The Bill Simmons Podcast - The NFL's Offseason Hibernation and the Brilliance of 'Eighth Grade' With Bo Burnham | The Bill Simmons Podcast (Ep. 389)

Episode Date: July 13, 2018

HBO and The Ringer's Bill Simmons is joined by Kevin Clark to discuss the NFL offseason, why it's so different than the NBA offseason, sports gambling's potential impact on the NFL, and story lines for next season, including the aging elite quarterbacks and talent-stacking through free agency, (4:00). Then Bill sits down with his daughter, Zoe Simmons, and comedian, actor, and director Bo Burnham. They discuss Burnham's new film, 'Eighth Grade,' his directorial debut; capturing the essence of eighth grade; doing stand-up comedy; the YouTube audience; internet subcultures; and more (53:20). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Today's episode of the Bill Simmons Podcast on the ringer, Podcast Network, brought to you by ZipRecruiter. When it comes to hiring, you don't need a high hiring IQ. I hired Nephew Kyle, who's now my full-time podcast producer after we promoted Tate. Amazing. I didn't need ZipRecruiter to do that. We were related and he had good people skills and that was all I needed. Well, for other people who need hiring help, that's where you want

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I just taped, I won't tell you who it was with. I taped a three-hour podcast with Dave Chang and another guest that by the time we finish editing it, we'll probably run in 2020. But if you're not listening to Dave Chang's show, he did a two-part interview with Alan Yang, the comedy writer, and his longtime friend. That's really good. And also speaking of celebrities who host podcasts on the Ringer Podcast Network,

Larry Wilmore had my old friend who worked for my HBO show, Trayvon Free, was on the Wilmore show this week and Trayvon stopped by. And it's funny, I hadn't seen him in a long time, but we had this extended ringer family and people just kind of float in and out of it. And he's one of them. It was great to see him. That's a really good podcast. Things slowing down right now. It's mid-July. NBA signings have kind of ebbed off. NFL still feels a little while away, but we have a lot of stuff to talk about and write about on The Ringer, including the biggest takeaways of NBA free agency, The Ringer staff weighed in. You can find that on theringer.com.

The great movie going fever of 2018. Sean Fennessey, he thought movies were dead. We're finding out otherwise. Ryan O'Hanlon wrote a really good piece about the defining player of the 2018 World Cup. He said, the answer is no one. I think it's Mbappe. I just feel like he's going to be in my life and in your life and in everyone's life for the next 15 years. And this was kind of the

breakout. My prediction for him is two goals on Saturday, and I'm betting that. So we have that. We have Paolo Huguetti on the Cavs and Colin Sexton. That's on the website. If you missed the Step Brothers oral history we did, that is also still on the website. And right after I'm taping the BS podcast right now, we are taping the rewatchable Step Brothers. You guys voted for it. We gave you a choice of Step Brothers, choice A on Twitter.

Choice B was Tom Cruise movie, TBD. We thought Tom Cruise was running a walkaway. Now, Step Brothers, people want it. So that's happening. We're going to put that up over the weekend. So keep an eye on that. Coming up, we're going to talk to Kevin Clark about the NFL off season.

And then an interview I did with Bo Burnham, who directed an excellent movie called Eighth Grade. It was me, him, and my 13-year-old daughter because she was the unintended target audience for it. So we did a three-person interview. I was really proud of my daughter. She kind of hung in there.

So that's coming up after this. But first, our friends from Pearl Jam. All right, Kevin Clark is here. Fresh off his three-month retirement from writing. That was amazing. You came back. Why didn't you do an I'm back? A Jordan-esque I'm back fax? Yeah, just a fax.

I'm back. You got married. You went to Africa. I wrote a story. I mean, that's all the, I wrote a story this week about the World Cup. That's all the I'm back I need. That was a good I'm back.

You just do it. It's like Beyonce with the secret album releases. You don't announce it. You just do it. I was excited that you didn't get mauled to death in Africa. That was great. Anytime I know anybody who's on a safari, I'm frightened. I've seen the videos on YouTube.

They get way closer to the lions than you think. Yeah. They're also not that worried about lions. They're worried about buffalo and elephant. Really? Yeah. Lions are- What are the power rankings of animals I should be afraid of on an African safari?

Elephants and buffalo are definitely- They're 1A, 1B? Definitely, yeah. What, do the elephants just get pissed off? They see some humans- Yeah, 1B? They're definitely, yeah. What, do the elephants just get pissed off? They see some humans, they're like, Yeah, they charge. Yeah, lions are much easier to predict. Who's the safest animal?

Giraffe? Giraffe's not going to do much to you. Yeah, their head's like 40 feet high. Yeah, cheetahs are actually underrated for how safe they are. They're scared of everything. Really? A guide told me,

and we're going to get fact-checked by the internet here. Basically, if it was Cheetah versus one of us, it's not a bad fight. Really? That's the one you want to get in a fight. If you have to get in a fight with a predator like that, you're going to want a Cheetah. But the buffalo is just going to keep coming at us?

The buffaloes are huge, dude. Yeah. The buffaloes are huge. Elephants are huge. The lion will get you but you just you have to you have to be a habitual line stepper in order for that to happen does does the buffalo come at you and then during the last game of the season lose by 30 points wow what wow what yes what's wrong with that joke uh i want to talk about the nfl off season with you yeah i'm in um

i love basketball and i read basketball stuff every day. And we certainly read a lot about it at The Ringer. I've talked about this on the pod before about when we launched Grantland in 2011, it was like we, every day we wanted to have NFL stuff. And the NFL off season was its own season, 12 months a year, people want to read football. Over the course of the decade, this changed, and you cover football for us, among other things. Have you felt that change over the last couple years?

It seems like from mid-May all the way through mid-July, football just disappears unless somebody commits a crime. Which is actively happening. Which is pretty much almost every day. So what happened? It's interesting because it coincides with the NFL trying to program more stuff in that window. You know, the NFL has tried to make

free agency more of a thing. They moved the time that free agency happens, unlike the NBA, in order to get it on sort of the primetime shows. They almost tried to make it, like they wanted to make it almost like college signing day where it's like, you know, guys have their decisions and that's why they have their early

tampering window. So on Monday would be, you know, the big free agent saying, I choose Detroit or whatever it is. Yeah. And it hasn't really worked because there's just not, you think about all the personalities in the NBA and, oh, this guy's doing that. You know, you just think about all these different things. How many true personalities people care about? Are there in the NBA and oh this guy's doing that you know you just think about all these different things how many true personalities people care about are there in the NFL they're all the quarterbacks who by the way almost never switch teams yeah they're all insanely boring

they don't really get into trouble they don't talk shit in Instagram comments so what do you do I mean there's no the the drama that propels a lot of the 24-hour news cycle would have to come from the quarterbacks. Drew Brees is not going to start going at people in Instagram comments. Right. So Le'Veon Bell, what's his basketball equivalent? Is he one

of the top 12 football players right now? Yeah, incredibly versatile. Always mad about his contract. I don't know who that is. But it would be... You know why? Because Le'Veon Bell in the NBA would have a five-year deal

worth $140 million. Sure. And he wouldn't be playing on one-year deals. So let's say his equivalent is Dame Lillard. Sure. Dame Lillard is under

a five-year contract, but is a little enigmatic, is unique to his own right. I feel like I know so much more about Dame Lillard than Le'Veon Bell. And by the way, I know I'm a basketball guy. I know I wrote a basketball book.

I know I've written more about basketball than anything, but I love football. I watch football every weekend. That's all I do, unless my daughter's a soccer game. Sal and I have been doing that pod on Mondays. It's not like I like football less. I just find that during the off season, I shut my brain down

and I don't really care what happens. And then we get within two weeks of the season. I'm like, all right, who's on what team? Let's go. And I wonder if part of it is because the off season stuff is so bleak. It's just hard to drum up any interest, especially in July when they're all gone.

I mean, you know, you have OTAs, you have mini camps, all that stuff, but there's just nothing to glean from that. Nothing. And anything we've sort of been, you know, Twitter was great for the first like four years of those off season things. Cause it was like, wow, look at Kirk cousins. He's really slinging it. And now everyone is realized that none of that shit matters and they just tune it out. And so I just don't know how you drum up interest. I mean, is it possible that some of those like XFL, All-American Football League type things drum up some interest because you're going to be able to see,

you know, almost like NFL Europe was. I mean, you know, if there was a minor league three years ago, there'd be guys starting in the NFL who were in it then. So maybe that helps a little bit if there's a summer minor football. Maybe they get college dudes after freshman year. I mean, that might be another,

I I'm really reconsidering. I thought the guys in college were too kind of young and their bodies weren't mature enough yet, all that stuff to play football. But when you think about the shelf life of these NFL careers now, and the majority of them are done by 30. Yep. So how old was Cam Chancellor?

Was he 30? Yeah, he was 30. But you also have to remember the NFL, the way the labor market has gone, it's only guys. The vast majority of players are on the rookie contract. Yeah. Everybody's between 22 and 27. And the superstars make it to 31. That's how this works.

Right. So a college player actually would have a much better chance because it's just the guys who are two years older than him instead of 10 years older than him. Like, why would I want to put three years of miles on me at the University of Alabama for no money when I could play in the XFL? Mike McCarthy was telling me a year ago

that you used to come into the NFL and all the offensive lines were 34 year olds who knew all these insane tricks and they were dirty and they had dumb beards and they, you know, like they were just classic, classic offensive linemen. Well, all those guys are out of the league at 32 now and it's completely different. It's not as rugged. That's part of what you wrote about last year where it's easier to keep the six rounder on a minimum who's 80% as good as the 34 year old guy who makes five million a year. The rookie contract scale helped the teams. They thought, the union thought it would help the veterans, but actually hurt them.

Yeah. So we have way more random player rosters. You have careers that are significantly shorter. Yep. And on top of that, just the randomness of every season. People complain about the NBA, about all the Warriors are so dominant. But the reality is it's nice to know who the three or four teams are heading into the season. And with football, it changes every year.

