The Ryen Russillo Podcast - Matt Leinart on CFB Playoff Rankings and NIL. Plus: Terence Winter—From 'The Sopranos' to 'Tulsa King'.

Episode Date: November 4, 2022

Russillo is joined by Matt Leinart to discuss the college football landscape, why Tennessee is the best team in the country, “How good is TCU?”, and Michigan vs. Ohio State before discussing the evolution of NIL and Matt’s new venture, Hall of GOATs (0:42). Then Ryen talks with writer and producer Terence Winter about his new Paramount Plus series 'Tulsa King', as well as his work on 'The Sopranos' from Seasons 2-6, 'Wolf of Wall Street', and more (28:51). Finally Ryen and Kyle give out their favorite bets for NFL Week 9 (1:03:02) before answering some listener-submitted Life Advice questions (1:05:38). Host: Ryen Russillo Guests: Matt Leinart and Terence Winter Producer: Kyle Crichton Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

excited about today's podcast something a little bit different matt liner not different awesome we talked to some college ball with him some picks for this weekend a couple big games in the sec as well uh and then we'll talk some nil stuff with him. Terrence Winter is an Academy-nominated screenwriter. He wrote on The Sopranos from Season 2 to Season 6. You'll hear all the intro. Wolf of Wall Street. He's got a new show out, so we'll talk with him

about his career, what's coming up, life advice, and our picks, our Friday picks. Enjoy. Matt Leiner, Heisman Trophy winner. All-around great guy and the co-host of big noon on saturdays beginning that's 10 a.m on fox uh i love the show i think you guys do a great job okay the committee rankings came out this week tennessee's number one do you have any strong feelings right now about who you think the best team is in college football uh i actually have

tennessee number one um i think the resume speaks for itself, but it really has shades of LSU a few years ago when Burrow and that offense was ridiculous. The defense kind of slowly got better as the season went along. But I think to this point, I've seen Ohio State. Look, I've seen them multiple times in person. I think're really really good um i just think tennessee at this point has proven to be better um but but i always laugh i just think it's so funny the the anger and hatred that people have for the committee after the first week of rankings a lot of my colleagues a lot of people in this business and um i i think there's brand bias i think that the committee really justifies what they want to justify. We can,

we got, I get that. But at the end of the day, Ryan, like, you know, this, like this stuff always takes care of itself.

But Tennessee, Georgia play Michigan, Ohio state play the PAC 12 championship. Like, like that's going to be a big game. Some of those teams are going to play with one loss. TCU is the team I think, and it will be out there this weekend, which I'm excited about.

I think that's the team that can have a little bit of a gripe because I don't know if there's a guarantee that they go undefeated and they're in based on kind of what the committee is already saying about them. I think that's the one thing in the top 10, at least, that really stood out to me that I think is a legit gripe. But this will play man it's just uh it's funny to see the the reaction from people yeah i mean we could say hey it always works itself out because these teams have to play each other but you know tcu and baylor would tell you a bunch of years ago that it didn't work out for them um and certainly baylor really i mean baylor to me had the argument uh going back and looking at it but let's stay with the Big 12 because like you, you know,

I watch all the games from around all the different conferences. I feel like the Big 12 is really good, underrated depth, maybe the second best conference in college football. I don't think it's a crazy statement to make.

I just had a harder time like at the top going, okay, do I really, would I pick TCU against Tennessee? Would I pick them against Bambi? And the thing is, is like everything we already have, all the preconceived notions, perceptions of these

teams, most of us wouldn't pick them. You've got them this week, as you said. You're probably doing some prep for them. How good are they? What is it about them? Not only are they undefeated with four straight ranked wins in a month, which doesn't happen very often, but who are they?

It's a great question. Look, I would say this. Do I think they can beat Tennessee right now? No. Do I think they can beat Ohio State? No. I think they can line up and play with Clemson. I believe that.

I really do. I mean, I think Clemson is a result of because they're Clemson and their brand and the perception. TCU is good. Their offense is really good and max duggan you know i think we're going to talk about on the show this week and max duggan's numbers are literally right there with hendon hooker and cj stroud and he's undefeated yet no one is going to give him any heisman love no one's going to give him any love because he's not a sexy pick he didn't even start the season

like he he's a he's a perfect example of just battling and battling, and it's all paying off. I think Sonny Dyches has done a great job with him. They got a big-time receiver. If you haven't seen Quinton Johnston, he's a – I think he and Marvin Harrison are two of the best in the country. I think he's playing himself into a first-round pick. He's that good.

Kendrick Miller, their running back is really really good their offense is legit like their offense i think could score um i don't know if they're as good as tennessee or i'll say but they're right there like they can score with anybody their defense is shaky i mean you know their defense is shaky at this point they've had to come from behind for a couple games but like i don't know i mean we look at tennessee's defense they're shaky uh we look we can analyze every team they deserve to be in my opinion ahead of clemson and ahead of a one loss alabama alabama is a direct product of who they are alabama is good i think they'll probably get to an sec championship game but that team is beatable and that team is vulnerable.

And they might even lose to LSU or they might lose to Ole Miss here in a couple of weeks, but TCU is a good football team. I just think the big 12 is there's not an elite team and they're all kind of, kind of beaten up on each other and TCU has survived so far, but they deserve more credit, man. They're good and their offense is really good. Who are you going to pick, Georgia-Tennessee? I got Tennessee. I'm telling you, I've got them. I don't know if I haven't won in a title yet, but I have them winning the SEC championship game,

and I know that means they got to beat Georgia, and I know that means probably they got to beat Alabama for the second time, and I get how hard that is, but I'm telling you, man, like I watched, I watched a couple of their games this week. Cause we're talking about them a bunch on the show, their offense. It's, it is, it is, it is shades of Joe Burrow and LSU. It's a different style with the wide splits and sort of the concepts that they do. But I'm telling you, man, every series, it's like, here's a 40 yard play. Here's an 80 yard play. Here's a 20 yard. Like it is,

it's ridiculous how good they are. And Hendon Hooker is that, is that good, man? Like he's, he's again, he's playing himself into that conversation with kind of Stroud and Bryce is maybe, I don't know if he's the number one pick, but, but getting himself into the first round, their defense, a couple of weeks ago, I threw this stat out there, and I'm not sure if you know this, but a couple of weeks ago, they were almost dead last in the country in time of possession,

meaning they just score in a flurry. They score really quickly. What that does is just forces their defense to be on the field more than they want. It's just one of those things. So Brady Quinn and I always talk about this. He's a hater and he always likes to go against me. I'm like, dude, like their defense is on the field for, I think it was 76 plays a game.

They're going to give up yards and they're going to give up points. So sometimes those numbers are skewed and they're not as bad as they seem if you really watch the game and the flow of a game. But I'm on the bandwagon, man. I think this could be their year. Let's stay out west where we're at. That Oregon beat down to UCLA was something else. And I still think UCLA is a good football team.

But seeing that version of Bo Nix, a version that, you know, he's always been a tease. Right. You know, there's a reason he left Auburn when it was all other backups transferring in. You know, like, look at that group. And you're like, you left, and then, I know he had a couple picks against Cal, but he had six total touchdowns, two for 4-12. Is he becoming a thing now?

Is he becoming somebody that, like, you know what? He can play with anybody right now. I do, and I think, you know, he, I think he said, you know, if they play Georgia again, that'd be a different outcome. I don't know if they, I hope so. Certainly wouldn't be that score. Um, he is playing as well as anybody in the country. And sometimes, you know, like, like it, I would like it until when I was in the nfl like arizona didn't work out right for a lot of reasons and i go to houston and i didn't play a lot but for me in my mind i just needed a change of scenery i kind of needed a new coaching style just i just needed a change

and i was like oh damn i can actually play football like i'm actually pretty good like that's how i felt i i don't i don't know if that's Bo Nix personally but like it reminds me of that because it's like sometimes you just you're in a spot SEC's tough um you know obviously with some of the stuff going on there you wonder just a little bit of the dysfunction that's going on in Auburn um and he never really materialized into the into the player that maybe we all thought he would be plus the pressure like his following his dad's footsteps all those things i'm telling you what like watching him on film is it like it makes me smile because he's become such a better passer in the pocket um he's extremely decisive with his throws he can always take off and run and make those types of plays he was always really good at that um

but like a lot of these quarterbacks i'm seeing duggan is an example hooker's an example like they just like they've they've mastered their offenses and they're playing like we always thought they could and his numbers are ridiculous i wish i wish people watched him on the west coast i think you know in the south and all that you think okay george would beat him by 46 points and whatever you don't get a chance to watch oregon that much oregon's really good like they're they're a much different team than they were week one and bo nicks is a big part of that he he should he should 1000 be in the heisman discussion um and he's got a game against utah here coming up in a couple weeks that I think will

hopefully catapult him more into that discussion from a national standpoint, but he's playing, man. He's playing really well. I'm reading Jeff Perlman's Bo Jackson biography. There's a time where Bo Jackson is running around in camp with the Raiders.

There's a million interviews in the book, so I don't remember exactly which Raiders coach it is. But Bo Jackson shows up, and he starts blowing past these all-pro defensive players. And they're kind of like, wait, what the hell's going on? And this coach basically says, you do it long enough, you kind of know where players are in the margins

physically, right? The worst guys, and then there's that top-top. But it's all kind of within the margins. He's like, and then Bo Jackson stepped in the field, and it shatters everything you think you've seen physically in this game. Okay, that was a bit of a hyperbole setup to Caleb Williams for SC, but what are we talking about with him as far as the physical gifts at that position in comparison to what is the norm?

He's special and i i had i had some reservations um and again like like you have to think like he's still so young so like last year and and being at oklahoma right with the expectation the pressure and they didn't have a particularly great year if i think they what they lost two games last year, three games. Well, he had a bumpy spot. Sorry to interrupt, but he had a stretch in the middle of the season. We were like, wait, I thought this guy was the savior. Go ahead. Yeah, he struggled against the two best defenses he had played last year,

and Baylor was one of those. We were at that game. So everyone was kind of like, all right, slow down the hype train and all that. I watched him come to USC. I watched him in spring football. I've been around him a bunch, obviously with, with kind of what we're doing with hollow goats and stuff.

It just got to know him on a different level. Been at fall camp, been, been out to practice this season. And he's, he's really unique and he's unique in the sense where physically he's really built like a running back. Like, like he's, you know, he's built like Jalen hurts.

