WTF with Marc Maron Podcast - Episode 1430 - David Mandel

Episode Date: April 27, 2023

Both David Mandel and Marc were obsessed with the early years of Saturday Night Live, in large part because of a book they both had. It was the 1977 SNL Script Book and it actually set David on a path to become a writer for that very show. David tells Marc about his “wonderful and awful” time there, followed by genre-defining work on Seinfeld, Curb Your Enthusiasm, Veep and the new limited series White House Plumbers.  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.

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Lock the gates! all right let's do this how are you what the fuckers what the fuck buddies what the fuck nicks what's happening how's it going out there seriously how's it going what's happening uh today i talked to david mandel He's a writer, director, and producer. He worked on Veep and became the showrunner in the final three seasons. He also worked on SNL, Seinfeld, The Simpsons, and Curb Your Enthusiasm. He's the director and producer of the new HBO limited series, White House Plumbers, which I enjoyed because on a base level, I kind of like anything Woody Harrelson does. I don't know when that happened or how it happened, but he and Justin Theroux, quite good.

But I didn't realize, you know, I thought it was, it is a comedy to a degree. It's sort of shot like that. But apparently, Gordon Liddy, G. Gordoniddy and, uh, and, uh, E Howard Hunt were kind of clowns. I really actually, I didn't, I didn't really know that, but I, I enjoyed this series and I'll talk to him in a minute. So, so what I'm trying to say here is that, uh, I just, I don't, I'm always surprised by other people doing things. The, the, like, I don't quite have a sense of her. I know that my life is relatively small and what's coming in and what's going out is, is, is, is, uh, is finite. There's a context to it. I don't stay in touch with the

big picture unless it comes up on my newsfeed in terms of peers doing things or unless I hear things. But there's some part of me that's always surprised when people are doing things because some part of my brain thinks that because I don't hear of something going on, that it's just not happening. It's sort of like the opposite of FOMO. Whatever the inverse of fear of missing out is, I have that. And what I have after that feeling is like, oh, I had no idea anybody in the world was doing anything, you know, other than, you know, what my direct experience is. And I'm

always pleasantly surprised that not everybody every day is just not functioning or on some sort of pause mode. And, but sadly, as soon as I hear somebody doing something or something going on, I'm like, then I go right into FOMO. And I'm just sort of like, how did I miss everything? Like an example, that's sort of a stretch, but I, you know, I started watching Rami Youssef show because I'm going to talk to him eventually. And also I had the same experience when I was watching Dead Ringers, because I was going to talk to Rachel Weisz, is that, you know you know both of these shows like Rami's show has been on for three seasons and I kind of knew about him and I kind of I kind of knew the show was there

but not really so then I watched his comedy special was pretty good and then I watched his show and like this is fucking amazing and I'm just overwhelmed with some sort of relief and gratitude that great things are being made by diverse communities, by ethnically diverse communities. I watched a season and a half or so of Rami, of Rami Youssef's show. And I realized I'm a grown man, I'm 59 years old, and I had no idea what the lives of Muslim Americans are like, or someone brought up by first-generation Muslim Americans, or immigrants, or what being Muslim in even a casual sense was like. You know, you assume a religion's a religion, but, you know, I didn't know anything about the Egyptian American experience. And on some level, why would I? But my first thought is, well, God damn it, am I just old?

Am I out of the loop? I mean, how did I not know this? Well, why would I know it? It was the same experience with Reservation Dogs. Well, I knew that show was one of a kind, first of its kind, of a Native American owned and operated and created show. But I was like, this is a whole world of of life that I had no sense of. And in a different sense, you know, Dead Bringers is different in that, you know, it deals specifically with a sort of spectrum of women's issues around reproductive rights and treatment in a way. So like I have this weird thing where I'm like, I had no idea any of this was going on. It must be because I'm old, but also as Brendan pointed out to me, it was more because a lot of people, their life is, they go to work, they come home, they eat, and they watch TV for a few hours.

Many people watch three or four shows a week, if not more. I barely watch television. I don't know what I'm doing. I guess I'm working. I guess I'm out doing comedy. I guess I'm taking in movies. But I don't really watch shows regularly that often. And I certainly generally, outside of succession, am not on the pulse of what the culture is up to.

It seems like a lot of people are watching that and that's pretty great. But these other shows are hitting me in a different way where I'm like some part, it gives me hope somehow it's a weird thing. And I'll probably talk about this again. You know, when I talked to Rami, it just sort of like it gives me hope that these voices are out there in the face of what we're kind of dealing with as a country politically.