So as you said, you see Kirk Cousins flinging it. They might go 4-12 this year. There is no rhyme or reason to season versus season, except for the Patriots always seem to win the AFC East. But other than that, everything's off the table. Coaching and general managers. I mean, those are the two things that are most, it's almost like college now,

where the infrastructure is more, is as important as the roster, which didn't used to be the case. It used to be the case that you could just stack a bunch of talent. The coach could be an idiot. The offensive coordinator could be an idiot and they could overcome it. Now you basically have four year cycles. You basically have, okay, these guys are under our control for four years.

The first round pick will get a fifth year option. But after four years, these guys, some of them will stay. Some of them will graduate into unemployment, right? That's just sort of the way the NFL works now. And so when you have that kind of contract situation where, you know, the bat, the number two wide receiver is going to leave in for agency, you know, it doesn't matter. There's just so much turnover that the only thing that matters are schemes and infrastructure. It's turnover and randomness. Yeah. I don't think it's that random, but I do agree. Well, it's randomness,

like the strength of schedule stuff, and whose division is going to be good. You just don't know. And it's like, oh, the NFC sounds good this year? That completely changes what I thought the NFC was going to look like. Well, not only that, but you also don't even know what matters because it changes so quickly every year. You know, like last year,

Mays and I both thought that the Philadelphia Eagles had a great roster. I think he said that they had the deepest roster in the league. I was pretty much with him. But we didn't think because they didn't have a Brady, Breeze, you know, that kind of quarterback, we're like, well, they can't win. They can't win.

Same with the Jaguars. Oh, the Jaguars have the best defense in the NFL, but they can't win. And then all of a sudden in one year, the one thing we knew about the NFL, which was the quarterback's the only thing that mattered, gets flipped on its head. Yeah.

And Blake Bortles makes the AFC championship game and Nick Foles wins the Super Bowl. I was driving to work today and Shannon Sharp and Skip Bayless were on my radio, the simulcast of that show. Okay. And they were talking about, I think it was Tony Romo who predicted

Jaguars-Packers. Jaguars in the AFC. Blake Bortles. Yeah. They were just arguing about that. I was like, Blake Bortles is going to beat Tom Brady? They're going back and forth on it. I was like, sure. Who the

fuck knows? It's football. The Jags might beat the Pats. I don't know. If somebody said- They also almost beat the Pats last year. But if somebody said, New Orleans is going to beat Golden State this year in the playoffs, we would be like, you're a lunatic.

Why would you say that? That's insane. There's no way that's going to happen. But in football, you can make any prediction and it's like not insane. Yesterday, I was listening to an NFL Network podcast and Bucky Brooks said that

the Jets are the number one challenger for the Patriots. And it's just like... I like that you were listening to Bucky Brooks on a podcast. Bucky Brooks is really good. That podcast, Daniel Jermai, is really good.

Should we take it? No. No? That's because it's my job. It's on your corner? You're forgetting you're talking to me. I have that job here. really good. That podcast, Daniel Jermai is really good. Should we take it? No, no. All right. That's because it's my job. It's on your corner. Forgetting you're talking to me. I have that job.

I didn't know if you wanted, wanted to load up. Now that is a good podcast. No, but the, you know, and it's exactly what you say. I listened to it and I was like,

yeah, maybe. And it's like, it's the Jets. You could go on a podcast and say anything. Yeah. Like literally anything. And nobody go on a podcast and say anything. Yeah. Like literally anything and nobody could 100% refute it.

You could say right now the Browns are going to the Super Bowl. Right. I'd be like, eh. Tyrod. Eh. You know, Tyrod, new thing. A lot of first round picks.

Josh Gordon moving on. Easy schedule. Yeah. So I think that's part of it. It's because Blake Bortles broke everyone's brain because we're just sitting there saying this has to fail

at some point and then he goes into Pittsburgh and beats Ben Roethlisberger. So the injury factor, I think when we go back and look at these seasons and it's like, well, Jacksonville

almost made the Super Bowl. But if Deshaun Watson doesn't get hurt, Houston probably wins that division. And at some point, Jacksonville almost made the Super Bowl. But if Deshaun Watson doesn't get hurt, Houston probably wins that division. And at some point, Jacksonville gets... I think it would have been Pats Texans if Watson's healthy. But Watson goes down. We had all the other injuries that happened.

And that adds to, I used to say, like shaking the snow globe is the analogy. You shake the snow globe with a couple ACL injuries. And then it's like all right here's jacksonville and the pats yeah that's our afc title game i think there's a lot of snow globe teams this year where i haven't done all my research yet but there's like 12 or 13 teams that wouldn't surprise me making the super bowl especially like with the pats on the downside clearly where at some it's going to be, where it's going to be this year,

it's going to be next year. I don't know what year it's going to be, but there's a finish line now. So I like to do this thing every year. Maze is in on it too. We've done the podcast where it's just how many teams can win the Super Bowl.

Last year, we came up with 16. Right. Which is a fair number because Jacksonville probably snuck in there as one of the 16. But now I think you have to expand it because it's almost like how many teams can't win the Super Bowl. Right. Because, you know, and what happens now in the NFL is that it used to be, here are the good teams. Also, here are the teams that have a great quarterback that if

everything breaks right, they're in. But that now it's like, well, if you have, you know, a great defensive line, that's enough. There's so many incomplete teams that one great unit can get you in the mix. Well, it seems like Philly and the Rams and the Jags, I would say have the most complete rosters across the board. I don't know what that means.

Minnesota Vikings. And the Vikings. Yeah. All right. So let's go with those four. Maybe the Pats fifth. I don't know. Okay. Yeah. Again right. So let's go with those four. Maybe the Pats fifth. I don't know. Okay.

Yeah. Again, I have not done all my research yet, but just off the top of my head, those seem like the most complete teams. And yet I wouldn't be surprised if all four of those didn't make the Super Bowl. The Rams, I think, are going to have the curse of the preseason favorite slash magazine cover

slash here come the Rams slash here's our feature about Sean McVay slash here's Jared Goff. Here's what like, I just know they're going to get besieged. Can I say what oddly helps with that is being on the West Coast. I feel like you don't feel it as much. I remember when the Raiders were really good, really, really good two years ago. And I was, I went up there in November and they were like 11 and 2 or whatever I was like you guys must be getting swamped with media and they were like no no one

comes out here it's the west coast like if you're in Baltimore or Philly like you get the the media the media hounds and in the west coast it's like no one cares out here that's one storyline I am excited about when the Raiders go to Vegas even though it makes me feel bad for Oakland and that whole situation. But what can you do? They couldn't get a stadium done. And maybe this will lead to them eventually getting another team. But after watching what happened with the hockey team in Vegas, and after being in Vegas,

and just the thought of that stadium in Vegas, and I think they have a lot more locals around there than people realize. I think having a football team in Vegas is going to be really fun. Well, I saw that they're selling PSLs, which I thought was such an outdated thing. But then I realized that Vegas is just the only city where you can sell PSLs. Because all the scalpers will buy all of them because they can turn them around. And also, there's just people who just, you know, woke up at the pool at the Bellagio, right?

Right. Yeah, PSLs, sure. 50,000, sure. Here's a check. I think Vegas will be really fun. And I think the sports gambling thing is going to be fun for football. I agree.

I think that's probably the best thing. The NFL has taken so many hits this decade. So many things have gone wrong. Every sort of societal trend toward how we treat women, sexual politics, how we report stuff, how we consider PEDs, concussions. All these things have gone against the NFL

and the commissioner has not helped. But the one thing that's gone their way is gambling. Yep. And I think that David Tepper, the new owner of the Panthers, inexplicably said that ratings are going to go down if there's gambling, which just makes no sense. I think the NFL has always had this sort of wink wink relationship with gambling. Oh, it's been more than fucking wink wink. They officials that, well, we don't like that, but it's, I think they understand that. So I think they still have to take the public position that this is not good, but they know

how much of a boon this is going to be. I mean, it will take a lot of the spotlight off of concussions and player health and stuff. And somebody like Gronk, who is not even 30 yet. And you just know what the finish line is. He's going to, he'll have one more year in the Pats. He'll then sign a two-year deal with some crappy team like, I don't know, Denver. And then he'll play one year for them and he'll be out of the league and he'll be 31

and he'll be doing a reality show. Whereas if he was an NBA player, he'd play until he's 38 or 39. And he would be like Dwight Howard, just bouncing around on these different teams, making 20 billion a year. I think the biggest change with the gambling. So Sunday night football, Monday night football, Thursday night football are all insanely heavily gambled.

And one of the reasons Thursday night football is not a real problem for most people, even though we all hate it, is it's really highly gambled because it's on TV. It's on network television on Thursday night when not a lot is going on. I think the NFL might even go deeper into those windows because they know how many people are going to watch. I mean, I know you I think you legally can't put a game on Friday night because of the high school thing. I think there's some sort of antitrust in there. They're just going to find a way to put a game on Friday night. I just feel like that's that's the future with gambling is people will tune in for anything, especially if it's on exclusively. I think you'll see more of those windows

in four or five years. They want to peel back the windows right now because of the ratings drop. I think it'll sort of creep back because of the gambling. It's got three gambling advantages. One, it's the most fun sport to gamble on. Two, it's, I think, the best live betting sport because you actually have time with the breaks

and let's go to timeout. It's 2017. They're getting the ball back. You actually have four or five minutes there to decide what to do versus basketball, which is just constant. And then three, I think it's the best daily fantasy sport.

Yep. I love doing a daily fantasy lineup every week. It's just fun. I mean, everybody's playing in different leagues basketball is so hard because there's four basketballs i know more about basketball than just about anybody and doing a daily fantasy for basketball is so random and so impossible and you're just banking on like oh that well maybe that guy might make some threes over under totals and then they figure it out so hard i'm sure we're gonna get feedback from people like, oh, it's actually easy.

You guys are morons. But it's not. It's random. You don't know if somebody's going to go three for 15 one day and 11 for 17 the next day. It's random. The other day I did DFS NASCAR. I know nothing about NASCAR.

