The Tim Ferriss Show - #108: Comedy's Dynamic Duo, Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg

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Starting point is 00:01:05 out. Go to drinkag1.com slash Tim. That's drinkag1, the number one, drinkag1.com slash Tim. Last time, drinkag1.com slash Tim. Check it out. This episode is brought to you by Five Bullet Friday, my very own email newsletter. It's become one of the most popular email newsletters in the world with millions of subscribers, and it's super, super simple. It does not clog up your inbox. Every Friday, I send out five bullet points, super short, of the coolest things I've found that week, which sometimes includes apps, books, documentaries, supplements, gadgets, new self-experiments, hacks, tricks, and all sorts of weird stuff that I dig up from around the world. You guys, podcast listeners and

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Starting point is 00:03:16 that have made them spectacularly good at what they do. And there are patterns that you notice across disciplines. That is why I interview people from a very broad spectrum of areas like the military, entertainment, chess, sports, comedy, etc. So it ranges from Arnold Schwarzenegger to General Stanley McChrystal. And now in this episode, we have a dynamic duo. We have Seth Rogen at Seth Rogen, R-O-G-E-N, who is an actor, writer, producer, and director, and his partner in crime, Evan Goldberg, at Evan D. Goldberg on the Twitters, who is a Canadian director, screenwriter, and producer. Together, they get into a whole lot of mischief and create some amazing comedy. I had

Starting point is 00:03:57 a chance to spend some time with both these great gents, as well as their team, which is spectacular, and I won't mention the location in case we're keeping that quiet, but here's some background. They've collaborated on films such as Superbad, which they actually first conceived of as teenagers, Knocked Up, Pineapple Express, The Green Hornet, and Funny People. They've also written for The Ali G Show and The Simpsons. In 2013, Evan and Seth released their directorial debut,

Starting point is 00:04:24 This Is The End, which was actually a combination of two different ideas, and we get into that in the conversation. In 2014, Seth starred in and produced, alongside Evan, Neighbors, which was a worldwide comedy hit and has taken in more than $268 million worldwide. And then appearing in the news yet again in December 2014, Rogan and Goldberg's film The Interview became easily the most talked about news story around the world. And that was not just in the entertainment mags, but in every different publication. Because of many reasons. So under extremely difficult circumstances, the film persevered to become Sony Pictures' number one digital title of all time.

Starting point is 00:05:04 Neighbors 2 is shooting right now and will be released next May. Seth and Evan are also in production on Sausage Party, which I saw a clip of, a prelim clip, which is a raunchy animated movie for adults about one sausage's quest to discover the truth about his existence. And I really hope to God that some of the raunchier scenes make it in because they will make your head explode. Seth and Evan are producing that film with Megan Ellison and Conrad Vernon. In our conversation, the one you're about to listen to, we discuss all manner of tactics and silliness, including kyokushin karate, empty hand, and how they participated in that. Writer's block and related debates. Does it exist? Does it not exist?

Starting point is 00:05:45 How do you contend with it? If it does, writing process. I ask questions like, who are the most underrated comedians and comedy writers? What is the odd book that Judd Apatow recommended to them, which happens to also be Woody Allen's favorite? How Superbad got made after they first drafted around age 13. How Kids in the Hall influenced them.

Starting point is 00:06:04 The movie they both wish they'd written, common pot mistakes. So if you're just listening to this for a marijuana playbook, well, there might be something in here for you as well. So recommended noob pot for working versus relaxing and much, much more. So I really hope you enjoy this. As always, if you're not getting my five bullet Friday newsletter, check it out. It is a very, very popular. It's just a short email with a lot of tactical stuff gets sent out every Friday. You can check that out for our workweek.com forward slash Friday. That's all spelled out for our workweek.com forward slash Friday, or just go to for our

Starting point is 00:06:42 workweek.com and enter your email there. And for all the show notes for this episode, all the links, et cetera, just go to four hour workweek.com and click on podcast. So without further ado, please enjoy my conversation with Seth Rogan and Evan Goldberg. Evan, Seth, welcome to the show. Thank you. Thanks for having us. I appreciate you guys taking the time, especially in this very busy, busy month that you gents have. And I thought we could start with a story that we discussed a little bit, Evan, in the car, which was Kyokushin. So tell me about your karate.

Starting point is 00:07:16 Karate? He knows Kyokushin Kai. Really? Yeah, yeah, yeah. We were talking about when we were kids how we behaved and how I was a softie. And so I did rugby and karate to try and toughen myself up. And I joined at the Jewish Community Center, which is one of the places we became really good friends. Because Seth had been doing it a few years before me.

Starting point is 00:07:33 We'd already met in bar mitzvah class. And our parents were like, ah, Jewish Community Center. That can't be much, you know? Just simple karate. And they let us beat the living shit out of each other. Yeah. It was pretty uh i realized like we were the bad guys from karate kid you're the kakai we were cobra kai yeah like we were

Starting point is 00:07:51 banned from tournament banned from tournaments and then we finally went to a tournament and i realized that like the way they taught us to fight like was not conducive to tournament fighting and i punched a guy in the throat and got disqualified from the tournament, basically. And I didn't know that that wasn't what you were supposed to do. I was just like, oh, we're supposed to beat the shit out of this person. That's what you're conditioned to respond with. I have a memory of one time where they made me fight that 35-year-old woman when I was 14. And she choked me out on the ground until I passed out.

Starting point is 00:08:21 Wait, this was in class? Yeah. I remember fighting full-grown men, too. I remember hitting that guy, Rod, so hard. This guy, Rod, was a 280-pound, 6'3 guy, and he was 14. I was 14, and I hit him so hard in the face with a spinning backhand that it knocked him,

Starting point is 00:08:40 it almost knocked him out. It dazed him completely. And then they let me then they like they let him fight me again and he like punched me in the mouth so hard i like couldn't uh i couldn't like i think my mouth started bleeding and then i hurt and then but uh oh man there's so many stories that are flooding i haven't thought about it there's the day that ended it all where i got kicked in the hip by a 40 year old black belt who fractured my hip yeah and then he backed up into a pillar and got a piece of wood lodged in his foot and thus ended

Starting point is 00:09:09 our kyokushin career but i remember fighting the teacher on the ground one time like the teacher sean would like i remember like grappling on the ground with him and like to the point where he was just like do anything you can and i was like like trying to bite him. I was like spitting on him. And like that was like what you were supposed to do in the class. One time when I was doing that. If you didn't, you would get in trouble. And he'd be like, you can do more. At one time I spat in his face.

Starting point is 00:09:37 And then he took the spit and rubbed it in my face. Yeah, he did the exact same thing to me. And then just started slapping me with my spit all over my face. He did literally the exact same thing to me. And we thought it was like this is what i thought that was what jewish community center karate is yeah so you mentioned kyokushin you're like i don't think you know people get the wrong image when i tell them karate and i from having lived in japan for a year as an exchange student is first time i got exposed to kyokushin and those were like the bad

Starting point is 00:10:01 boys of the karate world it was very well known like you don't want to get the leg kicks are very famous. Yeah. Oh, dude. One time I got the dentist. There was like, okay, we probably grown men. This was child abuse. It really was. And like this guy had the longest legs in the entire world.

Starting point is 00:10:20 He had these little brown slippers on. And I, uh, and he just like kept kicking my legs out from under me relentlessly. And there was nothing I could do to stop it. And they made all of us watch as he did it to him for like 10 minutes. Yeah. And I just would get up and then try to fight again. And he would just smack my legs out from under me. I remember just hitting the ground like a ton of bricks.

Starting point is 00:10:41 There was this one guy, the guy who ended up fracturing my hip, which ruined my rugby and karate. Fracturing your hip is not a small. A hairline fracture. It wasn't terrible, but it's enough that I couldn't run and stuff like that. Malcolm. He would do this thing. To this day, I can't comprehend how he did it. In a movie, you wouldn't believe it.

Starting point is 00:10:57 He literally like casually put both hands behind his back in a small room and was like, try and hit me. And I couldn't. And I'm like 15, 16, real fit. I've been doing karate for like five years and I couldn't even touch him. Yeah. I remember Malcolm kicked me in the eye once so hard that my parents had to call their family friends

Starting point is 00:11:15 who were eye doctors and take me to their house after the karate class because I couldn't see out of one of my eyes for like three hours. But I regret nothing. I regret nothing either. It's weird. It's weird now because I couldn't see out of one of my eyes for like three hours. But I regret nothing. I regret nothing either. It's weird. It's weird now because I'm so –

Starting point is 00:11:28 and I was always like not a violent person and I'm not competitive and I don't like care about any of that stuff that much. So did it turn you guys off of that type of thing sort of indefinitely past that point? Certainly as somebody who has like TMJ and and has had some joint issues, I can identify that that is too brutal. Their knuckles were all puffed up. Because we would break boards and if you didn't break the board,

Starting point is 00:11:54 you had to try again. I split a knuckle in two. Sounds like a liability nightmare. It's weird because it was happening at the Jewish Community Center. That's what's so strange about it. And I don't think any of our parents my parents would come and watch sometime but they thought i get i don't think anyone had a frame of reference maybe so they just thought like oh that's what karate class is because no my parents just picked me up and like not comment that i was

Starting point is 00:12:17 bleeding from somewhere no my parents would come sometimes because i started when i was younger so they like knew uh i did it for like over I did it for over 10 years or something. I did it for seven and you did it three more. Yeah, I think I started. And we did it with our buddy Fogel and our buddy Korber and our buddy Glansberg, and they would just make us, as friends, beat the shit out of each other. Yeah, Glansberg was soft. But he got to fight the younger guys, which made him probably feel pretty good.

