The Problem With Jon Stewart - A Conversation With Adam McKay

Episode Date: March 8, 2022

Jon welcomes his pal Adam McKay to discuss climate change and his film Don’t Look Up…and they barely do either. But! They do take a long stroll down comedy memory lane. From Adam’s start as a Philly stand-up, to his time with SNL and hits like Anchorman, to producing and directing Oscar®-nominated films, Adam’s fingerprints are all over 21st-century comedy.We want to hear from you! Have a question, comment, or simply want to share your thoughts on our episodes? Call our hotline: [phone].CREDITSHosted by: Jon StewartFeaturing: Adam McKayExecutive Produced by Jon Stewart, Brinda Adhikari, James Dixon, Chris McShane, and Richard Plepler.Lead Producer: Sophie EricksonProducers: Caity Gray, Robby SlowikAssoc. Producer: Andrea BetanzosSound Designer & Audio Engineer: Miguel CarrascalSenior Digital Producer: Kwame OpamDigital Coordinator: Norma HernandezSupervising Producer: Lorrie BaranekHead Writer: Kris AcimovicElements: Kenneth Hull, Daniella PhilipsonTalent: Brittany Mehmedovic, Haley DenzakResearch: Susan Helvenston, Andy Crystal, Anne Bennett, Deniz Çam, Harjyot Ron SinghTheme Music by: Gary Clark Jr.The Problem With Jon Stewart podcast is an Apple TV+ podcast, produced by Busboy Productions. https://apple.co/-JonStewart

We started with a clap because our guest today never goes anywhere without applause. He is a man who will not leave his house unless you applaud for him. Ha, ha, ha, ha. Folks, it's a special edition of the Problem Podcast, and we are back on television as well. The Apple TV Plus show is on.

And our next episode is on the climate. This was probably a bad choice, but we filmed it from inside a burning tire. I don't know that that it may negate some of the message, but the rest of the message is on Apple TV. But the rest of the message gets through. We have a wonderful conversation today with the filmmaker and comedian in front of mine.

Don't Look Up is his latest movie, nominated for 8,000 Oscars. That may be an over-exaggeration, but it's close to that. He was the former head writer for SNL. Improv, impresario. You probably remember him from the Big Short all those unbelievably fucking hilarious Will Ferrell movies.

So here it is, a special episode conversation. I hope you enjoy it. Adam McKay. Adam McKay, how the fuck are you? You have an Oscar. You're a sketch writer. Now you're just rolling up fucking Oscars. I was an improviser.

I was in Chicago doing Freestack. My God, the lowest form of entertainment. Now, actually, stand-up comedy is the lowest form. I was the guy who blows in the wind outside a muffler repair shop. That was my job for a good six years. Everybody's gotta grab cash. Did you start in Chicago?

You know, I started in Philadelphia. I was in college when the stand-up comedy boom hit in the 80s, around 86, 87. And that was when the whole comedy thing started rolling. That was like Letterman came on. The Simpsons got going. Stand-up comedy was everywhere. That's when I moved to the city to do stand-up.

It was 87, 86, 87. That was it. And so I was doing stand-up comedy. There's one other comic from that time you may have heard of. Oh, there's a couple. Paul F. Tompkins was kind of in my circle. He was the funniest of all of us in a great stand-up. But there was another Blaine Capac.

Yeah, all those guys. He was in our circle because I was in Philadelphia. Blaine was unusual, though, because he was live. Very few of us were live. Very live, ahead of his time. I would almost say Willowey. Willowey could have been in a Wes Anderson film. Yes.

Before Wes Anderson was even making films. Blaine was a throwback and super funny. I worked with him once, and Brian Posane, and who else were we working with? It was on some Bill in Seattle or something. And those guys were just so fucking funny. Oh, my God. Capac and Tompkins came out of the gate

with 99 mile per hour fast test. I had it. Meanwhile, I was just throwing junk. I had about five different pitches. None of them that strong. And I could eat my way through about 15, 20 minutes, get some last, make 50 bucks, and then I moved to Chicago.

Right. And that was the move that kind of changed everything. Yeah. Then I got into improvisation, sketch, writing, directing. I remember people used to say, they used to say about Adam McKay, he's the Phil Negro of comedy. This guy's just throwing, nobody can hit him,

but nobody knows why. It's just all knuckleballs and spitballs. Where did you work in Philadelphia? What was the club scene then? So my big highlight of my little scrappy, sweaty stand-up career was, I opened for Chris Rock for a week at the Funny Bone on South Street.

And that was like my sort of highlight. I was riding so high off of that, I quit my minimum wage job at Tower Records. That's how. Tower Records, my lord. Used to work in the jazz section of Tower Records, thought it would be the coolest job ever. Guess what?

It wasn't. A lot of, if you've got time to sit, you've got time to clean or whatever that old phrase was. Right. And so I opened for Chris Rock and I thought that's it. I've made it. And then the week ended and life was just normal and no one cared.

So, yeah. Do you think it's strange that we've gotten to the point in our lives where when we discuss our history, we mention obsolete business models? Where it's just, you know, so I was working at a blockbuster, crossed the street from a Tower Records. And yeah, it's been a long road. I can remember in early stand-up,

I opened for Richard Lewis. Oh, I used to love Richard Lewis. Richard Lewis is so fucking funny. He's still funny himself. He's hilarious. But I dined on that credit and my introduction for maybe two or three years in the stand-up circuit. And he's open for Richard Lewis.

