Where Everybody Knows Your Name with Ted Danson and Woody Harrelson (sometimes) - Rob Reiner

Episode Date: September 10, 2025

Listen to this episode to find out how Rob Reiner made Ted Danson cry! The legendary director and writer talks with Ted about the little-known origins of Spinal Tap, the long-awaited sequel, learning the ropes from his father Carl Reiner, how “Stand by Me” changed his career arc, meeting his wife on the set of “When Harry Met Sally,” and how he became politically engaged.Like watching your podcasts?  Visit http://youtube.com/teamcoco to see full episodes. 

This is the best interview I've ever had. Why? Because we're just talking. Suck on that, Conan. Okay. Okay. of work. The Princess Bride, when Harry met Sally, spinal tap, stand by me, a few good men, and much more. And by body of work, I don't just mean his movies. I'm talking about his career

of advocacy, which will also get into. Many of you will be excited to know that spinal tap two, the end continues, which Rob directed and co-wrote, hits theaters this weekend, September 12th. There's also a companion book that's out now called A Fine Line Between Stupid and Clever, The Story of Spinal Tap. So let's meet him now. Rob Reiner. I'm actually very excited to talk to you. Thank you. You're one of my heroes.

I never saved your life, though. That's what a hero does. I don't think I should be in that category of hero. All right. You're part of the lineage that I am part of too, but way down kind of the line of a tribe of funny people. Yes. Who I am so grateful to be considered part of that tribe, even though I'm down the line a little bit. You know, it's funny. I have a picture in my office, and it's the people who have written for Sid Caesar, the old show of shows. And I look at that and I think, oh, my God, first of all, there's Mel Brooks, Neil Simon, Woody Allen, Larry Gelbart, my father, Joseph Stein, who wrote Fiddler on the Roof.

I mean, anybody who made you laugh in the second half of the 20th century is represented. And I thought, wow, that's the world I come out of. Exactly. And I got to be introduced to some of that world. because Jimmy Burroughs, his daddy, Jimmy directed all the cheers and co-created,

but his daddy, Abe Burroughs, was, if not part of that team, was around that team doing the same thing. Absolutely. Jimmy Burroughs directed the first, his first TV movie that he directed was a movie that I did with Penny Marshall.

And every morning he would come in and I'd say, it's Abe's boy. And then he would say, Hi, it's Carl's kid. I love Jimmy. Yeah, he's a great guy. He's still doing great.

Speaking of Penny Marshall, I spent one lovely day making out with her nonstop in front of cameras. I'll give you that. It was LeVern and Shirley, and I played the fireman who she was going to marry and then he burned. Oh, he burned up. Yeah. Oh, that's so sad. But there was one scene, literally, where all we did was in the background kissing. Wow.

Fondness for her forever. See, I didn't know. about that. No, but... I might have gone to the set and observed that I know. Probably not. No. Okay. There's so many things they do want to talk to you about. So here's...

It's not a confession, but I am pop culture and I are just... You know, I'm just now starting to say, oh, snap, and think, oh, what a wonderful phrase. I last night, for the first time, Mary has seen it many times, saw spine, spinal tap. It was one of those things I've lied about over the years and said, of course, of course I have. You don't want to admit that you hadn't seen this spinal tap. Yeah.

And I am obsessed with it. I laugh my ass off. It is amazing. And everybody knows this because everyone else has seen it. But what I loved was take me through it because at first was an existing group? Because you in the 70s, you brought them on to just sing a song before they were actors. But it wasn't existing and basically we created it for this TV special I did

for ABC. It was called the TV show and it was on in, I think it was 1979. And it was, the show was a satire of all different things in television. Sitcoms, commercials, you know, everything. And one of the things we satirized was

a late night TV rock and roll show called Midnight Special. Right. And on that thing, I played Wolfman Jack introducing this band that we created for the special called Spinal Tap. And they did a song called Rock and Roll

Nightmare, which was, you know, like an MTV video, live mix of things. And they started improvising off camera in these British rock and roll characters. Harry Michael and Christopher. Harry, Shere,

Michael McKeon and Chris Guest, and we thought, gee, what great characters would be great someday to find another venue to explore these characters. And we put it aside. We said, you know, that was that. We went our separate ways. Harry and I started working on an idea for a movie. It was called about the life of Rodees, the backstage, you know, was a tour and how they get from one city to the next. And then we read that. there was a movie going to come out called Rodee with Meatloaf. And we said, okay, forget that. We put that aside.

Meanwhile, Chris and Michael did a little video of these two British rockers running into each other in a hotel in a lobby and vaguely remembering that they played in a band together at some point and they were improvising. And they showed us the video. I said, wow, what a great thing. What if we, instead of a tour told by, you know, from the Rody's point of view, we do it as the band's point of view.

And the four of us got back together and said, let's see if we can come up with an idea of how to do it. And we had this idea to do a rock and roll documentary, like a satire of The Last Walls and those kinds of rock and roll documentaries. I went to a guy who ran Marble Arch, which was Lou Grades Company. I said, look, give us, you know, we have this idea. And they said, great, here's the money for a screenplay. Will the four of us sat down and we realized when we were working on this screenplay,

it was no way we could communicate in screenplay form what this was going to be because it had to have a documentary feel. It had to be cinema verita and all that. So I went back to the guy. His name was Martin Starger. He ran ABC later. And I said, look, I said, give us the money that you were going to give us for the screenplay, which was $60,000. And I said, I'll make you some of the film and it'll give you a sense of what it's going to be. So he gave us the money and I put in 25,000 of my own money into it. The guys chipped in 5,000. We had 90,000 and we made 20 minutes with backstage footage, concert footage and interview footage. And I put it all together and I showed it to him and I said, this is the kind of thing we're going to do. He said, I hate this. I don't like this.

This is terrible. I said, oh my God, what am I going to do now? So we had this 20 minute film and we started shopping it all over town, trying to find somebody that would go ahead with. Karen Murphy, who was the producer of it, said we were going from studio to studio. I literally had a can of film under my arm, 20 minutes. And I said, Karen, if we ever get this made, we're going to be able to tell the story that we went from studio to studio, put a 16 millimeter 20 minute film on show people, and we could, and but nobody said it. Everybody turned it down. Nobody said. Finally, there's a movie that they're making at Avco Embassy. Some, you know, like take this job and shove it or one of those types of movies. And they're looking for a director. And this guy named

Peter Turner, who was not my agent, he was an agent at William Morris. I wasn't even with William Morris. He said to this woman who was shepherding the project, Lindsay Durant says, what about Rob Reiner? And he said, well, what has he ever done? He hasn't done anything. He said, I saw this 20-minute piece, and you should take a look at it. She looks at the piece, and she says, well, forget the movie I'm trying to get. What are you doing with this? She dug it. And she said, what are you doing with this?

I said, I can't get it made. I'm trying to get it made. She said, if you can find some money, I think I can convince the head of Afco Embassy, who was Frank Capra Jr. Frank Capra's son at the time, I think I can get him to distribute it. I said, okay, once you have a distributor, it's easier to get money. I got a little bit of money. I went back to her, and I said, okay, we're ready, let's go.

And then Norman Lear and Jerry Perensio, Norman Lear, who created it all in the family and all that, they bought Avco Embassy. And what happens oftentimes when you buy a, they scrap everything that was in development, including ours. We were done. So I was very close to do it, and then they said no. This is 81, basically. This is, uh, yes.

