The Church of What's Happening Now: The New Testament - #232 - Joey Diaz, Nick Santora and Lee Syatt

Episode Date: November 20, 2014

Nick Santora, Writer and Executive producer of shows such as "The Soprano's," "Prison Break", and "Scorpion", joins Joey Diaz and Lee Syatt live in studio. This podcast is brought to you by: Onnit.com. Use Promo code CHURCH for a discount at checkout. Nature Box. Visit Naturebox.com and use promo code Joey for a free trial box Meundies.com Go to meundies.com/joey for 20% off. Recorded live on 11/18/2014. Music: David Bowie - Fame The Beatles - Dear Prudence

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Again, it's Iron Dragon TV and you're going to use code word Joey or church and you're going to get two free rentals. Oh shit Are you kidding me or what Tuesday night Special Churchill what's happening now Just case you fucking slipping Some people start slipping

November 18th The day the devil was buried the seat And we took his pitchfork And stuck him in his fucking eye And that's it That's all I got for you guys want Manograms or whatever It's all over but the shout

Want what? I don't know what he bothered me for Let me say what's happening little brother He scared me today How was your day today? It was good, it was good I just uh You went to the gym

How many minutes did you walk on the epileptical? I did an hour again A fucking hour How many calories did you burn That's right Well, it's like an hour and two minutes Because when you lose weight It takes

It takes longer to burn calories So I did 800 And about like an hour And two minutes You're a fucking savage You're gonna win The elliptical challenge I'm gonna sign you up

There's got to be somebody right now In elliptical Taking over the world Well I mean It's title right down Honestly I should be doing more Like I should be doing weightlifting, and I got a, like a group onto a gym that does the cross-training and kettlebells. But it's, how long did you try to get me to walk for?

Months? Yeah. And it took me months to even. I never did it. I did like two or three times. And it just, it was so scary to me to start that. You live in California. This is how fucking, you're a Jew.

I love you to fucking death. You guys are supposed to be the top of the fucking pinnacle. We are. Geniuses. You live in California, but you decide to walk inside. Right. Like 10,000 fucking California. Because I can watch TV on the other.

Yeah, you're not supposed to watch TV. You're supposed to watch fucking life. People running red lights, fucking cats running across the street. I want you to think about that. People are dying from lack of vitamin C because you fuck the guys. Live over here. You go to a gym. You walk like fucking momos.

Meanwhile, it's 80 degrees outside. Vitamin D is the number one killer of obesity. Did you know that? It was just fucking in London. There's no fucking fat people. They started giving them vitamin D. People started losing weight. I'm on it.

I drank a gallon of it today. A vitamin D? Fuck yeah. Comes in a little can't as I hate the whole thing. Oh, it doesn't make sense. But it's better than me sitting on the couch for... You're not going to sit on the couch. I used to.

You go to North Hollywood Park. You put a 20-pound dumbbell on your back and you walk around like a fucking savage eight times. You do that five days a week. You're so many pounds you lose. And you'll be a dark-skinned Jew. I don't tan. I go from the white of...

of the white to burn and then back to white. It'll be like Sammy Davis. What the fuck? Get it together, dog. It's a beautiful day to be alive. You were inside for an hour. You could have been outside for an hour, grabbing vitamin D with your iPod,

listening to the fucking band you listen to. Jumping up and down. Jumping up and down. Yeah. How was your day? I had a nice day. I took mercy to the park. About 8 o'clock, walked around for about 10.

Did you play with the fire ants? That's the funniest thing. No, I didn't take it to the fire ants. Because we don't even go to that park no more. She's bored of that fucking park. Did your kid get hit with fire ants? No. hit with fire ants.

That's how I take her out of there. You don't want to leave. You tell her this fine. I take it to the fire ants. I take it to the fire ants. She plays around. She gets one. Then she goes,

ah, ha. Let's go. I pick her up and it's out of there. You got to this American ingenuity, though. You got to be on top of things. Nick Santorra in the fucking house tonight. How are you?

Writer, executive producer, ex-attorney. Names with a gangster. People confuse you. Your credits all fucked up. No, my, my credits are good. This is a Nikki the mouth?

Is it Nikki the mouth or Nikki Bigmouth? I don't know. Nikki the mouth, Santor. I'm pretty sure it's Nicky the mouth. He was a banana guy. I believe, yeah, he was banana. He was a banana guy. He's still alive.

Right, he's still alive. I think last I heard he was in Chicago. But what the hell do I know? I don't know. I don't know the man. But I do know. I'm a million years ago. I'm in law school up in New York.

I get a phone call one day. Hello? Hey, Nikki, I'm out. I go, who the hell is this? I'm out. I'm out. I just hang up. I don't know who the hell it is.

phone rings two seconds later hello hey Nick I'm out you told me to call you when I'm out I'm out I go who the fuck you I hang up the phone because I don't know who it is two seconds later phone rings again I pick it up he goes don't hang up don't hang up he's like Nikki you told me that when I got out I should call you I go oh you're looking for the other Nikki Santora I go congratulations on on your release I go I am not that Nikki Santora I go I'm actually a law student I'm actually a law student I swear to God, there's a beat of silence. The guy goes, you do criminal law?

I go, I don't have my law degree yet. I go, you got the wrong guy. He must have just looked me up, you know, in New York. I don't know why he's looking up in New York or whatever. And then a few years later, I had an aunt, God rest of soul, who passed away, and I think she left me like $2,000. And I didn't know what to do with it. So I knew a guy, I don't know what to do with it.

I knew a guy, I wanted to do something smart. And I knew a guy whose dad was like in him, he worked at like prudential. I don't even know what he did at Prudential. And he said, oh, yeah, it's like a stock broker. He's like, oh, yeah, he'll put you in a mutual fund. So he opens a $2,000 mutual fund the next day. And this guy was like a lower level guy. Next day, he gets a phone call.

Come up to the 37th floor. 37th floor is all the executives, all the VPs, all like the head guys. He goes up there. He's never been called up to the 37 floors in his entire life. He goes up there, conference tables surrounded by guys. He sits down and they go, what? the hell are you opening up an account for Nick Santora for? And he goes, what are you talking about? He's like, for $2,000, it's such a small amount. Clearly, he's looking to see if he can open small

accounts, maybe launder some money, blah, blah, blah. He's like, what do you talk? They go, this guy's a guy's a guy. He goes, this is a kid that my son went to school with. What are you talking about? They're like, no, no, no, no, no, this is the wrong guy. And he had to show him my, my social security number, my birth certificate, all this stuff, that it was a different Nick Santora. Every once in a while, it pops up. No, for years, every time. Every time. I saw his name. I'm like, ah, or saw your name, I kept thinking, oh, look at this fucking guy. He became a writer now. You know what's funny is there's a lot of Nick Santora's. Santora in Italy, it's like

Smith. It's not, it's not, maybe not like Smith, but it's not an uncommon name. There's a fair amount of Santora's in the country, in America, and there's, I've come across a lot of Nick. There's a Nick Santora, who's like a world famous skateboarder. There's a bunch of them. Every once in a while, I'll get an email from one of them. I'll be like, hey, I saw your name on TV. That's my name. What do you want me to do about it? Is he a famous mom? Like, how did you know he was a mobster? Like, did he find out one day?

How did I know? Yeah. Because I got a call from a guy in prison. But no, but did you know that? Oh, no. I, you know, you just knew from, you know, if you grow up with this name the same as the mobster, eventually someone just tells you and it just bled in. And then Casino came out and there was Nicky Santoro in Casino and people thought that was me.

How did they get famous about it? Like, I've never even thought about it. But like, how did all the big mobsters get famous? Like, back in, like, the 40s? Singing. from fucking being mobsters. From being mobsters. I know, but it's like...

The Nikki Santoro we're talking about was a banana guy. Yeah. He was a big time, but in fact, he still is a big time. Like, he's the only... There's like maybe three guys left from that, Donnie Brasco,

and he's still walking around somewhere. He could be out here. Every once in a while I go somewhere and somebody will come up to me and go, hey, you know, this guy over here in the gym, this is this guy. Like, who's in Beverly Hills now? I got no idea.

Yeah, so everybody knows he's in town. He's trying to put a reality show together. He's 70 years old. So I finally got a call about a year ago that you should come down to audition for Nicky's whatever Montemore or whatever's fucking name is reality show. It's going to be called something about the neighborhood and he's going to take care of problems in Beverly Hills.

What the fuck? When does it end? So they started coming out here. There's a bunch of them. Did you believe Wadi Boulger was here for how many years? Whitey Boll, but he didn't say nothing. But the other guy was right in Studio City, Obatz. These, listen.

Sal UBats used to have coffee at every ETC every day. He just moved. He just moved recently. Well, these guys, look, they did their thing. They did their time. They came out of, and now they just want to live the good life in California. And they want to, you know, they actually want to walk around outside and enjoy the sunshine. Well, they want to sell their story, you know.

I understand why they want to move here. It's too late to sell your fucking story now. They've heard 85 fucking stories. Right. Now they want to come out. They were a mafia. They carried embellows. too fucking late. We were you 10 years ago. We were buying.

Right. Yeah, I get people pitch me mob stories all the time. I try to tell them. There's no sale. I can't make them. I don't have the money to make the movie. You know, you got to go to studio and no, they don't want them. Really? And they're dead at the studio. It seems like every three years is a new mom thing. Dead. Dead. Well, now they got

Whitey Bolger, but that's because what's his name, isn't it? Well, they got, they got the Depp one. They got the Affleck one. They got competing, and they're all messed up. I don't know what's going on with those. Right. So, no. The one. The Dona's shooting. The Donnie Depp one's shooting. That's done already probably. It's the other one, you know, because the other thing is I get called once a month. Once a month. I get a call or an email. Can you look at this script? And as soon as I see Nikki. Joey? Joey. Sal. That's it. That's it. It doesn't even go farther than that. I don't even, I call them up and tell them thank you, but I'm busy those weeks. I got something because it's not. not even, it's not going to happen.

And if it does happen, it's going to be a fucking wear out situation that I want to be involved. We've got better shit to do with my time. Like, fucking eat brownies with you and goof onions and shit like that. How did you get into this? So we were talking earlier, you went to Columbia law. Yeah. So you, the first, and this happens fucking every day where the first day you walk into a place, you go, maybe the same for me.