Starting point is 00:12:44 And when did you guys first meet? I mean, first encounter each other? I went to like two hours of after school, Hebrew school, Tuesday, Thursday. And he went to like a half Hebrew school, half normal school. It was pretty much like a Hebrew school. They did half and half studies, but it was like a full-on Jewish elementary school. And he would get out when I would go in and I took the class at the synagogue, which was beside his school. So we would see each other for years.

Starting point is 00:13:11 We didn't really know each other. Yeah. But we would see each other. And I was kind of like the loudest person from this side. And he was. But you were friends with Fogel. I became. Well, yeah, this guy, Sammy Fogel, who's the McLovin of Superbad.

Starting point is 00:13:22 He's not really that big a loser. We just met. He and I became good friends and Seth's the McLovin of Superbad. He's not really that big a loser. We just messed with him. He and I became good friends. And Seth's mother and his mother were good friends. And then it all kind of culminated to bar mitzvah class. We all took Sunday morning, what was it called? Talos and Tefillin.

Starting point is 00:13:36 Talos and Tefillin class. Where they would give us chocolate milk and bagels to lure us in to learn how to do our bar mitzvah portions. I'd go to bar mitzvah class if you gave me. Yeah, I know. It's a weird mix, but it's delicious. And and we just kind of met there and because of fogel we became friends yeah and when did you guys start collaborating creatively in hindsight like eight months later yeah pretty early how old were you guys around 13 12 13 it was literally uh and it's not like we pretend we don't remember we don't remember but we were watching some crappy movie and we just looked at each other and we're like we could write a better, and it's not like we pretend we don't remember. We don't remember, but we were watching some crappy movie, and we just looked at each other, and we're like, we could write a better movie.

Starting point is 00:14:07 And there was a pause, and it's like, we should write a better movie. And I think I was doing stand-up already at that point, and so there was some context for we can write things, and they'll become things. I was already writing things and then performing them. So it wasn't just like we like we actually like wanted to make a movie like it wasn't and then i'd already seen like oh you can tangibly like do something and a lot of people uh you know like oh you came all the way from canada and it's not like like vancouver's a movie town yeah they've done the movies at our high school like we're from a bigger city than almost anyone that we know in america is from and they all think we're like bumpkins exactly like we're from a bigger city than almost anyone that we know in america is from and they

Starting point is 00:14:45 all think we're like bumpkins exactly like we're from a real city and where they made tons of movies and so you would see movie sets everywhere growing up at our high school they shot a lot of movies that new diamond phillips movie mastermind starring patrick stewart and vincent kartheiser uh it's not a fantastic movie but it was shot at at our high school. And so you would see it around. And so it was like, it was kind of, no, we didn't know anyone in the business or anything like that or who was involved in movies. But it was just like around. And so you kind of like. My first interaction was our friend Amelia Wasserman's mother produced kids shows.

Starting point is 00:15:22 And she like let me try to write some kids episodes and gave me some that's cool and I think Julian Maris's dad like produced tv shows or something like that I can't remember like we knew people whose parents like had like kind of like you know uh jobs and like it was around it was just kind of around yeah and then uh uh this girl I dated Abby Salzberg her mother was a writer for the newspaper and she kind of gave me some pointers and helped me out. So we had like some help, but we didn't really have a hard in, I think one of my distant,

Starting point is 00:15:49 distant cousins was a producer on passenger 57, the Wesley Snipes movie. And that I remember hearing as a child. It's really fascinating that you're given the opportunity to kind of tinker in the writing perspective with, with these episodes. When I grew up next to the, So you're given the opportunity to kind of tinker in the writing perspective with these episodes. I grew up next to the gent who created the Choose Your Own Adventure book series.

Starting point is 00:16:10 What? That's awesome. And so we had, my brother and I, chances to test drive his books. Oh, that's awesome. And provide feedback. And you're just like, this is a bad choice. If we gave him feedback he ended up using, he would put our names into the books. So if you go back, there handful of books tim's in the books tim ferris is not tim ferris is in the book and yeah that was they were a power couple his walking through the woods

Starting point is 00:16:32 he was warned the mountains are dangerous and you guys is it true that you started working on super bad around that time yeah that's what we started writing we sat down and started that that was the first thing we ever tried to do was writing super bad and it was it was terrible at first but it was really bad at first but um but that being said we liked movies so much and we're so into movies that like looking back we kind of instinctually like understood the vague structure of movies in like a pretty instinctual way and like the movie and we loved bad movies which i think actually was extremely beneficial because it showed us what not to do we watched tons of b movies there was this place called videomatica was that what it was called there were seven movies for seven dollars for seven days. Yeah, it was great.

Starting point is 00:17:25 And we would go and do that and watch them all. Yeah. And it was, you know, get like two good movies and five crappy movies. But then around this time was when movies like Pulp Fiction and Clerks and like that, like Rushmore and Bottle Rocket. Like, it was kind of like the dawn of like 90s independent cinema. And we were really really really into those movies too and again a lot of those movies you know uh at least in theory had and in myth had kind of like a do-it-yourself feel where kevin smith just made clerks especially it's clearly

Starting point is 00:17:58 like they just got a camera it was made a bunch of friends were like let's fucking do this yeah and that was very like inspirational to us uh because it just seemed very achievable you know um and so i think that's one of the reasons we again started doing it it was just like we're like it was about high school kids we knew high school kids i wanted to be an actor we knew there was other kids in our school who were trying to be actors and stuff like that and so it just kind of seemed like we like if we write a high school movie we could write a high school movie, we could make a high school movie basically. Yeah. And he, he had his standup start.

Starting point is 00:18:29 And for me, it was like when I was like five years old, if you asked me what I wanted to do was be a writer. I always wanted to be a writer. They actually tried to send me to a psychiatrist in elementary school because I would write like dark stuff. At Hebrew school, I learned about the Holocaust and I kept writing about the Holocaust and they thought there was something wrong with me.

Starting point is 00:18:45 But I remember Evan, when we met, he was the first person I ever met who wrote recreationally other than me. I wrote stand-up, and he wrote stories and stuff like that. And I remember when you're a 13-year-old kid, you meet a lot of other 13-year-old kids whose hobbies is writing recreationally. It's not that common. And he kind of made me realize with the stand-up he was like he just did it and so we both were like what if we just did this uh no one at this age is trying to do it so if we get a jump on it maybe we'll do okay and also it seemed like the easiest path to becoming a writer like i've tried to write a novel once and i failed. It is really hard. Novels are hard. And it's funny you mentioned the school

Starting point is 00:19:27 psychologist. So I was sent to the school psychologist also. Everyone in this room. I was for sure sent to several. Because I was forced to do writing assignments I didn't want to do and so thematically I would turn them into stories about serial killers and different types of murder. Yeah, that's kind of what I did. I think it's a common reaction.

Starting point is 00:19:43 I wrote a dystopian future story about a bunch of kids trying to get out of a Nazi-controlled future, and it ended with all of them dying. You invented the young adult novel. Yeah. You invented Divergent. And The Hunger Games. And I remember the reason they tried to send me to a shrink is because I drew the picture of all their corpses. Oh, nice.

Starting point is 00:20:08 That's a nice touch. Yeah, for those people who wouldn't take the time to read it the uh you've got to really spell it out what was what was the difference before you said then in the early days uh between what were the biggest differences between writing for stand-up and this could be contemporary like in general and writing for film for instance um i've thought about it a lot and when we started writing movies i honestly like and when we started doing it more i kind of became less interested in writing stand-up in some ways because like and i honestly think that good stand-up i wasn't the best stand-up comedian is one thing like i would i was pretty good I was like a b plus stand-up comedian a minus I wasn't like an a plus stand-up comedian and I'm not saying that we're like the best script writers

Starting point is 00:20:50 in the world but we've achieved a plus moments I think here and there and so that that was one of the things I was just like aware of I would just like watch other people do it and be like wow this guy's like doing something like that I like he like they're just better at it than I am. And when we started writing movies, I started to feel like, oh, like we – like this I feel like we could maybe again like really carve out our own niche doing, which I didn't feel like I was particularly doing doing stand-up. I was young and that was at first a niche is like I would write about my young person's experience. But then as I got older, I found like, I don't know, as a stand-up, I was struggling a little bit to find a unique perspective. I have a theory. You ceased to be tortured. Yeah, exactly.

Starting point is 00:21:35 That was part of it. I was like really tortured when I was – I mean I wasn't that tortured. Not really tortured but like young neuroses and anxiety. Yeah, it's true. Stand-up comics function largely, not all of them, but a lot of them on anxiety and horrors and like self-obsessed. I don't have that much. Yeah.

Starting point is 00:21:51 I don't find myself that interesting is honestly one of the other things is like I and I think writing and that's one of the reasons I think writing movies was better is because I was writing other people. And I also struggled with stand-up is that you can only really, and again, good stand-ups do this, but I couldn't find a way to do it, is like I can only talk from one perspective in stand-up. But in a movie, you can write two or three or four or five or six perspectives all in one scene.

