The Kristian Harloff Show - Arcane Season 1 Review (NON SPOILER) with Marc Bernardin

Episode Date: January 27, 2022

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Hey there, it's Wayfair here, where delivery and setup are as easy as a few taps on your phone. You're relaxing in an old hammock, scrolling Wayfair's app, when you spot it, a brand new patio set. Next thing you know, Wayfair delivers it right to your patio and sets it up. Oh, you need a new grill too? All right, Wayfair's got you covered. With Wayfair's room of choice delivery and fast experts set up on qualifying orders, life gets a little easier. Visit Wayfair.com or the Wayfair app. What's going on? everybody welcome back to the big thing uh this is i'm excited for this episode very much so i get to talk

to the magic man mark bernard and that's right uh he if you don't know mark you really well you should he is a very talented writer he's a great he's a great podcaster he if you don't know him from the fat man on batman show that he does with kevin smith and i am just going to be very excited to talk to him about a few different topics obviously the batman will talk about that and and his thoughts about what's coming up. I actually, before I even started recording, he and I were talking, and I want to tell him because I'm kind of,

it's, it's funny because people come up to me sometimes and like, hey, guess what I watched in Star Wars and everything too. And that's how I feel when I'm talking to Mark about Batman, because I'm doing all the rewatches of Batman right now. So I want to go over like my thoughts on the shit that I saw, and he can tell me why I'm wrong.

So I'm looking forward to that for sure because there's a lot of things. I don't know. Like, yeah, I'm excited for this one. But the main thing, as you saw, as I'm going to put in the title on this, I really have been waiting to talk to someone about Arcane. And I asked him, I said, did you happen to see Arcane? Cool if you didn't. He's like, oh, yeah, I did. And I was like, that's what we're talking about. We're talking

about Arcane. I can't wait. I can't wait to talk about Arcane. You guys have recommended it to me and I watched it. And I thank you so much. It was, it was such a great gift. But before we get into that, before we bring Mark in here. I wanted to remind you guys, hit subscribe. As I've been telling you before, show a little bit of class. Well, you just show an ounce of class. That's all we're asking for in this place. Show some glass and hit the and hit that subscribe button. The notifications also. And if you haven't done it already, look at the Apple podcast, a little logo we got.

We got Spotify. Spotify is working. Spotify's doing some things for us. All right, listen, enough with me. We're bringing in Mark Bernard and let's do it. It's the big thing. Boom. What's up, everybody?

It's me. What else are you expecting? Well, good. We got some stuff to talk about, man. We got some stuff. And in order to do that, I can talk to someone. I can talk to myself because I'm bored with that at that point. And I'm losing my mind.

So I don't want to do that. I want to have someone to talk to and talking to that person right now, the one and the only. Mark Bernard and is here, ladies and gentlemen, Mark, how you doing, man? Good, Christian. How are you, man? I'm good, man.

I'm excited to talk to you about a great many things. Let's get into it. Let's just start with this gem. Let's start with Arcane League of Legends. all right so i'm going to tell you kind of how this came about i and i will also tell everybody here is that i don't know what mark thought about about it he might not like it i have no idea i'm gonna find that in the second but i will tell you that i'm kind of a casual animation fan you know like they're sort of i for me it's it's it's uh clone wars i watched the when

the the star wars um what was the one that just came out that they did it well the bad batch well the bad batch yes but the other one that they did the japanese uh kind of animates Visions. Yes, Star Wars Visions. I watched Visions. And then I watched Masters of the Universe, right? I watched it. So those are kind of the animation. They dabble in it. But I'm not like a hardcore. So when they're like arcane, I go, I don't know what that is. And they're saying, you're telling you, you're going to like it. It's science fiction. It's fun. I go, I'm not a big gamer. They're like, watch it. Dude, I, this is some of the best science fiction stuff. In my personal opinion, I've seen the last 10 years. It had emotion. It had, it had, they, they, The animation is gorgeous. The fighting was crazy. They didn't hold back on not just the violent side of it because it wasn't just violent to be violent. It was an effect of violence. So I was over the moon about it.

What say you? I am a little bit more, I suppose, an animation person than your. I'm not like anime is my big blind spot just because there's so much of it. It's almost impossible for me to know where to dive in. I'm sure people will tell me, just watch attack on Titan. Just watch fully coolly. Just watch One Punch Man. just watch, you know, whatever, Dragon Ball Z.

It's all too much. But, you know, I was a Batman the Animated Series guy. I was a Looney Tunes guy. Like, and, you know, Cundercats and Master of the Universe and Silver Hawks and Silver Hawks. Silver Hawks. It was way more like my childhood than it was my adulthood. But, you know, I will still dive when the diving looks good.

And I remember seeing the first trailer for Arcane. And I said, oh, my. God, like, how much money did they spend on this? And then talking to friends who work in animation, they were like, oh, they spent all of the money. That's not TV money. That's not movie money. That's video game money.

That's, we make more in microtransactions in a week than any movie will have ever made ever. And they spent all of it on making a video game. And so it is the most amazing-looking animation I've ever seen. But like, that's not enough, right? You sit down. I was like, oh, that's gorgeous, and then you just move on. But, and I was, it took me like two or three episodes to really, like, kind of dig my heels into it and see it for what it was. Because at first, it seems very, here's a shiny world and here's the dark world.

Right. And the shiny world is rich and has advancements, and the dark world is like kind of broken. They're scrabbling. And it's, it's that same kind of fantasy construct that we've seen a thousand times. Yep. But then they dig deeper into it. Then it becomes his character story. And then the thing that happens in, like, episode.

four happens. And then suddenly it becomes this very sad tragedy of a story about two people who are just separated by fate and happenstance and accident who should be thick as thieves, but are now dire enemies. And that part of it is kind of what completely switched me on to it, for real. And this is why you are the writer, because you just sold this, that show to everyone. And I already watched it. It is absolutely. everything that you just said and more, where it is exactly that. What I really liked and without,

because I don't want to spoil it for a lot of people, because I don't feel a lot of people know about it enough because I'm still telling people about it. They're like, what's that? Like, it's all my brother. My brother's not, same type of casual animation guy that I am. And he trusts me, so he watched it.

Now he's obsessed with it. And now he's, now he's doing research on it, and wait for season two and all that. But it's exactly what you said. What they do that's very interesting in this show, is they get you involved in a certain story that you think's going a particular way.

