WTF with Marc Maron Podcast - Episode 1080 - Jay Roach

Episode Date: December 16, 2019

Jay Roach went from directing major comedies like the Austin Powers series and Meet the Parents to making timely political films like Recount, Game Change and his new movie Bombshell. The transition makes more sense when you hear Jay tell Marc how he’s gone from one thing to another in life - teaching in college, making documentaries, meeting his wife, meeting Mike Myers, directing his first feature film with no track record - often without warning or any plan at all. Jay and Marc also talk about their shared upbringing in New Mexico and Jay’s next project about Kent State. This episode is sponsored by Depeche Mode: Spirits in the Forest, the Watchmen Podcast, Pepsi, and Stamps.com. Sign up here for WTF+ to get the full show archives and weekly bonus material! https://plus.acast.com/s/wtf-with-marc-maron-podcast. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

It's winter, and you can get anything you need delivered with Uber Eats. Well, almost almost anything. So no, you can't get snowballs on Uber Eats. But meatballs, mozzarella balls, and arancini balls? Yes, we deliver those. Moose? No. But moose head? Yes. Because that's alcohol, and we deliver that too.

Along with your favorite restaurant food, groceries, and other everyday essentials. Order Uber Eats now. For alcohol, you must be legal drinking age. Please enjoy responsibly. Product availability varies by region. See app for details. Hi, it's Terry O'Reilly, host of Under the Influence. Recently, we created an episode on cannabis marketing.

With cannabis legalization, it's a brand new challenging marketing category. And I want to let you know we've produced a special bonus podcast episode where I talk to an actual cannabis producer. I wanted to know how a producer becomes licensed, how a cannabis company competes with big corporations, how a cannabis company markets its products in such a highly regulated category, and what the term dignified consumption actually means. I think you'll find the answers interesting and surprising. Hear it now on Under the Influence with Terry O'Reilly. This bonus episode is brought to you by the Ontario Cannabis Store and ACAS Creative.

Lock the gates! Alright, let's do this. How are you what the fuckers? What the fuck buddies? What the fuck sticks? What's happening? I'm Mark Maron. This is my podcast, WTF. Welcome to it. I'm broadcasting from a hotel in Atlanta, Georgia. I came down here Friday. It's been a harrowing few days. And I will tell you what's going on because you're all part of it. You're part of the story. You're part of my life. But before I kind of get into the thick of it, I'd like to promote my tour.

Is that okay? The 2020 tour dates that are now on sale are these. Thursday, January 30th in Cleveland, Ohio at the Agora Theater. Friday, January 31st, Grand Rapids, Michigan at the Fountain Street Church. Saturday, February 1st, Milwaukee, Wisconsin at the Turner Hall Ballroom. Friday, February 14th, Orlando, Florida at Hard Rock Live. Saturday, February 15th, Tampa, Florida at the Straz Center. Thursday, February 20th, Portland, Maine State Theater. Thursday, February 21st providence rhode island columbus theater friday february 22nd new haven connecticut at college street music hall and sunday february 23rd

huntington new york at the paramount you can go to wtfpod.com slash tour for links to all the venues that's going to be a freezing tour that's going to be exciting for me because I have a lot of winter clothes that I'm never able to wear because I don't ski really anymore and I don't live in a cold place. It's a stretch to have to wear a fucking sweater in Los Angeles. So now I'm going to have to pack big

and get out the gear, get out the boots, the warm jacket, layer up. I'm going to layer up. That's what I'm going to do. It'll be fun, except for Tampa and Orlando. I'm assuming they're not going to be freezing.

Oddly a bit chilly down here in Atlanta, but I don't know the weather generally. As I said, I've been here since Friday. Today on the show, I talked to Jay Roach, whose new movie, Bombshell, is playing in a limited release. It opens this Friday, December 20th. It's about Fox News. It's about Roger Ailes. I remember talking to John Lithgow when he was working on it, and we had kind of a funny exchange about that,

about the depth of the monstrosity. He did a great job with it, but there's no question, and we can make no exceptions, Roger Ailes was a fucking demonic fuck who ruined the world. Did not bring good things. Did not bring good things, and he's the reason why we have a fairly well-oiled

and functioning authoritarian state that is uh really taken over half the country and it's uh and they're excited about it they're happy about their dictator uh their tribalism is is is furious and they would like i would i'd really think they'd like democrats dead or non-existent not to mention other types of people but uh so yeah yeah right now there's about a 47 percent of the country is living in a functioning authoritarian state with much thanks to roger ailes now we'll see if it it spreads we don't know yet and we don't know what that spreading will look like it's not just going to be a people going like i guess it's okay that'll be part of it but i assume like any other authoritarian

virus the other part will be bloody we'll see right don't want to freak anybody out sorry maybe i'm not in the right headspace so i'll talk to jay about that about his his life and his other movies you know he has been sort of doing more politically bent movies but he also did uh the meet the parents movies and you know but we'll talk about life man that's that's what i do here so i imagine some of you know because um i kind of put it out there on social media a bit that uh i i um that lafonda my cat who I've been talking about for the last week or two, is no longer with us. I put my cat down. I put my buddy down.

I had to let go of my friend of 15 plus years. I believe she was, my estimate, around 15 and a half years old. I picked her up out of the garbage in Astoria. I wouldn't say I picked her up, but I found her and her siblings eating out of the garbage bins in Astoria Queens in, I believe, I think it was probably around August of 2004. I was working at Air America. I remember it was the eve of or shortly before the Republican National Convention that we had a cover. And I know many of you know this story, but I think it's important on some level in talking about these particular cats in my life. They've obviously played a big part of my life. But I don't know that some of you know the full depth of that

in that the cats that I rescued from the alley behind my apartment in Astoria, Queens, really, I believe, helped define my radio personality and my style of radio and provided me with an outlet or with a focus that really changed the nature of my voice on this type of mic and got me going. It was really two specific events that shifted how I approached the radio mic and what I offered of myself on that mic, which was the beginning of learning how to do it. Those two events were the trapping of four kittens behind my apartment building in Astoria. And it's so funny. I've heard from so many people from my past and people who

know me around LaFond's death. And one of them was Jody Lennon, who lived in the building, and I believe still lives in the building with me. And she was there the night that I decided to trap these cats. And as some of you know, I just really wanted to help them out. I wanted some friends. I thought kittens would be fun. I had no idea that once they're eating on their own and they're sort of doing that thing, you know, solo acts, they were all together and around, but they were out there in the wild eating on their own, which means they were feral. They were actively and essentially wild animals. And La Fonda, who was the runt of that litter and a very small kind of beautiful Russian grayish tuxedo cat,

somehow in her scramble wound up stuck to a glue trap and was flopping around, a wild fucking animal flopping around on my kitchen floor in a frenzy stuck to a fucking glue trap that I had to remove from her. And she was always always to this day or to the day before I I put her down well actually it kind of had gone away but she was a very reactive defensive you know quick to pop you kind of tough cat a little fist of feline fury was that LaFonda and and I and she was tweaked mentally They were all a little tweaked because they were feral, but I believe that Fonda was a little extra tweaked because that was her Vietnam, folks.

That was her point of trauma. That was when it went down. That was what reconfigured her brain chemistry was getting stuck on that glue trap and reluctantly fighting every bit of the way, me having to take her off that and bloodying myself. I can't tell you the number of times that that cat bloodied the fuck out of me either trying to put her into a cage or trying to help her out biting scratching I wore leather gloves at the beginning but it was during that period where I had those four cats in my house I named them one was hissy one was

meanie one was monkey and LaFonda's name I think came later. But they were just wild animals. I would go to sleep and I would hear them out there and I didn't know what they were doing and I'd wake up and my entire apartment was destroyed. And I didn't know what to do. So I started talking about them on the radio. You know, I want to talk about the issues. I want to talk about being here. but I think it's important to let my listeners know that because of your coercion and your bullying tactics, I have taken four feral kittens into my apartment in Queens. Do you understand?

I know this may not seem important. It may not seem the issues, but this is the world I'm living in. I was living in a world of order and in a world of discipline where I would go to sleep and wake up and come to work. No more. Four feral kittens.

I don't even know what to do with Riley. I think that you should hold on to them. I think you should feed them solid white tuna. And that they'll like me? And they'll like you. They will love you. Remember now, they're feral. They have seen nothing but abuse since the day they opened their eyes.

Yeah. So now, you've taken them in. They're going to be a little skittish at first. I don't think they were abused. They were living out there in the wilderness behind my apartment with their mother. And I swear to God, this one orange cat, literally, I let it out of the box.

I trapped them. I made a box. I cut a hole in it out of food, and I trapped four of them. There's apparently one more kitten out there. I've got to get the mother into a cage and get her neutered. That's the ultimate project.

But here, so I let this orange one out. Literally literally climbs up, I had a window open about five inches, climbs up into the screen, it's locked itself in between the screen and the window with its claws in the screen wedged in there. And I realized something about me, Mark Riley, I wanted to help the cats but after three days I'm realizing this was all about me being loved because none of them, they're behind the oven, they're behind the oven. They're under the couch. They will not love me.

There is no kiddie celebration of love going on. So what does that mean? You're going to put them back out in the street? I can't do that. I've now started making phone calls to figure out what to do with them. And did you know there's a whole underground network of 50-year-old women with money who do nothing but rescue cats? Really? And three of them are calling me.