That was the big thing if you would open for someone decent. Yes. So I was, he opened for Chris Rock. I had like a year and a half before I stopped doing stand-up. That was my entire career. By the way, later, like about eight years ago, I had lunch with Chris Rock. No memory of me whatsoever,

which of course the guy's doing stand-up 200 days a year. But I did open for him for a week. Like we were around each other for a week. No memory. That's the only reason why Richard remembered. And years later, he was on the show and we got along really well is I had, it was at Caroline's at the Seaport.

I don't know if you ever worked that room. I know it. Yeah. And I went in. It wasn't good enough, wasn't good enough to get in there. Oh, really? Oh yeah.

Caroline's was like legit. I was scrappy. Yeah, that was actually, that was a pretty good room. Yeah, yeah. I went into his, and there was only one dressing room. And so this was down at the Seaport

and I had needed to use the bathroom. And so I knocked on the door and I said, hey Richard, I'm opening up for you. Would you mind? And he went through about five minutes of, I have a diarrhea and it's not a good time. And I could just see like the bathroom door was cracked a little bit

and there was toilet paper piled up on the seat. Like he had created a toilet paper throne and there was just like medicine bottles around it. And I was like, you know what? I'm just going to, it's by the Seaport. I'm just going to go outside. It's fine.

Don't, don't even. I'll go in the Seaport. I'll go in the Seaport. All right. So you head over, you're done doing the stand up and you move into the Chicago scene. Stand up is out the window now.

You just, you immediately just moved to improv. So I'm kind of thinking I'll do some stand up occasionally to make like 50 or 100 bucks on the weekends. And so I've been told about this magical world in Chicago by a good friend of mine,

a guy by the name of Rick Roman. And he said, basically you go on stage with these groups of people and anything you say or do just becomes a reality. And it's called long form improvisation. And I remember I asked him like, because there's no internet. So we'd stayed up one night

and I just asked him five hours of questions. The first one was like, wait a minute, and people pay to see this. And he's like, oh yeah, they get big crowds. And it was one of those cases where I was like, this is it. I'm doing this.

I dropped out of college. I sold my comic book collection. I bought a Chrysler New Yorker, a 78 Chrysler New Yorker with shag carpeting. Style, baby. A style. Had an eight track player. The only eight track I had

was Jethro Tull's Greatest Hits. And I drove to Chicago. And the guy, my friend Rick, was right. Everything he described, it was true. There were theaters. There were like packed houses. It was Oz. It was a magical land.

It was amazing. And it was so much more in line with what I was good at. Because I was more of a writer, sort of director, sort of, you know, a big guy. And as a stand-up, I was always kind of C plus. I didn't have the kind of lead the room kind of good time sort of vibe.

Yeah. Stand-up is pugilism. Stand-up is the sweet, is the sweet science. But you're just in there throwing haymakers and trying to dodge stuff. Improv was, we always thought of improv as kind of, when people came out and they really wanted to do theater, they decided like, I could either be an actor,

was this around the time like Colbert and Carell and all those people were in Chicago? Absolutely. So there was a crazy thing going on in Chicago. Once again, there's no internet. Oh, right. So if you want to perform, you had to go to Chicago to do sketch and improv.

Right. So I got there and there was like this hilarious kind of, you know, people just coming to Chicago, there was like Colbert, Carell, eventually Tina Fey, Amy Poehler, Chris Farley, had just gotten hired at SNL. Jesus. Mike Myers, my buddy Neil Flynn

has been on a million different sitcoms. Murderers Row. It's Murderers Row. I honest to God, I could list Dave Kekner, Rachel Dratch, John Glazer, like 150, two Brian Stack, like people that are either writing, performing, or directing to this day, and they were all just there at the same time.

And it was awesome. It was so much fun. It's incredible how, you know, there's been certain kind of seminal shifts in comedy, like the national lampoon infrastructure of like the 70s and all those guys. Unfortunately, P.J. O'Rourke just passed away, but he was one of those guys seminal.

But, you know, there was that lineage that came out of the lampoon group. And then there was that other lineage through Chicago that really hasn't been matched. Like those names that you mentioned, like that was a farm system unparalleled in creating the next generation of writers, directors, comedians.

I mean, Jesus. Faye, Polar, like Farley, all those guys. Incredible. Even like David Mamet was a dishwasher at Second City. Now, obviously before... Was he really? For real. Because there's also an incredible theater scene in Chicago.

You know, obviously Steppenwolf Theater is really famous. So what was cool about the... That was Malkovich, right? Didn't Malkovich come out of there too? Malkovich, Senees. Senees, right. Like this insane list of actors. John Cusack, the whole Evanston scene.

Tim Robbins was there for a while. Insane, insane scene. So what... And then you're right. Like that national lampoon lineage blended. Like what Warren Michaels did was he blended the two, the Lemmings National Lampoon. Right.

With the Toronto and Chicago Second City. And that was Saturday Night Live. I mean, that was the alchemy. And the Lorne thing, people don't understand, you know, and it's super easy to take shots at Saturday Night Live. Everybody's going, oh, it's not as funny as you... There has never been, and I don't think ever will be, a...

Imagine creating something that is 40-some years old and is as relevant as it has ever been. There is still not something that can create a cultural moment like SNL, 40 years later. It's unprecedented in show business, I think, what he created. No question. I mean, it's now that we're living in the time that we're living in. It's almost more of a stable institution.

