The Watch - Is All This Money Amazon Is Spending Worth It? Plus, ‘Perry Mason’ and Lee Sung Jin and Jake Schreier on ‘Beef’.

Episode Date: April 7, 2023

Chris and Andy talk about a Hollywood Reporter article published this week that details Amazon’s efforts to put their streaming service on the map and whether or not their big spending has been worth it (1:00). Then they talk about the latest episode of ‘Perry Mason’ (23:04), before Chris is joined by ‘Beef’ creator Lee Sung Jin and director Jake Schreier to talk about the making of the show and working with Steven Yeun and Ali Wong (36:04). Hosts: Chris Ryan and Andy Greenwald Guests: Sonny Lee and Jake Schreier Producer: Kaya McMullen Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Stand up and walk now. Hello and welcome to The Watch. My name is Chris Ryan. And I am an editor at the ringer.com. And joining me finally back in the studio, it's Japani Greenwald. First of all, we were not in the studio prior to my international departure. Because I was Philadelphia's CR. Because of your, yeah, you were traveling.

Yeah, that's okay. Everybody travels. Some of us take beautiful pictures of wherever we travel and post them to Instagram and get lots of people being like, damn, I love this content. No one in this room, but I've been told that people in this room have been told by other people. they like. Yeah, that's right. That's how Kaya communicates friends. I don't even know how to like Instagram stories. Can you do that? Like when somebody posts the story, can you be like, good job? Yeah. You know how you do that? You pick up the phone. Uh-huh. You dial my digits and you say, hey, buddy, saw your story. International? You think I'm made of money? FaceTime audio, baby. It's fine.

You can make those trans-Pacific phone calls. It's fine. You have an MCI card, don't you still? Great to see you. Listen, I hope it's good to see me. We have stuff to talk about. You have guests today. I do. Yeah, we have some really cool guests today. Sunny Lee and Jake Schreier, who are the two of the guys Sunny obviously created the show. Maybe not obvious to people. They created beef, which is on Netflix today. All 10 episodes stars Stephen Yon and Ali Wong. Really like this show.

Really, really, really cool show. Really interesting show. It's like 10 episodes, 30 minutes each, and it's basically like, Ali Wong plays a basic, like kind of owns like a boutique furniture and home decor store. Stephen Young plays a down on his contractor.

They have a road rage incident to start the series. and everything goes from there. But it's a great throw a cinder block in the pond and see all the ripple effects, kind of black comedy, thriller, character study. It's really cool.

I'm really excited to talk to Jake and Sunny about the show. That's later on in this episode. Other admin, I thought I would mention. Please. As you may have heard on the Bill Simmons podcast, we did not get succession screeners this week.

No. So we will be doing our podcast on Monday morning. Bill, Joanna, Sean, they're going to go Sunday night, but we're going to go Monday morning in the studio. marinate on it, sit on it,

think about it. I think our take will be more... We'll have a little video for that too as well, I think. Our take will be more sober, I think. Not in terms of any variation, but... I'm getting shith housed at 8 in the morning. So, Kai and I are doing socket shots all morning. Just a round of bloodies?

Before we go. Anyway, good to see you. Here's what's on ARAGen. And you can just tell me what you want to go with first. There was a... Oh, okay. Industry Shaking article in the Hollywood Reporter. Kit Harrington.

Joining Industry. Dude, do you want to talk about that first? Keep going. You set the table. The agenda is basically, there's a big Amazon piece, a piece about Amazon Prime TV and Amazon Studios in The Hollywood Reporter by Kim Masters, had a lot of talking heads talking. We were going to chat about that a little bit.

Number two, Kit Harrington is going to be on industry season three. The HBO universe is collapsing on itself, and he's playing a guy named Henry Muck. I mean, that's so good. Which is really great. And what else? Oh, Perry Mason remains a pretty amazing

and elite television show that I want to talk to you about. That I think we should be talking about more, frankly. Well, we can talk about it today on this podcast. But first, I just want to check in with you because, you know, we haven't been in person in a minute.

I've accrued some stamps in my... Literally got 25 minutes. Let's go. It's fun. And, you know, I feel like you said right before we started that you want to be a new you. I want to know more about this.

Because when you greeted me at the door, Kai, you don't know this. I got all back. Chris, open the door and just started walking. No, that's because... Chris stood up and walked. He took... He finally listened.

Did you know that Born Legacy is the number two streaming movie on Netflix right now? Yeah, we were right, by the way. Maybe next Thursday we should just talk about Foreign Legacy. It's all I ever want to talk about. Have we ever done that before? Have we ever done like a Born Legacy episode? No, because I think we've always said that we're going to get Tony Gilroy to come talk

about it with us. Is he somewhat busy right now? Per recent reports from London, he's a little bit busy until late summer 24. But I think he'd make time for us. Well, maybe Born Legacy can keep the streak alive and just be a top 10 Netflix movie for about 58 weeks. By the way, listen to Chris Dassemble. Listen to him, change the subject. He doesn't want to talk about his new personality.

I just, we just have a busy day, you know? And I was thinking about becoming a little bit more straightforward. Because I think I garnish my takes a lot. Okay. How do you mean? You put a little extra mustard on them? It's just like a lot of ornamentation to my stuff. Okay.

I often will have caveats and, you know, digressions and... How long do you want these podcasts to be? Like, we could do a 12-minute... I know exactly how I long want this podcast to be. All right, fine. Okay, so we're going to be more direct. No, I want to talk about whatever you want. Want to talk about cherry blossoms?

You want to talk about? No. Tamago. What do you want to talk about? You just drop in the two Japanese things you know about? I'm reading a novel set in Japan right now. You want to talk about Tokyo Vice? Oh, I would love to. I mean, my experience of it?

Did you find that... Did you ever watch Tokyo? advice at all? Did you watch the pilot? That's a no. God damn you. Look, I'm being straightforward with you. I could have garnished it.

Dragging you up a fucking TV mountain every day. This is how Jen Salk feels. Okay, let's do that. Okay, so there was an article in the Hollywood Reporter this week, last week? It was, I've lost track of time. I don't know what time zone I'm in. I only know about it because, you know, I know about it because I read the Hollywood reporter every day over a cup of steaming hot coffee.

at a plate of runny eggs. Yeah. A slice of cantaloupe. And I know about it because it's the same article that gets written about every streaming service. That's my take. That's fair. There's nothing wrong with Kim Masters' reporting,

which is thorough. They got a lot of people on the record. There's a lot of numbers. They got a lot of people off the record, too, I would say. What they paid for the Citadel, the Russo Brothers show that's coming soon, what they paid for League of their own, what they played for Air,

the Matt Damon and Ben Affleck movie, which is a movie I will be seen too sweet after we were done today. I can't wait. But I think that this has now become kind of like a right of passage, especially for the streamers that are extensions of tech companies, where there's just a lot of, what ho? Seems like you do things different here.

It's supposed to kind of like your usual traditional Warner Brothers Paramount-style studios. Although I would argue that all of those places are trying their best to become more and more like tech companies anyway. So let's kind of like chat a little bit about some of the headlines. that you thought came out of this Amazon story. Okay. One is they spend a shitload of money. I think we all knew that, but a lot of that was a little bit, I think, obscured by the headlines. Like everyone knows, and we've referenced this a lot,

that like the entire Lord of the Rings series outlay, it was like a quarter of a billion dollars. I think even before the show aired, that doesn't include international marketing, that doesn't include future seasons or future development. So we knew that they were spending a lot of money. the amount of money that they just spend almost casually is staggered. Look, it's no secret that costs of everything have gone through the roof over the last few years

as people have demanded higher quality and bigger stars are involved, et cetera, et cetera. And worth mentioning that until recently, these costs were probably accounted for upfront costs because there's not going to be some back-end residual home video and or syndication for your shows. That also absolutely matters. But you see things thrown around like Daisy Jones and the Six, a show that we loved, that we are not done talking about. We're going to revisit next week. That's a TV Mountain. I just pulled myself up happily.