You know that's rude are they proposing marriage they're doing the right thing how do you know they're over 50 i i'm again making an assumption okay but i i appreciate their help and i don't know what i'm going to do with the cat so let's move on to bigger things it is amazing that brendan mcdonald found that clip and buried somewhere in his computer or files or a hard drive but that what you just heard that was me and my co-host mark riley from the show morning sedition on air america we were at madison square garden for day one of the republican national convention which we were covering and i it's you know it's really something i think I had trapped the cats of maybe a few days before

because that was um I think August 30th uh 2004 and I think I trapped them on the 27th because Brendan remembers me calling him because he was out with friends and telling him that I did this and I and from that day on you on, I continued to give updates on the cats like every day. And it was me sharing that narrative about those cats that really started to engage me in the medium of radio. It was that and actually burning a pot of lentils that I described with a certain weird passion that really started me off in knowing that I was doing the right thing by being on this type of platform,

on this type of microphone, in this type of medium. It was thanks to those cats, for sure. For sure. No doubt. So eventually I tried to take Meany across the street to the bodega but I think he just re-entered the ecosystem he was a very mean and crazy cat very wild uh Hissy was a black

tuxedo long hair that actually I found a home for I don't know if that cat is still alive and I took Monkey and LaFonda back to LA with me and Monkey even made a trip back to New York with me once when I was back there again for work for a long period of time. But La Fonda, the one trip to LA was enough. And I write a big piece about that in Attempting Normal. I've had a lot of memories with this cat. These cats at my old house were once indoor outdoor cats. Fonda did a lot of traveling, used to hang out a few doors down dodged coyotes somehow uh always came when i called them there was just a lot of a lot of people i've come in and out of my life a lot of women i've been with in the in the past the relationships i've had

have known this cat have had relationships with this cat uh when i told jody when jody heard um uh that i that i had to put her down down she said so sorry to hear about LaFonda what a life you gave that kitty and I said thanks Jody you were there when I trapped her with the shoe boxes and she said totally you you extended her life by at least 14.5 years and she said extra hugs for monkey and me but everybody you know I You know, I had a roommate at the house that was very close to La Fonda. My friend Stosh, who some of you might remember from the beginning of the podcast,

who used to live at the house with me and help me out during the early years. She was very close to La Fonda, and I told her, and I hadn't talked to her in years, and we sort of reconnected, and we're going to have coffee, but it was very difficult. I'd never done it before, and I was really dead set on not missing it in a weird way.

I remember I had a cat named Butch that was a gift to me by my second wife, Mishna, who had a heart problem, a congenital heart problem, and she died when I was in New York, and I miss that. I miss burying her. Mishna buried her with Ernie, the handyman out in back of the old house. As some of you know, Boomer disappeared many years ago.

What a great cat Boomer was. Deaf black cat got eaten by the coyotes and scaredy cat. You know, the other stray was hit by a car out in front of my house. But I just didn't, I was uh you know the other stray was hit by a car out in front of my house but uh i just didn't i was you know monkey and lafonda are my my old friends you know it's been over 15 years and as you know you know fonda was um got sick you know about a month or so ago she just her health took a sharp turn she lost a lot lot of weight, and I took her to the vet,

and the vet told me that she had a bladder infection, but her kidney numbers were horrible. They were all in the red, and she was sort of on her way. And I said, well, what do we do? He said, well, she's not, I don't think it's time, but this is not good. And you can give her subcutaneous fluids and, you know, do what you can to make her comfortable, but it's not good. And, but, you know, when you hear that as, as an owner of a cat, you're like, well, maybe she could just level off.

I mean, I always knew she probably had bad kidneys. She drank an awful lot of water and, you know, that had been going on for a while. I noticed that she had been losing a little weight, but, but he, he was like, just, you know, that had been going on for a while. I noticed that she had been losing a little weight, but he was like, just, you know, do what you can. You know, sometimes you can get another year out of them. You don't know. But the doc said, you know, look, if she starts throwing up or she starts getting diarrhea, then that's the time, you know. And then I was like, I still wasn't clear, you know,

because, you know, some people say, well, as long as she can, you know, accept love or give love or, you know, if she's conscious, you know, because I, you know, some people say, well, as long as she can, you know, accept love or give love or, you know, if she's conscious, you know, she doesn't seem to be in pain, you know, why not keep her around? I thought, well, okay, she's getting a little loopy. She's old and got this kidney sickness, but maybe this is just who she is now. She lost most of her strength, most of her will, you know, but you hold on, you know, because she was still sleeping with me and, you know, we could touch her still. And, uh, and she still seemed to like it, but she was very weak and losing energy. And, and then like people, a couple of people said, you'll know, you'll know when it's time because she'll tell you. And I didn't really know what that meant.

And, and sure enough, like thursday you know she just um she just didn't stop really stopped eating you know and uh and threw up a little bit and but she was acting bizarre you know she was drinking an awful lot of water like she couldn't get enough water and then she tried to you know she started to try to get in the toilet and she was acting weird and she tried to get in the bathtub and she shit in the shower and and she was just crying and howling all the time and and she was doing weird shit like trying it was almost like you know when you're sick and you're just trying to make yourself feel better you're looking for something that'll make you feel better it felt like that just howling all the time and she wouldn't eat and she wouldn't drink and it was

you know and and and i guess that's that what i what i thought she was telling me i thought she was telling me you know i was gonna have the euthanasia at home stuff and but i'm like fuck it i'm just i'm taking her to the vet because i want to know what's up you know she's howling all the time she's in pain she's not eating she's not drinking she threw up and you know but i knew what was going on her kidneys were gone you know and but i didn't want to accept it and i kind of knew when i took her to the vet that i was. Her kidneys were gone, you know, but I didn't want to accept it. And I kind of knew when I took her to the vet that I was not going to leave with her, you know. But I wanted him to see her.

I got a good vet over there at Gateway, this new guy over there, Dr. Modesto and Dr. Ram too. But Modesto, he was the one that diagnosed her and I was glad he was there. And I put her in the cage. She didn't fight at all. She was just limp you know and so fragile and so light there was nothing to her you know and i and i was sort of like i was just waking out of this haze of trying to save her and really knowing in my heart that there was no saving her you know so i brought her in and he weighed her and she lost weight she was like five pounds and um and i said should we

do a kidney test maybe she's got the uti again or the bladder infection he's like i don't know and he looked in her eyes and they were sunken he said she had anemia her gums were white and i told him what was going on and i said i was doing the the uh the subcutaneous three days a week and he's like how can she be this dehydrated if you're giving her that much and he conferred with the other doctors and he just said i think it's time and i'm like seriously really but i kind of knew you know i knew i knew that it was and i said okay okay and he goes well you know do you need a few minutes i'm like okay you know and lynn came and we were there and like you know i took some time i talked to the cat i apologized to the cat and uh you know i said

you know this is the right thing you know i know you know some of you are like it's a fucking cat it's a fucking cat but this cat and i you know it's whatever man it's just it was you know had a lot of things with it a lot of memories with this cat was you know and's just, it was, you know, had a lot of things with it. A lot of memories with this cat. It was, you know, and I knew it was the right thing to do. And he came back in. I said, he said, you don't have to, you want us to, you want to be here?

Do you want, I'm like, yes, yes. This is what I'm doing. You know, I want to be here. I want to, like, I don't want her to feel abandoned or more freaked out than she already is. And he said, okay, we'll put a catheter

on her and we'll come back in so they did that and they came back in and i was holding her you know like she was laying on the table and they had the catheter and then the doc it took him a long time to get the medicine because they have one guy in the back handing out medicine i guess and he's got these two syringes and I was just holding my cat, you know, and when it was kind of holding me, but I, I was holding the cat and, um, you know, and I was just saying, it's, it's okay. It's okay. I'm sorry. I love you. You know, and, and I was concerned that, you know, the, the tears wouldn't come, you know, and they definitely did, and he put the, the first one is a tranquilizer, and it just shut her down, you know, just right,

really very quickly, and I go, she's out, why are her eyes open, is she, she's just sleeping, what's happening, you know, and I was kind of panicking, and crying, and telling the cat it's okay, and then I, and I go, we'll do the other one, let's just do it, you know and I was kind of panicking and crying and telling the cat it's okay and then I and I go we'll do the other one let's just do it you know let's just do it and he did it and it was very quick and very painless and he just you know put this stethoscope stethoscope on her and said she's gone and I just was kind of crying and you know petting the cat and she was gone she was gone and uh you know that was that so we hung out with her for a few minutes and i you know i told them i wanted the ashes and you know and they took her away and that was that you know and uh and i was you know i was the guy you know i was the crying man

leaving the the vet's office you know with an empty carrier. That was me. And I tell you, some people feel guilty or that they waited too long. I just feel like it was the right thing to do at the right time, at the right moment. I was glad I could do it for her and I was glad to be there for her. It was

terrible and beautiful. It fucked me up, but she was at peace. I was at peace. Because at some point, both of your quality of life, the cats and yours are deteriorating when you're desperately trying to keep them alive and she didn't suffer too much whatever the discomfort was it was the beginning of it and the doc thinks that her kidneys just went and that was the end of it so you know r.i.p lafonda and i was happy to be there and and uh you know and she had a good life so that's that and I thank all you for being supportive and for all the outreach and for the

recommendations of how to handle this and you know how to do a home uh euthanasia and what to do and different approaches to the kidney. Thanks for all of your input. So Jay Roach, good guy. He's made some funny movies. But this bombshell movie is something. It really is. And some amazing acting and it's an amazing story. And there's a scene in there where I think

with Margot Robbie and John Lithgow, if you really wonder how abusive power affects somebody, affects a woman in a situation where there's not even sexual contact, there's a scene in this movie that will hammer that point into you, and it's really something else. And the movie's good. And this is me talking to Jay Roach back in the house. Be honest. When was the last time you thought about your current business insurance policy? If your existing business insurance policy is renewing on autopilot each

year without checking out Zensurance, you're probably spending more than you need. That's why you need to switch to low-cost coverage from Zensurance before your policy renews this year. Zensurance does all the heavy lifting to find a policy, covering only what you need. And policies start at only $19 per month. So if your policy is renewing soon, go to Zensurance and fill out a quote. Zensurance. Mind your business. Death is in our air. This year's most anticipated series, FX's Shogun, only on Disney+.

We live and we die. We control nothing beyond that. An epic saga based on the global best-selling novel by James Clavel. To show your true heart is to risk your life. When I die here, you'll never leave Japan alive. FX's Shogun, a new original series streaming February 27th exclusively on Disney+. 18 plus subscription required. T's and C's apply. So Jay, you rode a bike over here.

How long have you ridden a bike? I've been riding motorcycles since I was a kid. Really? I don't know if you... Your dad wet you? He did, but only on the dirt. I grew up in Albuquerque. Did I run into you and you tell me that?