In fact, you kind of could argue it is after what was done to the U.S. post office. Like, the U.S. post office is on shakier ground than Saturday Night Live. Like, I think without exaggeration, that's true. And I love the post office, but the corrupt government, you know, hamstrung it and like put all these requirements on it. Right.

But like, SNL may outlast the post office. Fucking remarkable. And it's comedy, and he was a... He created a formula, but not only that, like you could point to Kate McKinnon and Keenan Thompson and all that as astonishingly good as the early days, folks, the people that they all point to as, you know, the creators of that form, like the ability to find and bring talent

to the fore in that manner. I just... I cannot think of an analogous... Like, there have been moments like your show of shows where there was an alchemy and it blew up and these incredibly talented people sort of went through different ways and the writing room was, you know, Mel Brooks and Neil Simon and all these incredible people.

To keep that fucking thing going at such a high level for that long, you'll never see it again. Incredible. Yeah. And then you would say, well, you know, there are other good sketch groups like the kids in the hall. Well, guess what? Yes, no question.

Lord produced them. Like... Really? He did that too? Oh, that's fucked up. All right, I don't know. That's not fair. All right, that's not fair.

No, it's crazy. And I think you put your finger on it. His real talent, having, you know, seen the guy work, you know, about a six-year window with him, it is picking talent. The fact that, like, just no matter what age he's at, he just has great, like, Christian Wig. I would argue Christian Wig is as good as anyone who's ever been

on that show ever. No, every generation. He keeps finding these seminal talents that end up creating the next wave of whatever new comedy is coming out. And just to be his age, and I don't know, what is it, your early 70s? 130... Isn't that old?

So Canadians, it's very different than you and I. I've heard this. It's like Gravitational Force on Jupiter. It's much different. So he's around 178. And he has, like, a biblical amount of kids. He has 78 sons. Yes.

Yeah. And so here's what you don't realize. 30 Rock is actually an arc. Is that true? And he's been tasked with putting together a comedy crew. So if the Lord becomes angry with us, the prophecy has said that you will put together two by two sketch comics, stand-ups, and improv,

and you will put them all together, and then they will be saved and repopulate the new world. Because now that I think of it, in Lauren's office, he always had a male and female taper just roaming around. And I would always say why. And he would say some day, and he would just say, someday the rains will come. And then he would go, what about the cold open?

So this is all. It's adding up, isn't it, Adam? Yeah. Because, I mean, he is, he's 138. Yes. He's got almost Canadian years. It's a different thing. That's something to do with the curve of the Earth, right?

No question. When you're up that high towards the poles. Yeah. Yeah. So you think about it, all those children, 30 rock, because remember there were heavy rains about a year ago, and someone said 30 rock start was floating about three inches off the ground.

Here's the thing you know. Do you remember there was a huge blackout, yet somehow Jimmy Fallon was able to tape his show. So clearly there's a power source there within that building that allows them to do the same thing. Well, he was always pretty open about it. He would say, Adam, we're here to do two things, do a good sketch show and find a way to power 30 rock

through geothermal nuclear power. And he's like, I wish the show was shot in Iceland. We could power the building with geothermal power, but we're not. We're in New York, so we do what we can do. Here's how you know the influence of a man. There has never been a more imitated individual in the history of comedy than Lorne Michaels.

Never. Never. What he does is hire sketch comics, improv comics, and impressionists, and they all just walk out of the building with a Lorne Michaels impression. That's the parting gift. I mean, it used to be like John Wayne and Nixon

used to be slightly ahead of them, but I think he moved past them in the last five years. There's no question. Had you, would you see him in the comedy scene in Chicago? Would he come down there and kind of be doing that kind of like like scouting, like a ball, you know, a baseball scout, a football scout, like just in the back room, checking stuff out, or was that a yearly pilgrimage

that he would make to Chicago? How did that pipeline get established? So what happened was I, you know, we started the Upright Citizens Brigade with Matt Besser, Ian Roberts, Amy Poehler, that whole group. So we were doing that, but, you know, it didn't pay. So Second City had auditions and I was like, guys, I'm broke.

So I ended up auditioning and got into Second City. And the people on the main stage were Correll Colbert and Amy Sedaris, as well as a bunch of other, and just like talk about a murderer's row. I mean, it was crazy. It was like 86 Mets kind of stuff with those guys. Yes. Also with the cocaine, similar, terrible cocaine problem.

With the bucket of speed before you go on the field. Yeah. No question. And yes, Colbert was Kevin Mitchell, if anyone's wondering. Just catching a ball with his bare hand. You remember that? Oh my God, that was the moment. Kevin Mitchell running back for a fly ball,

he puts his glove up and then he just goes like this and catches it with his bare hand. That was the greatest moment. Kevin Mitchell was a bad, bad man. And I mean that entirely in a positive way. Positive way. Another quick baseball story. Yes.

Johnny Bench apparently once was catching a pitcher whose stuff just wasn't great. Yeah. And he was throwing a fastball that wasn't very intimidating. And Bench kept yelling at him to throw the curve and the pitcher wouldn't do it. So on one play, in a game, Bench caught his fastball with his bare hand, threw it back to him and said,

now will you effin' throw the curve ball? Yeah. Bad man. That's hilarious. Bad, bad man. That's back when baseball was badass. Yeah. Yes.

But anyway, yes. So he did. He came to Chicago. Lauren Michaels, I eventually got on the main stage and you looked in the back of the room and he was back there with the binoculars, with his card, giving all the stats. And then we had a comedy combine where he had us run the 40.