Starting point is 00:22:20 You could have five guys arguing about how to to you know turn you know how to do anything what's the best way to get out of this room you know and to and and as we started writing like you know some of the best scenes that we've ever achieved are literally just people screaming at each other and so like i think that was something that i thought was very funny that we were good at was like conflict and it's hard hard to have like conflict in standup comedy for me. I couldn't find a way to do it. Other people do it and they tell stories that involve conflict. And the whole thing is about,

Starting point is 00:22:54 you know, the struggle. And I look at it now and sometimes I think like, man, if I kept doing it, I maybe would have broken through a wall, but I just, I don't know.

Starting point is 00:23:03 And I loved movies. That was the other thing is just like and i i loved movies also but i was a bit more of a comic nerd he was a comic nerd too but i was like extreme comic meaning comic book yeah my brother is a like natural speed reader he reads at a remarkable pace he can read a book in a day like a 400 page book just burn through it so he would read comics and mountains of them would form and then he would draw them so i would mimic him because he was two years older and i would read all the comics he read and then try to draw like him he's actually an expert uh he's a very good artist he drew all the penises for super bad yeah which were good and he's did he make a cameo in the big lebowski on the notebook he's a lawyer now. But I tried to mimic him with that stuff.

Starting point is 00:23:46 And comics are just movie storyboards, really. They're very cinematic. Yeah, and I read all the comic books, too. I think that's it. I mean, it's like... We connected heavily over Calvin and Hobbes. Yeah, we loved that. One of the best of all time.

Starting point is 00:23:56 The sarcasm of it forged our... Hobbes, genius. But I think we just liked the cinematic, again, comics. It just seemed appealing. And I think we just liked the cinematic, again, comics. It just seemed appealing. And I think, yeah. And it's funny that at the time, if you look at what we've done recently, we like grandiose things. We like big things to happen, end-of-the-world scenarios and all that.

Starting point is 00:24:16 But at the time, all we knew was that we really wanted to get laid, we weren't getting laid, and we weren't super cool. And I think the reason Superbad worked out is it's rare that you are the thing you're writing on at the moment you're doing it right and you're self-aware of it yeah and we're still i mean and we that's something that we've continued to try to do honestly i mean neighbors you know is a very good example all our friends are having our friends are having kids they're trying to have kids and are married and are getting older and are moving into different places. Yeah, like I don't have a kid and I want to go out and I call all my friends and none of them can come.

Starting point is 00:24:49 Exactly. And so I think from the get-go – and that's something that came from stand-up comedy. Like there's a comic named Daryl Lennox who still performs who is great and he the comics were very nice to me which is in retrospect insane because i would not be nice to like a 13 year old kid who was doing stand-up comedy i don't think maybe i would but i don't assume i would but i remember he saw me perform and i used to have like jokes i would try to like mimic other comedians like stephen wright or seinfeld like what's the deal with crazy glue and he was like he was like dude you're like the only 14-year-old. He's like, you're the only person here who could talk about

Starting point is 00:25:27 trying to get a handjob for the first time. Like, talk about that. Like, that is so much more interesting than anything you're talking about. Like, why aren't you just talking about that? And I was like, oh, you're right. That's actually a very good way of doing it. And then that kind of carried through everything. Writing what you know and uh it's it's um i've been really fascinated just sort of observing you guys work

Starting point is 00:25:51 and uh you know realizing at least for me when you get started super bad at a time when those uh all those feelings were were very kind of ever present in your lives and when i look back and say past books people have asked me like what would you edit what would you? And I don't want to touch it because I feel like it was written at a very precise point in time related to very specific pains that I might not be experiencing now because that chapter is passed on. What does your writing process look like now? A lot of people have asked me to ask you both this, but what is just from the very first sort of concept stages well uh as i was telling you earlier it's changed a little uh we just did this project preacher with a guy named sam catlin

Starting point is 00:26:31 right which i'm bad yeah and and we used to immediately start like kind of we would always write down ideas and he taught us this new trick of not writing down ideas for a good month and just shooting it around and talking and talking and talking and i kept saying like now we're gonna write right and he was like no no we just keep talking and that's a new trick that i think was great just spend way more time talking about it that's what he said in breaking bad they would do is just like before they did anything they would just talk and talk and talk and it's something actually like we did it undeclared when i look back at it it's like we're just anxious to get going i think sometimes but but i feel like now i mean and it's kind of always been this way in that like we'll come up with ideas and it's like sometimes it it's like

Starting point is 00:27:16 it's there's almost like a darwinistic process where it's like it's around a year later or so like if it's something we're still talking about. Sometimes years later. There's some, I mean like there's this movie that we're talking about writing. I was going through old files. Like the first one from like 2011 or something like that. I mean a tangible example is This is the End. We had two separate ideas. One was a movie about the apocalypse.

Starting point is 00:27:40 And another one was celebrities playing themselves in a disaster type scenario. Both of those ideas survived for four five years yeah and they slowly we realized if we merge these things it's going to be a good synthesis and uh and that was that's the perfect example like we i bet we you know we'd just be sitting around working on whatever and then be like what about that apocalypse yeah or it's just what we talk about like i mean it's it's like you know we like what we do and it's fun for us to think about it so organically we talk about. Like, I mean, it's like, you know, we like what we do, and it's fun for us to think about it. So organically, we'd just be sitting there doing something else,

Starting point is 00:28:10 and that's the thing we would just start joking around about, you know? And then if it sticks around, then it at least means that we like it. Like lately, I've been obsessed with artificial intelligence, and we're not writing anything about that. But in a year from now, if I'm still talking about it, maybe that'll happen. So when you have something that's really persistent like that, and you have, say, the celebrities playing themselves in the end of the world, and you're like, you know, this could be really interesting if we combine these two things. At the time, not necessarily now that you have the input from the Breaking Bad writer on that approach, but what were the next steps you guys took once you were like, you know what, let's try to pull the trigger on this?

Starting point is 00:28:48 Well, it took us a really long time to figure out how to do it, honestly. Like, that was one of those movies where, bizarrely, it just took us, like, we could think of the first three, two acts of the movie, and then we couldn't figure out how to end the movie. And it literally took us like a year and a half, I think, until we thought of the idea that they realized they can still redeem themselves, basically. Which is what allows the third act to happen, which is they all start trying to redeem themselves. And we just didn't think of that. And it was literally just like we couldn't do it.

Starting point is 00:29:21 I mean, while we're working on other stuff and doing it, it's not like we're just sitting in a room for a year and a half like banging our heads against the walls like we're still doing things but that if like i mean in that example it literally just took us a really long time to come up with the idea that allowed the movie to to function and then once we thought of that idea i remember we wrote the first draft of this at the end in like nine days or something like that no that was all three acts or just yeah the whole we wrote the whole movie like the whole first 120 pages we wrote the whole script we sat it should be said we had an extensive outline yeah because we've been kicking it around for years and like one thing we do a lot of our movies are kind of genre based especially lately you know pineapple express and this is the end and the interview to some

Starting point is 00:30:05 degree and so something we do is just watch tons of movies in that genre and so like with this the end we just watch tons of these like horror movies and apocalypse movies and movies about isolation and kind of little groups of people that are stuck together and as we do that we just start joking around and coming up with ideas oh it would be funny funny if we send a guy out on a rope. It's like, oh, they need water. And you just kind of pick up these themes in the movies. Yeah, like when Craig Robinson went out of the house with a rope, that was based off of The Mist. Exactly.

Starting point is 00:30:35 And part of it, I mean, and we talk a lot about it, is like really trying to like have our cake and eat it too in these movies. Like it's like we are kind of like mocking the genres as we're trying to participate in them full heart fully you know and in doing that we like to it's almost like the characters in the movie are aware of the same cultural references that we are and so it would stand to believe that all that stuff would be on the table basically and so so that's a big part of the process is just lists of ideas tons of ideas jonah gets possessed someone gets puked on they need water someone steals the water someone doesn't like the rules they try to make rules how do they split up the food and something like do you put

Starting point is 00:31:15 this into like a notebook or do you put it into a word document and we'll sometimes and it's just it's just a running list there's no i think right now with the latest idea we're messing about with, we have a 10-page list. And I think there's another 10-page list we don't even remember we have. And it's like a relationship type movie. So it's just like things happen to us. And it's just like, oh, a fight about this. It's a symbol as husband who holds back wife. Wife who enhances husband's positive qualities.

Starting point is 00:31:42 And then it's also just like housewarming party. Like it's things like that. And like, or we'll go to a party and something funny will happen. And you put that in the document. So it's just a stream of consciousness collection of these ideas. And again, and like the ideas themselves, as you go through these lists over and over throughout the years, some ideas you kind of stick in your head and you remember,

Starting point is 00:32:01 and some start to seem stupid. And you start to create characters kind of based on the ideas or sometimes you come up with the characters first and sometimes you'll just meet someone you'll be like someone like that like someone who is going through this in life or you know what i mean um and it can come from anywhere and then for a while we got really uh uh and then process wise i think we kind of strayed a little bit in that we got so busy we started kind of like farming it out a little bit to other people which is something that we're kind of trying to not do as much yeah we wanted to do a lot of stuff and so we had other people writing stuff for us and it all worked out very well but we got i think our biggest skill i think literally at the end of the day

Starting point is 00:32:45 if like the thing we are best at is actually writing and and i think we kind of stopped doing that honestly for a while in lieu i mean we got to we got the opportunity to become directors and that was so exciting yeah that we just wanted to direct another one and then we became and we were becoming producers as well which and like i like, I mean, and it was all kind of, it wasn't like a plan. It was a very organic thing that was happening as our careers were building and expanding in a different directions. But as that was happening, looking back, uh, our writing, which is probably the thing we're

Starting point is 00:33:20 best at, got kind of pushed to the side a little bit. But now that we've done, I think, uh a a pretty okay job setting up these other things our producing is going very well our directing you know is established and so i think we can refocus on writing things and kind of settle back into what we were doing and it's really exciting too because the producing and the directing uh caused this cycle where it was like we got to get another one out because we need to you know You direct one movie you're not really a director until you direct like two or three things and then they're like Oh this guy's not going anywhere, but now that we've gotten past that hurdle We can go back to what we really like which is writing things and not rushing

Starting point is 00:33:58 Yeah, exactly. How did the first script you guys collaborated on that got sold or got made cross that chasm? Superbad? Yeah. It took years and years and years. Basically, I moved to L.A. to do Freaks and Geeks when I was 17. Just a quick interjection. Why did they do a casting call? It was at your high school?

