Uncle Joey's Joint with Joey Diaz - #500 - Greg Garcia

Episode Date: July 20, 2017

Greg Garcia, the creator of "My Name Is Earl" and several other series, including the new series "The Guest Book," which premiers on TBS August 3, 2017, joins Joey Diaz and Lee Syatt live in studio for the 500th episode. Thank you so much for all of the love and support over the past five years. The Church of What's Happening Now has turned into an international family of savages! This podcast is brought to you by: Blue Apron: Go to blueapron.com/JOEY to get your first three meals free and free shipping!   Onnit.com. Use Promo code CHURCH for a 10% discount at checkout.   Recorded live on 07/19/2017.
  

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That's NatureBox.com slash Joey. Number two. Listen, August is coming. July was hot enough. July is hot enough and you still didn't get your bidet. Well, let me tell you something. What August is going to do to you with that mugginess in your asshole, you're not going to get over it. Everybody wants to have a date. Everybody wants to go on Match.com, but you're walking around with a filthy fucking asshole and a dirty nutsack. That's why there's HelloTushy.com. Bidets are back, bitches. Portable bidets are back. That's what HelloTushy does. Right now, I've got a HelloTushy.com and I'll give you 10% off by pressing

go to HelloTushy.com slash church. Bam! Watch that muffler creeper nice and refreshed. The summer's here. You don't want to be a fucking slob. You understand me? Go to HelloTushy.com. Kick this mule, Lee. It's a church of what's happened now. The 500th episode. July 19th. 19th. Whatever the fuck it is. 2017. Kick this mule, Lee. I want to see fucking... Oh shit. This is you little savages. The beautiful people. The church of what's happened now. Lee Syat, Mr. Greg Garcia,

and your Uncle Joey. What do you think of that? It's that fucking simple. I don't even know how to introduce you, Mr. G. I don't know if it's creator, executive producer, director, writer, because you've done fucking everything. So it really doesn't matter. We want to welcome on our fifth hunt of the episode, Mr. Greg Garcia. It's an honor, man. Thanks for having me. Please. This is great. This is great. First, I want to tell you that you're one of the best bosses I ever had.

Thanks. You're up there with Sam Raimi. I got you up there. The Sam was fucking very... All right. Yeah. Like Sam, what's going on? I don't know. Just go hang out. I'll get you later. We like to have a good time. Yeah, and that's what... We spent some time in prison together. Yes, we did. Yes, we did.

Out there in Lancaster, right? Oh, my God. That's what it was. That's right. Talk about hot. And we shot, like, in August? Yeah, we shot in the middle. The one afternoon. Oh, my God. It was brutal out there. That's right. Walking around with, like, towels, wet towels on our head

and just trying to stay cool, but good Lord, it was rough out there. And we were in a place that was half gone, a place that was half closed and half operational, that prison we were in. Half of it was being used for illegal immigrants who got arrested, but not for, like, anything too serious, and they were just awaiting deportation. So they were just chill. They were just playing soccer

and hanging out and watching us and stuff, but we were another half of it. I remember the one of the scenes I shot was the guy hitting the head with the ball. You hit the head with the ball? Yeah, you hit him with the ball. And we're talking about My Name is Earl. He's the creator of My Name is Earl. And just, you know, yes, dear, the list goes on and on.

I know Lee said you worked on Family Matters. Family Matters? Yeah, I did that one for a year. Yeah, that was fun. I mean, your Jimmy runs deep, you know what I'm saying? Your Jimmy runs motherfucking deep. You don't need no introduction. Now you got a new show. Got a new show coming out, yeah, August 3rd called The Guestbook.

Yeah. Good. That's the new one. You always got something going on. I try, you know. You know, it's got to the point now, too, that, like, I've been lucky enough that I can just do some stuff that's fun, you know? I don't have to chase anything too much.

This new one's fun, yeah. You know, when I think of you sometimes, like, I'll see you on an old My Name is Earl at night or the other one that you did with the old lady who... Yeah, yeah, Raisin' Hope. With Chloris Leachman. With Chloris Leachman. She used to lick my neck.

Let me tell you something. She's fucking nuts, dear. Crazy. The other day, I'm in my hotel room and wherever the fuck I was in the longest yard was on. Yeah. I hate watching myself on TV. I was scrolling.

It was the scene when her and Adam, when she's got stockings on. She loves that shit. And I remember and I bust it out. At the table, she pulled up her shirt. Yeah. And showed everybody the titties. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Yeah, she'll do whatever. She doesn't care. She would lick me. She'd come and lick me on my neck while I'd be sitting there watching the monitors. Yeah. And one day I sprayed bitter apple all over my neck, like the stuff you put on the furniture,

so dogs don't chew it, the taste all bad. And she started licking and then she stopped. And I said, what's wrong? See her a little after noonie. Yeah. But it didn't stop her. She kept doing it. She was fucking tremendous and raising up.

But it's just not how you're one of these guys that you're so innovative with a little different TV and what the fuck they do. Like you're always right there. Then you had another show at one time that was crazy also. I had well, I had earlier before that. No, I had no.

I just just yes, dear. I worked on Family Guy for a little bit. Yes, dear. I had a show called Built to Last that was ironically Built to Last with Royale Watkins that lasted three episodes. Yeah. NBC.

NBC. It lasted three episodes. That was a long time ago. That long time ago. Co-created that with Warren Hutcherson stand up. Warren Hutcherson. Yeah. Yeah.

Good guy. Yeah. So that must have been 17 years ago. It was a long time ago. I was probably 26, 27 years old. Built to last. Yeah. I just saw Royale.

Did you? Yeah. You see him from time to time. Yeah. Okay. Good. He's around. Good.

I hope he's doing good. He's a good guy. He's a good guy. Television is so hard. And you make it, you know, right now at this point, you know, the proof is in the pudding. You've made it look so easy. Yeah.

You got to surround yourself with the right people too, though. I mean, I think it's a lot of that. You know, I met a lot of good writers, worked with a lot of good actors that would come back and work on other things too. The best show ever. If it's not on the right network at the right time, it's done.

You know, you got to just, you got to thread the needle almost every time. It's tough. When did you know you wanted to become a television writer? I watched TV my whole life. You know, sitcoms and stuff. That's all I did. I wouldn't read books.

I would just watch sitcoms. What were the earlier ones that you watched? Oh, I just, A lot of stuff, A lot of stuff in reruns during the day like happy days and father knows best and leave it to beaver and Sanford and son and, you know, what's happening and all that stuff.

You know, those were my shows. And so much so that when we had dinner, I didn't want to stop watching, but I had to go upstairs and have dinner. So I would set up a little cassette recorder because we didn't have VCRs, you know. So I set a cassette recorder and I just audio recorded. Then I'd come down when like Wheel of Fortune and Jeopardy

were on, which I didn't care about, and I'd listen to them, which would force you to kind of like direct it in your head. You'd have to like move the people around and whatever. So like looking back on it, that was kind of like a tool, you know, to start like thinking about how to how to actually do one of these things, you know. That's fucking brilliant.

For me, that's how I learned to speak the language. Yeah. So for me, it was Dick Van Dyke. It was room 222. Yeah. The courtship of Eddie's father, you know, the Walton's fucking was tremendous. I still remember the night that happy days premiered.

Yeah. I was in the fourth grade and I was at Sacred Heart School for boys. Uh-huh. And that's what you watch. Yeah. You watch TV like from seven to nine. Yeah.

And I still remember the night happy days premiered. And shortly after that was, I don't forget we were watching happy days, like 16 fourth graders, you know, we would have snacks like whatever. Yeah. And all of a sudden the television stopped one day and it was the trailer for Bruce Lee's The Chinese Connection.

Okay. And during commercials, like we just go crazy. Then none would come on and say, shut up. Stop it. Stop it. And I'll never forget that we were watching happy days and all of a sudden I saw Bruce Lee. Like I had seen him on The Green Hornet before,

but now he was in a fucking movie. Like when they took The Green Hornet off TV, people, it's not like today that they had variety. Yeah. Like what the fuck happened? I didn't know. Yeah. I didn't know what happened to Bruce Lee.

What happened? Six episodes beating up white people when they took him off. Nobody can fill you in. Nobody can fill me in. It's a mystery. So he disappeared. So Fista Fury, it's all, you know, the Chinese released them really weird.

So the first Bruce Lee movie that came out didn't come out like they just put it in Chinatown. There was no big advertising. It must have caught on. And that's when they released The Chinese Connection. In my world, that's the best one. That's the one when he goes fucking nuts. And I still remember the trailer playing

and the whole room, you can hear a fucking pin drop. Yeah. And after the commercial went off, everybody in that room just exploded. Like I'm going Friday. I'm going Friday. I'm calling my father right now. Like people are just going nuts.

Yeah. Like when your mom picked you up on Friday, like what do you want to do this weekend? You want to go to the restaurant? You're like I want to go see Bruce Lee. Yeah. Like everybody was fucking yelling. That's why.

Yeah. I remember that. Happy days. I don't think I ever missed an episode of Happy Days. Me neither. I loved them. And then when I was, this is crazy. Pinky Tuscadero.

Yeah. Jesus. Right. I'm in my backyard in Virginia. I'm probably, I don't know, 11, 12, 13 years old, something like that. I look over the fence. The new neighbors moved in right behind us.

You remember Ginny Piccolo? Ginny Piccolo. She played Joni's friend. To a friend. Right, right. Fucking Ginny Piccolo moved behind me in Virginia over the fence. And she married a dentist and the show was over

and she was just living there and blew my mind. Because, you know, I've just worshiped people on the TV and watching it. Now one's right over the back fence. I never talked to her. Was terrified. Wouldn't look in her direction. I would sit in our little sunroom.

We had a piano and I would, would she even be in the backyard and I'd play like Happy Days on the piano, but I'd like hide under the, under the window. And then eventually she moved. But it was, it was a mind blowing experience, you know, like, holy shit, like. You're in Virginia. Yeah.

We're in Virginia. Right, my backyard. My favorite fucking TV show. Yeah. The time that show. Right there. The next door. Just moved right there.

Crazy. Crazy. So, so yeah. So I watched, you know, I just watched sitcoms like Crazy. I went to this little college in, um, Frostburg, Maryland called Frostburg State University. Tiny little school.

No SATs there. No SATs needed. They had a hockey team. Yeah. You know how like, if you're, you're supposed to tell like if a dog is smart, you put a blanket over its head, how long it gets out. That's pretty much the test to get into Frostburg.

It was a tiny little school. But there was a TV writing class just as a fluke. And I decided, why not? I'll take it. I like TV. And, uh, the night before I was supposed to turn in a script, I didn't have a script. And I just took a bunch of caffeine pills,

stayed up all night long, wrote a cheers script, read it the next day. People laughed. And I was like, this is cool. I like this. I like this. And then, uh, they had something hooked up with Warner Brothers and they sent my script to Warner Brothers and I got picked

to go out there for two weeks. So I was working for, um, Tony Kornheiser, the ESPN, uh, PTI, he had a radio show in D.C. I was working for him and I said, look, I got to go for two weeks to this, uh, to L.A. to check out this TV stuff. I got picked for, you know, for this contest. So I went out to this show, uh, Room for Two

with Linda Lavin and Patricia Heaton. And I just hung out with the writers, got a couple of jokes in. They said, you should do this. No guarantees. I went back, saved up like two grand, got my car, drove out here and knew a guy that worked at a foot locker in Orange County. I slept on his couch, did some extra work on 90210

and some other stuff just to make some money when I got here. Got a job as a PA and, uh, as a writer on the, with the writers. And next thing I knew, I got my first job the next year. So just hustled a little bit. Which was? On our own with a comedian now named Ralph Harris and this family called the Smallette family.