We had to do reps. We had to do shuttle runs. And I kept saying, why does this matter? It's not an athletic endeavor. Isn't it? And someone would lean in and whisper, just do it. Just do it. It doesn't matter.

And I had a hell of a combine. You were a red flag guy, though. Here's what I had heard about you in terms of the Scouting Report. Really funny, great director's eye, a lot of red flags, behavioral stuff. Off the field. A lot of off the field problems, a lot of things. It's why your draft stock had gone down.

Did you get a sense that you guys were being separated, on-air performer, writer? Because he empowers the writers to really produce and kind of direct their own sketches. It's kind of unusual. Would you see that stratification in that process? It's a great question, because he was always very loose with that. He had no problem with writers doing a bit on Update.

I did one when I was there. I did a couple other small bits. Because he was a writer who sometimes would do on-camera stuff. One of my favorite writer performers ever is the legendary Jim Downey. Oh my God, like so funny on camera. Dry as shit and funny. We Make Change is the famous one. I can't remember the name of the back.

Bank of America or MasterCard was one of those. It was a fake date. If you look up, We Make Change commercial parody. We can do a five into two ones and a two. We can do a 50 cent into 20. Yes, tremendous. Genius. But you're also 100% right that he gave the writers a ton of autonomy to produce their sketches in a way to kind of co-direct.

I mean, we always had, Beth was our director. McCarthy. McCarthy. Oh my God. She's the best. All type of greats. She started with me at MTV. I know.

She was the kind of person that you'd be like, Beth, we're going to tape our show on Friday. And she's like, well, Thursday night, I'm doing Nirvana and Pearl Jam live in Seattle. So when I'm done with that, I'll just fly back and we'll do it. And we'd be like, you can't do that. She's like, no, it'll be okay. She'd come in the most. You could throw anything at her. Handle it like it was, I mean, kill just the best and attitude, like everything, the best.

The best. So my one Beth McCarthy story really quickly, I wrote some sketch that had the band Hanson in it. And we were, you know, because we all have our Hanson sketch. Everybody has their hands. We had our Hanson sketch, not the best thing I've ever written. When it got chosen, I kind of immediately regretted writing it, but you know, in the moment, it made me laugh. So we're blocking the sketch and the like 11 year old drummer is from Hanson is screaming

at me about how the sketch isn't funny. And you're in this position where you're like, I'm at the time. I don't know. I think I'm a head writer at the time. So I'm like 29. Yeah. And I'm like, can I yell at it? Like all these thoughts are going through my head.

Can I yell an 11 year old? He's 11. But he's a drummer. A drummer. He is a drummer without a yell at drummers. Yes. And Beth just comes up and puts her arm around me and says, I got this. Why don't you go back to the office?

And she just goes, okay, everyone, and takes over and blocks the sketch. And I walk away and I'm just like, Beth McCarthy is a is royal. She saved you from being pulled out in handcuffs that day. That was, that was going to be the way that thing was, was going to go down. Yeah. I think SNL too. Like if you think about even the writers that have gone out like Conan, Bob Odenkirk, Smigol, like guys that have gone on to be famous performers.

James, James Michener was a big one. Kurt Vonnegut, Dostoevsky wrote two years. So Vonnegut, I remember was on Fridays. He wasn't on SNL. Oh, you know what? You're right. He was on Fridays. And I think Dostoevsky was mad TV.

He was mad TV. Yeah. And now that I think about it, James Michener was she TV. You know what? I think actually he was logo. He was on logo. Oh, okay. He came on logo.

But listen, it all, look, we're old enough now that you can mix this shit up and it doesn't, it doesn't matter anymore. It's the same culture. I mean, you know, John, I shared an office with Jonathan Franzen. And yeah, I didn't realize that he wrote all the Bobby and Marty's move Farrell and on a gas. That was kind of his thing. Yeah.

I didn't know that. I, when I first came up at MTV, it was just me and Jonathan Saffron four. Now I'm just trying to think of all, now I just, now I don't know what to do. You know, Thomas Pinchon and I were Murakami was an apprentice writer on your MTV show. All right. You can feel it. You can feel it. So now you've done this.

You've gone to your, you're the head writer there. You're doing all these things. And I'm sorry to take you down. It just, I never get to talk to you enough and taking you down. You know, nostalgia way, but I'm just so interested in the pipelines because when people understand how to like mine and develop these groups, it's sort of like a Bella check. Like you see their influence that is amplified, like force amplifiers all throughout the business. And I think that's why it's always been such a held up as such a destination for anybody

that's performing such a dream because you feel like if I can get my foot in that door, it's getting into, you know, medical school at Harvard. Like it's the highest college, you know, it's the highest learning environment you can be in for what it is that we do and want to do. I mean, the biggest thing for me was, yes, the experience was incredible. You work with lots of different actors. You get your butt kicked, which is always a good thing. But then when I directed short films, my last two years, I directed about a dozen short films.

That was transformative. I mean, that was, I got to have a crew. I got to write it. I got to play around with, you know, different film stocks and lenses. And he just gave me kind of, God bless, Lorne Michaels. He just gave me free range to try these. You look back on them, they're pretty crazy shorts. They weren't like, you know, Chronicles of Narnia sort of big honking hits.