If you shot it in 84. Yes, yes, it's about, no, we shot it in 82. So it is like 81. And so I go to Alan Horn, who was running, you know, he was the head of business affairs. And he was, became one of my partners at Castle Rock. I said, Alan, please, let me just talk to Jerry and, and Norman. Let me just, please, I, let me, get him, get him in meetings. It puts together a meeting, Jerry, Norman, a bunch of other executives there.

And I go in and I go crazy. And I'm screaming. I'm going, it's the best movie. This is going to be a big hit. It's got rock and roll. The kids will love it. Repeat business. I'm going crazy like this.

Yeah. I leave the meeting. And I'm told, after I left the meeting, Norman turns to everybody else and says, who's going to tell him he can't do it? You know? So they let me, they let me do it. And then the rest, as they say, is history. Yeah.

Okay. A couple of questions. going back. Did you know Michael Christopher and Harry before you had them write a song? Yeah, yeah. We all knew each other and worked

together over the years. You knew they were amazing musicians. Oh, yeah, yeah. We knew I knew everything about them. Chris was in an episode of All in the Family. Michael McKeon, his best friend was David Lander.

David Landau at the time. they were Lenny and Squiggy on Laverna and Shirley. And so I knew him from that. And Harry dated my sister for a while. But before that, he was on a show called The Credibility Gap, which was a radio show, and I did a little guest appearance on that. So we all knew each other, and we all worked together in different ways. Okay.

Next thing is I thought I, maybe I misunderstood, that there is a gap between, okay, this is we're going to do. But we, if you're going to interview and truly do improvisation, then you need to have a backstory because these people were friends and either bandmates or friends that say were little kids. Right. So wasn't there a block of time like months or a year or more or something where they literally, you all or they all got together and made up an entire backstory? Yes, that's true. But we had created the Bible, the backstory, the history of these characters. when we were developing the 20-minute piece

before that. So we had you know, we knew that Nigel and David knew each other from the time they were kids growing up in Squatney. We made up a place. And they bonded in over the music. So we created all these characters. We had a good backstory. We knew

the bands that they had played with and all of that. And when we started the film, we basically just had an outline of what we wanted to have happened. But All the dialogue was... All your questions came out of the blues. Everything was improvised.

The whole thing was improvised. They didn't even have the questions in advance. No, no, no, no. They never had any questions. They never knew what I was going to throw at them. Okay. So, I mean, my experience of that kind of filmmaking is curb your enthusiasm. Right.

But even Curb had to build up on air, I think, a history. It was it didn't come in. You know. Right. Yours was so there. was so firmly, you know, organically in them that there was no acting going on. It was so subtle and real and in the moment that I don't think you could get any other way unless you had built this Bible that they had lived for a long time.

And we did. And we did. And the Bible is fairly thick. I mean, it talks about all their parents and, you know, what bands they played with, what other activities they did besides music. I mean, we had a whole, we created. a whole world for all of them. But it's interesting. You bring up Kerb because, you know, I did an, you know, you were on all the time, but I did one episode, and it was early on in the run,

and it was, I think that Larry started making him a little bit more formed as he went along because it was very, very loose when he first did it, yeah. You would get a call, what are you doing tomorrow? Yeah. And then you would bring your own time. clothes and almost do your own makeup. You're essentially playing a version of yourself and Larry is playing a version of himself.

I was playing a function. My function was to push him into a corner and piss him off so he would explode more coming out. But anyway, I'm so knocked out by, I mean, really, a lot of times when you see actors improvising, you know that they have a script and then the director says, okay, go ahead and do one and improvise, you can see it sometimes. No matter how good they are, there's a, oh, they just did an end of the scene riff, you know, and it feels funny and maybe you get a good laughing. But this was impeccable, you know, and so believable. I'm full of it because I literally watched it for the

first time last night. It was amazing. Well, you know, it's interesting because people always ask me, well, is your first film and you did it without a script? I don't know. How would you do that and I always say that that was easier than doing one with a script for me because that was my background. I was raised in improvisation. I was with... Wait, wait. Tell me that.

What do you mean? I, you know, I had my own improv group that I started and when I was in college at UCLA, I started a group called The Session and I acted in it and directed it. Larry Bishop, who was Joey Bishop's son, was in it. Rick Dreyfus, Richard

Dreyfus was in it. And we were together for a year, then I was performed with the committee, which was a San Francisco-based improv group that came from the second city. And in Los Angeles, I was with them for a while. So that was my background. And it was also the background of, you know, Harry, Chris, and Michael. So when we were thrown together, it made all the sense in the world to do it that way. It felt comfortable. It's like jazz musicians, you know, you get together, and you may not even know each other. But if one guy plays the bass, one guy plays drums, one guy's the piano, and guy plays sax, whatever, and you fall in, you just fall in, and you just start riffing with each other.

Sorry, let me just, the whole drummer, and one of them explodes. Yeah, well, yeah, spontaneously combats. Right, I thought it was very... Which happens a lot more than you think. Right. Yeah. Just a little green something left on the... Yeah, a little green globule left on his drum seat. I thought it was a very funny moment, very funny line. And then in the middle of a concert later, you want to hear the crazy part about that so we have you know obviously spinal tap has a series of drummers and by the time we do the sequel 11 drummers have passed on 12 11 11 we think but in this one we had you know one guy choked on vomit with somebody else's vomit but they couldn't dust for vomit so they don't know who it was somebody exploded at the aisle of lucy

jazz festival somebody exploded on stage you know somebody desired you know somebody desired died in a bizarre gardening accident, which oddly enough actually happened to the guy in Toto, Percaro. He died because he was gardening and he got some bad, you know, pesticide or whatever. But the point is we have all these drummers dying, and we wanted the drummer that we had before the end of the first film, they wind up in Japan because they get resurrected, they got a hit in Japan, they're going to go there.

And we found, and this is talking, holy serendipitous. We found when we were putting the film together, there is a flashpot that goes off in Japan in front of the new drummer. And so we said, wait a minute. If we marry that, if we marry that to the other drummer and we put it together, it looks like the drummer that they had blew up. And then when the smoke clears, the new drum, the guy in Japan is there. So it's a weird luck. We lucked out with that one. So a couple of things. It was not necessarily received as the second coming that it has become. No. When we first came out, we previewed it in Dallas and people just didn't get it. They thought, and it came up to me and said, I don't

understand. Why would you make a movie about a band nobody's ever heard of? And they're so stupid. And they're so dumb. Why wouldn't you do about the Rolling Stones or the Beatles? I mean, what is this? I try to explain you. It's a satire. We're trying to make fun. And the cards, you know, they have cards where the people fill out after the movie to tell you what they think of the movie. And so I looked, first of all, we had like 20%, 30, 40% recommend. It was the worst, worst cards ever. But I was a little bit heartened by the fact that I've found in these cards five different ways that they spelled the word movie and so I thought okay so it was M-O-V-I-E, M-O-V-E-Y, M-O-V-E-E-E easy mistake. Yeah, and my favorite one was M-O-V-E, move-E. So to me I said, okay, maybe they're not such geniuses here.

they didn't get it also you had people uh over years come up to you rock and rollers sting people like that come up and go i don't know i watch it and i laugh but i also cry yes and i'm not sure which and it does have that yeah well every it became it it slowly became part of the rock and roll scene where bands on tour would have the tape the DVD on their tour buses and they watch it religiously And I think of it as we created this fictional band and this kind of parallel universe and then all of a sudden the real world started creeping in. And it's like this weird Mobius strip

where it keeps folding into itself. So these real bands all of a sudden start saying, yeah, I have that same moment. I have the same rock and roll moment that these spinal tap guys have. And then the guys are playing Wembley Stadium. They're playing Glassenbury, Royal Albert Hall, Carnegie Hall, and they become part of the rock and roll world. And real rockers start playing with them.