And then they flip it on its head. And when they do it, you're, it's like, you would think, oh, really? Well, I thought I was kind of wanted to do. I wanted to follow that. But I never felt that way. From the way that they set up, they set up the world that's so rich and all the rules and the ideas. And there's so many like side stories that are going on that I, it had like a Game of Thrones type thing to it, where I cared, I cared about these little stories. And when it switched to whether it was the politics of the world or, like, and everybody had like a thing, whether it was,

So the enforcers for those people out there who have been seen, the enforcers are like the cops of, as Mark was saying, like the upper like privileged group. And at first, like, oh, I'm going to hate them. But then they let you, they humanize some of them. And they understand why they do so much. And the writing, and that's what I wanted to ask you as far as like, because I'm sure you watch everything you watch with such a different eye because you're a writer.

What did you think about the overall writing of this series? I mean, it does this thing. where, you know, exactly what you said. It leads you down a particular road that you think it's going to travel. And then about halfway down that road where you begin to make assumptions and you begin to have like, oh, I've seen a thousand one of these. Here's what's going to happen. And it's just a feel as if you can predict it.

And then the event happens. And I don't think it's too much of a spoiler to say that there's a time jump involved. Yeah. You know, which can either, you know, incredibly aid a TV show or it can just be a, sort of cheap gimmick. But when it works, it works because it becomes an emotional sort of reset for where the characters are. And what began to feel predictable suddenly became surprising. You know, and they treat things like, you know, mental illness or sort of dissociative personality disorder or whatever you want to call it in a very fair and very sort of even way. And they

dramatize it in ways you can only do an animation, which made it feel really, really sort of tangibly unsettling to a character you don't want to be unsettled by, you know, because she's tragic. Super tragic. And there's a lot of heartbreaking stuff. And like you said, you don't necessarily, even the main villain, or you're against him for the majority of it. But even when they let you know, it's like that Thanos thing.

It's like, no, I don't agree with you, but I understand why you're doing what you're doing. Right. Like, they get it. Yeah, I get it. You're wrong. But I get it. It's wrong. But I get it.

And I also like that they put snarf in this. I was waiting. I was waiting. Oh, my, no. Oh, my, man. Where's the enforcers? But no, but even, but that was, but even as I joke about it, I thought that that was the way that they did system stuff too,

is they had, they have these other life forms. And they don't have to, they don't over analyze why these things are there or what it is. They're just there. And it's like explaining anything. No, it's like the new hope style. It's like they're not going to tell you why all those ships are there and how they've been beat up and all this stuff. It just is. And that's what I love to battle.

Like there's different alien species. There's all these things walking around. But that's just the way the world is. And I might have missed this. Is it Earth like in the future or what is it? Do they ever say? You know, it's unclear. I don't think they ever say that there was like an Earth that was or, you know, in the ashes of the

old world or whatever. But I mean, there's lots of place names that don't sound like anything that we've ever heard before. But it's unclear if it's like deep future, if it's past, if it's alternate world, if it's just something else completely different. I don't know, you know, but I love a good deep world. Yeah, who cares as long as I just wouldn't know if I missed it. I'll tell you what. The biker gang in Boba Fed episode three could have been in this show and it would have looked more in place than it didn't in Boeufet. I'll tell you that. Oh, Boba Fett. know where you stand on BobaFet.

I stand apart. I stand apart. I stand apart. It's a hard thing because mystery is one of the chief tools of storytelling, right? Like sometimes you let the audience or the reader or the viewer or whatever do all of this work in their head to make something cool. You give them a little bit and then they start to embroider and they start to build a mythos. And like, that's what Boba Fett was for like 30 years. We're like, we knew almost nothing about him other than cool armor.

Fucking like he got Han Solo, that's badass. And then, you know, died rather ignominiously as far as we knew. But the fact that we were then... Yeah, it came in like a little biotch. Yeah. So like the fact that we were then able to sort of just live in this world of, you know, but he's cool. How cool is he? Well, he's one of the most dangerous.

No disintegration. he tells him, like, he's a dude who just disintegrates. That's his fucking thing. He disintegrates. Don't do that this time. To start answering those questions, like this show begins to feel to me a bit like the midaclorians of TV shows where I didn't need answers for any of these questions. I didn't need any of these backstory filled in for me. I just didn't need it. Like, it's not making him a richer character.

It's answering questions that maybe fans had, but isn't telling me a particularly new story. Yeah. And so I just, I wanted, I wanted pulp. I wanted adventure. I wanted bounty hunting. I wanted doing stuff. I wanted kicking ass. And this is a very, you know, relatively unass kicky show.

So I was confused twice by this show. In the first side of it, it was called the Book of Boba Fett. And I think that we all do exactly what you just said, right? We start to have these kind of cool expectations in our heads of what we wanted to be about. And the Book of Boba Fett. I thought, oh, maybe we're going to go through either times of his life and chapters of his life where we see like when he's doing a side mission for, for Vader in the, in the empire times, or maybe there's some stuff right outside of how he starts to get into it right after the Clone Wars and each chapter. And that's what I thought they were going to do it with the flashbacks. And then when I saw the trailer, I was like, oh, they're going straight out like soprano style and they're going to do a gangster story.

And it's really not that. he's more like the new sheriff in town than he is like the gangster and I will say I don't there's a lot that I don't mind I I happen to agree with everything that you just said as far as what they're doing and not keeping the mysteries but I'm enjoying it because to me it's the same thing where I love pizza sometimes the pizza is really good I'm not going to say me I'm going to bury myself in my my office and eat it but even if it's bad I'm still going to eat it and that's kind of how I feel about about Star Wars design I don't think it's bad I think there's a lot of stuff in it I like But I do think it was one of the initial problems that I had when they first announced the Disney takeover of they're going to do a Yoda movie.

They're going to do a Boba Fett. They're going to do Han Solo. It's like, Mandalorian has proven. If you come up with new characters, even if the familiar Mandalorian like Boba Fett look in armor or whatever, you get more of a pass from people because you're creating these characters, new things we don't learn,

and there's no expectations. And that's what I think is the problem. with whether it's putting Luke in last Jedi making changes in the way that they did or this because of that so I'm hoping that whether it's the acolyte obi one's going to have the same type of challenge you know because of what you're saying how much mystery what was he doing on tattoine does he go off world all of it but I'm I just I trust in debor chow and what she's going to do so I'm pretty excited for that series yeah you know like I don't I can't say that I hate this either you know and I'm fully aware that like I can have my own expectations for a show

and then come into and be pleasantly surprised. Right. You know, like, I'm allowed to be wrong, just as I'm allowed to have, you know, hopes and dreams. That's totally fine. Yep. I just, there was some tweet, I can't remember who said it, but he's like, how weird would it be if the,

they said, we're going to make a Star Wars show, and they made one about a Stormtrooper, and then we'll get another Star Wars show, and it's another dude in the same exact time. Right. You know, and like, was there no other speeds we could go? Like, yeah. Yeah, I think that would have won't.