Starting point is 00:34:21 No, it was in Vancouver. Sometimes on... Because it was based your high school? No, it was, they went to Vancouver. Okay. Sometimes on. Because it was based in LA. It was based, it was set in Michigan. It was shot in LA. Right. But sometimes Judd and Paul, Judd Apatow and Paul Feig, the creator, Paul, the creator, and Judd, the executive producer of Freaks and Geeks, had a very, they wanted very real

Starting point is 00:34:44 kits. And they had an idea from the beginning that they wouldn't find them in la that if you're in la you're like an actor kid and that there's a good chance that you are not what they're looking for that being said i think they cast i think everyone but me and one other guy out of la but so they were kind of wrong but thank god they looked at least because so what they did is they did casting calls in vancouver and boston and new york and chicago and toronto and all these cities and i got to audition um in vancouver and they were there like paul and judd like we're in vancouver yeah no they were actually yeah they were like in the room and i recognized paul

Starting point is 00:35:22 because he's in this movie uhki Patrol, which I had seen. He's in Ski Patrol? Yeah, he's in Ski Patrol. And so. Is he the topless woman? No, your thing is Ski School. Ski Patrol is a less pervy version of Ski School. I am not interested.

Starting point is 00:35:36 Ski Patrol is not that pervy. There's maybe one or two topless women. Yeah, it's not Ski School. But that threw me. Anyway. And so, yeah. And so they cast me from Vancouver and I moved to L. I went there and shot the pilot.

Starting point is 00:35:53 And then I came back and then it got picked up. And then I'm. And so I was very lucky because I, like, moved to L.A. Like, with a job. Like, I wasn't, like, one of. I didn't have to, like, go to L.A. And, like, try to find work for myself. Like, I went there employed, which was, like. I didn't have to go to L.A. and try to find work for myself.

Starting point is 00:36:14 I went there employed, which was like at the time I didn't realize how many massive hurdles I was overcoming just by doing that. You know what I mean? And then so I was there. And then meanwhile, we're writing Superbad, and I give it to Judd. And Judd was very busy at the time running the show, which was like going down in flames basically, even though it was very good. And so he kind of didn't pay too much attention to it at first.

Starting point is 00:36:37 But Jake Kasdan, who was one of the directors of the show, who has gone on to direct tons of movies and stuff like that, he directed the pilot of freaks and geeks he um he really he's just like a very nice guy he was around he's he was in his 20s very young and so he just like really took a lot of time to like sit with me and talk to me about it he would give us notes on it and like it was just very encouraging because he was like this is good and you could keep working on this yeah and i was just at university at McGill in Montreal the whole time because I couldn't come to America even if I wanted to because I didn't have a visa.

Starting point is 00:37:10 His dad's American. My dad's American. But I wanted to be a writer, and it seemed like via him on Freaks and Geeks we had an inlet, so I studied U.S. history so I knew who I was writing for better. It was a good idea. I loved history, and I thought if I understood Americansicans better i could write better for americans because i knew that i knew canadians and uh and america's quite different yeah but then after at some point judd did read it and it was

Starting point is 00:37:37 um during the show we did uh undeclared uh so freezing geeks got canceled and then because judd read super bad he got another show going the next year called undeclared which was about college freshmen i was literally the exact age of a college freshman and so and he liked how super bad was written so he hired me as a writer on the show and so and then during undeclared, he really took a producorial role on Superbad and would give us tons of notes. And that's when we first started going around trying to sell it. That was in like 2000, 2001. And in 2002, he said, bring your friend on down. I'll throw him a tiny bit of cash so he can live.

Starting point is 00:38:25 And you guys should try to write something else. So I came down and we spent two months writing Pineapple Express. He told us to come up with 100 ideas for movies, which is insane. We got to 50, which is great. We never made any of them. And then he was like, these are awesome. But you should instead write a movie about a pothead who's a process server who gets hunted by his own dealer and we said that's stupid and that will end a career before it ever happens to do like a modern cheech and chong and he just said uh but what if it was good yeah we were like

Starting point is 00:38:55 oh what if it was good and we love action movies and you know die hard and leave the weapon they were like oh what if we kind of make it like a 90s like these 90s action movies that we love so much and so we wrote pineapple express pretty fast like we just loved it just in a few weeks or a few months and we really just like locked ourselves in a room like maybe like six weeks or something like that it was like one of those things where like wake up at 3 p.m right until 6 a.m we were very unhealthy at this time in our lives this was that the time when we got a costco card and gained like 20 pounds we would get pasta and cheese because it was cheap yeah and just eat pasta and cheese all day long it was gross um so so by the end of i think like

Starting point is 00:39:38 2002 both pineapple express and super bad were written and just no one wanted to make them and it would it would come close to be someone oh we, we might make it, and then it wouldn't happen. And we might make it. And every now and then, and I didn't have the money to do it, I would fly down. We would go and pitch it. Or my dad would drive with me from Vancouver, and we'd go and pitch it. And every time we pitched it, probably 10 times, Judd and Seth and me would go, and my dad would drop me off. And we'd go in, and they'd be like, we love this.

Starting point is 00:40:03 This is great. And we're like, okay, so you're going to make it? And make it and they're like oh no we can't yeah and i was supposed to play the seth role and slowly throughout this process like i just i still remember the meeting where like always i was like and i'm gonna play seth and then i remember like it took so many years there was like one meeting where i was like i think this is the meeting where i no longer should say that i'm gonna play seth because i'm 23 years old so we uh these were uh studio heads or studio execs it was all it was every it was it was some new companies with like weird money that comes from who knows where it was some studios it was

Starting point is 00:40:38 like every type of thing you could imagine basically when did the sort of the the other shoe drop in the positive so meanwhile like we start getting work we get hired on the ali g show which is great um and it's just it starts to make things like pick up a little for us i was in the 40 year old virgin like things like that started to happen i and while he was doing 40 year old virgin judd invited me to participate in some capacity but i knew i had to finish my degree so I could actually stay legally. So I finished my degree and missed out on that. And by the time I came down, the premiere had happened and the movie had hit.

Starting point is 00:41:14 Yeah. And so Judd started to become a successful movie person. Like he was now a director and a writer and a producer and an incredibly successful one. So an anchorman had come out in Dun well, which he was a producer on. And then Talladega Nights came out and did really well. And I think it was... Wait, Talladega Nights didn't come up before we made Knocked Up. We made Knocked Up first, didn't we?

Starting point is 00:41:37 We did. I don't think so. No, I don't think so. I remember going with Judd to the deville film festival i think for 40 year old virgin while he was here in atlanta i think shooting talladega nights i'm bad with years and time but this is approximately what happened and then around now it's like you know when you get successful like judd was people just start wanting whatever you have and so it was sony was just like we'll make stuff and so they made super bad and then at the time to make an uh however much it was like

Starting point is 00:42:14 22 million like it was it was it was a bizarre model that had never been done no famous people low budget it was kind of an experiment the studio was doing to see if they could make big movies at a smaller budget without famous people and they also what's crazy is knocked up pineapple express and super bad were all made in like one year i think basically like we made them like back to back to back because that it was essentially like once the floodgates opened we just like shoved everything in there that we had. If you just look at statistically, we're going to be done in two years. Yeah, exactly. So you have to take advantage of the window.

Starting point is 00:42:52 Yeah, we just took everything. And then Knocked Up and Superbad came out the same summer, and both did really, really well. So he was a co-producer on 40-Year-Old Virgin, and they made him an EP on Knocked Up, and Judd just made me an EP, too, which was bonkers. on the third day evan's first day on set he was an executive producer universal studios comedy and i remember judd laughed really hard because i was like can i just take however much water i want and he was like yeah man you can have all the water you want and i was like what about the coffee and he was like yeah so i man, you can have all the water you want. And I was like, what about the coffee? And he was like, yeah. So I would have like 14 cups of coffee a day. And I remember I saw Katherine Heigl.

Starting point is 00:43:28 I was like, hey, what's up? We've been working together for like a week. And then she went up to Seth and was like, wow, that guy's got a lot of energy. He's got great enthusiasm. Where does he get it from? And he was like, oh, this is his first week on a movie set. He's had 14 cups of coffee. What was your reaction, Evan, when you first found out that super bad was going to get made

Starting point is 00:43:46 i mean was that i don't i mean i assume i freaked out and lost my mind uh i don't remember or did or was it not it's such a blur because as he said it all went down in one year it was just the most exciting year ever but also for me like he'd been working yeah i've been going to school right which meant not going to school and getting drunk and hanging out with friends. Like I barely went to class. So I had this shocking shift from like slacker student to working 14 hours a day. And I remember I would have to sneak away and just like go into a bathroom and sleep for like 20 minutes because I wasn't used to it.