I loved watching that show. But it says that costs like $160 million to make. You look at some of the other things that they do, just the cost of doing business or the way they've done business is throwing out overall deals to secure talent, to pay a premium for people that might not author. otherwise want to develop in these places like Donald Glover, like Phoebe Waller Bridge, and then you look at what the quote-unquote return on investment is. And again, we're not in the rooms. We don't know what they're developing. We don't know what's still coming down the pike.

But these are, what, eight-figure deals with questionable return. Right. And then, I mean, the Russo Brothers thing is also just wild. I did not understand it. It does seem like you can rewind this to the germ of an interesting idea and strategy, right? Right. Do you want to talk through it? This feels like a show that you would like to watch potentially.

I'm reserving my judgment on The Citadel, which is a show with Richard Madden and Priyanka Chopra Jonas, right? Yes, correct. Which is like an international spy show, the idea of which is that this first season of the show is going to spawn multiple multilingual adaptations or extensions. So they're already making an Italian version of this show. or an Italian spin-off of this show and that it can be a truly global franchise. Yeah, I believe there's an Indian version, too. I'm just hearing now that my Russo Brothers direct deposit went through,

so that's great. Ching. I mean, that's, they keep, they are the Cayman Islands, I think, at this point. But this was, again, this is sort of interesting. It's top-down, maybe it's tech company-style reverse engineering. Jen Salke, who is head of Amazon, creative content, has a lot of... I think I called her Sulk earlier. My apologies to Jen Salky.

And Dr. Jonas Salky, who was non-Mondi, who's non- involved in this, although a biopic by him starring Adrian Brody was just put into development by Amazon for $200 million. Oh, okay. No, that was a bit. You're just being, you're just being cruel now. What's cruel? I'm ready to rebut whatever you want.

Reboot? No, I'm going to rebut your takes here. Oh, I didn't know. This is, oh, this is the ultimate tag. Street Shooter CR. Big Zon over here. I'm just saying, so Salky was like, our growth, like a lot of these streamers is international and foreign language stuff.

so why not create our own franchise that can be spun off around the world? That's smart. Going to the Russo Brothers. Interesting. Interesting. And then spending hundreds of millions of dollars on this without yet any return of investment. It's the little details, too. When shows go top down like this, you do end up seeing things like showrunner remove 10 episode season order

dropped to six episodes for the same cost as most shows spend on 20. It's just a lot of – there's a lot of noise and not a lot of signal, right? But here, hit me. Hit me with your take. My take is that can you name me an overall deal that's ever worked? Starting with the overall deals that they're passing out to Phoebe Waller Bridge and Donald Glover, et cetera, et cetera. Can you name me like an overall deal that has just been like an absolute, like hit for the people who gave it? Well, I think the answer is yes, but it gets more complicated.

Because we just did this with Warner Brothers with JJ Abrams like six months ago. As a writer who hopes to one day get another overall deal, like keep it coming. Yeah. Don't stop. I don't want to put you on the spot where you're just like, these are a waste of money. Yes, like tighten your purse strings, billionaires. No, I think that there's a, I think there is a legitimate case to be made that the value, it's the same, this is the easiest one-to-one sports analogy we could ever do,

because there's a case to be made that sometimes the value is not necessarily the production on the court. You just a sign of seriousness of intent. You bring someone into the fold, they bring other people into the fold, it announces things to the town or to other talent relationships. It's like the jets getting Aaron Rogers. Yeah, it's exactly. Well, the second part of it is like that, in the sense that the danger for a lot of these studios can come from the fact that a lot of the really rich mega deals are the Albert Pooleholds contracts.

Are the, you've been incredible. So now I'm going to wildly balloon-sized overpay you for the back end of your career when you are less incentivized to be working at, this is unfair Albert Poo-holes because that's just an age thing. But sorry, you know what, this is a terrible one-to-one analogy. It's also. It doesn't work. That's unfair to his pharmacist. Hey, hey, listen to CR. It's Friday.

I don't know what's going on. Wow. I'm just hoping this one goes out into the ether that Albert Pools and lawyers skip this episode of the watch. Do you think they're big listeners? Finally, another sports analogy. Yeah, you never know.

Look, the overall thing, that's just been the cost of doing business. I do think that the bigger conversation here, there's shocking stuff in this article, there's eye-popping stuff, There's stuff that feeds into writer's paranoia, heading into what appears like an almost inevitable strike. But it does come down to a very strange moment that I think is hinged on a couple of things. One is the tech takeover of TV, you know, and how decisions get made and how blame is spread around and what role creativity or inspiration or randomness or luck has and all that.

That's been debated and we'll continue to debate it. The other thing is all of these giant tech companies, which they are now streaming services, desperately trying to pivot back to becoming TV channels. And I think one of the underappreciated drumbeats of this Amazon story is, like they have shows that people watch, right? Like Jack Reacher, like Terminalist. Like, those work for them. People watch those shows.

You don't want to say people. You can see the guy who right across from he watches them. I also will say, I love Daisy Jones. I also will say that I love the English, which was on Amazon Prime Video. that like nobody else, it swarms not on another channel. And they make the boys. Yeah.

Like, so it's very hard. I think maybe one of the struggles with articles like this or the reason for articles like this is you, just like with Amazon where you can buy toilet paper and Cormac McCarthy novels,

is you can't really put your arm around with the service is. Why are you looking right at me when you say exactly what I do on a Thursday? Just buy Cormac McCarthy novels and household items. I mean, you're just, you're swaying me here. But it, so your takeaway is. I'm not trying to fuck with you. I'm really literally saying,

like, tell me what in this article is different about any other article about any other streaming service, whether it's some people question whether or not they're relying too much on focus groups.

Like, are you fucking kidding me? Like, people have been relying on focus groups since there's been people. Like, they always run this stuff through what, and just so happens

that Amazon's probably going through some proprietary kind of data analysis with this stuff. I'm sure it's frustrating to be making stuff in that environment. I bet it's frustrating

to be making stuff in any environment, especially with all the economic and labor uncertainty facing the industry and everything like that. I just, there was something weird about this piece maybe because I was like, I don't know, Amazon seems to have like a pretty good hit rate ultimately. Yeah, I think a lot of this stuff also is coming bottom up, which is to say that a lot of creative people. And I don't mean commercial hit rate.

I just mean like, that's a pretty good show. Yeah, they have a bunch of pretty good shows. I think that who's, a lot of the stuff, if you read between the lines, is who's running this town in capital letters. And a lot of creative people on the record in this piece, off the record in this piece, anecdotally in our lives, have had struggles working with this company. Not struggles like they haven't been well paid or the shows haven't been made, but in terms of interactions, in terms of development, encouragement, like mixed messages, et cetera, et cetera.

And I think that increasingly there are two stories to be told, right? There are these companies that have so much money and could be doing anything. And then what does that mean? Yeah. Those are the Netflix, Amazon's, apples. And then there's, what, there's FX and HBO? as the places where people are like, they still know how to do things the old-fashioned way,

and they're going through their own crises as they are being asked to become the other thing. So we end up kind of talking in circles. When you get past the sort of eye-catching numbers, right, in the headline-grabbing details, we end up kind of in the same murky middle, which is where the industry is, right? It's either going this way or that way,

but right now it's not making much sense. Yeah, it's fascinating. I mean, I think that what's interesting about these stories is also the cycle of them, where there's like the initial sort of like, I can't believe it. Finally, a home for creatives where we're paid what we deserve and nobody interferes with our product. And then after a couple of years when people are like, how come these movies and TV shows are kind of shitty?