Yeah. And I remember I was listening to you and Mike Judge talk about your youth, and I was like, wait a second. That's my youth. I was amazed how many similarities just the how much are you older than me how old are you I'm 62 so I'm 56 yeah you were there you were went to Highland right I went to Highland graduated in 81 yeah I graduated in 75

from El Dorado yeah so you remember man oh the whole thing. Just the cruising around, nowhere to go. McDonald's. Doing donuts out in the dirt. And my thing was the motorcycle. I just had a dirt bike, and it was in my garage being taken apart more than it was being ridden. Oh, yeah. But I would get out on that bike, and my dad wouldn't let me run in the street. So I got a street bike finally when I went away to college, and I haven't stopped. I did stop when I had kids, and and I haven't stopped. I did stop when I had kids and I kind of parked it for quite a while. Out of fear or what? Out of my wife's,

the look on my wife's face every time I would come back. She's like, she wanted you. You know, like, what are you doing? You're way too old and you're, you know, you should be responsible. You have a family now. And that's coming from an old rocker. Yeah, exactly. What's your wife's name again? Susanna Hoffs from the Bangles. The Bangles. They didn't get as fucked up as the Go-Go's though, did they? I don't think so.

She's pretty, she's got some stories. She's got some good stories. But I don't know. Did she write Walk Like an Egyptian? She did not. She wrote Eternal Flame. Oh, yeah. And Prince wrote Manic Monday,

and those are sort of their big hits. I like the song on the first album, Live. Yeah, yeah. I love that song. With the Pearsons mostly doing the singing. Yeah. Yeah, Vicky and Debbie. I like the lick. Yeah, yeah.

It's a good lick in there, right? Yeah. Am I remembering correctly? You would catch that. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Vicky's a good guitar player. All right, so Albuquerque, though, in the 70s,

the General Store. Did you go to the General Store over by the university? Yeah, down by the campus. Yeah, the posters and everything. The Frontier, man. I used to hang out there all the time. My friend was later, while he was in college, would perform at Civic Light Opera all the time,

Pope Joy Hall. Yeah, you know? Yeah, doing what? So we would go, he was a song and dance man. Oh, really? Now he's a lawyer there. Do musicals and stuff? Who was your friend? He's a lawyer in Albuquerque?

Yeah, Chris Pierce, yeah. Oh, yeah? I might have, you know, been gone by the time some of the stuff you guys went through, but I just sounded like it hadn't changed that much by the time you were- When did you get out of there? 75.

You were out by 75? Yeah, yeah. Where'd you go? I went to Stanford. I had lived, I was born and raised in Albuquerque, lived there my whole life. Never left, you know, until I got on a train and went to Stanford. What part of town did you grow up in Albuquerque? I grew up up by Lomas and Candelaria.

What'd your dad do? What were you doing? My dad worked for the Defense Department. He worked at Sandia. Sandia Labs. A lot of people do. Sandia Labs, which is affiliated with Los Alamos and Lawrence Livermore. And he was a bomb builder. No shit.

Yeah. Like an engineer? Mechanical engineer. He was involved and he would go underground in Vegas in the Nevada test site, install a device that would read the force of the blasts and then go back in after the blast and then come back to it. So was he up in Los Alamos a lot? No, it was mostly just Sandia and the Nevada test site.

But he was radiated a bunch of times. He had a whole, there's a whole story about what my dad went through to build hydrogen bombs. Wait, like the original ones? No, like in late 50s through the 60s and all. I think, I don't remember, he sort of retired. Wasn't it like, did he go into the mountain?

Wasn't there a hollowed out mountain? That hollowed out mountain is on the property of Sandia. It's on the Federal Reserve there. It's in Albuquerque, right? It's a big bunker full of nuclear stuff. You know, you fly over it. It's real. It's real.

And there's like three fences that, you know, my friends used to hunt around that mountain. And once when I was a kid, we were sitting at one of those diners down along the freeway and looked up and a plane crashed into that mountain. And everyone was afraid for a little while like the whole place was just going to turn into a nuclear mushroom oh yeah yeah and some a

fair number of soldiers died i think it was like a scene 130 or something that crashed and we saw the plane hit it was always a it was that mountain was such a mysterious weird uh kind of monument to nuclear activity but like this was all sort of like mythic. Yeah. But your old man told you about it eventually? Well, he could talk a lot about some of it once it was declassified, once the Cold War was over,

which he takes credit for ending. Oh, does he? With Ronald Reagan. And, you know, Ian Reagan pretty much, what does he say? We brought down the Russian bear or something. Were they buddies? Yeah, not really.

My dad worked his way up really from nothing. He didn't go to college, and he just drew, and they hired him as a draftsman, and he taught himself to draw mechanical drawings, and then he actually turned himself into a full-fledged mechanical engineer without a college degree, which is pretty impressive. That's crazy. What did your mom do?

She was a housewife. She had four little kids by the time she was very, like, 24 or 25. She was a handful. And then after I left, she became the administrative assistant at the high school where I went, El Dorado High School. El Dorado High. Yeah. Yeah, I don't know anything about El Dorado.

It was a brand-new school when I went there. I kind of remember where it is. El Dorado High School. El Dorado High. Yeah. Yeah, I don't know anything about El Dorado. It was a brand new school when I went there. I kind of remember where it is. It was brand new. You know, Highland had been around forever, and Highland was always our big rival. The Hornets. Yeah, because El Dorado always had a good football team. We had terrible basketball teams,

but really good football teams, and Highland was always there. Yeah. When we, after a basketball game with Highland one time, my best friend Chris and I actually were standing around outside, and it used to be so many fights after games. That's all. People knew what to do,

and we got literally just knocked over and kicked for a while. We weren't injured, but I was looking back like, there's a lot of stuff that went on that was vaguely traumatic, which we probably didn probably even recognize. I didn't get involved with sports much, but driving around. I mean, you got your driver's license when you were 15. 14, eight months. 14, eight months for the learner's permit.

That's when I got mine. Yeah, and I mean, it's like, what are you going to do? And then most of the people have guns out there, and they're just riding around, dicking off, drinking, getting people to buy you booze outside of a fucking liquor store. You got the same fake ID we got. That thing where you blow up a big picture and stand behind it and somebody takes a picture. And cuts it out. Literally, I was listening to you guys talk about your experiences.

I was like, is that just like, it's just been going on there for decades and decades? Well, I guess it's like they didn't make the, they didn't secure the, how do you like that coffee? It's just been going on there for decades and decades. Well, I guess it's like they didn't secure the, how do you like that coffee? It's all right? It's excellent. Thank you. They didn't secure the identification. They added all kinds of different things on it with the light. But back in the old days, it was pretty easy to fake them.

Was your school good? I was thinking about this the other day. My public school was like a good testament to the quality of public school the teachers were good and i i you know i i feel like i lucked out for because i talked to a lot of people in some of the other schools there in fact one of my friends is a principal at element as an elementary school there now and uh people don't see it as such a great school system in new mexico but i felt lucky i must have gotten i think if think if you're lucky, if you lock in with teachers, I don't know. There was a couple of teachers that were pretty horrible. I had a couple of drunks. My electronics teacher,

he was kind of a drunky guy. And my English teacher was kind of a little off. But then there was another English teacher that I really connected with and the history teacher I connected with. And then when I didn't, it's really a crapshoot. But they built this amazing state-of-the-art art department over at Highland in my last year. And they had this full high-tech darkroom. And it was like – I just was – it was crazy. So I was really kind of in the darkroom the last year or so. That's what happened to me at college. It's funny you say that too.

I was pre-law studying economics and I found out there was a dark room in the basement of my dorm senior year. And that was it. That was the end of pre-law. I just like started shooting pictures, decided I was going to be a camera person. And then-

Well, that's interesting. So, okay. So are you the youngest of your siblings? I'm the oldest. Oh, you are? Yeah. Where's everybody else? Anyone still in Albuquerque?

My dad's still there. Are you still around? And siblings? I'm the oldest. Oh, you are? Yeah. Where's everybody else? Anyone still in Albuquerque? My dad's still there. He's still around? And my mom's around too, but they're both in assisted living, but different parts of my mom's in Southern Colorado. So they weren't married? They were married. They've stayed married all this time. And it just, the health reasons and the doctors and stuff ended up, they just were in separate

places and they are now. And my brother is difficult are they both cognizant yeah yeah and they're they're actually supportive of each other from afar they kind of have a funny long distance you know correspondence really i know it is it's it's interesting um my mom has uh sort of she sort of has a kind of specific type of immune system thing and she just gets better care up there and your dad didn't want to leave albuquerque you want to leave he has this great house uh looking up at the sandias you know uh up off of tramway and he just did they facetime they facetime a lot they facetime they facetime accidentally a lot i'll get buzzed you know they that facetime is

is a really uh great thing for grandparents and your siblings, none of them's in Albuquerque? None of them. The other one is, my next brother down is a pack train guide in Wyoming, has always been like a wrangler of some sort up there. He's a cowboy. My other brother's a truck driver. Really? Yeah, we grew up in a kind of texas rancher uh household my dad was in the

suburbs but had grown up in out in the very rural texas you know and still thought of himself as a cowboy um and so all my at least my two brothers became very very outdoorsy your dad your brother rides rides horses yeah and yeah and outside of tours? Outside of Yellowstone, he leads, you know. Now he's leading National Geographic scientists into study wolves or something. He's got a really cool life, you know. Like he's a tracker or something? He's like, he tracks them and he knows, you know,

I once went mount biking with him back in there. He does that too, tours. And he like has to carry a 44 Magnum air spray. Where's that documentary, Jay? Yeah, that's what I should be working on. Where's the doc about your brother? Yeah, he's great. He's amazing, actually.

And then the other one's a truck driver? Truck driver. And then there's another one? My sister is, you know, she just moved to Southern Colorado to be closer to my mom, but she's been a paralegal and real estate lady. She's done a bunch of different things.

It's crazy, and you're a film director. Yeah, I was always the weird kid because my family were just, you know, It's crazy, and you're a film director. Yeah, I was always the weird kid because everyone, my family were just, you know, just working people. And as I said, my dad, we were sort of raised in a lower middle class environment. And I just had a, I don't know, I was sort of driven. I was a little type A, you know. Running around your motorcycle.

Oh, my motorcycle to get away from it all. But I was also a very focused student, a lot of student government stuff. Oh, really? Oh, yeah, yeah. In high school? In high school, yeah. And sport. I was trying to do everything.