Yeah. But you don't say it because you're already there. Yeah. Now you get that fucking degree. You marry a. high school girlfriend. She gained 60 fucking pounds. And now you're working and you're doing two fucking things you don't want to do. And then it begins. That's it. Yeah. I would listen. My first, uh, my first day of being a lawyer, I came back to my apartment

on Bleaker Street. And my girlfriend had a key to the place. She was already in there. She's now my wife. Beautiful Italian girl from Bergen County, New Jersey. And, uh, we're still together. We've been together since I was 24 years old, 20 years. And she, uh, she looked to me and She said, how was your first day? You're so excited for me. Just beautiful and excited. And I looked at her and I just look at right in the eyes. And I go, I've wasted the last three years of my fucking life.

I'm $120,000 in debt. I want to kill myself. I fucking hate this. What the fuck am I going to? First day. I got home. I got home at like 10.30 at night. And one of the lawyers was like, let's call it early.

You know, let's pack it in early today. Pack it in early. It's 1030. I've been here since 7.15. But that's what it's like at those big corporate law firms. And my wife looked at me, and this is why we are a good, you know, match. I get sometimes worked up. And she looked at me, and she said, well, you can't just quit.

It'll make you look like a schmuck. You know, it's your first day, first week. You just got out of law school. It'll ruin your career. She got to do a year. Got to do a year, at least. And I said, all right, you're right. And I just did it, you know, I just did it checking off a calendar every day.

You know, you, you were in. You know what it's like. Don't let the time do you. Do the time. I'm not saying, it's not the same, not nearly the same as being locked up. Time is time, brother. But I just said, I got to kill it. I got to kill it.

And I did a year, one year, one month and one day. And I quit that job. And I said, you know, my dad was a carpenter. He was a construction worker, a union man. And I said, you know, there's money when guys get hurt. I'm going to go do slip and fall. And I went from like a thousand lawyers in this beautiful law firm. I mean, gorgeous law firm.

tip of Manhattan, overlooking the Statue of Liberty, to five lawyers above a pizza place in Brooklyn. And we just did slip and falls. And, you know, car accidents, malpractice, Listani. I went from, like, the fanciest law firm in the world to honestly stand on the corner outside, you know, Woodhole Hospital, handing out business cards saying, you got hurt, call me. You got hurt, call.

It was crazy. But I figured I could get into the, I could get into a courtroom and at least actually try a case. And that would at least be fun and exciting for me. Well, that sucks shit too. Sounds like the Wolf of Wall Street, essentially. Yeah, except I wasn't making money like Lino Caprio. You know, I was the puppy of fucking Puts Street, you know?

Do you remember how much money you were making at the firm? Because my girlfriend's in law school, and she doesn't want to work in the firm because of what you were talking about, like the 90 hours, 100 hour weeks. Yeah. And she told me like the DAs when you start out can make like 50,000, $60,000, which is good, but she tells me like when you go to like the first year of like a law firm, you make 200,000 or something. Well, that's maybe today.

Like at these back then, but I'm sure, you know, time value, money, inflation, everything. But I think I remember my starting salary in like 96 was like $84,000. And I think they gave like a $10,000 bonus. So it was like $94, $95,000. And I think I made $99 total that year. That's wonderful. You know, that's, I'll never say no to a dollar. You know, it was honest money, but I hated it.

And when I was a slip and fall guy, I fucking hated it. Every once in a while you got someone who was really hurt who couldn't feed their family and you helped them and that was good. But a lot of times you had people where you're like, I know this motherfucker's lying. I know his back's fine. I know his neck's fine. But you can't do anything about it because you have a duty.

If the client's telling you know it really, if they tell you, look, I'm full of shit, then you have to not represent. You have to say, I can't represent you. But when they're sitting there saying, Oh, it really hurts, it really. All right. They're fucking lying.

But what I did when I was doing that, because I was practicing law in Brooklyn and the Bronx and Staten Island and Queens and running around, I just, you know, and I think it's what a lot of writers do. I was just absorbing it all. And I did it for years and years. And all the characters, the world,

the craziness, the corruption, the scumbags, the pieces of shit, the ones who were trying to do it honestly, the fucking liars, the plaintiffs who you really feel bad for, the scummy insurance carriers, than the beaten down defense attorneys that work for the insurance carriers,

the corrupt judges. I was so dumb, I had a judge trying to get me to bribe him in his chain. I didn't even fucking realize it. A couple of years later, he goes away for taking bride. They wound up getting like nine years, I think, or something like that.

Judge Barron, I'll say his fucking name. I'm pretty sure. If that's not the guy, please don't sue me. I got the name wrong by accident, but I'm 99% sure it was Judge Barron. And he went away. All this shit was going down. And I was just absorbing it and sucking it in.

And the whole time, my whole life, since I was six years. Should I shut up? Is this boring? You want me to? No, no. From the time I was six years old, I always wanted to be a writer. I just loved it. And when I got to the place where I couldn't take it anymore, I was going to fucking hang myself.

I mean, I was miserable. I was so depressed. And my wife, one morning I'm sitting there. I'd gotten up from work. She comes out of the bathroom. She had gotten herself ready. She was a school teacher. And she got her face on or whatever.

She doesn't even wear makeup. She's beautiful. She doesn't need makeup. But she did whatever she did to come out. And she looks at me and I'm sitting on the couch. I'm still in my boxers and T-shirt that I wore the night before. I've been up for an hour. I couldn't bear to even put my suit on to go to court that day.

And she looks at me and I look up at her. And this has been going on for months now, deep depression. And I just look at her and I go, it'll get better. Because I knew what she was thinking. And she looks at me and she said, well, it better. Because I can't live the rest of my time. my life like this and that just put the fear of God in me because she's not the kind of woman you want to lose so I had a week of vacation coming up I hadn't taken a vacation in almost two years

and I said to my wife I'm going to take a week's vacation we're not going to go anywhere I'm going to stay home I'm going to write a screenplay and she said thank fucking God shut up about it already write the screenplay so I took the week off and I wrote a screenplay I started on a Saturday morning I wrote that whole weekend. I wrote Monday through Friday. I wrote Saturday, Sunday the next weekend. By that Sunday night, I was done. It was a screenplay called Slippin'fall.

It was about a crooked personal injury attorney in Brooklyn. I wrote what I knew and submitted it to the New York International Independent Film Festival. It won. It got accepted and it won best screenplay. And, you know, I don't know. I always get the timetable messed up because it was 15 years ago now or something. I mean, not 15, but 13 years ago now. but basically

I got David Chase read it and asked me to write one episode of The Sopranos for him and it changed my life and I quit my law job my wife and I got in a Toyota Rav4 which was my car and drove 3,000 miles away from every person we knew set up shop

in L.A. to see if I could make it as a writer. That's it. That's it. That's what happened. Take a chance Columbus did, bitch. Can you explain because I went through it too? I moved out here to be an editor in TV and I I worked for three years doing it and two of the years

I was working nights and I had that every day like when you wake up and you just dread going to work Yeah Like that's just It's hard I did that for about five

Half a decade That's awful way to live Everybody goes through that This is interesting conversation Everybody goes through that And it builds character I think it's good for you I now

Because now when I get in a situation Where I'm like Oh you know Oh man This year I'm doing this show Scorpion that I created And it's always You get when you're a writer

You get it developed by crazy credit or the created by credit it's a little bit of bullshit you have i got hundreds of people making this show to decide so for someone to say i created it i wrote the pilot and pitched the show and wrote the pilot but there's hundreds of good people making this show happen but that being said it's a first year show it's insane hours 19 hour days i had one i had one day a couple of weeks ago where i probably slept three hours one night got up on a friday worked all day friday we still about five six o'clock at night we started filming on six o'clock at night went till about seven o'clock the next morning saturday morning raced home got my kids went to their soccer games they had two games back to back

took them to a birthday party i went 40 hours without sleep and after like a full days and it was you know it was exhausting that's what it's like but when i start feeling bad for myself like you were saying it's good that i went through it because i can say i got nothing to complain about i'm doing what i love some days are hard that's not nearly as hard that's not nearly as as being in Afghanistan with a gun. It's not nearly as hard as what my dad did for a living. My dad walked up and down scaffolds in New York City winters, sheetrock knives cutting through his hand,

breaking his back, doing all this shit. I get to sit in a nice air-conditioned office and make-up stories. I am blessed. I am happy. I got a wonderful family. And the reason I think I appreciate some of it is I spent years doing something that I hated because I wasn't meant to do it. Now you know what it feels like.

And I know what it feels like to be unhappy. And you know what, even then, I was being a little bitch. Because I had nothing to be unhappy about then either. I was making money. I was feeding my family. I got nothing ever in my life to be unhappy about. But I wasn't meant to be a lawyer. I always wanted to be a writer.

I'm happy with what I'm doing now. I'm very fortunate. I'm the luckiest guy you guys will talk to ever. You know, it's funny that you spoke about slip and fall. How interesting. Like, now you have, I need to read the script because I want to laugh. Well, you know what's funny? I want to fucking laugh because I tell Lee all the time.

When I was in high school, there was a guy, Cy Lawrence. And all this guy did, I mean, he went around. He was a flopper. Yes. Yeah. He had pants. He had pants that had pee stains in him. You couldn't sit next to him.

He smelled. He lived in a garage. And this guy, throughout the year, he was a genius. What this guy did, he couldn't tell you on paper. But he was a degenerate gambler. Right. So USC would call this guy. He knew all these coaches, and they'd go, go, we'll pay you.

These are like Secret Scouts and break down Pittsburgh. We're playing them in a month. Oh, he's really good at it, right? Cy was a genius. Okay. Cy was a genius. But in the off-season, Sy's set up, so he kept bugging me for years. Joey, I know he'd make a scam all I want is 400.

He had 50 guys paying him 400. He took you to a supermarket. He dropped the pickle juice on the floor. Your flop. You'd slip, and he'd tell you, as soon as somebody comes to you, The key words that did I pass out, that's the money right there. Because then we're going to put you on the ambulance. I swear to God's saying.

You have to go through it because he's gone through it like each step. And then he's telling. Oh my God. We talk about it every day. And the other thing that you do is you tell the client is what you say is listen. And this was in, because what I did is I took slip and fall. I turned it into a novel. It was a national bestseller called slip and fall.

That's what you should read. And I took the screenplay, turned it into a novel because I wanted to explore it even more and really get into it. And you'll love it. it's set in Brooklyn and it's nice. And there's a scene in it where the lawyer is prepping his client for deposition. And he says, listen, I can't tell you to lie. I would never tell you to lie. That would be against the law.