There was a bunch of them, uh, that were actually related. So they played brothers and sisters on the show. There's like seven or eight of them or something. And the, the thing was it was one of those TGIF shows, you know, like Family Matters and those shows that were on ABC on Friday nights, you know, real family oriented shows. And the premise was about as stock as you could get for a sitcom. Their parents had died and their older brother

played by Ralph Harris had to dress up like their aunt so they could all stay together. And of course the guy that's in charge of like social services, he's in love with him when he dresses up like the aunt. So there's a lot of jokes like that. And it was just, it wasn't great. It wasn't great. But, uh, I remember the first day I said,

why can't he dress up like the uncle? And they were all like, hey man, you're gonna fuck up the whole show. Don't say that. So yeah, that was the first one. It lasted a season. It lasted one season. And then I went to Family Matters with old Urkel after that

for a couple seasons. And then I did that Bill Tillass we talked about. Wow. So you got here what year? Ninety-five. Ninety-three. So you moved out here in 93. Four years before I got here.

So you've been here 24 years now. Yeah, yeah. You know, you blink an eye and it's like, good lord, how long I've been in here. It's a quarter of your fucking life. Yeah, it's crazy. You know, you start to think about, you know, Jesus, you know, you think about yourself from one place

and then all of a sudden you look up and you're like, I've been here longer than there. You know, it's crazy. Time fucking flies, man. It does. It does. I still remember reading, I don't know if you remember this, remember they tried to turn the Tony Kornheiser show

into a TV show. Absolutely, yeah. And I wanted to read for something in that TV show. They did it for a little bit with Jason Alexander. Yeah. Called Listen Up. They did something, they did something. I still remember reading and going,

who the fuck is Tony Kornheiser? Yeah. I'm not a big sports radio guy, but they were telling me at the audition, yeah, they gave him a show and I'm like, what the fuck? Yeah, it was funny because I was doing Yes Dear at the time and they took us off the schedule. They didn't have us on the fall schedule

and they put his show in our slot. So I called them up on the air and I said, hey, motherfucker. I said, look, you hold a grudge, man. I left your show and 15 years later, you got to come take my slot, you know? He was laughing about that. Now, Yes Dear was the guy from Boston.

Anthony Clark. Anthony Clark. Yeah. You had Gardell on there? Gardell came on there a bunch. A bunch? Because it was a time where like before Yes Dear, I was having all these meetings with comedians that had deals

and I met with Gardell and I just had a great time at the meeting. We didn't do anything. I mean, but I was meeting with like Mitch Hedberg and Joe Rogan and all these people. I'd have these great meetings and then nothing would come out of it, but I remember Gardell just made me laugh like shit.

They all did. But so I look up in the audience one day, Yes Dear, and he's there because his buddy's doing like a one, two-line thing on the show and I see him again. I'm like, man, we got to get you on here. And then he ended up doing like 30 episodes or something. That's right. I saw my Billy on there.

Are you talking about watching sitcoms after school? Yes Dear, I think I might have been in middle school or high school. That was huge. That was my like 3 p.m. TBS. It was Yes Dear. It was King of Queens. Yeah.

I think it was everybody that was Raymond. It seems like in the last like 10 years or so, I don't know how long sitcoms have, like they kind of get a bad rap. And I don't know. They're like just thinking about it. Ever since you come home from school, that's what it is.

It's sitcoms. You know, look, the thing is, there's so many people out there. There's different audiences for different shows. So like the people that give like four cameras, sitcoms, a bad rap, they don't like them. That's fine. You know, but I'll talk to people that run into me

and they'll go, oh yeah, yeah, yeah. I love that show, Yes Dear. And my name is Earl. I don't care for that one, you know, but Yes Dear is the one. And then you meet other people and other people. It flips, you know. So a lot of people out there, you know.

So, but definitely four camera shows. They get a bad rap, but that's because most of the people that write about that stuff don't like those. And it was, I don't know, because I was watching them and they were in syndication. So like TBS, I think, ran them in order a little bit, but not really.

So I like, I got to watch, it got to be like, I don't know, like they were, you seem to do shows where they're not always, they're not always like the jockey. Like really, like in Yes Dear, it's a nerdy guy and a loser living in a pool house. Like both, like I kind of relate more to the nerdy guy a little bit,

but everyone wants, like all the nerds want to be the cool guy in the pool house. So it was just like looking, when I saw that you did that show and then family met, like it's just, it's, you look, when you look back at those shows now, for me, at least it's like, I think of childhood. Even though it's like, I didn't watch Yes Dear

as it was airing, I watched it later on, but it was, it means childhood to me. It's like a TV, like, I don't know, it's all these nerds. I think TV means a lot more than just a TV show. It means a lot to everybody. It means a lot to me. Why do you think when I go pitch,

I always try to pitch with a 70s theme? Yeah. I fucking pitch with a- You just get, you know, that's the time for you. You know, just like, you know, you come home from school, that's your break. These people are influencing your lives. I pitch with a 70s theme and people look at me,

especially now that everybody's remaking shit. Yeah. I'm like, guys, this is the way to fucking pitch. Yeah. I want to pitch family affair. That's what, because Sebastian Cabot and the fucking good-looking dude. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Buffy and Jody and Jody. Yeah. I've been dying to repitch that, but 30 fucking years. Everybody's like, nobody wants to fucking do it. No, no, no. That's the show. That's the show.

But then then they, no, they did, they, we did the odd couple, right? CBS did the odd couple. They did the odd couple. That didn't work. No, that did not work. And then somebody did the other one we discussed. Which one?

The courtship of Eddie's father. ABC tried to crack on it. Yeah, yeah. Because I went in for the fucking uncle. That's right. But this had to be still, Jeff Gettler was my manager. So it had to be fucking 17. They tried family affair at 1.2.

No, they did. Yeah, they did. I'm telling you, they did. You can look it up. They did it on, when Warner Brothers had a network, I think. Yeah, they didn't do a good job of it. No, because they got to do it for 2017. Yeah.

Sebastian Cabot is a fucking English guy. There ain't no English people that live in your houses. They're Mexican. Exactly. That's why I come in. You follow what I'm saying? Yeah. I'm the Sebastian Cabot dude because the dude is supposed to be a fucking hot single

bachelor. Let's make him a hot single fucking bachelor. Yeah. And I'm the guy that takes care of his house when he's away. I smoke dope. I drive his car. You know what I'm saying? I make sure nobody breaks in.

Yeah. This guy travels the world, a CEO for something. It could be the dude from Son's Anarchy. I don't give a fuck. And all of a sudden his three nieces show up. The family house burned, whatever. Yeah. They were starting to three.

And all the kids showed up one after the other. Uh-huh. If you watched the pilot. Yeah, yeah, yeah. They didn't come together, right? No, they didn't come together. It was like one came at two in the afternoon. The other one showed at 6.30.

And the other one showed the following morning. Really? I mean, so that's at any age. Yeah. Any fucking age. I don't even want to get re-hooked and I love Lucy. It took me, it was worst in Coke getting off. I love Lucy.

It's worst in Coke. Yeah. Once you get into I love Lucy's, like I don't even fuck with those things no more. I'm done. For a long time I was proud. Ricky Ricardo. I'm Cuban. I can't do it.

Yeah. Because I actually go back. The other night I watched The Honeymooners. I watched The Honeymooners every Saturday night, Sunday night at 11 on Channel 20. That wee channel. Yeah. I just recorded a bunch of Andy Griffiths. I want to watch with my 10 year old.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. They got everything. The Colombo, God, Night Stalker, that Kochak. They got everything on there. You just got to get, they even have Rap Patrol. Yeah. Nope. Oh, they even had, a couple of months ago they had like they ran the Wild Wild West F-Troop.

Yeah. I'm always curious when I watch it with my kids too, like what'll hit and what won't. Because it's such, like we were saying, it's so formidable years for us. You know, it just gets in there. You know, there's something about those years. I mean, I'm a big 70s guy too. You know, as soon as I had a little bit of money, first thing I did was buy a smoking abandoned Trans Am.

You know, it was like, that was the coolest car I've ever seen in my life, watching those movies, and I had to, I had to have the damn thing. But now, you know, then my kids look at me like, what the fuck is that car over there? You know, but there's something about those early years that just stuff gets in your head. Do you remember when people used to train you on to black and white shit and you tell them to go fuck yourself? Like when I was a kid, you show me something black and white and they go fuck yourself. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

What is this? It's a classic. It's a, what's the one with the fucking long show with Marlon Brando? Oh yeah. I'll never forget this guy trying to sell it to me. And I'm like, listen, I'm not watching that fucking black and white movie. He's like, it's Marlon Brando. It's on the waterfront.

I don't give a fuck. Put color TV on, okay? Like I refuse that one age. That's funny. And I'll tell you what made me switch, the Twilight Zone. Oh yeah? Because once you get hooked on the Twilight, you know what, the Twilight Zone, you get hooked on those.

You're like, I might as well fucking watch, like that's a show that you can't remake. Oh, absolutely. They tried and somebody died just as the kiss of death. Somebody, didn't somebody die in the set? Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. They tried. They came, don't fuck with that show. Yeah.

It's just too much. It's just, and the excitement of being something different every week too, that show, which was great. You've watched that, you've seen that black mirror? It's like an hour Twilight Zone. It's on Netflix. It's crazy. I think my wife watches that.

It's good. It's good. And it's like Twilight Zone. It's just weird shit that happens, except it's an hour. And, you know, it's more, you know, it's updated now, but it's good. It's good. You should check that out. Now, I didn't know who Greg Garcia was.

I didn't know Dick about Dick. I'm just a comedian who goes out every night, gets on stage as much as he can. And I'm doing blow and I'm trying to survive. You know what I'm saying? You know what made me, another thing that made me quit doing blow? That last episode with Tim Stacks, Tim Stacks. Set him on fire. Set him on fire.

Watch him burn to death. Tim Stacks. Tim Stacks. Set him on fire. Well, if you watch that, my tooth is black. Okay. And people always go to me, man, you're brilliant. You made your tooth by going, I wasn't that fucking brilliant.

That was the cocaine starting to come through the enamel. Oh, shit. I went to a dentist two weeks later and he fixed it. Yeah. But that's how crazy, like I was at, that was the last, I think I quit doing coke, yeah, 10 years ago. But I didn't know nothing about nothing. And one night I couldn't find the remote control.

And it was an episode of My Name is Earl with John Leguizamo with Mexican G-Shit. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. And I'm fucking dying. I left that house going, who the fuck does these things anymore? That was how you, that was how I fell in love with, with Greg Garcia. That was the episode with him and three other Mexicans. Oh, yeah. He was crazy.

Oh, you also had the guy from San Zanaki that episode. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. You had Rockles Tacos, whatever. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm blanking on his name. Me too.

The guy that's got the taco places. Oh, Danny Treyhoff. Danny Treyhoff. Danny Treyhoff. Was he on that episode? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. That's right. I was like, this is fucking crazy.