So it's like, and that the second movie that we made, the sequel, you know, the end continues. We have Paul McCartney in there. We have Elton John, you know, in there. So it is kind of a weird hybrid. Okay, you moved on. So let's move on to the, well, it's not the sequel. or is it? Yeah, it's a sequel. It's a sequel 40 years after the first one. Right. It's not just spinal tap two. It's spinal tap. Spinal tap two, the end continues.

Right, but the two, isn't that? The two is a stonehenge, a little stonehenge thing that looks like a two, yeah. Okay, so what changed your mind? Because I know you were asked by hundreds, you know, thousands, when are you going to do a second one? And now you are and have. It comes out September 12th, by the way. number 12th, but it's funny because we never wanted to do a sequel. We always said, ah, we did it. You know, it's done. We're not going to do it again. And just time went by and, you know, became part of the, it went into the national film registry through the library of Congress. It became a phrase, goes to 11, got into the Oxford English Dictionary, all this things happened. And then Harry, and God, God bless him, Harry Shearer, he, we, we, we, we

never got any money. We never got anything. And I'm, it's going to sound really weird, but over the years of 40 years with DVDs and videos and foreign sales and all, we each got 82 cents. I'm not kidding. It sounds weird, but that's what it was. And so Harry says, this is ridiculous. How come we never, he sued the company to get the rights back. And after many years, he was able to win and got the rights to the thing. Now we have the rights. What are we going to do with it? And we thought, well, I don't know, what should we do? We said, should we make a sequel? And they said, no, we've, that's past.

We're not going to do it. We sat around, talk, talked. And then an idea started coming out of a real place, which is they hadn't played together for 15 years, the guys. The guys. They hadn't played. And they hadn't, you know, so we said, oh, what if it's a thing about these guys haven't played together in 15 years,

they haven't talked to each other in 15 years? Maybe there's bad blood. What could that be? And we started exploring all that. and it grew out of a very natural place. We said, okay, let's revisit them and see where they are now and what would force them to have to play.

And is the bad blood talked about or is it, do you actually see bad blood? You, you, you, you, you, you, we kind of allude to it. Yeah. And we say something, you know, as David says, David St. How is Michael McKinnell? There was a stick in the spokes.

And we don't say what it is. And you find out over the course of the film what it was, what was going on and why they went their separate ways. But they're forced together to do a concert. All of them are great musicians. Yes, they are.

For me, because I did work with Michael recently two or three years ago. And he's brilliant. I love him. I love his acting. It's amazing. I had no idea he was like a rock star when he sings. Oh, no, no. They're all great musicians. And

what's interesting is everybody thinks when you see a movie like, oh, somebody's playing for them or by that. No, no, these guys can really play and there's a moment in the second film that's coming out where Elton John is talking about it. And I said, I'm, I'm

so curious that you would want to play with these guys. He says, no, no, these guys are real musicians. He says, no, is that you, Rob, are you the... Me as Marty DeBergie, I'm asking Elton John on camera. Why would you pick to play with me?

These guys are real musicians. He said, they're not like normal heavy metal musicians. He says, you don't see a guy in a heavy metal band playing a mandolin, which Chris Gess plays very well as Nigel. So these guys can really play. Every note that you see in the first film and second film is played by them. You can forgive the people who thought, why would you follow such a dumb film? Yeah, because it's so real.

It is totally real, yeah. Okay. So you did it. But have you seen it? Obviously, you have, what am I saying? But is it, it's good. Are you glad you got back together? Yes, I am.

And what we found is, first of all, they love to play with each other. So even if they hadn't played along, they fall right back in. And just like old friends, you know, you haven't seen a long time, you fall right back in. And Chris Gess calls it schnettling, where you, you know, started doing stick with each other, you know, and biplay back and forth. And we fell right back into that, right back into. we always did. Yeah. My experience was

Cheers, 11 years. Yeah. You don't see people because of lives and the way they are sometimes for a year or two or three. But as soon as you see them,

you're madly in love, you're giggling your ass off. And falling back to the same roles, not necessarily in the characters, but how you were with each other in the making of the show. Didn't you find that? Yeah, very much.

I mean, that happened. That happened to me on the, you know, I was writing on the Smothers Brothers show when I was. Yeah, you got to bring me. When I was 21 years old, you know, I was one of the, I was the youngest writer. Steve Martin was the other young writer and we were kind of thrown together. I was 21, he was 23, whatever. And we, you know, we were the youngest guys. Then they had a 20-year reunion for the Smothers Brothers.

And we were all brought back. And it was so weird because we fell back. right into the roles that we played back then. No, Steve Martin at that, you know, at that point had become a huge star. I had gone on and become successful in all that. And so, but when we're back together, I'm getting coffee for them.

Steve is going, you know what I mean? We were the young, we were like the nobody's, you know, again. Yeah, I'm Mary always, my wife, Mary, when we went back to this prep school that I was back in Connecticut, and I was 13 through 18. And some of these, you know, we were 13-year-olds. We go back and Mary goes, Ted Danson, who she's only known as cheers and whatever degree of success and all of that that I have had, you know, when I step back and I'm 13, terrified,

don't know if they're going to accept me. All of that just comes flooding back. Why the book? The book came because they called, said, Simon and Shrews. said, what about a book? You can write, you know. At the same time, you'd done their sequel? Well, yeah.

I mean, you know, we wrote, I wrote most of it, you know, with the help of the guys and also the guy named David Kamp, who was really helpful. But nobody had ever put down the history of what we talked about, how this got made, and how the sequel got made. And also, we said, but we also want to talk about the history. the band, this Bible that we created and who these guys were. So we suggested, let's do a book that's in two parts. And you, on one side is called a fine line between stupid and clever, which is my favorite line in the first film. And that's written by me and the guys. And then

if you flip the book over, the other side is called smell the book. Yeah. See, look. Oh my God. I'm doing it right now. Yeah. See, They want to smell the book. That says fine language. And Smell the book is written by, is an interview. Marty DeBergey, the character I play in the film, interviews the guys in character, and they talk about their lives. So you get both. You get the...

Good for you. Yeah. Good for you. Okay. And it's a fun read. You'll have a lot of fun reading that thing. If you haven't, it's really fun. I have two copies.

One of which you'll sign. Yeah. If you're nice to me, and you've been not very nice to me. So far. Very nice to me, so I think I probably will sign it. You'll have to sign it twice. Okay. The book and the other side of you.

All right, sure. I'll sign one as Marty and one is Rob. Okay. Carl Reiner. I heard of him. Was one of my heroes. Dick Van Dyke. I used to love watching.