It's like, well, we're, you know, we don't get any guidance about what they want. Nobody knows what they want. And it's like, yeah, I mean, like, this stuff is going to run in cycles. Like, I think if my big critique of Amazon would be the same as my critique sometimes of Netflix, which is like, I don't know when stuff is coming out or what you guys think is good or like there's just kind of a fire hydrant's opened aspect of the curation, right? Now, my kind of issue with that is more that stuff like the English, which you have to wonder if it was on an HBO, although now increasingly that's the only other thing I can point to,

or maybe an Apple, although I can tell you, I do not think that the English would be made for Apple. No, they wouldn't have made that. It's not affirmative enough. It's too weird, it's too arty. It's not like straight down the middle. But the issue is, you can't only have HBO

is the only place is doing it right. Correct. Yeah, right? So it just turns into this thing where it's like, yeah, I guess this is the new reality where you're not going to get the

like, we're going to walk you up to the Emmy podium from development to finish. I think that your take on this is the most useful, honestly. I think you win this one. Kaya, are we doing this around the horn style? Give him some points to my,

to Young Woody Page over here because I think this is right. And I think you said the word exactly when you said curation. And I think that there's an element of our conversations that kind of do pine for an old school aesthetic curation for the stuff that comes to us where the sense that there is someone, not just the creative person

making the show, but there are creative people on the other side of the desk sculpting the larger conversation. And this is a strange leap, but another thing that happened this week when I was away was the legendary A&R record man Seymour Stein died. And this is a figure that

does not really exist in our culture anymore. much where he had good ears, a good sense for business, and he signs the Ramones and talking heads and Madonna. And his legacy is unimpeachable in terms of what he chose to promote, what he chose to give the platform to, and you could kind of trust what Sire Records was, even though it didn't all sound the same. And we continually find ourselves lionizing people like a Casey or like a John Landgraf in his team at FX, who seemed to at least be able to maintain some aspect of that.

And maybe this is just too old-fashioned of us Because I think you're right Like we can have fun dancing on this Amazon article And there's a lot of blame to be passed around here clearly But at the same time, there are people there who clearly care Who are championing good stuff Yeah Like whether it's the boys which is consistently extremely good

Whether it's Jack Reacher which doesn't need to be as good as it is frankly And it is really fun and good Or the English and Daisy Jones like that stuff Or the Taylor Kitch spin off of Terminalist which we just can assume is equally good. No, I'm just saying that you are correct to say that that is a pretty good hit list for what TV output was 15 years ago.

Did it need to cost $2 billion to make it? And did they also need to be 47 other original shows that we didn't even mention, some of which were good, some of which were bad, and most of which were middling? I was looking through this list of the last couple years of Amazon shows. Let me just go through it for you. Just to kind of play it out.

Will you watch an episode of The Citadel with me? Oh, yeah. It's an international spy show. Of course. Are you going to watch Rachel Weiss and Dead Ringers? Fuck, yeah. That's another one that I'm like, yes. And that's, by the way, you could be like,

Jen Salkey doesn't know what she's doing, but she apparently was like, Rachel Weiss and Dead Ringers, take the checkbook. Right. Dasy Jones and the Six. Loved it. Swarm.

I don't know if I can say I loved it, but I certainly loved it. It's there. Incredible. The rig. I watched it. It's about Scottish people stuck on a rig. You made that one up.

No, I told you about this. There's this like, it's like everybody from Game of Thrones is on a rig, and there's a fog. But Stanley Tucci is there too, and it's winter, right? It's good. The special effects are a little rough. I don't know. They should have taken some of that Lord of the Rings. Devil's Hour, some people dug it.

That was the Peter Capaldi thing. Peripheral couldn't fuck with it. Lord of the Rings. That's an expensive show. It gets a lot of part of this. Paper Girls, I respect the fact that it didn't. Paper Girls might be an example of something where it's like, damn, the golden goose right there. That was like, it was like a layout. Paper Girls was good. And I think that with...

Paper Girls was good, like the show itself was good. I really like that show. I finished it. There you go. I feel really sorry for what happened to it. And that would be a whole argument to be made if we actually had the intel to be like, my sense of that show is with a more focused development team

that knew what they were doing and championed what they championed and cared about it, that would have had better stewardship and had gone on for multiple seasons as it was intended to. A good show that didn't work. Terminalist? You love it.

Did you ever watch any of Terminalist? I mean, sometimes you just know your space. I just really love shows set in San Diego. My wife loved the summer I turn pretty. Outer range is a banger. Reacher is a banger. Wheel of Time Pass. I keep calling a Jack Reacher because that's the Tom Cruise movie.

And I actually kind of enjoy the first few episodes. I know what you did last summer. Which is before I got nuts. They also made Underground Railroad. They made the Wilds, which I enjoyed. You know, like, this is like a pretty good list. You know what I mean? Kaya, Chris is angling for that free shipping through 2030.

Chris is getting gift cards. It's unbelievable. Do you ever listen to this podcast on Prime Audio? Certainly not. Also, one last thing about Amazon. Yeah. I like the player. Oh, oh, like watch.

You like the X-ray thing. I like the U.S. of the Amazon. Now, I don't like the fact that it's like when you open up Amazon, I'm like, like, carpal tunnel wristbands and Japanese crime novels. I cannot find their programming. So, yeah, I like the U.S. I cannot find it. I didn't mean the UX of like the search or like anything like that. Do you know how many episodes of Daisy Jones and the sixth I've watched?

All of them. Do you know how many times the player suggests watching or continuing Daisy Jones? Zero times. But when you're actually watching the player itself. Yeah. I don't find it buggy. I think it's like very intuitive to be able. I also love like for our purposes going forward or backwards 10 seconds is really useful for like taking notes.

The x-ray thing is convenient. If I'm like, I know that guy. The x-ray thing. I'll say that when I'm watching Perry Mason, which we'll talk about momentarily, I do pause it sometimes. I'm like, tell me who that guy is? Do you say it to Syria?

Who do you say it to? Well, no, I say it to Alexa. My young daughter. My daughter, Alexa. I talk to her constantly. Good. Let's switch to Perry Mason. Wow, this has really been invigorating.

We should always do podcasts with you, A, like this, and B, with a hard cap. You know what I mean? We should be like NFL free agents. I love you, but like I'm, I just definitely want to get all of our stuff down. No, I'm not, no. Listen, the coffee's going down smooth. Let's keep it moving.

Okay. Do you want to talk about Perry Mason now? Yeah, yeah, I do. All right. Yeah. Why is the show so fucking satisfying? Because it's TV. Because it's a TV show.

You know, who sat in that very seat and said the same thing to me as Bigwas. Bigwas agrees. You, me, and Bigwaz are the Perry Hive. First of all, I'm so, so glad there's a third chair for AM to the, PM because I was looking at our schedule for the next 12 months and it is going to be demanding. Yeah, but I think it would be cool if we launched a feed, you know, declared it AM to the PM. Yeah. Kai is the producer. We get new art and then we immediately go on hiatus.

I would love that. I would love that. And we just put out like a really heartfelt statement to our fans. Is there a dormant ringer feed that we could use? I'm sure. Let's look in the archives. Keeping it 1600? Do we still have that right? I guess. I mean, we just go right at the top of the charts with AM to the PM. It's ironic that we talk about this because HBO, in the way we're talking about it, is still HBO, and that still has value, whatever that means to whoever's listening.

And yet HBO has this show that seems to us to be, in many ways, the exemplar of this new age of let's class up the old stuff. Yes. Of let's give people something consistent. middlebrow is not the right word. It is just satisfying. It's like, done at a very high degree. Somewhere in Santa Monica or Culver City or wherever the HBO offices are is there's

like someone, there's a few people in like a basement office. Yeah. And they have like boardwalk empire posters up. They sure do. And they just like, they just crank out like solid hour long like genre dramas, you know? In the same way that some Marvel actors don't know which Spider-Man movie they're in, Hope Davis just shows up. Exactly.

They're just like, Justin Kirk, while we have you. Yeah, you're great. Just do this now in a different suit. Here's the thing I wanted to ask you about this most recent. And we can, there's not only a ton to spoil about Perry Mason as you. We're through five episodes now, right? Yeah.

The thing that happened in the fifth episode is the really, really amazing piece of craftsmanship that I wanted to ask you about. Converting B plot to A plot. So essentially these, you could. call it busy work. You could call it, you know, give this person a lot, like a storyline or whatever. A lot of shows just do that. And then that's, that's to take up innings, right? Like, giving Juliet Rylance, like, her love affair that's happening.