This is crazy. Yeah. That was nuts. What is NBC doing? Like, NBC's really fucking, because it wasn't about that time. I've been telling people this. Nobody remembers. You're going to remember, Greg Garcia.

What was the show NBC tried to push one day about Jesus on Vicodans? Oh, shit. What was that called? Oh, shit. What was that called? That shit lasted. Oh, yeah. Do we have episodes?

Yeah. And somebody was, they tied up the executive who greenlit that. Yeah. And they were just giving them back-hands. Oh, that was a big miss. But yeah, I remember Jesus on Vicodans. And he had a daughter and he was traveling across the country. Yeah.

Oh, my godly. This was when I read about it, because I think I went in to read for it. I read for the pilot and I go, this is not going to get picked up. Yeah, I hadn't even thought about that. That didn't last long at all. There was no cable back then. There was no, like, big cable. No.

So I'm like, this is not getting picked up on NBC. Yeah. And I remember even like, when I go to auditions, I'll log four pages. Like, I'll log a page and go, my name is Earl for the part of Vinnie, call back. And I'll never forget that. They released the pilots and I even got the notebook to see if that pilot. I go, they picked it up. Oh, my god, I fucked up.

I was like, I thought. And then it lasted after the first episode, a bunch of fucking Christians went nuts. Oh, yeah. Midwest. I can't even imagine. So they went nuts in the Midwest. In episode two, he did something even crazy. He copped Coke.

Yeah. And they really pushed him. Yeah, that's crazy. Yeah. Even when we, so when we came along to do Earl, like, they didn't have anything, you know, crazy. We were doing stuff that they hadn't done either and which was cool. They had the office, but nobody was watching the office yet, but they had the office on

and it was good. And then, and then we brought this to them. You know, this satellite, that show sat on a shelf for a year and a half. Nobody wanted to do it. It just sat there. My name is Earl. My name is Earl. Yeah.

I was doing the show yesterday and I knew I had to write something. If I wanted to go work on a single camera comedy, I know how people are. Like, I wouldn't get a job on the rest of development or Malcolm in the middle or Bernie Mac if they just looked to see that I did yesterday because I'll go, oh, it's a four camera guy. You know, yeah, he did a lot of them, but it's a four camera. So I was like, I got to write. I got to write a script that's more like their shows or not like their shows, but single

camera, little edgier, what have you. So I just sat down to write it and then I was like, I like this. So I tried to sell it and nobody would buy it. So about a month, you know, year and a half later, NBC, they have a meeting with me. They're like, hey, we read that script. You wrote my name is Earl. We'd like to do a show with you. And I was like, well, how about we do that one, man?

Because they're hard to come up with if you like it. And they talked about it and they're like, yeah, let's take a shot. So thank God they did. You know, but it was a long road to get that thing shot. Give me a favor, Mr. G, for me and for the people at home, I never asked you this. What's the breakdown? I don't know, fucking one camera, four camera. Oh, got you.

Break it down. All right. So the four cameras, the show like sitcoms you kind of used to like King of Queens. Everybody loves Raymond. It just looks like a play. You know, there's not that happy days, whatever. Is that a single camera? That's a four camera.

So basically you got four cameras just pointing at all the actors. Okay. So you don't have that fourth wall there. You know, people can't, people kind of talk sideways to each other and everything because it's just like you're shooting a play. And you shoot it in about four or five hours and then you're just done. Single camera, which actually you normally have two cameras, but they call it single camera. It looks more like a movie.

So that's more like the traditional movie making. You and I are talking to each other. We're going to get your coverage. Now we're going to take 20 minutes to turn all the lights around and get my cover. That's single camera. That's single camera. So shows like, you know, my name is Earl raising hope that I did. But like I said, Bernie Mac, arrest development, those are all single camera shows.

So you got to shoot those things five days a week, 14 hours a day. So for the actors, single camera is brutal. For a multicam, that's the best schedule of you're an actor because you work about 20 hours a week and you shoot the whole show in five hours and then it's just done. What's the fucking, what are the soap operas used? That's more like a four camera kind of thing. Yeah. Because they, they fly.

No, no, no. They fly. I tell people all the time, I booked a general hospital. Look at me. Uncle Joey booked a three episode fucking thing. I couldn't believe it. Yeah. My agent called.

He goes, hey, uh, uh, general hospital called. They wanted to send a reel. You mind? They go, sure. Yeah. They're going to hire me a week later. He's like, yeah, they want to hire you for three episodes. And I tell people, if I would have got hired for that.

When I first moved to L.A., I would have got fired. Yeah. I would have got fired. How so? When I got to my name is Earl, somebody greets me and they go, Joey, hi, my name is Penelope. I'm the first AD. Your call times are two. That's your trailer.

Lunch is over here. This and this is, there's a script waiting for you. You will take you to wardrobe and then they take you to wardrobe, you come back and then wardrobe's not ready for you. Then we'll take you to makeup and you come back and they talk to you. And then have you met Greg yet? No, come on. Let's walk you over to the set.

Greg, this is Joey. I like your read. Nice to meet you Mr. G. All right, no problem. We're gonna have fun today. Then you go back. That's a usual set. Yeah. General Hospital, you pull up to that fucking ABC, you give them a license.

They look at it, they look at you. They run you in. They tell you what's about the parking. Go to 331. It's by the fucking book. Not a long walk either. There's not a lot of cars up there. It's not like a half a mile, like regular lots.

Yeah. You know where they shoot it, right? Sunset, if you go straight east, instead of going towards Echo, you shoot up that street, that creepy street up there, that's where they shoot those. So they have like a really weird street. They used to audition a lot when I first moved here. No more up there for different stuff. You go in, you show me ID, lady tells you what room you're in.

You're in room 209. Okay. You walked into room 209. Your wardrobe is there. Your contract is on the table. There's a pen. There's a little refrigerator, a few waters. Not one fucking soul comes and talks to you.

There's two monitors. There's a monitor that shows you what they're shooting. And there's a monitor that tells you when to go out. Okay. That's it. Not human interaction. Not a fucking one. It's like him with his sushi.

He went to the conveyor belt sushi and shit. No human interaction, you know what I'm saying? Yeah. So, but it was so weird. Somebody finally came in and said, are you ready? Yes. And they'll tell you on the thing when to even come out. They'll say scene 28A and 28B, upcoming 29A.

You got to go out there. Yeah. You're on deck. And like, okay, if I shoot something for you and you're like, Joey, say the line, Lee, let's finish here and let's go get some fucking potato tacos. Okay. If I go, Lee, let's finish here and sorry, you don't start the line from scratch. Yeah.

Sorry. You start the line where you fucked it up. Like it was the quickest shooting. Really? There was no drama. And do they start shooting right away? You get one to rehearse or you just fly? You get one blocking.

Okay. So the camera, the TV also tells you when to go block. Okay. And once you go block, there's no like people mingling. Like, you know, on sets, I can go with somebody to court. No, nobody, everybody's in their fucking room. Yeah. Like it's the end of the world.

Like your mom just dropped and then it says, come out. You go out there. There's final touches. I mean, it's like, bam. Like I would get in at nine and be in the car at 1045. Wow. And it's one a day, one episode a day. Yeah, one episode a day.

Most people have been there since, you know, most of the people in that dirty fucking years. Yeah. They got it down. I would have never cut the mustard if I would have came here as a rookie. Yeah. I would have had a nervous breakdown. Yeah. So this is, I don't really, I don't think a lot of people understand this.

So if you like audition for a role, right? They give it to you, you go to set, you're not doing well. They'll like you or whoever Greg would go to them and be like, yeah, it's not working out. We'll find another actor. Like you'll just go down the list in the auditions. Like that happens pretty regularly. I've only gotten fired one time. Yeah.

My agent told me not to go back at lunchtime. Tell them Mundo. Really? Yeah, I went in there and read. Once I got there, they said they didn't like my Spanish. But they paid for my after. So what I give a fuck. Yeah.

I haven't replaced a lot of people. For camera shows, like I said, those, those things you can replace people because you don't shoot it until the end of the week. So like you could have a table read and if it's just not working. And I've had a situation where it's just not working with people that like you're excited to be there too. Like, like TV icons and then just didn't work. And you're like, shit, you know, and you got to, you got to replace it.

Single camera, people come in, they're shooting that day. You're going to figure it out. I mean, you know, they, they auditioned. You saw them. They're good. You know, if, if, if, unless you just offered it to them and they, uh, and then they just blowing it, but you're going to have to figure it out. We've had those situations too.

Jesus. It's, uh, speaking of firing people, I don't know. I don't think you were involved, but you worked on at least one show that replaced a character. Family Matters replaced the mother, didn't they? And then I know you didn't work on it, but Fresh Prince of Bel Air, like they replaced the mom. So like it happens where like the middle of a series, they'll just change the actors. People are pretty forgiving for that stuff.

It's surprising. I thought people were upset. I guess. I mean, I don't know. The shows still go on. So I figured they're kind of, I mean, you know, you got the, you know, bewitched and that kind of stuff where they switched the Darren's and all that thing. So, so it feels like, you know, they can still survive it sometimes.

We really don't know what's going on behind the scenes either. It's, it could be money. Could be someone's just a pain in the ass. Somebody's a fucking pain in the ass, you know? I can't live my life no matter what status. Like I just read an article about Mariah Carey on some movie. Yeah, I heard about that. Did you hear about that?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. That, uh, shit, what movie was that? The one with Will Ferrell and Amy Poehler. That's right. Will Ferrell and Amy Poehler. House in Gambling. House in Gambling. Right.

She got in and then she didn't want to sing that song that day. Yeah, she just made up. Yeah, she wanted to do something completely different. My fucking people are crazy. Yeah, I couldn't deal with that at all. Yeah. I can't. And I know there's a lot of personalities involved in shooting a film or a TV, TV even

more because you got upstairs watching every fucking move. But I can't deal with that diva. I've never seen, I've never really seen it like that. I've been lucky. I haven't seen it too much, a little bit here and there. But, uh, but yeah, you just, it's life's too short, man, to put up with that shit. You know? I mean, I don't, I kind of get the feeling that people say sometimes like, oh, money

change, have success changed that person. I always kind of thought that it just lets you be who you really are. Like the people that are divas, they would have been like that before if they could have got away with it. I mean, that's, that's, that's my philosophy on it. I could be wrong. But, uh, it's just life's too short. You know, it's funny you said, uh, you said smoking the bandit.

When I cast, when I got cast in the longest yard, seeing him was like everything. Yeah. Like, I don't know if you understand, like in the seventies, he was everything. Oh, please. You know, the other night, oh my godly, I didn't tell you. I usually end the shows on Saturday nights and I'm one of these wackadoos. I take the first flight out, Mr. G. I got no time up at 10 a.m. or two o'clock.

Those are the delayed ones. That's not even when you're drunk. When you're on the four or five and four, go fuck yourself. Take the first flight out. You land at 8.45 and you could sleep three or four hours. You're fine. Absolutely. Do you know what happened the other night?

I fucking got home Saturday night and guess was on all American classics fucking the getaway with Steve McQueen. Now, you know, for some people, I don't know if you even know who the fuck Steve McQueen is. Guess what? I forgot too. I forgot till I laid on the bed and started watching him and going, look at this motherfucker, motherfucker with a gun.