I grew up without a TV, hence the pop culture thing. My first TV was Stanford University. Wow. Freshman year. That may be good that you did that. Maybe, but I am behind. Yeah. Well, I, I, we, I've told this story, but my father was on television before we owned a television.

Yeah. And so, so, so I, we bought a television so we could look at him, you know, on Saturday night when he was on with Sid Caesar. That was the world I grew up in. When, were you sports young wives? Yes, I was sports. I was good with sports, baseball mainly. I was a good baseball player. And I, we moved to California and, you know, they made fun from New York and they made fun of the way I talked. They, you know, say, say coffee, say balls, say, you know, so they made fun. And the only way I could fit in is I could play baseball. So I was able to fit in in that way. Okay, that took you, when did you bump into, oh, maybe I want to follow my dad's, or if not my dad's foot, I want to do something. You know, they, you know, they took, my folks told me the story.

I don't remember doing it, but they said that one day I came to them and I said, I was eight years old at the time and they said, I said to them, I want to change my name. And they thought, oh, this poor kid, he's worried about being, you know, in the shadow. and having to live up to his father and all this. So they asked me, they said, well, what do you want to change your name to? And I said, Carl. And so I obviously, I looked up to him. I thought he was the greatest.

I mean, he is, he was. He was a genius, and he was brilliant, and he had so, you know, the Van Dyke show is like, to me, still one of the best sitcoms ever made, and was groundbreaking at the time. So I wanted to be him. And as a kid, when I was, off from school during the summer

I went with him every single day for three months I would go with him to Desilu Studios where they did the Van Dyke show and I spent all day there and I'd watch how he worked with the actors and rewriting and all and I set in how they

positioned the cameras and everything it was like school for me I think it was probably a pain in the ass to him because who wants it was like bring your kid to work nine year old every day you know how I was No, I was 14, 15, 16. And, you know, during high school.

Oh, yeah. Yeah. And the famous story, which Mary Tyler Moore told in her book, so I'm not saying anything out of school. One, I think I was about 14 years old. And I don't know what possessed me. She was gorgeous. She wore those capri pants.

And I grabbed her ass. Just nothing, I couldn't help myself. And she told my father on me. She said, you know, and my father called me in. He said, did you grab Mary Talimore by the ass? Yeah. And I said, yeah. He says, don't ever do that again.

And we had kind of a smile on his face. I think he wish he could have done it. But anyway, there's a great payoff to all this. And she wrote about it, told it on Letterman's and all this stuff. Years later, they're doing a reunion show, Van Dyke. Now, if you remember, if you watch the old Dick Van Dyke show, Laura Petrie, which is Mary's character. She used to say, oh, Rob, she always would ever say that like that.

So now they're doing this reunion show, and over in the CBS and Valley, I go there, and now I've already, you know, been on all the family, I've directed movies and stuff. And I walk in, they're finishing up a scene where Dick is in a tuxedo, Mary's in an evening gown, it's very formal, and they finish the scene. I tell her the camera, I said, just keep rolling, keep rolling, don't stop. And so I walk in there and I say to Mary, I said, Mary, look, I just want to say, I've never apologized. I've always felt bad about what I did when I was 14.

I really feel bad about it. And I said, but you were, you were so beautiful and my hormones were raging. And I said, look, you're beautiful now. I mean, if I wouldn't get in trouble for sexual harassment, I, you know, she then literally bent over, stuck her tush out. I grabbed her tush, and she went, oh, Rob, and it was a 20-year payoff to what happened before. That TV that I got when I was at Stanford University, turned it on, my first TV, turned it on. And no exaggeration, it was 11 o'clock in the morning reruns.

Dick came out and tripped over the autumn. That was the first thing I saw on my TV. Oh, really? Wow. And I was hooked. I was hooked on the show. I was hooked on Mariton Armour. I was hooked on Dick Van Dyck.

I used to stalk him during my cheers years. Yeah, yeah. And Dick is amazing. He's 100 years old. We both were part of that. I remember that evening. Oh, yes. When they did the tribute in that, yeah, that was great.

He was 99 then, I think. Yeah. And then we all went to his house. Oh, yeah. In Malibu, yeah. And he's just sharp as a tar. It's so funny. Amazing.

Yeah. It's amazing. Well, you got, he's going to be, he's 100 this year, and Mel Brooks is 99 this year. Wow. And they, you know, these guys are still incredible. Yeah. Watching your dad in Mel Brooks was one of my great choice, too, later on. I mean, it was usually something I saw on a rerun kind of thing.

Yeah. It was the 100-year-old man? 2,000-year-old man. 2,000-year-old man. Yeah, yeah. You made him a lot younger. He'd be happy to hear that he's only 100. No, 2,000-year-old man, that to me, if you look at, listen to those albums,

They're the most brilliant comedy albums ever done. And as a kid, I used to come home, listen to it every day. I would listen to it. And I would know whether or not I could be friends with somebody if they got that. That was a bond. You could know, okay, if they dug that, then I could connect with them. Okay, going back one more second. How come Smothers Brothers knew to hire you to write?

Okay, so I was with the committee in Los Angeles, and one day, Tommy Smothers comes in to see the show. It comes into, and we're on the Tiffany Theater. And they're on TV during their show. Pre-cancellation. No, they're on. As a matter of fact, he was going to produce a summer show and was going to be called the Summer Brothers Smothers Show. And it was to star Glenn Campbell. It was the first thing that where Glenn Campbell became, you know.

know, what he became. And so he was looking for writers. He was looking for people that, you know, were music-oriented and comedy. And he saw me on stage. And Carl Gottlieb, who was a good friend, and he was one of the members of the committee. And he just plucked us out of the cast. And Carl Gottlieb and myself, and we went to work on Smothers Brothers for Glenn Campbell initially for the summer show. And then we were hired, you know, for the, when it came back in the fall in 69, we were hired back for that. This is pre All in the Family. Oh, yeah. This is a, yeah, this is, I would say

this is two years before all of the family. One more thing while we're, I think, in this era was, you said your dad wasn't overly complimentary or whatever, but you did something. Was it a play that you directed? Yes. What, first of all, I just want to say

something before we go further. This is the best interview I've ever had. Why? Because we're just talking. And, you you know, whatever background you have, you know, they always, everybody, they look at notes, they ask a question that's on a list. This is now, now that I've said this, I'm probably going to fuck you up here, but I mean to do it.

Anyway, you're going to fuck me up because I have tears in my eyes because I so respect you, where you've come from, all of that. No, but I'm being dead serious. I mean, I never had a thing like this. Anyway, so no, I mean, when I was young, I don't think he thinks. Can we just stop one second? Yeah. Suck on that, Conan.

Okay. Conan's very good. Don't get me wrong. He's very good. Very good. He's my hero. But go on. He did save my life.

Yeah. No. Anyway, he did. So that's a real hero. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You'll tell me later what that was. But no, he was so, yeah, no, when I was young, he didn't, he didn't really think or he didn't see me the way, you know,

others did, and the way Norman Lear did, obviously. But I was in a play in summer theater when I was 18 years old, and they did a production event or laughing, which is based on his book. It was a play that Joe Stein wrote based on the book. And I got good reviews, and people seemed to like it, but he thought, uh-oh, you know, and he never had, he didn't ever say anything that, you know,

but you could, I found out later from Martin Landau, who was a good friend. He said, you know, your father always thought, I don't know what to say to this kid. I don't know if he's, you know, he wants to do this. And I don't know if he can do it. And then when I was 19, and oh, and then he was doing the film of Enter Laughing. And he was directing it. And I auditioned for a part, not the main part that when I, but the part of a friend of his.