Like Jalen hurts is a big thick dude who can withstand hits and obviously can run. And he's, he's very, very savvy and shifty and fluid when he runs. Caleb is built like that. I don't know if you've seen him in person, but like his, his, his, his butt, his legs, like he's built like that. I don't know if you've seen him in person, but like his butt, his legs, like he's built like that guy and he's thick. So that's one thing that really stands out in person. Like, dude, this guy, he can move.

He's fast as hell, but like he's built like a running back. And then you start to see the arm, you know, like, all right, like is he Josh Allen, Mahomes? Like those guys are one of ones right but like he's right up there with arm strength and then i'm watching these games this year you know we fly we fly home after the game on saturday so i get to watch a lot of these games on the plane and i'm sitting here watching some of the plays that he makes and just some of the the improv and just some of the like hey sometimes you just got to go run around and got to make a play.

Cause that's kind of what this game is morphed into with some of these, these players playing the quarterback position. And Ryan, like I'm telling you, dude, like he's, he's, he is, he's a number one pick. Like he'll be the number one pick in the draft, not this year, but next, I think he's that good. And the one thing that I'll say that some people don't notice about him. And I talked to Lincoln about it. I talked to him about it. He is like, he is a film rat. He's a gym rat. He wants to be the best he can possibly be. He's super, he's very unique in his own way and his personality but like like i just sat down with him last month um at the interview and he i was just asked him about like la life man like what's it been like you come from

norman and and he's like honestly like and he's doing a lot in nil and he's been a face of that but like he's like honestly i just i wish i was just in the film room like 24 hours a day like i don't really like going out uh like like he's serious. Like he's just one of those guys. So that's a long winded answer, man. But like, it's, it's,

it took a while because I think like you, there were some reservations, like, is he as good as the hype and all that? Like he's phenomenal. And, uh, to me,

he's going to be the number one pick in the draft probably next season. He had a throw in the Utah game where I texted you immediately. And I just went, are you kidding me with this throw? Like just the torque and the rip. And it was like, I don't know if there's another guy in college football who makes that throw. And shit, even when there were 16 seconds left, they were at their own 16 at the end of the half. I'm thinking like he still has a chance to put some points up right now.

And, you know, their issues are certainly not him. You know, there was some stuff in the Fresno game. I was like, is he hanging on the football a little too long is he he's almost spoiled by the offense like yeah i mean whatever he's a younger guy that you know not everybody's going to deal with with uh pressure the same way when you're feeling it the first time but i just think physically he's kind of in his own class that's all he he like like you just said like he can make every throw and some of those throws are just like, holy. There's not a lot of guys that can make that.

He's a lot like Bryce Young in what you just said. There could be 10 seconds on the clock. There could be 30. I just, like in the NFL, it's Brady. It's even Josh Almo. I was like, we got a shot because we got Caleb Williams a quarterback like we know we could like we got a shot regardless of where we're at in the field like he he's one of the rare guys in college football where I just would feel totally comfortable when he steps on

field now to your point like there's holes on this team I mean this team isn't um you know this is first year I think he's done a great job with what he's had, adding pieces, transfer portal. Caleb obviously masks a lot of some of those deficiencies, even as a team on both sides of the ball. But yeah, man, he's a rare, rare talent. Do you give LSU any shot this weekend at home against Bama? Yeah, I do. I mean, I give them a shot.

I don't know what the spread is. I think they might cover. But Jaden Daniels is playing really good, man. They got speed. They got talent. I think they're getting better every single week. I just – I don't know. I just think Alabama is kind of one of those teams that's sure –

as up and down as they've been and, you know, Bryce is taking a beating every week. They don't have the receivers and the guys on the outside like they've had in the past. I just think they're – I just – I like them in this game. I think LSU's got a shot, but I like Bama in this game. I think Bama's going to win their division. I think they'll beat Ole Miss.

I'm not – I love Lane, but I don't think Ole Miss is as good as probably maybe people think they are. I think Bama gets to the title game. Bama right now is minus 13 at LSU on Fanville Sportsbook. I know it's early, but I feel like you guys have so much Big Ten stuff going on, and you've already been out on the road so many times. Are you getting a feel on Michigan-Ohio State? Because when I look at Michigan, I love the weapons.

I can't believe the defensive ends. There wasn't nearly the drop-off that you would expect after losing two first-rounders. Those guys have been terrific. And Ohio State, there's a weird game against Penn State, and Penn State's the one turning the football over. You're looking at the score going, oh, wait, is this one of those classic, oh, Ohio State can't get out of their way? But even really good teams end up having that one week where they lose that game, and Ohio State gets clean out of it. So I don't want to be just dismissive of like, who's been better the last five years, which seems to always be kind of the deciding factor,

how we feel about these more marquee matchups. Are you feeling any kind of lean at all after last year? Yeah, no, it's a good question. The thing it's, we, we clearly we've seen both teams a lot this year.

When you look at Michigan and to your point, they, Michigan is really good, man. Like, michigan could beat anybody in the country i think they're i think they have that capability um and those d linemen like morris oki like those guys are it's hard to say they're as good as what hutchinson and ajaba were but like they're playing that way as far as production and impacting the game. They, they, I mean, I don't think they've really been tested. You know, they got Penn State at home. I think Penn State's a good football team. I don't think Penn State's a great football team. I don't know. You know, the game's at the shoe this year. So I would probably give Ohio State the edge. And I just think that offense and those receivers are that good. And we still have a little bit of questions, I think, about J.J. McCarthy as far as can they throw the ball for 400 yards or 40 times a game to win? They haven't

had to. And they might not have to because Blake Corham is freaking good. And that line is great. They might not have to do that. But if they do, that's the one thing. And they won't get tested until Michigan or until Ohio State. My biggest concern with Ohio State, though, is they can't run the ball. And that's two weeks in a row now where they played Iowa, who Iowa's really good defensively. We know how bad they are offensively. They could not run the ball against Iowa, not even close. They couldn't run the ball against Penn State not not even close um they couldn't run the ball against penn state and michigan ran for 400 yards on them and like that's a that's a consistent

theme i think here for ohio state they didn't run the ball in particular well last year at times oregon the game they lost to early in the season michigan so that is my concern like when you play a team like michigan who can get after the passer who who's got good guys on the back end, if you can't run the football, like you're, you're going to be in trouble. Um, especially with Henderson and my limbs and those guys that that's the concern. And I know that's a concern for them. That's two weeks in a row now. So, you know, that's the something I think to keep a, keep an eye on here is the next couple weeks go by is maybe more of an emphasis on them trying to get back to like being a consistent running football team um which will help them but you know that game's a toss-up like I've seen them both they're both really really good in their own ways final two things here hall of goats you've got the goated hat on. I know you've talked to me about this. Explain what you guys are doing and what the, I don't want to get all technical and go mission statement on you here, but I think that fits. to help service these players and their NIL. So what that means is we're building an arcade-style college football game

where fans, players, someone like you who's a fan of the game can buy these players' digital assets, import them into our video game, and play with them and use them and level them up and buy accessories, all sorts of things them into our video game and play with them and use them and level them up and um you know buy buy accessories all sorts of things um you remember like nfl blitz and nfl street like nba jam right like cool fun arcade style games like so think of that um for holodeck so we wanted to create a platform and a game where these players one can make can make money off their NIL, but they can also own their own assets and they can control those and they can build a kind of brand off of that.

And based on the blockchain technology that we've built, it allows them to do that. So it's cool, man. Like, it's a lot of fun. We're signing some pretty top tier talent in college football, some legendary players. And it's, and it's a great, it's going to be a great way for fan bases and just gamers to connect with their favorite players and play with them and, uh, have fun doing it. How's Cole doing? He's crushing. He's crushing, man. He,

uh, it's so funny, man. It's like, it, one, he just turned 16. Right.

So, you know, just dealing with 16 year olds, but like the whole kind of recruiting process is like starting to start and coaches are reaching out and like the seven on seven club team. Like, it's just like, and again, he's got hoops coming up too after the football season, but like NIL, people are knocking on my door. Like, it's just, it's wild. And you know,

you know him a little bit and obviously, know me on a personal level like it's just it's really interesting to like take my uh goaded hat off take my nil hat off take my college football you know job hat off and just be a dad and like be consumed and like trying to do what's best for him. But he had a great year, man. Freshmen, their freshman team was ridiculous. They went undefeated. He had a great year. He backed up on varsity all season long, so he got a lot of burn on varsity in modern day,

which is the number one team in the country through his first touchdown pass a couple weeks ago. He's doing great. He's working hard. He loves it. It's special, man. It's going to be a fun i tell everyone it's gonna be a fun couple years here coming up to to kind of watch him grow into i think what what he can become it could be to be really cool okay so the recruiting part of this starts this is an incredible dynamic because not only are you doing

the nil stuff you went through it a different era. I mean, nobody can possibly try to bullshit you at this stage, right? Do they even bother? That's the good thing is, yeah, exactly. So like, I've had the conversation

literally in my mind a thousand times. Like, people have already started. I said, listen, this isn't happening now until he starts playing and he starts really kind of earning that right.

You know, look, I want him like as weird as it is to say you can make money in California high school. Go for it. Like I'm not going to hold you back from that. But, you know, do it the right way and he can take care of his teammates and do some cool stuff. And and obviously I'm in it. So I know. But I think that's the advantage that we'll have as a family is, is I just, I know what's going on. I, I, I work in the space. I see from my side, I see from marketing people's side.

I see the agent side. I, I see, I know coaches. I mean, I know, I know a lot of people in this world and it's college football world. So yeah, it'd be pretty funny to see if someone tries to sneak something past me. Plus, my wife literally is an attorney who works in the NIL space. So, yeah, message for all those people. Don't try to take advantage of the line. You know what I'm saying?