I mean, it's been kind of a bit of a problem. It's just been so scattered and interested and curious about everything. So it's actually been- But you must have done well in school to get into Stanford. I did okay. But when I got to Stanford, I realized, I think they just let me in

because no one else applied from New Mexico because they really actually have a, they like a map that seems, yeah, it seems like they represent all 50 states. So I think it was a regional affirmative action. Really? Because I didn't have great, I had really good grades

and good sort of student resume or whatever, but my SAT scores were not strong. And I got there and everybody was like perfect 800s and whatever. And I was like, oh man, I'm out of my league here. And I had to hustle. That's a good school, man. I mean, it's like it seemed,

and so it's the mid-70s, so things are pretty groovy still. Very groovy, you know, post-sexual liberation, pre-AIDS. So it was that, there was a crazy. That was the pocket. That was the pocket. Post-sexual revolutions, pre-AIDS pocket. Good times. There was a lot of exploring going on.

For me, from coming from albuquerque just into a big you know a sort of sophisticated coastal place like that uh was i was very out of my element for a long time there and i was always sort of trying to just catch up drug guy uh i didn't i smoked a fair amount of marijuana yeah yeah but uh i didn But I wasn't so much into much else. I would drink beer with my friends there. But I was never... I didn't join a frat or anything like that. That's good.

I didn't get caught up in that stuff. That doesn't end well for anybody. It seems like most of the people you talk to that were in frats, almost always, 99% of the time you go like, no, I can see that. But I was tempted just because I love to play basketball and the sports part of it. But what stopped you, Jay?

I had a living with dudes. Yeah. I lived in a co-ed dorm. They didn't let you think about it in freshman year. And so living in with just cool women, it was also an interesting time for the women's liberation movement. And I had a lot of very strong, cool women

who were asking a lot of questions and pushing things. And growing up the way I grew up in a pretty male you know be be a strong man and all that stuff you know from the texas ranter mentality which is you know there's a certain nobility in it but i i know i you know i started kind of drifting politically away from some of my dad's ideas and uh i'm actually working now on a kent state uh thing to try to do um a limited series about that week you know uh really yeah um with tina fey's company actually because her husband jeff richmond uh lived at kent at the time but i remember that 1970 13 years old the protest yeah but was he at the time of the shootings in 1970. But his family lived there? He was a kid, yeah.

He goes to school later there too, I think, if I'm not mistaken. But he definitely was there when he was 10 years old. I talked to Mark Mothersbaugh about it. Yeah. Oh, that's so interesting. I just met his wife the night before last. Yeah. I said, you got to talk to Mark.

Yeah. He was like there, there. He was there, there. And Joe Walsh. Yeah. Yeah, I talked to Joe Walsh about it too. We've talked to joe too and it's a really compelling story there's so much more to it than you just know from the song or the photograph oh yeah no like you don't get anything like that the whole town was like they called in the fucking tanks absolutely uh you

know it was a four-day process that led up to the monday when they when they shot the kids well that sounds very compelling you're gonna like what do you think in six episodes five six episodes you know what made me think we were trying to do as a feature and then i saw chernobyl and i was like you could tell this story like a meltdown of a system you know and and try to analyze all the different forces that end up with kids carrying rifles of live ammunition who are avoiding the war by being in the National Guard, shooting other kids who are protesting the war in just an inexplicable series of fuck-ups that led to this clash, you know. And then what happens after they shoot them, and this is a really compelling story, is they're, the whole campus has gone nuts and finds out about it.

And there's like, suddenly went from like three or 400 protesters to thousands of them. And the National Guard is reloading to go back in and clear them out. And the story of this one professor who avoided, it could have, as Simi Chalas is working on it with us, you said, you know, the thing about this is not that it happened who avoided, it could have, as Simi Chalas is working on it with us,

you said, you know, the thing about this is not that it happened, but that it could have, there could have been a lot more people killed afterwards is really the powerful story. Well, I think like the whole town got involved. Absolutely. It started in the town. It started on Friday night after Nixon said they were going into Cambodia. There was a riot in the town and there was a town gown tension all the time anyway. Right.

So anyway, it's a really compelling story. But the reason I brought it up is that that's when, I remember my dad saying, I feel like the students might have deserved that. And that was 60% of America

thought they did polls that blamed the students for what happened. And it was the students that were indicted first, not the guard, until the more and more photo evidence came out, and then there was a big thing. Sounds like you're pretty deep into the process.

We've interviewed a ton of people. And it's going to be like, is it going to be a documentary type of situation? No, no, more like a docudrama, more like Chernobyl. Did you see that? No, I didn't watch it yet. Oh, it's so good. Be careful with the costumes. Oh, yeah, more like a docudrama, more like Chernobyl. Did you see that? No, I didn't watch it yet. Oh, it's so good. Be careful with the costumes.

Oh, yeah, good point. It's the 70s clothes to not have them look goofy. Tricky, wow. I could show you pictures that would be from 1970s. I know, I mean, they look so cool, but for some reason it's so hard. Some of them do, you know. It's so hard to get it right when you're fictionalizing it.

Absolutely. So how do you get, you started Stanford in pre-law. I mean, you direct big movies. I mean, it seemed like you kind of come out of nowhere in a way. I was late. I was late to that game. What have you been doing, man? So you're in college, but you said that you started doing photography out of nowhere.

Yeah, I started in photography and was working there right at the beginning of Silicon Valley, really, during the late 70s. You graduated in 79? 79, yeah, and worked there for two years running an instructional television thing for the School of Engineering at Stanford that was beaming out to Hewlett-Packard. Wait, after you graduate? Yeah, after I graduated. But where did you have experience working in television?

I worked my way through school. I had to have all these work-study jobs. And one of them was running these little classrooms where you'd have three cameras in a booth and joysticks and a little switcher and just kind of capture and record the professor's class, but beam it out to these remote Silicon Valley companies so you could get a master's degree or a PhD in electrical engineering while you're being employed at Hewlett-Packard or Ampex. Was that a service offered by the school or is it something that Silicon Valley wired up?

School of engineering set it up to sort of hub out so that's how a huge part of how silicon valley uh got educated networked itself yeah yeah and and got educated um it was a big part of that actually so i worked there and they let me shoot some documentaries and i applied to usc film school you shot some documentaries and little tiny short films you know and um so this is after college for two years for two years in palo alto you know living in palo alto and uh but working on campus um and not really sure what i was gonna do but i got to i was i had so many work-study jobs like i was cleaning sound heads in the documentary program. I met some cool documentary camera people

and thought, I'm going to apply to film school. So I applied to USC and got in there and then helped them run their, they had a similar kind of engineering school network. And so I worked my way through USC doing more of that, which is a weird way to get- Setting up these- Classrooms and doing these engineering courses.

It's so weird because there's no internet. This sounds like, why would anyone do that? But back then it was sort of like an amazing thing, I would imagine. Yeah. It was like a one-way FaceTime actually because you could see the professor, but you could then, there was two-way audio, so you could push a button and get right into the classroom with a question. Oh, I see. So you'd always hear the off-campus people calling.

Wild. And this is your beginning? Well, it was a job, you know. But it had a camera component to it. But it got you through USC, though? Yeah. Yeah, and then I started getting the directing bug at USC. I went there to be a camera person, but it's a narrative storytelling thing

because of George Lucas and John Milius and all those people who had been there. Yeah. And so I got the directing bug, directed a couple short films. It's a three-year program. It was an interesting five years of my life because I couldn't afford to keep going.

So I'd stop out, go back, stop out. And then I didn't really get to direct for 10 more years after that. What the fuck were you doing, Jay? I was shooting documentaries, actually, and being a writing assistant. Where at? All around town.

And teaching. I taught cinematography at USC for seven years. Where? At USC. You taught cinematography at USC for seven years part-time. At USC. You taught cinematography? They hired me right out of school to teach, which was just, you know. How did that happen? Were you that good?

I was a TA for a long time, and I took over for a professor who, you know, needed some help. And, you know, I liked shooting and showing other people how to shoot, you know. And that was a great prep for directing because I would ask the students to set up a little scenario and build a couple walls of sets and light them and shoot them and just edit in camera. Every Wednesday night, you know, they would come into the little studio there. And it actually helped me think more about how to shoot and edit by talking about it to kids and um and who what were some of your first jobs in show business i got i was a writing assistant for a lot of that time where a company called trilogy entertainment that um so they made blown away and robin hood prince of thieves and kind of mainstream actiony stuff and they started letting me write scenes i wrote the story for blown away the bomb squad thing with jeff

bridges and uh i wrote a a pilot for a sci-fi show that was terrible ultimately sadly but it had some promise at the time across space rangers yeah and uh and I started just getting permission to keep writing more and more and I actually turned myself into a writer and then I did some weird art films including one film

about the psychology of evil with Adolf Hitler as the weird stylized, I was watching Jojo Rabbit the other day. It's such a good film. It is good. And I was thinking back

on this time and I was doing a ton of research on you know the rise of nazism weirdly and uh and i around this time i met mike myers and he is a history nut and we started talking about that and then he sent me we also started talking about monty python he sends me that script and that's when i finally got to start austin powers and that's when i finally got to start directing Powers. And that's when I finally got to start directing. What were these docs though? So I shot documentaries that were, I would shoot like industrial documentaries and even actually

some for the Air Force. I shot like footage of F-16s and A-10s and I would just get any job I could get. I was just a working person. I was not, I was always just, I lived in one room in a seven room house with six other people. You know, I was, I was like a grad student for 15 years basically until I met Mike and, uh, and got to do Austin powers. So I had a weird,

very weird, eclectic. I mean, but like you just, you just see all this stuff you did. And, but you know, when you meet with Mike,

how'd you meet Mike? We started talking about, he had a guitar that my, it was a signature Rickenbacker, Susanna Hoff's guitar. He walked up to Susanna, got to know her. She and his wife at the time, Robin Roseanne got to be friends and Mike. And I just started talking about history and. And you were just this guy. I'm just this guy.

Literally just this guy. Who does these weird little jobs kind of in the show business. No promise whatsoever. It's a pretty amazing story because we talked so much about these things. And you're already married. Yeah, had been just married for a couple years.