And I, in front of it, he rejected me. And so, you know, I auditioned for me. And he said, no. And I thought, oh, my. This is, you know, it's not, there's no bigger rejection from, you know, your father to say, you know, you can't do it. So then time goes by and then I'm 19 and I direct a production of no exit of all things, the John Paul Sartt play, and Richard Dreyfus was in that production, was in the theater

here in Los Angeles, and my father came to it and he came backstage afterwards and he looked me in the eye and he said, that was good. good no bullshit just like that it's the first time i ever heard you know validation like that and then i went and visited him the next day at his house and uh we're sitting in the backyard and he says i'm not worried about you you're going to be okay whatever you decide to do you're going to do it good and that was that was a big deal that was a big deal but it was like not until i was like 19 or 20 yeah and then you know i went on and then he would say you know you're a better director than i ever was oh this is interesting so one year uh when this is spinal tap came out this is in 84

he had a movie called all of me with steve martin and he did four movies with steve martin but this one comes out and you know how they have these top 10 lists at the end of the year or the best 10 movies of the year. And all of me, and this is Spinal Tap, we're on a ton of lists together. And I thought, wow, this is really cool. When has it ever been that a father and son directed movies that were in it? And we look back, none that never happened. That's never been. And then we have our Walk of Fame in Hollywood, the thing, the star thing, and they're right next to each other. And then a few years ago, you know, they brought us to Groundman's Chinese, you know, and you put your hands and your feet and the cement. And the both of us did it at the

same time. So it's so cool to me the whole thing of, you know, I love him so much. And I think about him every day. And he still guides me. To this day, his, his voices in my head. And when anything I ever do, he guides me. Forgive my ignorance. I'm assuming your mother passed away. Yes, my mother passed away a few years before my dad. My mother was eight years older than my dad, but she died at 94. He died when he was 98. Having been together?

65 years. 65 years. And my mother, on her 60th wedding anniversary, people were asking her, what's the secret? What keeps you together? How do you marriage together this long? And she said, the key is find somebody who can stand you. Not somebody you can put up with, somebody who can stand you because that's what it is. I mean, you know, I mean, every marriage, you know, you've got to accept the other person.

That's the only way it works. Yeah, yeah. The only time I get really bad at Mary is when I'm wrong. Yeah. It's only when I'm wrong. Because if she's wrong and I see it, it's like, oh, that's sweet. You know, she's wrong. But does she admit she's wrong?

Yeah, but not in the moment, but later on. She's incredibly trustworthy to turn around very shortly. Well, that's a great, great quality. Oh, it's a great quality. Because otherwise, you're not going to, you're not going to grow because you're not going to tell your shit eat little secrets because. And do you admit when you're wrong? Only when it just becomes so blatantly funny that I'm trying to nod at, you know.

Yeah. And listen, I'm wrong a lot. Yeah. I'm wrong a lot. And I usually admit it pretty quickly. I mean, not always, but pretty quickly. But that's the key. I mean, you're living with somebody and you just have to accept. Listen, everybody's got issues. They all have to be with it. You have to accept that those things are working. My father said when I was young, he said, if there's something about the person that you're with that's, that annoys you. know for a fact that that is never going to go away. So if that annoying thing is something you can live with, he said it's like a fly buzzing you're on your ear.

If you're okay, you'll be okay. But if you expect that annoying thing to disappear, then you're going to be in for trouble. It's like we're all imprinted with all this pile of stuff. Yeah, yeah. And that doesn't go away. No. You can choose or learn not to have a knee-jerk reaction.

and to be that person. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Look what we're descending into here. This is becoming, you know, a third. In a minute, I'm going to make you cry. I'm kind of the Barbara Walters. Oh, of the thing. Okay, yeah.

Okay, wait, you did all these amazing films. The first one, it sounds like stand by me is the one that made you go, oh, I can be this other thing, which is touching, moving, real funny, amusing, but something really impactfully. Yeah, that was the first film when people always asked me, well, what is your favorite film of the ones? You know, make 21, 22 film, whatever.

And like, I always make the well, you love all your children, even the crappy ones, you know. I mean, so the film, but the one that means the most, I don't know if it's the best, whatever, the one that means the most is stand by me, because the first film was this, the spinal tap, which is a satire, and my father

had trafficked in satire his life. The second one is the short thing, which is essentially a romantic comedy for young people. And my father had done romantic comedies with Doris Day and James Garner and all this stuff. So I was playing in a similar sandbox to what he was. Stand by me was something way, way different than anything he would have ever attempted. It was and it was a real extension of my sensibility.

It had humor in it. It had nostalgia in it. And it had melancholy in it. had all these things. And I said, this is really a representation of the way, of the kinds of films I would like to make. And so if it's accepted, then, you know, if it's rejected, then I'm in trouble. If it's accepted, then I'm getting validated. And it got accepted and it did well. And I was okay. Okay. I can marry humor with drama and it can be okay. And I remember when I was 17, I was an apprentice at the Bucks County Playhouse.

I were building scenery and a little kind of thing. And one of the first plays they had there was A Thousand Clowns, which was a Herb Gardner play. And it's very funny and very moving and dramatic. And I'm looking at this and I'm going, wow, you can take something really dramatic and have real big laughs and marry them. I said, if ever I get to do anything,

that's the kind of thing I want to do. I'm bad with names. In my defense, it's not just age, I've always been bad at names, but who was in the movie of Thousand Clowns? A thousand clowns? The amazing.

Okay, it was a James Whitmore, I believe. Not in the movie. In the movie? Yeah. Oh, oh, Jason Robart. James Whitmore was in the thing we did. Oh, no, Jason Robarts. One of my favorite actors.

Yeah, yeah. And Marty Balsam. Yeah. Also an amazing answer. Yeah. Yeah. Wow. It's a great film. And, oh, and Herb Gardner once said to us, he came to a run-through of all in the family.

We used to, you know, like you guys would do cheers. You know, you'd have your run-through before you went on camera. You know, you'd do your run-through. And then afterwards, you take notes. You know, they come and they give you notes and the other. And we had a thing where we all contributed. You know, I had written a number of scores. scripts for the show, and, you know, Carol was a writer.

So when we did our, you know, note session, we'd all be sitting around the writers, the producers, Norman, the actors, and we'd all trade notes, you know, and I'd say, hey, if you take that line and cut that and give that to Carol, and maybe we lose that, you know, we'd all contribute. And Herb Gardner is used to the theater where you don't change a word unless the author says it's okay. And he's looking at this, and he goes, wow. this is like creative communism here.

What are you doing? But he was like astounded by it. And then the other thing he told me, he directed a film. I think it was a I'm not Rapaport, which was a, I think that's the film he directed. And he said to me,

I said, do you ever hear the crew members say the silent schmuck? And I said, what do you mean, the silent schmuck? He says, well, you know, you're working and the cameraman will say, this is where I want the camera to be. And the camera, and I'll say,

are you sure you want that? Schmuck, schmuck, under the brush, because they think, they think they know better. And so, yes, you hear the silent schmuck from everybody, the director, because everybody thinks that they know the best. Yeah, so you're the silent schmuck.