And you're like, okay, that's great. We get to know more about her. Her character who has been kind of this, like, white knight in this show and is morally, like, sort of, like, you know, spotless is now doing something with some, some, some, ambiguity and some regret. Chris Chalk's character is getting the same same thing. But you could say like,

oh, they're just kind of like stretching their arm here. And like, I don't really know where this is going. And then in this episode, it becomes quite obvious that both of those plot lines are going to have a direct impact

on the Gallata case that's being tried and on Perry and on everything. And I just thought that the way that they fashioned that was like, this was the exact right episode to do that. Yeah. Because in the previous episode,

I was like, this Delo thing is just great. I love these two, you know, but what the hell are we doing? I mean, other than showcasing the insane production budget the show has, where they just go to a Palm Springs mansion for two scenes. Yes. I think this show is exceptionally well crafted. It's exceptionally well entertained.

And I don't mind as an experienced TV viewer or someone who's usually dining on the richest ingredients. I'm like, I don't mind the scene where the three characters are walking down Alvara Street, which has been dressed to look like the 1930s. I don't mind it either. And Juliet Rylentz and Chris Chalk, who are great, great, great actors, their job in that scene is to be like, like, oh yeah? Like, that's what they do it at work that day. Yeah. It's just kind of the engine of TV, but it's humming. It's humming, you know, and I think the other thing that you're responding to is a lot of the shows that are, you know, autourist fits of fancy or flights of genius, or mixing up the metaphors, you can feel incredible inspiration, but not necessarily

tied into the workman-like production of a television show. And for whatever happened behind the scenes during the making of this season of Perry Mason, it does feel like everything was integrated into a whole. And there was a plan and they're enacting the plan. And I know that that, you know, nothing goes that smoothly. There are probably people who were flown in and triage and things were stitched together and editing, whatever. But that's TV and it works. I made the very strange choice on my Trans-Pacific flight to eat a gourmet meal to watch the film The Menu.

Oh, interesting. Did you seen that before? I had not seen it. I wish I had just an hour with you. I'd love to just hear what you have to say about stuff. We should do a podcast maybe once or twice a week. I'll see if Kai is free. She's pretty busy with AM to the PM.

Fielding a lot of customer complaints. Yeah, about the U.S. with that podcast, which doesn't exist. But Perry Mason is the cheeseburger made from the ingredients that we're lying around the gourmet kitchen. It doesn't speak well for what happens after the cheeseburger. I'm going to take it to go and worry about the problems later. But I do think it's worth championing this show because, I mean, it's like Catherine Waterston playing the romantic lead to the main character.

She's so much better than this and she's so great at it. So when she shows up, I'm not like, oh, God, B story. I'm like, this is fun. This is exciting. Look at the costumes. Look at the set that they built for her apartment. Look at the fun she's having in the scene. You know, this is not talking about an Apatow movie to be like in the scene in episode five where she kicks the door closed behind Perry who's taking off his clothes.

You can feel that when whoever directed that episode, I'm sorry, I don't have it in front of me yet said cut. They were probably laughing. Yeah. They're having a good time making the show. That matters. And what's strange to me is I don't know if this fits into HBO's mandate. Maybe the HBO Max mandate, but this is an HBO show. It's incredibly expensive.

it's on Monday nights and in a more balanced world where you could redraft shows to different networks. You would say, well, I mean, in a,

you know, Casey Boys came on this show and it's not like this is an accident, right? Yes. They decided probably that they didn't want this to be paired with succession,

but I think it, in a little like sort of back to back sense, but they've obviously, they've got some eyes on the service right now. You know what I mean? Like, so the Sunday Monday thing, which is not uncommon,

like that, and the city did that, like Night of did that. Like, they've done this before. Maybe that's a good night. They've found for some of their more, like, harder genre stuff. Maybe. I don't know what the numbers are for this show. Maybe that Justin Kirk has it contractually that, like,

he wants his stuff spread out across two days. That's right. Can we put into the universe that Justin Kirk needs to come on this podcast? I feel like he would come on the podcast. I've been a fan of his since Angels in America anyway, but... He's great. The scene in this episode where he goes back to Mason and offers the deal that he had rejected.

Yeah. There's a lot going on there. He is like, maybe it's just like he knows exactly how to play the roles that he chooses or gets hired to do. But Burger being like, I can't tip my hand as to why I'm offering you this deal, but I also can't be too aggressive in pushing back against your counter. You know what I mean? And the Milligan, the other DA is just like, what the fuck is going on here? I just want to put these guys in nooses. Like, let's go.

Every scene has a lot of thought and care and professionalism brought to it. I want to shout out great director, Jessica Lowry, a friend of mine who did episodes three and four. And she did such a beautiful job with those episodes, but also she got to go to Santa Anita, right? And the way that they shoot a fucking racetrack with the horses that survived luck. At night, yeah. Horses do some of their best work at night, though.

Is that your personal experience? Or is that just what Mr. Milch told you? Dave, let me shoot this at night. You have Shay Wiggum, like, look what they get to play with. I just, it's weird to say that a show that probably costs, I can't even imagine how much it costs, Daisy Jones money. Don't pocket watch. Let these guys, let these tech companies burn through their...

I don't mind them spending the money on Perry Mason. I just feel like it seems like it's being overlooked in the conversation when this is actually them making a show. that everybody could find a way into. It's very entertaining. Like in episode five, does a character turn to his wife and say, am I a bad man?

And did I break out in hives? Yes. Yeah. But I'm not expecting poetry. I'm just expecting a really good pulp. And it's delivering on it. I also love the double mystery where the first mystery is actually not mystery at all.

Yeah. And then the second mystery is the conspiracy that we still are like, damn, why is this lady in a wheelchair? And like, what did Brooks do? and, you know, his dad seems like an asshole. Like, let's get this conspiracy going. Was that your read that maybe his dad seems like an asshole?

Like a pretty big type asshole. Yeah, it's a really good show that I really enjoy watching. And I just feel like that is notable. Since a lot of the shows we talk about are either like upper echelon, like God tier succession stuff or noble things that are worthwhile that we're interested in. You know, like, let's pivot. Let's just talk about Let's just right down the middle

Okay Let's be like Aeronola with a pitch clock Just groove everything Yeah You know what I mean? He's loving life We'll just do fast, fast stuff Straight down the middle

I love that MLB is like This pitch clock is fucking awesome Like they're making ads about the pitch clock And then when like you actually watch your team And the picture's getting tattooed all over the place Yeah And they're like my life is over Yeah I'm glad I secured the bag

Before I had this mental breakdown Nobody checked into how Aaron Nola fucking tries pickoffs every other pitch so that he can grind the game into dust. Also, what about, like,

how do you feel for the beer vendors who used to be get like three hours or just getting people sauce? Can I tell you my Dodgers story? I went and saw Dodgers Diamondbacks. Because you've been a Diamondbacks fan since Randy Johnson days. Kirk Gibson really speaks to me.

I went to that game and we were there a little early so then we were like, let's get some dollars. You know, let's get some treats. Got up. I personally stopped. I don't know where my wife was.

She was, like, getting a margarita or something. But I, like, stopped for the national anthem. Slude the flag. Yeah, I mean, that's who you are. Terminalist style. And then as I got in this very long line to get a plant-based Dodger dog. Which I think is just like, if you're going to do Dodger Stadium,

I understand, like, personally, I don't mind plant-based meats. This is, by the way, this is why they can't pin you down. This line was so long. Andy. And you know what I heard? The roar of the crowd as Trace Thompson hit a grand slam in the bottom of the first inning. It was my fault for not sitting in my seat. Right. And then I watched two hours of Clayton Kershaw dealing, but there was no other action.

I have to say, though, couldn't take my eyes off the field. Too much action. It was great. It's too much action for you. Rob Manfred and Jeff Bezos, my two number one guys, 2003. Because they just, they answer to the people, right? I mean, this is... Wow.

I can't keep up. Okay. This is, I am Aaronnola, honestly. Like, I just, I went away. Yeah, you just still go to first. I'm like, that's a penalty now. I miss spring training. I'm just throwing pepper around the infield.

I got to kick you out of the studio. I got to do this Sonny and Jake interview, and I can't wait to do it. But I love seeing you back here, and we're going to be back on Monday morning. Thanks for having me as a guest on the watch. No, I don't want to blow all our takes anyway. Monday morning, we're going to come back. Monday morning's going to be interesting. And then Thursday, you want to do Daisy again?