I'm just going to tell you what the law is and you apply your facts to that law. If you say during the deposition that you walked into the supermarket and slipped on the pickle juice and fell down and got hurt, but you had just entered the supermarket, you have no case. you can't prove how long it was on the floor. And then the supermarket doesn't have what the law calls actual or constructive notice. But if you're telling me, you walked into the supermarket, past the pickle juice, noticed it, went and got your cereal, your milk, your eggs, your oranges, then when you were walking back to the cash register, about 20 minutes later, you slipped on the pickle juice, which you rightfully assumed would have been cleaned up by then, so you weren't looking for it,

and got hurt. Well, then you've got $100,000. case. So now, tell me the truth of what happened. And you know what? Amazingly, no client ever told me that they hadn't seen the pickle juice first and 20 minutes hadn't passed. And that's why I fucking hated myself. It's fucking amazing. And then he had other attorneys that would tell you if you broke an arm, you got 50,000. If you broke a leg, you got 100,000. If you slipped and broke your hip, like if you really broke it. So they would look for people who were just, I homes already recovering of makeup. I mean, it was fucking, this is what he did every day.

He did this every day, sigh. Every side. You had people who would be, you know, they never had a homeowner's policy, and then they'll get a homeowner's policy, and they'll talk to their friend down the street, and say you come over to my house for some coffee, and when you leave, you're going to say you slipped and fell on the ice on my stoop. And I'm going to say that it was icy.

I poured down some rock salt. It melted it, but I didn't push the water off, so it created a clear ice, which was more dangerous, because you can't see it. So I created a dangerous condition. You'll say you fell. You'll say your back hurt. I know a chiropractor.

You take an MRI. There's a line in my book slip and fall where the guy with a crooked chiropractor says, MRIs are like those inkblot tests. Some people see a butterfly. Some people see their mom with an ice pick in their back. Either way, you see what you see. He'll say you have a bad disc and we'll get some money. And that's what would happen.

And I'd have these clients and I'd know they were lying about it, but they would always say they were telling the truth. Just so happened that their good friend from down the street happened to slip in their house and the guy who owned the house would say yeah it's my fault you know and what what happens he loses his home insurance policy he didn't want it to begin with so his friend gets a hundred thousand the lawyer takes 33 thousand the friend gets 66 thousand and the friend then kicks him back 25 000 and it's and by the way it's all tax free money you don't get taxed on personal injury money what's what you don't understand but you know what these people i'm telling you that's why i don't

look i don't have my license in california i don't do this stuff anymore I'm not involved because the truth is eventually, and that doesn't take that long, 99.9% of these people get caught. They get caught, and there's no good in it. I knew a kid in Jersey when I was growing up that got hurt. Not a good friend, just I heard the story, got hurt, and took some time off, and he worked for like a big trucking firm, and he was a big shot there, and he took time off. He was suing the trucking firm or something.

Went to the deposition. They awarded him the money. And that day, he was dancing in a club in the city, and they took pictures of me, he lost the case. They said, he had blow. He was on a table. Yeah. You know, and they did it recently in New York,

a bunch of people. All the fire guys that wanted disability. There's a lot of these guys. They file them with video. Yep, and they got him on a boat. The guy hadn't been to work in fucking five years, and they caught him out on the boat in Staten Island fish and pulling in a fucking great white guy.

You know, but you got a bad back. You're out there fucking bean jaws. It's really, uh, It's really a problem. The disability stuff has a ton of fraud and it. It's an issue. And I don't want to be part of that. And I would say, look, I never told a client to lie.

Even when you break down the stuff of the deposition, I wasn't as bad as maybe, you know, as I was making it out. But the truth is, is that these guys, these guys out there, there are guys out there that are really good personal injury attorneys that are trying to help people. And there are a lot of people out there. They're just doing the wrong thing. And I just don't want to be part of it. And then the truth is, is even if I was doing the right thing every single day, which I was, I just wanted to write.

I just wanted to write. And the crazy thing is the truth between you and I, the money I got from helping the Sial Lawrence. I paid for that 10 times over in karma. Yeah, there you go. That 18, I think I got 18,000. When I got arrested, my attorney bill was 18,000. I mean, it was just...

There you go. It always came back to home to me that 18,000 fucking dollars. So at the end, you don't really win nothing. You just buy some fucking time for yourself. I remember I fell in front of a fucking sneaker store. And here's how even crazy it got. I fell in front of that sneaker store, but they sold the sneakers I like. That's how I knew the hole was there in the sidewalk.

And I went back there six months later to get a pair of Adidas. And I was in a rush. I had to get the fuck out of. I had to catch a bus or something. And I just took the box. And when I got to Aspen, Colorado, I put the sneakers on. One was at 12. The other one was at 9.5.

I had to walk like a schmuck with a nine and a half and a 12. And I got an ingrown toenail and fucking, so there you have it. There you go. Karma is always a motherfucker. So now, David Chase got you on the phone. Did you shit your pants when he called you? No, he didn't call me. I had been signed by an agency after I won the film festival.

And they said, you know, they've been calling me. And they said, listen, you got a meeting. And I said, look, I told you guys a thousand times. I'm a working lawyer. I can't just fly out to L.A. I'd only been with them a couple of months. And they said, no, no, no, no. This isn't in L.A.

it's in New York and I go, who the hell in New York? And then it just hit me and I'm like, don't, don't tell me. And they're like, yeah, David Chase, Sopranos, he loves your script. Can you go meet with him? When I said, yeah, I can go meet with him. So I went over there and it was, you know, Silver Cup Studios in Queens.

And there's that parking lot right across the street. It has a big chain link fence around. So you've got to park and then walk all the way around to get the silver cup. And I've told the story before because it's the truth. I parked the car and I got out. I started walking around the fence. And I remember looking at the sidewalk, looking at the cracks in the sidewalk, trying not to step on. And I said to myself in my head, I was like, okay, asshole, next hour, next hour, 60 minutes determines the rest of your fucking life.

You got 60 minutes. You're going to be happy in the rest of your life. You're going to be miserable. So I went in there and we talked. And I talked about story and character and that kind of stuff. talked to me about my script. He told me he thought my script was very funny, you know, very real. And he said to me, you know, look, but, you know, I understand you're an attorney.

When are you going to have time to do this? And I looked him right in the eyes, and I fucking lied. And I said, well, the good news is Mr. Chase is, you know, it's December. And the holidays are coming up. And I took the early vacation. My vacation starts tomorrow. The truth is I had a trial starting the next day. And he said, great.

and so he said let me talk to your agents so I left and I got a call for my agents that night I was living in Long Island and you know Long Beach I was living in Long Beach and in this tiny apartment in this house

one of these big old houses built right on the block before the boardwalk and they had an apartment the apartment was the old maids quarters so I had a separate staircase separate entrance it was tiny and in the winter the wind would blow through that thing off of the ocean. My wife and I would go to bed at 6.30

because we were just too fucking cold. You needed to get onto the covers. And the phone rings. And that's the first thing I learned about Hollywood. When the phone rings and there's two agents on the phone call, it's good news because they both want credit for it. They both want credit for giving you the good news. And they were both on the phone and they said,

congratulations, you want you to write an episode of The Sopranos. I'll never forget that feeling. I said to my wife, I'm like, I was so amped up. I said, we got to go for a walk. Now, it's December on the boardwalk at 10 o'clock at night because it was seven in L.A. And we went out and we walked.

I'm like, let's just walk the boardwalk. Let's walk the boardwalk. We were both so excited. And I'm walking the boardwalk, and we walked maybe 100 yards. I'm like, fuck this. Let's get the fuck out. I'm freezing my ass off. When he called you, did he give you parameters for the script?

Well, then I had to go back in and meet with him, and he gave me a piece of paper. I sat down with him and Terry Winter, who did Boardwalk Empire, who was a friend and a very nice man. It was very good to me because after that meeting, Terry came up to me and he said, listen, it's a freelance. And this is the height of the Sopranos mania. It was between seasons two and three. Season one, it was a breakout hit.

Season two, people got nuts and people couldn't wait for season three. And Terry Winter came up to me after the meeting and he said, listen, here's the deal. I want this to be a good experience for you. Here's my home number. Here's my cell number. Here's the direct line to my office. You have any questions while you're doing this? this, just gave me a call. He didn't need to do that for some freelance schmuck who had never had

anything produced in his life. And he's just a nice guy, Terry. He's always been nice to me. And so we sat down and what it was, it was one sheet of paper at this point. That was it. One sheet of paper with a bullet point. And there were about 50 bullet points, each were seen. And each bullet point had one sentence. You know, Tony talks to AJ about football practice. I'm making stuff. You know, that kind of stuff. And then he'd say, yeah, in this scene, we're looking for this or that or whatever. And I was just jotting down notes, jotting down notes, jotting down notes, John down notes. And I went home and I wrote.

I was writing it at night. I wrote it on the weekend. I finished it in about five days. And I remember David Chase called me. And he said, I heard from Terry that you're almost done. And I'm like, yeah. And he's like, are you sure? This is really fast.

I'm like, no, I'm rereading it, but I'm done. done. I feel good about it. He's like, okay, you know, send it on in. And the one thing that law school did for me and being a lawyer did for me is I'm fast. I can remember. I wrote my last novel in eight weeks. And if you give me a good outline on a network television show, you give me a good outline, I'll have you a script in 36 hours. I gave him the script. He turned around, called me up and he said, listen, I got it. Thank you for your work. There's a cease. There was a C story in about AJ having a crush on a girl. He's like, we decided we don't want to do that story.

So we're going to put in a new story there. It's like four or five scenes. And he said, but, you know, I want, I never, I'll never forget it. He said, I want you to, you know, I want you and your wife, move to L.A., go right. You're going to have a successful career. You know, you're going to be a writer. And I was on the Northern Parkway in New York in traffic when he called. And no, actually, no, I was on Northern Parkway.

after I left his office, after he gave me the beach sheet, I was on sunrise on Long Island when he called me and gave me that. And that was very nice of him to say. And the last time I ever talked to him, the guy just came into my life, sprinkled fairy dust on my head and said, I'm going to change your life. I never talked to him again. A few years ago was the 10-year anniversary of me getting that job.

I sent him a very nice bottle of wine with a note that said, thank you very much for the opportunity 10 years ago. You changed my life. I sent one to Terry Winter. And Terry and I keep in touch. Every once in a while, I will email. And, you know, David Chase, when slip and fall, the novel came out,

I thanked him in the book. He was one of the people I thanked because the guy changed my life. He wouldn't know me. If I went outside and he hit me with his car, he'd be like, who's this bald fuck that I hit with my car. He wouldn't know who I am. But changed my life. That's amazing.