Starting point is 00:44:21 I couldn't handle it. That's why I was drinking so much coffee. It was a really hard transition for me, but knocked up was kind of like boot camp yeah because judd you know it was his big shot to make something really huge for sure so we would go 16 hours 17 hours 14 hours and i almost lost my mind but by the end of it i think i was like kind of battle hardened right yeah conditioned for it all and what what were some of the the lessons that you guys learned have learned from judd i mean what what were some of the the lessons that you guys learned have learned from judd i mean what are like some of the takeaways for whether it's a creative process or so that's

Starting point is 00:44:50 a that's a whole other yeah i mean it's uh we could feel i mean i would say the biggest thing we learned from him in my opinion is like and and we talked about this earlier is don't keep stuff to yourself like you're surrounded by smart people bring them in get other people's opinions share it with them yeah um and importantly, emotion is what matters. It's an emotional journey. It doesn't matter if the aircraft carrier hits the skyscraper and it collapses onto the hero. It's what is he feeling when that happens? And why does it matter that he has to get out of the rubble?

Starting point is 00:45:17 He just taught us like emotion is the key. Like the four-year-old version is a crazy weird movie. It's insane. But it's about a guy who's got like a wound yeah that he wants to heal and through this journey he does and it's it's all about that we mentioned that to me in every every character i still have a wound yeah that's a big judd juddism yeah i think i mean about the process i mean he basically like yeah like taught us the process that we use a lot i mean especially in regards to collaboration and...

Starting point is 00:45:45 And improv. He was somewhat revolutionary in how he did it. Like, people had done it before, like Christopher Guest and other people, but Judd figured out a way to make improv and mainstream movies collide in a way that I don't think anyone had at the time. No one was really doing it like that. And, yeah, I mean, the filming um and how how to work on set is something he's taught us a lot about i mean again and it's all it was stuff that was partially figured out

Starting point is 00:46:11 together but he worked for years and years and years before us and i mean it's so funny it often i remember one time we were filming a scene in knocked up i think and improvising and he's or maybe it was even 40 old virgin the-Old Virgin, the direction he screamed at us, because he screams direction from another room a lot, which is hilarious. But what he screamed at us was, less semen, more emotion. And I think that is actually an across-the-board good note

Starting point is 00:46:38 to apply to things. And yet still, we've managed to get quite a bit of semen in there. But I think it was just the area we were riffing on. But I think, yeah, I mean, what Evan was saying is exactly right. Like, the emotional core. Like, what is it really about? And that movies can be very sweet and still, like, and especially if you you're gonna make a movie that is so like you know um dirty or aggressively you know um you know uh filled with profanity and that thing that

Starting point is 00:47:14 like it helps if they're sweet and if you really like if they're not mean-spirited and if you uh and and and write what you know it was a big thing and try to inject your own honesty and experiences into your work, even if it's a weird spy movie or end of the world movie. This is the end is just about Jay and Seth and Jay is upset that Seth has found new friends and Seth is upset that Jay seems to

Starting point is 00:47:38 be holding on to the past. That's what the movie's about. It has nothing to do with the apocalypse, really. That's just the area it all went down in yeah when looking at filmmaking or comedy uh movies specifically if if you guys could have written something that someone else wrote and besides your own stuff where you're like oh i wish adaptation adaptation yeah it's the best it's the best movie ever yeah it's it's it's a masterpiece and the script is even better than the movie

Starting point is 00:48:06 the movie I think they made the right choice with the changes they made but the script is unreal not a lot of movies make me mind-blowingly jealous but when I saw that I was just like that ended five of my best ideas

Starting point is 00:48:22 I was like oh there should be a movie with someone who has anxiety represented by a character and I was like oh he did this 10 times better than i ever could plus 10 other things that i had and it's the whole and the movie's like funny and awesome and like it's just just the story of how that came together also in terms of yeah that he was hired to write the adaptation and then he freaked out and couldn't do it i mean it's like it's unspeakably genius like the meta backstory is is so funny and then i would say on a flip side uh to me the most magical uh emotional beautiful movie is the princess bride my favorite yeah it's just i can't watch it too much that was uh you know i've had this fascination

Starting point is 00:48:59 with screenwriting even though i haven't uh pulled the trigger on anything, but the screenplay that did it was The Princess Bride. Reading, was it William Goldman? Yeah, yeah, the book on it. So good. It's a great movie. All the backstories. So one of the scenes in Adaptation, because you mentioned it, one of my favorite scenes is when he's sitting in the movie, Nicolas Cage, sitting in his apartment

Starting point is 00:49:19 at this typewriter, and he's like, and you hear his internal dialogue. He's procrastinating. Yeah, he's like, you hear his internal dialogue yeah he's like you know i should really have a muffin god i'm so hungry like i really need some coffee don't think better what is what are what are your opinions of writer's block oh uh we touched on this earlier uh i think writer's block is complete bullshit really and is it yeah i think it's a term i have it right now i think it is a term like it's a term people give to a bad week like i have bad weeks i don't have a writer's block writer's block implies that like

Starting point is 00:49:52 you can't do it some things are just harder than other things but i like like you could have said that we had writer's block on this is the end when we couldn't figure out the third act i don't call that writer's block i say that was the biggest struggle no i think that we just have never experienced it uh which is why you don't think it exists but i think that like you think that we've never said no way i i imagine i think what i think what happens to people actually and we're just lucky that we haven't experienced it is they become uninspired like that i think is what writer's block is and we're just lucky because that has never happened to us you know i take issue with the term, especially block. It's just the term.

Starting point is 00:50:27 Writer's difficulties, writer's struggle. Writer's crap. Writer's block implies like, it's just not going to happen. But I think if you truly lose your inspiration or who you are as a creative person, I think people experience those moments. And that's writer. I think that's what writer's block is. Do you think that, what would you you think that what would you attribute that to do you think that's because you guys are writing what you know or what is i think there's two of us on it yeah a really big thing is when one of us

Starting point is 00:50:56 is not doing great the other one can pick up the weight yeah and when one of us is uninspired the other one can be inspired moments where i'm just like i don't even know what the fuck we're doing anymore why are we doing this and then he'll just have an idea and i have to just keep going and And when one of us is uninspired, the other one can be inspired. There's moments where I'm just like, I don't even know what the fuck we're doing anymore. Why are we doing this? And then he'll just have an idea, and I have to just keep going. And then you plow through it. There's probably moments where he's thinking a similar thing. And in that moment, I'm not thinking that.

Starting point is 00:51:13 And so it allows us to keep going. And there's a beauty to writing stuff on your own. But specifically for movies, I think writing as a team is extremely beneficial. And even if you do write alone, you should be sharing what you're writing with everyone all the time all the time because writer's block as some call it and i would rather not could easily be solved by just getting someone to help you right and i think a lot of writers uh the biggest problem i think writers have is they're like i can't show people until it's ready and that's a pocket i think you need to show it immediately i think you need to talk about your ideas early.

Starting point is 00:51:45 And I think that's how, if you have writer's block, there's probably a reason you have it. There's probably a reason you're uninspired. And that is the thing you should be writing about. And I think in order to arrive at that, you need to talk to someone sometimes. And I think that's why it's helpful to have another person. We're very open with each other. We talk about pretty much everything that's happening in our lives with one another and so it's not like i'd just be sitting there grumpy and he's like got an idea he's like no i'm not not feeling it today like like we would i would explain why and that would

Starting point is 00:52:20 probably lead to an idea because we like to write in that way. And I guess that's why, to both of us, adaptation is the most genius thing ever. It's a movie about writer's block. A guy took writer's block and made it something. And I guess that's my beef with writer's block. It's just something stopping you, but it'll put you in another direction. So it's still the path you're taking. Who in your mind, whether right now, alive or dead, are some of the more underrated comedy writers? Well, Hannibal Buress is a stand-up comic.

Starting point is 00:52:51 He's not a full-on writer, but that man is an unspeakable genius. Hannibal Buress? Buress. Buress. He started this whole Bill Cosby thing. Yeah. Oh, Bill Cosby started it. I don't want to attribute that to Hannibal. yeah well bill cosby we have a guy we're working with named joe mandy who's bizarrely genius i think sasha's one of the

Starting point is 00:53:12 funniest guys yeah sasha baron cohen i mean gary shandling is brilliant to me like the larry sanders show i think in a lot of ways does a lot of the stuff that a lot of people try to do today there's an animator who i think and writer who i think is one of the stuff that a lot of people try to do today there's there's an animator who i think and writer who i think is one of the greatest geniuses to ever live named don hertz yeah and now people know the funniest he's amazing he made this thing called rejected yeah that is the funniest thing i think i may have ever seen in my entire life it's crazy he he animates by hand usually with a 16 millimeter camera he just started using computers a little but uh it's it's he's really it's like stick figures literally and it's it's the most genius thing i've ever seen

Starting point is 00:53:49 yeah he's incredible um and uh yeah he's probably not as lauded as one could be i think he gets nominated i think he won an oscar action so never mind fuck he does a really good looking. But, yeah, I mean, I think, like, Matt and Trey of South Park and Book of Mormon, to me, are, like, two of the funniest humans ever created. Again, Judd. And, I mean, who's, like, growing up I was really into, like, SCTV, like Martin Short. Yeah, and especially as Canadians. John Candy. Kids in the Hall and SCTV played on a loop. Yeah, Kids in the Hall. Kids in the Hall is, like Martin Short. Yeah, and especially as Canadians. John Candy. Kids in the Hall and SCTV played on a loop. Yeah, Kids in the Hall.