So, I think it was, though, I think Fabro, I think Fabro, from what I heard, how true it is, I don't know. But from what he pitched and he was like, because they were, they were like courting him to do like a movie for a while. And then he was in a conversation with him and Flon. He obviously worked together with Clone Wars and rebels. And I think that he really wanted to do a BobaFet thing. And as a Mandalorian and they're like, well, he's not really a Mandalorian. He's this and this. So they started to develop and came up with the Mandalorian show.

But BobaFet was Fabro's favorite. and so he wanted to write this and kind of like the side deal that they gave him that they let him do a side story with Boba. I don't know. Yeah, you know, and listen, I was also kind of underwhelmed by the beginning of the Mandalorian.

Okay. By the time you get to the end of the first season, I was kind of on board. And all of the second season, I was there for it. So I don't discount the ability of Favreau and Faloni to stick the landing. Yeah. I just think that at this point, this show, it's got a higher degree of difficulty to stick that landing for me.

And the fact that there is no baby Yoda to distract me from the fact that I'm not that thrilled with the way we're not sticking the landing. I was like, there's no shiny here yet. Rancourt, Rancor is not doing it for you? It is not doing it for me. Is that a fucking baby Yoda? Is that baby Yoda the cutest thing in the world? Oh my God. Look at fucking baby Yoda.

Right. Bobfetch just doesn't have that yet. Other than Tamara Morrison keeps him, I am Boba Fett. Boba Fett. I am Boba Fett. Funny you say that. I was taught on my last review, I said that they should make a WWE type shirt that says I am

Boba Fett except it's got to have somebody in caption going, who cares, dude? He says it to everybody. And like, yeah, did you see, I forget, did you say, did you see the last episode? Yeah, yeah, I did. So he grabs the little droid by, it tells the little droid, I am Boba Fett, and the droid

and the droid himself off. I'm like, dude, you just did it half of us want to do. But either, you know, even though like, and as I said, I'm on, I'm still, I look forward to the show because I'm a Star Wars guy, but I will say that when we were, before we started recording, you brought up the show that I think was a big surprise to everybody that's really kicking everyone's ass in a good way. And that's peacemaker. DC has to me, and I'd love to get your thoughts on this. DC to me has shift their tone dramatically in the last like four years. And I think have just gotten on track. and embraced kind of their lunacy overall. And this show, the Suicide Squad to me was so unexpected, and I just loved it. I loved it.

And so I wouldn't have given a shit about this series. Had I not seen that, obviously, I love this show. I think it's perfect for James Gunn. I think James Gunn's better with DC than he is Marvel personally. But I'm curious where you stand on all this. Yeah, I mean, I liked the Suicide Squad, far more than I liked Suicide Squad. And the difference in the article proceeding says everything. But it wasn't like the hugest fan.

Like I liked all of the actors, especially David DeSmalchon, who I will always sort of ride or die for because that dude is just like bleeding pathos wherever he goes. And so, yeah, the minute he shows up, like, oh, all right, I see what we're in for. Like I liked it. I didn't love it. And I wasn't like over the moon thrilled for peacemaker. But, you know, I'm the guy that I am. I'm still a nerd, even if I have issues with the name.

nerddom. And so I was going to tune in and watch it and then found myself incredibly captivated by it because it does the thing that TV gets to do that movies don't, which is it gets to dig deep into character. It gets to pick one or two people and excavate their lives. And so to like understand why peacemaker is peacemaker. Yeah. You know, to understand why that dude is as, you know, daffy and shallow but open and candid at the same time and funny and tragic and horny and everything. Like, he's, he's a broken man who was broken in very specific ways. Yeah.

And I think that, like, James Gunn really likes playing with broken people. And so this, this feels to me emotionally resonant in a way that guardians never had a chance to that suicide squad doesn't, simply because we're getting, what, seven hours of this guy, you know, and why he's this way? And it reminds me a lot of the boys. which I did not expect the boys to be as sort of finger on the pulse of a show that it was and to be about things like supremacy and things like privilege and to introduce a character like Stormfront and for a home lander to be the guy that he is,

which in this current world stage that we're playing on is incredibly relevant. Didn't see that coming. And I think that the story between, you know, peacemaker and his father, the white dragon and what it's like to have to have to go home to Thanksgiving and discover that, oh, yeah, you know, the person who is supposed to love me and that I love despite them may or may not be hateful and full of hate. Yeah, so hateful and and so blatantly hateful towards his own son. Like just telling him straight out, doesn't, didn't want them, all these things. It's brutal on a lot of the, and Robert Patrick plays it

so well. And I think, and John Cena to me, this is the best role he's ever played. There's, there's there's no doubt and i think that that's that's all it's a testament to you look at what james gun and that has nothing to do with the wrestlers is just the it's just the reference of of batista what he was what he did with db batista and what he did with john sina he takes these he really knows how to get the best out of them and has done it so well because i loved sina in peacemaker that was that was one of the things because i always thought he's just okay sometimes i feel he's a little too cheesy or over the top like bumbleby i loved didn't love him in that movie right tons of it but this for some reason he's really gravitated towards this role for everything that

you just said like you you care about him but he's such a douche sometimes right when he's laying on the bed at the one point and he knows he's being a dick and he's like no one likes you because you're such a dick you could be friends but what i really love about the show and i think it's also going into that point of what you said what you can get away with in tv that you can't get in movies is that this show consistently does this in every episode. There'll be a conversation that they're having about the plot, that's specific to the plot. And one little sentence will be thrown out.

It could be about a salami sandwich. And it could then turn into a three-minute bit. And I love it. And at first I was like, oh, are we going to do this all the time? And then now I find myself waiting for it. It's just so funny. It's just so funny.

And guns really clever. And he gets to like kind of take his gloves off. wrap it around with glass, you know, and go and go straight up kickboxer style with Van Dam. Yeah, no, it's very, it's very mootai. It's very Kumita. It's cool, day, television. And I'm here for it because, yeah, I mean, Gunn is super smart. You know, he seems to have something he wants to say about the world.