Yeah. How did you take it in classes in college or just because for the second thing you ever wrote it sounds like you're to be writing sopranos were you nervous or was it just you didn't even know to be nervous? It's funny. I wasn't nervous. You know, it's so funny. It's it's it's I know well to answer your first question. I never taken a writing class. That must put a lot of people off in the town. That must be the worst thing. Maybe but some people, you know, I think writing classes can be very effective and very helpful, you know. but I just never did. I kind of on the job training. But I think it was one of those things where you're so blessed,

you're so stupid and so ignorant about the business. You don't know enough to be nervous, at least at the beginning. I was nervous when I walked into that meeting. I knew I had an hour to either give myself the life I really wanted or not get it, or at least have to wait a lot longer to get it. I knew enough that if I can get a Sopranos episode, that's got to mean something because this show was really popular. and I do remember sitting in the basement of my in-law's house in Jersey

and they have a, my father-in-law has a little basement office he keeps down there and just filled with, you know, brick-a-brack and shit. And he's a little desk. And I were sitting there on my computer. And that's where I went to type. It was quiet there. And I started typing and I got to, I don't know, three, quarters down on the first page and I typed in the word Tony.

I was about to write dialogue for Tony Soprano and that's the one time it hit me and I took my fingers off the keyboard and I kind of pushed away from the desk for a second and just went, this is fucking real. This is fucking real. I'm about to, I'm about to write something that Tony Soprano is going to say. So it should be good. And, you know, it was a good episode. It was the episode where at the end,

uh doing Tony told uh Assemblyman Zellman uh go ahead you can you can sleep with the Russian girl and then he takes his belt off and he whips the shit out of him and that was also the one where they shot up the they bought the crack house the HUD house right they pulled out all the copper piping and then they just used the money the that was a that was a fun episode there was some good lines in it that you know that that that I wrote that I think did well and uh it was a it's still to this day an important credit on my resume.

Absolutely. When people say you wrote for that show because people in the business know I beat one in 10 million odds getting that job with no...

The first thing I ever had produced was The Sopranos episode. The first time I ever saw my name on television was my wife and I moved out because it took so long with HBO to actually. We moved out to L.A.

And then a few months out in L.A., they finally aired the episode and we were living in this tiny little apartment and yeah I sat on the couch and we got the New York feed so we got to see it earlier seven o'clock or something yeah five o'clock or something and yeah I sat there and watched it on TV and my name came up and I started to cry because I said to my wife I'm like you're the only one you know who thought I could do it it was nice what was it like how much time was there between you sending in the script and you hearing back that he liked it because I can imagine like he might be worried he's going to call him to hate it you made a

mistake. No, he was very kind. I mean, he said to me, and he was honest, and I didn't realize at the time that it's very common. And now that I'm a showrunner and I've created three television shows now that have gotten on the air, but very, very blessed, that, you know, when you have a tone and a voice of the show, a showrunner will take it and tweak it and make changes or blah, blah, blah, or do a wholesale rewrite. In this case, he said to me, he's like, look, you know, I'm going to go through it and do this, that, or whatever. And I was like, Oh, no, maybe, you know, he's being nice, but maybe he doesn't really mean it.

He's telling me I could be a good writer. And I called it my agents, and they said, no, no, no, no. This is what, this is the way it works. And then when the script, when the final script came out and I saw it, I, you know, 80% of, I'd say my, the deceased story had changed, which they told me was going to have it. I'd say, you know, 70, 80% of my dialogue was there, you know. And, you know, there were some lines in there.

You know, it's when Paulie gets out of prison. And they're like, Pauley, you know, what can I get you? And he's like, after six months inside, how about late? And at the end, Tony goes, I never thought I'd say this, but to the federal government when he's cheering because they stole the federal HUD money. And so that's all stuff I wrote. And where I grew up in New York, you know, everyone talks like that. You know, and you know these guys and you know how they talk.

And they're, you know, they're very charming, fun guys. You know how they get a line in that scene? You probably know it better than... Shrippa. When he goes, hold on, and they play his song by Sinatra. He's sitting there. And all of a sudden he goes, this is his song? And he goes, why is it his song?

Is that in that episode? I don't know I remember that episode because I remember it now. I haven't seen that episode in probably 10 years. It was on, it's funny. It's called watching too much television. Right, but the sopranos was on, and then they were on A&E for a while. And I'd catch them on A&E. And that's when in the daytime, I'd be.

bored they came on like a three or something that's a great time then dick on so i started watching them and that's when he has that line he goes why is it his song everybody's got a song yeah everyone's got a song he was great on that show he was a he brought a lot of sweetness to that character it was great yeah they replaced the the the storyline i didn't write at all they replaced the a j storyline with the story of chris and his girlfriend and she doesn't think she has to testify against him and she goes to the lawyer and the lawyer's like you'd want to watching too much television. That was the name of the episode. I think that was like four or five scenes that I had zero to do with. I think Terry Winter came in a row, and Terry's such a great writer.

And from there, you went to prison break. No, from there, then I moved out to L.A. to look for work. And my wife and I were out here, and I had no, I quit my law job. She was a tenured teacher. She quit that job. And when I asked her, I said, listen, I think maybe we should give this a shot. I'll never forget. She looked at me, and she said, okay. She goes, it'll be an adventure. If it doesn't work, we can come home. That was it. And we moved. And it was hard.

All my family was back. All my family's back. I come from a very close family, very big family, a very close family. Moved out here. And I was out here six. I was unemployed 16 days. I just got a horseshoe up my ass. It's the lucky guy.

And I got a job on a show called The Guardian on CBS. It was season two of The Guardian. It was with Simon Baker. Dabney Coleman. It was picked up for 22 episodes. We wound up doing 23. I got paid for a whole year as a writer. I wound up as a baby staff writer, you know, getting my name on multiple scripts that year, really writing a lot. Sony, only time this has ever happened to me in this business, Sony gave me something for nothing. They were to studio and they said, you know, this kid's doing a great job. we need to promote them.

They didn't ask me to give them a pilot script in return. They didn't ask for another year on my contract. And they promoted me within a year. I was up four levels. I went from a staff writer to a co-producer on the show. And then when that was over, I went to Law & Order. I did that for one year. While I was on Law & Order,

I created a reality show called Beauty and the Geek that ran for five years on the WB and CW. Do you remember that show? Yeah. And I'd never done reality. before, haven't done it since, but that's when reality was in its heyday. And I just said, I remember watching a commercial and a network had a show called The Littlest Groom, which was basically who wants to marry a midget.

And I said, and they pulled it. They never aired it. They pulled it because people got so offended by the commercials. But I remember watching the commercials, and I said to my wife, you know, this shit, we're in trouble because I'm a writer and this shit's not written. And if you can't beat them, join them. And a month later, we had Beauty and the Geeks sold. That got on the air.

And then I went from there, from Law & Order to Prison Break, which was the best four years of my life. I mean, what a group of writers. All those writers, I'd not show. Man, they were amazing. And we did that. Made some of the best friends in my life, worked hard, had fun. and from prison break

created a show with a friend of mine called Breakout Kings that ran for a couple of years A&E A&E. It's a very fun show, good show. Dominic Lombardoz. He's like, you know, Domney's like my brother, that guy.

No, I never met him. I just see him in 29,000 fucking things. He's the best human being, the nicest guy. Another fucking guy with a mobster name. Yeah, but he's a good man, man. Everybody says he's very cool. And you want to talk about an actor that will just give you his heart and soul.

I mean, he'll do it. He'll just do it. And he and I, you know, we become close. We're like brothers and I love him. And did that. During that time, I put out a couple of books. I had my first novel, Slippin'Fall, my second novel, 15 digits. They both did well.

The first, you know, the first one was a national bestseller. And so that was an interesting, different type of storytelling, you know, books. And then what did I do after that? I went out to breakout. I did Vegas for the one year it was on. I wanted the opportunity to work with Nick Pilegy. You know, anyone who writes Goodfellas in Casino is all right by me. The coolest cat you'd ever want to meet.

81, I think he's 82 years old now. He was 80 when I worked with him, and he showed up every single day, more energy than anyone in that room. room, the nicest man, the most decent man. And you want to talk about humble? I don't know about you guys. If I wrote Goodfellas, I'd wear a t-shirt every day that said I wrote Goodfellas. I'd never stop. I mean, listen to me now. All I'm doing is talking about myself. I haven't done shit in this business. And Nick Pilegy never made. You got to pull it out of him. And I did. I made him crazy every day. I was like, hey, Mr. Pellegi. Remember that scene? When when Pesci goes,

when little young Pesci goes, hey, how you doing, Hendry? I go, why do he call him Hendry? Why didn't he call him Henry. I'm like, was that a mistake? I mean, every day. And the best was, he's like, no, that was scripted. He goes, we knew a guy in our neighborhood, he couldn't say Henry. People from the Bronx. Yeah, he called him Hendry. Hendry, Henry, Earl. They really said Earl. I went to

school with a family, the Balzano's, and the mom, Marianne was in the Bronx. And her, she'd said that. She would say Hendry. Yeah. Hendry, Earl, instead of oil. She had a couple words that were just fucking tremendous. Henry, Henry, Henry. Henry. Henry. Yeah. Andry, yeah.

And I drove him crazy and he was so patient with me. He answered every single question because I just love, and I loved him. He's the nicest man. Everyone called him Nick. I refused to call him Nick. It was Mr. Pilegi. Just out of respect for what he did. And also, he's 80 years old.

You call him, you know, I'm like, in my kid's school, all the kids are like, they call all their friends' parents by their first name. I tell my friend's kids. I'm like, my name's fucking Mr. Santora. Call me Mr. Santoria, you little 10-year-old shit. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's how I was raised. is awesome.

Yeah, and I called him Mr. Pilegi, and he said to me, he's like, please, it's Nick. And I was like, okay, okay. And I tried it. My mouth wouldn't say it. I tried this. I couldn't do it. And I said to him, I said, Mr. Pilegi, if it makes you really that uncomfortable, I'll call you Nick. I'm like, but it feels, it's just not right to me.

And he said, okay, you can call me Mr. Pilegi, Mr. Santor. And he called me Mr. Santor and still calls me Mr. Santor this day. And he's the nicest, classiest guy you'd ever want to meet. love him. That season of Vegas wasn't a guy from Chicago on there? Chicago. It was Dennis Quaid and Michael Chickles. No Farina? Oh, that

Vegas. Oh, my God, you wrote that? Oh, shit. Vegas. Yeah. I was talking to you about the other fucking Vegas. There's been like seven Vegas. Yeah, I was only about the Vegas with, oh my God. I never went in for that fucking show. I didn't know what kind of Vegas it was. I remember hearing about it. It was a

it was based on a movie that Mr. Pellaggie had written a million years ago about the real Ralph Lamb and his interactions with organized crime in Vegas, in the early 60s when Vegas was really starting and really getting bigger and bigger and bigger. And the battles between outside money coming in from the mob and old school Nevada ranchers who had been their family's land for years. And it was such a ripe world to be explored. but unfortunately a lot of the executives

were kind of looking for it to be kind of like a crime of the week, case of the week show. It eventually, by episode six, turned into what it kind of probably should have been the whole time, which was this saga. But by then, the audience had gone from like 17 million, almost 18 million that it premiered to, to down, it was just, it was its attrition

and it couldn't be saved. And I felt bad because Mr. Pilegi, This other guy, Greg Walker, who was running it with Mr. Pilegi, really nice guys, but it didn't work out. But I made some, I got to work with Nick Pilegy. How can I complain? You know, it's funny. Didn't Pellegie have Goodfellas on A&E for a while? I was supposed to do it.