Starting point is 00:54:27 Kids in the Hall is like. I mean, Kids in the Hall was very influential on us, and we watched it a ton growing up. I've seen every single episode. Like, I never will turn on an episode, and it's one I haven't seen. Do you want to see one that kind of changed our lives? The Shirley. The Shirley. Which is one of the weirdest things of all time.

Starting point is 00:54:43 It's one of the strangest, and they did this short, I believe, called Sausages. How do you spell that? Sausages. Sausages. Sausages. S-H-I-R-L-I-N-G. Oh, yeah. It's a made-up word.

Starting point is 00:54:53 And so, but what was great about Kids on the Hill was how insane it was. And at the time, it didn't seem insane because we watched it so much and it was on so much. But as we got older and started to make stuff, we realized, like, I don't think I could get that show on air right now. No, it's so crazy. It's so bonkers. And the fact that they got to do whatever they wanted, even though, like, two out of the five times it was a big miss. The other times, it's just like they nailed it because they got to do what they really wanted to in their hearts. And, like, we've got to work with Lorne Michaels and I've got to be around him a bunch.

Starting point is 00:55:24 And, like, that's one of the things we things we talked about the most every time we're around him and he and he's very proud of the show but he says i mean he's like the key to that show was letting those guys do whatever they wanted and that was it he's like that was that show was like they had to do all of it because that's how crazy it was. We also had a – well, also quickly, Mel Brooks was like a huge thing. Lauren is amazing. I mean he's not like known as being a writer by trade or anything, but he's a very funny guy and like – He's like the Steve Jobs of comedy. I mean he's – and it's unbelievable what he's done.

Starting point is 00:55:57 And like he's someone that every time I'm around him, it's like – it's truly like an awe-inspiring thing. And we also, just from being in Canada, we had a lot of British television, so we got a lot of those British comedy shows. Yeah, like Fawlty Towers and Monty Python. And I think that gave us an attitude towards comedy. Ab Fab? Did you watch that growing up?

Starting point is 00:56:16 My mom watched that. Absolutely fabulous. Yeah, it was a great show. My parents were really into comedy and watched a lot of Woody Allen movies when I was growing up. Are there any late bloomers in comedy writing who have not, say, known since they were kids that they wanted to be in comedy or in writing who have kind of come onto the scene and done well? That come to mind?

Starting point is 00:56:39 That come to mind? Maybe not. There must be. There must be. I mean, it's a tough question, but I figured I'd throw it out there. No, it's a good question but i figured no it's a good it's a good one i i can't think of anyone or comedy directing acting tim ferris yeah exactly when i'm funny it's usually accidental uh i'm gonna go with elon musk on that

Starting point is 00:56:58 no i can't i can't think of it it of those things, though, where it's like, and I think it's what brings comedians together. It's so funny because, like, whenever you go, which I don't often, but at the times I do go to, like, a Hollywood-type party, all the comedians are often, like, lumped together in one little section because they often all know each other. And often they're similar types of people they've for whatever bizarre reason known since they were little kids that they want to be i think you can boil it down and this is maybe over generalizing but they comedians know that life is ridiculous yeah and i think that's like a common bond that holds them all together well they're all like we're never gonna figure this out this is all absurd and let's kind of analyze how ridiculous the party they're all the people who want to stand in the corner and make fun of the party they're at and so they all and so they

Starting point is 00:57:49 all go and then sometimes the whole party is that i had uh brian callan has uh been on the podcast and buddy is a stand-up comic oh yeah he's done a lot of acting and he gave me my first tour of the comedy store he's in the 40 year old virgin movie virgin movie, Knock Off. Right? Oh, which one? The 40-year-old virgin who knocked off Sarah Marshall's Superman thing. I think he is. I could be wrong, but I'm pretty sure. He gave me my first tour at the Comedy Store. And a bunch of the comics just ended up standing outside basically making fun of the party and shooting the shit.

Starting point is 00:58:26 That's where the real comedy is, is right outside the comedy club. When you guys think of, it could be more broadly, uh, outside of comedy, like Evan, I'll ask you first, when you think of the word successful, who's the first person that comes to mind for you? Uh,

Starting point is 00:58:36 uh, honestly, my cousin, David. Why is that? I got it. I got two cousins, David and Charlie who live in orange county and they

Starting point is 00:58:46 just have a really nice life and three or two great kids and every time i go to their house i think this is the most successful group of people i know just because they're they're really happy and they all really like each other and it's rare to have a family that everyone likes everyone and they're all proud of each other so corny answer but my cousin's day why do you think more people aren't like that or don't have that um i think they just made up their minds and i think other people deliberate too much like they were just like he was like i'm a doctor she was like i'm gonna be a teacher we want two kids we're gonna live there and we're gonna make the best of our lives and uh go to the beach whenever we can they just like they seem to have cut through a

Starting point is 00:59:24 lot of the bullshit and made their lives very simple in a beautiful way, and it's all about their kids. I don't know. I just feel like they are the most level-headed people I know who have stuff really figured out. Seth, what about yourself? You've got to say something emotional or you're going to be a jerk.

Starting point is 00:59:39 I know. Michael Jordan. I don't know. My parents, I feel like, seem pretty happy. Yeah, I definitely don't ascribe a financial meaning to it off the top of my head. Yeah, my parents are on a cruise in alaska right now eating they just sent me a picture of a meal that entirely comprised of tater tots and beer so i'd say they're doing pretty well right now his dad has somehow made vegetarianism unhealthy to a degree the most unhealthy vegetarian on the entire planet but uh yeah my parents are very very happy honestly and um and and have always uh

Starting point is 01:00:29 have always seemed they're very like they're pretty like zen i gotta say which to me is like uh a good a good place to be and what i strive to be is is just at peace at peace with myself do you uh seth give give books as gifts ever? If so, do you have a most gifted book that you've given to people? I don't give books as gifts. I give sometimes like coffee table type books as gifts. But like if someone's in a movie, like I like coffee table books. I read and I give comic books sometimes

Starting point is 01:01:05 to people i don't often give books to people as gifts because i'm not myself like a huge reader i'm not like a witch comic have i given to people i've given preacher to people i've given watchmen to people i've used to i've given hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy to people because i love that book and if they tell me they haven't read it, I give that to them. I've given this book The Art of Dramatic Writing to People because it's one of those... By Lachos Egri. By Lachos Egri. That's something Judd told us to read.

Starting point is 01:01:30 That's a book Judd gave us. The Art of Dramatic... Yeah. If you're a writer, 60% of it's useless and 40% of it is gold. It references a lot of plays that if you haven't read and you haven't, because who has? It just doesn't... A lot of it is very referential to certain places.

Starting point is 01:01:47 The best part of it is it explains the importance of premise and how you must have a rock-solid one-sentence premise before you dive in. Yeah, and like a thesis for the movie itself. I remember when Doug gave it to us, he said it was Woody Allen's favorite writing book, which was meaningful at the time. And so I've given that book to people um the the that uh conquest of happiness i've given to people because that's a great book that's by bertrand russell it's like the original like the racial epitaphs at the time were more acceptable than they are it was written in like 1920 or something like that i think right but um it's uh it's a great it's like one of the og self-help books basically right um i think like the gist of the book is like some say life

Starting point is 01:02:32 is pleasurable some say it isn't so i think about it um and so uh i've given those books to people yeah but not uh i don't give a ton of books to people and i know we only have a little bit of time left but evan what uh what about yourself do you have a most gifted book every uh newfound uh every person who becomes a mother uh who's a friend of mine i send this canadian child's book love you forever to which i think is just love you forever the number two or love you forever it's it's got a Love you forever, love you for always. As long as you're living, my baby you'll be. It's like a thing between a mother and son. And I think that's a beautiful book that I give to anybody who's had a kid.

Starting point is 01:03:11 But it's beautiful. It's unbelievably depressing. No one's been upset I gave it to them. Really? Not to you. The Little Prince is phenomenal. Hitchhiker's guide and then i i often give uh preacher v for vendetta and the watchman to people but my main thing is love you forever i think that

Starting point is 01:03:32 like anyone who has a kid should have that book now we were talking about this briefly yesterday but could you describe the habit that you picked up from snoop dogg um in the context. We were smoking pot with Snoop Dogg. What happened? Did you pick up? This is when we were recording that song and we were hanging out with him and we were smoking pot. Do you have hoes come in when you write now? I can only write with hoes around.

Starting point is 01:04:01 I don't know how we got to this, but he was like, you like to go for walks? I was like, not really. He's like, what do you mean? I was like, I'll go for exercise or whatever, but I don't just go for walks. And he looked at me really disappointed

Starting point is 01:04:16 and was like, you should go for walks, man. That's a bad move. You're making a bad mistake. And it haunted me that Snoop Dogg was disappointed that I didn't take walks so i started taking a walk in the morning and a walk after dinner and it has like massively changed my life i sleep better i have a better day because and i just walk for like 10 minutes but he just kind of went on like a little mini rant saying like walking's great man it's it's

Starting point is 01:04:39 important i walk with my kids it's one of the reasons people like having dogs yeah do you walk them yeah steve jobs was a famous walker i'm not joking yeah he was known for like doing meetings on walks like instead of like sitting in a office doing a meeting he would they would walk around and now i've started to i become obsessed with like i i will stretch during meetings and i don't care who it's with yeah i will as as with you i will stand for full meetings because I don't like sitting. And we're trying to get a new office. And when we do, I'm putting a treadmill in there, a bunch of other stuff. Because when we're writing, I'm often just walking around the room,

Starting point is 01:05:13 spinning a pencil in my hand. You should try a treadmill desk. My friend has it. It takes a little while to get used to. I don't think I could do that. I've heard it's good. I saw someone running on a treadmill reading a book at the gym this morning. That sounds like a great idea. No one's written a

Starting point is 01:05:26 hilarious joke on a treadmill. That's never happened in the history of comedy. I have an elevating desk that goes up and down, but I will try the treadmill desk. The key is not running. Yeah, exactly. And having a safety clip on.