So, does that mean that Cole, I mean, I don't know how much you want to share. I'm just fascinated by the topic. So, I mean, you go. But I assume he's been offered money already through a high school NIL. I mean, there's, there's obviously not only his talent, it's the name, you know, he's a little, he's still a kid, you know, like in this news, like, yeah, how much money do you think I can make? And like, I'm like, whoa, whoa, whoa, listen, focus on, focus on school, focus on sports, that'll take care of itself. And like, that's literally the tone that I sell them because I don't want, that's, this

is the part of the NIL where you want that, you don't want them focusing on that kind of stuff he's naive he's young um so i said whoa no like like who knows dude like you just focus on your stuff it'll all take care of itself but then i get you know i get because like i you know i do marketing myself i do i speak to companies do all these things and like i i got one i think not too long ago like hey we got 10 grand right i've got 10 grand they want to do like this cool um like this clothing line maybe like a father-son photo shoot and like i'm like one i i don't want any part of this personally this is his deal and two we'll pass but thank you like like that's it and i and i don't know if he'll end up watching this,

but I don't really tell him a lot of it because he doesn't need to know. It'll happen. So shielding him from it as long as possible is what we want to do just because there will come a time and place. But it is fascinating, man. And I find myself asking a lot of advice to dads who are going through it, to coaches who are

coaching it. When I'm on the road, because people know him, right? He's a recruit. He's going to be a big-time recruit. So they always ask me, how are you dealing with that as a dad? I'm like, honestly, any advice you can give me, because this is going to get, it's going to get wild. And as you said, the name, obviously, but, but being at modern day, who's won, you know, they're, they're maybe going to win a third national championship in a row.

Like he's going to be the quarterback of that team in the next couple of years. So there's the exposure and all those things. So he handles it really well. He really does. He's really, you know, his personality, he's really kind of laid back. He's a lot like I was kind of laid back, just kind of goes with the flow, like kind of just like goes out there and balls and then goes home.

You know, like he doesn't like, it doesn't, he's a kid. Yeah. And we're not going to let it affect him. No, I,

I obviously really like him. Um, I, all my interactions. He's funny, man. He, he,

he's, he, he's really funny. Like he can't, like he sees all his boys, like offers come in. He's funny, man. He's really funny. He can't... He sees all his boys' offers come in. He's like, come on, man. We got to do this. We got to do this. We got to get these offers. Buddy, you're a

freshman. He's just new to it all. He's excited, which I love. He's excited about it, which is a great thing. Wow. I'm really happy for you, man. I can't wait to see where this all goes. I'm really happy for you, man. I can't wait to see where this all goes. Thanks, dude. Appreciate you, man.

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And one of the co-creators, Terrence Winter. Incredible resume. Soprano season two to the finish of the sixth season. Creator of Boardwalk empire and an oscar nomination for the screenplay for wolf of wall street uh huge fan man this is really exciting thanks for doing this today same here my pleasure happy to be here so i always like to ask any creators you know you're working with taylor sheridan who we all know his resume as well the

the origin of the tulsa king story how did this this all start? For me, it started in, I think, mid-2021. I got a call that Taylor had written a pilot pretty quickly, apparently like over three days. He had this idea for Sylvester Stallone, basically about an aging mobster who sort of gets sent to the middle of nowhere, which in his original version was Kansas City. A really fun idea. They told me about it. And they said, you know, obviously, Taylor being so incredibly busy, can't do anything with this, but he wants you to take a look at it. If you're interested in joining up and taking this over, he would love to have you. So, you know, basically, it was like, great, where do I sign? You know, this sounds great. And especially the idea of working with Stallone. So I read the pilot. It was always terrific. I had some ideas of my own, you know,

some changes I wanted to make. You know, we added the backstory, you know, originally Stallone's character hadn't been in jail when you see the show now. He's just getting out of prison after 25 years. I changed the location from Kansas City to Tulsa, Oklahoma, as it felt much more remote to me, you know, made those changes. And we were basically off and running. So I signed on and we just sort of took it. It was actually a really easy process. I had literally one conversation with Taylor over Zoom. He said, great, this is your baby. Take it and run with it. I have visitation rights and go and go and do your thing. And that's that's what we did. There's a lot of creative trust there because I imagine you've had many

thousands and thousands of hours by yourself, creating your own little babies and then to then shift as you have, whether it being in rooms and other shows, how, how does that dynamic change the writing? You know, well, this was, you know, because I had such autonomy, you know, everything except the original idea was sort of just given over to me. So take this premise, which I thought was a brilliant one, and then go with it. I think part of the genius of Taylor's creation here was to take two tried and true genres and just smash them together into a new thing.

One of the big challenges in writing in the gangster genre is trying to find a fresh way in. Because generally stuff has already been done. But taking a mobster and dropping them into cowboy country, I thought was really interesting. Also for me, too, the idea that taking a guy in the twilight of his years, who's really got a limited amount of time left and very limited conflict resolution skills and say, OK, here, now go, go here and make a living. It was really interesting to me. and say, okay, here, now go, go here and make a living. It was really interesting to me. You know, he's trying to rectify the sins of his past and sort of rebuild a new life

and build a new crew out of this group of people that may as well be Martians to him. So it was really, really fun. It was a really interesting, you know, playground. But yeah, it was easy. Again, aside from the idea that, you know, it wasn't my original premise. I mean, the premise itself was great.

And I was like, I can take this and have a ball. It's a lot of fun. And I don't mean to be simplistic about the description of it, but I watched the pilot last night. It's just fun. It's just fun to see Stallone with these beats and in this world in a setting that isn't natural for these kinds of stories. And I'm wondering when you write the character versus writing for somebody like Stallone, where there's so much buy-in. As soon as he's on the screen, the audience is like, okay, all right, I get it. How does that work when you're writing for somebody you haven't cast yet in your head, as opposed to this scenario

where you're like, okay, now I'm writing for Stallone? Well, it makes it easier for me. I know some writers don't like to have an actor in mind, but for me, I knew Leonardo DiCaprio was going to be Jordan Belfort, and that was so helpful in writing the character. And also to have an actor in mind but for me like you know i i knew leonardo caprio was going to be jordan belford and that was that was so helpful in writing the character and also to have sly's voice in my head for you know the last you know since 1976 really was helpful and also you know just imagining him you know i also knew a little more about him personally like i know how smart he is i know how funny he is uh i You know, he obviously brings this inherent charm with him. You know, you just immediately like the guy. So that all helped inform the writing. Like I knew like this character, for example, can kind of get away with not murder exactly, but kind of get away with anything.

And you're kind of on his side as long as he's not, you know, a complete asshole or herding kittens. You know, you're kind of on board with this guy, particularly once you know the backstory. He's been he's just got out of jail. He's kind of been, you know, screwed over and, you know, you're really rooting for him. So having that voice and that idea of who he was in my head was really easy, made the writing process a lot easier. And I was really excited to this is really, I think, you know, one of the very few times you're going to see him, you know, really do comedy and be sarcastic and funny and have monologues, you know, he doesn't get a lot. I think that was very appealing to him too, is that he actually gets to, you know, rant a little bit, you know, which you don't

really get to see in a lot of his other movies. I want to back up because I like your story, NYU St. John's to the writer's room of Flipper. How does that happen? That was a long, circuitous route. I grew up in Brooklyn. I didn't know what I wanted to do except be rich. And I grew up in a fairly blue-collar neighborhood. I went to an automotive high school called Grady, William E. Grady Vocational Technical High School. Graduated from there. I was in the deli business, kind of finagled my way into NYU, figured I needed to get an education. And then, you know, again, my big ambition was, you know, a good job means a job where

you make a lot of money. The only two jobs I knew that you could make a lot of money were doctor and lawyer. That was the extent of my worldview. So I said, I'll go to law school. I had in the back of my mind, I had a high school teacher who told me I was a good writer. And I kind of parked that away. But yeah, the idea of being a writer for a living, particularly a writer in Hollywood, was just like, what? If I would have told my friends that, they would have thrown me in the creek and broke. I was like, really? That's something other people do. So I went to law school, hated every minute of it, graduated,

passed the New York Bar. i was the worst lawyer ever because i just did not care uh and i was somewhere you know in my late 20s when i finally just had this crisis of not wanting to get out of bed and go to work in the morning i finally had to face the fact okay what is it you actually want to do and the deep dark secret was i wanted to be a tv sitcom writer and once i was able to say that out loud, my whole life changed. And of course, everybody thought I lost my mind. All my friends in Brooklyn were like, wait a minute. Automotive high school, first one in your family to go to college, law school, New York

Bar, you're in a major Manhattan law firm. You're going to quit that and move to L.A. where you've never been to write scripts and you've never written a script before. And I said, exactly. That's my point. Were you funny? I thought I was. Yeah. You know, and I wasn't in your group. You know, I was funny with my friends in front of my family. It's interesting. And you remember Billy Crystal's movie, Mr. Saturday Night. And he talks about the idea of having like I think it's what he calls a

living room balls or actual balls. You have balls in front of your friends and you're funny. Go do that on a stage in front of an audience. So I sort of put myself to that test. I said, I think I can do this for a living. But the quickest way to find out if you're actually funny is go on stage and perform. So I did stand up for a couple of months in the very early 90s in New York, you know, Catch a Rising Star, the comic strip, wrote my own material and actually did OK. So it's like, OK, you just proved it. You can do this. And I had no interest in being a standup. It's funny. I just had this conversation with Colin Quinn recently. He was a friend and, you know, I was saying to him, like the challenge, I said, when you do it, there is no sound in the world louder than people not laughing. It's like getting punched in the face. You know, you go out there, you think, oh, this is going to

kill and nothing, crickets. And then they'll laugh at something you didn't even think was a joke. It was just sort of a transition to another joke. And it can make you real. But I was like, great, I found out what I needed to know. I can write material that people will laugh at. And if other people perform it, I should do OK. So that gave me the confidence to head out to L.A. and I just sort of started writing. Flipper came about when I started actually getting work. My standards for taking a job were really high. You had to ask me, do you want this job? And I said, yep, absolutely. I didn't care what it was. I couldn't believe people were paying me to write. I still can't, you know, in some ways. I still don't feel like this is a legit job, you know. So it's something I would

do anyway and something I love doing. So I'm one of those really lucky people who just sort of makes a living at doing what they love. So I didn't chart a career path or, you know, think, oh, well, this won't look good on my resume. Again, if you said, do you want to write this? I said, yeah. The problem with Flipper particularly is that there are maybe 10 stories in the world that organically involve a dolphin. And when you have an order for 24 episodes, once you find those 10 stories, you've got 14 to go. That writer's room is really a dark place. It was really challenging. And I don't know anything about dolphins and marine biology or animals in general. I, again, grew up in Brooklyn. Pigeons and police horses are about the extent of it. So fast forward a couple couple of years and I've, I've seen, you know, going back through some older interviews that you've done, you know,

talking about seeing the Sopranos pilot and then freaking out because it reminded you home and all the people you've grown up with take us through that part and actually getting on the show, you know, which is, which is pretty amazing that leap. Yeah, it was, it was a huge leap. I saw the pilot. I literally think I was trembling. It was, it was so good and so unbelievably real. I felt like I knew these people. And, you know, I grew up in a neighborhood in Brooklyn that, you know, had a mob presence. I actually worked in a butcher shop as a teenager, a butcher shop.