They were pretty odd. A couple of them hit okay. But that was it. That's when I started realizing what I wanted to do. And looking back on it, the SNL experience couldn't have been any better between producing, writing, getting to help with directing the actors, rewriting the pressure of it. I mean, Farrell and I, later when we would do our comedies together,

we would be having a hard day. And we would just look at each other and say it's not nearly as hard as SNL. And our day, we just get lighter. We'd just be like, oh yeah. As bad as it gets, it's still not four in the morning and we're trying to rewrite something on a Thursday night getting ready for. That was it. And, you know, and also you're on this show with like 20 other writers

and like 16 cast members. I mean, one of the tricky things with that show were just the sheer amount of bodies that were in the building that you were trying to kind of get your piece on the air through. The distribution of opportunity and all that. Is that what makes it hard? You know, when you think about the decision to call it quits there, and it's always a really difficult decision for people.

I mean, it's very rare that I think somebody just says like, oh yeah, I'm just ready to move on. It's one of those places that kind of like the mothership. It's a really tough decision to step away from that machine because as difficult as it might be, there is an excitement in it, a cultural relevance in it. There's all those things that I'm sure were really hard to walk away from. It was the easiest decision of my entire life.

Really? That's fucking crazy. I never would have thought that. Yeah, it was well, here's why. Because I was head writer for three years, which was an incredible experience. Then I had two years where I was doing the short films and still writing sketches. Those were the most enjoyable two years where I got to kind of just be a, you know, a roaming sort of writer, filmmaker.

It was a joy. Right. And then through those last two years, I started writing feature scripts. And I'd written something with Will. I'd written another thing with Higgins and Dennis McNicholas. Dennis McNicholas! He's been flashed from the past. Danny McNicholas, who still produces update on SNL.

And a friend of John in mind's really funny writer. He's got something that just came out that's like a comic book, Batman comic book podcast. He had Josh Leib and Steve Higgins and all those guys were, they were all on the old show that I did on when I was supposed to be Arsenio. So who better to imitate Arsenio than having writers like Dennis McNicholas and Josh Leib and Steve Higgins. That was a big show though.

Oh, we had a show. Amen. We had some fucking fun on that show. That's for sure. Oh my God. You could tell. Yeah. You know, they still have music clips up from your show.

And so on YouTube. Oh, from our, we had music on that show. Like you can't, like, I'm talking about like biggie, you know, some of the most incredible music, Johnny Cash, public enemy. Like it was Bruce Gilmer who I think, I don't know what he's doing. I think he's producing a bunch of stuff as one of the guys. He came from MTV. So the music that he could bring to that show and Beth was the director and she had directed

all those on plugs and everything else. So the level of music, it'd be like Mike Watt, you know, coming out to do a song and Eddie Vetter and Dave Grohl and Pat Smear are with them playing with them. And then the meat puppets would be on. And then like fucking crazy. And it's all still up on YouTube. Oh, wow. Sometimes I just buzzed through YouTube looking for old, weird live clips.

And I swear to God, there's a bunch of them from your show on there. That was a cool show. Oh, we had a ball. Yeah. And, and I had fun with those guys too. They were like Dennis and I became really good friends. Higgins is awesome. Lebes awesome.

It's a great group. Anyway, so yeah, I was starting to do rewrites and I was starting to kind of get ready to go. So the timing was perfect. Right. And for me to leave SNL and I sat down with. And you didn't, you didn't look back. There was a moment where you thought like, I don't know, man, I'm in a pretty sweet spot

here. I'm directing my own shit. No, I knew where I wanted to. I was always interested by then. I got in the directing bug in an even bigger way. Right. I always loved movies. I was always, you know, watching every movie there was thinking about movies.

So that was always the leap. The funny thing was my grandfather was alive back then and he was a depression era guy, you know, raised in the twenties and thirties and he couldn't comprehend. Well, I don't understand. You have a job. It pays well. You have healthcare. Why would you leave that job?

I go, you know, grandpa, I want to go. I want to do. I just don't understand it. You have a good, solid job. You're working in Manhattan and you're going to leave. I mean, he's a, he was a good guy. So he wasn't like mad at me, but he was baffled that I was going to do this. And then of course, Farrell and I tried to make Anchorman and every single studio and

financier and planet Earth said no. So there was a moment about it, you know, a year later where it was like, huh, should I have left that show because we did not, we weren't allowed to make our movie. You guys left. It's not like you were walking into another solid situation. It's not like you had this thing lined up already. You actually had to then kind of hustle a little bit. A little bit, but like, you know, we got paid to write Anchorman.

It was part of a script deal that Farrell had. It wasn't a lot because we were new writers. It wasn't enough to live a whole year on, but it was a little chunk of money. We did a rewrite for someone else. The rewrite thing is big. So I was doing rewrite. So I was making money and never got scary. But when all the nose came on Anchorman, that was the time where I was like, maybe this

plan is not going to work. And then the only script that they wanted Farrell to do was one where he was a grown man playing an elf. So Farrell and I found ourselves. I'm not familiar with that. So it never was released. He was a grown man and how would that even work? Farrell and I were so bummed and we were in my crappy little apartment in New York

rewriting it. And I remember looking at Farrell. Farrell, by the way, was still on SNL. He stayed for a couple of years longer than me. Right. So, and I was like, what the hell happened? And he's like, I don't know, but we better make it good. And we were just like, all right, let's make it good.