And I figured maybe that would help. I just looked at the gambling odds. I was not good. I recommend Daily Fantasy for the majors in golf. I did it for US Open and I actually finished second place and won some nest egg for football. I was so excited. I had Dustin Johnson.

I had Tommy Fleetwood, all these people. So I'm doing that for British Open next week. Me too. Yeah. Daily Fantasy for the majors and for, you know, once you get to like the tournaments like last week where it's a bunch of no names, that's almost a sickness. The John Deere Classic?

Yeah. Did you get to go in? How was your DFS team for the John Deere Classic? Yeah, I did not have one. But yeah, I would say those are the three advantages. From an ownership slash commissioner standpoint, where are we right now with the league being run? How are we feeling in 2018?

I feel like Goodell is not on as shaky ground as he has been. Having said that, I think every owner is looking at him after this anthem thing and they're like, what the hell was that? You went out of your way at a meeting where it was sort of hinted at that maybe they were going to address it maybe they wouldn't all of a sudden he just comes out with this huge policy which now the the nflpa is coming out with the grievance on and so i just think that when it gets to september and the president is coming after players and coming after teams still

owners are gonna look at goodell and this was supposed to help yeah like it made it worse and also got it back in the headlines we're now talking about it i mean i i sort of do believe you know you used to always used to have the david stern theory that he would try to do something right before the season that would drum up interest i do think the nfl tries to do a little bit of that yeah maybe it's in the headlines all the time but that's not a theory by the way the david stern theory it's a fact that was that was just called the the way, the David Stern theory. It's a fact that was, that was just called the David Stern. There's no theory. He did it every year.

I think there's a little bit of that, but with this, I mean, it's just going to cause so many more problems. And it's one of the rare things in the NFL where talking about it does not strengthen the NFL. Whereas anything else they want conversation. I think,

I think that, you know, there are people in the league office who obviously Deflategate was an absolute debacle. Yeah. One of many. I mean, Deflategate was talked about every single day for an entire year. It really was. It was genius. Yeah. And a complete railroading. I think the

biggest mistake he made this decade was not letting Trump buy the bills. You can't say that from an intent standpoint or an incompetent standpoint, it was his biggest mistake. But if he lets Trump buy the bills, all the stuff Trump is doing as our actual president just could have been confined to the National Football League and him feuding with other owners. It actually would have been enjoyable just to have this crazy loose cannon, George Steinbrenner type owner. Paul Manafort is defensive coordinator. Yeah. He just would have been nuts. He would have been firing. Head coaches would have been

leaving every six weeks. It would have made the bills really interesting. It would have taken the bills from one of the most irrelevant franchises at that point to a top five talked about. Skip and Shannon would have been talking about Trump's at it again, threatening to fire. It would have been great. He would have been on some insane coach. Instead, he's running our country. I would have settled for the Bills. The Bills fans, I think, would have...

I don't know. They can't win a Super Bowl anyway. At least have a crazy owner. It's like the George W. Bush, he just wanted to be the commissioner of baseball thing. Yeah. We could have just sl owner. It's like the George W. Bush who just wanted to be the commissioner of baseball thing. Yeah. We could have just slotted these guys into different sports positions.

Top three storylines you're most excited about heading into the season. So the number one thing for me is just the way the league is changing because I think the big thing no one

talks about every year is just whenever a team wins a Super Bowl by doing something really defined, every team rips that off. Yeah.agles were analytic driven they were they had tons of college schemes they had i mean they were running the spread they were doing all this different stuff they obviously won without a great quarterback and so i think you're going to see a much better

nfl in 2018 because teams are going to be like okay you know what we are going to go for it on fourth down because they won the Super Bowl with it. You have to prove more aggressive, more analytics guys in the coaching booth, which the Eagles had and a couple of other teams have had. Like, I think those, I think some of those teams were a little too earlier. Teams were a little too early on the analytics thing. I think now is the perfect time for it. I think there's going to be, it's not gonna be an analytics revolution.

We're still years away from that, but we're going to start to see the same sort of stuff that happened in basketball a couple years ago and then baseball, obviously, like 15 years ago. I mean, the Jags make the Super Bowl

if they don't play like complete wusses in the fourth quarter. Yeah. They turtled. Yeah. If they had approached the fourth quarter

like the Eagles approached the entire Super Bowl, it's Eagles-Jags. Yeah. And also, you look like the Eagles approached the entire Super Bowl, it's Eagles-Jags. Yeah, and also, you look like the Philly Special, right? The innovation cycle is moving up so quickly where you can just see a play in a high school game on Monday.

I was just talking to a coach about this. You can see a play on Monday and you can run it on Sunday. And you used to not be able to do that. But you didn't have the internet, you didn't have YouTube. You can just look on YouTube now. You can just look on YouTube and you can run it on Sunday. And you used to not be able to do that. You didn't have the internet. You didn't have YouTube. You can just look on YouTube now. You can just look on YouTube and say,

wow, Boone High School in Orlando is doing this. Looks great. We're going to run it on Sunday. Is that Boone High School reference? Yeah. I was trying to think about... Shout out to Boone High School. We made the state championship in 2007. It's great. Ross to Miami Northwestern. Alright, so that's storyline number

one. What's two? That Number one, storyline. Number two, number two is the quarterbacks and the aging curve because you have Tom Brady pushing 40, Drew Brees pushing 40. He will be 40 at some point. Eli Manning, who's apparently still around is amazing, is just going strong.

Phillip Rivers, Ben Roethlisberger. Yeah. Are we Aaron Rogers is 35. I don't include him in this. And sad. Are we? Aaron Rodgers is 35. I don't include him in this group. And sad. I don't include him in this group. That group I just named,

who falls off this year? Because Peyton Manning was the best quarterback in the NFL until he wasn't. And when he wasn't, he really wasn't. And I think now there's sort of a, every year, because we're in unprecedented territory with these quarterbacks, we don't know what the aging curve looks like.

Even Manning had four neck surgery. So you can't look at breeze or, or Brady and say, they're going to be like Manning. They're going to fall apart. When Manning did Manning was different. I think we're an unprecedented territory because these guys have taken care of their bodies.

They they've taken generally less hits than most people. And so you're just watching them. Is Breeze going to... I saw a headline the other day on some stats blog. Is Breeze just going to become Sammy Sosa that one year? Like, maybe. Oh, that'd be great. But that's not a...

Grow the neck beard? Yeah. That's not a reference to what Sammy Sosa... That's just a statistical comparison. Okay. I would say Roethlisberger is most likely to fall off. I thought we saw a ton of signs with it last year. Physically, he does not seem the same.

Took a lot of punishment. And he just had too many games where he was like the one giant deer getting chased down by the herd of smaller lions and trying to keep the play alive with five people pulling him five different ways. And I don't see him aging gracefully. He just took too much punishment.

Brady, I've given up trying to figure out and especially the Edelman, Alex Guerrero, whatever the fuck happened there. Like who knows, who knows what all these guys are up to? I think it would be foolish not to be like, all right, this is kind of unprecedented.

All these guys are playing with this many miles on them and still succeeding. We've just been taught over the last 20 years to question it. How was that for stammering around? have no thoughts on it yeah i just don't know i don't know what these guys are up to i don't know how long their bodies can last i don't know what limits they are doing to push it but rothlisberger would be my bet because i just think he's taken too much punishment. Yeah, I mean, but all it takes is one hit. I mean, Drew Brees tore his rotator cuff 12 years ago.

Yeah. And he recovered from it. But if he tears his rotator cuff now in a hit like that, he's not going to recover from it. By the way, I'm going to do something on this at some point, maybe a video. The guy, this is how everything is connected. The guy who hit Drew Brees to then send him to New Orleans

and not Miami or staying in San Diego. And a chain of events, starting a chain of events that changed football. Who was the guy that made that hit? Drew Brees in San Diego? In 2006. It tore his rotator cuff. All full circle. Bobby Boucher. Who was it? In 2006. The Torres Rotator Co. All full circle. Bobby Boucher.

Who is it? John Lynch. Oh. So now you have Lynch in San Francisco. That hit kind of explains the 2018

NFC. All right. That's storyline two. What's three? Storyline three is the emergence of super teams because

you look at the way the cap, the cap has been rising 10 million every year for the past five years. That money is not necessarily going to the middle class player. In fact, it's not. It's going towards absolute superstars and you're getting to a point

because there's no max salary that you can stack players. So all of a sudden in LA, you've got Marcus Peters, Aqib Tlaib, Indomitian Sioux, and then a stacked offense. And in Philadelphia, oh, we won the Super Bowl. We'll go ahead and add Michael Bennett, who still has a lot left in the tank. And so we've never really seen this because you have to remember the best coach in the history of football is Bill Belichick. And his whole thing, his whole shtick

roster management wise is we don't need this guy because we can get this guy half the price. In the modern NFL, it is possible if you have enough rookie contracts and enough cap space,

it is possible to stack all of those guys who are paid fair market value. And I cannot wait to see how they interact because there's a definite talent arms race. Philadelphia, I think started by going out and getting Alshon, Jeffrey and free agency guys like that.

And, you know, free agency is for the first time in history, a viable way to build a team. And now we see how does that play in or how do those teams interplay over a full season? Cause we just don't know. I'm actually excited for this season, even though I'm not ready to really seriously think about it yet. But I do think it will be a good season because I think the Patriots thing is going to be really compelling. That has a finish line, whether it's this year or next year. Jimmy G in San Francisco is going to be really fun.

Love it. This Rams team they've built is going to be super fun. I think Rodgers is at kind of a tipping point in Green Bay now where he's in his mid-30s. I think he's probably the most self-aware great athlete that we have right now. He's got a contract coming up. He's got a contract coming up. He's clearly been not that happy with front office slash coaching,

all that stuff. And if that starts out badly for them, I don't know how that's going to play out. I think that's going to be fun. I think the Eagles fans, all the crowing and all the shit talking they did after their Super Bowl. I've never seen anyone tempt fate for the future like this. Did you see Ben McAdoo last night? No.