That was a chain of butcher shops. It was owned by Paul Castellano, uh, called CNS meat market, Castellano and sons. And a little earlier, a little later as a teenager, I worked in a illegal card game run by a guy named Roy DeMayo. If you ever heard the book, heard of the book murder machine, I worked, you know, for these guys. So I, you know, by osmosis, I sort of understood that world knew how these guys operate. So when I saw the Sopranos was like, I called my agent immediately. So you got to get me on the show. My second call is to a guy named Frank Rizzulli, who was one of the original writers on the show, who gave me my first job in this business or in a show he co-created called The Great Defender. I called Frankie. I said, have you seen this thing? He said,

yeah, I'm actually meeting with David Chase on Friday. So you got to get me in there with you. As it turned out, Frankie was the last guy David hired for season one. And then the doors closed. So I was sort of shut out, but sort of watching from the sidelines. And Frankie was telling me about the writer's room. And I was actually editing some of his work. So I was kind of writing on Sopranos in the first season, even though David didn't know it. But I was on a show called The PJs at the time, created by Larry Wilmore and Steve Tompkins.

It was this Eddie Murphy claymation show that was really funny. So I was on The PJs. Pranos was happening. And season one finished and turned out, you know, some of the original writers didn't work out. And David was open to accepting new writers. So I said, great, this is my shot. And I had written a movie, my first movie script called Brooklyn Rules, which ultimately got made. But I had a kind of a mob element to it. I said, oh, this is the perfect writing sample. So David read it.

And then Frankie called me, said David hates it. I was like, you're kidding me. I said, no, it's up. But to his credit and Frankie, you know, his dear friend said to David, you know what? Fuck that script. I'm telling you, this guy can write the show. And David said, all right, if you're vouching for this guy, fine, I'll give him a shot. And he gave me a shot. And I wrote what became an episode in season two called Big Girls Don't Cry. It was sort of a test episode. And this was the scariest thing that ever happened to me. David had called me up and made me an offer to come on staff of the show. But I had been working at that point for like six or seven years.

And I was at the co-producer level, which is sort of a, you know, as in the steps up the, up the food chain. And I'd been at the co-producer level for many years at that point. Cause I kept bouncing back between comedies and dramas. So every time I would move, I would always make a lateral move. So David said, I want to offer you a job on the show. And he actually offered me a demotion from the co-producer thing. And I said, I, I can't take this. I'm sorry. And, and he said, huh? What? Okay. Um, I said, I need to at least come in at the level I'm in. And he said, all right, let me, let me think about it. Let me call you back. And I hung up the phone and I was just like, I just turned down a job on the Sopranos. And I, I, my head almost exploded. I, I turned out it turned out to be

exactly the right thing to say to Dave he totally got it he's like I totally understand I said I can't look myself in the mirror in the morning if I don't if I take a demotion

and but it was the longest 15 minutes of my life and then obviously I got the job and my world changed and my life changed I mean that

that show just opened every conceivable door for me like a lot of people one of my favorite i don't know if it's my favorite it might be my favorite pine barrens your episode one of the 25 that you wrote shimmy directed it i i like how when a show finally it's like okay we're good you guys are good at this it's an awesome show and there's like well now what we can do you know because if you were to say all right for 45 minutes of this episode paulie and chris are gonna be in the woods right you might feel like yeah and then what else happens

it came at the right time i think you know the show had already settled in again as you say you know we already knew everybody and we were ongoing that episode actually originated with tim van patton who was one of our amazing directors in the show uh timmy came into the writer's room one day and i was sitting there with another writer bouncing around stories. And he said, I have an idea, but it's really stupid. I said, what? Can't be any dumber than what we're talking about.

And he said, well, it's Pauline and Christopher. He had a dream. Pauline and Christopher go into the woods to whack a guy and then they get lost. I said, that's fucking great. Tell David. And he was too shy. I said, no, I don't want to.

I said, I'm going in there right now. I'm telling him. So I knocked on David's door. I said, you got to hear the story. So I told him the story. And David said, great, let's do it. You know, but it was too late in season two. He goes, we'll do it next year. And then it became, I think, the 10th episode or ninth episode of season three. And Steve was slated to direct whatever episode 10 was going to be. And it just turned out to be Pine Barrens. And that's how I met Steve. And then of course, years later, you know, worked with them on Boardwalk Empire and became good friends. I guess I think, you know, Christopher, you know, Michael Imperioli, he's my favorite character, like, again,

like a lot of people, uh, because he's, he's struggling with all these different things and you're always rooting for him because, you know, on my second watch through, and again, this isn't like some big surprise. I was like, man, these guys are terrible. Like Tony's not, I mean, I know this isn't breaking news that Tony Soprano wasn't a good guy, but like all of the beats. And I think that's what I liked about something you had said. And especially at the time that we got the show is that you realize this wasn't some moral 80 show. We tied it all up in a bow at minute 22 and we all went home with some punky Brewster lesson.

You know what I mean? That's what TV had been for far too long, unfortunately. Yeah. And this was everybody kind of does the far too long, unfortunately. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And this was, everybody kind of does the wrong thing all the time. Yeah, it was very unsettling, you know, a lot of times.

You know, David said, you know, at one time, David Chase said, you know, the function of network TV is to make you feel like everything's okay and you should buy this product. And that was the opposite of what we were doing.

A lot of times you came away thinking everything is not okay. Sometimes the bad guys win, justice doesn't prevail, scumbags, you know, succeed and good people, you know, get screwed over, you know, and it leaves you like really kind of, you know, kind of shaken and thinking about things that, you know, somebody once said, I don't know who to attribute this to, but they said, art, art, ask questions, it doesn't give answers. And, you know, that's what we were kind of aspiring to, this to, they said, art, art, uh, ask questions that doesn't give answers. And, you know, that's what we were kind of aspiring to, you know, a little walking away, you know, you love that experience.

You walk away from a movie and you go, God, what do you think that meant? You know, where do you think those characters are now? It's so rare that you have that experience that we, we kind of aspire to give that experience to the audience. Do you think executives have far less trust in the audience than the writers? Absolutely. Yeah. It's, it's a constant debate I have, uh, you know, with, with creative execs, you know, at every studio I've ever worked in is like, please give the audience a little more credit. The good, you know, there, you know, there's nobody's going to get this. There's

somebody who's going to get it. And, you know, this is written for those people, you know, please stop talking down. You know, the only, the audience is for those people, you know, please stop talking down. You know, the audience is a lot smarter, a lot more savvy than you think. I mean, I guess they the instinct is to want to appeal to the the biggest group. But then that's the lowest common denominator. And you're you're just constantly dumbing things down to make it where everybody can understand everything. And, you know, that's just not satisfying. I mean, I try to, I go into it assuming the audience has a certain knowledge of the world and a knowledge of history and

context and pop culture and various things. And these are the things too, I mean, you know, there's been a million times I've been watching things like, you know, whether it's Mad Men or Deadwood, and there's these weird references that I'll just file away and I'll Google it later and go, oh, that was interesting. Or I don't have to understand exactly what they're saying. You know, you sort of there's context clues or you basically infer from the conversation what's happening and it's fine. You still get it, you know, and it works, you know, well. But, yeah, I really am always determined to try to write up instead of writing down. In a way too, I also don't necessarily blame the executives considering that

their life is made up of probably like 90% bad ideas. Absolutely. So back to Chris, the line that I've always loved, I forget exactly which episode when he's talking about finally getting out, he's like, all right, maybe I can get out. And it's like in the middle, I mean, he's still with Adriana and he's like about you know finally getting out he's like all right maybe i can get out it's like in the middle i mean he's still with adriana and he's like i can finally write my memoirs and it's just it's like you know all these things you're like at times you know when people could talk about like sometimes the industry doesn't like when some form of television or film will take on hollywood right and you guys had a blast with it. I mean, you carried it out forever

where he's this pursuit. He's trying to figure out how to write. He's trying to do all these different things. He's got the awful slasher movie and you kept staying to it. And I think in other shows

would have been like, what are they doing with this? Right. And it always worked because there was always like this hope that Christopher could find his way out

and accomplish these things that he had that were so foreign from what he was involved with. It's very real, too. I mean, look at the proliferation of mob podcasts from guys who are actually in the mob and mob books and TV shows. And you get mobsters who are, you know, guys who are the real deal, who are exec producers on movies and consultants. So there's, you know, there's always been a real tie in between the real guys and entertainment. And it is entertaining. And look, the gangster film has been around since the very first film, The Great Train Robbery is basically arguably a gangster film. And it's just endlessly fascinating. So who better to tell those stories or work with the people who tell stories than the guys who live that life.

So it was a very, you know, David hit on something, you know, making Christopher an aspiring screenwriter, you know, was really prescient. And then we just had so much fun, you know, just skewering the business and writing in general, specifically being a writer and the award shows and the Writers Guild and, you know, all of that stuff. It was just great and

i think the audience liked it um i'm pretty sure they did yeah i always did and you know this is going to kind of transition to something else but like one of my favorite movie scenes in recent memories once upon a time in hollywood where dicaprio has to figure out how to play a bad actor and then kind of get back to like an actor who's pretty good and reminding himself how good he is but he still isn't peak leo dicaprio right he's playing these lanes yeah all in the same movie man and you know like yeah i'm watching go ahead go ahead that's no that's mind-blowing to me i mean any you know it's anybody who thinks acting is easy hasn't acted uh you know when i you know those like people oh yeah what are you gonna do stand up Anybody who thinks acting is easy hasn't acted.

You know, those people, oh, yeah, what are you going to do? Stand up there. What's my motivation? I go, you clearly have never tried to do this. It is so unbelievably fucking hard. And to see somebody who does it at that level or who can completely divorce themselves from the idea that you are surrounded by 80 people pointing cameras and lights at you and then just just behave normally or or like you're alone uh and just be fearless and you know you i was lucky enough to you know to stand next to a jim gandolfini or or steve is semi or bobby kind of or leo and watch that process it's just unbelievable and then to act like act like you can't do it it's like you just described, is just a whole other level of talent.