Let's make it the best grown man playing an elf movie you ever can. And kudos to that whole team. John Favre did a great job directing it and cast a great cast and it worked. And really through that and then old school by Todd Phillips also broke Farrell. So kudos to Todd Phillips. And because of those movies, then they were like, you can do Anchorman. It's so interesting how they won't, you know, decision making out there is so based on fear that unless they feel like you've hit gold, like, I'm sure the script for Anchorman was

the same. The participants were the same, but everyone's so afraid. And it's not, listen, Anchorman's not, you know, the Phantom Menace, like the budget on it is very small. Like it's not a huge gamble with such a big reward. And it's funny, you know, Sandler paved the way for a ton of this shit because he went out there with kind of these very modestly priced comedies that fucking went crazy. And it paved the way for so many other comics to get that opportunity.

Couldn't agree more. Sandler created the model. Right. And also the style of his first couple of comedies, too, were really loose and funny and a lot of comics in them. And then you had, obviously, Mike Myers, who was doing a similar thing where it was like Joke Intense. And Spade and Farley and all that.

Yeah. Oh my God, the Spade, Farley movies were like, and it was just, let's let the funny rip. And it coincided with the invention of the Abbott. I always thought that the Abbott is a big part of that comedy kind of explosion of the late 90s into the 2000s, because then you could time your movies exactly to the laughs in the crowd. And it was amazing. You could get rolling laughs as opposed to the Cam where you got to take the actual negative

out. Right. Yeah. Take the slice and tape it. Make it with affordable comedies like $15 million, $18 million, $12 million comedies at that time. Right. That combo was just an exploit.

I mean, we know it was Sam or it was Jada Apatow, it was Seth. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I never realized, like, I'd never connected it to the technology because for the Daily Show, the Abbott was a lifesaver because the way that we used to edit was in the online room. You'd be in there and if you fucked up, you had to go back and start again at the beginning. So if you wanted to layer a montage, you'd be in there for eight hours. The Abbott was such a game changer, but I never thought of that for comedy and film

as well, which is, it must have been enormous. And then the advent of video that looks like film that gives you that same quality and suddenly studios don't mind you going out there and just fucking around. Right. Your style of directing, you really let your guys run. Always. And especially with the laugh driven comedies that I did with Ferrell and John C. Riley and Paul Rudd, Carrell, like we played all day long, although you know what's crazy?

Those are all shot on film. Oh, you're kidding. I did. So how did you have the balls to let them improv when you knew that's just burning money? It's not, the truth is, it's not that much to shoot on film. It's a little overrated. And I did one movie on digital and I hated the way I did Anchorman 2 on digital.

I finally got to have to do it and I didn't like the way it looked and then everyone would tell me, look, digital's gotten really good. And I'd go, yeah, but is it better than film? And they would all say, no, no. And so just easier. It's like a microwave. Is it tastes better than cooking it out of stove? No.

No. It's faster. There's shit going on. It's like, well, we're only here to make a movie. So that was it. And then the great thing was, if you're getting, if the movies are playing and doing what they're supposed to do within the kind of commercial box that Hollywood has said, you can kind of do anything you want.

So within the realm of these absurdist comedies, I was able to really play around with how I shot stuff, really learn about how to use CG, how to use high speed, how to like, you know, I constantly was talking to my DPs. Oliver Wood was one of the big ones that I worked with, incredible DP. And just always asking questions and playing around with Dolly, trying different arms, trying different, you know, whatever you could do. And it was just educating yourself as you went along. Yeah.

Yeah. So laughing like a goon. And then, you know, always Farrell and I would have some point of view in our comedies. There was always something, whether it was the collapse of news or sexism or whatever it was, there was always something in there. But more broadly satirical than maybe, you know, some of the stuff. Was that then, so if the decision to leave SNL wasn't hard, or any of those other things, was the decision to do a bit of a tonal shift?

Was that something that came from a maturation of you as a director or as a person? Or you just felt like, I want to challenge myself in a different direction. How do you move from that into something like The Big Short or those other types of movies? Well, I mean, I'm sure you know this. It's pretty well publicized, but I was in a boating accident. I know I remember very clearly. I was trying to get the most dramatic story. It was basically ordinary people, only that's what led me to do The Big Short.

I was going on my deathbed that came out of really practical thing, which was the financial collapse. And we were like, hey, can we do a big comedy that's kind of about the financial collapse? And we made the other guides. And the whole, I spent hours and hours with Chris Henshey, designing the whole movie to be a parable for the financial collapse, but then it's also a lot of, oh my God, so many hours. And I was like, we're not going to do drug smugglers, like that, that isn't the problem

anymore. God bless Chris Henshey and Farrell. They kind of put up with me doing this and all this time. And then we released the movie. Yeah, sure. We don't want to do drugs here. Drugs? And then we put the movie out and no one noticed.

And it was like, and the only thing was in the end credits, I did these end credits that were pretty nakedly about the financial collapse. And I was like, that's weird. How did no one notice like, and everyone's just like, where did those credits come from? And I was like, the whole movie is about, and I'm not a big fan of blame the audience. So it was, I was like, ah, I get it. If it's, you know, if you're looking here, if the audience is looking here, it's hard to see over there.

Let me go directly at it. Yeah. Yeah. And then I started thinking like, well, this is weird. I don't know if you can do these movies anymore because the entire world economy just collapsed because of flagrant illegalities and malfeasance. And our media didn't report it. And two presidents in a row, W. Bush into Obama, let everyone off scot-free.