So she loved you even though it didn't look like you were going anywhere. Oh, we met on a blind date. years um and so she loved you even though you didn't look like you were going anywhere oh i was we met on a blind date i was a guy had a old vw bus that would catch on fire about every third time wow man and i she just she had said i'm just she dated a lot of actors and you know musicians and uh somehow she said to the guy who was actually working with me on space rangers do you know anybody and he'd worked with her. And so he put us together.

And I literally thought it was a prank. Like I just. Was she already a big star? Oh, she was huge. The Bengals had already had, you know, all their biggest hits. That one record? Yeah, two records. This was in 91.

They were biggest in the mid 80s, you know. Yeah. So, yeah, so we, she sort of helped get me together with mike myers and um he yeah got me to write up some notes about the the script and after that said we helped me look for directors and i was combing through other people's directing reels and i found a guy i liked and said oh you should go with this guy. This is after Wayne's World, Axe of Murder, Wayne's World 2. It was after all those films.

And he was sort of looking for someone that he could sort of just collaborate a little more closely with instead of just someone who would just kind of direct him and push him around. But you didn't have any, you couldn't really show him any real directing experience.

Nothing, nothing. In fact, when he took me into New Line Cinema and, you know suzanne todd the producers that i had known since film school also were very involved in this and he and and my wife and the todd sisters had put me up for the job without telling me and said we what michael thinks this guy would do based on this 12 page notes document I wrote that had some, a lot of jokes in it. And, and, um, so I sat with the studio people cause I said, I said, here's the guy. He said, well, I put you up for, I said, what are you talking about? I don't have any background. And that's what the studio guy said. He said, who are you? We're not going to just hire Mike's buddy. You're

not funny. You don't have any, you haven't directed anything. And I said, Mr. Shea, Mr. Bob Shea at the time, I said, I totally totally get that but will you take a look at this storyboard sequence and i had worked out this whole thing with the fembots um that hadn't been in the original script you know and and it was really funny it was right i must say it was a great thing and i got a storyboard artist and i was acting it all out yeah mike kind of helped me perform it with him and they hired me to do it and they actually didn't right away mike had to say they finally said we're not gonna hire this guy and you and he said i tell you what don't call me anymore unless you hire this guy and they were sending him like big time directors this is mike this is mike he went to bat for you he went to bat for me and it took a few more weeks

and he called me he had he had just jumped into the swimming pool with his dogs you could hear with all his clothes on his wife told me the story and he called me and i could hear this crazy racket in the background dark splashing and barking yeah and he said you got the job you got the job and he it was you know and so him plus the todd sisters i have to credit them too because they really helped too. But Mike freaking fought like a crazy person. And at the time with not the most power in the world, you know, the first Wayne's World was huge. But he was an actor and, you know, but just fighting like crazy for me. And then he became his guy there for a while.

Yeah. The Austin Powers guy. Yeah, I did. And then he became his guy there for a while. Yeah. You're the Austin Powers guy. Yeah, I did. And he's like notoriously a control freak. And I, you know, I've talked to him, but he's not easy, right? He cares a lot about what he's doing. And I think that gets misunderstood sometimes

as being difficult because he just fights like crazy. I didn't get the sense. I don't know him to be difficult, but I mean, you know, you must've learned a lot on some level because he wanted his way right he i feel like i learned comedy uh working with him i didn't really i honestly didn't know that much about how i didn't know comedians i had only written i'd written screenplays by then and all serious all either sci-fi right um but i we think sci-fi freak not not a freak but i was you know i read dune and all the heinlein stuff and all that you know i i but i wrote in science fiction um i

got to do some sci-fi adaptions for like bruce willis and uh and so there just wasn't a dad for bruce i did nothing that got made. A weird book called Ambient. And I adapted it for Bruce. It was about a post-apocalyptic world, Manhattan, that's been flooded. And you can only get to the different skyscrapers, which are now like castles through bridges across the tops of them. And Bruce would have played a bodyguard. of them and Bruce plays a would have played a bodyguard so whenever you went down into

the no man's land he would be the guy who would escort the the warlords or the pharmaceutical control. You need that guy. Yeah. It was a great concept. So when you say you adapted it for him you were hired by his company? Yeah. Through again

Suzanne and Jennifer Todd who I'd known in film school were producers for him. And I'm pretty, I like telling stories. So I would go in and do this tap dance of pitching something. And I could often convince people I'm pretty, you know, gung-ho about those kinds of stories when it's something I really loved. And he said, okay, I'll try it. And he really liked the script, but it never, it was expensive.

And I never really, I don't think I nailed the third act. So I never got to make it. But that's how, you know, that's the kind of stuff I had been doing right before I met Mike. And no comedy in it whatsoever. And so getting, I really learned. Mike is kind of an encyclopedia of comedy I don't know if you've ever talked to him

about how he's got a very worked out sense of what's funny why it's funny from working with Lauren

a lot from working with Del Close from really studying comedy he's a genuinely serious

student of comedy I wish he would either like do a master class or write a book about it because I don't think I've ever spoken to anybody who articulates just the considerations, the things that make something funny. What did you learn from him? Usually you can kill comedy by talking about it too much.

But some things like the power of clear setup, you know, making sure everything is not fuzzed or the camera's not moving at the wrong time. And it's all, you know, just the power of making sure that by the time the comedy is to be delivered, that's too mechanical a way to say it, but that there's nothing that could get in its way. And that sounds so simplistic,

but you'd be surprised how many, especially in previews, you'd find, oh, the reason this didn't work is because that sign somehow got in the way. Muffled. And also just the power of- Distracted. Yeah, exactly.

Things can kill jokes. Music can kill jokes or whatever. It could be anything. It's really like the way to avoid messing. And I'm sure it's partly just because he would know what was funny. He's like, don't have something as part of this that could sort of fuzz it out. And those movies are sequences of jokes, really. They are, but they are also...

The other thing he taught me was that, and this is from Lorne, is just that talk up to people. Try not to talk down. Make it clear, but don't make it look like you're talking. And he really cares about story. He cares about the predicaments. Because a lot of times those things

are the engines for comedy, too. What is at stake? Why does this matter to this guy? Why is the fact that he's completely not, in Austin Powers' case, the difference between how he sees himself and what his capabilities really are is so vast. Did you have to watch the James Bond movies? I did. I did, but I actually was forced for him, or at least my influence, I think,

was more to try to not parody as much as go for the style of pop art movies and old Italian heist movies. Right. The camp. The 10th victim, you know. Yeah. Yeah, but to go for that style could be funny because I guess that I guess that is camp, you know, you push it a little bit. Right.

That can be. Sure. And he's, you know, he just knows that stuff. But then I got to go off and do other comedies, you know, Meet the Parents. Well, I mean, but you did three of those. Now, how did Meet the Parents come up? How did that happen? Was it Austin Powers?

Did that help get you that job? I saw that. It actually, Austin Powers helped me not get that job at first because I found that script after Austin Powers, but Universal Studios and producer then Nancy Tenenbaum, who had it, said, we don't want it to be silly. Like from their minds, Austin was just pure silliness. We want this to be real.

So I lost Meet the Parents and went and did Mystery Alaska. I had it for a while. What was that movie about? That's that hockey movie with Russell Crowe and Burt Reynolds and- Big cast. It was a great cast. Lolita Davidovich and Hank Azaria and Ron Eldard

and all these really cool people. Cole Meaney, he's an amazing guy. It's actually probably my most personal film because it's about a kind of small town sports, the way sports can hold small towns together. When I would go around the state of New Mexico and play, I was a terrible, I was like the bench warmer in my football team. But we would go to those towns and uh

and experience the life of the town wrapped around a football game so very much like a Friday night lights thing right then I saw that when I started doing the research for the hockey thing that's how in Canada you know the soul of the town is can be often the hockey rink right so that's the essence of it is a challenge to that anyway it's a crazy you know cast amazing experience with russell crowe and burt reynolds i think it's i thought it was pretty funny it got bumped because beloved oprah winfrey's movie was uh wanted the date we had and by getting bumped we were previewing really well in terms of a release date yeah and so people um got lost it got lost no kidding out a year later and nobody saw it so people- Got lost? It got lost.

No kidding. It came out a year later and nobody saw it. I didn't see it. So that was a good experience to have a nice experience. I don't understand how you guys fucking shoulder that shit. And obviously that's a pretty high level example of it where you put all this time in and you make this amazing thing. in and you know you make this amazing thing and because of really forces out of your control but nonetheless executive decisions just uh uh you know they they sideline you yeah and literally it disappears yeah the movie and someone would have to go out of their way maybe because we just talked about it in that cast to try to find me mystery alaska on itunes which is probably there

oh yeah it's there, yeah. You know, and it's... Hockey players find it. That's because there's not many great... But there's so many projects like that and people that put years into things. Yeah, it's happened to me a couple times where you were surprised something you work on

a long time just kind of... How do you handle that shit? In that case, I just got busy on the next Austin Powers. I went right into the sequel. But doesn't anyone go, what the fuck happened, Jay? Oh, yeah. They're coming at me, and I'm coming at the studios. But at that time, I had zero power.

You got Russell Crowe calling you? What happened, man? Russell Crowe was probably calling the studio more than he could. He knew he had more clout than I did at that point. Sure. was probably calling the studio more than he could. He knew he had more clout than I did at that point. That was after Ellie Confidential, but before Gladiator, but he still was already pretty influential. How was Burt Reynolds? Nice guy? He was a great guy, but he was in a really interesting place where he had gotten the Golden Globe for Boogie Nights. And then it had come out

that he had fired his reps because he'd been embarrassed by Boogie Nights. Right. And then it had come out that he had fired his reps because he'd been embarrassed by Boogie Nights and he didn't win the Oscar. And the night before he was flown down to the Oscars and he was kind of figuring out that he wasn't going to win, I think Robin Williams won that year for Good Will Hunting. We were shooting out on the ice at like 30 below and he was, oh, he got so, he got very cranky,

and he yelled at the line producer, and then like a pretty, pretty rough bit of verbal abuse, and then he felt so bad about it, and it was all because he was, I think he just, you know, this was a comeback for him. This was a huge deal, Boogie Nights, right? And he didn't realize it. He didn't realize it.