And I've been doing this a long time, but I'm still blown away when I see how people can do that. Because I certainly can't. Right. And that's Michael. Not even remotely. When he joins the acting classes that he gets as a gift and he hits it out of the park. And in a way, you're like, he's doing two different things in the same episode and i just i'm so incredibly impressed it's rare to see it happen because so many people i think would screw it up but it just kind of speaks to his talent and it was a really well done setup yeah okay

i know this is probably annoying for you and talking about the end i know that david chase likes talking about it far less than you do. So I'll just ask you, because this is what I've always thought was funny about the end. When I was in the hotel room, I was working at ESPN. I'd stay in this hotel across the street. I was like, I'm not doing anything. And then everybody was like, is something wrong? Yeah.

And my first feeling was I was let down, right? Right. Because I wanted this plane to land in some dramatic way. Sure, Sure. But as you can attest to this, this magical landing of a plan that we all want is the audience is like, it just doesn't, there's most even great shows. And in a way we were like, ah,

it's just hard. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So I guess I was disappointed from that standpoint, but hell, I mean, talk about something working now when you think back to it,

that people are still so obsessed with it. And it feels like once a year especially if you give us time and access to share those thoughts we will come up with some bullshit where they're that same we all got whacked theory like pops up every 18 months as if it's it's fact um what can you tell us about the lead up to the end and then ultimately i know you've shared this before about what it actually was because it's far more simple and i think it's just funny yeah i mean well you know i mean at first i think and you know as david himself has said many times he goes i'm just trying to do something different i'm trying to entertain you guys and trying to do something that you didn't expect that you haven't seen before that was the motivation um i think probably

a year before the ending he came in i was sitting in the writer's room with Matt Weiner and David walked in and said, I think I got the ending. And and he pitched it to he said, I think I just want to cut to black in the middle of the scene. And Matt and I both were like, wow, that's really ballsy and interesting. And then a couple of days later, he came in and said, I also have this song. I think I think it's going to be Don't Stop Believing. But you just heard it on the radio. You know, it's something really interesting and really poignant about that. So no idea how it was going to ultimately factor in.

But ultimately, that's where he went, of course. And for me, I was like, you know, again, when people criticize it, I always go, what did you think you wanted to see? Did you want to see Tony get killed? No, no, no. Of course, you want to see the whole family? No, of course not.

But you wanted to see, what, just some big bloodbath? No, I don't know. I said, well, then you didn't have to see that then. you got whatever it is. And for me, for ice cream with your family is going to be looking over your shoulder for the rest of your life. Who's that guy? Why is that guy looking at me? You know, it's that's, that's what he has wrought. And again, whether it happened that night or another night or never, we don't know and we don't need to know. So for me, it was, it was, I thought it worked great. And then of course, I watched it with my family in Brooklyn, my extended family, and they all flipped out. I literally had to just, I said, bye everybody.

It just, what the fuck was that? I was like, I gotta go. I'll talk to you later. But, uh, yeah, I mean, I think, I think as the years have gone on, people have come to, if not understand it or like it, certainly accept it and deal with it and certainly not at the fever pitch levels of hatred they were when it happened. It's a win because it's 15 years later, we're still talking about it.

I appreciate it. Don't tell me the endings of five other shows that you remember. Generally, they're disappointing, as you said. I think it's just hard to say goodbye to something you like so it's never really completely satisfying right and the the answer is the simple one right just the anxiety of the moment yeah that's it yeah yeah i think so okay wolf of wall street a couple things on that and then we'll wrap with you uh you said you i know you

knew it was for leo right so you knew you were writing this for leo i read the book i mean the first script you'd be like okay this would be a thousand pages yeah yeah how did you define what like the three acts like how did you define the best way to put this together which again and i think is one of the best scripts ever thank you very much um you know it was really just a you know as you said if i would have written that entire book it would have been you know a 10 hour movie uh i had to find that through line you know the basically the the rise and fall and slight rise again of jordan belford you know in the most economical way possible so uh you know certain amounts a couple of scenes were combined, a couple of characters were combined.

And it's basically really just showing, you know, the beginnings, the rise, and then the crisis and the ultimate destruction of this guy. You know, while, you know, picking, you know, the main thrust of the story, the love story, you know, And, you know, the main thrust of the story, the love story, you know, is him and Margot Robbie's character and the betrayal with him and Jonah Hill. And ultimately the, you know, the idea that this is a kid who, you know, is an ambitious kid from Queens who, you know, wanted to be successful and kept drawing lines for himself in the sand. And before he knew it, he was over his head in water and didn't know how he got there. So it's just really going through the book, you know, a bunch of times and circling things. One of the things I do, especially when I adapt something, I'll go through a book and I'll go, all right, well, this is a movie moment. This has to be in the movie. Oh, and this is the Quaalude.

That has to be in the movie. I ended up circling the entire book. I was like, now what do I do? I mean, the whole thing is a movie moment. So I got to go, OK, I got to pick and choose the best of the best. So it's funny. I read that my friend, Alexandra Milshan, who's a producer, sent me the galleys of that book. And she told me, you know, I got to get, it's not published. This guy, he just got out of jail. He worked on Wall Street. Will you read it? And I was like, yeah, yeah, yeah. And I thought I'm going to read 20 pages and politely pass.

I read the entire thing in one sitting. And I called her up. I said, I'm in, what do you want to do? And we ended up going. A couple of days later, we met with Leo's company and Brad Pitt's company, and I think Mark Wahlberg. And then we were off to the races. Ultimately, obviously, went to Leo and Marty and could not have been happier about that. What makes Leo so good that the rest of us don't understand, that someone on your side of things understands that we don't? that the rest of us don't understand that someone on your side of things understands that we don't. You know,

again, I fearlessness again. I mean, he is just willing to go to places as an actor. I think that, you know, and just make it look so easy that I think it, you know,

it looks easy to us, but it's really, really difficult. He's incredibly likable. And in reality too, he's like one of the nicest guys, you know, you'll ever meet.

He's funny as shit. He's, he's just sort of, you know, he's very de of the nicest guys you know you'll ever meet uh he's funny as shit uh he's he's just sort of you know he's very deceptive you know he has like an everyman quality and yet he's clearly a movie star but he's sort of you know he's not a movie star where you go like oh he's he's i i can't relate to this guy he just he's very relatable and just really likable and funny and you know all those things so he just he's just you know he's he's the full package he's like one of those actors i always talk about like steve mcqueen or gene hackman where you want to put him in a you want to freeze them at a certain age and go i wish i could have 50 year old gene hackman available to play this role or that role and

leo is one of those guys just i'll just freeze him right now and just keep him around forever and he could just cast him in anything he's amazing i heard a story and i'm not going to show the names but there is a writer who wrote a pilot right for tv show and then the director is a well-known director and the writer was his first pilot and it was like unbelievable gut made making it a big time show making it a big time show and he's on set and they shoot a scene and he's like hey that's not that's not what i wrote and so the director stops the whole shoot and goes hey everybody this is this is his first time on set he wrote the pilot and so everybody give him a round of applause and everybody claps he's like now shut the fuck up because there's this this handoff moment where you're like and and every writer's different yeah i imagine with martin scorsese

it's a little different because like hey here's the script because you weren't on set for this movie what is that like knowing i've spent all my time on this it's nominated for award like we knew this was going to be a big deal but i imagine with martin it's a little bit different because you're like hey i trust you guys but it's still you know so much time and being handed off and hoping it still matches your vision for it well you know it's different i mean that you know there's a way to do what you just described i don't know who that director and writer was there's a way to do that as that director that's that's much kinder and gentler and and and much more productive for me the best relate the relationship between the writer and director is like architect and builder and you know i always go if you're the builder and you're

working off these plans it's really good idea to keep in contact with the architect particularly if you want to start moving shit around like hey what let's what is this support being doing here let's move this and oh fucking house will collapse so it's pretty good you know if you have the screenwriter there to go hey i'm thinking of losing this scene can you just walk me through this and this is what martin scorsese will do and you know somebody at that level the greatest director you know in american cinema will call you and say can you walk me through what this scene is doing here and i'll say yeah that scene sets up the thing later oh okay Do you think we need this or can we do this or can we combine that? So if,

if Martin Scorsese is comfortable enough to include the writer in on his process, I think, you know, that's, I, that would be my advice for any director. It's probably, then we're not your enemy, you know, and I get it, you know, you know, writers are very fond of saying, you know, the score, you know, it all begins with the script. And I always say, yeah, it doesn't end there though. Then you get the director and the whole crew. So when, you know, you are very fond of saying, you know, the story, you know, it all begins with the script. And I always say, yeah, it doesn't end there, though. Then you get the director and the whole crew. So when you see those credits at the end, all those people had a hand in this.

And obviously the director is the most important one. But it's really, I think, critical to have that relationship where you're actually. And, you know, and as a writer, you should be able to point to any line in any script I wrote and say, why these words and not that word? And I can tell you why I chose to write it that way. And if I can't, then I didn't do my job properly. And you're right. You shouldn't pay attention. But I can justify every choice I make. And when it's done correctly, I think with anything, and the same thing building a house, and the architect should be able to tell you the same thing. So, you know, that said, then, you know, the director now has to bring this to life and add his or her vision to it. And sometimes, you know, they're certainly obviously in the case of Martin Scorsese, where he loves to let actors ad lib and play around. And sometimes that's where the magic is. When you get actors who can do it well, you know, Leo and Jonah Hill, for example, just let him rip. And, you know, you end up as the writer looking better for it because at the end of some of the greatest lines from Wolf of Wall Street that are attributed to me are not mine. I think that was Jonah Hill.

That was Matthew McConaughey. That was Leo. I'll gladly take the credit. And I was very happy with the script I wrote. But these guys, it was, you know, I had an assist from the greatest actors and ad libbers and the greatest director. And in a perfect world, that's how it works. But it's a group effort.

Last thing, and we'll finish here again. Tulsa King, November 13th, Paramount Plus, where you can stream it. I watched the pilot, and it felt like going through your resume and reminding myself of all the different parts of it. And it feels full circle that you've got these comedic beats, and you got this dramatic thing and i know people have argued about sopranos oh it's actually a comedy and all this time like i don't i don't yeah i don't know that seems a little aggressive it feels like tulsa king's a combination of all these things you've been working on yeah absolutely i mean it it definitely threads the needle between dark comedy and drama there's moments moments of great poignancy. There's action. There's flat out, you know, I wouldn't say slapstick, but there's some moments where, you know, the kind of Three Stooges violence that makes you laugh and there's some really real jeopardy. stuff I like to do and the stuff I think I did well. You know, I obviously love the mob genre.