As a series? Yeah. Oh, I never even heard about that. Yeah, they came out and announced it and I couldn't see it. He writes every day, Nick Pilege. Every day, he's got stuff going on with Scorsese. He's just, he's an inspiration. I want to grow up.

to be Mr. Pilegi. He's the best. And now you got Scorpion. Now I got Scor. Look at you. I'm forgetting all the... Now, what is Scorpion about? Scorpion is inspired by a real-life guy, Walter O'Brien.

It's inspired by his incredible intellect. He has a 197 IQ. Average is 100. You know, if you got a 125, you're pretty sharp guys. He's 197. Einstein was 160. So that shows where this guy is. And it's like a Richter scale.

So 197 is not 37 points smarter than Einstein. It's about, you know, 5,000 times smarter than Einstein. And he's like a guy. He's from Ireland. He lives in L.A. now. And he's super smart. And he does all this crazy shit. And he has this company called Scorpion.

And he only has geniuses working for him. And they problem solve. They'll problem solve for governments. They'll problem solve. for massive corporations. They'll problem solve for charities. You know, his whole thing is, is I'm a very bright guy.

There are other very bright people. Let's try to do some good. He also likes to get very rich. You know, he's got Ferraris and Lamborghini. This is the guy from Terminated? Well, that's Robert Patrick. I saw him on that. He's a commercial.

Yeah, he's on the show. He plays their government handler. Elias Gable is the, is the, guy who plays Walter O'Brien. I got called in to play a guy at a plant, two lines. At a plant? Yeah, like some furniture, a factory or something.

Hey, you've been not doing the job here. Don't do your best, do my best. I was just cutting that episode. Something like that. And you know what that line comes from? I can't take credit for that line. Don't do your best, do my best. That's Adam Carolla's famous line.

And he's always saying that line. I'm friends with Adam, so I stuck it in there as a little goose to him. but yeah that that's I didn't even know you came in on that I didn't I didn't it was I was out of town oh okay called in like on a Wednesday and they called in that morning or something they said can you make it between 12 and 1 and I couldn't make it oh okay but it was like one and I didn't know what it was like really don't play a fucking factory worker

that guy gets shot and killed yeah right something happened you get factory worker or some shit I didn't know what they were doing yeah he takes a bullet but Scorpion is doing great it's the new number one drama on CBS it's got a young You know, everyone wants that young 18 to 49 demographic, and normally if you can get like a 1-8 or 1-9, okay, that's, now we're doing something here. We're well above a 4. You know, we're average, I think we'd do like a 4.5, 4.6 at one point.

It's, it's, I don't know. It's a blessing. It's good. It's tough right now, though. It's tough. I'm working long hours right now. But I got-TV is very tough right now. Yeah.

And TV is tough, but this show's doing really well. And so I'm doing that. And then I got my first kid's book that's out now. I want an alien for Christmas. It's a chapter book. It's about 134 pages. It's for like five, six-year-olds, up to about 12-year-olds. You've got to read it to a five- or six-year-old.

Seven, eight, nine-year-old, they can read it themselves. But I'll tell you, you probably didn't know this, Mr. Diaz. But on December 17th, something happens with Santa Claus. He goes on a test run. He gets in his sleigh with his head elf Elvis. And they do a test run, and they check weather patterns and the navigation that he's going to use in a week on Christmas Eve to make sure everything goes smoothly. Except when he goes behind a cloud bank in the middle of the night, he smashes with a star hopper, which is like an alien version of a jet ski. And a little 10-year-old alien was playing on a star hopper.

Well, they smash that alien flips in the air and lands in the sleigh. Santa and Elvis tumble into the starhopper. The reindeer see the alien. Reindeer is stupid. They think they can run away, even though they're latched to the sleigh. they take off and crash in a small town called Millbrook Falls, New Hampshire, and the three Bartlett kids find the kid, and find the alien, and realize the aliens down here, Santa's up there,

we got to switch them and save Christmas. And it's a really fun, it's a fun story for kids. It's already been optioned for a movie. I'm going to be producing it. I'm going to write the script. And I really, really, really, if we're really going to get this movie made, you'd be able to buy it. So if you're incredible listeners want to get a gift for a kid, a niece,

You, a cousin, whatever. Let's go to Amazon, Barnes & Noble.com. I want an alien for Christmas. Good family Christmas fun. You're an old school motherfuckering writer. Like, you don't give a fuck. I'll write anything. Books, toilet paper.

You don't give a fuck. I'll write anything. It's amazing. Fucking Bazooka Joe comics. I don't give a shit. Because some people just, well, I just write scripts. You know, some people have attitudes or whatever the fuck. You have, and I mean, even the genres.

You know, all right, prison break. You know, the sopranos. You like the criminal world. I like that stuff. I've done, I wrote a comic book series for D.C. called Sandstorm, which was a horror movie set in the, a horror story set in the Afghanistan War. And it was something original idea I had. I'll write anything.

Anything. You know why? Because I had a job I hated. I was in my late 20s, my mid to late 20s, and I was like, I'm a young man, and I feel like I'm 100 years old. When I was a lawyer, I used to say to my wife, my biggest fears I'm going to be doing this the rest of my life. Now that I'm a writer, I say to my wife, my biggest fear is that I won't be able to do this for the rest of my life. I love what I do. I'm so happy I get to do what I do.

And I like being collaborative. I love making film. I love producing film. I love editing. I mean, you were saying Lee, that you like, I love editing. That's rewriting. That's the best. To me, it's the second best part. The purest part is sitting there and writing it. And then editing is when you get to fix all the fuckups. Oh, man, I overwrote this. Let me, cut those three lines. We can do that whole speech with a look. Let's lose it. Let's do this. Let's do that. And it's fun. And some of these editors, I mean, they're just artists. They're painters. And I get to work with incredible editors on Scorpion. And I've gotten to work with incredible editors throughout my life. I love working with great television directors. I love it.

I'll write anything. I'll write anything. I'll do anything. Want me write you a joke? I'll write you a joke. I'll do anything you want. That's amazing that you wrote like a kid's book, like a genre. And you have children. Yeah. How old are they? Two little girls, five and ten. Wow. Like you, the blessing of daughters.

And they're beautiful kids. They're good kids. And, you know, Scorpion's the first thing I've ever done that they can watch. Now, the five-year-old doesn't watch it because she said to me this morning. She's like, Daddy. And my kids both, because they grew up in my house, they both have, they've lived in California the whole lives. They both have New York accents because they just learned how to talk in my house. So, you know, my little one looks at me.

And she goes, Daddy. I don't understand what they're saying. I can't understand the show. I don't like Scorpion. And I said, okay, I go, I get it. You don't have to like it, sweetie. That's all right. And my oldest one's like,

oh, you're crazy. It's the best show on TV. Because she loves it. It's the first thing I've done that we can enjoy together. So that's special to me. And the kid's book is something that I wrote for them.

And they love it. Because it reads like a movie. I mean, it is crazy. There's a guy, an Air Force cadet that works at NORAD. And he notices when the sleigh crashes that there's these fire streaks in the air. And he realizes that copper, when moving at a certain speed, gives off heat flashes. And there's like seven of them.

And he connects them. And when he connects him, lo and behold, it looks just like the runner of a sleigh. And he realizes, holy shit, that's Santa's Slay. Because when this guy in NORAD was 10 years old, he was looking up at his sky with his telescope and spotted Santa on December 17th. Santa because he's magic. This all makes sense, right? Santa because he's magic.

looks at him and gives him a wink because he knows that he's being watched. And this guy from NORAD goes, oh my God, that means I'm special. That means Santa's going to give me the best gift on Christmas. He's going to get me a Commander Cody Retro Rocket with optional bonus boosters because I've been so good. And then Christmas morning he gets a fucking catcher's mid

and he has had a hard on for Santa for now his entire life. And now he's 27 and he sees Santa crashed into Millbrook Falls, New Hampshire. And he's like, I'm going to go get that fucker. So you got the guy from NORAD from the Air Force going after Santa. We got a bad shopping mall Santa, like bad Santa, like Billy Bob Thornton, realizes there's an alien in town

with these little kids, and he's going to catch that alien and bring him to the National Enquirer for a million bucks reward. So we got a Santa going after the alien. We got a guy from space going after Santa. We got a school bully chasing all of them, and it just becomes like a mad, mad, mad, mad, mad world,

and it reads like a movie, which is probably, hopefully, why it got optioned, and I hope we can actually make this fucking thing, because it's fun. You're a fucking savage, brother. I just got to write shit. I got to write it and say it. I am just blown away.

After I spoke to you, I read a little bit about you. I was just a fucking attorney. Why would you quit? Because it sucks a big dick. I see it. It sucks. You know, I knew nothing. I did comedy for all these years, and I wrote jokes and cars.

And years ago, I used to get up about six years ago, I started getting up at four in the morning and night, and I would write for two hours, you know? Get up at four? Four in the morning. What time would you go to bed? It didn't matter. I got 11.

And I started writing a blog, and I forgot grammar. You know, it's amazing how you. And I remember looking at the blog after a year and going, wow, that's what writing is. It's a muscle. And you have to hit it every day. And that's how I feel with calmly. When I wake up in the morning, I write a little bit,

and then I fuck around, absorb, and then write a little more. And like, tonight, before I came, I wrote a little more, half hour. And this is, you know, to put together, sets for shows. Yeah, a tag, something I've been thinking about. Just, because sometimes

I'll put the sentence out and then work it in my head. Then put it on paper and take a look at it and go, okay, here we go. Once it's on paper, it's completely different. And you can always really hear it when you say it out loud. You write. I go crazy. I write scripts. And one of the reasons I like writing scripts, you said

grammar. Like, I can't spell for shit. I mean, I can't. But does it spells it four. Yeah, I know. It spells a way. But my spell check is like, fuck you, motherfucker. Give me a break. because I can't, every of the word is wrong. But the thing I like about writing scripts is the dialogue. It doesn't matter. It's not to sound real.