You and Kaya are going to be lit, apparently. And you two, both of you two on the other side of the table, you know what you're in for? An absolute fucking classic Top Chef. Wow. Because you haven't watched it yet, but it is a banger. Okay. So we have a lot to catch up on now that I'm ready to catch up. Yep.

Okay. You know, I think that's fine. No pitch clock on the podcast. No more banter. No more digressions. You're like, what's your heart out? I was like 11. I just like to hang out with my pals.

Jake and Sonny coming up next. This episode is brought to you by Amazon Prime. Ever have a plan come together out of nowhere and realize you're missing something? Like a last minute beach day, a spontaneous hike, or an outdoor movie night you didn't plan for. That's when Prime's same-day delivery as you're back.

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Say it with me. The Active Cash Credit Card from Wells Fargo, be a 2%er. Learn more at Wells Fargo.com forward slash active cash terms apply. This episode is brought to by Whole Foods Market. Spring is here, so celebrate it with fresh, juicy, seasonal produce and some very tasty, limited time flavors. New Whole Foods, Market Peach, Apricot, Rose, Italian soda. Perfect for a picnic or brunch, as is their trending mango, Yuzu chantilly cake.

But if you're on the go, new 365 strawberry pretzels make a great sweet snack. That sounds delicious. Get savings with yellow sale signs storewide and everyday low prices on 365 brand items. Enjoy the fresh flavors of spring. Save at Whole Foods Market. Okay, we're about to get into my interview with Sunny Lee and Jake Shrier. Sunny is the creator of and the writer, largely the writer of Beef and Jake directed six of the ten episodes. Jake Shrier, you might know, he directed Paper Towns several years ago as a feature and then has done some great work on TV since then, especially on

Lodge 49. Sonny is a TV veteran. He's worked on Tuka and Birdie, on two broke girls, on It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia. And this is just a really, really interesting show. It's not unlike a 90s from hell thriller

meets a Cohen Brothers black comedy, meets a treaties on class, meets a nearly psychedelic, uh, one-on-one battle between these two very, very screwed up people. Those people are played by Stephen Yun and Ali Wong, who give powerhouse,

performances at the center of beef. It's a really interesting show. It's about 10 episodes. It is 10 episodes. I don't think it's about 10 episodes. And each episode's around half an hour. So I highly encourage you to check it out. And I really enjoyed my chat with Sonny and Jake. So let's get into it. Sunny, Jake, thank you so much for joining me. I love the show. I'm so excited to talk to you about it. But Sonny, I know that I've read already the sort of origin story for the show and the incident. I thought for our listeners, we could talk through it. This road rage incident that's kind of like the Proustian moment for you here. Yeah, it was similar to the show in the sense that there was a white SUV involved.

It was a BMW though, not at Benz. And I was coming home from work. It was in Hollywood getting on the 10. And, you know, I'm on my phone. It was my fault. And light turns green and didn't go right away. She starts like honking like crazy, pulls over. to the side, rolls down his window, starts just cursing at me, and drives off.

And, you know, I wasn't having a particularly bad day, but on that day of the reason, I was just like, I'm going to follow you. And I really didn't have a plan, but, you know, I think I justified it in my mind, like, I'm just going to commute home. Yeah. And if he happens to be in front of me and feeling a little scared, great. Yeah. But that day, we were going the exact same direction for miles.

like all the way to Fort Street in Santa Monica, like through 45 minutes of traffic. And so I'm sure in his head, he was like, oh, this maniac is following me through all of Los Angeles. And so that kind of made me chuckle. Yeah. You know. And did you like make a voice note about it or like did it immediately start to germinate with you as like something that could be a story? Well, it ended in, I've been advised not to tell the full. but I think it's fun enough to share.

By like your lawyer? No, it's just like, I know it makes me come across a certain way. Like, I'm like, you know, like the characters in our show do some like horrible things. And so I don't want to condone this behavior. But, you know, like we got off 4th Street and Ed he's like trying to like lose me. And I'm like, well, I'm pot committed now. Yeah. And he stopped in the middle of the street.

And he was on the phone. He gets out of his car. He's on the phone with the police. He's trying to get my license plate, but I don't have one on the front. Okay. I find it aesthetically displeasing. And so what I did was I wrote, yeah, this is perfect. Yeah.

My phone blowing up. Is that the FBI? Yeah. And so I rolled down the window and I put on sunglasses and I, like, pointed two fingers towards my eyes and then at him. Which I've never done before in my life. Clint Eastwood? What's happening? Yeah, it was weird.

And then I reversed out of there, like, so fast and smooth. And the reason I'm sharing the full story is because, you know, I left there feeling quite alive. Yeah. You know, I was like, that was awesome. And I told that story to every single person that would hear me for, like, the next, like, two months. And so that's when I knew that there was something there was just like, I couldn't stop, like, talking about how, like, great that felt, you know? And, you know, a couple people are like, you okay? Yeah.

But that's what really sparked it. And one of those people that I told that story to was Ravi Nondin at A-24, who I had known for many years and we hadn't caught up in a minute. And I was just like talking to him about the story and like how so we were also like trapped in our subjective views of reality. And he's like, you should explore that. Yeah. There's something there. And it really was his encouragement that made me dive in further. I don't want to turn this episode into the S&L skit, the Californians,

where we just talk about different streets in California, but I'm going to do that for a second. I have a theory that I want to bounce off you guys. That there was that moment right after like peak pandemic when restaurants started kind of like doing to go and stuff like that. And that is what broke reality for me with Los Angeles traffic. Because for a brief moment, I saw what could be. And I saw the version of L.A.

that's like in the Joan Didion White album where she's like, I went from Franklin Hills to Santa Monica in nine minutes and I was like, what? And this is now, like, now that we're all back out in the streets and stuff, I can't do it. I like every single time when I'm stuck on San Monica or wherever I am,

like there's some like edge to it that is now it's different than it was before. Before it was just like, this is mind-numbing. I'm listening to a podcast, but I got to go to work. And now I'm like, no, I know it only takes nine minutes to get to past dinner.

People tasted freedom. Everybody here is just... And wasn't their data that, like, there were even more... Despite there being no traffic, there were like car accidents were up. Oh, yeah. Well, because people were doing like 103 miles per hour. Yeah, like, they tasted that freedom and now they're like,

yeah, that makes a lot of sense. I think that checks out because people seem much angrier, you know, once things open back up. Do you think that this is a story... Let's just say that this is, like, do you think that this is like almost weirdly a post-pandemic story, that there's something about everything that's happened over the last few years, maybe even the last six or seven years with like the real invasive nature of social media and the way it's changed.

Because I have a follow-up question of this, but I was curious whether you felt like this is an era-specific story for you. I've been seeing reactions online that say that. And it certainly wasn't by design intentionally, you know. But it probably is because, you know, everyone involved, we were just trying to write something honest to how we all feel right now. And, you know, we all exist in the post-pandemic world. And so I think we must have been tapping into something that's in the air and that's coming across. But yeah, but I will say that I think even pre-pandemic, it's not like these

things didn't exist. Yeah. It's just everything's kind of cranked up to 11 now. You know, Jake, I was watching, I've been watching Perry Mason this season. Andy and I were just talking about how much we love this season. And one of the things that's cool about it is because of the era it's set in, I think a lot of the scene mechanics where it's like, this person has to go across the street to go talk to somebody actually makes sense in the era that it's being set. Whereas, say, like, there are episodes of like Ozark where it's like,

you didn't really have to drive around the lake to talk to this guy. Like, you could have just texted him or whatever. Yeah. One of the things I love and you directed six episodes, correct of the season. One of the things I love about beef is the integration of all the tech, whether it's like next door or DMs

or ring cameras and all this stuff, how do you bring that stuff to life filmmaking-wise? Because this is, that's probably like last four years of reality. You know, like 2017, 2010, I don't think it's the same as 2023 or 22. Yeah, it's definitely made things a lot harder. I mean, Sunny and I talked about that obsessively, throughout. And we never even really committed

to an approach as we shot. Like we would always get... I think from the beginning, I was like, there's so many texts in this show that we're going to have to do the overlay thing. And Sonny was a little hesitant. Which, because, like, maybe that looks cheesy. Did you want to VO it? I wanted everything to be practical.