Ben McAdoo just came out of nowhere and just started taking shots at everybody last night. Where? In the New York Post. Really? He just came out firing. Yeah. Did he take shots at Eagles fans? He said, Philly's never,

Philly, how much success have they had? I think that they're going to struggle handling it. Yeah, it's definitely like, the way the Eagles fans have acted was like one of those 80s movies where the kid becomes popular and just starts treating everyone like shit. And then there's a big come up at the end. So I know that your whole thing is defending a title.

Absolutely plays into, you know, how we view the title. No, this was a, that's a great title. I wouldn't, I wouldn't change my thoughts.

It's like Lane Johnson, I think said this when we're talking about the Patriots and the Patriots have their, their rings and stuff. But I think a couple when we're talking about the Patriots and the Patriots have their, their rings and stuff. But I think a couple of Eagles players, we'd rather have that one ring than play for sort of a humorless, unfun Patriots. And I'm sure there's some justification going on there,

but it's kind of like, you know what? We did it. We got our ring and now we can just sort of hang out. Yeah. And I'm not saying that they, I, they have such a short,

the Eagles, they have a talented, no, they have a talented roster, which I think will carry them, but you will, if you're Philadelphia, you will lose some of that

Super Bowl motivation because you're no longer going to be the guy who brought the... You're already the guy who brought the Super Bowl championship to Philadelphia. I'm just doing all my picks now based on nobody believes in us. It's a dominant NFL theory. In Philadelphia. You'm just doing all my picks now based on nobody believes in us. It's a dominant NFL theory. You lose that in Philadelphia. You lose that in Philly

and we might not even know who the nobody believes in us team is yet, but we'll know at some point and I'm just picking that team all the way. Because that seems like it's the most dominant for us. The problem is there's only like 10 teams in the NFL that nobody believes in. Back to our earlier point. It's like the Browns and the Bengals.

Well, that's another thing I'm excited about. What if Baker Mayfield's just... I did not like that pick. What if he's really fun to watch? He might be, but Tyrod... He might be fun to watch right away. He might steal the job

from Tyrod in August. He might. And then Tyrod goes somewhere. I don't know. Baker Mayfield has the chance to be a really, really exciting player. The Giants with Barkley and Beckham back,

I think that's just a fun – how much does Eli have left in the tank? I think all that stuff's fun. Eli Manning was 29th last year in yards per attempt. He was awful last year. I don't know how much he has left in the tank. I mean, he might have zero. The Jets having a real quarterback is a fun storyline.

They might have three. The fall of the Seattle Seahawks I've really enjoyed. It's going to be fun to see them stink on next year. You're buying Seahawks stock? No, I'm not buying Seahawks. Sorry, Danny Kelly.

I'm not buying Seahawks. I'm definitely not buying Seahawks stock. I liked the Seahawks more than you did. I enjoyed that run a lot. They went against my team. I'm just 100% biased. I understand that, but I'm just saying I just thought they were great. They enjoyed that run a lot. They went against my team. I'm just 100% biased. They talked a lot of shit. They were a great group of personalities.

They started a fight after we won the Super Bowl before the game was over. I'll never forget them. Who was your least favorite Seahawk in that run? I didn't like the entire defense, but I really disliked Richard Sherman. Richard Sherman, who had done jack shit in his career up to this point, and they beat the Pats in Foxborough that time,

and he's talking shit to Brady. How dare you, Richard Sherman? You should be shaking Tom Brady's hand and saying it was an honor to play him. Well, first of all, he did do that in the Super Bowl. He did. That's what I wanted from him. At least he admitted he was wrong. Richard Sherman on the Niners, by the way.

Another fun storyline. Richard Sherman backed up all of that shit talk he had in New England in 2011, or against New England in 2011. I'm just saying, if anybody backed it up, it was Richard Sherman.

That's all. Are you buttering him up for a Lee Jenkins-style feature? I talked to him last year. We talked about... You wouldn't go there, hang out for a week? No, we should hire him to be our Lakers writer.

He loves the Lakers more than anybody. He was... Richard Sherman is a diehard Lakers fan. Richard Sherman was wearing a Kyle Kuzma jersey for most of last year. Really? Yeah. That's really weird.

He's a big Kuzma guy? He's a Kuz head? Why is that weird? He's from Los Angeles. That's a tough corner. Kyle Kuzma guy? He's a Kuz head? Why is that weird? He's from Los Angeles. That's a tough corner. Kyle Kuzma put together about eight weeks and then was a mediocre player the rest of the season. I'm not the Lakers fan.

Yeah, that's a weird one. I'm trying to think of, oh, the Cousins, Alex Smith, who won out on that one is going to be fun. And it's not just Cousins and Alex Smith, it's Case Keenum. Because he's the third piece. And you know, it's really interesting. That trifecta is going to be fun to see

how that shakes out and who won and who lost. Case Keenum was underrated last year. You and I are on the same page with this. I would have kept Case Keenum if I was Minnesota. I would not have traded for Alex Smith if I was Washington.

And I would not have spent all that money on Kirk Cousins. I think Case Keenum wins that whole roulette. So the Vikings offensive line is not that good. And Case Keenum was one of the football outsiders at this study the other day. He was one of the three players in the history since they started doing it,

which I think has been eight years. He had a positive rating when under pressure. So he's the guy you want behind a bad offensive line. We don't know if Cousins is going to operate like that. I thought he was Rich Gannon last year. He's Rich Gannon 2.0. And you know what? He threw one shitty pass in that Eagles game

and the guy returned it for a touchdown and it completely flipped the game. And football is like that. Sometimes one play and then the other team has momentum. They complete that long pass at midfield near the end of the half. And then all of a sudden the game was over. Yeah.

I just thought Case Keenum was really good. And it took me a while to get there. But that pass he threw against the Saints was really one of the best passes I've ever seen in my life. It was absolutely perfect. It was the only place he could throw it. He had pressure on him. And I don't know.

I just liked the guy. He was a great Slow News Day guest as well. That's why you really on him. And I don't know. I just liked the guy. He was a great Slow News Day guest as well. That's why you really like him. He was telling us, it was the week after the play, or the three weeks after the play. And I said, you know, I heard when you make a play like that, that all anybody wants to do is tell you where they were. And he's like, you're absolutely right.

That's exactly right. And so we're filming and we get done. And there's a bunch of people to our right, just waiting. And as soon as it finishes, this guy comes up and goes, I was in Park City, Utah. And he just looks at me like, really, bro? Like this is all anybody does to Case Keenum is come up to him and tell him what bar they watched the miracle in.

It's too bad because that miracle kind of, it kind of came and went. Cause the next week, not to the good people at the Under Armour store in the mall of America. That one, that one. It's just like, it, it's tough when you have the miracle and then the next week you just get

bounced. Andy Chavez Mets catch. Yeah. Where it's like, he makes this amazing play and then it's like, Oh, Oh, it's one of the, it's one, he makes this amazing play and then it's like, oh, oh, by the way. It's one of the greatest and most ultimately

meaningless plays ever. I mean, it probably means more to the Vikings fans that, that, I mean, not the Vikings, the Saints fans, that,

that's how they didn't make the Super Bowl. But even then, you can't feel bad for the Saints because they won the Super Bowl in the last 10 years. Is it 10?

Is your grace period 10 years? No, it's five. Okay. But at least they won. Yeah. They never thought they'd win. Bowl in the last 10 years. Is your grace period 10 years? No, it's five. Okay. But at least they won. Yeah. They never thought they'd win. What about the Eagles? Neither did the Eagles.

The Eagles, at least the Phillies World Series, opened the door ajar. Yeah. The Bills and the Browns are looking at this, and the Vikings too, I think. And there's no door ajar. It's a closed door, and it's the gateway to hell. That's where

they are. And the Bengals too. We always leave out... The poor Bengals always get left out of this and should always be included. And they've been so anonymous, they don't even get mentioned. The Browns also have the problem of LeBron is gone, so now

everybody's just looking at Baker Mayfield and Josh Gordon and Jarvis Landry and Corey Kluber saying, do something. Yeah. And Francisco Lindor. Wait, what's going on with the Indians? Are they good or not?

They're in the mix. They're not that good, but at least they'll probably be in the playoffs. They're closer from Boone high school. I went to high school. Boone high school. Boone Braves. Last thing.

And then we're going to go. Jonathan Isaac got a lot of love on the site this week. What was your reaction to it? After the Magic have made 100 straight terrible picks. Charks told me, gave me a heads up that it was coming. Yeah. He said basically, because I had made fun of Jonathan Isaac muscle watch stories, and he told me he was just going to do a muscle watch story.

Neck beard or no? For Isaac? No, no neck beard. no neckbeard no nephew kyle has a neckbeard i don't know what the fuck's going on with him i think he's told you have peds right now listen unless they're at the dark room i'm not getting my hands on peds is that an ipa with peds isaac and bomber are something to build around. Now, we didn't sign. Yeah, those are two good ones. Now, who's going to score baskets? Here's the thing that frustrates me with the Magic.

Just get a real point guard. You have these two big guys that matter. Isaiah Thomas to score baskets. I think you trade Aaron Gordon in January. I agree with that. That was a contract where you lock the guy down and then you shop him. Wait, so one of our basketball writers, Jonathan Sharks, he floated this to me

and I've been thinking about it since. Hmm. I don't want to, I'm taking his Slack take public, but who cares? Aaron Gordon for CJ McCollum. Oh, that makes sense. That makes sense.

I think there would have to be more people in the deal, but something like that. there'd be a pick, obviously. But, Sharks' thought is McCollum would just love to be the guy and he'd be the guy in orlando and he would get these young pieces no mccollum needs his own east coast team yeah that he's just the creator yeah i think one of those two guys will be gone at some point gordon's a west coast guy yeah from san jose

aaron gordon's one of those are we sure he's good guys? But I actually am in the yes, he's good camp. He's okay. Because I do think that not having a point guard matters. And they've never had real point guards on the Magic the entire time he's been there. And it matters. Yeah, it really matters. Guess what point guards do?