Yeah. He's on our set and he, you know, wants to be let go. And I'm shooting, you know, huge scene in a locker room with Russell Crowe and all these, all these hockey players. And it's the coaching scene. all these hockey players and it's the coaching scene it's the scene where he's supposed to Russell uh Bert's supposed to be the he's the judge who then gives Russell the strength to to you know keep going it's a really kind of funny tropey moment but yeah he gets so bent out of shape and I actually step between them I think I feel like it might get violent i step between him and the line producer and he feels so bad and he walks back on the mark where he had been giving that speech and and we weren't filming but he starts to do a like a a long apology that gives his whole history of how

he grew up with how you treat directors and we used to directors. Robert Mitchum used to hang the director off the balcony by his ankles. And I've been injured so many times, and I've flatlined from Percodine. It was the most unbelievable, I think it was like 20 minutes long. It's like a mea culpa? Yeah, and what I didn't know is the video tap guy hit record on that. Yeah. And somewhere there's a tape of it.

But Hank Azaria to this day can deliver that whole speech because it was so unbelievable. It was one of those moments when you're on a set. Was it good? It was so good. And moving? But so much about the sort of damage an actor has to go through, you know, and the complicated psychology of being such a huge star as Burt was. Yeah.

And then having this chance at a huge comeback and then having it be so fragile, you know, and it was just it was just an incredible old school he blew it somehow i i think so i i you know i i that was us all trying to figure out what's going on but uh it was such a heartbreaking sort of a breakdown yeah but it was also we loved it i remember the the guy who was a hockey player and i mean a kid and he just said this to the whole set to the whole set and of us, now he's had us all come out. Now it's a big deal.

And he's actually now on that mark, lit, just like he was when he was giving this other big speech. The locker room speech. And it was just the most surreal and kind of amazing and moving moment. But it was an apology. But it was an apology. To the whole crew. To everybody. For making a scene. For losing his shit. For losing his shit in front of all, you know was an apology to the whole crew to everybody yeah for making a

scene for losing a shit for losing a shit in front of all you know in front of the whole crew and i've we all loved the the the tension was broken by some uh you know the one that kid hockey player said something like at the very end he said something like i think you'll be all right or something the place just went crazy. Just shit, I was laughing. It was really an amazing moment. And that was the movie before Meet the Parents. So that was the movie before the second Austin. Oh, because they took it away from you.

And then while I was gone, I got a call saying, hey, it's from a guy at Spielberg's company. He said, you know, we slipped that script that you told us about to Steven Spielberg. He's going to direct it now. And Jim Carrey is going to be in it. And Meet the Parents. You know, and I couldn't.

Spielberg was going to direct it? Suddenly Spielberg was going to direct it. He had it for about two months. And then he decided that, you know, maybe he was didn't want to. You know, he'd done 1941, he was a little nervous about doing just a straight up comedy. Still a little tender about 1941.

I never quite get over that. So he kind of gave it back. So many years later. I know, but he said, that's how he explained it to me. And because he stayed involved, even just for saying he was going to direct it for a little while,

when I got, when I did get back on it, Jim Carrey carrey actually through jimmy miller who i think you know was jim's jimmy's jim's manager and my manager too and so jimmy's your guy yeah jimmy's my manager for a long time and uh since then actually since before since the first austin and he uh he uh the having because he could put me with Jim Carrey, then I got to get back on it and then Jim Carrey fell off

and I always wanted Ben Stiller. So we got Ben and then your acting buddy, De Niro. Oh yeah. Came on and then that made it go

and that was, that was my second, you know, a series of comedies was the Meet the Parents. Who played his wife, Gwyneth's mom? Blythe Danner. Yeah, Blythe Danner.wyneth's mom uh blight danner yeah amazing yeah yeah yeah and uh and then they it wasn't until the second movie where he got hoffman and streisand yeah it's crazy you got big cast

with your movies that one nearly killed me because they they set the release date before we had a locked script for meet the fuckers meet the fuckers and they set the release date before we had a locked script. For Meet the Fockers? For Meet the Fockers. And the money on that, the budget on that was so big. Just for paying those actors. Just paying all those actors who all, of course, deserved a payday.

The first one did really well. And the second one, you know. It did? The first one did well. And once we had the idea that we could get Dustin and Barbara as a counter to De Niro. As a couple. It's so crazy.

Then we knew we could get going. But we started it without a third act. We started it with 70 pages. And I had to walk on the set every day saying, don't worry, Academy Award winners of various. We'll figure it out. But I did not think we were going to figure it out. And we just kept shooting and finally did figure it out. Who hires Randy Newman for those things?

I did. I think he just did the music for Noah Baumbach. He did. He did. And it's extraordinary. I have to watch that movie. I heard someone say that music elevated that movie. And it really, and it does.

I mean, I like the story anyway, but the music really is a big part of it. If you watch Meet the Parents and you see how great the kind of just normal, almost sitcom plot and really good acting in Meet the Parents, I'm really proud of the acting and the story. But it works at a level. And then add Randy Newman's, uh, these beautiful choral arrangements and this kind of, whenever Ben Stiller screws up these,

I always just say the angels would sing because he's, he's so doomed. He's like completely, uh, engineering his own, you know, humiliation. And that's when the, that's when this great Randy Newman music would kick in and suddenly make it

seem, now when you, when you work with him, do you give Randy notes or you just let him have a pass on his own? And that's when this great Randy Newman music would kick in and suddenly make it seem... Now, when you work with him, do you give Randy notes or you just let him have a pass on his own? How does that work? So Randy works a really specific way. First, he just came and watched the film and was laughing really hard. I didn't think he...

I was like, really? He might actually do this? And he liked it. And then he just said, when you're finished, let me know. And he didn't, a lot of composers now will be working with you along the way and mocking things up. I just delivered the film. He, we talked a little bit. We did a spotting session.

We did a lot of temps. We actually do a pretty great soundtrack with other people's music. And he said, a lot of composers don't like that because then it seems to steer them. They feel steered by that we're trying to impose a vibe. And some composers are asked to knock off whatever you've used in the temps. And he actually said, no, I'd like to hear it.

And then he heard all the music we'd put in. Some of it was Tommy Newman stuff. Some of it was, you know, other... some of it was you know other no his uh i think he's his cousin tommy newman i can't remember the direct he's a composer there's a whole family of the newmans are all david newman and alfred newman yeah it was alfred yeah or the uncle i i actually lost track of their family tree but the fact that his father was a tough guy is what he loved about this movie was the de niro you know hard-ass thing that didn't that Stiller has to and and also Stiller you know typically I mean he playing himself as a as a kind

of bullshit artist and a guy who's trying to yeah just wiggle way through and right when he's with his girls out of his league and blah blah blah but he Randy took it really seriously and and you just give it to you just give him the film. He saw the temp. He says, I love it. I'm not going to do anything like that, which is awesome. Like the music we had. And he took it away, and he just sits at a piano. He called me one day.

I'll never forget. He called and started playing this melody for the song that became The Fool in Love, which actually got nominated for an Academy Award. Yeah. And he's just playing it on the phone. I'm like, Sue, listen, Randy Newman's playing this song on the phone to me right now. And in the end credits,

Susanna, my wife, and Randy sing a duet in French of this song. And they ended up doing it together on the Academy Awards as well. Oh, that's sweet. It's really cool. Yeah. But he elevated it in every way,

and the movie just seemed smarter for that music. He's the best. I love that guy. He's the best. I've got to watch him. I'm going to do a musical with him. I pitched him a musical recently, a big political musical,

and I haven't gotten back to- Well, his last record was kind of a political musical. You know, all his, yeah, the Putin song. Sure, yeah, yeah, yeah. And great, what's the other record he did that had a great Nations of Europe? Yeah, no, I love him. I got to watch this new Noah movie.

I haven't watched it yet. It's good. It's really good. There's a lot of good films out now. It's an interesting film. It's crazy, yeah. So like you do, like Dinner with Schmucks, I don't remember, I don't think I saw it.

I'm sorry. Yeah, no, that was another one of those films that not a lot of people saw, so you wouldn't be alone. I'm not sure why. I'm not sure either. It was a great cast, Steve Carell and Paul Rudd, and Zach Galifianakis was really funny, and it tested as well as Meet the Parents.

It was like, we were like, it's a great example of falling for the testing. The title is what killed us in the reviews and uh it was a remake of a french film a beloved french film called uh le denier de con or something i think is the title of a bear film and people we got people the critics really hated that we were remaking this French film. And then, oh, really? So in between, though, you started the... We started the political things, recount and game change. Those were big for me. Sidney Pollack brought me in to do recount

because he got sick. He got the cancer? Yeah. Did you get to spend time with him? I did. And I'd known him before. He'd kind of been a mentor figure for me. And we talked about serious films, but I hadn't done any serious films.

So once again, he said, just come in. He's a guy that I admired for just serve the story. Don't feel driven to... And you see this in all... He had such a wide variety of films. You don't have to impose some signature style. Just, you know, I just admired that he, his style fit the story. And, and he also loved actors so much as an actor himself. I love, I love him as an actor. Yeah.

He's great, you know? And so, and Tootsie, I mean, it's just, that's a fantastic performance. He was your buddy. he was your buddy and just he liked the comedies but he said you know I always talked about politics with him and he was gonna do that film

and a guy named Danny Strong wrote it and they started working on it recount yeah and he got sick and he just all he had done in prep

was cast Kevin Spacey and you know picked a that's a big show was that HBO yeah yeah it was a big bigy and, you know, picked a... That's a big show. Was that HBO? Yeah. Yeah, it was a big, big thing. And I just, he told me,

listen, I've got some weird news. I'm fighting this disease and I think I can beat it, but I need you to take it over. And I was like... No kidding. All right. So I did,

and he died the day after it opened on HBO, the day after it came out on HBO. But he watched cuts and gave me some interesting feedback all along the way. He was amazing. He was, yeah. But you also did a political comedy

around the same time. I did a campaign a couple years after with Will Ferrell and Zach Galifianakis. I think I remember seeing that. Yeah. It was goofy. Goofy. Goofy, seeing that. Yeah. It was goofy. Goofy. Goofy, but, you know, it was Will.