I didn't want any overlays. Just because I was worried it would take you out of the reality of the moment. But, you know, then this guy shoots really beautiful camera movement things and you're like I don't want to fuck with you know

I don't want to interrupt this like nice pull or push with like some like insert into a phone that's horrible and so you're stuck because I agree like I don't in theory want to use overlays like I would probably default

to what Sonny defaults to but in the end if you're not is there anything that great about an insert shot of a phone but we shot an insert of the phone for every single text in the show just in case and sometimes we do that like Sunny would kind of modulate and post like when it felt, ah, right here, like, I just want to see it on the phone. I want to know that it's real versus like a longer conversation where we don't want to

interrupt the wide. See, that was the other thing that felt very much like post-2020 to me was, especially living out here, you know, it's like, I just realized that like I can't get my phone out of my hand at all anymore, you know, and that has become like, if there is ever a break in a basketball game I'm looking at my phone. Even if it's just like the second quarter, I'm like, I'm just going to look at my phone while this is happening. And it's, it's kind of amazing how in beef, you know, like I think Danny has like a little bit

of a sort of different relationship to his phone than Amy does. But one of the things I thought must be challenging and making it was a majority of this series, Amy and Danny are not in the same place, right? But they are locked in a cage together psychologically. And the way that they are is usually through these various. forms of communication, which is not so much of a question as it is like, how did you guys talk about that? What was that something that you were sort of aware of that this is in some ways a two-hand or where the two hands are only together for what, like 20% of the show, right? Yeah. That was a,

that was a lot of the writer's room time was just discussing really the core progression of the season, you know, like this analogy that we like to come up with in the room was, you know, There's only like six pleasing core progressions to the modern ear. It's like DAG. Yeah. And funny enough, machine learning algorithm that was fed like thousands of pieces of human literature found that there's only six ways that we tell stories. And they're all different versions of rises and falls.

And so you have this standard core progression like G, E minor, CDG, which is when you break it down, G's a status quo, E minor is a fall. CD is a rise. Back to your status quo G. Right. And that is literally like Heroes Journey, three-act structure that we're obsessed with. And so, but that's like a, you know, standard top 40 hit. How do you make something that's not not saying we made the Beatles, but like how did the Beatles do it? It's like you fuck with that core progression. And so then instead of that, you do G E minor, G, E minor, G, E minor, and create that longing and only give the audience CDG at the very end. Right. And so that's kind of what we're doing with the Danny Amy. Like I know. when they're in a scene together, it's electric. But why constantly do CDG over and over create a little bit of tension, a little bit of longing for that with going back and forth without giving the audience what they want? So that was a lot of the writing.

But then I think in post we found that like, oh, there's some times where you kind of at least want to keep them somehow connected, even though they're not in the same space. Yeah. It's like a proxy war between them. You know what I mean? Because, like, they're sending out their kind of different emissaries and they're doing all this, like, espionage against one another. But there is those meeting points. Yeah.

And there's all these, like, kind of really subtle pieces in the writing that's so fun as a filmmaker. Because you can, you know, like on a filmmaking level, we would try, especially in, like, episode two, like, there's a whole sequence where we're constantly, like, balancing their eyelines across space, even though they're not looking at each other, which is sort of, like, theoretically drawing them together by the end of the episode. So it's always like, I mean, I thought it was going to be very obvious, and then no one notices it. Except for one person on YouTube noticed it. I'll take it. I'll take it. But yeah, like in the gallery and the club, like, they're always looking. They're kind of like matched frames across space.

And we would try to like always like really frame. We did a lot of like unbalanced coverage so that normally like in a dialogue seemed like classic approach is like whatever distance you are from one character. You should be from the other character. It's what cuts the easiest. For this show, like we would always be closer to Amy. and Danny than we were to whoever was their opposite within the scene. So the camera's like always subtly closer to them in a way that you start to feel like they're, I mean, ideally, if anyone, whether you notice or not, ideally you start to feel their subjectivity and feel how kind of connected they are in the way they're being filmed versus anyone else. That's so cool.

I love when I hear stuff like that because obviously like I'm watching this stuff, you know, primarily as like an emotional reaction and then like an intellectual reaction to like the thematic. content of the show. And then on a sort of more deeper level, I do think that there are filmmaking decisions that get made like that. And hearing you say that, I'm like, you never escape either of those two characters, POV. Like, everybody else actually feels a little bit at an arm's distance throughout the show. And it's only over the course of the series or season that you start to learn more about these people who maybe like in the first two episodes seem like caricatures, you know what I mean, that then become these much deeper people. So I guess that segue is well into this sort of thing I wanted to ask you about, which is the show starts on such an intense note, right?

Like that first episode is like your adrenaline is going watching this whole sequence take place. And then your jobs as filmmakers and as storytellers is to core progression to your point, but also like how much gas, how much break, right? Can you talk to me a little bit about pacing for a 10 episode but 30 minute season and where, where, to drop the like the big moments when to kind of expand character when to when to bring in set pieces and things like that yeah it's it's it's tough especially um in sort of the the modern algorithm you know like we when we took out the show we we had a bidding war and multiple different streamers but we ultimately knew we wanted to be at netflix because it's like you know in terms of like scale and like the way we consume things.

Netflix kind of defines a lot of like modern habits, you know? And so a lot of the, our initial pitch even was designed to ride the line between like being like, I don't know, artful in your writing, but also you're making it for a modern audience, you know? And so there's a lot of conversations about where is that bullseye like, like is this too much propulsion over and over again? Like should we slow it down? And, you know, who's to say, I don't know if we like nailed it all the time, but it was a constant discussion. Well, I'm always fascinated by like how much of the whiteboard gets used up in the first episode.

Like, you know, it's like how much of your notebook is getting emptied, how early. Well, Sunny actually has a graph. I mean, he calls it story math. But I mean, like if you looked at the pitch for beef, like there is an actual graph of each of their characterizes and falls. that was pretty well hewed to. I mean, obviously things shift in the writer's room and then production, but like the overall concept of it is on that graph.

Yeah, we do a lot of graphs, a lot of spreadsheets with like columns for each person's arc, like interpersonal arcs. And then I have a column that's audience emotion. Interesting. We do a fun thing in the room where we kind of like pretend to be different viewers. Okay. almost like your lizard brain just like base level reaction to things

and and if you do if you have that spreadsheet and you look at that column you're like oh shit we have like 10 consecutive beats where it's just like just pure adrenaline that's probably not good like we're gonna like wipe people out so then like then we go back and we're like well what if like you have a still stiller moment here

and you actually build that and then you do the adrenaline that'll actually make the adrenaline pop even harder without having to exert so much effort because, you know, like stillness before, you know, something. So you're your own focus group? We do a lot of that. Did you participate in this? I mean,

I wasn't in the writer's room. I saw the graph and then, you know, I think everyone, I mean, we had a really great group of, you know, their beats of like even, I can't spoil. But some of like the ways things are done in episode nine, like Larkin, our cinematographer, who's brilliant, like had really good story notes too. And like, Like when you have like good scripts that everyone gets very excited about like Gracieune or production designer, like people do bring a lot of themselves.

And, you know, like with a good writer who is willing to listen to that, like when Sunny's pushed, like it usually can get them to an even better place of how to work that in. I mean, I don't think that that's odd. I remember, I mean, all writers have their systems, right? Like some people have index cards and David Lynch's like I just do scene on an index card. And when I have 60 of those, the movie's done. And Stanley Kubrick had the card catalogs and stuff like that. And it's not surprising to me that we're using these suite of office tools essentially or micro-sitting, you know, like these basically these computer programs to kind of illustrate narrative ideas.