And, you know, again, the idea of getting to work with Stallone was just for me the biggest thing. I mean, I've been a fan of his since I can remember. The idea of getting to, you know, to be on set and collaborate with him was amazing. He, you know, the great thing about him is you don't just get an actor, you get a writer, a director, a producer, an editor, a guy who's been doing this at the highest level for 50 years, who completely gets the entire process, who also happens to be really cool, really smart, really funny, and a real gentleman, exactly the guy you hope he is going to be and that he turns out to be. You know, it's sort of, you know, they always say, don't meet your heroes. And, you know, this is one, you can meet this guy because he's exactly what you hope.

And we had such a good time doing it. And it was just such a pleasure to get to know him and work with him. And I'm really excited about the show. Terrence Winter, thank you. Thank you so much. Great meeting you. Okay, the pick contest continues. How'd you do last week, Kyle? well so i'm i'm moving off of

the the bedroom poster parlay for now i just i need to get something on the board again so i'm gonna i lost we'll just put it that way i lost uh the the raiders didn't score a single point i had them scoring 27 i think or 24 and winning and they lost and got shut out so uh 27, I think, or 24 and winning and they lost and got shut out. So, uh, uh, but maybe that's what I get for not picking a, um, a quarterback as my, the anchor of my, uh, bedroom poster parlay. That was Chandler Jones. That was a legacy pick my fault. Um, so I'll, I'll go something else just to get us on the board. Um, I just have to get in the, in the, in the red or the black, sorry. That's funny. I didn't know what to say. And this is about gambling.

It's going to be, I just want the under 49 and a half in Lions and Packers. I just want the under. I was going to do Lions plus three and a half, but I really want to win this one. So I'm going under 49 and a half for Packers and Lions. That should hit. Okay. All right. Yeah, that should hit, man.

That should hit. Packers Alliance. That should hit. All right. Yeah, that should hit, man. That should hit. We've decided for Cerruti that for however many of these he misses, he just will have to bet that many games. So if he misses like seven, then he just has to pick seven games

and then he's caught up. I can't wait till he has to guess a whole week. Yeah, I think it's fair. I mean, I don't, and honestly, I don't feel like it's any kind of punishment or anything like that. It's just a way to get back into it. Last week, finally got off the losing streak. Got a win. Cranking back to 500 here. Let's see here. Last week, we gave out Minnesota to cover at home against the Cardinals.

A lot of people liked the Cardinals last week. This week, no one likes the Cardinals. We will give them out at minus one and a half at home against Seattle. 78% of the public betting on Seattle. So there you go. Those are our picks. Also, for those asking about worst take, Cerruti really is our worst take spirit animal

and we just bounced it. We just bounced it for the week. So we really is our worst take spirit animal. And we just bounced it. We just bounced it for the week. So we'll bring it back next week. There was a million submissions. A lot of opportunity out there for the podium, potentially. But some of them were a little heavy that I don't know that I wanted them to carry them through the entire podium season. I think we talked

about Kyrie in three different segments. And then some of the takes that were off of the Kyrie stuff. So we're just going to, they're all eliminated. They're ineligible for the podium. We'll be back with it on Wednesday of next week. It's just that Cerruti really gets our gears going for it.

So there you go. And those are the picks. You want details? Bye. I drive a Ferrari 355 Cabriolet. What's up? I have a ridiculous house in the South Fork. I have every toy you could possibly imagine.

And best of all, kids, I am liquid. So now you know what's possible. Let me tell you what's required. Life advice. Life advice. The email address is lifeadvicerr at gmail.com. Want to start it off with an awkward encounter with Chris Long. We always enjoy these.

Send us your awkward Chris Long encounters. Actually, don't. You don't have to, but we got one here. I'm at game five of the World Series and just met Chris Long. It was awkward to say the least. I came with my sisters and they didn't think it was him. So pregame, Kelly Clarkson's Since You've Been Gone came on. That song fires people up, even pro athletes from all walks of life, right?

Definitely. Has anyone ever come? What's that? The music video is good too. Do you like her show? Do you ever check that out? Do you pregame Kelly Clarkson's show before the judge shows? I'm more of a Rachel guy. Yeah, it feels like it's more efficient.

There's just more going on. She has a good rapport with her husband and stuff. Yeah, it's really nice. He makes cocktails. During the day, huh? Well, it's East Coast time, so they're a little bit ahead of me. Yeah, that's fair. No, I get it. I get it. I still think the Kimmel

thing when they had an open bar at the show and then everybody got too hammered. Throwing out like five pukers. Bill would say, yeah. Has Bill done that conversation with Jimmy? I imagine a million times, right? Or at least one good time. I think I think he's done it on the thing.

Yeah, I think. Yeah, I think that statute of limitations has passed, but I don't think either of them were comfortable discussing it. But I feel like they just had to get the oral history out there. But it seemed like they felt like enough time had passed. It seemed like such a good idea. The problem is like in the beginning, people are going to be way too fired up,

but you'd have to have it be a normal thing. That's part of the routine. And then everybody's kind of desensitized the excitement of it. And it's just like, okay, you know, this is something that we do. Maybe they can slow,

bring it back. Probably not. Maybe see Disney. That was one of my ideas for the first pitch meeting at the ring i was like all right a podcast but we're drinking and they were like great kyle i was like oh okay uh we just couldn't do it they were like bring it bring like two big ideas and i think the one that was leading the charge was like like a regular pod like we do but just drink it to like loosen people up um and they were what was

the reaction and what was the reaction of the room after that pitch i think like one of those those smiles when you like pass a guy in the hallway that you kind of know but you don't say hi and just kind of tuck your lips away that it was sort of like that they were just like great okay anything else i was like yeah stories pod would be cool. They're like, all right, great. That's your two. Good job. How old were you when you pitched that first? Probably 24. 24, like, yeah. 24-year-old guy who's a PA.

Thinks we should do more drinking on our podcast. Great. And then, look, Drink Champs running things right now. So who was wrong, really? Yeah, exactly. A lot of people have picked up on that. who was wrong, really? Yeah, exactly. A lot of people have picked up on that. No wrong ideas, right?

No wrong ideas in those meetings. Okay, remind me to tell you a smile story very quickly after I get to the rest of this email, which I've done a poor job with. Okay, so Since You've Been Gone comes on. As someone who had had a few beverages, I sang Since You've Been Chris Long. That's worse than my drinking idea. But if you say it fast enough,

it does sound good. Since you've been Chris Long. God damn, that was aggressive. He immediately turned around and we had an awkward encounter. I'm literally a huge fan of his and I'm sitting here embarrassed and don't know what to do.

What would you have done? And can you apologize to him for me? He was so cool, but I hope he doesn't think I was weird. Such a great guy. Man, you really like him. We'll see how the rest of the game goes. Oh, wow. This was sent. This was sent in game or

before. This guy really was freaked out about it. He immediately had to share it with us to get it off his chest. I can tell you Chris doesn't care. I haven't asked him about this one specifically, but I will follow up with him shortly. Before we get to the other ones, I want to tell you about a weird smile encounter. The other night

on a flight, I was aisle. I used to be all aisle guy. Then I was a window guy. Now I've been a window guy for a while. You just have more room. You just do. Because when you think you have room in the aisle, you kind of don't. And I've got all sorts of elbow and knee encounters with the drink cart that tell you you don't have the room you think you have. You're actually doing, it's like sitting at the service here. It's like,

you can't have your foot there, man. I know you can mostly, but when we need it and it's there, it's a big problem. Exactly. I've been thinking about jumping to the window. I just haven't done it yet because I'm still kind of convinced you get more room in the aisle. I know you don't. No, I think the window downside is that you're not in charge of getting in and out. That's true. People don't really like that. And there'll be times too where it's like, you know, but if you're going to get up everybody's gonna get up like that's just the way it works you know like deal with it sometimes i'll go to the bathroom when i don't even have to just to exercise my get up ability you know it's like what's the point i do it yeah no i do it i

like to get up and stretch it out a little bit in the aisle like you're not in charge you weren't voted anything like you just you have an aisle seat you're not in charge of us here in 24 d e and f like there was no election you just you're there so anyway i had a middle the other day that was brutal but you know that's international oh okay it was last minute and they weren't going to do anything for me and it was just the whole weird deal when you're you think you're delta but you're not you're like the delta international version of it aero mexico klh just they just delta i love delta it's been established but the international arms they don't care about you you'd be like well what about

what about this thing over here and they're like here's your fucking b bro shut up um but once i mentally accepted the middle it actually wasn't that bad because i had this like hour plus two hour stretch of like are you serious like i'm gonna fly from mexico back to la middle again it's not like you're going to paris it's not it's not armrests right oh it was established yeah i was going to get both armrests but that's also something i want to remember too is that then when i had aisle window and the more recent trips i go you know remember you were you were pretty determined to get the two armrests this middle guy although some people will be like do one off so you'll everybody only gets one you're like well then

window guy kind of lucks out because he doesn't have to do shit. And he could just sleep on the side. So that's what he gets. He can just lead up against the wall and sleep. Right, right. But once I went, hey, I'll be fine. You're going to be fine.

You're going to be fine. It was kind of like facing your fears. I just kind of sucked it up. I was like, hey, this actually isn't the end of the world. Now, granted, if it was a nine-hour flight or something like that, I would have been like, i'm not going today um so anyway i'll see grab my backpack no overhead uh the other thing too is that we all this is not new content right this is everybody talks about the absurdity of people getting off of a plane it is really

annoying when somebody seven rows back thinks that like you won some sort of fucking contest because the other people didn't get up in time and then it's like cool now you just it's like when a car doesn't let you in to then immediately be stuck behind a red light traffic situation you're like awesome dude you know didn't let me in and now you're stuck there and one spot ahead of me anyway or many spots ahead so i purposely was like like, hey, I'm getting up. I'm grabbing my backpack. It's the only thing I have to do.

And as I was turning and putting my book in my backpack and making sure everything was in there, don't want to be out another fucking set of earbuds, making sure you got your book. I get a tap from behind, a little tap, tap, tappy. And it's an older woman. She goes, do you mind? I'm like, what? Everybody's getting their bags. I'm not jumping head rows. I'm not doing anything. I was aisle, so I'm going to get up because I'd rather stand

up. I was like, what? She's like, your butt. It's in my face. You kind of want to be fair, but welcome to airline travel i'm kind of glad she tapped you i'm tired of asses in my face i'm not gonna be honest brian i know it's a thing that's done and you most people just deal with it i'm just glad she kind of was i'm glad she did you like it you like in my face. Do you think it was the joggers?