I'm the perfect actor. I have never, I do not have the brain, the storytelling brain. I don't have the desire to be the director. I want the directors to be way smarter than me. Well, But that's the best kind of actor because then you're totally focused on what it is you have to do and what they want you to do. I don't like acting and directing so much, but I was always, when I was doing all the family, I was always looking at the other actors, thinking where the audiences, where the cameras are.

It's not the way to do it. The way to do it is the way you do. Except you're in training to be a director. Yeah, I was. I was. movie. I acted in one. It was called Bullets over Broadway. And I show up

and I see that it's, you know, it's very dark. It's outside at the Manetta Lane, you know, areas, a little cafe and I'm saying, boy, this is really dark. I don't know. Unless they've created some kind of film stock I'm not aware of. I don't know. I see it. But

it's Carlo de Palmas. The D is the director of photography. It's Woody Allen. I'm not going to say anything. I'm an actor. I don't want to, you know, I don't want to say. So I go in there and I just, do it and whatever. Then I get a call the next day. They looked at dailies.

He said, it's a radio show. We can't see anything. It's black. We have to reshoot it. But, you know, you don't want to insinuate yourself if you're, you know, if it's somebody else's. Isn't he or wasn't he, I don't know if he still does it, but the, wasn't he the, a third of his budget would be to reshoot? Yes, yes.

He always, he always looked at the movie as a first draft. Yeah. And I remember Jeffrey Curlin, when we were leaving and said, he says, see you at the reshoot. Yeah. He always knew that there was going to be, yeah, there's going to be a reshoot. Tell me quickly, because I want to get to Norman, how did you get hired? Do you remember that moment? Yeah, I mean, for all the family.

Yeah, well, I mean, they had done two pilots at ABC that were rejected before it went to CBS and was done at CBS. Came from England, right? It came from England. It was a show called Till Death Us Two Part. And it was very much, you know, it's very much the way Archie Bunker's characters is portrayed. And in the first two pilots, they had two different sets of Mike and Gloria's. They had two actors that played, and those pilots got rejected. And I think I auditioned for one of them, but I was not developed yet as an actor.

Then they were going to do for CBS. In the meantime, I started to work for Andy Griffith. He had a new TV series called Headmaster, and I was one of the right. along with my writing partner, Phil Michigan, we wrote some episode, like four or five episodes for the new show. One of the episodes we wrote was about a young teacher who falls in love with his student, a high school student. And I played that character in the show.

Norman saw that, and he thought, oh, he's developing. I mean, he's developed. And so they had me come back in. I went back in, and I auditioned with Penny Marshall, who I was living with at the time we were about to get married and Penny obviously didn't get the part and I got it because they said Penny looked more like

she would be Gene Stapleton's daughter but Sally Struthers looked more like Carol's daughter so yeah so as you mentioned Penny I want to mention Michelle so you guys met during the shooting of of when Harry met Sally. And this is an incredible story because what you see

at the beginning, throughout when Harry Miss Sally is all these stories of how people met. And it was, it came out of something very natural when I asked Alan Horn's father, you know, who was at a dinner party says, he was quiet. I said, I said, Mr. Horn,

how did you and Mrs. Horn meet? And all of a sudden he lit up. A guy who was not talking. And he said, I was in a horn and hearted restaurant. and I saw this woman come in. I turned to my friend. I said, see that woman? I'm going to marry that woman.

Two weeks later, we were married. It's 50 years, and we're still married. I put that as the first story. So all these stories are great. And whenever you talk to people, how they meet. So I'm in pre-production for when Harry Met Sally. I'd been married for 10 years. I'm now single for 10 years,

making a mess out of my dating life, in and out of relationships, which became the basis for when Harry met Sally. And I'm looking at a picture on a coffee table, on a Premier Magazine, the cover Premier magazine, there's Michelle Pfeiffer. And I thought, you know, I had had lunch with her, a professional lunch number months before, and I heard she was getting divorced. I said, maybe I'll call her. I say this to Barry Sonnenfeld, who's the director of photography, who's now become a direct.

He was a DP of the time. time. I said, maybe I'll call Michelle Pfeiffer. And he said, no, no, you're not going to call her. I have a friend in New Yorker name is Michelle Singer. You're going to marry her. I went, what? Who's Michelle Singer? He said, she's a friend of mine. She's a photographer. And the first question I asked, does she smoke? And he said, yes, because Penny Marshall had smoked, you know, like I said, the state of North Carolina every day of her life. So I didn't want it. So we didn't meet. And she didn't want to meet me because she heard I rejected a smoker. So we didn't meet. Now we're three quarters of the way shooting the picture. We're outside on a brownstone on the

upper west side and we're about to break for lunch. I look across the street and I see Barry's at the time girlfriend, Susan, who's now married to him and this other woman and very attractive. And I looked at him to the Barry. I said, who's that with Susan? He says, that's Michelle Singer. I said, that's Michelle Singer. He said, yeah. You said, what are you doing this? Well, when we break, we're going to go for lunch at docks. You know, it's over on the west side because you break for lunch in New York. You go to whatever it's closest.

I said, well, maybe I'll join you, you know. So I go to the lunch and I'm sitting there with Billy and Meg. No, Meg was there. Carrie Fisher and Nora Ephron, Bruno Kirby, and Nora Ephron and Michelle are talking over in the corner there. And Michelle says, I can make better vichy swas than this. And I'm thinking, boy, what a bitch. I'm really attracted to her. May I remind you that she's actually in the other room listening to this?

Okay, sorry, fine, I just thought maybe you forgot. But I'm really attracted to her. So after lunch, I kind of woke up to chat her up a little bit and we talk a little bit. And I thought, you know, and so I asked Barry. I said, you know, find out if it's okay. if I call her. He said, it's okay. I call her. And we started seeing each other. We, you know, during the film and one thing led to another. And, you know, I changed the ending of the movie. Literally, right? Yeah, because at the end, I had, I didn't figure, I was ever going to be with anybody.

I couldn't figure out how to be with anybody. And I had it where Harry and Sally don't get together. They run into each other in New York. They talk a little bit and then they walk in opposite directions. But I meet Michelle, and I said, well, I see how this works. And I changed it so that they, you know, I reshot the ending where Billy, you see Billy running and seeing Meg at the New Year's Eve party. Thank you, Michelle. Yeah, thank you, Michelle. And what I hear, and this is I've heard, is that people who like that movie will put it on at 1030 at night so that it ends with the Happy New Year thing. I love that.

Yeah, isn't that a great, it's not a cool thing? Yeah. Yeah, yeah. I love that what we do for living does affect it. Create community and a sense of belonging. Yes.

Out there in the world. And I think it used to do it more than it does now. I agree. I think we have to be careful. And I think, because, you know, I've told this story many times, but when all the family,

and by the way, a lot of young people, didn't even heard of all in the family. This is a show that was number one for five years straight. They never even heard of it. But when we were on, We were number one in the country for five years.