I mean, it's not all like I have write longhand in a notebook and then send it off to the typist. And especially when, you know, we shot this show, we cross-borded it. So it's entirely out of sequence. Like we didn't go episode by episode. We did the whole season, except for the last episode that Sonny directed, which happened at the end. Like, everything else has done all across the map. And so to have not just scripts, you know, but also like this kind of story math of where are we and what is this, not only like what's happening in the scene, which you can tell from the sides, but where in the story is this and what is it propelling you to? You know, to have like checkpoints for that, like actually written down in a somewhat more mathematical fashion can be a lifesaver.

So you've got this story You've obviously got a very precise way Of planning it out and planning out the beats to it Do the casting And I know that you sort of wrote with an idea of who is going to be in the show in the first place But do Allie and Stephen act as Like unstable chemicals with all this planning? Or are they part of like the sort of equation that goes into like the final thing

If that makes sense? They're very much a part of the equation. That was one of the joys of having them on so early as EP's, but even before we took out the pitch was, you know, I'm creating this PowerPoint presentation. I'm stuck on like a character beat, and I can just text even at like 1.30 in the morning. He's usually up.

And I'm like, hey, what do you think about this? And then he'll call me and we'll talk for like an hour and fix it right there. And their fingerprints are all over everything, not just their characters. And so that was very helpful. And, you know, there were countless times. There's this one story that's pretty fun in episode seven,

and I don't think this spoils anything, that he returns from a party to find his brother in his apartment going over the accounting of the business. And Jake was setting up rehearsing, and Stephen was like, I don't know why I would say the back half of this scene. It doesn't make any sense. And so, like, brought it over to me,

and I was like, you're right. Shit. And I was like, well, give me a second. Please, I'll try to fix it. And then Jake was like, all right, let's move on to something else. And then everyone's scrabbling. I wasn't even that great. I was like, it works, it works.

Let's shoot the scene. Yeah, that's true. You were like, pay no attention to that. And I couldn't fix it. And I was like, I'm so sorry, everybody, but I think we have to call it. Because it was like, you know, we think, I think we start. like three or four more hours in the day. And so it felt like a huge defeat at the time.

And I went back to my office, just kind of pretty depressed, feeling like I'd let everyone down. But then I started rewriting the scene. And not only was Stephen 100% right, like it broke, it allowed me to like re-break some of the pieces at the end where we landed summer really, really good. And he just has such an incredible knack for like this like,

I don't know, the truth radar. Yeah. And anything at all false, he'll call out. And so, you know, thanks to him, we, we readed that scene. And it's one of my favorite scenes in that episode. He's, I don't like, I try not to be, like, super hyperbolic about this. I can only imagine what it's like to look through the monitor when he's doing what he's

doing in this show. But, like, is he fucking Serpico? Like, what's, like, he's, like, the iceberg there where you're like, I can see what you're doing and then there's so much more behind your eyes and in your like gestures and this guy is carrying around so much pain and so much anger and yet that doesn't have to be said you know you just know it the second you see him and what's it like on set yeah i mean it's what sunny said he just refuses to be false you know and so it's just a kind of i think like as a director you know and especially like doing the kind of filmmaking that we both love where you know it's a little

more like precise and planned and you have to hit marks and you have to do some of those things, you know, but then what you also want as an actor, it's like, I can hit those marks. You know, like, when we had that conversation, he was like, oh, you want me to hit some beats? I can hit beats. Like, okay, all right. But in between that, like, he's not going to just, you're not going to get the same thing every time, and he's going to bring something that you never would have expected to it. And so if you can marry those two things, like precision with this level of kind of commitment

and truth and reality that isn't because you don't actually want, I mean, I don't know, Sonny maybe feels differently. Like, I think you don't want what's just in your head. Like, you have a vision of the thing going in. but it's not. That's good. That's fascinating. I mean, like, I'm fascinated by the idea of, like, you must have had, you must be a very

protective father when it comes to this, but then there's also, like, the lights wrong, or today the, you know, this didn't show up or whatever, and letting that be whatever it's going to be. Yeah, I think it's a balance between both. And that's what's great about the squad that we had on this is I am pretty particular about what's in my head, but then everyone's, they're so. much magic and also like executing and new things being discovered

and what Stephen does really well too he's on like some like Michael Jordan Kobe shit where like in this scene so he's doing all of that everything you're saying but then he can also be guiding the other performer towards the thing that he knows

that the scene needs to be so we're just sitting at the monitor being like are you watching this like he's literally like guiding other performances to be Like emotionally, like, kind of like, just sort of egging this person towards whatever she leads it from them? Emotionally, even like slightly like tweaking the dialogue in the moment to kind of nudge a reaction, a more of a reaction from his scene partner. Is there a scene particular that you're thinking of?

Oh, I mean, like, I'd say a lot of scenes with Young, who replaced Paul. Also a lot of scenes with Rec and Santino. Bobby and Michael, because they're so comedic. And I don't want to detract from them as performers either because they're incredible. But especially with Rec and Santino, they're coming in just for kind of like the middle part of the show. And like Jake said, it's so heavily cross-borded. They may not know what this means for like the whole season arc. And just constantly in those scenes, Stevens, like, you know, they're,

fairly comedic, but then he's like nudging them towards like, you know, so that the scene ultimately is about Danny feeling aggrieved or not seen or about like, you know, really like bringing out the Isaac factor of the scene a little bit more. I mean, it's really, and I asked even, I was like, are you consciously doing that? And he was like, not really, but like in hindsight, he says he can see it. Right. But that is like... After he's like looking at his highlight tapes, he's like, Yeah, sure. Yeah. So I think it's just like intuitive for him in the same way like, you know,

all-star basketball players just like, they're not like consciously like, like, A to B to C leading like, you know, the flow of the game, but they just intuitively know the flow of the game so well. Right. You know. There's like the Chris Pauls who are like, I know exactly where to give you the ball. Yeah. And then there are the guys who were like more like somehow I just knew that I was going

to pocket pass to you and that everything popped off. Yeah. One of the things that we do not on, not only on this pod, but on. big pick and a couple of the things that we do here is we're constantly having this kind of conversation about the push and pull of like what's a movie and what's a TV show and was this written as a feature and then changed into a TV show or was this a feature that should have been a TV show because it could have been expanded and I was going to ask you a pretty boilerplate question about influences going into this both filmmaking wise and tonally but I

thought we could have a broader conversation about I mean was this always going to be a series in your minds. Okay. Yeah. And is it a series that was shot in any way differently than you would have shot, say, a feature? Well, it would have been nice to have a little more time. Yeah. More time and money.

Less page count every day. Yeah, I think that, you know, that's really the only thing is that just for whatever reason, the way kind of tradition and economics have worked out, like series are expected to be shot much faster than features are, which is not for any real reason or content. I think, though, that, again, we're very lucky with, I mean, Larkin is incredible and incredibly fast, and Grace's design, Helen's costumes. Like, there are definitely, there's a lot of the show that I am as proud of as I could imagine being as proud of. But the feature, it's just maybe not like, you know, I think both of us feel like.

If I had another hour or if I had another day on something. Yeah, a few more days. The show would not exist without the Jake Larkin combo. They're the fastest alive. but still operating at such a high level. I mean, there was one day when we were shooting at Veronica's house, you know, the Orange County house. That was like an eight-page day, I want to say.

Something like that. Which like, look, other shows do that, you know, but like we're trying to do it on a level where, like, it feels like more purposeful filmmaking. And then, you know, what you also need is you need a showrunner. You know, like the way that I shoot, you know, you're not getting a lot of options in the edit because it has to, like, you have to commit,

The trade-off for the time is like, okay. You basically shoot, you're cutting in camera. Yeah, exactly. Like, we can do good shots, but these are the shots. Like, are you good with it? And Sunny and I would talk a lot at the monitor, and I'd try to make sure he was cognizant of that. Every now in the edit, he'd be like, where's this?