They run the offense. They get guys the ball in the right spots. They run fast breaks. They encourage people. These are all valuable things. Kevin Clark, when's your next? So you're doing your camp tour right now? Camp tour starts beginning

two weeks from now, essentially. Less than two weeks. Okay. Good luck. Will it be more or less frightening than the safari? It will be the same. Okay. It will be the same. You just drive around middle america you don't see anybody for like eight hours also the most frightening thing there's a weird leg between green bay and minnesota where there's just no cell phone reception yeah and i just didn't think

that was possible but it's just every year i'm like well it's 2016 it's 2017 uh you know i'm sure they fixed that by now no Nope, no cell phone reception. Fantasy and I drove back from Vegas in separate cars on Sunday. And there was a huge accident on the 15 and we had to drive around it according to Waze. And we ended up on some road for 30 miles. That was one of those roads,

like if your car breaks down, you're just never seen again. Yeah. One lane each way. And for about 10 miles, there was no cell phone reception. Great. And I was like,

this is, the aliens are coming down to kill me. You're going to accidentally wait in a nuclear testing facility? Yeah, that would be a good app of where there's no cell phone reception.

So you just know ahead of time. Like, oh, I'm going into this, whatever app. Kevin Clark, pleasure to have you on. Ring our NFL show. When's that coming back? Like in a weekly way?

I mean, we do it every other Monday and then pretty soon we'll start doing it weekly. Weekly is going to be soon. Soon. Okay. Maybe, I mean, we'll do it next week

and then ditty up. All right. Thanks, man. Let's take a break to talk about Squarespace. Turn your dream into a reality with Squarespace. Squarespace makes it easier

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our friends at Miller Lite, they know that at The Ringer, we have our disagreements. We argue about stuff constantly. We argue in our Slack. We argue about what is the best summer TV show right now. My top five is The Challenge, Succession, The Affair, Sharp Objects, and whatever that Kristen Cavalier, Jay Cutler reality show is. I really enjoy that.

I wish they could spin Jay Cutler off into his own show. Those are my top five summer shows right now. You might think I'm a lunatic and you might want to argue about all of those choices, but that's the thing. People are going to argue about stuff. Well, there's no debate about this. Miller Lite is the great tasting light beer, only 96 calories, 3.2 grams of carbs, fewer calories and half the carbs of Bud Light. Nothing really more to talk about. If you have a real argument, let me hear it. Until then, stick with Miller Lite. Miller Lite, hold true. And now, Bo Burnham and my daughter talking about a fantastic movie called

Eighth Grade. Here we go. All right. Bo Burnham is here, director of Eighth Grade. And my daughter is here. She's going into the Eighth Grade. I had to bring her in as the third person on the pod. Yeah. I know you're doing a lot of press. I bet you haven't done any interviews with an actual soon-to-be eighth grader. No, this is right. This is the toughest critic and the source of what we're getting at. So I'm thrilled and terrified. Well, she saw the movie four times because they mailed me the DVD. Really?

Yeah. Incredible. So you got to move closer to your mic. See, in eighth grade, they don't know how to put their mouth close to a mic. We're already getting into the fraught father-daughter relationship that this is all about. Yeah, it's always fraught. It resonated with her, especially the phone stuff. Yeah.

Which you're pretty good about. You have other friends that aren't as good about. Are not so good at all. So how did you understand that whole world? I mean, I feel like a part of it a little bit. I mean, I'm like the elder of the internet generation. Like I'm the oldest person that grew up with the internet. Sort of Facebook and all that stuff was ubiquitous when I was like 16 or something.

So I had a little bit of a sense of myself before it started going crazy. But you were like one of the original YouTube stars. Yeah, one of the OGs. Oh, six. Yeah, yeah. Oh, six. Yeah. At the time, I. Yeah. One of the OG. Oh, six. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, six. Yeah. At the time I didn't even know what it was.

I just, I had posted, I had a funny song. I wanted to show my brother who was at college. So people were like, there's this thing called YouTube where you can just post things and show. So that's how I started on it, not even knowing what it was.

And then it became a whole, I think that summer it took off. Cause I remember writing a piece about, it was like this YouTube thing, all this stuff's on here. Here are my like 30 favorite things on YouTube right now. And all these videos. Because a few years earlier, I'd worked on Jimmy Kimmel's show. And anytime we had to find videos, we had to go on the dark web.

And he had this video coordinator. And he went to typing all this stuff in to find. And then all of a sudden, it was all available. Yeah, it's crazy used to be yeah it used to be vhs is sent to bob saget like i think that's what like most of the internet videos used to be and then uh yeah so how much how much tv do you watch on youtube now out of the percentage of tv that you watch how much of it is youtube related probably like 85 yeah and it's, is it TV? Are you watching like vloggers? I'm watching vloggers. I'll watch challenge videos.

It varies between a lot, depending what's there. The challenge videos are weird. The challenges are like, I'm going to eat this case of cinnamon and try to say the Star Spangled Banner or something. Yeah, it is like that. It's very humiliating. One of the videos you watch where it's just people screaming in really loud voices? That's not what it is.

Is that a challenge to make me want to not drink cyanide? Yeah. What are those videos? Those are just people being loud. I mean, they're probably doing challenge videos, but just being very overreactive. I feel like you listen to more of the loud aspects than when I'm actually watching. Well, because I can hear it from the other room.

I'm like, turn that off. What is that? That person's the sound of hell. Yeah, it's a lot. So what was your first video? It was a song? It was a little song that I wrote that I posted online in my bedroom at the time.

How old were you? I was 16. Yeah, I was a junior in high school and at a Catholic all boys high school. And you're just a theater kid? Yep. I had my Shakespeare in the park t-shirt and a golden crucifix around my neck. So it was pretty on brand at the time. Yeah, I was a sports kid growing up. And then I did theater as I got older and it found like, I have a very sports heavy centric family. And I was sort of the weird little theater kid, but my father supported me.

Like I was an athlete. Like he would come to like Shakespeare's a winter's tale, which is the worst Shakespeare by far, like five times sitting there, like cheering me on in like a three hour, awful five act Shakespeare comedy in quotes. So did you become like a, like a local celebrity as the YouTube thing took off? A little, not, not totally. It was like the weird thing about it, which is like,

sort of became the story of my life. And I think the story of a lot of kids' lives was like, you know, I got a million views in a day and my life didn't change. So I had this weird double thing going of feeling like, okay, there's this thing happening online that's insane. And yet my life isn't really that much different. Yeah, you're still going to the gas station. Yeah, still, well, yeah. I had a teacher come up to me and go,

I got a challenge for you. Stop posting those. I was like, that's not really a challenge. That's just telling me to stop. But yeah, no, it was weird. And then I started doing stand-up. I would open up for Joel McHale on the weekends. When you were like, how old, 18? Yeah, 16, 17, 18.

Oh, my God. Yeah. So I would go out to like the Hampton Beach Casino and do a five-minute set where someone would scream at me like, where's Joel? And actually at that show, Ernie Buck, do you know Ernie Buck Jr? I mean, that is Massachusetts royalty. He owns a series of, I shouldn't be saying this. He has a series of used car dealerships, Ernie Buck Jr. And there were all these commercials when I was growing up, Ernie Buck Jr. Come on down. He started a band called Ernie and the Automatics where he basically like bought members of the Eagles to be in his band. And he showed up

at the Joel McHale show in Converse and Black Frame glasses, and it was nothing like I expected it to. So I did. I became Ernie Bach Jr. level local celebrity, which was royalty at the time. And then you're just doing comedy for the next few years. Yeah, so then I was going to go to school,

and then I didn't. I didn't go to college, and I just started touring, and then yeah, did that for, yeah, basically the next seven years. When did you become one of the stars of EOTEACH? That was, so. He's in this movie called Funny People that I probably haven't let you watch yet. I haven't seen that yet. I did the Montreal Comedy Festival the summer after I graduated high school and Judd Aptow was there.

Yeah. And we sort of hooked up there and he threw me in the movie very, very kindly. And it was very fun. Yo Teach is a funny scene. And we filmed like three full episodes of that. We shot that for like two weeks. So there's a lot of Yo Teach in the world.

So what made you decide to direct a movie? You know, I was doing stand-up for a while. And why are you good at directing a movie?'s the part i don't understand that movie is like very well directed oh i appreciate it i don't get it um well i was doing stand-up for a long time i did theater growing up and i love that and that's uh and then i did stand-up for a long time then i was trying to like drag all the things i loved about stand uh theater into stand-up and then i directed my own specials and i directed a couple other people's specials. Um, and, uh, yeah, I was just sort of like, I wanted to work with other people again. I was very tired of my own head and my own voice. Um, and yeah, so that's why I wanted to do it.

And I felt like, all right, if I'm going to direct a movie for the first time, I should choose a subject that I think I could talk as well about as anybody, which felt like, you know, kids and the internet. But it was eighth grade girls though. Yeah. I mean, that was sort of like, I watched hundreds of videos of kids your age, Zoe, like talking about themselves, talking about their lives. The boys tended to talk about Minecraft and the girls tended to talk about their souls. So it was like, okay, well, I think it's probably going to be a story about girls. They just run slightly deeper.

The boy story would be like 90 minutes of Fortnite references. Oh, 100%. Yeah, yeah. 100%. And just whatever, if it's innately, I think girls run a little deeper at your age. But also culturally, I think we're just like asking deeper questions of girls a lot earlier.

They're certainly more interesting than 7th and 8th grade boys who are basically just dumbasses. Yeah, I mean, they're just boards. They're just like blocks of wood. They just want to bang into people and play video games and play sports. They still want to eat dirt.

They still actually want to just get down there and have a handful of dirt in their mouth. Fortnite's been great for them. It's probably saved some lives. Yeah, exactly. They're just all trapped in rooms. Yeah. And then Zoe and her friends are having like these deep conversations about. Yeah, like we'll be sitting in a corner at recess talking about life and they'll be like

attacking each other with multiple balls of different sizes and types and playing games where they're hurting each other you know that is life though as well boys that's you know it's it's just war it yeah it's just boys going to constant competition yeah it's just they're just trying to make war before they will eventually actually make war so you started studying all these different clips and then that character fell into place from different things you saw basically yeah and i wanted to like a lot of movies about this age feel, and I like movies that are nostalgic, but I didn't want to make one that was nostalgic. I think like when you try to project your own memory, it's different.