And every single week, a country of 200 million people, 40 to 45 million people would watch that show. And there was no DVR, there's no TiVo, there's no tapes. If you wanted to watch it, you had to watch it when it was on. That meant 40 to 45 million people are having a shared experience. And it is a communal thing. And then you talk about it, the next, you know, when you ever saw them at the office, now you have a show on, whether it's, you know, on cable, I mean, or, you know, on streaming or it's on the air.

And if you get 10 million people, that's a big hit. And they don't even see it at the same time. They see it at different times. You can't even discuss a show. Did you see the latest white lotus? No, no, don't tell me. I'm only on episode number thing. Or I only saw the first two seasons, whatever.

And so that communal thing that you're talking about, I think I worry that it's fraying. I do too. Yeah. Yeah. This is a good place to switch gears. For me, if you don't mind and if we don't have to go here if you don't want to. But this has been your life.

You are political, not partisan necessarily. but political animal. Politically active, I have been, yeah. Did, and Norman is one of my heroes, what he did in life with his success. And he was always encouraging to me when I started being an ocean advocate. He was always there, always encouraging.

And I did not have, obviously, the relationship you did, but I literally would, you know, just about get down to my knees when he was sitting and talked to him, whatever I could. And I know you had this, he had the same impact on you. What do you think was the first, do you remember back of first overtly? Oh, I'm going to, I'm going to take this on and do it.

I know you did a lot with education. Yeah. But was there stuff before that? Well, what I got from Norman, and he was like a second father to me. He really was. I was closer to him. The only one of my father was the only one I was closer to. But when he started People for the American Way, which was all about a separation of church and state, which was about, you know, everybody should be allowed to pray and believe how they want or not believe at all, and that it should not be brought into the public, into schools and in public places like that.

When he started people for the American way, I saw, oh, I see. You can use your platform, your show business platform and whatever fame you got. you can put it towards something you believe in and make a difference. And that was the first time I saw that that you could marry those two things. So the first thing I did was a thing on early childhood. I passed a thing here in California, Proposition 10. Yeah. And I made, I took it upon myself to make sure that I was not thought of as just an actor. And at the time, a meathead, you know, who was from all the family. I studied. and learned everything I could.

It was a natural progression from what I felt could be done to help society if you could nurture children early on in their lives, they're less likely become drug addicts or early pregnancies or, you know, go into crime in some way. And I learned everything I needed to know about it, about how the brain develops in the first three years and so on, so that when I faced reporters, I could answer second, third, fourth, fifth tier questions. I could answer everything.

And I knew they could not go, oh, he's an actor, he's a thing. And so I got this thing passed. We went up against the tobacco industry in California. Because the idea was we'll tax tobacco. We're going to tax tobacco to use money for early childhood for the first five years. And I got it passed barely because they had 40. million bucks they threw it as we had a very small budget and then governor davis at the time asked me if i wanted to chair the state commission that oversaw the implementation of the of the act which was at the time

about 750 million dollars a year it's now much less because part of it was to raise cigarette taxes and that reduced people smoking which was also a good thing so i did that for seven years i was up in sacramento all the time and i worked on this and the first time i uh you know commissioned the meeting and was chairing the meeting. I said to everybody, and it's public hearing, they're public. I said, look, I said, I'm an actor. I said, today I'm going to act like a commissioner, but I will become a commissioner. I will understand how this. So I did it for seven years, and we got a lot done, and it's still, the first five is still going on here in California. Then after that, I worked environmentally to stop Washington Mutual from building a city in the

Santa Monica Mountains, and, you know, it's still now pristine there and Amundsen Ranch. And then we, with Michelle, we filed the first lawsuit, first federal case that made it to the Supreme Court to provide marriage equality, which is, which now is the law of the country. And that one is in danger a little bit, just like everything is in danger now, just like they. gutted the Voting Rights Act, and they've gutted, you know, education department. Yes, all of that, we're going to see gay rights being attacked as well. And so we're in a very, very, very tough time right now. And, you know, 250 years it took to build this democracy in fits and starts and not always pretty. And, you know, but we've always managed to move forward. I'm hoping that this is a massive.

step back that we're taking right now in hopes of us moving forward. But it's scary because it may not be. I mean, it's much easier to break some, it takes six months. This guy's breaking of 250 years of constitutional democracy down. And I don't know if we're going to be able to build it back so quickly. It's scary. I mean, you know, I talk with, you know, my wife, her mother was in Auschwitz and she lost her entire family in Auschwitz. She was the only one that survived. And my uncle Charlie, my dad's brother, was at the D-Day, part of the D-Day invasion

and fought in 11 major battles in the Second World War and millions and millions of people died so that we could preserve democracy. And so we could say never will this form of fascism be on our shores. And here we are 80 years later, and we're in the midst of it. And make no mistake, that is what is happening right now. And to people that go, oh, that's an exaggeration, unfair comparison.

You say what? Well, it's only an unfair comparison when you think of exactly what Hitler did. I mean, Trump is not, you know, invading countries and doing all that. But what he is doing is trying to turn America. into an autocracy in the model of Vladimir, of Putin. And if you look at what Putin did, when he took over, he made the oligarchs pay. Any deal that they wanted to cut, they had, he would get a piece of. And if you've seen lately, Trump is basically trying to partner with the big corporations.

You know, the national American-based corporations and others said that the government gets a cut. and I'm sure it means he will get a cut. And what it does then is it starts to control, not just he's controlling the courts, he's controlling the universities, he's controlling law firms, he's doing everything he can to control everything. Once he has business on his side and not pushing back,

then you have the danger of becoming an autocratic state. Not in the way Hitler did. it, but in the way the modern autocrats like Putin, like Erdogan, like, you know, those there. I sit here, I mean, L.A., it's

kind of vibrant right now because of immigration and ICE and how they're going about it and not really trying to fix the problem, but just use it as a fear tactic, I feel. And I go,

okay, because I see friends, people I've known, people I admire, people who work hard, staying in their homes, you know, afraid to go out. I mean, it is about fear and it's about cruelty. This is, you know, playing to a very, very specific base. It's a white Christian nationalist base that wants to have a white Christian nation, believes that America was founded as a white Christian nation. We did a documentary called God and Country. which is about that. But, you know, if you look at his coalition, it's those people who are, you know, want to push their religion and push their ideas on it, then you have a group of very, very wealthy people who are selfish and who don't care about anything but that. And he's put this coalition together. And a lot of people who are ignorant and don't, you know, racism. The racism is at the core of a lot of this. And that's a very

dangerous cauldron of a constituency that he's put together. Right. So I question

myself. So I look at myself and go, well, wait, what are you really doing, Ted? Are you hiding

behind your, well, I will try to put light and good and caring and nurturing out into the world. And I do,

and I want to, and that is kind of who I am. Well, so what? Is that enough? I keep looking at, what, What do you do in this moment?

But you can only do what you can do. I mean, you know, we have, we're limited with our power, whatever. I always look for, you know, this is a conversation that my wife, Michelle and I have had every day since Trump was elected. What do we do? What can we do? And I keep saying, what can we do? I don't know. I initially thought, okay, if we win the midterms and not just win them, but win them by a large, you know, swamping 30.