Starting point is 01:05:43 If you could have given your, let's just say, 25-year-old self some advice, what would you have said? I would have told myself to lose weight. Earlier? Yeah. I just lost like 25 pounds and I feel so much better and my brain is so much sharper. And I was just – I wasn't like massively overweight overweight but i was overweight for those from 25 to 31 and that was a very very big mistake that was very fixable and i wish that i could go back in time and be like just start walking yo start walking some

Starting point is 01:06:15 nice walks we'll fix this all and and uh and i found out i was allergic to wheat so i wish i could go back in time and tell myself that. Tony, wheat. Because I found that out three years ago, and if I found that out six years ago, I would have had a lot better of a decade. What about yourself, Seth? I don't know. I was probably a lot healthier when I was – I was probably doing better, by all means, when I was 25 than I am right now. I probably would have told myself to propose to my wife sooner. Oh, yeah, me too.

Starting point is 01:06:44 Me too. That would have saved me. Why to my wife sooner. Oh, yeah, me too. Me too. That would have saved me. Why is that? Just because I waited. I mean, I waited like six and a half years. Is it a coincidence we both made that mistake? I don't know. Probably not. But it was probably like, what do they call that, enabling?

Starting point is 01:06:58 I think we probably enabled each other. I was like, Seth's not doing it. But I don't know. I mean, I don't have any major regrets that have occurred between now and then or any like I think there's lessons I've learned, but they've been valuable and organic to my living process. But the proposal, I should have proposed sooner. That I would have done differently. I suppose this could be maybe a similar type of question. But for you, Evan, if you could have one billboard anywhere that said anything,

Starting point is 01:07:28 what would be on it? I've had a lot of billboards, so that's a tough one for me to answer. I've been on the same. He would say, would you have a child with this guy or whatever knocked up one? The night before, coming out November 24th. I guess my biggest beef with the world that I would throw up on a billboard is this is going to get deep, guys. No. Accept each other.

Starting point is 01:07:53 Whoa, Evan. Boom. I don't accept that. I don't like when people don't accept one another. I think they should. And I would put it on top of the Empire State Building. Really? People wouldn't see it very well up there.

Starting point is 01:08:03 Okay, fine. I'd put it at the bottom of the Empire State Building. On the entryway to the Empire State Building. Really? People wouldn't see it very well up there. Okay, fine. I'd put it at the bottom of the Empire State Building. On the entryway to the Empire State Building. Accept each other is good. I like that. Accept each other. Or just accept me with a picture of me. Except Seth Rogen.

Starting point is 01:08:21 Well, I know we're wrapping up here. You guys have a lot to do today. We have some more time. You've got like 11 more minutes. 11 more minutes. We're going to go, yeah. Okay, all right. In that case, I would like to...

Starting point is 01:08:30 When we leave, we have to go back to our jobs. Yeah, exactly. I'm not eager to go to my job. I'll help postpone that a little bit. So I'd like to ask a couple of fan questions. This one is from Kyle Bailey. He wants to know about the future of comedy, and this is what he says.

Starting point is 01:08:43 Robots. Singularity. Singularity. Singularity string Singularity. String theory. What is funny on one side of the universe creates a funny reaction on the other side. No one knows why. He says, it seems to me that late 70s and then 80s satire, Saturday Night Live, Seinfeld,

Starting point is 01:08:59 has led to all things funny being absurd hence old spice commercials having minotaur and so on seems like the more absurd the funnier at least in the mainstream when will this snap back or when will we experience the next direction of comedy or is absurdity the final act of comedy and then somebody added to that specifically on not online where you're trying to grab attention in a distraction i heard actually with marketing specifically recently someone told me that uh that now commercials like actually do better if they make no sense like that literally just like mountain commercial have you guys seen that mountain or the moment like the horse in the way it's like this horse to tell you like there's literally like i i someone was explaining the

Starting point is 01:09:39 theory where it's like the fact that they make no sense actually makes you pay more attention to them than a traditional commercial narrative. I actually don't necessarily agree with that. Yeah, I got it. It depends a lot. Like, Superman's not absurd. Transparent's not absurd. Or, like, Trainwreck is one of the biggest comedies of the year. And it's, like, completely, you know, a very grounded movie.

Starting point is 01:10:03 Yeah, like, we love ourselves some absurd comedy. But there's room for both. And Neighbors is our most grounded movie. We love ourselves some absurd comedy, but there's room for both. Neighbors is our most successful movie, and in a lot of ways, it's quite broad at times, but in premise, it's about people who have a bunch of kids moving next door to them. It's not that bizarre. So I actually think the biggest comedies are not absurd.

Starting point is 01:10:24 They're somewhat grounded in reality, So I actually think the biggest comedies are not absurd. They're somewhat grounded in reality. And the somewhat popular but maybe less popular comedies, like This is the End, which did very well but isn't in the same universe as Neighbors or Trainwreck is doing much better than that. I think those truly absurd ones actually don't do as well as the more grounded ones. Well, it's like Memento. I mean, not absurd, but it but so confusing to so many people. I mean, I love Memento, but it's been kind of disheartening to find that a lot of my

Starting point is 01:10:52 favorite movies did very, very, very poorly at the box office. Oh, yeah. And a lot of movies... We always say this, like, we'll never be number one, and if we are, we won't be that cool anymore. Yeah, like, it's true. Like, we always will have the sensibility where it's like things everyone loves, I hate.

Starting point is 01:11:08 And things everyone hates, I love. And I don't mean that in like I'm not trying to be like a hipster. I also love a lot of mainstream stuff. And I'm the first guy in line to see a Michael Bay movie when it comes out. Fast and Furious is the greatest time you could have at a movie theater.

Starting point is 01:11:23 Exactly, but that being said there's some shows that are really popular. I'm just like, I don't understand why people like this. And there's some shows that no one likes. And I'm like, I don't get why people don't love this, you know? And as long as you have that sensibility, I think there's a good chance you will not be the most successful person. Well, so, I mean, along those lines, so Freaks and Geeks, looking back at that, I mean, that, and this is a question from Nick Abregu, what was it about Freaks and Geeks that made everyone so successful in their later careers? Would you attribute it to advice they received or more of a networking effect or otherwise?

Starting point is 01:11:57 I'm paraphrasing. Honestly, my hope is that Judd and Paul found people who happened to be very talented and had the talent to sustain themselves. So they cast very well. Yeah, I think they cast very well. Yeah, and having cast movies with Judd, he's just got the eye, man. He's very good at seeing. Is it just an instinctual thing, or is there some? You get better at it. It's literally just there's not that many really funny people and like when you see someone who's actually very funny like and if

Starting point is 01:12:30 you're it's again what we you know you talk about it with investments it's the exact like you start to hone in on just like things that for whatever reason you start to think like this is good like and i think you you can train yourself to become more and more in tune with it. And I think that's one of the things Judd taught us, is, like, keep your eyes out for that person. If you're watching a movie and someone is in one scene and has one line and is funny, that person could star in a whole movie one day, maybe.

Starting point is 01:13:00 Yeah, like in The First Neighbors, there's this stand-up Gerard Carmichael who's in it. And he now has his own show. And we're trying to write a movie with our guys Kyle and Ariel for him to star in. And it all just came from our co-worker Alex saying, I saw this guy and he's got it. Lick yourself like a cat. And I think more than anything, that's what it is, is that he has a very good, you know, Paul and Judd both have very good eyes for spotting people that will keep working.

Starting point is 01:13:31 And another thing is they look long and hard. Like when we were looking for who was going to be the McLovin focal character in Superbad, it literally came down to putting up signs in high schools. Allison Jones, the casting director, did an epic search. Literally just putting up signs. Does anyone know anyone who fits this bill? And his buddies were like, you should go and do this. That's a very smart approach.

Starting point is 01:13:53 And we saw like, I don't know, 100 kids. And that's just what we saw filtered from the casting director onto us. And it's like a Hollywood cliche almost. But when you see that person, you go, it's him. That's the one. So just on McLovin, because this came up surprisingly often. So Justin Ninobasti, I think, and then Dan GMO Designs, I'm not sure. Ask them if they would ever be willing to make a spinoff movie about McLovin.

Starting point is 01:14:21 We are not, but we have discussed, which we'll never do what i'm about to say but we always thought it would be funny to kind of do something where you take saul from pineapple express the james franco character and mcloving from super bad and put them in a movie together but it's never happened no why would you never do it in the same way that donald trump thinks if he changes his hair he'll ruin his career yeah to us like super bad worked it was everything we ever hoped it would be and more, and I'm not touching it. It's like if you throw two bullseyes, you're like, no, I'm done with that.