I think the way we remember that time is different than the way it is. So it being a girl, I couldn't project my own experience onto it totally. And I had to approach it like it was something I didn't know. I try to make a movie like, okay, I'm making a movie about World War II and I know nothing about it. I just have to research it and I'm using actual veterans. So that's good. You know, like actual kids. And that was the thing to just like bring real kids in the movie and just let them author it. Not literally. I mean, I wrote the script, but, but I just mean author the moments themselves and tell me when shit was lame and when shit didn't make sense.

And I had faith. I had all of her messages in the script were originally in faith on Facebook. And then the, the actor that plays the main part read it and said, no one uses Facebook anymore. So I changed that girl says that line in the movie because to her mom, I have a girl say it in the movie, movie to her mom.

Cause I was that lame person that thought Facebook was a relevant thing. but my the actor read it was like was is this about my aunt why why is she using Facebook that's a super important tidbit though because if Facebook had been prominently involved in this movie I think you'd lose my daughter right it's not realistic right right and I didn't I had to learn how to use Snapchat because I had no idea what that is I mean it's like super in right now I had no idea what that is. I mean, it's like super in right now, I guess, for kids my age. I don't even think it's fun to use. Like, there's no point to it unless you're trying to hide things from your parents. You're not a stinky person, though.

Yeah. That seems like a good use. I could tell some of my friends who like Snapchat why they like Snapchat because they like hiding things from their parents. You said she's not a sneaky person? She's not yet. You got, you're really doing it. Good job. That's the sign of a truly sneaky person is when your dad thinks you're not a sneaky person.

She is a sneaky person. Maybe that's what makes me so sneaky. But you know what, like I didn't put it in the movie, but musically that's a big one, right? Yeah. That was like my fifth grade trend. Okay. Because that did, that to me feels like very young. Yeah.

That's something that I see my brother Ben using. Yeah. What do you, what do you, what do you use? What are the most Instagram, right? More than Twitter. Yeah. I don't use Twitter. Right.

She loves Instagram. Well, it's just because it's offering everything that I want, like all these videos that I want to be watching. I don't really use it for anything else, but looking at the search bar and like- Browsing the- Yeah, browsing everything that it gives to me because then I'm like interested and I'm excited about it.

And DMing on it is better than- And slime videos, which were not in your movie. They were. Yes, they were. Yes, they are. Was that a major part of it though? No, no, no. There's a tiny clip of a person doing slime videos. I was in your movie they were yes they were was it a major part of it though no no no there's a tiny clip

of a person doing slime videos that is me when I was watching it I know those weird satisfying videos of like people like cutting up foam

it's very strange it's very strange that's been some of our biggest fights because I buy shaving cream and then I went to New York City once

and I brought my shaving cream, but she had raided the shaving cream to make slime. So I had this whole giant empty canister of shaving cream. And I went to go shave and I had no shaving cream. So I had to go buy some. And I called her and I was yelling at her the whole time. So for people with no reference, there are a lot of videos online of like people making slime and putting their fingers into it. And it's like,

it's satisfying in the way, like, like, uh, like peeling, um, the plastic casing off, like a new laptop screen is there's like a lot of,

there's a whole internet subculture based off of just like things that make you shiver in a good way. It's very strange. Is that people are like now talking into mics and whispering and eating food that, okay. I can't deal with that. That's like gross to me. So it's like right here. It's just like right in this world.

Yeah, it's super creepy. It's so weird. It's super creepy. And they'll be eating Doritos and having the mic. I just can't watch that. Yeah, well, good. That's something that's too gross for me.

You find slime relaxing though. Yeah. Like you would do it like before soccer tournaments, you'd make slime and then you'd just be up in your room like. Yeah. It is.

Yeah. You don't get it. It's like bubble wrap. It's like bubble wrap though. Something like that. Yeah. Just like a nice therapy. It's like a Newton's cradle or something.

I do get it. What I don't get is when it leaves the bathroom disgusting, when you steal my shaving cream and when it gets all sticky stuff all over the place. Yeah. Right. Those are the parts I don't get. Yeah. bathroom disgusting when you steal my shaving cream and when it gets all sticky stuff all over the place. Those are the parts I don't get. Instagram, I would say, by far is the dominant one right now. Now that they're doing this, the Instagram TV and all that stuff.

I don't know what that is. I don't know how that's going to affect it. They're doing Instagram FaceTime thing now where you can FaceTime people from DM. That's what's so crazy. So like, you know, I wrote this movie like three or four years ago and I would have to every two months update it. And then like, we just decided like when we filmed it, like, we're just, we're not trying to be timeless. We're trying to be the opposite of timeless. Like we're just going to

capture exactly what this moment is. And like, we're not going to be afraid of it being dated because if you do it honestly, like hopefully in 10 years, even if people don't know what Snapchat is, they'll know what she's doing on that which is trying to represent herself or trying to connect with people or whatever but uh people are very phobic of portraying the internet in tv and movies because they think it's so it ages like milk and you're never gonna you know um but that i think that's why the movie that's probably why why Zoe watched it four times with three different sets of friends because they don't really have enough content for them. It's something Netflix has figured out really smartly with whatever algorithm they use. All of a sudden, they're feeding all these shows that are like in your wheelhouse.

Name some of the shows. I just watched The Carrie Diaries. The Carrie Bradshaw Diaries. Oh, right. Yeah. I blew through that in at least two days. That's awesome. Yeah.

I just watched that. What was the one before that though? Oh, the couple of the Netflix movies, The Kissing Booth. Oh, The Kissing Booth. Yeah. Yeah. Joey King. She's great.

This movie that I just watched that came out in like 2001, but it was really good. What was the Jessica one? Oh, Jessica Darling's It List. Yeah. Netflix is just like, it's like a t-shirt cannon. They're Oh, Jessica Darling's It List. Yeah. Netflix is just like, it's like a t-shirt canon. They're just firing the canon at our kids. Yeah, wow.

Just more and more scripts about, although you said they don't have enough for middle schoolers. That's one of the reasons you like this movie. Yeah, that's why I like this movie a lot because I felt like every movie that I watch, there's aspects that I can connect to, but this movie, I could really connect to it because I understand everything that was happening. But this movie, I could really connect to it

because I understand everything that was happening. But other movies, it's like they're showing parts of what happens in middle school, but they also sometimes, like older people write about middle schoolers and they don't really understand middle schoolers as well, I guess. What don't we understand?

What don't older people understand, Zoe? You write about like middle schoolers. Not you, I didn't write anything. we understand? What don't older people understand, Zoe? You write about middle schoolers. Not you, I didn't write anything. It's you. They write about middle schoolers as if they're fifth graders and into that type of stuff, and it's more advanced than that, I guess.

You're more thoughtful. Yeah, it's so funny. I really wasn't, weirdly, it's so great to hear that I wasn't trying to write a movie for you guys for middle schoolers for 8th graders

you know I was really weirdly trying to write a movie about myself and I just felt like her I felt like I understood her and felt like I was

feeling like her I hope kids your age can see it I mean the issue it is R-rated like that is it's going to be R-rated but hopefully if the R-rating encourages like parents or whatever to bring their kids hope kids your age can see it. I mean, the issue, it is R rated like that. That is, it's going to be R rated.

But hopefully if the R rating encourages like parents or whatever to bring their kids, it seemed fine. Except there was one scene when she's getting the ride home and, and all the parents in the room, like, Oh, yeah, yeah,

yeah. Pause it. And we decided just to fast forward a minute and a half, but I think that seems, yeah, I think that's too bad. It doesn't go to. And like, it's definitely, in an app, but I think that seems... That seems too bad. It doesn't go to... And it resolves itself

in a way that I think is good for kids to see. It doesn't go anywhere that's where your word is going to go. But also hopefully portrays a situation that kids face and hopefully illuminates how to navigate it. Because what is so terrifying about

that scene, really, is that those conversations are not had with kids. Those things aren't represented. It's sort of like quote unquote health ed that you have is very like, it's all about anatomy and it's not really about like actually how navigating power and relationships actually work. Yeah. And hopefully,

hopefully the boys can see that too. And I understand a little bit more too about what's happening in those situations. But yeah, I'm so glad to hear that. That's so nice. Really. I mean, I care more about what you think than New York Times critic.

I'm saying truly, you're more interesting than anybody. The actress that you found, where did you find her and how different is she than the character? I found her, Elsie Fisher. I found a clip of her online being interviewed on some like weird brown carpet event at a rec center talking about like cupcakes or something. And she was just very alive and exciting and brought her in to read. Every other kid that read for the part felt like a confident kid pretending to be shy

and she felt like a shy kid pretending to be confident, which is what it is, you know? Yeah. What it means to be a little in your head or what it means to be shy isn't to not talk. It's actually to want to talk every moment and not be able to. And so she feels anxiety.

She understands what, she has similarities with the character, but also she's giving a very technical performance. I was worried that I was going to have to make like babe or homeward bound, which is like a movie movies with animals where I was worried that I was going to have like trick these kids into making a movie and they would have no idea what we were doing. It wasn't the case at all. Like in the pool party scene, she's looking completely terrified. We're yelling cut and she's jumping in the pool, having a good time. So like, yeah, it wasn't the case at all. Like in the pool party scene, she's looking completely terrified. We're yelling cut

and she's jumping in the pool, having a good time. So like, it wasn't a weird dog. I was worried I was going to have to like manipulate the kids to feel what I needed them to feel because I didn't think any young actors

could do what I was asking of them. And it was just totally not the case. Don't you have like shorter shoots when it's younger kids? Yeah, nine hour days. They're 13. They're under 16, which is why they usually cast older is nine hour days. But you they're the the under 16 is that which is why they usually

cast older is uh nine hour days but you didn't cast older with this right no no and that was very important i just think that's like there's like a really great push for diversity in film and for me there's but there's no aesthetic diversity you know i mean it's still all like five four perfectly symmetrical flawless skin kids and everything. Yeah. That are also diverse, which is good. But also like, also put some actual real kids in there. And like the story of being that age is whatever. So yeah, we wanted braces and elastics and all that stuff.