And he's using this as the kind of candy-coated pill to get us to swallow it. And, yeah, I really appreciate it. Do you like right now, do you agree with the, assessment as far as that how DC has kind of shifted over the last four or five years and and because they were I remember that there was a one point remember being on amc movie talk and and everything that they were doing they would it looked like they were trying to model their style after what the MCU was doing and then at one point they shifted the execs and they said fuck this and they and they start like whether it's joker and shazam and they get well this kind of connects it doesn't

who gives a shit just enjoy it and now you got the batman coming out and they just seem like they they have hit their stride on what they're doing now. Yeah, I think they figured out that they could not beat Marvel at Marvel's game. Right. You know, and that they were, you know, five or six years behind the ball. And so they're trying to play catch up. And so, you know, then you get the sort of Man of Steel and Batman v. Superman and Wonder Woman and Justice League as the sort of four movie push towards getting to Avengers, you know, ultimately. And it was too fast.

You know, it was too fast. It didn't have the sort of depth that Marvel gave us, didn't have the variety that Marvel gave us. So it just didn't hit the way they expected it to. And so I do appreciate somebody saying, you know what? Our ground game isn't working. Let's go to the air. And what's our air game?

Like, we're not connecting any of these dots. Like, we're living, we're embracing the multiverse. You know, and I think it's a thing that, and I'm ascribing quite a bit of intention to, that they might have gotten from TV. You know, The Legends of Tomorrow, is as goofy and bat shit crazy and a little bit detached from reality as anything that sort of James Gunn is doing.

Like, they're doing everything. It's like, we're making an anthology show that happens to have same people on the same ship and it's time travel, this dimension hopping, and there's like doppelganger, there's an evil this, and, you know, all of it is being contained somehow within that show. And so the ability to then take that to the movies and say, you know what? We're 100% going to do a comedy of Shazam and we're going to do the Batman, a three-hour along what looks to be like the darkest detective movie and history of detective movies. We'll get into that. That's crazy three hours long. Yeah. You know, you get

peacemaker, you get suicide squad, you get Batgirl coming, you get Blue Beetle, you get Flash with old Batman's, you get all of these things that could not be contained in a single universe and they don't seem to care. And so, you know, whether or not I think that their batting average is as high as Marvels is to a certain degree irrelevant. But they're now playing their own game and they're the only ones playing this game which means that they get to win on their terms. And they're putting out cool shit now too. So where it was like

they weren't just, as you said before, like, were they going after the same kind of model? And then they try to lighten certain things up and it wasn't working the right way. And now whether it's Joker or you know,

like we just get right into it, the Batman in general, right? So the Batman And when casting was going out, so Roxy Streyer and I were on, it was Clyde Alive, and the casting was starting to get rampant. And we both had brought up with Robert Pattinson would be fantastic, right? Because just, just, I had just seen the rover, I think, at that point.

And I think a good time, whether or not it had come out or not, and maybe just had come out. But I was like, people are sleeping on this guy because, obviously they stereotype because of Twilight, you know? and now after you look at what Matt Reeves has done with Don of the Planet of the Apes and his and his horror senses of what he's also worked on in the past I feel like this could be and three hours long I'm I'm I'm skeptical but less skeptical of three hours because it's Matt Reeves but I am so excited for this because it's in it's like

it's seven it's zodiac it's it's it's it's good they're going to change it a little bit but are you have you liked what you saw so far in the trailers um I I I think I think I've sort of loved it, you know? Like it's, it's, I mean, it's none more dark. You can't get like black or bleaker than this. And I'm also excited about the fact that hopefully this is the zero point from which you then have to rebound into some brightness at some point.

Like, there's no darker movie than this darker. It's like, let's say Nolan and turn all the contrast off and all the brightness down. You know, but I love Matt Reeves as a filmmaker. I think, I think Donna of the Planet of the Apes, I think, you know, war for the planet of the apes are masterpieces. You know,

I think, you know, let the right one in is fantastic. I think Cloverfield is really smart. You know, like I don't think he's made a bad movie. And so for him to sort of kind of get under the hood and dig into, you know,

who Batman Year 2 is supposed to be and what that story is, you know, he's a dude with a fucking Dodge Charger. It's got a rocket inch in the back of it. Like that's just badass. That's badass. So, yeah,

I can't wait for it. I do, like, I do long for the days. of the, you know, 110-minute movie. Like, gone, man. Give me 150, man. Give me this sweet spot.

Venom gave it to you. It's so funny because Venet, we just, we're doing a rewatch series of all the Batman movies right now on the channel as we lead up to the Batman. And at the time of this taping, we just recorded Batman Returns. And what I, and I don't know where you stand in that movie, but I, I can't stand it. It drives me crazy. But I know there are a lot of people who love it, but what I did say inside of it is what I will say about Venom and let there be carnage is that they are clearly going after that 90s comic book movie feel. Because the day, once the Nolan movies kind of came out and then the Marvel started this kind of new phase that we're in now with what comic movies are in the way that we anticipate them.

It wasn't that same kind of feel. And when you look at a movie like Batman Returns, you can see that same type of feel when you watch Venom, because it's the lobster scene alone in the first one. But yeah, so I don't know. Do you, well, first of all, where do you stand on Batman Returns? And then do you also feel that, you know, Venom was going for that 90s feel?

I feel like Batman Returns, because I also remember podcasting with Kevin about Batman Returns, is that it's a Batman movie in which, Tim Burton was very clearly not interested in Batman. Like Batman was his least favorite character because all he wanted to do was the bad guy. I want to do monsters. Right.

I want to spend, you know, I think Bruce Wayne or Batman is in like 40 minutes of that first Batman. Eight minutes in the first 52 minutes. Eight minutes. Yeah. Yeah, yeah.

Like there's almost nothing. And so the fact that he opens Batman returns with, let's show you how these people, like drop their infant child down a sewer. And then he gets raised by penguins. and let's sell Happy Meals off of this is kind of insane. But, you know, I appreciate it again. Like, I like the Catwoman stuff more than I like the rest of the Batman stuff.

But I'm not that big a fan of that movie. The one thing I will say is that I think the thing that, you know, the 90s were good for and Marvel has been good for is making people unafraid to make actual comic book movies feel like comic books. you know like those people are wearing the uniforms they wear like captain america is in red white and blue and we're not going to run away from that you know and i think that for a while you know the the the the dc movies were unwilling to embrace like that was the nolan lesson was that it's not a comic book this is real it's like but what if it was also a comic book because that's not a bad

thing you know and i think that you know wonder woman embrace the fact that it's a comic book and and you know but man of steel like why isn't he wearing the red and the blue anymore why doesn't anymore. Why does this look like, like rust? Uniform feel like it's been out in the sun for too long. And so I think Venom is like very much, we're making a comic book movie here. Like, we're making a movie that's just kind of like balls to the wall. It's a little bit nuts. It's a little bit insane.