Bad dialogue almost, like, it offends me. Bad dialogue hurts my ears. And the tough thing with television, especially when you're doing a procedural like Scorpion, is sometimes you've got to write dialogue. That's not that natural because you've got to do all that exposition to explain the case to the audience, the case of the week, whatever it is. And I've gotten it down now where you can give the audience that medicine. but wrap it up in some sugar so it's not as it's not as bitter as it normally would be but i you know

all you got to do someone like you you could write dialogue that sounds so real that sounds so you know with all the shit you've done and all the all the experiences you had it would be easy for you know but but i but what i do when i when i'm writing my dialogue is i'll just say it out loud i'll act it out i'll get up if i'm doing a southern guy i'll pace around in my office i'll talk in some half-ass southern accent i'll start going crazy i i lean i i'm sure you're I start sweating. I just got to make sure it sounds right. You do what you got to do.

But, yeah, I mean, you're getting up and this stuff. Look, I, you know, Mick Betancourt, like I said, he's one of my best friends. I know he's a friend of yours. Dear friend, love him. Mick, no, it's my, I give it all up tomorrow to do a half hour. The best thing I ever wrote in my life was a curvyer enthusiasm script. I love con. I don't watch our drama.

The only hour dramas I watch, I love the Breaking Bad, which I think was one of the best. shows for me it's the best show ever made I love that show I love that show and but I all I do is I watch the office and always sunny in Philadelphia and modern family and Archer and I I watch this stuff like I just want to make people laugh you know I hate half hour comedies yeah well some of them are absolutely fucking watch him cannot fucking watch him whatsoever I have a problem I grew up watching the other morning I woke up last what's say the 18th yeah Yeah.

It's the last Thursday I woke up early in the morning at 6. And I went and I threw my wife out of the bed so I could write. And I brought a cup of coffee in and I opened up the computer. I go to Facebook and ran it the thing that says, it's November 13th. Felix was asked to remove himself from his place in residence. That request came from his wife. I almost dropped my cup of coffee.

You don't know. Nobody fucking knows. You don't know what that is? Nobody knows. The tears in my eyes. The odd couple. It's one of the greatest shows. But that's what I grew up watching.

This is what I'm telling you. So you cannot. I grew up, listen. All in the family. But it was 11 o'clock, Felix, 1130, the Mooners. Yeah. 12 o'clock, Sanford and Sun and 1230, Twilight Zone, opened up with 1030. WPI.

WPIX. WP.I.X thought 11, but I grew up at 1030, you had Benny Hill. So you were smoking dope. We're playing lifting weights and everybody. do it, 1025. Gotta go. Benny Hill's on, 10.30. You went home just maybe.

Benny Hill's dropped a tit. Every once in a while, something would happen. They'd show a tit. Something would happen on fucking TV, and nobody said nothing. There was no wardrobe malfunction. There's no black people jumping up and down. Nothing. 10.30 fucking...

And then 11, you switch right over to WPI. Honeymooners. And it was the honeymoon. And in my world, there was two writers for that show. Two writers. Yeah. And he would come over and bring up. break that ball.

Two riders. One night I'm watching Saturday Live. I get back from watching comedy, from doing comedy, watching comedy. I'm sitting there. And it's Jimmy Fallon and the fat kid that lost a lot of weight. Horatio sons.

And this is when I stopped. This is why I'm the way I am. I'm old school. Don't try to run it by me because I grew up, I came from Cuba. Yesterday I went to Jiu-Jitsu and some kid was there, a Cuban kid, and he goes, hey man, I brought you a present.

He just came to town to visit but he heard the podcast you did with Higgen Machado where I spoke about Dick Van Dyke Dick Van Dyke is how I learned to speak this fucking language. When I came from Cube, I know nothing. I knew PS-166 and I knew Dick Van fucking Dyke. And he fall over this.

He fall over, but then season two, he walked around. Yeah. Fucking Billy! They don't do that shit today! He skipped around it. And he skipped around it and looked at the TV like, what, bitch? Okay, that's being a fucking writer, okay? And so I grew up on that. And then you had all in the family, the mother-in-law with the Desi Arnaz.

There was a bunch of shows we grew up. But something happens when you're nine in New York, you discover the honeymoon. Yeah. And, you know, I got to prove, ready, I remember me and Wadi O'Donnell on my mother's bedroom phone, me on the phone with Furnie Buss, with their kid Valentin Farrow, doing the honeymoon lines. Oh, yeah. Doing the line. And your mother going, what the fuck is, I'm going to sleep with that two fucking.

Why are both of my lines? Because there was no caller I'd be, caller waiting. You could use the phone. It was beep, beep, beep, and that's what you did. I remember when the group, that was it. Then the Felix Ungar there once was a man. His name was Felix. No, what was it?

Oscar, Oscar, Oscar. He wore his suit, very messy. MCMessie. Oh, that shit. You can't. So for me to watch something now, the bar was raised. The bar is high. The bar was raised.

A channel came out recently, Channel 20. It's called WeTV on whatever the fuck you have. I sit there at night and sperm comes out of my dick and my belly button. It's Hawaii 5O, Mission Impossible, Canon. These are the shows we grew up on, you know. Nothing's better than that Hawaii 5O theme song. Nothing. No, to me, Mission Impossible.

Okay, yeah. I'm a mix of the Bongoes. Fuck the Cowbell. The Bongoes came before the motherfucking cowbell. that whatever talked about. I hit the babysitter in the head one night because I heard that. I heard the Hawaii 50.

I hit it with the shoehorn. What was the name? La Nebosa. She used to shake when she talked to. My mother said she had syphilis. So I hit her in her with the shoehorn and shit. When I was like seven, I forgot. She was still alive.

Whenever I go to Union City, she'd still be shaking. You hit me in the head with a shoehorn to Hawaii 50. But I grew up on the honeymovers. And there's times that I'm not doing it. nothing guys I'm not ashamed to admit this I'm not doing I probably have 16 episodes on my TV on

DVR yeah yeah and when nothing's going on I sit there and I put them on and I start crying oh yeah I start crying I bawling the lines fucking bawling the one I watched the one one he fucking tells the magazine company he's going to die

because he read the dog oh my god and he shows up with Norton dressed as a fucking doctor and he's Dr. Norton to keep it easy. Norton walks in. Don't touch me. I'm sterile. Remember that was the whole thing? Don't touch me. I'm sterile. Norton, listen. We're going to give the guy to check and we're going to get the fuck

out of here. Alright? Guy comes in. Who's this? This is Dr. Norton. We want to give you back the check. We discovered. I don't have arterial monochromian. Right. Oh, you remember that. I don't have arterial monochronian. I'm going to give you the check and we're going to leave now. Wait a minute. Come back here.

And he tells him, you know, Arturio monochronian. Who's this guy? And he goes, this don't you see that we have a human interest story here and he goes Dr. Norton how about we take some pictures and do a story about and Ralph goes, no not really he's busy, he's got to go back to something and Norton looks like it goes, I don't mind

a couple pictures What Karnie did on that show It was a master's class Come on Doug, come on Doug Hello ball Oh string of palopinies String a palopinous when he fucking danced Here's a dance you should

No, the hucklebuck. And when fucking Carlos, that was the first Puerto Rican ever on TV. And he told them, you know, I don't care what is it. Oh, Mrs. Maticata. Mrs. Maticata. Mr. Maticata, he wants to do the mom boy, everybody. And you and your age should be ashamed of yourself and shit.

The episode when he throws his mother-in-law, that's one of the most, there's two episodes I look at today and I look at because of the brilliance. And it always involved the mother-in-law. 60 seconds, I give you two minutes, and she'll fucking ruin my night. And he sets the time, and he's got tickets for the play.

Murder strikes out. Murder strikes out. Jimmy Pierceall. Jimmy Pierceall, Boston Red Sox, bitch. He lost his mind. He lost his fucking mind. He started climbing the backstop. A real Boston fucking Red Soxie.

He used to run around the bases backwards after he hit a home running shit. He was crazy. Joe Sander, people. And he goes, you know, the press tells you not to tell the story. And at the end, he goes, she goes, and all the press saying that, not to tell the story, it was the butler who did it. And all of a sudden the bell goes off. It was perfect.

The alarm clock goes. The timing was perfect. The timing was perfect. And all of a sudden he goes, he hits it and he goes, you are a blabbing. Well, I was going anywhere. Whether you were going anyway or any other way, I'm still throwing you out. And the one when they found the suitcase filled with money, that's one of the best written TV episodes of our day. You know what one killed me?

The one that killed, I mean, made me cry. Killed me. Not cry because funny. When they adopted the baby and had to give it back. I never saw that one. That's the 1951 ones. Yeah, it was somewhat of the lost ones. And he kept saying about the baby.

They adopted a baby. They finally had a baby. And he's so proud. And Alice is so happy. And then the mother, who gave birth to the baby, decided, I can't do this. I need my baby back. And Alice is like, Ralph, if we love her, this much imagine how much she loves her and he and he and and uh uh cramden's pacing back and forth he's

like i don't care it's my baby i'm in love with her i'm in love with her you can't have her back it's my kid i don't have no i'm in love with her and he's just going over and over and it's heartbreaking and they give the baby back it's like a dramatic honeymooners it'll kill you and i that's the one that always stuck with me to me he's always been one of the best and you said at norton carney was a master's class that's the thing that i really I realized when I started, I was, you know, a kid, and I was, you know, in elementary school or late elementary school when I started watching it. And it was when my dad on a, you know, on a construction site, someone showed up one day, you know, selling TV radio combos that fell off the back of a truck. And he came home.

And I mean, when I say the screen was this big, it was like two decks of cards on top of each other. And it was this big. And then there was a little radio next to it. And he got it for like 10 bucks, 20 bucks. He gave it to me. I thought I had the world. And I put it on the little desk next to my bed, and I'd lie on my side, and I'd watch this little black and white screen every night.

I was supposed to be in bed, but I had to watch the honeymooners. I had to watch the odd couple. And to this day, even when I write drama, everything I had to have humor in it, because that's what I loved. And I remember watching the honeymooners and having this epiphany of, oh, my God, all the shit I've been watching that hasn't been doing it right, has been stealing, all the shit, all the joke. the Pratt Falls, the moves that I saw in Three's Company in 1977, 78, whenever the hell I saw it,

it was all stolen from the honeymooners. They just did it badly. The crazy, I mean, he's the original crazy next door neighbor. He's the first Kramer, you know, all that shit. And the honeymoon has just laid the platform, the blueprint for everybody, and everyone's trying, no one's gotten it. And it's just, you watch it, and it's, to this day, it's one room, one room, an ice box, the size of a shoe box, one window, one door,

and God bless them, a chested drawers that seemed to have everything they needed in those drawers. I mean, anything that they needed. A pad and a pen was in there. An extra shirt was in there. You know, if they needed a deck of cards and a pair of dice, everything was in that, and that's it. And a table with a couple of chairs.