So all the kids were from that area that we shot and went to that school. What was the area? Suffern, New York, near Westchester on the other side of the river. I would go up and meet with all the kids, all the extras every Saturday. I'd go up and meet them. And I'd have a little, just so they felt comfortable during the shoot. And I'd have a little conversation with them like, what's your name? Do you have a special talent? And one girl, I said, what's your name? She said her name. I said, what's your special talent? She goes, I have eczema. And there's another kid eating a bell pepper, like an apple.

And it was like, so it was like meeting these kids. It's like, how can you just get them into this movie unprocessed? You know what I mean? Like, I really didn't want to be on set being like, all right, I have this vision. It was more like, how can you just get kids in? And they're already perfectly qualified to be eighth graders. And like, they, they will be better than anything you can come up with for them. So did you go backwards and watch all the different movies with seventh through 12th grade, like over the years, the different genres,

the breakfast club and all those. Yeah. I mean, the ones in this space are kind of just like, welcome to the dollhouse and, um, which is a great movie, but a little bit mean.

Um, there's not a lot of, of ones this age. Stand By Me. That's one of my favorites. Yeah, that's a really great one. Yeah, most of it is high school, which I understand,

because we want to remember high school. We don't really tend to want to remember middle school. Yeah, and what's weird is seventh and eighth grade is actually more action-packed in a lot of ways. That's what I thought. I thought it was like, that's where the actual drama. When I meet high schoolers, they feel like over it, like blasé. Like they have like a thousand yard stare that I think they got from the war of middle school.

It feels like. Because when you're in middle school, you're still a child and you're becoming an adult. When you're in high school, you're just becoming a young adult. But when you're in middle school, you still actually have like childhood in you. And that's crazy. You agree with that, Z? You still have childhood, did you? I think you grow more from sixth to eighth grade than you do from freshman to junior year. I don't know. You know what? For me, it was not that case. I was, because I hit puberty really late. I grew eight inches my sophomore year. That was like you, dad, kind of, right? Yeah, I grew after eighth grade.

Another thing with the girls versus the boys is the girls seem to switch their one or two best friends every couple months, whereas the boys are kind of like loyal the whole time. It's like, these are my dudes. Yeah, I had a group from first grade all the way to high school, for sure. Yeah, and the girls will be like, oh, I thought that was your best friend. No, no, it's this one. It's almost like a reality show. But also it's maybe just because the, like, I was friends with people for 10 years and we never brought anything up. Like literally we got to be like 20 and we were like, hey, have you liked me this whole time? Like we literally, literally talked about nothing. We like played tenny ball. Yeah. about nothing we like played tenny ball yeah like it was just like in like cops and robbers it's

just it's like actually hilarious which is the same thing it's like you know i golf a lot and it's like you know my girlfriend's like what do you guys just go out you don't talk about anything i'm like yeah that's the joy of it yeah we go we talk about nothing we never you sit at a blackjack table for like eight hours with your buddies yeah exactly nothing's really going on you're just gambling and then you know everyone's then in the hospital we'll break down and be like we should have and then that's that's men's lives and then we die you you uh the instagram selfie culture yeah is a big thing you had some of it in there that how important the profile pic is yeah and getting the light right yeah taking it over and over again to make it seem like you're Yeah. It's a big thing. You had some of it in there, how important the profile pic is. Yeah.

And getting the light right and taking it over and over again to make it seem like you're happy and you might not be. Well, part of it was like one of the initial ideas for the script was I was in a mall and I saw this girl sitting at a fountain taking pictures of herself. And she was like all bummed out, like looking at her phone. And then once in a while she'd snap up and smile, take a picture and go down and go on her phone again, take a picture. And I was thinking like, it feels like culturally the conversation we're having is looking at her profile and we're going like, look at this narcissistic, self-obsessed generation, you know? But if you actually see her the way I was seeing her, which is the way a movie would see her, you'd see like a scared, nervous kid that in her falsest moment, almost as if like she's being held hostage is forced to do this thing. And that's what I believe it is.

Like I believe her generation is self-obsessed, but not self-obsessed in like a narcissistic way, self-obsessed in like a slightly sad, it's a bummer to have to think about yourself all the time. And you're forced to think about yourself all the time, not because of their own doing, like they're 12, 13, 14, 15 year olds. Like, of course, if we give them these apps and all this shit,

they're going to use it this way. Well, I'll say you have people in your age group who are taking the medium a little too far and they're doing a lot of pictures. They're bathing suit pictures, stuff like that. And then you feel like, do I have to catch up to these people? Oh, you have a point. I don't feel that way as if I have to catch up to these people because I know who I am

and I know what I want to be doing. And I feel like I don't have to be those people because those people are deciding who they want to be and that they want to, because they're almost moving too quickly. It's like, like you said, middle school, you're still a child. And I feel like that. I feel like I'm not an adult. I'm a child. I'm really stupid.

And I make a lot of really bad decisions sometimes, which aren't like super effective. It's usually the stuff like forgot to flush the toilet. Yeah. Like stuff like that. Like leaving stuff in the house, forgetting to. Yeah, leaving the refrigerator door open. Yeah. But what you're saying is like, was something I think a lot of people don't know that don't either have kids or in contact with,

with kids is like, you're much more self-aware at your age than you think you are. You know, like kids are in on the joke of eighth grade. Everyone thought like, Oh, was it weird having kids telling kids that they had to be awkward? It's like, no, you know, you're awkward. You know, it's seventh and eighth grade. You know, it's a strange time that you're a be awkward. It's like, no, you know, you're awkward. You know, it's seventh and eighth grade. You know, it's a strange time that you're a part of. But also like the truth is like, as much as I wanted to talk about kids, like the stuff we're describing

about like selfie culture and everything, there is no one more embarrassing on the internet than 30 year olds. No one. The people I know, there's no one more cringeworthy and like narcissistic and transparently annoying than it's actually the kids on the internet that seem to be using it the most like non-embarrassing.

So when everyone's going to me being like, somebody like, man, I'm so glad I didn't grow up with the internet. Or I'm so glad I'm not as awkward as I was at that age. I'm like, you're first of all, you're still that awkward. Second of all, like you're the internet's not doing well for you right now i think maybe it's maybe better that they get familiar with the internet and get all their annoying stuff out with it out early as opposed to people like my friends that are just getting it at 30 and i'm going like what what are you what are you doing i wonder like this generation is so self-aware from the first minute whereas my generation was like constantly

finding out we were doing something wrong yeah exactly it was like if we if we weren't learning about it through pop culture we didn't have like an older brother or something like that you just kind of stumbled into failure which then taught you how to act well that's the that's the really weird thing about what john hughes did and what all generations past John Hughes had is that like, and it was definitely for me, which is by the time I got to all like the landmarks of my youth and it'd be interesting what you have to say about this Zoe, like by the time I, you don't have to get specific because your dad's here, but I mean like by the time I got to my first kiss, I'd seen first kisses a hundred times in movies. By the time I got to prom, I had seen prom. And so like, I just seen my life reflected in culture so many times,

but that by the time I got to it, it felt weird or empty or disappointing, you know, like it just, it's been represented so much that you've already like high school is, you've seen high school represented so much and you've yet to even go there. So like, you don't even really get to discover it or you might like worry that, oh man, why isn't this like all the movies

I've seen? Yeah. When I was going into middle school, I had seen some movies that were revolved around middle school. And when I went into middle school, I was expecting everything to be like that. But in all these movies, it's like everyone's meeting each other and everyone's new. I've known all my friends since kindergarten. Right, right, right. So it's like, I know everyone already. This isn't exciting.

It's just another three years where I have to be stuck with the same people. Right, but you had felt like you'd been told like, oh, this sixth grade is this huge mark. This is where everything changes. This is where I- That could be ninth grade though. Yeah.

Because you're changing schools after eighth grade. Yeah. But it's like, they represent middle school as a year where you're meeting everyone new. Whereas I felt like. She's known all her friends since kindergarten. So like none of them are attracted to each other. Yeah, right. Because it's like they're like cousins.

They're like, yeah. And then you go, you leave the school, you go somewhere else. And then all of a sudden these people are like, who's that? Yeah. Well, it's very strange to see. It was very strange for me to see my friends be seen for the first time by girls or other people. I was going like, you think Tom's cute? Or you think Nate's cute?

You think Joe's? How is that possible? Like, like, cause you would like had way too much context for them. Well, it's funny with your movie though. Like she got, she and her friends got the character right away. And that first scene when she does the Gucci at the end, they were all laughing. Oh my God. Which I don't know if you knew people were going to laugh at that.

Yeah. Me and my friends text each other. And now when we say goodbye, because we watched the movie together, we go Gucci. Oh, that's amazing. And then the little, yeah. Yeah, I don't even get it. We talk about it all the time. So that's something that the actor just would, she would say on set. She would always go say Gucci, I don't even get it all the time. So that's something that the actor just would say.

She would say on set, she would always go say Gucci. I don't even get what it meant. And then I would do it back to her and say, she's not in the movie at the end of her video, she signs off a Gucci. So I would say, and it's super awkward.

Cause me and my friends say that to each other all the time. Like we'll text and we'll say Gucci and say goodbye. And he'll be like, it's just, I don't get it. That was goodbye. And he'll be like, it's just a thing that I understood. That's something she did. I don't get it. That was smart.

