% every single morning with him, or he'll just eat you for lunch. Yeah. So Paul not only wrote and directed that movie, he was the director of photography on that movie, and he was the camera operator on that movie.

I mean, all due respect to the other filmmakers that were noticed. Was it last year the movie came out? Yeah. All due respect to the other filmmakers who were noticed that year, but nobody did what Paul did on that movie. I finished that, and I was like, I remember looking. I didn't even know he shot it I was visiting I was working in London at the same time as he was and I hung out with him

we'd go see dailies and stuff and I remember him being really involved with the dailies talking about the color timing and you know they were making changes and I was like why is he so like micromanaging the photography and then after I saw the movie I was like god damn he did all of that and

just to just to be the director and direct daniel day lewis in a part that that was as intense as that part that is a massive undertaking but to but to park yourself behind the lens and be in charge of making sure the camera's going the right way. It's amazing. It really was. He should have just made the costumes, too. He should have just done everything. Well. Sewn all the dresses. Yeah, I'm sure he had a lot to say about the costumes.

There's nothing in Paul's movies that's not there because he didn't pick it. All right, let's go through the new movies you have. You have four. Yeah. So what do you want to talk about first? Whatever you want to talk about. No, tell me about each one. How long do we get? me about it four more hours we're wrapping up the sisters brothers the sisters brothers yeah or the publicist must have overheard us and said i think that we're going to talk about

i have a whole process uh yeah sisters brothers is a movie that i produced with my wife alice and dickie we bought the rights to this book that was written by patrick dewitt seven years ago Yeah, Sisters Brothers is a movie that I produced with my wife, Alison Dickey. We bought the rights to this book that was written by Patrick DeWitt seven years ago. Okay. And we promised Patrick that we'd make the best movie we could from his book. And then we got this French director, Jacques Odiard, involved, and Jacques took it on. And he did The Prophet and Rust and Bone. Yeah.

And The Palm Door for D-Pen. Anyway, he's like one of the greatest filmmakers also out there working right now. And yeah, it's in theaters now. And it's a pretty incredible movie, I must say. I'm not speaking for myself. I'm talking for what Jacques did with the genre. What he does with the Western and the Sisters Brothers is really, really interesting. He stays ahead of you the whole time. You never know what's going to happen.

There's all this intensely emotional stuff going on between me and Joaquin Phoenix. He plays my brother. We're hired killers in 1851 in San Francisco and the Pacific Northwest. And we're hired to go find this guy and kill him. And along the way, we start to have doubts about, wait, who is this guy? What did he do? Why should we kill him? And also, we've been killing people for a living since we were little kids.

And we're starting to have this identity crisis. So the movie is, I don't know. It's a really deeply satisfying movie. You know how I was saying earlier about how a lot of these movies are just there to entertain you now? Yeah. I watched a movie on the plane on the way back from Europe recently, a big superhero movie, and it was good.

It made the flight pass by, and I was engaged in it. But as soon as that movie was over, right now, I couldn't tell you a single thing of what it was about or what happened. I could tell you maybe who a couple of the actors were in it. I couldn't tell you a single thing about the plot, and it had no resonance in my life afterwards. The Sisters Brothers, what people are saying to me when they watch The Sisters Brothers is like, wow, first of all, holy shit, that was a really original take on the western i didn't even know that was going on

at that time and blah blah blah and i i liked the movie when it was finished but i can't stop thinking about it that really expanding in my consciousness and it keeps like echoing inside me emotionally about my own relationships and the place of men in the world and what is masculinity and like all these stuff like it's really resonating with people so i really i know i every time i go out to sell a movie i try to urge people to say it to see it and i say please go see it but i really do hope people go see the sisters brothers because it's a pretty special movie. Of all the stuff I've done, it's pretty damn special.

That was a great sell job. Thank you. Now I'm like out of my mind, ready to see it. No, that was awesome. Yeah. I mean, I got a lot of sports to watch. I might still, I'm going to make some time. Okay.