And you can see that this whole system is starting to spiral out of control and get really scary. I don't think I can do stepbrothers too, even though I wanted to. And then I stumbled upon one of the great books at that time, The Big Short. And that was a peanut butter chocolate kind of moment. And from that point, we were sort of off to the races with, you know, the funny thing is people are always like, oh my God, you changed what you did. But these are all like The Big Short has a lot of laughs in its succession, has a lot

of laughs. Vice, even as dark as that movie is, has some big laughs. And then certainly Don't Look Up is a comedy. It's actually pretty silly in a lot of ways. So it was still comedy. It was just trying to find that level. And you know, I feel like you've dealt with this your whole career too, whether it's the Daily Show or what you've been doing with movies.

It's always that line of how overt are you? How subtle and clever are you? Because the subtle clever is awfully fun. And there's a certain crowd of people that are going to love it, but it's not going to really play for the big like, I love Death of Stalin. It's one of my favorite movies of the past 20 years. So good. But a very small group of people saw that and appreciated it.

So now the game is sort of like, how can you make a populist film that talks about the shit that no one's talking about, that our media is ignoring, we're all ignoring, which is corruption, inequality. It's funny. They used to do it in fables. You know, it was sort of like that Preston Sturges or Capric. Like, they were the ones who did those, you know, meet John Doe or really populist movies, but also could be really funny, but about those divides.

And it's really hard to, I think, I mean, obviously, look, those guys are the geniuses and the pillars, but it's a hard line to walk. And as very clearly, I think the audiences generally enjoy it a little bit more than the commentariat. I will call them. They seem actually quite angry about the whole thing. Yes. I think that is a fair assessment.

It seems to be a fair assessment. Yeah. The commentariat. I also think we're in unparalleled times. And I think like, I mean, the way I look at it is like, hey, we got to try some shit. Like we're not crossing over. There aren't like magazines or news articles or movies that are crossing these divides because you know, people forget they used to, you know, there used to be movies and cultural

events that were collective events, like all the movies that were made about the threat of nuclear war in the 60s really made a difference. And you know, the famous one is the day after the series that was put out in the 80s that about Rachel, Rachel Ward and wasn't that the it ends with her like on a mountain holding hands with somebody. Yes. It flipped America out. But it's scared Reagan and he changed his nuclear policy because of it.

And then there's the China syndrome, you know, which freaks people out about the dangers of nuclear power. So I think we're kind of relearning that right now because I think we've had a blast for 30 years. You know, they call it the Great Moderation and we have had a hell of a party for 30 years. But now we kind of have to. We got to sober up. We got to clean up, take a shower, get a shave, get our shit together, get a job, fucking

get a job. But do you pay attention, pay attention? Do you think about the one thing that I've always sort of has been a question in my mind is efficacy. And I've never seen what we do as as effective. I've always seen it as this is, it's in some ways selfish for me. It's a way that I process things. But I guess I never viewed it in the sense of and this will make a difference.

It's more like this is the way that it's the art that I make about things I care about. But efficacy never sort of entered the picture. That's very tricky because the truth is likely what's going to happen. First and foremost, everything I've done has been me expressing my feelings about it. I mean, you sat at that desk through the W Bush years and rode that emotional maelstrom which was a horror show. And yeah. And so me doing vice, I wanted to dig into it.

I wanted to hire some journalists and find out like, what the hell? Where did this guy come from? So there is a selfish motivation, but so efficacy has to be a byproduct. I don't think you can say I'm making this movie to create this reaction, which will be something that will have a tangible result. You can however make a movie that's maybe going to fire some people up, that's going to create passion, anger, I mean, and of all the ones we've done, don't look up came the closest to that.

I mean, we're hearing that they're doing just look up day in the nation of France through all the major cities in March. And it showed up in Brazil. We have like climate scientists who are in tears saying I'm finally feel heard. And then of course, there's people that like hate it and are angry about it, which I kind of love. So of all the movies we've done, this one probably created the most noise. Let's just say that I won't go to the level of efficacy, but I'll say it's certainly.

But it created a conversation and a moment for you as a director. So sometimes you look at people's careers and you think at a certain point they get to a project that is almost like a doctoral thesis of everything, and you talked a lot about the things you picked up from doing stand up and Philly and doing improv in Chicago and starting to direct those short films. And did you look at that film as like, this is kind of a doctoral thesis of everything that I've learned. I've put into the sum total of this.

I don't know if I consciously thought that, but my approach to the movie was we are not creating things that are crossing over or appealing in a broad populist manner. I'm a guy who's done populist stuff. I've done comedy. The only sort of populism that I'm seeing out there, a lot of it tends to be, you know, leaning right wing or about race or cancel culture. I mean, populism, we forget in the 19th century, there was a political party called the populist party that was incredible that mostly about economic justice and fairness.

And you know, the writer Thomas Frank has written a lot of incredible stuff about this. So I was like, wait a minute, why can't we do a populist movie that can be positive and not divide? And I realized it's the old story of the guitar player trying to battle the devil with blues. And then he goes back to his classical training. Is that Ralph Machio who did that in that old movie? I believe it was Machio. I think it was.

And so I was like, you know what, I'm going to do a big honking silly comedy. And then we'll break genre at a certain point in the end. But that was really it. And it was cool to see all these big actors with all their awards go, yes, that's the way to do this. Let's do a comedy. And if everyone can, one thing we can all laugh at is that the world is a, you know, a fricking snow globe full of nitroglycerin right now.