Yeah, they could, you know. Yeah, well, she kind of gave me like a directional thing. Like, you need to face forward. I'm like, so I need to be parallel to my stuff here. Dude, it wasn't. It was maybe 10, definitely less than 20 seconds. It was like, I'm packing up my bag. I'm turned back to my seat as I'm packing it. I'm not going to air do it.

This isn't like the end of some set where I'm holding a plate in front of me. It wasn't that long of a time. And to be honest, she was pushing probably 250. So I wanted to be like, you think your ass is in somebody's face ever? But I didn't say that to her. I actually gave her a slight chuckle. And then she like, she pushed her hand forward being like, you need to face forward. No, no, no, no. You need to fit. And as I like turn, she was like, yes. She was like staging a set like nope right great great yeah exactly like a plane was coming in and she had the two fluorescent lights and she's waving me like straight forward so she was mad after she was upset about it after 10 seconds you're right there was probably some leftover

damage from an earlier encounter yeah like this this was this was the residue of whatever so i just sort of i gave her a look and like a slight chuckle and a couple other guys are checking out like how i was going to handle it because it was a pretty immediate request and then to see her hands be like no no you have to you have to keep and then as i turned forward she was like yes good i she didn't she didn't really... Again, whatever. I was going to be off the plane in five minutes. I didn't... I was more laughing at the assertivity

of how upset she was the whole time. Okay. Let's get to a couple of life advices. Landlord check. I like this one. My landlord forgot to cash my rent check last month. At this point, I've not reached out to him asking if he received the check, which I place in his mailbox the first of every month.

He's a very busy guy, travels a lot, so I'm wondering if our check is getting lost in the shuffle of a week's worth of mail when he gets home. Okay. He owns a general contracting business for renters. So it's basically the email he's going to tell us the guy's rich. He owns a GC business for residential homes. He does really well for himself.

He's in the Bay Area. I guess we could just say where he is. I'm sure there's more than one GC that has a rental property. So, okay. So he's adding that it's also like a higher end area. In fact, he built the house my wife and I rent from. He built our place specifically for the rental income. He lives in the back of the lot, separate home and entrance, and we see him all the time. Oh, okay.

Wait a minute. This isn't the first time he's done this. Last year, he forgot to cash a rent check as well. However, that time I did reach out to him asking if he'd received the check, which he confirmed he did receive, yet he never cashed it. At the time, I feel satisfied knowing I reached out to him. If he didn't cash the check, that was on him. My question is, am I obligated to reach out to him again for last month's rent check, or do I just let it ride? He clearly doesn't need the money. We don't necessarily need the money either, but who hates a little extra cash at the end of the month? He's a great landlord for the most part, so I feel guilty, but it doesn't keep me awake at night. Is this bad for the karma meter?

Love the pod. Looking forward to the advice. Kyle, you're not telling him again, right? No chance. Don't ever ask to collect the homework. That's all I mean. If you did the homework, that's great, but don't ask, hey, you forgot to collect the homework. That's all I mean. Like if you did the homework, that's great, but don't ask, Hey, you forgot to collect the homework. Cause you know, maybe there's somebody else in there

that he's also forgetting. That'd be cool. You don't want to jam them up, but you know, I'd say like maybe the least organized GC landlord in the Bay area. Right. So you're looking out for everybody else. Yeah. And I think that, you know, give it a three month window. And then I think then the money's probably yours, you know, or maybe just throw it in the vacation fund. And I think that, you know, give it a three month window. And then I think then the money's probably yours, you know, or maybe just throw it in the vacation fund. And then if he's like, oh yeah, that check is expired. Would you mind sending me one? I don't even know if he can do that. If you've sent a check and then he never cashed it. And then three months later, he's like, oh yeah, for the Decembers, you know, you think you could write that one again? I don't know. He might even be too embarrassed to do that. So I think you could just, just let it ride.

Be like, I'm, you know, be like me. I don't ever like look at my, like balance my checkbook. I just assume it goes there. It's going the right way. I don't write that many checks either. So that's why I'm not like a crazy person. I just mean, you could be like, I thought you did it, man. I don't know.

So, um, I, yeah, I just let this ride keep track of it. And then maybe you've got an extra, I don't know what you yeah i just let this ride keep track of it and then maybe you've got an extra i don't know what you're paying three grand or something just put it in a nice house yeah brand new maybe maybe it is 3k uh i i asked you that not because i thought less of you i did the same thing when i was 21 i think yeah 21 21 and by the way i whatever that 300 or 400 was split in a room with a bunch of other guys like i needed that cash that carries uh that was that was a big big deal and they didn't cash my check and i said something one of my roommates and i said hey he didn't cash my check and the guy was like you better you better tell him and i was like no doubt dude

i was like i'm not fucking telling him. Because the roommate was looking at it as the rest of us paid, you didn't. Why do you get the win? I thought that was kind of selfish. So I then felt like it wasn't so much about not paying the landlord the 400 bucks for that month. It was more about my roommate, one of my best friends being mad. Yeah yeah being mad that i got a free month out of the deal so i i told him i was like yeah i'm on it man and look those were rough for solo years so i as soon as i said like yeah dude no doubt i'm like i'm not fucking i'm not reminding an adult to to come get an extra 400 bucks out of me because I probably already mentally spent it thinking I'm up in the game for the next 30 days. The other part of that landlord situation was,

I think I've told this story once before, but apologies for sometimes repeating myself. But after everybody graduated and moved out, I wasn't done. And me and another guy went to them and like, we'll extend the lease for the summer. And then we'll pick it up September 1st. Cause I love the house and I wanted to stay there. And we had a plan to have these other guys show up. It's one guy sent a check, canceled it immediately. Another guy just never showed, never even came back to school. And then the dude that I was actually living with never paid anything the entire time. And so I was sending in my ringleader of this. Yeah. So i was sending in like the ringleader of this yeah so i was sending in my

check for the three months but that meant that if the house was two grand a month for the six bedroom house which is absurd the two guys were living in it for an entire summer uh that was the summer we get the water shut off for a while uh whatever so this dude is freaking out because he's like what's going on with the house? What's going on with the house? The college season is stepping up. He was like, I'm going to rent this. You guys are assholes. We're like, no, we got it. We got it. We'll figure it out. And we knew we were jammed up. So you were just kicking this can down the road. Yeah, totally. Totally. Because we're like, we can't move in August, bro. Nothing's going to be open. We got to think about ourselves. And then he broke into his own house through the kitchen window.

And I'll never forget the sight of him and Daisy Dukes stepping into a sink full of dirty dishes, his sneaker into the dishes, and breaking into his own house being like, you guys are the worst. I was like, yeah, I agree. I'm like, I'm not proud of this current situation. All right. So to the emailer, as we spend a lot of time telling stories, I get what you're saying, right? I get what you're saying. And a younger me, I'm not going to pretend like the most moralistic person here, and as Kyle brings up a really good point, we're not exactly balancing the

ledgers like we used to back in the olden days. So things getting lost in the electronic shuffling of all of this stuff and younger people listening, it's like, what are you talking about? Balance something. Most people probably don't even look at their transactions, which is bad. But yeah, we used to actually sit there and figure out how much money we paid out, how much money should we deduct it from the account and then figure out where we're at. You actually took the time to balance your checkbook and figure it all out. Yes, because he's rich, we can start to play that game. I mean, like any of this stuff,

you start to kind of do the moral justification thing. You're like, well, if this, this, and this, and this, this, and this, the only problem that you're facing here is that apparently he's one of the least organized guys going is if he's this big of a deal and has a GC, he's an assistant, maybe the assistant sucks. Maybe you're in the clear,

but I'm just warning you, it's going to be fucking weird if this has now happened twice. And then you're going to just have to play dumb, which is fine. You can play dumb and then you can say, oh shit, I didn't even realize, man. Like, hey, look, we wrote the check. I don't look at the balance or my wife handles it or whatever.

I'm not very good. I didn't notice. Stimulus checks coming in. My wife handles it or whatever. I'm not very good. There was actually 12 grand lying around. I didn't notice. Yeah, totally. Stimulus checks coming in. Maybe not for this guy. I'll just say, we both know because you wrote the email, you're not going to remind him because of the extra cash. You're not unique in this.

I'm not even saying you're a bad guy with it, but there could be a time where it could be awkward and it's up to you to how well you can play playing dumb because that's what you're going to have to do. And there's a chance now, there's another part of it too, which if you love the situation, you love the house, you love landlord, you feel like you're going to be there a long time do you want to jeopardize it over payment that you're admitting doesn't exactly ruin you for the month do you want to potentially jeopardize it because if i had had you know i've had tenants a couple different times and eventually you do kind of know you know like i was i was on it enough that I was like, Hey, what's going on

here? Like, why is this late or whatever? And I was never a dick about it, but I would just go like, what, what's going on? You know what I mean? Like, I just, my fear for you was that it could actually be awkward and you could be jeopardizing a living situation that you really, really like, but we both know you're not going to write him. You're not going to remind him again, because most of us, you know, it's just the way it works. You're already looking at it as your money. Cause he didn't cash the check, which is kind because most of us you know it's just the way it works you're already looking at it as your money because he didn't cash check which is kind of fucked up but it's kind of the way it works yeah practice your conversation in the shower i think that's just stay ready stay ready you don't have to get ready it's like practice you're surprised what do you mean what are you talking about

for which month well which month are you talking about i think that's perfect okay all right yeah just which month oh really oh my god wait i gotta check my web but seriously yeah i want to be square though if there's an issue i'll handle it immediately that's perfect man come on that guy's not gonna that guy's gonna be like he's gonna be his new best friend i was like that guy really the last thing i want to be yeah i don't want to be a guy that's done it to you twice and emails a show if it's cool. All right. This one's a little too aggressive.