Have you ever seen that movie? Yeah, yeah, yeah. They were already in the dumpster and they're talking about how fucking the dude. She's like, we can move forward if you'll just let it go. I chose you. And he's looking at his fucking that cannon of a gun that he had. He had a fucking cannon. And he's like, okay, and he grabs it.

You know, we forget like you just fucking fight. I was sitting there going, look at this. This is what Lee has to watch. Yeah. They put it in the hand. They walked out of the dumpster. They fucking get to the hotel. They check in, but they're laying down.

They're about to fuck. You know, they did the class act because Alex Baldwin and his wife, they fucked and they showed the pussy and shit. Not Steve McQueen. No. Steve McQueen is not fucking Ally McGraw on camera and shit. He beat the fuck out of him in the middle of the movie, but he wouldn't fuck about camera. That's okay.

But he got up and he goes, you know what? That dude is a fucking whiner. That dude, his family's always around him because if not, he fucking, he drinks though. He's a gambler. Something's not right. That's why he got up with the gun. And then the guy that looks like me, that guy that played salato, people always told me when I was a kid, that guy looks like you.

You know what I'm talking about? Uh-uh. I don't know that one. He played salato and he played the getaway. Okay. He's in the getaway. See if you got a scene from the getaway, Lee. And when I was a kid, people would always tell me I look like this guy.

He played salato and a godfather. And I forget what that fucking guy's name is in the getaway. But I watched Steve McQueen. I watched his acting and shit. He was fucking great. Yeah. He was great. And Bert, what was your experience with Bert?

Ella, Ella Turkey? Huh? I'm sorry, Ella Turkey? Yes. What was your experience with Bert on The Longest Yard when he was there and you were working and like, you know. Overall? Yeah.

Overall, it was heavenly. Yeah. You know, he brought tears to my eyes at times. You know, like Lee was saying everybody. Everybody gets, you know, everybody feels the same about the people they grew up with. Yeah. Absolutely. Because he did a My Name is Earl of Bert Renter.

What did you think? Well, Jason Lee and I, we were big fans, you know. Okay. And everybody is. Everybody is. And we bonded over that when our first meeting. So we were like, ah man, we had this strip club called Chubby's. And it was supposedly, you know, and we said it's owned by a guy named Chubby, right?

He owned everything in town and he was like this mythical character and we're like, well, we want to do an episode with Chubby, but who's going to play him? And we said, what about Bert Reynolds? And Jason was like, man, what if, what if, what if it's not good? You know, we have this image of him. He's our hero. What if it, what if it turns bad? You know, because you hear stories about Bert Reynolds.

I mean, he doesn't really take any shit and we're like, I was like, yeah, but we got to do it. We got to do it. So we put an offer out and sure enough, he said he'd come through it. So we had him for three days. First day he came in, man, was it amazing. Just talking to him, sitting, he'd never left the set. We talked about stories.

He told me about deliverance and a hooper and smoking the bandit and everything. And I'm asking him like, why did you look into the camera at that one point? And he's telling me how Marlon Brando told him he loved that part and all these great stories. It was amazing. Best day of my life. He only went to audition with that fucking dude and the guy brought a gun when he was his roommate.

The dude was his roommate in New York and he took him to the audition. The guy was in the movie with the fucking bowling movie, not the other one. The one Will Farrell did. He's an older. Well, him and Bert Reynolds were roommates and they went to an audition on Broadway for Eli Kazan. And the other guy brought a piece and he pulled it on Eli Kazan. And then the story when Clint Eastwood called him and said, we're going to go piss on that,

produce his grave, that fire this. Oh yeah. And they took motorcycles and they pissed on his grave. You know, just, he's crazy. No. What about when he showed up with Dom Delouise? Who shows up with Dom Delouise, dog? With groceries to cook.

Okay. You know what I'm saying? With a grill. He showed up on the 50 yard line on the longest yard. That's funny. He showed up with Dom Delouise, arguing, still fucking throwing. They showed up. He had groceries.

They cooked. I got something in the house you might like. Oh my God. I got something at the house that you're really going to like. So it was great, man. Second day, he sat there and he told me the same stories. Oh yeah. Who gives a fuck?

Yeah. I loved it. I loved it. And then the third day, he was in a little bit of a mood and he had a scene where he had to slap one of the actors, Ethan Supply. And we're just blocking it. We're just blocking it. No cameras are even around.

And it gets to that point and he slaps him right in the face. Hard. Hard. And I was like, oh shit. And then we rehearsed it one more time. Hard. Just slapped him. Hard.

My God. I said, Ethan, you want me to say something to him? He goes, no, no, no, no. I'm not telling Bert Reynolds to pull a punch. No, I'm not a pussy. I'm not doing that. I'm not doing that. I said, all right.

So then we're not even getting his coverage. Every time he's slapping him. Finally, I felt so bad. I went over to Ethan. I said, I'm going to give you $50 from now on every time he slaps you. And after we were done shooting the scene, I gave Ethan $950. And he had a mark on his face that didn't go away for two days. And it's just Bert doesn't play around.

Did you see that to me in the longest yard? There's one scene in the longest yard. He actually fires out on me. I could do it today, but at that time I was 400 fucking pounds. I couldn't breathe. He almost killed me. He was still strong. Yeah.

Like he was still strong. Don't ever fucking, like when he did the longest shot, he was messing around with us. Yeah. And he was still immune. Yeah. I was terrified of him. I didn't fuck with him. He'd do something.

And I go, yeah, that's good, man. Go ahead. And I'd be like, oh, we're not going to use that. But you know, I think that he, I think he, he got a reputation and then he saw himself in a few pinches and he really was very humble with us. Yeah. Honest to God. I mean, my, my people, what, what did you really like about the longest shot?

Our mornings. Our mornings. That had to be a fun set. I'd be on my trailer. And he had the last trailer, but I think he liked the cold and like I like, and I would go outside and I'd see him and we'd meet like in the middle and we just talk about yesterday's scene and blah, blah, blah, blah. You were funny.

Yeah. You were funny too. That's fucking crazy. Whatever. And that was it. Yeah. There was no, I didn't ask him for a picture. Like I have nothing with him.

Yeah. I think, uh, Goldberg took a picture of us and he signed it for us and he gave me a copy of his one man show, which I got in the safe, you got to watch his one man show from Vegas. Oh, I bet it's amazing. And this is taped like by a friend that is like, when he gave it to me, he's like, never give this to nobody. Yeah. This is for you.

Cause we were talking about one man shows and he's talking about some wild shit up there and he's killing. Talk about watching things with your kids. My 17 year old, that's his favorite movie, the longest yard by far, his favorite movie. The original? No, no, no. No. Yours.

Really? And then I sit down with him after he watched. I go, I go, I want to show you the original. Couldn't get through 10 minutes of it. You know? It was, I don't know if it was the pacing of it or whatever, but it just was not, it wouldn't live up to it. What do you think that is?

I mean, what? I don't know. It kills me. It kills me sometimes when I show somebody something and I know that like Lee's a little younger and they may not be enjoying it. It's not that pace. I could see like the old Westerns or not, even the old Clint Eastwoods, to that room. No, exactly.

No, you sit down and you're like, all right, I like it for nostalgia and everything else, but it doesn't have the pace these shows have today. Things fly today. Do you think your son would have liked it more had he not seen the newer version? Probably. I think once it gets in your brain and you've identified it and because he liked it so much, you know, it was just like, why is this, why is this trying to be what I just watched? You know?

That's in his mind, that's what he's thinking. I watched the original in the movie theater. Yeah. And that last 30 minutes, the whole theater went on their feet. Oh, yeah. I watched that at the same theater where I watched Rocky, where I watched Tommy, where I watched The Exorcist, where I saw Anthony Dragon, that was my own Union City Cinema, 48th Street, 300 seats.

For the longest yard you left there, people were sweating from cheer. Fantastic. Unbelievable. I think I broke his fucking nose. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Crazy. Yeah. I remember Rocky, I was probably five years old when I went to see Rocky.

My father took me, because my father was real into boxing and we'd listen to boxing on the radio or wherever, we could always see it and watch it, but went to, went to see Rocky and I just walked out of there five years old, it blew my mind. Blew my mind. I mean, it just, you know, I felt like if five years old I thought I could conquer the world, you know? It was, it was amazing. It was amazing.

I used to love going, my mother took me to Harold and Maude, you ever see that movie? Yes. That's right. I was probably seven years old, going to see Harold and Maude, it's like all demented and weird and strange and, but I thank God she took me to that stuff, man. You know, that was, that was a, that was, that was a good movie. That was a good movie. I went to see, I think the weirdest movie, my godfather used to take me to the movies

every other Saturday and we'd go right to 42nd Street and we'd walk on the decent movie side. He wouldn't take me to the, the far, that was all triple X. Yeah. We stayed on this side, the family side. Gotcha. And we would, I would just pick the weirdest things and I still remember going to see the first movie ever that fucking destroyed me when I came from Cuba was Her Majesty's Secret

Service. It's the first James Bond. I don't know that one. Nobody knows that one. Yeah. They hid that one. That's got Kojak in it, Diana Rigg and George Lazenby play James Bond. All right.

I don't know how to do it, skiing and all that shit, but I went to see the stone killer like those are the movies I would, like he'd go pick a movie, like I went to see one kid movie with him. Yeah. The Love Bug. Yeah. And once he told me that that wasn't the case, I could pick whatever I wanted to. I think I went to see the world's strongest man with Jan Michael Vincent.

Okay. Yeah. Disney. Yeah. I went to see that with him, but then something happened. He was like, pick a movie, went to see stone killer. I would go see all those crazy fucking movies with him. Don't you know that stuff's out there?

Oh, Death Wish. Yeah. I was at Charles Brown. The first Bronson was the Lachy Papers. Let's get the fuck of that. That's the one I went to see and I went home and asked about the mafia, what's the shit the mafia? They wouldn't tell me.

Oh, shit. Yeah. It's fun. Like my, you know, again, like with my kids, I see them watch like the first time they get to watch like an adult movie, you know, show or something, you know, they've been watching like just kid shows, kid shows, and then like, it's funny because I think one of the first ones my son watched was Breaking Bad. I was like, you got to check this out.

Check this out, you know, because he watched Woody Watch under the dome. He watched that and it was a network show, but he was just like, man, all this stuff's crazy stuff's happening. And I was like, buddy, you have no idea. I said, watch Breaking Bad. And he just comes out of the room like, oh my God, this is, are you kidding me? This is crazy. You know, and then just starts watching all.

It's fun to watch him discover that stuff. What movies have you tried to show him that they've said that? What the fuck? We got to go. I'm trying to. We got to go. I'm trying to. And don't show this to us ever again.

I'm trying to. Yeah. Well, you mentioned like, I took my kid, I took my 10 year old to smoking the bandit. They were playing it on the big screen. So I took him to see that. He's very polite. I'm not so sure he loved it, but he said he liked it. But then I've tried to show him like Clint Eastwood, any which way, but loose, any which

way you can. All of those movies, they can't make it. They can't. They can't do it. Even like Cannonball Run. Like all those movies I love. I'm fucking good as Cannonball. Love it.