But that was the weird thing is you could almost look at it as a cautionary tale for so many different things. I mean, obviously climate change is the most direct, but you could sort of relate that to the financial crisis. You could relate it to a lot of the different things. And I was expecting the funny, but I have to say at the end of the film, there's a poignancy to it that kind of that that caught me off guard. And I'm going to have to say from Chalamet of all people, when he sits at the table and

he offers a prayer, it was a bit of a gut punch because I, one of the things that I think comedy does well is it gets you to, most people approach things like this. And at some point, maybe you bring your arms down if you're absorbed in a different direction. And once somebody brings their arms down, then whatever you throw is a big, can be a real haymaker. And I thought that you did that really, really beautifully in that. And that's, as someone who has not done that as beautifully, it's a fucking hard, that's a hard tightrope to walk.

I really loved it. Oh, thanks, man. I mean, it was probably of everything I've ever done, the most emotional sequence for me. Right. Honestly, it was a discovery. It was in writing the script. I realized, oh, we're living in a comedy, we're living in a farce, we're living in this kind

of Ralph Steadman cartoon, but there's a reality underneath it. And in the end of the movie, when I realized I wanted the characters to become real again, it led to that scene. And it was one of those things, it started choking me up when we were looking at the first cuts of the movie. And the prayer was really it, that really, because I forget we're so used to religion being used as a cudgel and a political tool and to divide us or for people to be superior. And our co-producer Ron Suskind just said to me, what about faith?

And I thought, oh, yeah, I forgot. That's right. People used that at the end of the world. Yeah. That would be something they might throw in there. And I forgot faith is a beautiful thing. Like it's actually not a bad thing, because I've seen it abused so much. And the second we had that prayer, you also forget, because Timothy Shalamey is such a

giant movie star, that guy is an incredible actor, and he delivered that prayer. And I remember Melanie Linsky, like, oh my God, I'm going to start sobbing. Like we were all like, and then DiCaprio comes up with that end line. He actually came up with that on set, and I'm assuming most of the movie's been out for a while, but he says in the end of the movie, when you think about it, we really did have it all. And he came up with that line on set, and he told it to me, and my script supervisor and I, and both of us started getting teary-eyed immediately, but yeah, that ended up being

the movie. The movie is, we're living through this entertainment, click, you know, slot machine of a world. But at the end of the day, it's going to get real, and it's going to be about the people to the right and left of us, and it's going to be about simple things like faith. And it's both beautiful, and it's terrifying. And regretful. And there's a rooffulness to it, and a real regret. And I thought that was the saddest part, is that sense of great regret over opportunity

lost. You know? Well, you said it. It's not, obviously I wrote the movie motivated by the climate crisis, but it relates to towering, you know, inequality, corruption in our government that's never recovered on the media. And really what I realized the movie was, was like a depiction of gaslight culture. And right now the U.S. is being, we're being gaslit to a level. I mean, it is, I joke with my friend like, this is the quality propaganda.

This is like the blue crystal from, you know, Breaking Bad or whatever that math he had. This is the Heisenberg, was that what his name was, this is the Heisenberg propaganda that we've got. Yeah. Good shit. And then by the way, I watched the Super Bowl, I talked about the halftime show for way longer than I should have. Like, I see an ad for a bizarre Taco Bell creation, and I'm like, I want to put that in my mouth.

Like, I am part of this. Sure. Good mouth feel. It's got a good mouth feel. We all are. I think you can do both. And maybe the question is, is you get into that question of, is this malevolence or is this just system in place where they're incentivized for a profit?

You know, the question is, are we being gaslit or are we just participating in a system that's kind of purely incentivized for the highest profit margin? I think that's the question. And I would also reframe that question as it pops up in a lot of our movies. Are they dumb or are they corrupt? Evil. Yeah. Dumb or evil?

Yeah. And I think your question is basically, is it dumb or is it evil? And because I don't think there's a star chamber of six people. That's what I was getting to. Yeah. No, I totally agree. I think the amount of money that hit the U.S. in the 70s into the 80s was so gigantic post-World War II that in a way just swamped our democracy.

And by the way, I mean that in a right and left-wing way. You look at Bill Clinton, you look at Obama to some degree, Joe Biden. Deregulation is more owned probably by the left in the 80s than the right. 100%. Jimmy Carter too. People forget did a lot of deregulation. So yeah, I agree. But whatever the result is, it feels really good in the moment, but it's not working so

well. Because it just stowed in Pasadena a week after a 90-degree heat wave. Things are getting volatile out there, I guess you would say. Climate volatility will be the new thing. But we're going to have to, I've just been informed, you actually have shit to do. And I could sit here and talk to you all day, but I've really enjoyed it. I never get to catch up with you enough.

It's always wonderful to run into you. And thank you for, you know, you've always been very generous to me with your time when I've run shit by you, and I've always appreciated it. So thank you for that. Thank you so much. And keep going, man. We're going to figure this out. We are.

We're figuring it out, man. That's the episode. My thanks to Adam McKay for spending the time with us. A wonderful hour. I got to tell you, I feel a little guilty in that there's a little bit of high school reunion to all of that, but I hope you enjoyed it. And that's that. We'll be back with our regularly scheduled episodes of The Problem.

Our next episode is on the climate. I believe that young David Wallace Wells will be joining us on that podcast. And then we have the television program, the Apple TV Plus show also on climate. Check it out. Link in the episode description. And thanks for listening. The Private John Stewart podcast is an Apple TV Plus podcast and a joint bus boy production.