I mean, that was it. And they made masterful storytelling, week in, week out. Yeah, I love that show. The Christmas episode, I mean, the fucking food with the chef of the future when they were going to cut the slice of the dice.

Chef of the future. Chef of the future. Chef of the future. Who are you? Chef of the future. Can they call? A apple? I mean, just shit that we still fuck around with people.

The tax one, it's just a. But the one, who is the guy when they're at the pool hall? And my friend, was it my friend Harvey? My friend Harvey is even bigger than me. I got a friend Shirley.

It's bigger than you. So good, man. Let me give some shit. shout out to you. Get you the fuck out of you and do what thing. I don't even know what the fuck we're going to do. How you feeling? I'm pretty high.

See, I gave you a nice little edible. Look at that. Look at the shape of him. He's so happy. Yeah, this is okay. He said he's going to give me mushrooms too. He's sitting there thinking he's like, when's this guy going to shut the fuck up?

No, this is what we do, brother. No, I know. This is amazing. I'm going to tell you something. What we do on this show, I got a second chance in a lot of ways. And you are the fucking epitome of stories for this. This is what we do. You know, people email every week that they're unhappy.

They don't know what to fucking do. You know, when you tell your story, everybody goes through this. There's some people that have the balls to do what you did, or not even balls, or there's people who are just scared. And they'll live their life to their 50 and one day, you know, you weren't scared. Yeah, it gets, well, I had to do something. But I tell anyone, like, when people get depressed or say, I was depressed, you just say it'll get better. You got to just push through it. You got to do something yourself.

If you sit there and take the windfall, that's what's going to happen. But if you get up and do something about it, which it's a beautiful story. You know, you've been writing all these fucking stories. Write a fucking story by yourself constantly. That's what you've got to do. Right on it by yourself. Forget all this shit with fucking Martians and shit. Fucking Scorpions and shit.

Joey V. DeStefano, Joe Ando, Tommy Easter, James Mello, whatever your fucking name is. Albert Jimenez. got to throw a Puerto Rican in there. Michelle Clifford, I love you, dirty bitch. Amanda Taylor, I love you, too. Thank you for torture and Lee today. Ross, dude, stay black. And Madison Ray, you sexy bitch,

I love you too. Nick Santor has been a fucking trip. O'Leh, what do you got to say about this? Did you learn something today? Yeah, no, it's, I actually had a question for both of you guys. How do you guys deal with, like, Nick, like, you love all the shows you worked on. And, like, when they get...

Not all of them. I just won't tell you which ones. Well, even though it didn't, what is it like when they get canceled? What is it when a job like that ends? The one that hurt was Breakout Kings. Because that show was the highest testing pilot, FPC, Fox Network, had had in over decade, tested through the roof. And they picked up two shows that tested substantially lower than we did. One show got canceled after two episodes.

And the only reason to get canceled after one episode is because if it got canceled after one episode, they would have looked like total fucking idiots. So it got canceled after two episodes. The other show got canceled after 13 episodes. Our show got picked up by A&E, which never happens. You never have one network say, well, we're development execs. It's our job to develop TV ourselves, and we're going to admit to our corporate bosses

that these other people did a better job than we did, and we should buy their cast-offs. I mean, it's career suicide. But they love the pilot so much, and it tested so high, A&E took it, and it perceived. seated to then set the record for the highest debut at A&E. It ran for two seasons with Dom LaM Bardoso, and that was around the time, like, American horror story started getting popular, and the people at A&E said, you know what, we got to go genre.

We got to go genre. We got to move away from cops and crime. In the meantime, Breakout Kings, if you watch it, watch the first, just watch the pilot. It's the funniest one-hour cop show you'll ever watch. We cast Jimmy Simpson, who's, you watch House of Cards? Yeah. He's the hacker on House of Cards. Oh, okay.

He's one of the best actors in the country. He's like a hidden gem. And I cast him off of O's Sunny in Philadelphia, a comedy. To be in this hour of cop show. Sunny is, I think that's a groundbreaking comedy. You might like, I know you like the old school stuff, but you might like, because these kids on Sunny, I've heard that it's a good show.

They take chances. They do different things, and it's wild. And the whole thing with Breakout Kings is they decided we're going to go genre. And so after the second season, they just didn't have us come back. And we ended the second season on a massive cliffhanger, never got resolved. That one hurt because that show was my voice. It was what I loved and it was fun and I loved the actors and I loved going to work. That one stung.

That was tough. But then, you know, you put it in perspective and say, you know what, that sucks. I lost something that me and a lot of other people worked hard on. But you know what? I'm healthy. I've got a family that loves me. I love them. I got a box full of pens.

I got a box full of pens. I've got a full four and a half inch dick. Life is fantastic. Life is fucking good, man. That's fully erect, Lee. Well, that's not bad. It's, uh, I just get a text from Bettencourt. You're killing it.

Yeah, yeah, it's great. You're a fucking asshole. You, uh, you know, I don't know how many times. I remember fucking going to an audition the week before Christmas, going down to whatever, a fucking Olympic. Going into a room and reading and her going, come back in two hours. And I go back in two hours, and I get back in two hours, and Travolta is there. And I hear you with Travolta, and he's giggling, and we're all giggling.

She comes, goes, listen, come back tomorrow at 11.30, and you're going to read for the director. Okay. And I'm washing my pussy. I'm putting my warm-up suit on. I got a call that the director hired somebody out of New York the night before. That happens. It happens. It happens in so many.

And it's how you, I used to always get Clifthang. I'm Captain December. I start rocking now. I'm already ready. I'm like next week. That's it. My comedy career ends on Sunday. And I go to podcasting and films until December 20.

Yeah. That's all I do now. Every year, it just gets hot. But every year, I go on for something huge, and I go on the 20th for it. And I got to sit for three weeks during the holidays, waiting for the fucking cliff hangar. And then they call you on the fort, and they go either they went with you, they went with somebody else. You made me wait for fucking three weeks something you knew. They work during Christmas.

You know, nobody just sits there and opens up fucking presents. So there's been all those situations, but then I've also been on the other side of the coin. I also know what it is to go in and get it right away. And it's, you know, a couple of years ago I got a call at one in the afternoon. Joey, they're looking for somebody on Ivor for an Italian sprint commercial. Fucking walk. When can you walk to an audition?

Yeah. When can you fucking walk to an audition? I walked, went in, red, walked out. The next day they had callbacks. I didn't get called back. I was depressed. They gave me the fucking commercial three days later. Yeah.

I made a ton of fucking loot. I walked through a commercial. How many times that happens? Never. Yeah. Is it a weird thing on that side? Like, do you, are you involved with auditions? Yeah.

Because I've been working with him for three years and I hear, oh, I didn't do this well. I didn't like, I didn't like the way I did it or just. That's the worst part of the process, Lee. Be honest. The worst part of the process for me, the thing I like the least about my job is casting for a couple of reasons. One, 30 people. come in the door every single one of them is talented you don't get into that stage of the auditioning process unless you're talented unless you're

immensely talented and there's only one job got a 29 30th 29th 20th 30th chance of losing when you go in to it's not at the end of the day my final call I might be a show runner on a show but there's networks people, there's studio people, there's a million people that are involved in you know, you have a very strong voice, but you don't always get to make the final call. And I hate seeing people. And sometimes someone will come in and just kill it, crush it. They're amazing.

But you know what? They're four inches taller than the male lead. And we need someone shorter than the male lead, and the male lead's only five foot eight. So we need to get a woman five foot six or smaller. And you had a woman who came in who was, you know, 5-11, and she was amazing. But you can't make the leading man look tiny. And that's the note you get from the studio. And there's a million reasons why an actor doesn't get a role.

The last reason on the list, which never comes into play, is you're not talented. It's always the wrong look, the wrong this, the wrong that. But it's never, oh, my God, your read was awful. Everyone comes, they do it a million different ways, and they're all interesting. They're all good. You want to give 30 jobs at 30 people. that's the part I don't like. Yeah.

And it's... Because I do that. I audition all the time. I run around town with my little fucking knapsack full of stupid stories and go, hey, you want to... It's just... It's auditioning. Every time I pitch a story, I'm auditioning. Right.

And the worst part of anything like that, like, even job interviews is not... Like, they don't call you usually when you don't get a job. So, like, and it's like, it's just awful not knowing. Like, do you ever call an actor? I mean, you did a good job, but just the network said no. I actually... No, I actually have done that. It's rare, but I've called their...

agents and I said I just want you to know your client didn't get this job but they crushed it and I want to keep them in mind for other stuff they were perfect it was this thing it was that thing they want to go a little older they want to go a little younger now this studio came in and said they want the guy to be black and you know you could be as good as active as you are as you want to be but you

can't be black that's the worst that happens a lot okay you just everyone just heard it Joey just said black people are the worst no no no no he said worse than that I've had three or four situations early on when I was learning to be an actor, when I had a manager who was very aggressive, and there was one job in particular that they probably saw me four times in five days and then said that they switched the character of the black or the other way around. I've known black people have been in for two weeks mind-breaking pilot and they switch it to a white guy.

It just happens. I meant it like that. Yeah, it just happens. No, you said what you said. You don't like black people. I don't like when I go in for an audition, the person they ask me, is how much it's a tall are you or what are you wearing that's it I don't like that that's

pre-qualifying you're done you know they just asked you the killer you don't even know what the fuck to say and it says and who the who the fuck cares come in and become the character I don't give a shit if you don't know but that's why you're saying that I can't go in to play opposite Tom Cruise

if he's five fucking six you're following me you know I know somebody who did the movie but the music down in Miami he was his double oh the Rock of Ate Rock of Ages. He was his body double.

He was telling me, it's amazing. I'm fucking tiny the guy was. It's how skinny, you know, the whole fucking thing. Oh, I always knew I've never taken, I've never taken an acting decision poorly. It's always gone through me. I've digested it and I've moved on. I've always been, I've had friends that have been suicidal. You don't get disappointed at some things?

Some things I'll go, fuck, I should have done better in the audition. My eyes are gone. Right. When you're 44, it's over. It's over. Can I tell you something? 44. The past four or five months, I said to my wife, I'm like, I'm getting headaches.

I'm like, and at night I'm lying in bed next to my daughter reading to her, and I'm holding the book six inches away from my face. It's done. 44. I got to get glasses, right? 44. Do you have glasses? Everywhere.