It's very much in the spirit of the main character who's a little bit nuts and a little bit insane. And we're just going to hold on and hope that you all come along for the ride. Yeah. And I appreciate that. Yeah. I do. when I was, it's funny

with going to Venom, I was, when I saw the first one and even, I understand exactly what they're going for, right? It's not, I just feel that now I just, there's certain things I like more and there's other things that I like to, the silliness kind of takes me out of it sometimes

and I can embrace silliness when it comes to something like peacemaker and I can embrace silliness when because of everything you just said with peacemaker of how it, it just is this kind of perfect blend of shit that shouldn't work that does. And another show, and I don't know if you're watching it or not,

that I feel the same since season one, it's Cobra Guy. And have you been watching that one? I haven't been, and I feel bad because I know that I should, because everybody that I like tells me it's great. It's great. And what I love about it is that the same way that, like, you know, we geek out about whether it's Batman or Star Wars, Josh Heald and John Horowitz and Hayden,

Schlaasberg, who are the creators of the show, that's how they geek out about karate kid, right? It's their Star Wars, and you can tell. They just put everything in it, and they've done this thing with the karate kid world. That is fascinating. Like, to me, like, there's things inside of it. It's got elements of sports entertainment, right?

It's got Star Wars. It's got 80s cheese. It's got drama that you actually, they can shift to a really silly joke. And then I was watching these reactions of them. I won't spoiler for you if you're going to watch the show. But there's a moment that happens in season four. It's pretty heartbreaking.

And there was reactions from a lot of the top reaction channels that were doing it. And you see the emotion that it gets out of people. And they're like, oh, I'm like, no, why don't you do that? And that's the type of show. And you know what I really like about the two markets is that it's a feel good show right now? And I think we need more of those. you know, especially right now the last two years. It's not a lot of fun shit.

Yeah. You know, and I think that all of the things I've been responding to, I respond to the ones that are not embarrassed to be what they are. Yeah. You know, like I think the peacemaker opening credits is the perfect encapsulation of that. Where everybody is deadpan super serious doing the dumbest fucking shit. And like, not embarrassed to be here. We're taking it seriously.

We're taking ridiculousness seriously. Yeah. And like that's what, that's why I respond to this stuff. That's why I respond to filmmakers and showrunners and storytellers who know what they're working with and know the sort of arena they're playing in, but don't ever condescend because that's the arena. They elevate because like, I love this stuff. Why would I not take it seriously?

Why would these characters not take it seriously? Why would we not think that that sort of Karate Kid is the sort of great text of the 1980s? Like, because to us it is. And so we're going to treat it that way. And I think that when you can do that, you'll find success because you'll find people like us who respond to it because we were also there. Yeah. You know, and so when you, when you aren't embarrassed of, you know, whatever elements

of Star Wars you're dealing with, you're not embarrassed of whatever elements of the DC universe is as batch it crazy as it is. We're going to drop like bat might and matter eater lad references and stuff. Like that's a guy who is not at all ashamed to have read every one of these comic books and love them and found a way to be. to incorporate them. You know, when Marvel is doing

sort of deep cuts and then refashioning things when they need to and like Civil War on the screen was far different from Civil War on the page, but the crux of it is still there.

Like these two guys who should be best friends and aren't who have to punch each other to one of them submits. Like, yeah, I want to see that. Of course I fucking do. Of course.

And you've built it up in the way that you have. It's like you're setting up, it's almost, again, like setting up, whether it's a UFC fight or a boxing match or wrestling events.

You're setting up these characters for so long. They finally went. It's finally time to collide that it's almost like a big pay-per-view event. The other trend is a big trend as I'm listening to you talk and I'm like, oh yeah, they're really leaning in into all of this stuff, whether it's Cobra Kai, No Way Home, Flashpoint, a lot of different things. The trend at one point, whether it was 3D or whether it was remakes, now the trend is nostalgia.

and I'm kind of here for it because it can be dangerous because it was just like, oh, remember that guys? Yeah, we ain't got nothing else except that. But if you do it right and I thought No Way Home did it right, and Cobra Kai is doing it right, I think that there's ways to do it. And I think that if you do it right with Keaton in Flash, you can certainly do it right. So I like this trend. Are you hesitant of it?

Are you also kind of embracing it? I mean, I think that nostalgia, nostalgia is a hell of a drug. Yeah. You know, like it almost always works to a point. It's like, you know, empty calories. It's like fucking, you know, cheeses, you know, like the first couple are going to taste great. And you'll give me exactly what I want. Can you build a house on this?

No. Can you build a diet on this? No. It's a spice. It's not the meat. And so I always get somewhat concerned when the only reason we're doing a thing is because people have nostalgia for it. as opposed to we found a really interesting thing to say. Like, Creed for me is the perfect example of when nostalgia works well,

which is we have a whole new story we want to tell, but the only way to tell it is with these characters. Right. And so, hey, do you want to come back, Sly, and do you want to be Rocky again? And here's the story we're going to tell. And it's not about you except it kind of is, but it's about this guy.

He's got his whole other fucking life to live. Yeah. But by the end of this movie, you're going to play that fucking Rocky thing. theme and Michael B. Jordan's going to step out in those like star spangled trunks and he's going to punch a dude, I'm here for it. Right. All day long.

Right. You know, but yeah. But, you know, there's times when it's, it's just, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's noss in a gas tank. Like it burns hot, it burns fast and then it just sort of evaporates. And I mean, I don't think that was No Way Home. I think No Way Home did a lot with that because it could have just been, look, it's three Spider-Spoterman.

That's cool and moved on. Right. But then they dug, especially into the Andrew Garfield. of Spider-Man and, like, found a new story there and found redemption there. What I loved about that one was, it's the same thing that I was telling you, we were doing the rewatch. We did all the re-watch for the Spider-Man movies leading up to it. And we kind of thought that they were all going to play in in a certain way.