This is baseball playoffs, NFL, NBA. I'm still going to make time for this. Who's going to win? The Cubs are out. I know. I don't care. make some time okay this is a baseball playoffs nfl nba i'm still gonna make time for this i've known the cubs are out i know i don't the brewers are somehow in the final four i was glad the cubs were out it gives me special joy like this kind of sadistic pleasure when the cubs lose especially when they pan the audience and you see all the north siders with their sad little faces like it makes south siders in chicago so happy like Although when the Cubs won, unlike many Sox fans, I was actually like, it's a good day for this city.

It's a good day for this city. But I have lots of people on the Southside who were like, die, die. They were not happy. Well, you must have loved it when the White Sox won and all the Cubs fans were super resentful. It was literally like the second coming on the Southside. People had their televisions out on the front yards in the lawn watching it as it unfolded.

It was mayhem. I was also there in Chicago when Jordan was winning all those championships with the Bulls. But I'm known as the jinx in Chicago. Why? Among my friends. Because the one time, because I'm like the Johnny-come-lately, you know, like in Silver Linings playbook when all the paranoid thinking about luck and superstition and all that.

I'm the guy that messes it up. I'm the guy that says the wrong thing or whatever. Jesus. Like when the when the Bears won the Super Bowl in 80 was 86. Yeah. The one game they lost was the game that I went over to my brother-in-law's house. The Miami game.

Yeah. Miami Dolphins. I went over to his house to watch and they lost. And there was the one time I went over to his house to watch it. And now I'm still the jinx from that, from that one game. You caught Kevin. I kind of believe it.

I do. I caught his perfect game though. That wasn't a jinx. Yeah. It's a perfect game. Yeah. I know where the pitches really landed bill and it wasn't a perfect game you saw the secret sauce uh we have to go you have to go continue to promote this movie in your other runs this is great a long time ago this is fun you're

always invited anytime you want to come back you know a 30-year anniversary of boogie nights you're gonna be participate yeah let me Let me know. That'd be amazing. I want to get you and Paul Thomas Anderson on together. Oh man. That'd be the dream podcast. Would you do that? Better set aside a few hours for that one. Would you do that one?

We could get food. So many stories between the two of us. Yeah. We'll do it in like a restaurant. We'll eat and we'll just put microphones on. We could spend three hours just talking about Burt Reynolds. Like in the stories that happened on Boogie Nights and just the craziness that went into that performance. You know that Boogie Nights house was available for sale last year.

I saw it. And it looked the same. And he was thinking about buying it. But it was like, what are you going to do? It's in West Covina. What are you going to do there? But do you know about the people that own that house? No.

They were like devout Christians. Oh, no. Devout Christians. From you going to do there? But do you know about the people that own that house? No. They were like devout Christians. Oh, no. Devout Christians. And they filmed Boogie Dancer? And they had not changed that house since like 1974. Like we barely did any set dressing when they went in there. It was like almost the same as it was in the 70s. I think it's almost the same now.

And then one day, and they didn't know what the movie was about. The people that owned it, they didn't. And of course, would never have approved of any kind of porn thing in their house. And so there was a day when we had summer and rain. Those big chested girls. Remember like in the 80s where Ricky J is filming. It's just video. We just keep shooting or whatever.

These girls playing with each other in the hot tub and whatever. That day, the Christian people that own the house decided, we'll go visit the movie set. Oh, no. And I remember looking out and seeing this producer, John Lyons, booking down the driveway trying to stop them. He's like, well, we're actually, can I take you out to lunch? Desperately trying to keep them from coming in the house.

But I wonder what they thought of it when it was done. Well, good luck with your four movies. I bet they got more money for that house though when they sold it based on it being Boogie Nights. I got to say it was on sale for a while and Boogie Nights was used as the selling point of the house and it still was on sale for nine months because we actually had a legitimate conversation

about whether the ringers should buy it and shoot all of our videos from there. But it's too far away. It's like 50 minutes. Yeah. If it was like 20 minutes, we could have done a lot of time on the 10. Yeah.

It would have been rough in the 60. John C. Riley. Good luck with everything. Thanks for coming on. Finally. Thanks so much to John C. Riley.

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