Don't go to the doctor. Because the doctor's on, it's three, 400 sag with the whole thing. You don't need that. Just go to Costco and get the 20-pack of fucking vision and just put them in your car. Put them in your car. bathroom because you're going to start the kitchen anywhere where you got to look at shit because it just goes it's it's crazy i went i it's fucking crazy i've never worn glasses in my life never never fucking eagle eye never i could see a coke rock under the fucking carpet that's

i tell people for years and i fucking once i stopped doing blow and stopped at 44 my eyesight went into the shitter and now so now i'm at home i got the glasses on i'm doing the audition Boopo da poopo, I get up, I write it. Once you get in the room, I'm the king of improvising. Yeah. But once I take those glasses off, it disappears. And when you're in front of five people, it disappears. I don't care if you did it 80 times.

You've got to look down for key words. It becomes a blur. You're fucked. There's no mobsters with fucking glasses. Yeah. So I could do a great wee-wee with glasses. Maybe you get contacts, man. For one eye.

He told me already. He goes, you're going to be like a fucking schmuck. It's for one eye. The left eye went down the tube. That's why if you look at my car, I got dent on the left side. So put on, put in one contact. It's a nightmare. If you haven't done it all your life, you're just not going to fucking go home one day.

I know. I can't, I can't. So it's, I got to do something different for auditions now. It's become a problem. Yeah. That I do a good one, but it's not me. It's not me. I got to learn it inside and outward, but I've never really sweat it.

If I want something, I always went for it. Yeah. That's how I get my shit. If I want something, I go for it. If you put out a breakdown, if you tell 20 people, I'm looking for this guy, and I find out about it, I'll get the script. I'll call my buddy at CA, we'll get the script, and I'll put a fucking, that's how I got the longest yard.

They told me they want a big pussy or Saragusa. I thought one thing to myself, they're stars. You gave them goose a pussy? Yeah, I gave them goose a pussy. They're stars, but they're not funny. Right. Not what I've, I'm a classically trained. I'm trained in front of a deli in,

Jersey. That's classically trained. When you could hold Delhi with eight other fucking funny people. That's classically trained. Then there's a stand-up. I did comedy in Buffalo. Once you go to Buffalo, that's it. It's over. If you can keep them in Buffalo, they don't shoot you. You're good to go.

So I knew that in my heart. Yeah. Nick. And I put an audition tape and I sent it to Adam Sandler, and I got the fucking roast. Spider-Man 2. Same fucking thing. What was the one where you pulled your pants down when they were turned around? American Family, the pilot, before this one, on ABC. ago about a family that wanted to move and they moved and they thought they were moving

to paradise and they had me for a fucking neighbor and I'd be out there with like a bikini on like a little kid's pool flying up hot dogs asking you want to come over for a hot dog never got picked up but I still bump into the people and they're like listen again that pilot that year I bumped I kept on that was the first pilot ever that I shot that people kept in touch of me yeah I did that one in Bronx County it was was a pilot on CBS 15. It was going to be there and to the NYPD Blue. Right.

And these guys really kept in touch of me. Because the pilot had, I forget, I could drop a bunch of names. I forget who was in this pilot, but they had this show covered. Like, this show was funny as fuck. Scored the highest of ABC. ABC didn't pick it up. They picked up three other comedies. And they all shit the bet.

And all them shit the better. It's the story of life. You don't know why they do it. Today I was sitting there. Today, we got to get out of here in a minute. I just want to tell you something. I'm sorry to keep you. No.

I'm sitting there today, and I'm part of it when I'm going to acupuncture. And I look up, I don't look at fucking billboards. Again, I can't see. But I'm at the light, I can see the billboard, Dracula, whatever. Let me ask you a question. How many fucking Dracula movies can they make? How many Spider-Man are we going to fucking make them? Until when are we going to keep making fucking Spider-Man?

He got bit by a spider. Now he thinks he's a fucking spider. His grandmother's retarded. They killed his fucking father. And you move on with your fucking life. That's it. There's only one way you can tell the three little fucking pigs. Not these fucking people.

So, I tell my agents, I go, these are the smartest, dumbest fucking people you've ever met in your life. When Lee makes a decision, he makes a decision on his own. When I make a decision, I ask my wife, you ask you, you have also, God bless you your wife. Because if you wouldn't have a wife, they have a cliche saying, behind every good man is a good woman. It's not a cliche. I'm living proof. Me too. You just, you know, there's most women you go home to and say, I want to be a writer.

If she was abroad from Staten Island. You go fuck yourself. And you went home and said, I want to be a writer. I'm thinking of a career. Well, you have to do that on your own because I'm not leaving. That's what you do. You're a lawyer. You're a lawyer.

You're a fucking lawyer. Go make money. Go slip and four and sue yourself. Let me do some shout-outs of it. I love to have you on it. Bro. What's the name of the book? And give him a link where we can put this up.

I want an alien for Christmas. Go to Amazon.com. Go to Barnes & Noble.com. Great gift for a kid. And if it says on Amazon temporarily sold out, it's just because we're selling a lot of them. Fuck that. still order it, they'll get it to you because we're getting a bunch shipped over soon.

I want an alien for Christmas. And thank you for having me. I'd love to come back. Let's come. Let's come with Mick and we'll get real stupid and crazy. Let's do it. Three hours. We'll do seven fucking hours.

We'll do seven hours. Whatever the fuck you want to do. Let me get you the fuck out of here. Audit.com. It's not about vitamins and whatever. It's about a higher level. Taking your fucking body and your mind to a higher level. It starts with alpha brain.

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and give it back to you. No, not on it. They give you a check back. What I'm trying to say is Hon. Don't fuck around. All right. Go to honor.com.

See what they got. The vitamins, nutrition. They also have weights. I can't help you with that stuff. But on the vitamins and minerals, give you 10% off. Go to honor and press what in the box? Church. Stop it.

Church. Get 10% off. Also look into the stay on it program. Mike Dollar Shave Club, they send it right to your fucking house every month. You have to leave the goddamn house. Meundees.com. How long are you going to have those disgusting fucking underwear on it with skid marks and blood and fucking chlamydia lotion on it?

You don't need that shit. You know how long a man holds on the underwear seven fucking years? And he keeps the chicks underwear, too. After you break up with them, you take the little undies home, you sniff the pussy out of the middle, and you whack all for fucking years till the thing don't even smell like pussy no more. You can smell the cotton, the fucking hand was picked with, whatever the fuck it is, right? So, whatever the fuck, I don't know what the fuck I'm saying.

What I'm trying to say to is meandies has tremendous selection. Go to meandi, see what they got. Women's and men's. Go to meandes.com and press in. Joey. Boom, I got meandis on right now. My balls are fucking tremendous. I use them to work out because it keeps everything in place.

Your nut doesn't pop out at the gym. Plus, it pulls the moisture out of you. a nut sack. So it goes into the thing. I swear to God, my balls don't sweat at all. They're tremendous. It's not like Irish Spring. Meandis.com, press in.

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And free shipping in the US. Canada. Who's going to give you that type of action? My brothers, I love these guys. Iron Dragon TV. I was watching it today. I didn't watch any of the movies. I just want to see how it worked.

This is the fucking future. This is nanotech laying it down for you, bitches. They sponsor fighters. This Iron Dragon. DragonTV.com. You press them what? Joey or church. And you get two free movies

to start off and on your rogue coup. They're going to have fun things on Saturdays. I'm not allowed to tell you. Listen, they got classic martialite. They got It Man series. They got the fucking a life of a ninja. They got Donnie Yen. They got Chow Young Fat.

They don't have Bruce Lee cock sucker. Why are you lying to people? They may have Bruce Lee with the 1E. I'm sorry. Remember when they had like 22 Bruce Lee's? You know the Chinese day. They're all cousins too. Fuck it.

Iron Dragon TV. Donnie Yang. Child Young, Fat. Go to Iron Dragon TV right now. Do me the favor. Everybody here's a martial artist. We all love that old classic shit. Press them what?

Joey Or Church. Boom, and you get two free movies. Who's better than you, cock suckers? All right, we're not putting this out to like Thursday morning, so I hope you enjoyed it. Nikki S., who's better than you? The best story on Hollywood. No, you guys are better than me. Fuck this shit with all these suicide kings.

It's all over. When we leave here, I'm calling you Monday. We're writing your story. I'm going to play one of the guys that's Lipsy Falls. I'm going to play one of the guys. that slips and falls, you take him to the hospital, you help him out. Lee, what's up with you? You're selling shirts, you got the blog.

We lost 70 pounds. He's been walking. Are you serious? Yeah, in like five months. Thank you. That is fantastic. I'm trying. I put on 25 pounds since the pilot. Did you really? It's so easy when you're working in it. I never, that's what killed me. I was always a bit like fat,

but like when I went to school in Boston, I walked around. I came out here and was in an office. You started dating a Mexican woman. You were a fucking Jew. You guys got the worst fucking diet in the world, so you started dating a Mexican chicken, you went bananas. Yeah, of course. You start eating pussy and enchiladas, and you couldn't fucking stop, okay?

Ant your pussy. That's what happened. This guy's a filthy Jew. You know these Jews. They try to be all right around Jewish chicks, but once they get around the Puerto Rico and all fucking Yanbrood, they lose their fucking mind. I did not know that about the Jewish people.

Yeah, my girlfriend before this one was black. He's a freak. These Jews have never dated a Jewish girl? For what? No, I don't think so. No. I've dated many Jewish girls in my life. They're lovely people.

I love them. I love youth girls. Jews don't like, it's like me. I'm Cuban. I would never did a Cuban. They drive me crazy. See, I'm Italian. I married a beautiful Italian.

Did you really? Nice and copacetic. Red hair? No, but I... Old school? No, you never know. When I had hair? Red hair.

You have red hair? It was all burning. I was actually quite delightful to look at back time. You're one of those red Italians. Yeah, not anymore. No, I'm a big fat, bald. You're a beautiful man. Thank you very much.

Thank you. Thank you. You got a beautiful story. You got balls of steel. A lot of people forgotten this fucking country. Thank you. Your success does not surprise me. It's balls, brother.

I had a lot of good fortune. But thank you for having me on your show. Stay black. The Uyat's brother is coming up next. Lee Syatt. Get it together. We're going to a comedy store. What are we doing?

Okay. Let's go. We've got it on five minutes. I'll get it together. I love you guys. Stay black. What's the music? We're playing the Beatles,

but I have to read the ads first. All right, take your time. But here we are. Show is brought to you by Onet.com. Use code word church to get 10% off of any of the great products, like Alpha Brain New Mood, Shroom Tech Immune, Shroom Tech Sport. Show is also brought to you by Naturebox.com. Oh, we didn't talk about NatureBox.

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