Love it. Is that the one when they, don't they get pulled all by cops and Sammy Davis, Jr. and Dean Martin come on. They start dancing. Is that the one? Yeah, exactly. They start dancing. I mean, it's insane.

It's just nuts. And Dom Deleuze is Captain Chaos. Yeah. Yeah. That's the one. And you can tell they were just having a blast. A blast. Yeah.

I mean, when they started to let Hal Needham, the stunt coordinator, he started directing those movies, you know, and they were just going nuts. They were just having a blast. They had the money. Burt Reynolds was the name that was getting everything made, and they were just all buddies and they were going out and having fun. And you can tell. When Dean Martin and Sammy Davis, Jr. come out of that car dressed as priests, aren't

they something fucking crazy? Yeah. It is fucking crazy. And you can tell, unless you're a retard, that they are fucking hammered. Yeah. Hammered. Absolutely. They were hammered.

They were like lab, like, ah, we're getting $20,000. Ah! Can you believe this? We're dressed up like priests and we've been here since eight in the morning drinking. And now they want to, they would pull up in a limo and we're fucking, you can tell how much fun they were having. Yeah. Absolutely right.

There was another one they made like that. The Cannonball Run. What was the other spoof like that they made? Something about Harry, an Asian one? I don't know. I know Jackie Chan was in Cannonball Run. Cannonball Run. They had a couple of them.

One of them, they had an elephant in the back of an ambulance the whole time. Dom Delawes was taking care of it or something. You look back, it was crazy, but they were having a blast. You know, for those movies, to do that type of stuff, the studio can't be around. No. You know, shoot those like, listen, we're going to shoot this movie in Chicago. Well, we'll send somebody out there on the third week to see how you're doing, because with the studio around, they can't have that type of fun.

No. Once they had seen those two happen, we cannot put them on a tape. Yeah. Listen, we got this. You've got to get out, especially now. Especially now. One take, one take, one take. We're going to get the light here.

That's the secret. You've got to get it. That's what I did with Earl and Raisinghope. I went as far out, you know, I went to, you know, you go to Van Nuys, you get out there between two trailer parks. There's no secured parking. People are scared to come out there. All of a sudden, you're all by yourself.

You do whatever you want. This new one, I went up to the mountains. We were like three hours up the five to the mountains. Nobody showed up up there. Nobody wants to drive up to the mountains. So yeah, that's the move. That's the move. You get out of town.

I learned that when I shot the longest yard, the first eight weeks in New Mexico, you should have seen it. Yeah. They had umbrella girls. They went to Albuquerque and pulled up strippers and told me, you want a day job, 200 a day, three, four hours, went on an umbrella, holding it for the plays. We came up to Arvings County. It was no more umbrella girls.

Yeah. There was no more smoothies. There was no more weights on the set. The hammer went down. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Let me give some shout out to Mr. Party Starter. Jenica Jones, a true fucking artist. This girl does stand up.

She paints walls. She does murals. Her and her husband, I've met him going to San Francisco a few times and every time on her Twitter feed, that's all she's got. It's pretty stuff. So, Jenica Jones, I'll see you August 12th at Punchline. Emma Hagan, Death Squad, M-U-F-C, Brian McCann, Zan Marino, Aaron Giesbreit, Susie Creamcheese, Cameron Sanmaier, Joe Cunningham and Care 94.

Thanks for all the other guys that have been supporting us for the last five years. Thank you very much. That's it. We just give him a little shout out. Absolutely. Why not? Just to make him feel at home and this whole fucking thing. Before you created My Name is Earl, what were you thinking about?

You wondered, what did you base it on? I've always wondered. He's a guy that fucked up for years, now he's apologizing for everything he did. I always like shows about redemption. I believed in karma somewhat, whether or not you believe in karma as a magical thing or you just believe, if you just do good stuff, well, you feel good about it and good things happening or whatever, but I always believed in karma. I wasn't religious, brought up Catholic, but that went away pretty quickly, but I always

kind of felt like, all right, you treat people good, good shit happens, whatever. I just went walking on the beach in North Carolina and I just started trying to start to think of an idea. Now I had an uncle who, he would always go through AA and would always get to the step to go make amends and everything and that's about as far as I got and then he'd start over at one again and just keep going and going and going. But so that was in my head somewhat. I had some other people in my life that were similar to Jamie Presley.

I used to hang out with my buddy at a trailer park in Virginia and my life growing up, I ran the gamut. I had buddies that were living over in country, literally named Country Club Hills and then I had buddies in the trailer park and I was kind of in the middle and I'd go back and forth and everybody would hang out together, but when I was at the trailer park, I liked it. I just liked the characters. I liked walking around there in the middle of the day.

I was fascinated by the fact, I'm like, why isn't anybody working? I'll come, everybody in this place has a bigger TV than my house and my house doesn't have wheels on it. What's going on over here? Then you open up a door and there's just a whole room full of weed growing and it was just, it was just, I loved it. I loved the characters of it, you know? And so I think the combination of all those things, when I was walking on that beach,

I just started thinking about this guy and that he, you know, maybe he did these bad things and how's he going to make up for it and he's going to have this epiphany and whatever. And I kept going over to my brother-in-law and he was just drinking beers on the beach all day and I'd run over. I'd go, what about this? And I'd tell it to him and he'd laugh and then I'd go, all right, I'm going to go walk some more and I'd come back and he'd drunker and I'd tell him some more and he's laughing

and by the end of the day, I kind of had the idea, you know? I'm like, all right, well let me sit down and write this and see if it works. And I always knew that like a show about redemption, people love redemption, you know, and they should, you know? People, anybody trying to turn their life around, you root for them. No matter where they were, no matter what they did for the most part, unless they did something really heinous to you, you root for them. You want to see that and so that made it easy, I think, to like this guy and you could have

the fun of seeing him do a bunch of bad shit but it was always in the past. So when you're watching him do bad stuff, you know, well, this dude is trying to turn over a new leaf so now you can laugh at it, you know? As opposed to you're just watching him in present day doing this stuff, oh, should I be laughing at this? Do I feel guilty about it? What have you? So that's how, you know, that's how pretty much I came up with it.

The world of fucking characters, bro. Yeah, that's the fun part. The world of characters and like my dilemma when I write this, I got too many of these motherfuckers. Mm-hmm. Like, I had your dilemma, when I came from Cuba, my dad died, my mom had money. We had to book make an operation and then she had to bar a restaurant. Serbia thought she was a restauranteer but really the bulk was numbers, Cuban numbers,

three numbers, that was her money, all right? So I lived on 205 West 88 Street with nice white people. We do Santa Ria shit, we had to sneak the chickens out the back door, I'll never forget sneaking a goat up to the elevator one time and the goat didn't want to get on the elevator, he had the brakes on and my mom's pulled them by the horns and I'm like four going, oh my God. Then I went to the dentist one time and the dentist lied to me in the building. There was a dentist upstairs with the thing and everything.

My mom brought me upstairs, went downstairs, he fucking, he kept telling me that wasn't blood. I'm not stupid, I can taste blood. So on the way out I stole the ivory elephant, my mom made me bring it up and shit it. This building was crazy. Was it an office or an apartment that you had just with a chair? This was still there, 205 West 88 Street, still there. People will send me pictures.

Once I say that, when I came from Cuba, we lived in Jersey for maybe six months and then once my dad died, my mom didn't like Jersey. She went right back to New York City where she belonged. So this was a very, on the corner, it was owned by the kid, some fucking ugly kid that was on Dark Shadows. His parents hold the camera stop in the corner and he would hang out in there, which my head would blow up. Yeah, he's your Jenny Piccolo.

Yeah, he was my Jenny Piccolo. What the hell? What's going on? He owned the camera store on the fucking corner. The girl I grew up with, the Chinese girl that we'd hold hands and kindergarten, her father was the chief dude for Shilton those days. So every time Charlie Brown came out with a new movie, her and I went to fucking movie theater on the East Side like doctors, people on our feet and shit bowing.

But my godmother, my Santa Maria godmother was on 148th Street in Broadway and that was the neighborhood. Yeah. They did another slope the first day I went there, they showed me at that body, the kids were like, you want to see a body? Like, what? What do you mean? Like six Puerto Ricans and three Irish kids and we went down there and they had a piece

of tube by four and there was flies everywhere and you could smell the thing 20 feet away. You think they gave, you know how now you see TV shows and people like take a body to have masks, these kids had no masks. They were as tough as death. Now were you scared or were you instantly interested? I was instantly interested because I knew that the other side of my mom's bar, I had saw these characters in my mom's bar. So wait a second, you guys know where there's a body, yeah it's on the West Side Highway.

You know CSI didn't work that quick those days, I don't know what the fuck happened and then we went one day there wasn't any more. You know I didn't hear about it in the news or anything, it was just a body of somebody dumped on the highway and then had flies on it and they put a tube, like a four by eight on it but after you go to some kids house and they show you, so I wanted to go to my godmother's house as much as I could. Dead body is trialed by fire, like I dipped my toe in it and I was nervous but there was no dead body.

I remember the first time I went down to this kids house and he said he's gonna have a sleep over and you know I'm thinking, ah sleep over, okay you know we're in like fifth grade or something like that, sixth grade, I'm like okay maybe we'll watch some movies, mom will pop some popcorn and whatever and my mom drops me off and there's like eight kids in there and it's like mayhem already. I'm like where's this guy's parents you know and then his mom comes down, she's drinking a beer, smoking a joint, she says I'm going out, I got a date, I'll see y'all tomorrow, she's gone and I'm like what the hell is going on, then all the playboys get out, everybody's

looking at playboys starting to drink and it got to be about eleven thirty at night and everybody was getting up and I said where's everybody going, I said we're gonna go to the lawn mower shop, we're gonna hop over the fence, we're gonna steal some engines and tomorrow we're gonna make go-karts with that thing, I said I'm gonna go to the bathroom, I called my mother, I said you gotta come pick me up, this is crazy over here, she came and got me, I couldn't handle that one so dead body, I would have shit myself. I've never felt more connected to any guest than you right now because Joey tells all these stories as a kid like that, like that sounds like Joey's childhood and then he's

just like what, no one else, like he looks at me like I'm crazy, I know, he told the dead body, I said am I really gonna tell a story about pushing out over some lawn mower engines, I would have pushed out, I wouldn't even, oh my god, drinking beer in fifth grade, are you serious? Like I drank soda, that's all, I can't even imagine a beer in fifth grade. I didn't drink in the fifth grade, I wouldn't even consider drinking in the fifth grade, I fucking hated all that shit in the fifth grade, in the fifth grade I was still into giggling. My problem was in the seventh grade I went to a family party and I had a beer or two and that's all you needed, I was what, 60 pounds or something and then we went

to a football game and I was drunk and this girl I had a crush on, she said you're cute when you're drunk, well that was the end of that, I mean shit. I need more of this apparently, but yeah, seventh grade, that's early. That's fucking early, a bit early, I think I smoked pot in the seventh grade, I think I smoked pot but none of my friends' moms got high, like that, that, I never saw that. I'd never seen that, that blew my mind, that blew my mind. It blew my, like my mom smoked but she didn't smoke on the open, she didn't smoke how people smoke now, like my friends never saw her smoke or nothing like that, my mom smoked at the bar in the back manager's room at night, she'd smoke back there but no, not

the way it is today and I'd shit my pants every time she'd smoke that the cops are going to come, like I was one of those little fucking sacks that the cops are going to come, you know, the cops are going to come. I was such a scary cat kid, I remember her smoking cigarettes in the taxi cab and throwing them on the floor and stepping on them, me going, this cab is going to blow up, like that's when they had rubber, there was no carpet in those fucking New York cabs, people getting fucking stabbed in those things, there's not going to be a carpet back there. She needed a car like my grandparents that had a hole in the backseat, so you just, I loved it, you look down and see the street, they just, you'd be jumping

around back there the day and don't put your foot in the hole and just, just street, you just see street, that'd be good for her, she'd just throw the butts right out there. Oh my god, I had a friend who had a hole too and he had to put a piece of metal on there, is that rust? It must be, yeah, but he didn't put any metal on it, they just said don't put your foot in the hole, we used to love taking that car. Now you're always working on something, right? Yeah, I'm trying to, you know, I could. You're always writing, like you're, you're the last of the real deal, you get up every morning and write something. I try to, yeah, even this show that I'm doing now that's getting ready to premiere, it's,

they haven't even ordered a second season I've written two or three scripts, because I'm just like, well maybe they will, so I'm going to write them and then if they don't use them, I'll use those stories for something else, but, and I wrote this, I told you I wrote this Broadway musical. Right, that's right for Jimmy Buffett. Yeah, Jimmy Buffett. That's fucking crazy. Which is crazy. Michael Malley, who was on Yes, Dear, who was a writer, he called me one day, he says, you want to write a Broadway musical? And I was like, what are you talking about, man? We don't know how to do that. He goes, I will figure it out. And he goes, listen, that's all the, the money's there, the producers are there.