It was just great Will stuff. Yeah. Will Ferrell. And Zach was really funny, too. Those are funny people. And then you did Game Change. Yeah. The Sarah Palin movie.

Yeah. And she's Julianne Moore. Come on, man. I know. I know. It's a great movie. And both the Game Change and Recount won a bunch of Emmys. Yeah, yeah.

So they're well-received. So now you're sort of in. That's your wheelhouse. And then you do Trumbo. Now, what happened with Trumbo? Another film that a lot of people didn't see, but it was a great experience. But did you like...

Yeah, with Cranston. But did you... How did you feel about the final cut? I was okay with it. You know, I, it was, there was no, it was the film we were trying to make. It was. There was two scenes that I have to this day

tortured myself, one that I left in and one that I took out. But I don't know if they would have made a huge difference. One I took out was this great scene with Hedda Hopper where she sees a soldier, you know, with a one-armed guy. And you start to understand why she was such a right-wing nut, you know, because she was so military, you know, soldier-driven. And then the other one was one with Trumbo uh teaching

his daughter about communism which i left in i cut out the the one-armed soldier one and i left in the uh then i think i've now in retrospect i might have flipped those like it was two scenes that just dog you for you know for a long time and how many people did you talk to that knew trumbo i his daughters were the were the the main people i talked to. There wasn't really anybody else still around. I mean, as just a director, you know, what are you looking for when you ask? Because, I mean, it's on the page, right? You had the script.

Yeah, the script was there. But, for example, they told us a story. John McNamara wrote it. They told John and I the story about once trumbo started writing under other names he had a pretty organized racket where he would uh uh go and pitch his his take on a story to get work sometimes original but sometimes he would pitch to to be a script doctor but he couldn't be working because he was blacklisted and so he would uh he would you know use somebody else's name and and wrote roman holiday and the brave one but huge big award-winning films and then

he would also to help his other writer friends offer to rewrite anything they screwed up you know if he would get he would say you pay this guy just something to get him by. And I guarantee the results will be good. It may not be as good as something I would write, because he was the most highly paid screenwriter of his time. He said, but I'll, I promise you, I'll vouch for them and I'll back them up and rewrite it for you if they don't come through. So he had his daughters handling that whole he became a market for a kind of um i don't know what you'd call it like a go-between from between the blacklisted writers and studios yeah the daughters told us all about that it wasn't in the script and it was really high pressure and high stakes and there was always he had supposedly like six different phones and the

daughters would pick them up under different names wow and uh the details of that that's the kind of stuff you i always push the writers are always a little afraid to go and speak to the real people because it blows whatever concept or structure they oh yeah and then they and but then also you know then then they're going to be bothering you yeah and they're going to be you have to get approval if you know and but i it's always been worth it uh it just you know just on this film we just did bombshell uh to talk to the women at fox you know we we were it would never has been as good as as we it turned out whatever you think of it what you know and also all of them talked so they talked to us when they weren't supposed to

you know but they that was what the movie was about that's what the movie's about yeah i thought it was great i thought and it had good pace to it and i didn't know the whole story and it's got powerhouse actors in it yeah so like how did that story come together for you how were you attached from the beginning to this the it's basically the fall of roger ailes and the you know But unfortunately, it didn't shut the studio, Fox Network down. But it was a big shift in culture over there. It was a big shift. It takes place in a year from 2015, summer 2015 to summer 2016. It starts with Megyn Kelly taking on Trump in the primaries.

Recent history. Yeah, real recent. And pointing out all the horrible things he said about women. And it goes through to when Gretchen Carlson, who's been recording all this abuse for that whole year, ends up getting fired and then sues him. And then it's a Megyn Gretchen overlap because it's not until Megyn Kelly steps up

that they're able to take down Roger and talk the Murdochs into firing him. But along the way, there's a lot of very interesting twists and turns. What I liked about it was just that you think you might know something about what the people at Fox are like, what those women might be like, and what everything we found out was like, there's so much more to what got presented in the press and how they portray themselves. And part of it came from interviewing a lot of real people to try to get the essence of

what went down. And Charles Randolph wrote it. He wrote the big short, you know, and it came to me through Charlize. She had been offered it and wasn't sure she was going to do it. Much like the Mike Myers thing. She just sent it to me. I gave her some notes. How'd you know her?

I knew her from working with her on a TV pilot idea that a guy had brought her and she wanted help with it. And it was a comedic mixed tone sort of thing. And we've been trying to get that off the ground. We hadn't, but we enjoyed the process. And so she just sent it as a friend and I gave her notes. And then she's, I don't think she was thinking about hiring me to direct it.

So she's a producer on it? She's a producer and it was the, you know, the real active producer on it. Like she was, we fell apart. She acted the shit out of Megyn Kelly. Oh, she's she's an amazing actor and she transforms herself entirely both physically with a lot of makeup prosthetic stuff going on but her accent her yeah the attitude you know she really went for it but

she was she uh she was also just an incredibly good producing partner on it as well so she brought it to you and you don't think she had the intention of redirecting? Not until she read these notes. I did another, you know, like. Oh, what was sort of, what was the thrust of it? The main note was she was not sure she should do it. You know, she just wasn't sure that she could connect with Megyn Kelly. And I said, here's why I think you should try, because it's a way of talking about this issue of sexual harassment to people who are Fox News watchers who may not think of themselves as feminists or may even resent being asked to think about this sort of progressive idea of women standing up to power, you know, speaking truth to power. up to power, you know, speaking truth to power. And I said, that might be a way to, I don't know, just connect this conversation across a much wider audience than people might have expected was possible. And maybe that's a way to be a force for change, you know, in some weird way, or at least be a bigger conversation. And so that's how I pitched it to her. And she said,

that sounds pretty interesting. Would you direct it? And I honestly, I was totally stunned. I thought she might see me as a comedy person, but I never thought she had seen me as someone who could direct her in a drama. But also, I think this, you know, doing the political stuff you did to balance the sort of politics. This is really about politics within a corporate structure. It is, but it is trying actually to be about, it's from the women's point of view, and it's

actually about what's it like to be harassed in a corporate culture that sort of seems to be part of it. But it turns out, and this happened a year before the Harvey Weinstein news broke, this whole story. And Ailes had been doing it for decades. And decades. But it turns out, obviously, that pattern is not just a right-wing or a left-wing thing. Right. There's abuse. It's a man thing.

And that's a cross-political thing. And we tried to emphasize that. But all that said, there is a singularity with trump and his misogynistic bullshit you know and and roger ailes is and the fact that roger's promoting trump that whole time shamelessness of it and and the egocentric power addicted entitlement to it right you know entitlement to loyalty and even in the film we say in his mind, sometimes loyalty meant sexual favors, you know. But it's also entitled to bully people or just be, you know, a sort of vaguely culty kind of person who wants to impose their worldview on and make you have to reflect back that worldview. And they're fucking liars.

And they're such fucking liars. And what they'll do to protect their lives, you know, is back that world. And they're fucking liars. And they're such fucking liars. And what they'll do to protect their lives, you know, is destroy so much. And some of that is used to trash the women who in this story, this is what happens. As soon as someone speaks up, there's a smear campaign. Yeah, there's that.

And then there's just this commitment, like those scenes where he's with his wife and the stuff's coming at him, and she's going to side with him, that codependency, that turn a blind eye or the sort of like not knowing but knowing business. And then just the defending the lie to the point of ruining people is really kind of a – it's malignant and horrible, but it's so human. That's the fucked up thing about it, and I you know lithgow plays him with a certain amount of vulnerability just gonna say with the way john goes at it uh to not just vulnerability but also

even sense of humor he was a very charismatic guy he could even be a sort of father figure to a lot of these people megan kelly uh was harassed 10 years before our story and she keeps working and keeps getting promoted that whole time. She kind of gets out of his eyeline and just stays away from him and then he stops harassing her

and she stays and becomes a star under his guidance, but meanwhile, he's harassing other women. Right, but there was that weird, interesting little part of the script

where you get a quick sort of summation of his backstory and why he, it did kind of give script where you get a quick sort of summation of his backstory and why he, you know, it did kind of give him a human foundation, you know, as much of a monster as he was in as much,

you know, that you wanted him to, to, to get what he got. Yeah. Yeah. There was an element of sort of like, well,

he's a damaged fucking person. Well, and that's, that's what we hoped would happen is that you would see that he's an actually much better villain because he's so human. And because that's what we're all surrounded by these guys you look at how many of these people rise to power and control a lot of our lives you know and politics or anything because they're so egocentric that they become super charismatic and fearless like kind of entitled so much shameless than that we are

we as a species i guess are attracted to these alpha male kind of things and i really think it is some of it is a male issue you know not that there are certainly women who have some of the get to some of those places and and are abusive potentially but it's pretty rare compared to the number of men who are. Yeah. And how much that overlaps then with the politics. And the scene with Margot Robbie, and like all of it was really good. Now, was the Margot Robbie character a real person?

No, she's a composite representing a lot of the women who had spoken to Paul Weiss or had told women their stories, but had not come out in public. And they're anonymous. And the only way to tell their stories, but had not come out in public. They're anonymous. And they're anonymous. And the only way to tell their stories was using a composite. Right. Well, I mean, I thought it was very compelling. And I love seeing the work and learning about the stuff.

I think it's good for men to see it. I actually talk about how some men come up and say, I kind of thought I understood what this is. And there's an empathy factor. Well, we're lacking empathy because we don't live that life. And I think that when you see a scene like, I think the scene with Margot and John, where he's interviewing her,

and the way that unfolds, where you see even the sort of, just the power dynamic, the abuse of the power dynamic can shatter a woman. And you can see it happen. Like, I think that's the larger disconnect for men is that, you know, the woman's in a situation. She's being asked to do something that may not be sexually, you know, contact or even, you know, it's devious. It's more of a power control thing. Right. But they don't know, you know, if you don't choose to not do it and you just sort of, I think the pace you gave that, the time you gave that to happen was great because you can see her spirit get crushed. That's exactly right.

By the compromise she decided to make because she didn't know how to say no and she felt that if she did, it would be detrimental to her career. And it's exactly what we heard from women. We talked to that. He would push them a little bit and a little bit more and a little bit more until they're over.