40 seats, whatever, then it at least sends a message that says the country is not behind what you're trying to do. But now he's gerrymandering in Texas. He's gotten the Texas legislature to agree to flip five Democrat seats into becoming Republican seats. Gavin Newsom is fighting back here in California, which I admire immensely. And he's trying to fight fire with fire. But the truth of the matter is, if you look at the map and every state decides to do to go down that road, we're not going to win. We're not going to win if everybody does that. So they can gerrymanders out of, because all of our constituents are in herb, mostly, mostly not all, but many of them are in urban areas. And so it makes the carving of these borders to skew towards

the Republicans. So if we don't win in the midterms, then I don't know what you can do except to win big in 2028 and then start to turn the ship around, which is going to take years, if not decades, because he has taken such a wrecking ball to our democracy and to our Constitution and to the rule of law. He doesn't care about the rule of law. He breaks it every day. And if there's a ruling he doesn't like, he doesn't pay attention to it. He won't live up to it. And, you know, it was said when they were finished the constitutional convention, when people came out, they said, what do we have? What have you guys given us? And they said, you know, a republic, if you can keep it. Because it's fragile. Democracy is fragile. It's all based on whether or not we

all share a set of values and that we all honor the rule of law and that we all honor the Constitution. But if you don't care about the Constitution, if you don't care about the rule of law, then what avenue do you have? If you don't have a legal recourse because you have somebody who says, screw the law, then where do you go? It has to be some kind of political movement, and the political movement has to happen hopefully in the midterms, but I don't have a lot of faith right now. But if not, then in the next presidential election and who's going to emerge? Right now, Gavin Newsom is the, you know, and J.B. Pritzker are the only two that I see on the, on the horizon. Gavin is fighting like a dog. I mean, he's out there calling every lie out and hitting very hard.

So, you know, we've got to get behind somebody who's willing to fight to, you know, to keep this democracy. I mean, we want it to survive. We want it to be the beacon to the world. We want it to be the shining city on a hill. because if it succeeds, what it means is that a diverse group of people, religions, gender, nationality, sexuality, all can live in one place. And if we can show that, that means that bodes well for the whole world. It says, yes, you can put all these people in one place and we can live together. Right now, Trump is making it so we can't live together.

He doesn't want it. He's trying to divide it, and he's doing a pretty good job of it. Okay. All right. All right. Get me off my soapbox. No, no, no, no. I ask you.

The end continues. September 12th. Get back to that. No, it's good. It's good to talk to the... Yeah. So I feel like I should be talking to people on both sides of the fence to try to literally understand because I don't.

And I do know that I can be a condescending... judgmental dick sometimes when I look at people I go wait why are you doing this you're hurting yourself you're hurting your farms

you're hurting your well you know if you look at the but I do but I am a I do know that if I were on the other side of my condensate

condensation yeah that I would be pissed to I'd want to flip me the bird and I know there's a lot of that yeah

well you know you know the elected officials the Republican elected officials many, many of them know what's going on. They know better, but they're also worried about their power base and they're worried of not getting elected and all that stuff. It's a show of real weakness. There's no profiles in courage coming out of the Republican Party right now.

Some of them are true believers. Don't get me wrong. Some of them are true believers and believe exactly what Trump is putting forward. But a big chunk of them are saying, no, no, this is ridiculous. You listen to what J.D. Vance said. about Donald Trump or what Marco Rubio said about Donald Trump or what Lindsey Graham said about Donald Trump before

he was elected. You just play that they've done one 80s. Every one of them has done 180s because they're frightened. They're frightened of losing their power base. Ha-ha. You know, it's okay. Here's something I got, I mean in my desire to have everyone like me. Yeah. Well, I like you.

Thank you. So one down. It's good to remind myself. Yes. Yes, it's good to be nurturing and caring and loving and try to provide hope. That is who I am. Yeah. But there's a big, big real world out there. So don't be naive, Ted. And this is a little bit of the real world. Yeah. Yeah. So I appreciate. Thank you for talking about it. Yeah. No, I'm happy to do this. I'm happy to do it. I mean, I've been speaking out for a long time. And, you know, I was on Twitter, I've been not on Twitter anymore, but I used to be on Twitter, and I built up a pretty good following. I had like 2.5 million people. And all I did was talk about politics. That's all I ever

did on that thing. And the reactions I got, it was just astounding. My kids would breed it and they go, Dad, what are they saying about you? You know, it started out Lib Tard, Libtar, that's okay. I don't care about that. But then they started saying pedophile and you're on Epstein's Island and all this stuff. And it's just, you know, the power of social media and disinformation is, and AI is frightening, frightening. Because that's the, that's the basis for an autocrat to be able to take over is you control the media in such a way that you confuse people and they don't know what's true and what's not true, what's real, what's not real. And you can't believe your eyes. Yeah.

And so you say, he comes along and say, I'm the only one who can. who can point you in the right direction. Sorry, forgive me. Do you have grandchildren? No, not yet, not yet. But you have children. I do. And, okay, I think, you know, well, I can't turn to my grandchildren and say it's kind of hopeless.

You have to turn to your grandchildren and go, here's the hope, here's hope, here's love and hope. Well, there is hope. And here's where I think there is hope. In every single one of us, there's good and evil. I mean, the greatest story, Star Wars, it's good versus evil. And there's that battle. It goes on in the world. It goes on within each of us, where we have evil impulses and we have good impulses.

And the hope is that good impulses, the better angels, as they say, win out. And I believe they can. You know, history will show that there's always been wars and so on. But, you know, in fits and starts, America has become better. and better over the years. So like I say, this may be a huge step back that we're taking, but ultimately, I think, I know that the positive part of me thinks we can go forward, and we have to preserve this. We have to have an example that we can show the rest of the world to say, this is the way we should all live together as one. People, I was just in the UK,

and people are looking at like, what's going on in America? Yeah. What is happening there? You know, We used to look to America as the place of the beacon of hope. Now it's like you've gone to the dark side, you know, and you can't argue it. They're right. But the light side, the force and the evil and the dark fader, we can win. We can win, but we have to stay. You have to jump in. We have to jump in and stay vigilant.

And you tell your grandkids that, you know, you and I may not leave this world seeing it where we want it to be. but ultimately it can be there. Yeah. Thanks. Really fun talking to you. It was great, smart, smart, smart man. Oh, thanks. Thanks.

It was great to talk to you. Well, I love talking to Rob Reiner. I love the community that I am privileged to be part of, those people who try to make the world giggle. It was really fun to talk to them. Thank you. Be sure and catch Spinal Tap 2. The End continues in theaters this weekend.

And while you're at it, pick up the book. It's called A Fine Line Between Stupid and Clever. That's all for our show this week. Special thanks to our friends at Team Coco. If you enjoy this episode, send it to someone you love. Subscribe on your favorite podcast app and maybe give us a great rating and review on Apple Podcasts if you're so moved.

If you like watching your podcasts, All our full-length episodes are on YouTube. Visit YouTube.com slash Team Coco. See you next time, where everybody knows your name. You've been listening to Where Everybody Knows Your Name. With Ted Danson and Woody Harrelson sometimes. The show is produced by me, Nick Leow, our executive producers are Adam Sacks, Jeff Ross, and myself.

Sarah Federovich is our supervising producer, engineering and mixing by Joanna Samuel with support from Eduardo Perez. Research by Alyssa Grawl. Talent booking by Paula Davis and Gina Battista. Our theme music is by Woody Harrelson, Anthony Gen, Mary Steenbergen, and John Osborne.