Jimmy Buffett, it's his music. Jimmy Buffett, like my name is Earl, so he wants you to be a part of it and you'll write it with me and we'll just come up with a story and we'll write it. And I was like, all right. Well, I mean, I can't say no. I got a, I got a 19-year-old who's a theater major who loves, you know, musical theater and everything. I got to look cool to him. Got to make some contacts for him, you know. So, we went and did, that was four years ago and it's going to be on Broadway in February. Broadway, Broadway. Broadway, Broadway. Just finished up in La Jolla for like an eight-week run or something like that in La Jolla. Then we go to New Orleans, Houston and Chicago in the fall, and then

Broadway, Broadway, February, mid-February. I love a few people like Jimmy Buffett. They love him. Still. Love him. Still. Yeah, he sells out and people, you know, and you're talking about like doctor, that's why it's good for Broadway because you're talking about doctors and lawyers and they just come there from work on a Friday and they just go crazy and sit in a parking lot and drink and go nuts and then they go back to work and these are people that buy Broadway tickets, you know. So, I think it, you know, it could work. People see. Who knows. But, but they just love him. He sells out stadiums, still. Still selling out. That's what you're selling out. Does he tour constantly? Yeah. I mean, I

think he slowed down a little because he doesn't have to tour as much now, you know. But, but, so he kind of does his own thing when he wants to do it. But I know my friends just saw him in D.C. It was 26,000 people sold out in D.C. and 26,000 people. Yeah. Parrot heads. Yeah. They just, they love him. They absolutely love him. So, hopefully. He had a bar when I moved to Colorado. He had a bar in Aspen called the Paragon. Okay. In 1983, 84. It was like the biggest bar on that. I don't even know if it still exists. But that's the first time I discovered those people. Okay. Yeah. That he would, they would do something. You know, when I went to, I used to eat at a diner in Jersey when they had Tequilaville. That

record on the, you know, you ever go to the East Coast and they have those little, when you go to the diner in the boots. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. And I would always play, take it away again in Margaritaville. Yeah. Yeah. I like the song. Yeah. I know it's Jimmy Buffett as a kid. And all of a sudden, it's fucking Jimmy Buffett. It's everywhere. Like, it's just huge. Yeah. He, he, he's a marketing genius because he's got the hotels. He's got casinos. He just, he's just starting retirement homes. Margaritaville. He took that one song. Yeah. Margaritaville retirement homes. Why not? Yeah. Yeah. And blenders and bikes and shoes. And I mean, it's a billion dollar, you know, corporation. He

has over one song, a six minute song that he just, he, he told me one time he goes, I told the Eagles, man. He goes, man, I told the Eagles, there should be a hotel California on every corner. They blew it, but they didn't want to do it. But he just, he's, he's a business man. He knows what he's doing. A hotel California on each corner. Yeah. Going in a little memorabilia. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But back to, I want to just, yeah, characters of the whole thing. That's your, that's your world. You, that's what makes your shows uniquely different. One thing I noticed about you that you always say is, I mean, you create the shows and you write these scripts. Where's

the rest of your writing guys for season two? Oh, for, for this show, I wrote all these 10 myself. I didn't have a writing staff for this one because with this one, it was an odd, odd journey for this one because I wrote these stories before it was even a TV show. I'd go up to the mountains and I would rent a house so I could write shows like raise and hope and come up with scripts where it was quiet up there. I knew, you know, writing's hard. We all know writing's hard. So like you procrastinate everything. I figured if I drive up to the mountains and pay for a rental house, I got to get something done. You know, I can't come back empty handed, but sometimes I would, you know, be stuck up there. I don't know what to write.

And so they'd have these guest books where people would write, you know, we had a good time, the kids went sledding, PS, the dishwashers not working, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, you know, boring stuff. And I picked it up one time and I thought, what could happen in this house? And I just started walking around the house. I'm like, what kind of fucked up crazy shit could happen? And I sat down and I wrote a 35 page story about two guys that went up there from work and they played cards and one caught the other one cheating and the other guy stuck a, stuck a fork in the guy's eye and they had this big fight and then they put the fork back in the drawer and they didn't know which one it was. So now

they feel bad. Don't use the forks, you know, whatever, all this stuff. And I made a copy for myself. I left it there just to fuck with the next people. That's it. Just to freak with them. And I read it to everybody on set. Everybody was laughing. And then I went up there and did it again and again and again. And then I had 15 of these stories. So I'd already kind of written the stories. And then I went to TBS and said, I want to do a show about a cabin in the woods. Different people come in every week and we're going to, we're going to make these stories come to life, you know. So when I sat down to write them, I didn't really need a writing staff. I knew kind of what it was going to be. So I just

sat down and wrote all 10 episodes and they were, they were fun to write. They were fairly easy. So going forward, I might just do that again. I don't know. We'll see. We'll see if I can still keep coming up with the stories. But yeah, that's, that's why, that's why with this one, I didn't have a writing staff and it was only 10 episodes. If you do 10 episodes, that's peaceful, you know, that's easy. That's like stress free. You write them all, then you shoot them all. You do 22 episodes on a network show. You maybe have 10 scripts ready and then you start shooting them. And then somewhere around Thanksgiving, you say, oh shit, we got to shoot nine more of these. We don't even know what the stories are anymore.

And then all of a sudden it's not about really making the stories great. It's about making them make sense. You know, if a story makes sense, then it's good, you know, and that's why these shorter orders, I think when you see these shows that do like 10, 12 episodes on Netflix, on cable, they keep the quality up a little bit more than the network shows throughout. It's just, you know, it's just time. You run out of time. 36 episodes, a lot of fucking episodes in the season. Remember really years ago, I remember even Rogan said he had to shoot like 41 Fear Factors one year. Like that was his biggest order on Fear Factors was really hot. That's a lot of work. That's a lot of work. Every

day grinding it out, you know, I don't know. And it's stressful. You got a tough job, but you, I mean, that was only on the one set. And it was, I was thinking about this morning, I hate marijuana gear. I've never been privy to marijuana gear. Yeah. Okay. I don't not like it. There's no reason why I should have a shirt with a poly-fondant and then get mad if a couple. Yeah. Why put a target on your back? Yeah. I've always been one of those guys. So whenever people give me anything, marijuana-ish, I always throw it away or I give it to whatever the home over here, this place on North Hollywood. Yeah. Some guy gave me a, there was a dispensary. The guy was a baker. Him and his family got together

and he was a baker in Beverly Hills and they opened up this little dispensary in a head shop in Hollywood and he went out of his way and he made these gorgeous shirts and it was just a shirt, not even marijuana, but like that heart with the thing going around it. What's it called? Hemp? No, not fucking hemp. The fucking, what they call these people that smoke marijuana. They call them something, compatriots or whatever the fuck they hold those. All right. What was the symbol for that? Didn't really, you know, it wasn't like a joint or something, but it really wasn't the symbol for marijuana, but people knew it as the medical marijuana. People in the know know. No. Yeah. So it was a weird yellow

shirt and I liked this shirt. It was fucking comfortable. You ever have a shirt that's just fucking comfortable? Absolutely. Absolutely. And then I had another shirt that I found like that, the same manufacturer, like a fucking Wal-Mart in Houston and I bought cause that's where you shop when you're fat. Houston is the place because they cheat you on the sizes. Right now, what are you, a medium? Yeah, I'm a medium. In Houston, you're a fucking double X because they make you big. So you get things, I'm losing weight. Give me the cheesecake. You know what I'm saying? I don't want you fucking missing meals. So what the fuck are we talking about here? I forgot the symbol of the shirt, the comfortable shirt, the yellow

shirt. So I get up one morning, I got to go to my name is Earl. I think I'm taking the yellow shirt I bought at Wal-Mart. Yeah. But once I get in the fucking car and I'm driving, I look down and it's the fucking symbol shirt. That's the last thing I wanted a TV fucking set, especially an NBC show. You're not that fucking stupid, Joey, but I was already three quarters up there. Yeah. I couldn't turn around. I look for like a clothing store. Again, two X is not going to fit. I'm not walking on that set looking like a two pound bologna in a one pound bag. So that's not going to happen. So I tried to turn the shirt around. Yeah. I turned the shirt around. Well, the guy had the symbol on the other side like

something fucking crazy. He had you covered. So as soon as I walk into your set, people are like, what up, man? Everybody was like, I'm like, what? Oh, hi. And I didn't know what was going on. And then I looked at the fucking thing and I'm like, oh, so I knew like I was telling you when you walked in that when I went to that audition, I hate those, those producer ones, those five man rules. Yeah. I do well in them. I don't dislike them. But when I saw the look on your face, it took that like it made me say it was just joy, man. I was happy to see you there. You know, I thought I was like, I don't give a fuck now. Like it's my dog. Yeah. Give a fuck. He knows what I can do. Yeah. Absolutely.