They've crossed a line they never thought they would cross and you see it in her face oh man how did i i was just kind of he would do this thing like make women they called it beware the spin he would make them stand right and give them a spin and he'd check out their wardrobe whatever and she thought that's what it was about and then it slowly gets worse and worse until it's so far and then it's like oh my god i've gotten to this position and now he has a secret you know he knows you'll keep because you won't she's not gonna she's not gonna want to talk about this now there's shame involved and he it's an incredibly weird creepy crafty manipulation to sort of groom someone into now being in his cult of people. And not so much, not that uncommon within the range of toxic masculinity.

I feel like it's surprisingly common. And it's, you know, our film is not going to, there's so much more to talk about in terms of how widely problematic this really is. Sure. It's the tip of the iceberg. You know, this is just one. And this is interesting

because it was a year before, again, before Harvey Weinstein. These women came out. Gretchen Carlson is pretty amazing for coming out with no,

with no expectation of a public support system like that. Not that every woman is going to feel supported by the Me Too movement now, but back then no chance of that especially against such a powerful guy in fact the opposite the chance that everyone's just

going to attack you yeah and a powerful smear campaign hit squad that will come out yeah still yeah yeah yeah i mean i i was working on a bit about that that how there's a toxic masculinity spectrum that i think most men are on, really. Where like, you know, at the far end of it is like just basic insensitivity and lack of conscious respect. And then the other side of it is murder. Well, it's not wrong. I've been reading a lot of literature in this field, and that's exactly right. That in sense of entitlement, there's nothing more dangerous than a wounded ego of a person who felt they were entitled to the woman's attention. And men, in this case, he was punishing women in a pretty severe way.

But a lot of men punished them in a much way. A generalized sense of that with a certain contingency. Yeah, I think so. With the NCEL community or these younger people that sort of kind of communally feel rejected by women and use that to power their hatred. That is spot on. And listen, we're men.

I always feel like I'm glad I'm talking about it and it definitely has changed me going at it, but women know this stuff, you know, and we're,

I think women that talk to us about our film are glad we're making it, but it's also like I'm always nervous about trying to explain any of that.

I can sort of talk about my own position about this stuff. I was a huge asshole. I don't think you were. No, I definitely was not sensitive enough to what women deal with. And I definitely remember as a young person just, I don't know, as a young person just, I don't know, just not getting what we do, how we behave towards women. It's an empathy deficit. Yeah. Yeah. I think that's, and particularly once it goes up the spectrum towards more narcissistic behavior, which is almost by definition less empathetic.

Conscience at deficit. Yeah. There's a big shift from the empathy deficit to the conscience deficit. To pure evil. Right. But that's the narcissistic trip into the psychotic trip. Yeah, man. So why do you, what is it? Because like you're making a lot of political films now and they are dealing with well there's there's tribalism but there's also like here's what fascinates me is that how can they be so detached from the actual

like the the uh the idea of democracy and tolerance and equality and all that stuff now it's just about like winning and it's about like it's's not like I, it's sort of like, do they know what most people want? That's a good question. I think, I think there, there is an addiction to power. There's an addiction to being relevant. There's addiction to feeling like you have your hands on the levers of things. And I think it's, i think that there starts to be this rationale that okay we're we may not be serving some some liberal not the not necessarily specifically lefty liberal but the idea of liberal democracy but we'll get there we'll get back there once we we can once we win the the power to make the world we want it to be, it will be an American democratic founding father.

This is the right thinking. This is the right thinking. That it's a means, you know, the end justifying the means. But in the meantime, they've gotten so good at stoking fear and playing off of fear and demonizing people on the left that to them it seems like an existential battle for how then shall we move forward you know what's who's going to be in charge of how it all goes and and uh let's not let those socialist communist uh you know subhuman lefties so in when we were doing recounts we interviewed a lot of the real people who were involved in that story.

And one of them is this guy, Brad Blakeman, who had taken credit for engineering the Brooks Brothers riot, which was that was the nickname for what they pretended was a grassroots thing where local Floridians were banging on the glass while they were hand counting the votes to decide if, you know, in Miami-Dade to decide who, you know, whether the election had been fair or not. It shut down the vote. The vote never got to happen because the local election people decided that it was unsafe all of a sudden. And the guy who took credit for it, you know, was this guy, Brad Blake Blakeman but the guy who wanted credit for it was Roger Stone in the movie we have uh Tom Wilkinson playing James Baker walk into the room when he's first sent down there saying get me Roger Stone who was already a famous dark arts dude since Nixon he was part of the creep world you know all those guys and when we talked to Roger later and and we interviewed both I got to talk to Roger uh Stone a couple years ago but but when we talked to Roger later and we interviewed both, I got to talk to Roger Stone

a couple of years ago, but when we interviewed Blakeman, we said, why do you want credit for this? This is like actual unconstitutional behavior. These people are trying to get to the essence of making this election feel like it has integrity, you're trying to diminish that. What's the upside of that? And he said, dude, we won. We like winning. And if we don't lie, cheat, and steal before the left does, because that's all the left does is lie, cheat, and steal, we'll lose.

So they believe that. So they believe that. They believe they've taught themselves that they've demonized, you know, in their minds, this vast left-wing conspiracy to subvert what they think is is american uh at least in these dark arts dudes minds and i think it's now this used to be the fringe guys roger stone used to be seen as a fringe guy yeah but now a lot of them had you know have risen there with the advent of internet communities you know the fringe is now the mainstream the fringe is the main and donald trump was uh

in the and do you remember when when i was growing up there were the john birchers you know who are always seen as the crazy people that's donald trump now makes that sort of yeah the john birchers and the larushis yeah exactly and now that now they now they have the, it's like Clockwork Orange going back and finding out, oh, now they're the policemen. Well, it's like it's dismantling the, they're sort of dismantling any real barometer of truth or fact, you know, through sort of the persistence of conspiratorial thinking and then kind of throwing into question any sort of documentation of anything. And because the internet moves so quickly and because so many people only take in a fraction of the facts,

it's enough to mobilize brains. People are volunteering for a pretty good brain fucking that they're not going to recover from. All you need to spread is a little doubt, a little confusion, and a little fear as a propagandist. If you really want to delegitimize anything, and it's so easy to do that. What's hard, there's actually even a quote in All the Way that Brian Krantz think from an old congressman. The LBJ thing? Yeah, the LBJ thing. You directed that, right?

Any jackass can kick a barn down, but it takes a carpenter to build one. You know, anybody can kick down the legitimacy of something. Yeah. But to build it up takes years of, you know, statecraft and diplomacy and commitment to the ideals that all are held together with just, you know, bits of faith in the system. They're often not stamped in stone anywhere. And once you start delegitimizing that, and it's pretty easy to do that. And I've been fascinated with the Roger Stones of the world, the sort of wandering, dark samurai killers of institutions is the way I look at it. samurai killers of institutions is the way i look at it um and it's this is why i want to do kent state because kent state was the the result of just very negative fear-based rhetoric to demonize

kids who were not they were called communist local uh outside agitators uh subhuman you know brown shirt they would like use you. They would call these progressive people Nazis to dehumanize them. And they were local Ohio kids. None of the people who were killed or wounded that day were anything other than just commuter kids from Ohio. It wasn't Columbia or Berkeley. It was people that Nixon had called bums

and the local governor called, you know, brown shirt communists, whatever, mixing all his metaphors. And so dehumanized those kids that these other kids thought, oh, I'm just going to aim and pull the trigger 67 times. The name of our thing is 67 shots in 13 seconds. It killed four kids and shot a total of 13. So that's the ultimate conclusion of this kind of dehumanization is people start to look at other people as worthy of destruction. And that I think, I think it's worth talking about all this stuff. So I appreciate you asking me. Yeah, man.

And like that, so that seems to, that's the core of your, your, uh, curiosity. I think I'm really interested in how bad ideas spread. Like what? Yeah. And there's people just walking around shooting Jews. Yeah. Where did, whose idea was that? Yeah.

Guess what? That's, that's been a bad idea that's been spread for centuries. But the dehumanization is part of it. Absolutely. Through rhetoric that enables the worst kind of fascism and genocide to happen. Absolutely. That's what I love about Jojo Rabbit. I don't know why that film just got to me. It's all about that. It's all about the way this little kid is taught to see Jews. He even keeps a book of all the dehumanizing terminology and stuff. And it's just like humans are so susceptible to it when somebody leads them that way. We're gullible.

Again, if you play to our fears or insecurities about the truth, you can sow a lot of dark. We'll keep doing the good work, the big work there, Jay. Thank you, Mark. Thank you, man. Okay, folks. The movie is Bombshell. It was a nice conversation I had with that guy. He's a very decent man.

No music. I had with that guy. He's a very decent man. No music. I'm on the road. And I'm just hanging out because I don't start shooting Respect until Wednesday. I was supposed to start on Monday, but I didn't. But the prop guy gave me a little fender strat to fuck around with in my hotel room. But I'll have it hooked up to a nap. But I think better yet. It's a moment of silence for all the sick and suffering

cats everywhere, and a moment of appreciation to all the people that take care of those cats, and also a moment of reflection for people that have to, you know, follow through and do what's right to end a cat's suffering. And to people who lost cats, I say, La Fonda lives! It's winter, and you can get anything you need delivered with Uber Eats. Well, almost almost anything. So no, you can't get snowballs on Uber Eats. But meatballs, mozzarella balls, and arancini balls? Yes, we deliver those. Moose? No.

But moose head? Yes. Because that's alcohol, and we deliver that too. Along with your favorite restaurant food, groceries, and other everyday essentials. Order Uber Eats now. For alcohol, you must be legal drinking age. Please enjoy responsibly. Product availability varies by region. See app for details.

It's a night for the whole family. Be a part of Kids Night when the Toronto Rock take on the Colorado Mammoth at a special 5 p.m. start time on Saturday, March 9th at First Ontario Centre in Hamilton. The first 5,000 fans in attendance will get a Dan Dawson bobblehead courtesy of Backley Construction. Punch your ticket to Kids Night on Saturday, March 9th at 5pm in Rock City at torontorock.com.