So you watched them, but what was so brilliant about it is that all of those movies are now connected to the MCU. They're all part of the MCU. They're all part of it in general when you watch it. and I was so glad that I did the rewatch because of exactly what you just said, that the emotional connections of all of them. And Andrew Garfield certainly was the one who stood out the most and has the big moment, you know,

that we, for a movie that a lot of people felt disappointing, but the end of that movie with Gwen Stacy, everybody remembers it. And so what he's able to do in that, that's what you remember. But I don't think Toby McGuire gets enough credit inside of this movie because Andrew's stealing all the headlines is that Toby McGuire,

like that third movie some people love the ramy third movie i i think it's incredibly stupid um but but when and he was and there's that meme of him dancing all the time and he didn't shake that but the fact that they embrace it that he was like yeah i kind of went through some some some some shit and i got more mature and he presented himself as a more people like oh he's just playing toby now he's kind of a mature spider man and you understand where he was and i thought that they played all three of the guys really well even where Tom Holland ends up going. So I agree that it could have just been nostalgia, but it had a nice arc to it.

Yeah. So like when nostalgia is being used by people who respect the power of it. Yeah. And use it in like tiny places. And like it's a sprinkle guys. It is not our main seasoning because too much of it just becomes like caramel. Yeah. You know, like, oh, I can't, my mouth is filled with it.

I can't even move my teeth anymore. Like I'm being like welded shut by the sweet cloying thing that is nostalgia. I'm hungry for caramel, I'll tell you that. Look what I did there. This episode was brought to you by the caramel. There's a carol.

You got a sponsorship by caramel. Let me check the inbox. 100%. No, you're right, though. You're right. But I do, I'm not going to let you get away. We're bringing up Creed and not talking about it. So I'm like,

Rocky's like, Rocky's my thing. And I love, I love the Rocky movies. And Creed, I don't know. Are you familiar with the story on how that all got made? Some of it. You know, like the pieces that I'm familiar with is that, you know, Ryan Cougler and, you know, a sort of childhood friend, you know, sort of like, for Ryan, it meant the world. Like, he was like, this is this, these were the movies that I watched with my dad. Yep.

And my dad passed away. Yep. And so, like, I want to get a chance to sort of pay homage to my dad and what these movies meant by telling a story of fathers and sons and a son without a father and legacy and all that stuff. And that ultimately is what hooked Stallone, who was like, yeah, you know what? I got kids. I'm a dad. I understand they've been living with this character since forever. Like if this is how we put him to bed, you know, and I think there had been a draft of the script

where Rocky doesn't survive that movie. Was that it? I know that Stallone passed on it the first time around, and then he watched Fruitvale Station. And then he said, oh, wait a minute, I want to take a meeting with this guy. Because the funny thing is, I remember in 2003 or 2004, so I was at the comedy store and my buddy, Steve Simone, I was there with him and I was telling him, I said, I have an idea about a Creed prequel.

And I wanted to do a Creed, Apollo Creed story, almost like mimicking the Muhammad Ali's story, but back in like the 50s and 60s and kind of how the different, how he's coming up. And I was like, that's going to work. And then I hear this coming. I'm like, yeah, this is better. And hearing it because I felt, in Fruitvale Station had me like, I mean, I was, I was in tears watching that. that movie and I said and I was the first time going wait a minute who's that the director i mean Michael Jordan i had known from the wire and other things but i'm like who is that then and then then hearing that he was going to do creed and then i had the i actually had the opportunity to talk to him i went to philadelphia to see the see a screening of it and i got to talk to him i got to talk to slide and i got to talk to michael b jordan about it and it's it's what you were just talking about

it's that nostalgia sprinkle but you got to have the passion behind it and you got to have the drive for it it and you got to have the overall, this is what we're doing here, and that's our end goal. And they had that and then some. But how do you feel about Michael B. Jordan taken over for Creed 3 and no Stallone? Can it survive without that major nostalgia now, with Stallone being the major piece?

You know, I think that it's, it's, in a way, it's fitting, right? Because Stallone made his directorial debut on Rocky movies. ultimately because they wanted to make more. And he was like, if you really want to make another one of these, then I have to direct it.

Yeah. I'm like, okay, I guess we need a Rocky three. So let's go have a Rocky three. And then that's also the movie that loses Mickey, you know, the trainer is gone. And so there is this sort of nice sort of, you know, history repeating itself where Michael B. Jordan has made his director debut on the third of his quote-unquote Rocky movies,

which will be, you know, without Stallone involved. Like he no longer has Rock as his trainer. Right. You know, I think it's, I think it's a, it's a bold move for Michael B because, you know, if he wants to step into that arena and it's clear that he does, this is the way to, this is the muscle that you flex to get that done. I think he knows the character as well as anybody does. I think he surrounded himself with smart people who can help him make that movie, you know,

and because, I mean, Jesus, like making a $70 million movie where you're the star and also the director and you've got to be training and you've got to be fighting and you've got to be in almost every frame. Like you've got to surround yourself with the best team possible, and I think he has. But, you know, I wasn't as big a fan of Creed 2 as I was of Creed 1. I don't know if I will, you know, unless you tell me this is the Clubber Lang story, in which case, then, then yeah, I'm back on board. And if Jonathan Majors is playing like Clubber Lang Jr. Yeah. Great.

Then I'm in. Then I'm in. But I will still see it. Like, again, like the same way that we're Star Wars fans, we will see every Star Wars, no matter how good, bad, or indifferent they are. I'm a Rocky fan, and so I will see every Rocky. It's always the same answer. It's got to be better than five. It's always the same thing.

Five would have been so good for two reasons, two things, that really get me about five. First of all, put it in the ring at the end. It's like, oh, the doctor's like, we're just kidding. You're all right. And then he fights, he's able to fight in the ring. If it ends in the ring with the same shit that happened all the way leading, much better movie.

That's part one. part two is this is the heavyweight champion of the world and the guy that was the biggest underdog of all time nobody's going to give this guy a sponsorship nobody he's going to let him live in the old shitty neighborhood nobody's going to come in and give him a commercial i don't care if he can't read like you like you did back in the day it's rocky put him in a video game commercial stupid right yeah i like rocky bob boa more than i like rocky five me too i like rocky bobboa a lot I thought that even though, you know, you can say what you want about, that real HBO style of boxing, which is fine, it's fine.

But he got back to the roots in that one and he would walk. And that's, and what I was just saying, there's that scene that he has with, with his son when he walks in, that was so significantly different in five. And five, he's walking around the neighborhood like he did in number one before he fought Crete. In, in Rocky Balboa, he walks into a place and everybody wants to take pictures with him. and everybody wants to, oh, there's the champ.