Fuck the lines. Let's just go for it. Yeah. Fuck if I sing an opera song. He knows what time it is. Auditions are rough, man. I get stressed during auditions, you know, because you know, it's so hard. And I think the hardest part about auditions and being an actor is you come in and you read for a part. And what you don't know sometimes is, you know, we'll have, I mean, a pilot, you'll have, you know, whatever 100 people come in there and read for it. But just this is an episode of TV, maybe 10, 15 people come in and read for a part. You could have hired nine of them. You know, nine of them could have been great. They could have been fine, but you got to pick somebody, right? Some people look like

what is in your head. So it's their job to kind of lose it when they come in. Other people, you think, oh, that's, that's not what I had in my head. And then it's their job to get it. And that'll happen too. But everybody just gets a no for the most part. You know, it's not like you get a no with an explanation or this was how it ranked. You came in third, you know, nobody, you know, and you, so you just got to brush that off your back and keep going. But that would, that would be very tough. That would be very tough for me to be like, well, you know, was I close? Was it, you know, to not get that feedback? You're on a set, you're acting, you get the feedback. Somebody say, I'll do this line this way, this way,

this way, you know, a lot of times with the auditions, it's going so fast or it's just the casting director reading and you're looking at on tape, you don't have the time necessary to work with somebody and give notes and, you know, you try sometimes when you can, but you don't always give people that benefit. So you come in, you get one shot and then you don't necessarily know why, you know, it didn't work. My first two years, it would bother me. Like not bother me extremely. I mean, I'm not stupid. I know, and it's a battery, you know, I would try to prepare, you know, I went to acting class, the whole fucking thing. And my whole thing was cold reading. Once when I got here,

you're going to understand this. I had a manager that was way better than what I was. So he was getting me into big time rooms and I was falling apart at the same. But once I put comedy and the auditions together and I just said, this is a seven minute set. What the fuck am I doing? What am I turning this into? Fuck in Chinese arithmetic. I was going into like Stanislavski. This is fucking common. This is what I do. What the fuck? That's when it started clicking. But it wasn't, it took about three or four years of auditioning to get over those whys. And then one day I realized I got the breakdowns. And that is the worst thing you could do as an actor. You will shoot yourself because you think you're right for

20 things. And when you don't go out for all 20 of them, you're killing your agent. But there's variables involved. There's directors who have a brother-in-law who's retarded, needs a job, whose wife's going to fucking leave him. You know what I'm saying? Yeah, they know that stuff. They don't waste your time. So that was one mistake I did that once I've never gotten the breakdowns again. Like I stopped in 2005. Like that was a year of torture. That was a year. I hated everybody. Why am I not going in for this? Because there's fucking variables involved. You don't know what the fuck's involved. When you write something, do you know 90% of the time who you want, Mr.

Sometimes. I mean, sometimes you write it. Sometimes you write it with somebody in mind that you know is, but it's a type. And you know that you're not going to get that person or that person's busy or something. But a lot of times, especially now, you've worked with so many people, you're like, oh, okay, I think I can write this and I think I can get them for this or whatever. Yeah, you have an idea in your mind. And that takes me back sometimes to the audition process. If I don't get that person and somebody walks in and they look nothing like the person, then it's hard for me until they start opening their mouth. And then if they get the part, then it's like they earned that part. Because then

it was like, because I was predisposed as soon as they walked in and go, that's not what's in my head. And then they changed what's in your head. And that's pretty spectacular for them to do that. You ever going to shoot a movie? A feature? I don't know. I've thought about it before. The problem is, I mean, I've been lucky that I'm busy with TV, you know? And I wrote a movie one time. I actually had this idea and I was palling around with John Stamos. And he was like, let's write this thing together. I'm like, all right, so we would go over to his house and he loved blue crabs from the

East Coast. So we would order some blue crabs and we would just sit and drink beer and eat crabs every Saturday. And then we'd write some of it and just have fun. I didn't know what was going to happen with it. And we got done with it and we shopped it around and MTV was MTV Films. They said, well, we kind of like it that a meeting with us. And they said, do these notes and then we'll think about making it. And then the next day, my name is Earl, got picked up. And I said, man, I can't, I can't, I'm busy. And so that went went that way. And, and I've always thought about doing it. It would be fun. It's kind of the reason I started directing my own shows

because what I was worried about is with a movie, you write a movie, you hand it in. And that's it. You know, I mean, the director is the king on the movies. That's that's the way it works. TV, the writer's king, writer calls the shots, you know, the director works for you. You hopefully get somebody you work well with. But if I have I see something I don't like, I can say, Hey, man, let's do it like this or let's try it like this or let's do it both our ways or whatever. A movie, it just seems like you hand in a script and then you go watch it at the movie theater and see what they did with it. And that would drive me crazy because I'm a bit of a control freak when it comes to the stuff I write.

I want to see it all the way through. So I thought I'm going to start directing some of these episodes. So if I do ever decide a movie to do a movie, maybe I'll have enough under my belt where I can go, All right, listen, if you like this movie, let me direct it. You know, and I want to and I don't want to just say that without like being prepared for it and feel that I actually can do it. You know, so now I feel that way. So who knows? I mean, depending on what's going on with the TV and stuff, that's something that's certainly interesting to me. And I'd like to do everything in this business that I can. And there's something exciting about just finding one story to tell and then being done

with it. You know, I'm so kind of programmed to come up with an idea that you can do a hundred of, you know. And so even when I sit down to think about a movie, sometimes it's hard for me because I'm like, well, that's a good story, but I don't know if it's good enough for just one story, you know, I'm kind of, I think about things as open ended, like let's set something up and now we can do like a hundred of them. So that's, I think, a little bit of training I'd have to do to my mind to really sit down and write a movie. I have to do so much TV. On The Earl's, you directed all of them?

No, no, no. I directed some of them, though. Not all of them. No, no, no. I only directed probably about four or five of them and then Raising Hope, I directed a few of them and this new show I directed two of them. I like doing it. It's fun and I like learning new stuff every time, but also because it's TV and you do get your say. When I can, I like to bring in a director that I work with, that I like, because now there's two of us doing it, you know? Why should I just be there and just think, oh, my way is right before I've even, exactly, right? And so when you find the right people, sometimes you work with somebody and it's like they want to, especially if they've done movies and stuff, they come

in, it's going to be my way and then you figure out, okay, well, we're not going to work well together. This isn't going to happen again. But for the most part, you get people that realize it's not about ego. It's not about, you know, I get my way or whatever. It's just about, we're just here to make the best show we possibly can. And once they've realized that, then it's like, it's just easy, you know? Everybody's just having a good time and you throw out your ideas. I throw out my ideas. We take the best ones. If we disagree, we shoot it both ways. You know, what have you? For at least from a writer's point of view, even though everyone loves movies, is it more

fulfilling to do a TV show? Because you only have at most two hours, two 30 if you're really pushing it. Was it was a TV show? You could do even one season of 20 episodes is longer than that. So like, even though it would be great to do a movie, do you feel like, do you like it more because you're writing more? You know, I wouldn't, I couldn't answer honestly until I maybe got the chance to do the movie. And I'm sure it would depend on the movie. But I do like that. I like working with a group, right? Even though in this last show, I didn't have a writing staff. I like working with a group. I like doing that and having the fun and the camaraderie and everybody's

busting balls all day long. And you're there two in the morning and you're banging your head against the wall trying to figure out a story, you know, whatever. That's all, you know, it's hard sometimes, but it's also fun. So I like that. And I like kind of having a steady gig too, you know, like having, I know I got to do this. I got to go do that. There's a structure to it that I like. Whereas, you know, with movies, I can see how those guys don't get stuff done for a long time when it's just you sitting in a room and you got to self motivate to write this script that you have no idea if somebody's going to shoot and TV, you know, they're going to shoot something. You're whatever you, at the

end of the day, they got to shoot something. A movie, you could be writing forever, which I think happens most of the time and it just gets put on a shelf. And then, and then like, what did I, you know, what did I do? So I like the certainty of TV too. You know what's crazy that what the fuck was I just thinking about that? I was going to ask you, you guys got me out of the difference. It's his fault. That's his fault. I apologize. No, no, no, it was interesting what you had asked him. What the fuck was I going to ask you? This is crazy. I got to take my pills. I don't even take pills. I'm just lying. You'll remember tonight on the, at the ice house, right in the middle of, yeah, right in the middle of the set.

It's the worst when you have something and you get so involved in somebody's conversation. And so like, I'm, I'm blown away that yeah, I like this kind of talk, like this talk. You know, we never really have this type of talk with the guy in your league. So it's a beautiful. I'm, I'm, I'm pleased to be. No, I'm happy you made it. I hope people find it interesting. I'm glad we got to at least talk about the dead body and stuff. Because when I listen to the show, I'm like, I want more crazy fucking stories nonstop. So yeah.

But no, I'm happy that we're both character guys. I like, I sit there at night and giggle about the people that have met in my life. Yeah. I like sometimes I go, Jesus Christ, like whatever happened to him. Like within prison, even there was a black dude I met in prison that would call his house, collect every night his wife. And at the end of the conversation, he'd go, don't call back in all morning, slam the phone and walk to his cell. Like, you don't know how many nights I've stayed out thinking about what is that guy doing with his life today?

You know what I'm saying? He's probably not on Facebook. You probably can't, can't check in on him. I mean, I think that's, that's part of the fun of writing, right? I mean, it's like just taking all the stuff that you've seen and mixing two characters into one and stealing a little something from here and there. And, you know, even with this, this new show, people are like, well, where'd you come up with these like townspeople that live in this mountain town? Like, what TV show and movie did you like? And I go, TV show and movie?

No, I'd go up to the little town and I'd go to the bar and I'd talk to people and, you know, get to know people and, you know, from real life, you know? I think for me, that's the most fun about it is actually going and living things and then trying to figure out a way to put those into scripts, you know? Actually leaving your house and doing stuff. I did this one pilot, you might like this story. I did this one pilot called Super Cod and it was about this guy that inherited some money and he worked at a fast food place. He inherited money and then he decided that he was going to give the money away. That was going to be his purpose in life now. And we ended up shooting it twice for CBS but it never got on.

But it was all inspired by, during the writer strike, during my name is Earl, right about the time that you were on because the writer strike was trying to write. That was right in the middle of that stuff. So the writer strike hit and I didn't have anything to do. I didn't have a job. I knew it was going to last for a while. I was going to ask you about this. Yeah, that's right. So I had always wanted to write a book about me doing a bunch of minimum wage jobs because growing up I worked at my uncle's lawn business, landscape and I worked at the gas station pumping gas.

I had real jobs, hard jobs. But one time I was sitting at the Roy Rogers in Maryland eating a burger over Christmas break or something like that. I was doing yes there at the time and I was just eating a burger watching everybody and I thought, can I still do a hard job? You know, am I too spoiled at this point? You know, people bring you your lunch, you know, whatever. Can I still do an eight hour shift? And I thought it'd be fun to just do a bunch of jobs, like 30 days at a time, do the job, write about it, talk about my adventures, meet the people. And then for a little game show element to the book, I thought I'll pick one person in the restaurant that works there and at the end of the month I'll give them $10,000 and then I'll just disappear.

Then I'll go to the next job. So this was an idea I had, but then I never had time to do it. I was always working. And so then the writer strike came and I thought, alright, I'm going to do this. I'm going to just see what it's like, see if it works. I got my car and I started driving up the 101. I pulled off. I went past two exit because I didn't want anybody from my neighborhood who was going to go get fast food to see me.

I went to exits, pulled over, went into a McDonald's filled out application, went into a Taco Bell wrote my name on a napkin. Then I went into Burger King. Lady sat me down. She goes, let's have an interview right now. So we had an interview. What did you put down as your background? Yeah, so I got it. I'm talking to her, right?

And I'm telling her that because I got to explain my driver's license. I got to explain my neighborhood and not a lot of people in my neighborhood are going to fill out applications at Burger King, right? So I go, well, I live with this family and I take care of their kids during the day. So I can really work from like, once they go to school from like 9.30 to like three when they finish school. Because I also didn't want to like, I worked a lot of hours on my name as Earl. And I didn't want to all of a sudden look at my kids and go, oh yeah, now I don't have to work, but I'm still not going to be with you because I'm going to work at Burger King. So I wanted to work while they were in school. So that's what I came up with my backstory for this woman.