Starting point is 01:14:49 If I made a sequel to Superbad and it was bad, it would crush me. I don't want to mess with it. I couldn't deal with that. Of course, weed comes up a lot. What's that? The marijuana. Do you find it helps creativity productivity neither both i mean because there are questions about like how do you be so productive

Starting point is 01:15:12 but for you for you two guys what what impact does it have i would say that it makes you a little dumber while you're on it but for us uh you know no matter what job you have no matter how amazing it is it's work and work in some ways sucks and what we've tried to do at our office like we have a big buck hunter in our office and just taking five minutes and playing around a big buck hunter it like lets you chill out going for a little walk to get a cup of coffee well and for us and for some people it's a very very bad idea i would say like most people it makes them work so much worse that they shouldn't. But some people, it relaxes them.

Starting point is 01:15:49 I think what's important, I think why it's helpful to us is because it's what we do socially. And so it makes work not feel like work. And I was actually just, like, yesterday reading this thing that Isaac, like, it was an old article that Isaac Asimov wrote about the creative process that was just republished. And one of the things he talks a lot about is, is in his process, how it's very important to create like a casual environment. And he says like, you shouldn't work in an office, you should work in someone's living room or at a restaurant. And you should, and you need people who are jovial, who, so you can, who create a fun environment because a lot of writing is failure. And if you're self-conscious that you're going to be rejected, then you won't say your best ideas. And I think, again, I think our thing happens to be smoking weed.

Starting point is 01:16:38 With some people, it's other things, but I think because it makes our working feel like a not working environment, it makes our brains function in a slightly more free way. And it makes us pitch ideas that maybe we would feel were too stupid to pitch if we were in a more rigid environment. And it would make ideas like this is the end not exist. Not because we're stoned, but because we are working in an environment that feels very safe and that feels very social and casual. And that lets us pitch out the ideas that might seem like the craziest ideas you could ever pitch out. But because we don't feel like we're in a work environment where everyone's judging us and that we're wasting time or not hitting the numbers or quotas that we have to be hitting, it allows us, I think, to be more free creators. Yeah, like in our office right now, Seth has a bunch of paintings that he's bought over the years from home,

Starting point is 01:17:35 and he put them around, and it feels like home. Yeah, I like that. And I have my yoga blocks and my yoga straps, and doing the stretches to me is akin to the smoking pot. You have one of the best Caucasian squats I've ever seen. Thank you, sir. He doesn't have the sitting position, usually. He goes from straight standing to perfect. In Japan, they would call it unkozuwari.

Starting point is 01:17:56 Unkozuwari is the shit squat. Yeah. Well, tell them what you bought me. I bought Evan a platform that goes around his toilet, so he can squat and shit into his toilet. The toilet server. If there's one thing people listening to this should take from this podcast, it's you should be squatting when you shit. It's natural.

Starting point is 01:18:14 It's better for you. It's bad for your back. It's bad for your bowels to sit on a toilet. Pop a squat. What do you guys use? I feel like since you guys grew up in BC in bc that it's uh for that is to pot as like growing up in france would be to wine so is there a particular type of pot because i've had friends be like no man you get anxious because of this you're using the wrong thing i will say

Starting point is 01:18:36 those friends are possibly correct um i had somebody who was telling me the pot's too strong i don't like it it makes me anxious so i went to one of the stores in California and said, can you give me some pot from 1995? And they did. And I gave it to the person. And they were like, there you go. It's not literally from 1995. No, the vine. It's as strong.

Starting point is 01:18:55 Oh, that's right. Because I've heard it's just. Maybe like the weakest, like what is the absolute worst weed you could buy now is what the best weed was when we were in high school probably yeah we have a problem where people will smoke pot with us and we'll be like take it easy we don't smoke weak stuff yeah we continued smoking good weed but uh but to get name specific uh uh jack hair yeah that's good is a good working one there's also good ones for work and ones that well it's very simple there's sativas and indicas. And sativas are generally kind of uppers,

Starting point is 01:19:27 and indicas are generally kind of downers. And when you're working, a sativa is generally better because it's not bogging you down. Jack hair, like a name. H-E-R-R-E-R. H-E-R-R-E-R. H-E-R-R-E-R. I think there's one R in the middle, but...

Starting point is 01:19:40 Is there... Do you guys have any, just in in closing ask or recommendation of the people listening um i would say the the reason that this podcast is happening right now is because uh with that guy don hertzfeld i mentioned there was one day where i was sitting there i was like god what i would do to talk to him and then i just picked up the phone and called my agent and was like, can you get me Don Hertzfeld's number? And I talked to him and it blew my mind. And then I had the same thing with this guy, Sam Harris, who I look up to very much and I like the work of, and I just called him. And so I reached out to you in the same way. And you write about this in your book as well. And I just think if you

Starting point is 01:20:21 idolize someone or you look up to someone or you respect someone's work try to get in touch with them it's there's no harm and so far i'm three for three and i have an advantageous position with an agent and all that incredibly successful producer writer director but still still there's there's like uh there's some guy uh named jordan who i ran into on the street who i email with and he now works at funny or die and i keep him in mind and i don't know this guy from anything he just came up to me one day on the street and it's worth a shot you never know like what's the worst that could happen well this jordan guy could kill me one day he could be a serial killer you're like totally the wrong people to ask that but uh no it's so true i mean uh some fans of mine have uh you know, reached out to Warren Buffett and gotten handwritten letters back from him.

Starting point is 01:21:06 You just never know. Yeah. Well, it's the same thing. Like sometimes like Seth and I always talk about this, we'll find ourselves doing like an interview or something. And we look at each other and we're like, why are we,

Starting point is 01:21:14 when did we agree to this? Why would we do this? Yeah. Sometimes people just drop their guards and agree to shit. They should. Exactly. I'm not sure if that's a, that's like a wink,

Starting point is 01:21:23 wink at me at the moment. I've been in whole movies. I don't understand why. Yeah, and like you call the person on the one day where their will is exhausted from whatever else, and they're just like, yeah, man, I'll meet with you as long as I can get off this phone call right now. Exactly. Yeah, that's what I think, too, is just do it. I mean, like Nike.

Starting point is 01:21:41 You meet so many people. Nike. I mean, Nike has the best tagline of all time. But it's like we so many people talk about writing movies and we did write a movie. And like, you know, my wife wanted to make a movie. And so she raised a million dollars and made a movie. Like, it's not something that is completely unachievable it's something that if you are somewhat talented and have a lot of determination and are willing to put yourself out there and are willing to fail then you can probably do something more than nothing yeah and like in the end super bad was a success but like make no mistake for

Starting point is 01:22:19 10 years it was a failure yeah and the first five drafts like if you read them you'd be like this is the worst thing i've ever read in my life people told us over and over and over again like i don't think anyone's gonna make this movie i don't think anyone's gonna make this movie and like it literally didn't even occur to us to to listen to them like it wasn't even a conversation of like should we stop like i literally we didn't even have that conversation just like fuck those people let's go to the next one. To picture Stephen King writing his first book and then being like, man, I'm stumped. I'm going to go be something else. You just keep going.

Starting point is 01:22:53 Blind belief in yourself. The four-hour workbook was turned down 26 or 27 times also. I mean, viciously, violently. I have these angry, infuriated, insulted letters from acquiring editors, turn it down. All right, guys. Well, let's, I really appreciate all the time. Let's wrap up and we can do that with telling people where they can find more about you guys, find you on the social webs and so on.

Starting point is 01:23:18 If they want to say hi, we do a film called the interview. We're not as active on the internet as we used to be. I'm pretty active. I muck about on Twitter a little. You're Evan Goldberg on Twitter. I'm Evan Goldberg on Twitter. Is it Evan or Evan D. Goldberg? Or Evan... I think it's just Evan Goldberg.

Starting point is 01:23:34 I think it's just Evan Goldberg. It's been a while. I will put it in the show notes for everybody also. I'm Seth Rogen on Twitter. And that's Rogen with an E or an A? With an E. Not to be confused. If you write a letter and put it under the second O in the Hollywood

Starting point is 01:23:50 sign, or the second L in the Hollywood sign, we go up there and we'll read it. Alright, guys. Well, thanks so much for taking the time. I really appreciate it. Everybody listening, of course, thank you for listening as always. And for all the show notes and everything else, you can go to 4hourworkweek.com spelled out and just click on podcast.

Starting point is 01:24:07 And until next time, thanks for listening. Thanks guys. Hey guys, this is Tim again. Just a few more things before you take off. Number one, this is five bullet Friday. Do you want to get a short email from me? Would you enjoy getting a short email from me every Friday that provides a little morsel of fun before the weekend? And Five Bullet Friday is a very short email where I share the coolest things I've found or that I've been pondering over the week. That could include favorite new albums that I've discovered. It could include gizmos and gadgets and all sorts of weird shit that I've somehow dug up in the world of the esoteric as I do. It could include favorite articles that I've read and that I've shared with my close friends,

Starting point is 01:24:52 for instance. And it's very short. It's just a little tiny bite of goodness before you head off for the weekend. So if you want to receive that, check it out. Just go to 4hourworkweek.com. That's 4hourworkweek.com all spelled out. And just drop in your email and you will get the very next one. And if you sign up, I hope you enjoy it.

Pet Camera - EBO Air 2

The Tim Ferriss Show - #108: Comedy's Dynamic Duo, Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg

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Pet Camera - EBO Air 2

The Tim Ferriss Show - #108: Comedy's Dynamic Duo, Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg

There aren't comments yet for this episode. Click on any sentence in the transcript to leave a comment.