It's good, but it's aggressive. I don't know. I just don't know that we can do it. I don't know. There's like this imaginary line I have in my head of stuff that I, you know. All right. We'll do this one instead. My parents might hate my husband. All right. The issue has been weighing on me for years. My husband and I have been together for 11 years, married for eight, and the entire time of our relationship, my parents have never bought

him a gift ever. To add a little more to the situation, my husband is five years older than me, but our birthdays are seven days apart. His birthday's three days before Christmas and my birthday's four days after Christmas. So my husband gets to see me get gifts from my parents on Christmas, then four days later, get a gift for my birthday. He's never brought it up,

but you can see it in his face. The quote, hey assholes, I just had a birthday and Christmas, where's my gift? Wait, they don't get him Christmas gifts either? I figured as soon as you said that his birthday was right before Christmas, like every kid that is listening is... Yeah, he's rolled into one. Yeah, everyone that's ever

grown up with one of those birthday Christmas combos within a 10-day window, you've gotten hosed your whole life. It's just the way it is. Nobody's going, what I would spend on a June birthday, I will add to that the equal amount of what I would spend on the Christmas. It just doesn't work. Everybody's nodding right now that has a birthday that falls within those bookends.

They're just like, yeah, man. You're down in the game. You're just down in the game to the rest of the kids in your group. But he doesn't get any Christmas gifts either. Did I read that correctly? I just had a birthday and Christmas. So they don't get any Christmas gifts either. Let me, did I read that correctly? I just had a birthday and Christmas, so they don't get him anything. That's almost harder to do

than just getting him something, really. Yeah, just, you still have to like say hello to him, like knowing full well that we're going to be in the living room. Because when I first looked at this call i thought oh well they just don't get him something for his birthday and you're the daughter and you know but this is this guy's going over for 11 straight years eight eight with legal arrangements wow this is kind of like when somebody goes oh and five on their weekend picks you go that's harder to do than 5-0. That's what this is.

That's right. You could have got at something. If you tried to go 0-5, I think it's harder. Here's what makes matters worse. My husband is a gift giver, so he always comes up with the great ideas on what to get my parents for their holidays, anniversaries, and Christmas. As the gifts are being exchanged all around my husband, only opening what I got him and whichever one of my sisters picked him for secret Santa.

Oh, my God. Are they a family? It's nuts. All right. I'll get to the email, but I have a very simple question. And before you ask, yes, his parents give me gifts all the time. All the time. We also have two kids, and my parents always get my kids gifts

so it's not like the idea of gift giving is foreign to my parents it'd be a little weird if this email was like and they jam up the kids basically anybody with this guy's dna is just out all right so the kids get gifts i mean again that would have been really fucking that would have been a massive twist i don't even know what i would have been able to do so here's the question do i ask my parents uh what's the deal Do you hate my husband? Do I buy him stuff and give it to my parents to give to him? Thanks for any help. P.S. He listens to the show each day, so if he comes out at work, it would read like the ultimate gift to him while showing him I know he gets nothing from my

parents. Wow, we're saving lives here too on top of everything else. Okay, here's my completely simple question. Are there any other indicators they hate this guy? What's all the other stuff like? Does anyone talk shit about him? I mean, after a while, there's no way, if they hated him, they would have said something to the sisters, and then that would have gotten back to you. I mean, it's impossible to dislike somebody in the immediate family that comes in through marriage and then not have that person realize. So are you getting any other clues, any other stories, anecdotes? Is there anything else that you can work with here to understand why this guy's gone 0 for 8, 0 for 11 since origin on getting one single gift? Is this like a tradition thing? Like,

is this like, do people in their 80s know it's like oh you don't get the man anything is it like women and children off off the sinking ships and the guys are just just like sorry you're a dude like you're you're winning everywhere else but here you're last is it is there like some sort of tradition where like you know the man of the house like it's like the big piece of chicken in reverse is there is some sort of gift thing? The reverse biggest piece of chicken? Yeah, actually nothing. You get nothing because you're the head of the family or something or the man of the house or something.

If it's not that, yeah. If it's not that, then it's, hey, are you guys crazy? I'm sorry, I wanted to ask you this seven years ago. And then if they're like, yeah, we just don't do it, then you embarrass them by buying gifts for them to give, give your husband. That's crazy. That's nuts. Hey, look, there's some sort of longstanding tradition.

This doesn't make any sense. I think two things that, first of all, being older than you, I can tell you, there's not like an olden days. Hey, you made 30% more for every female dollar. And you know, well, not that just like you guys don't like gifts right because you're no strong but i know no no clearly he likes gifts because people that like to give gifts usually don't mind when somebody else steps up and puts a little thought into something okay right right i uh i know i'm the worst to get gifts for when you don't have a family, you don't get a lot of gifts.

So that's fine. I'm okay. But I actually was big into just the surprise, like pull over for a friend or something like that. And a lot of times I think I had like a weird stretch where I was, cause everybody would, everybody's aggressive, but I had a weird stretch of being friends with like only females. The only people that I was interacting with multiple times would be females more often than any males during this weird stretch. That was the end of the Connecticut run. And then everybody would be like, oh, you're just friend zone. I'm like, yeah, these women are actually married to or dating very close friends of mine. So I'm actually not that guy. i'm not trying to jam up uh any reunions here but the point is

is that like when you like to give gifts it doesn't mean you hate getting them either okay yeah that's a crazy connection to me yeah right right uh i wonder if the secret santa thing where they think they're covered that's might be the easiest one because you're not expecting the kids to be a secret Santa. That would suck if you're an adult and you got a kid making you fucking popsicle sticks for your secret Santa.

So that would make sense why the kids are out and secret Santa, that might be it. That might be it. It could be they think they're covered with, yeah, the secret Santa deal.

It might just be funny. Like of all the times where every answer ends up being, why don't you talk to him? Just say this or whatever, which clearly we all have a hard time with in so many different walks of life. But it might actually just be funny

a night that he's not there. We're like, your sister's there and you're there with your parents and you just softly transition into it. You know, this isn't a hard- So what do you get Dan this year? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Right.

But like you start talking about gifts, be like, hey, I want to get you this, or how should... You know, and then, then again, there's also a part of this too that has happened, and I'm not trying to scare you here,

but sometimes old people's finances aren't the way you think they should be. Could be. And I'm not telling you now all of a sudden to run home and ask your mom and dad if they're poor and that they're going to be living with you in five years, but you just never know. You never know. So there could be other reasons, but you've got to start asking yourself a lot of questions. Are there any other indicators that they don't like this guy?

Well, if there aren't, then okay. Then I think the more important part is that they actually like him they're just this this gift thing keeps going on but i think you should find a fun night where you're hanging out where he's not around which i know is probably a little rare with the family and all that kind of stuff or whatever but just something where you would get into the conversation softly you know side door it and then bring it up and laugh and maybe you'll get an answer that you'll think or maybe you just don't and i'm like oh my god but it might just be the secret Santa deal. It might just be the process of that. They're like, we're covered every single year. And you're a man.

You're not our daughter. Like, why do we, why do we have to keep doing this stuff? Although he keeps hooking them up with awesome gifts every year. You think one time the light bulb might go off. Old people are shameless, man. And I do think you might be right about right about that thing where, you know, my grandmother, rest in peace, she just passed this last year, but she had a good run. And towards the end, I was one of the only people that would just put up with her because she had all these things that just made it hard to spend a day. You know, she'd like trick you into taking her to her doctor's appointment, which is fine. But, you know, like I'm home, I'm home for a little bit. And it's like, I'm sitting in the eye doctor waiting room, which is fine. Love you, miss you.

But so one of the things that she, like she would just start cutting off these things from her finances, which we found out in the end, she actually had like a little bit, she had like a little bit of a nest egg or whatever it's called. I don't know what he was doing. She had, but one of the things that she stopped doing was like garbage pickup.

So she was like, everyone knows one of the rules. When you come and see me, you have to take a bag of garbage. I don't care what you do with it. Every time I'd visit her, she'd hand me a fucking bag of garbage, like a full bag of tuna fish garbage because she loved tuna fish. And she was just like, that's the rule. Everyone knows. And so that's an extreme case.

And there was other things that fell off. It feels extreme. It is extreme. Where if you that's an extreme case, you know, and there was other things. It feels extreme. It is extreme. If you go to visit your grandmother, you have to leave with a bag of garbage every time. Oh, she would have like the county, like the office for the aging of Dutchess County would send, you know, these poor people that are just trying to help out. And then she sends them home with like a bag of garbage. So anybody that visited her got garbage. That was a rule.

I think maybe she let the mailman get out of there without taking a bag of garbage, but she would get like the, like there were three different programs, you know, for like people to help folks with the aging. And she was sending them all home with garbage bags, including her grandson,

her daughters, stuff like that. So I'm just saying like, and, and, but she had convinced herself that she had to stop garbage pickup. And it turns out, you know, maybe if she lived to be 100,

she would have been out of money. But, you know, she passed with a lot of money. And so there was a bunch of stuff that didn't need to fall off the ledger that she thought she did. So maybe, you know, maybe gifts for people that, you know, don't share blood with them is just

something that they convince themselves they can't they can't do yeah i mean that's actually a power move i mean you want to talk about i'm in absolute awe of her now that just being like i just can't imagine visiting the one grandmother i still have and then every time i would see her going here's your garbage. Oh, dude, cheap garbage bags without the drawstring either. So it's like, come on. So what would you do with it? You would just like find a CVS dumpster.

It would be in your car. And then you would just find a place to, or you'd put it in your own garbage. I'd hide it in her yard. Oh my God. The story gets better. What? Yeah. She had like a large, large piece of property. I mean, I'm not taking it

with me those other people did take it though i mean i guess i guess the whatever hourly wage they were making was good but i wasn't are you kidding me so i would just how long did this go on did you pick the same spot it was like the last two years really which wasn't that bad you know because i was the last two years i was out here't that bad, you know, because I was, I, the last two years I was out here, you know, so it wasn't like I was seeing her, you know, I mean,

I was shocked. I was like, are you seriously doing that? She's like, yep. And I just was like, I'm not going to argue with you. I'll,

I'll give you a kiss goodbye. And you can think that I'm taking your garbage just like everyone else. I mean, it was, I probably only stashed like four bags, five bags over the last, you know? Yeah.

It's not the number. It's the story. It's the ask. It's all the other numbers. It's not about you, this story. Uh five bags over the last, you know. Yeah, it's not the number. It's the story. It's the ask. It's all the other numbers. It's not about you, this story. And by the way, the fact that she ended up having some money is because she was telling, you know, she was making, she was cutting things out of her budget where she was like, I don't need 40 bucks a month, waste management.

I got enough people rolling through here. I can flip the bag of person, bag of head. So maybe, maybe the moral of the story here on the husband gift thing is that your parents are loaded because they decided to cut out things. 11 years of gifts. When they first met him, they go, here's one for the budget. We're never getting that guy a fucking gift ever. That's life advice. Thanks to Kyle, as always.

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