And I gave her my friend's number and he was going to say that I like did some roofing with him or something like that. But she never called. And she hired me on the spot, you know? So I went home and I told my wife. I was, I just got hired at Burger King. She said, you're fucking insane. I said, no, this is going to be good, right? I'm going to get some material from this.

So I went up there. I started working. They give me a little shirt. They give me a small, it barely, it barely, like it's a belly shirt. Like you can see my belly. Like it's so tiny and I'm uncomfortable in the thing. And I just start working on the cashier and I'm doing the, I'm cleaning the tables and I'm a janitor. And I go home every night and I write, you know, stuff about it.

And I'm writing funny stuff that I think is funny about my experience with it. And I'm trying to get to know the people because I still want to do this game show element to it. I want to like follow it through just to see how it works. But everybody, not a lot of people spoke English. They spoke Burger King English, right? They knew everything on the menu and stuff. They, and I was learning Burger King Spanish, but to talk with each other was tough. I'd always have the manager around when I try to talk to somebody else.

And so she could translate. So I try to get to know people and stuff. So about two, three weeks into it, it starts to get a little boring because I run out of stuff. I run out of stuff to write about. Now I'm just working at Burger King. And I'm like, what am I going to, you know, and I thought I could screw around. I could mess around. I could make it funny if I start like screwing around, but everybody's working so hard.

They got two jobs, a manager working. I don't want to be an asshole and start messing around. So I just worked my ass off. I worked, I worked hard at that place. I did everything I could to be, and, you know, she asked me to be in the management trainee program. And I had to say, no, you know, this family, I worked for them. And she's like, no, listen, you know, you got to take care of yourself. You can't think about this family.

And, and so ultimately then the strike was about to be over. I'd done it for about a month and I was like, I got everything I needed out of this. I went in one day. I sat down. She gave me, I got my new shirt, got a medium. She was so happy. I got the new shirt. I put it on.

I pulled my shift. The guys were pulling me into the drive through. It was like, it was crazy. I was like, it was like the first day where I was like really part of the team, you know. And, and I sat down with her afterwards. I said, listen, I got, I got, I got to leave today. This is my last day and she's, she's, what are you talking about? And I said, listen, I got to be honest with you.

You know, I'm actually a writer. I write sitcoms and this is a book I've been working on and I lied to her. I told her there was already a publisher and stuff because I didn't want the money stuff to get weird. But I said, listen, and she goes, well, now I got to train somebody else. And I said, I know I'm really sorry. I didn't really even think about that. I'm sorry.

But here's the thing, you know, part of this book is, is I'm going to pick one person. I'm going to give him $10,000. And so I picked you and I gave her cashier check for $10,000. And then she said, oh my God, well, my God, you can keep the shirt and whatever, you know, and, and, and, and I said, all right, well, well, you know, I'll take it easy. And so I left and I got in the car and I remember I called my buddy, uh, the late Alan Kirshenbaum and I called him up and I said, Alan, I just gave this woman the check and she, she just looked at me like I was, like I was crazy.

You know, she just, she didn't know what to say. And he goes, really? Maybe because it's the craziest fucking thing that ever happened to her. And so the next day she calls me up. She says, oh my God, I, I, I Googled you. I watched my name as Earl. I love my name as Earl. And she goes, I told my bosses about this, you know, and they're going to be calling you.

They're a little nervous that you're writing a book. So now I got the Burger King guys calling me and they say, what's going on? What are you doing? You're writing a book at our store and I go, no, don't worry about it. I don't even know if I'm going to write the book. And I got to tell you, I won't even say Burger King, but I got to tell you, the place is clean as can be. My wife said, it's going to turn me off of fast food.

Just the opposite is clean. He goes, you mentioned Burger King as much as you want, man. You, as long as you keep saying that. And they gave me a little card that I can eat Burger King for the rest of my life. And I still keep in touch with the woman. We keep in touch. We text on holidays. Her family's come over.

I've gone over to her place. She had some dust up with her husband. I ended up on the phone with him for two and a half hours trying to talk him down. They stayed together. I mean, it turned into an adventure, but like just doing something like that and then sitting back and going, all right, now how can I make a TV show about this? You know, how can I, how can I take that experience? Cause I'll probably never write the book and do it again.

How can I take that experience that'll feel authentic because I've actually done it. You know, I think minimum wage jobs are a perfect play. I haven't seen it any yet, but super, uh, super store, I think. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. On NBC. On NBC. I'm sure it's great. Like just the premise of it makes me want to watch it because some of my best friends in life

or from the movie theater or the, uh, I worked at CVS too. So it's like those two jobs and the, and they all have amazing characters and it would be perfect for television. Like all those minimum wage jobs that you think you would hate. Like you hate during a kind of. You hate the job, but the atmosphere and the, you're around the right people and everything. That's, you know, that's, that's those are the stories people are going to relate to. Those are the characters people relate to.

And those are the good times, you know, I tell people, you know, I tell people that come out here and they're starting to make it and they're like, such a hurry to get things going. I'm like, I've had just, I had just as much fun as a PA fucking around with the other PAs and getting in a car and going to Laughlin, Nevada for the weekend and 18 of us staying in one room that's $16 a night. And I had as much fun doing that as I did once I got shows on and things were working. You know, you just enjoy the journey along the way.

It's been a great journey, man. Bro, this is the most interesting afternoon I've had in a long time. I'm happy that this show is working out for you. It's a great show by the way. Yeah, you checked out a couple things. I couldn't get on the link today. I'm sorry. I totally, Lee goes, cause I call Lee, I go, Lee, keep saying please try again.

Yeah. So he goes, keep hitting it again. So he told me what to do. Okay. All right. Check it out. Check it out. I know Lee watched Summit.

I'm a fan of Michael Rappaport. We did all the scenes together. Oh man. Yeah. He's a blast. Jamie Presley is just, I used to always see it. She's beautiful still. She's pregnant with twins.

I saw her yesterday. Pregnant with twins. So how many kids is this? This is going to be three. Okay. She only has the one, but now she's got two coming. Two coming. Yeah.

I saw her yesterday. She was a hoot. I don't know if we can play it cause that's probably owned by NBC, one of the networks. But your M.A. Speech was one of my favorite. Can you just, did you get in any trouble? I mean, maybe we'll just play the audio. It's on YouTube.

You can play it. I'll play the audio. But that was a blast because, you know, I want it to be prepared. I want it to be prepared. Like, you know, I didn't want to get up there and stumble and whatever. And I have the most respect for comics out of anybody in the industry. For me, they're the top. Comics are the top.

You got to write your own stuff and then you got to go out there and do it. The top. And so the idea that I was going to be in front of this audience of my peers and had a chance to make them laugh. I was like, and I didn't even know Cloris Leachman yet. She was presenting it and I was nervous, but I had my little card and I had this speech and I thought, all right, well, let's try it. Let's see what happens.

Oh, my God. Anyway. The Emmy goes to Greg Garcia. My name is Earl Pilots. Yeah, I'm nervous as hell right there. I got a Xanax in my pocket. I'm getting ready to take it. Look at all those people.

I'm terrified. I just found this last night. I got a kiss from Cloris Leachman. I don't have time to thank everybody that I should. So I thought it'd be easier if I mentioned a few people I do not want to thank. My eighth grade social studies teacher told me to sit down and shut up because I wasn't funny. No, thank you, Mr. McAdoo.

My boss, when I was a PA on the show, step by step, it made me clean gum off the executive producer's shoe. No, thank you, ma'am. God, share this with you. And finally, God, I'm sure you're responsible in some way, but you took my hair, and that's not cool, man. Not cool. Then it gets boring.

And since the music isn't playing. The best part. Yeah. No, that was fun. And I got a little taste of what it's like to be you guys up on that stage getting laughs. And that's a good time. And that is a thrill. That is an absolute thrill.

It's energy, meaning energy. And it's, uh, it's so fucking weird. Talking about characters, my brother came. We grew up together in Jersey. He came to the show Thursday night, and he's a manager at a car dealership. And that's a show that's always had to be explored with the right characters. Absolutely. But I'll never forget.

I worked, I was going to see you part-time, and I would sell all of Subaru's part-time. There was a good-looking dude who worked there, and he sold cars, and he had kids, and he had a wife. And from time to time, he'd smoke a joint. And I knew they used to, in the wintertime, they would drink Blackberry Brandy when they were shoving snow and shit. And one day, he would leave for lunch. No big deal.

Everybody left for lunch. Some people ate their lunch at their desk. One day, we'd get surrounded by SWAT. Fucking SWAT. The SWAT, bolder police. And all of a sudden, they're like, Carlos Valverde, exit the building. And they're like, Carlos, they're here. They came down with us all go down.

They shot a little thing into the service department. It was kind of fucking scary. Yeah. And we found that that guy was a bank robber. And he'd go at lunch and rob the banks. At lunchtime and rob banks. There's a movie right there. No, you never.

I think they even did one. The Little League guy that was robbing banks. Wasn't Josh Wolf had something? He said, I'm a Little League dude who was a coach. But at the same time, he was robbing banks. Everybody fucking robbed banks. Greg Garcia, I want to thank you for coming over. Thank you, man.

This was a blast. Again, August 3rd, TBS. August 3rd, TBS, 10 o'clock, the guest book. The guest book, guys. And this is the mind of Greg Garcia, which is just a fucking never-ending war. It's like the fucking shining. That's what's in your head at night, the fucking shining and stuff. Let me just read this off.

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I also want to talk to you about something on the personal hygiene note. Like I told you in the beginning of the show. You know, it's summertime, it's muggy if you live in Philadelphia. By the way, I'll be in Philadelphia next week and I'm bringing a fucking portable bidet because I know humidity kills your asshole in the summer. So I'm not going to fall for that fucking stink trap. That's why you got hellotushy.com. You're sitting there going joy.

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It changed my life. Start every day with hellotushy.com. I'm saying to you, there's a Buddhist religion somewhere in this fucking mess here of people that just pray sitting on a fucking bidet all day with hot water cleaning your little asshole. Do you know what that feels like? Don't discount the cold water. The cold water is even better.

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Once again, I want to thank hellotushy. And once again, naturebox.com for always being a great sponsor. And I want to thank Mr. Greg Garcia, Mr. Lee Syat, my little brother here, and all you guys for 500 fucking episodes. I love you cocksuckers. Have a great weekend. We'll see you next week. Stay black.

Hit it, Lee. That's what it's trying to do, y'all. Take it back at me. You can take it. The eyes of fate. Trying to get on the floor. Trying to get on the floor. Trying to get on the floor.

Trying to get on the floor. Super flat. The aim of this road was to move a lot of flow. Ask him his dream. What does it mean he wouldn't know? Can't be like the rest. It's the most you'll confess. But the time's running out.

And there's no happiness. Oh, super flat. You don't even make your fortune bad enough. But if you lose, well, that's no Christmas ride. The only game you can was do or die. Super flat. Super flat. Super flat.

Super flat. Trying to get on. Trying to get on. Trying to get on. Trying to get on. Trying to get on. Trying to get on. Try to get over

Try to get over Try to get over