It's like, okay, you can, we've seen athletes lose their money, but there's no shot that an athlete that's lost all their money walks in and people don't treat them like, that's the champ, there's the guy, you know? Yeah, it is hometown. Hometown. Right. Yeah, so, but anyway, little things like that. But before, there are a couple of the movies that I wanted to talk to about things,

but I wanted to talk about you and like what, what are you got, what are you doing right now? What's the latest project? because you wrote a full episode of Masters, right? I wrote a full episode of Masters in the first sort of chunk, which was a ton of fun, a ton of fun, because, you know, Kevin Smith, who I'm not sure if you know this, was running the show, is also both a talented writer and a very kind showrun,

you know, and was like, hey, listen, we got great people in this room to come and help me make this show. I'm going to listen to what they have to say. I'll choose the things that I like and don't like, but everybody gets their moment in the sun and everybody gets their moment to sort of, you know, advocate for what they think is going to be great. Right.

In this show. So I did that. I think that same summer, I wrote an episode of Critical Role, The Legend of Vox Machina. Okay. Oh, yeah. Okay.

Which, and this was like two years ago. Yeah. Which is now coming out, I think, on January 28th. I think in like three weeks. Not even three weeks. Eight days. Three weeks. Me and Maff.

Not good friends. But, yeah, Legend of Voxmachina is dropping on the 28th. And I think I wrote episode seven, but the run order is always a mystery to me. Like it's out of my hands. And certainly that that was a boatload of fun to do. And I was not a critical role fan. Like I was not a critter. I was just a dude that they hired who can write shit.

Right. Sort of came into play and was so surprised by how warm and open these guys were about this world that they had created. They had been living in for years. Yeah. You know, like Matthew Mercer, who was the DM. who invented this out of whole cloth, you know, was like, hey, man, like,

I never thought about that, but if you think that could work, then yeah, let's do that. Oh, sure, maybe that's the way this religion works. Maybe this, and he was, he was more than willing to engage with the thought experiments that the writers would have, some of which he knew the world very well, and some of which like me were like, I don't know what this means, but here's, I think, what story would work.

That's right. But isn't that, that, that's, see, to me, that's the thing where can work brilliant. Matt, and Matt's a great dude, but like where you can do a, you have, you know what you want to do, you have those people in the room that do know the world. They knew, they do know the stuff upside down. But as you said, you bring in people who can write that want to learn it because they've got the gig. So they're going to learn like, I'm sure that once you got the gig, you were doing your research to figure out how it worked. But like, but the, but the thing is, well, if someone says in the room, well, Mark Medard, he doesn't know anything about it.

Who gives you shit? He's a great writer. Bring him in. We'll tell him, maybe he can come up with some great ideas. and then it pushes forward. That's encouraging to hear in general, because I don't always feel like people need, everything comes back to Star Wars.

But I don't feel that people need to be hardcore fans of things to necessarily make it work. But they've got to embrace it and love it when they're working on it because otherwise it's just a gig and you can tell that it's just like, eh, you know, I'm just here. It's like you have to be able to recognize the things in it that people are in love with. Yes. And to kind of find your way to,

understand where that love comes from. Right. You know, but to also be able to question it, you know, and I think that that was, that remains one of the problems with Star Wars where, you know, and I remember encountering this on the special features for episode one, where George would show the movie to people, and they would all say, George, that's great. That's amazing. You fucking did it, George.

And nobody, nobody said. Malam effect. Yeah, like, hey, man, like, I don't know if this is holding together. Oh, hey, man, maybe we're cutting away too many times from our main story to this kid, in the cockpit of the ship. Like, you need to be able to have people who can question it. And then you can take those questions as a creator and see why are they asking me these questions.

And I know that it's not from a place of hate or from a place of could we be doing this better? Right. And I think that, yeah, Matthew and Bill Willingham and Sam Riegel and all those guys were incredibly generous with their world and with their time and helping to get a newbie up to speed. But also like, hey, great idea wins. Who's got one? If it's, if it, if it plays directly into the mythos, awesome.

If it's a brand new thing that doesn't like fuck with the mythos, just as great. Yeah, I agree. And hearing you talk about this stuff and watching you be around, whether you're around people like Mount, around Kevin, you know, are you, are you in Clerks three? I'm not sure if I can say, but I did fly to New Jersey to for a reason. So, and the reason I asked that too is watching being around Kevin, and you'd been in other stuff that he did.

And do you, do you want to do, like, I know obviously with writing, that's the first thing, but do you want to pursue directing as well? You know, it's funny. Like, I wasn't sure because seeing Kevin do it, seeing other people, you know, other friends of mine who do it, it's an all-encompassing, insane job to do. You know, but I made myself a promise that I was like, you know, but that time I turn 50, I'm going to direct something. And then I did, like, I made a short film.

Just last December, we spent, you know, whatever, two weeks in prep and four days of shooting, and now we're in post on it. And, you know, I'm still not sure if it's a thing that I would want to do going forward because it is so taxing. It is so demanding. I don't know how people like Kevin, you know, have the fortitude and the both intestinal and cranial to be able to do that on a long-term basis. It's hard.

It is. but the only reason I definitely ask you is because just listen before even having this conversation and listen to you being a fan of yours and having like you've got that eye that's not just the writer's eye that you watch it in a certain way even when listening to you talk about arcane yeah you're approaching it from the writer's view but it's that visual side in the way that you explain things that I just thought that with with that gift and talent you already have with with writing a lot of the directors don't have that Kevin's got it obviously a lot of A lot of directors don't have that where they just,

they got to get the script, but having it, being able to do that, and you've got friends in high places. You know, like, it's funny. And the other thing about it is when you're directing a movie, you're living with that movie for like three or four years. Yeah. You know, whereas I could write an episode of Masters this week. And next week, I can go write an episode of this thing.

And, you know, I'll spend six months on one show and then I'll bounce. And then, you know, like Picard, I was on for the, yeah, Well, the hell was that? That was, God, it was it 2019, 2020. I don't remember how dates work anymore, but it was like six months. You know, right in the middle of the pandemic, like I was on Picard. And, you know, there was a great experience. I had a blast.

My time in the Final Frontier came to an end, and I went on to something else. Right. But if you're making a movie, if you're making a fucking Black Panther movie, you're Black Panthering for four years. Three years. Yeah. But here's the thing, know, with that. So in that four years, and some people,

Because you also, like you said, you had the luxury, not luxury, but you've been able to have a job. No, you may, it may not be there after the first season, and then you're able to bounce to something else, right? People, you've had that reputation enough. People are confident enough of your work. You're going to get a gig. But it is still scary, like even like you said,

when you're working on Picard. So talk to me about that. When you're on a show that, I don't know whether or not how you felt when you got Picard, if you said, this is going to stick around a little bit. And then it doesn't, right? Like is that so is it one of those moments like sometimes I'm sure you might be looking around and saying all right well then I'm going to start looking around and start working on this and other times it's like shit I don't want to start looking around again. I just had this. Yeah. Yeah. There's the constant push and pull. I feel it more today than I did when I first started because you know when I was doing like Treadstone and Castle Rock. Right. It was am I ever going to get another job? You know and I went like a year between gigs on both of those shows because like they were there. I was new.