So where do you see this culture going? What have you learned? What have you learned over the last four years making this movie? I don't know. What's next? I don't know. I mean, like part of making the movie was like,

you know, we made it last year and it felt like, you know, the country was on fire and it was like, I don't even know. Is there even going to be a country in four years? So part of it last year and it felt like, you know, the country was on fire and it was like, yeah, I don't even know. Are we even, is there even going to be a country in four years? So part of it was just trying to be like, let's try to just capture this thing and who knows. But in working with the kids, I feel like confident in the kids. I really do. I don't feel confident like Silicon Valley or whatever. But I feel confident in the kids. Like the kids, when they get enough power to, you know, affect change and control these things, it'll be good. But people, you know, it's just very, you want to say a swear on television, you have to go like in front of Congress. And if you want to like change the neurochemistry of the entire generation,

you have to be like five dudes in Silicon Valley putting your hand up. That's weird. That's very, very weird. So I just hope that changes. Women in tech would probably help a little bit to just like have just people, just more representation in tech of every, just because they are literally like, they're not just companies making apps. They're like actually leading the feelings of an entire.

Do you feel like the shame guidelines have dropped? Because, you know, like when I, in the nineties, I remember when Pamela Anderson's sex tape came out and we were all like, Oh my God, she's going to be naked.

It seemed like the craziest thing that ever happened. And now it's just like the, the, the line has dropped and everything is so available. And it's like not shocking if anyone's naked and it's not shocking if anyone does something dumb on the internet. Everybody just kind of moves on to the next thing. Yeah.

Well, it's going to be interesting. And like when your generation gets older, like the dirt on all of your like candidates, like your political candidates will have like an entire, like, oh yeah, like that, like at a certain point we're gonna have to just call like amnesty or whatever we're just gonna have to be able to be like all right everyone anything before you're 20 yeah like everything gets forgiven because uh that happens at the nba a lot somebody will get drafted and then somebody will go through their twitter feed in like 2011 yeah they took shots at lebron yeah right now that's the guard of it's like lebron's

a punk they were like 15. Yeah, yeah. Well, it's that Rondo picture of him with the girl with the LeBron shirt that just happened. It's incredible. And that was like two years ago. I was like, amazing. So the sequel is going to be called 10th Grade. I want to do 5th Grade with like Lord of the Flies, like just absolutely like desks on fire.

What was the meanest grade? 5th Grade? Meanest grade? That's difficult. When was the one where everybody started Fifth grade? Meanest grade? That's difficult. What was the one where everybody started getting mean? Sixth grade. Sixth grade. Or actually maybe- It was like fifth heading in a six.

Well, it wouldn't have been fifth grade if like- A couple of people pushed the envelope. Yeah. Like someone more experienced, I guess, came into our school. Yeah. In our grade. And then everything just started like exploding. Yeah, because the girls, they start getting competitive

about who's getting attention. That's not what happened. You're not allowed to disagree with me. I created you. Okay. No, I'm kidding. What are you going to say? Well, it was just like this one person came in

who was more experienced than everyone else and then a couple people tried to be friends with her and connect to her but they couldn't so then that kind of created

rivalries between them and then everyone just started getting involved and it was crazy it was the classic like 90210

one tree hill plot where somebody new comes into the group and splits everybody apart for like two months. What's really good about school and insane is like, and I always say this to the kids, like there, you will never be in a more surreal social situation than school. Nothing is ever as weird as school.

It's like a bunch of people, my age, like, and an older person at the front. When I was walking, when I would like seeing him as an adult and I would go back to middle school, you realize, oh, mutiny is so possible. You can't believe that it doesn't happen.

The order is being maintained here so lightly. The adults are so outnumbered in the school. It's crazy. You also wonder why anyone would want to be a teacher. Yeah, it is an incredible amount of patience. So you saw the movie four times. What's your biggest critique? Yeah, come on.

Lay it on. Lay it on. He's ready for it. I don't know. He grew up in the era of early YouTube comments. He's seen it all. You can't hurt his feelings. But I don't know.

You like everything. I'd have to think about it. That's something that I'd have to think about. Because I felt like everything in the movie I really connected to and understood. So, it was almost as if I was like watching myself or one of my friends out there. That's awesome.

And that was probably like the weirdest part of it. It was like making me cringe because I was like, oh my gosh, that's like my friends. That's like me yeah i love cringing cringing is a good cringing is i think a form of empathy so it's very cringeworthy yeah date and the and the chicken nuggets like i was i was like oh my gosh what is happening that's a lot and you know the dad was in an iconic 90s movie. Of course. For my generation. It was one of the movies for my generation, Kicking and Screaming.

Yeah, yeah. No amount of that. It was singles, reality bites, Kicking and Screaming. And before Sunrise. Oh, I've been to Prague. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Grover. Grover's having a late, Josh Hamilton is having a late career run.

He's been in all these different things the last five years. Yeah, I mean, I've loved Josh forever. He was great. I'm just so happy that he's having a late career run he's been in all these different things the last five years yeah I mean I've loved Josh forever and I'm so happy to him I'm just so happy that he's that he's in this and he's got he's got my dad's bod that shirtless in the door in his boxers that's that's a lot of my dad is he does he wander around shirtless no oh not shirtless but pantsless. No, big boxers. Yeah. Big boxers, but that doesn't make it better. Shirt and boxers. Yeah, but that's still like, why? It's better than Ben.

Well, Ben is very open. Very open. He's a free boy right now. Yeah. When she has friends over, his shirt's coming off right away. He's just one of those kids. 100% one of those kids. She had like a 30-person school soccer party,

and it was just all these girls in the pool, and Ben just- He couldn't handle it. He's what, in his fifth grade? He's going into fifth. He's going into fifth grade. Yeah. He's your sequel. Fifth grade boy is the other version.

It would just be like an EDM laser tag movie. Yeah. You know what I mean? Just like going hard. I'm telling you, it EDM laser tag movie. Yeah. Just like going hard. I'm telling you, it's all Fortnite right now. All they do is play Fortnite. What they do is he has the mic, right? So he's talking to these random people on his

mic as he's playing and ends up, I think he likes playing with random people because he can really rage. He trash talks them. He's a good trash talker. And he gets mad. So he'll start screaming at them. And they can't do anything because they're in thailand yeah they're 68 year old people yeah he's causing geopolitical crises so what's your what's your next project i'm not a great multitasker so i'm just sitting around and once this is over i'll just try to bang my head against the wall in the press for it yeah how do you market a movie like

this well that's the difficult thing. I mean, it's like, it's like, it's called eighth grade, but like it's R rated. So we got, you know,

it's not ostensibly just for kids that age. So I don't know, you know, I think like, there's a great quote of like maturity is a phase. Adolescence is forever. And so like, I hope people see it.

I hope kids see it. I hope parents see it. And I also hope like, I'm a childless 27-year-old dude, and it's the type of movie I think I'd like. So I hope. Yeah. There's this sort of bummer thing where it's like stories about the human condition are only about, like, some male poet in the woods or some sad comedian wandering around New York. I mean, and why can't it be? Why can't everyone see themselves in a 13-year-old girl?

Like we see ourselves, we all see ourselves in like, you know, some 50-year-old astronaut, so. Why rated R, not PG-13? It just is. I mean, it just, that's just what sort of happened. That was when the rating came back and we could have taken some things out,

but it felt like- Not worth it. Well, it's like, we didn't want to reflect, we weren't trying to reflect an experience that we thought was appropriate for a kid we wanted to expect the like eighth grade the movie is r because eighth grade is r it just it just is you know um i i promise you this movie is not express exposing to kids anything they're not aware of yeah i'm saying it's not like you've do you they swear way more than they swear in our movie there's probably less swearing in our movie than it is in real life um we just didn't rewatch

this podcast about jaws and jaws was rated pg which i thought was incredible oh yeah and like quink gets like chewed in half and just blood everywhere i don't know what they were thinking yeah and like teen wolf had like homophobic slurs in it. It was crazy. You watch it, it's G. It's very funny. But if it makes parents bring their kids, that's fun. If the R-rated does that. But I suggest just sit on opposite sides of the theater and then talk about it after. I honestly don't think it will stop kids from seeing the movie.

Yeah, I saw R-rated movies when I was a kid. A couple weeks ago, I bought tickets for Ocean's 8 and snuck into Tag with my friend. Nice. It was like the first, the first live. So it'll just kill our box office. I was seeing you every night. I was so guilty after.

I almost didn't do it. I started walking into Ocean's 8. Luckily, I brought my friend who's like very adventurous and made me go to the movie. That's exciting. Yeah, it was fun. Do you like Tag? Yeah, it was good. I like it too.

I mean, I thought it was really funny and entertaining. I recommend buying tickets for other movies. Yeah, exactly. I like it too. I mean, I thought it was really funny and entertaining. So my daughter recommends buying tickets for other movies. Yeah, exactly. Whatever gets it done. That's what 824 was looking for. I love it. That was your advice. Well, that's what we did back in the day.

That's right. You know, whatever gets it done. How do they know? There's nobody at a movie theater. Once you're in, you're in. It's a free for all. Actually, someone walked up to the lady next to us and we were so scared. I put my hoodie up.

I was just like horrified. So who would you recommend seeing this with? Parents or friends? I mean I feel like it's a movie that anyone can relate to from ages. I guess you have to be in middle school

to understand but maybe if you're younger you could get it. Aspects but I feel like if it was middle school and up, I would personally like to see it with my friends. There you go. Hey, maybe with one parent that brings you and then go sit in a different room. Buy a ticket to Ocean's 8. Yeah.

And then, yeah, sneak in. We're supporting female-centric cinema no matter what we're doing. But you highest recommend. I would. She demanded to come on the podcast. That's the best. So I no matter what we're doing. But you highest recommend. She demanded to come on the podcast. That's the best. So I'm so glad you're here. This is very, very fun. Congratulations.

I appreciate it. It was really good. I mean, especially for your first movie. I was surprised to find that out. Oh, I appreciate it. But yeah, it was cool. Good luck with it. Thanks for the time.

Thank you. Thanks to ZipRecruiter. Don't forget to try it out at ZipRecruiter.com slash BS thanks to Miller Lite if you're having a cold one this weekend I would recommend Miller Lite 96 calories, 3.2 grams of carbs, fewer calories half the carbs of Bud Light

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