And I'm like, do you remember how much we had to do? Yeah, I was like, oh, yeah, no, all right, sorry. I guess I asked this question because you're wearing a letterbox hat. I'm sure you're like a huge filmmaking fan. And there are parts of it where I, you know, like, the Santino, the duo that comes in as like, these kinds of like, that's very like, to me, like very raising Arizona and it's kind of got like this,

this got this great black comedy energy throughout it, which is I think a genre that movies have largely stepped away from. You know, I think it's been hard for films to be like, comedies alone are difficult to release, much less black comedies. I was just wondering how difficult it is to synthesize cinematic influences or maybe conversations that you guys may have had about like movies or stories that you think pertain to,

into this one and then translate into we got to do eight pages a day or however many pages a day. Yeah, there were a lot of early conversations with Jake where I'd be like, you know, be like, you know, punch drunk love and like Fargo, ah, like we got to, we got to be on that level. Jake's like, you know how many pages they shot today? Yeah, it's not fair. Give me some Lords of Arabia? Yeah, I just want a little bit of that. Oh, sure.

I mean, I think, yeah, it's almost like weird to talk about the references because it's hard on to sound pretend. You know, it's like, yeah. I know. We do this whole thing where it's called director bullshit where it's like somebody is making, you know, like whether it's a Star Wars or a Marvel or DC thing, but it's actually like the conformist and we're like, I love it. But I love it though. It's still the lifeblood of it. But I think like honestly, like we really didn't. And maybe it's just because I tend to not really like to direct from reference.

Like we talk. Sunny and I, I mean, we've been friends for years and we talk about this. movies, even when we're not making a show. And I mean, we obviously love PTA and Punch Drunk and Spike. You know, we talked a lot about like the PTA spike divide of like how L.A. is shot and how it's seen, you know, but when it actually comes time to make it, like we don't have those references on set. We don't really end up talking about it in that way.

It's like you kind of form a unit between Larkin and Grace and Sunny and I of like what, what are languages. Like you kind of figure it out as you go. And then like that really becomes your language. because it's just too weird to be stepping outside of that or holding it up to something like looking at a laptop instead of something someone else made.

And again, we just really didn't have time to even talk about anything. We were just like, go, go, go. And so, yeah, it's like you consume all this before you make it, and it's probably rattling around subconsciously and bleeding out in different ways, but certainly while making it, you know, you're just kind of responding to

the character and the environment. In some ways, the genre or maybe the reference that I love the most is that this is such a distinct Los Angeles show, but like a greater Los Angeles show. I do want to bring up, because I know that I always wanted to be on one of the heat recut. So at some point, midway through the show, I started telling Stephen that we were making dumb heat. And I even...

He made a little meme. I made a little poster. He photoshopped their faces onto the heat poster. What's the coffee shop? Kate Manalini's? Randolini's not there anymore. Yeah, I know. You guys should have just rebuilt it.

But there's this awesome thing where it's like, you know, a lot of the Amy stuff is Calabasas. And then Danny's stuff is in these like various. Where's like that actually his stuff set in the show in the show? In the show, it's set in Reseda. Okay. His, I think we shot a lot in like Chatsworth and Kanoga Park. Okay. Yeah.

And it's like I'm a transplant. I don't really spend a lot of time in Calabasasas or Recita. But it's awesome because like you drive around the city and you'll go past an exit and you're like, the person lives off this exit, things where I live is like fucking nowhere is Phil and like never goes there. It's like so funny how when you talk to people in Los Angeles, like Kai and I work together for years, she lives on the west side, I love on the east side. She's come to the east side like three times in the time that I've known her. And it's like it's just such a weird canvas to paint on because you can make it any reality that you want.

Yeah, I mean, largely it was because I had just moved to Calabasas. I mean, his house is actually four houses down from Sunny's house. Yeah, the first day of shooting, we shot, it was the 105 cold open with the bike bicycling, and that was the street right behind mine. So I just like woke up, walked out of my house, and I was like, I could get used to this. This is pretty nice. Thank you, guys. But yeah, you know, pre-pandemic I had just moved there and, you know, I'm a first-time homeowner and like going to Home Depot and buying supplies all the time.

And just it's that Home Depot in West Hills is such a interesting kind of melting pot because you have people coming from Hidden Hills from Calabas but also like recita chats for it. Yeah. It's just so many different, you know, socioeconomic statuses all like my, you know, coming to one spot to build things for homes that, you know, and it just seemed rife with tension. Yeah. And so that's really what sparked the setting was it was just what I was seeing every day. And did you want to shoot it in a different way than you had seen before? Maybe. Was there elements that you wanted to avoid in the way you'd be?

to California. It's a good question. Again, it's like the kind of thing I wish we had had time to, because I'm like, he doesn't like the color green. Oh, that's true. I tried to keep. Neither is California. Yeah, there was a lot of times in the grade where Jake would be like, just the green.

Can we just knock down the green, please? There's a, I don't know. That's just probably personal taste. But yeah, I think like, yeah, just wanting to feel, and again, I don't think it's, it's interesting to have seen PTA's movies and then move like where you're like you're aware of this sort of mythology of the valley but I didn't know what the valley was or what it meant

until I moved here and then you kind of get a sense of like what each of these places mean to the people and like how kind of I think like when you grow up outside of L.A. You're like you really just imagine like West Hollywood is Los Angeles like that's the only kind of L.A. that you're aware of and you also think the whole place is kind of vapid and silly and then you move here and you start to understand that like these places have real meaning like you said like they are these little enclaves well they're distinct from one another almost entirely yeah like you could spend

I mean I'm sure there are people live in the valley you're just like I don't go across them out over the mountain at all you know so there are time you know like our stages were in chatsworth we shot out there a lot and there were like man are we really getting enough LA in the show going to you know it's so hard to get to even shoot in LA you know well that's like the koreatown week was huge for us because it really like sells uh LA just even seeing, you know, there's that one shot and two when Danny leaves the club to get into his car, and you see the, like, Korean bakery sign in the background and just gives it that little extra oomph. And we shot at Arena Club, which is like classic K-Town Club, which I hear is not around it now. Like it went under, like in the time that we shot. Oh, really? Really? Yeah. I could be speaking out of her, but someone told me that last week.

I've always been disappointed, speaking of heat, that BJ's on Alvarado is a fictional club, you know? Oh. Yeah, I mean, yeah, I thought about that a lot. Because when you're in K-Town, like, that's sort of what it feels like. Down two elevators through a metal detector. I know, but they used jump around in the club, which is just like, oh, like, I love Michael Mann more than anything.

Yeah, he'll drop it out of your sleep song on you. Yeah. Well, thank you guys so much for coming in. Oh, you know what? I did want to ask one more thing. I'm going to go ahead and ask a little bit about the finale. Oh, sure. Okay, so if you haven't watched, so you may want to stop the interview now just because I wanted to talk a little bit about the conclusion.

Not so super specific terms, but you said something about the court progression and this idea of release. I'm sort of thinking about like how you do the conclusion in Cota here. And the show itself kind of ends in like this amazing, both violent and psychedelic way. And for you, you know, obviously it starts at this very domestic kind of like everything is recognizing. recognizable and then it keeps going on and on and the characters are pushed to these further and further extremes. Does that have, that's where you got, where you like, this has to have like almost like a transcendental ending for these two characters for this to, this story to wrap up?

Yeah, I think just mood wise it felt like slowing things down felt correct. And then, you know, the episode nine title, the great fabricator, so all the titles, if you just Google the title plus quote, it'll send you to the quote that it's based on. And that particular quote is about how attachments are sort of the greatest fabricator, because in order to really grow, you need to detach from everything. And I think for these two characters, the only way for them to do that is to be trapped in the middle of nowhere.

And so once we knew that that's the setting, it just naturally, the story wanted to be a little bit quieter. and, you know, and truthfully, like, also, like, it's the end of production. We're running out of money. We're like, oh, like, you stand on that rock and you stand on that rock. There's a little bit of that. But it's like even that aside, I think even you, from a musical standpoint, instead of, like, the audience is, I think, is expecting something a little bit more bombastic

given how the show started. And so there's something, I think, interesting that makes, at least, at least me as a viewer want to lean in when it's suddenly all of a sudden, so quiet and tonally very different from a... Yeah, it's also Western at the end.

You know? Like, it's kind of neat. Yeah, yeah. It wasn't fun for the actors, but there was so much poison oak and snakes, but, yeah. Guys, thank you so much for coming in today.

Congratulations on the work. Congratulations on Thunderbolts. And I can't wait to see what you guys do next. Thank you for having us.