I knew. I was young-ish, younger, and didn't have that momentum yet. Like I had a couple of, like, the shows were hot, whatever that counts as, but like, nobody knew who I was as much as they knew what the shows were. And so that time between got to be like, I could use a job six months later. I could really use a job eight months later. Boy, job would be amazing right now. Right. Whereas now I'm at the place, you know, thankfully, knock on wood, it's a blessed privileged place

to be where I'm like, maybe I'll take a couple months off. Maybe I'll, maybe I'll just kind of put the brain to bed, but I'm still, I'm still a little bit that kid who's not sure if the next job is going to show, you know, it's like, the bitch of the business, right? Yeah. Yeah, it's like, I got a kid going to college. Like maybe now it's not the time to take a couple months off, buddy. Is he going to college now?

I think when I first met yours. Yeah. He was, you think he's still in high school when he came to the Smodown, right? I mean, no, he was, no, we, we, we, you know, we, you, we, you may, at him fast seven, I think it was, a screening for one of the fast movies. You took him to,

you took him to a Schmodan match. I think he came in. He came in a collider. Yeah. You're right. You're absolutely right. And yeah, I think he was like 13 then. Wow.

Oh, dude. My oldest is 10 and it's like, it just flies, man. It just fucking flies. Anyway, so last thing to ask you about before I let you go, and thank you so much for being so generous for your time today. But when your show that you've been doing with Kevin, Fatman and Batman, you guys have been doing it, how long?

Because, and you probably answered this a million times, and I apologize. But how did that show come about? And how did you meet Kevin in the first place? I don't think I've ever asked you that. I met Kevin when I was working for Entertainment Weekly. I was assigned to do an interview with him. I think it was, I didn't remember what it was around. It was pre, it must have been like Zach and Mary.

Okay. And so I did like a short interview. Like it went fine, whatever, went away. Then Zach and Mary Make a Pornow was about to be released. And I was like, I want to do a filmography with this dude. Like he's made enough movies. Let's just walk it through. And he said, okay, great, listen, but could we do it over instant message?

Like, I'm a writer. I'd much rather write than talk. This was pre-podcast kept. Right, right. And so we did it over instant message. And every now and again, He would just pop up on my I am. At first, it was like, hey, man, do I use a semicolon or a comma here?

It was like, hey, man, which worthy sentence? It sounds better. You're a journalist. You know how this. I'm writing a letter to somebody. What do I do here? And then we're like, hey, man, did you see the Hulk? And I'd be like, yeah, I saw the Hulk.

And then it was, hey, man, I got a poker game in New Jersey in the Secret Stash. Do you play poker? And at the time I was living in New Jersey, and I did play poker. So I said, sure. I said, you should come down and roll some cards. And so I did a couple times. And then I would come out to L.A. And then he would say, hey, you come at the house and see the movies.

I said, all right, I'll come in the house and see the movie. And then when I moved to L.A., he said, hey, man, I got this podcast to do with my wife in the morning. Do you want to come by and be a guest plus one with me and Jen? I said, sure. So after that, I was like, hey, man, that was fun. I got this Batman podcast. Do you want to come by and do a guest on it? I said, sure.

Hey, man, that was fun. Let's do a commentary track for the Dark Night Returns Part 1. All right. hey man that was fun do you want to be the co-host of this thing sure like hey man basically everything that i do with kevin is kevin saying hey man and i just say yes it's it's it's isn't it funny how that all works out with just it's it's it's all about chemistry too right because it's it's it's that's how with mark ellis and i we we just kind of met through well we met through friends and then from being a comedy store and all that and just it's just

kind of evolving and it's funny how you just you like talking to somebody and then strangely enough people like hearing you talk about it because you're having a good time and you're not bullshitting about it and i think that's what's what's about you guys yeah i mean it's we we are both died from the same cloth in a way we're both these coast guys were both nerds we're both fat some of us fatter than we used to be some of us less so um you know we we both love this stuff deeply you know and and the only thing that we want from each other is to be able to talk about it you know and to have a person for whom um there's enough shared reference but also enough like new shit that we can learn, which is like I didn't grow up with Kim.

Like I met him as a grown-ass person. And so there's a whole wealth of life experience that I have and that he has that I, that neither is are privy to. And so kind of like getting to know a person that you already have a lot in common with. Like we just started dating and then it became a long-term thing. It's a great thing. And I know, and you see East Coast, are you from, are you from, are you from New York? Oh, what part of you? I was born in the Bronx.

grew up on the south shore of Long Island, grew up in a town called Baldwin. So I'm from Queens. So we were probably in the area around the same. I spent a lot of time in Long Island also. So we probably, yeah.

I lived in Woodside for a couple of years when I first moved out of the house and then moved to Jersey when I got married. And then that was it. Always in New Yorker though, even though I've lived every place else longer.

Well, now I know why we get along so well. You know that. And the great Mark Bernard. And where can they, And obviously for those people who don't know for having a Batman, you can get it on Apple Podcasts and all that. But when, so it's on Kevin's YouTube channel and is there a particular date? Is our time?

You know, in a perfect world, we would be every Tuesday night. Yeah. And when we're, when we're shooting it live at the canteen, those are the nights that we do it. Yeah. The Scummanville and a canteen on Hollywood Boulevard in Hollywood, California. But now it's more like Tuesday, Wednesdays on, yeah, YouTube.com slash Kevin Smith. and there's like every episode we've ever shot I think you're still up there

I think you can get a decent chunk of the backlog on Apple Podcasts or Spotify or whatever or if you join that Kevin Smith Club you have access to every episode that's ever been done well make sure you guys go check that out it's a great show it's a lot of fun and if you're not following Mark Bernard on Twitter

please do it's a great follow there and check out his work because the guy is very very talented and I hope to do this again with you man hopefully we can do it in in person next time once this shit starts to go down a little. We'd love to. This was a blast. Thanks, brother. All right, man, Mark Bernardin,

and for you guys, once again, just a reminder, please subscribe, as I mentioned you before. We're always looking for people to show an ounce of class to do that, and go ahead and do that, please. Will you do that? And hit that Apple Podcast, big thing, Spotify, all of it. It's a big thing. We'll see you next time.

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