It makes me happy that. That it's happening, that these voices are being heard, that there's something about the nature of entertainment and their need for content, streaming content, that a good deal of money is being spent on content or shows or limited series that are provocative, progressive, aggressive, new, extreme in a way. And I keep seeing them as some sort of political reaction. Maybe they're not. You know, it's not like everybody's going to watch Rami or everybody's going to watch Underground Railroad, which is another example of this. But I think that given the nature of the political situation we're in, that these are voices. I mean, I'm not going out into the streets

or maybe I'm being, maybe I'm just being some weird, excitable old man that's just sort of learning about something, you know, but we're in a world where like the Montana state house just voted to bar the state's only transgender lawmaker from the house floor for the remainder of the legislative season because they spoke out in defense of their constituents and in defense of their gender status. And they were shut down by the state government being part of the state government. It happened in Tennessee. So this is what is happening, a sort of aggressive, shameless, driven fascism that has no patience or desire for democracy. And I have thought about this before, and I'm going to think about it again out loud, that once you remove tolerance from the national discourse or political discourse, there's no hope for democracy. When you just have assholes doubling down on drawing lines

and shutting another party out without debate, without respect, without tolerance. There's no future for democracy. So when I see shows that I think represent voices that aren't generally heard or aren't generally integrated into the entertainment paradigm, I think it's some grand political statement. But I don't even know if it's big enough. Hopefully there's other things that will guarantee the future of democracy. But in a lot of states, the shit is coming down. Abortion restrictions and bannings in some sort of hope, I guess, on their part to populate the state with like-minded people. Maybe they have a better shot at enforcing fascism with people who were born unwanted, unparented properly, poorly parented, angry. born unwanted, unparented properly, poorly parented, angry. Maybe they're just thinking of the long game of harnessing that anger to their political means and othering anyone who

doesn't believe like them. So that on some level, and maybe I'm being too sort of a old man lefty ish. I think that these voices are resoundingly political, even though it's just a limited series. I may have jumped a gun in my reaction to my blood numbers. I know this is maybe only an ongoing tale for the people that might be interested, who are of a certain age that are obsessed mildly or totally with their health. But because I was given my test results without doctor commentary, I assumed that an LDL cholesterol, bad cholesterol, they call it, of 102 was bad. And after doing a little more research, I found that

after talking to my friend James, who is an amateur doctor, who said, he asked me about my triglycerides. And when I told him that my triglycerides were 54, he was like, holy shit, what are you worried about? You're healthy as fuck. And when I told him about my good cholesterol, 72, he was like, oh my God. But I was only preoccupied with the red 102 and the flagging of my test results before doctor input that I was on the bad path. But apparently, according to the doctor, everything's normal. I guess there's a ratio to all this and that my total cholesterol of 185 is fine, if not good. But because I'm me, I'm still going to reach out to my cardiologist to make sure, given my history of arterial plaque, that I'm okay.

heck that I'm okay. So I guess this is all to say I will be remaining a vegan for the undetermined future or whatever that word is that you put there for the indeterminate. I don't know. What is the word? See, how's it going to help my brain? So look, this show, The White House Plumbers, which premieres Monday night, May 1st at 9 p.m. on HBO, and it'll be streaming on HBO Max, is pretty great. I enjoyed it. Learned new things. Watched some good acting. It was very precise about the time period. It's a great show.

And David Mandel, he's the director and producer of this new show. And I talked to him about writing comedy and other things, life stuff. So this is me talking to David Mandel. 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 So no, you can't get snowballs on Uber Eats. But meatballs, mozzarella balls, and arancini balls?

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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 you think, where would we have met? When were you?

I was at SNL 92 to 95. And I guess I, and then I was also friends, and he was, I guess, my mentor a bit, Al Franken. Oh, yeah. And then obviously you guys crossed over sort of in the air. Yeah, but that was until 2004, so 95. No, but I felt somewhere in there when, because like-

I was around. Because there was that moment where like Sarah Silverman and Dave Attell were on the show, and I felt like stand-ups and people were coming to the show, the Afro party. Yeah, I don't think- I could be wrong. I never went to an Afro party,

and I never went to the show, but I was definitely around. I think Luna Lounge started in the mid-90s. Okay. You never did stand-up though? No, never. Yeah, the closest I ever came was I gave the humor oration at my college graduation and that was it for me.

Yeah. Always comedy, right? Yeah. Where'd you grow up though? New York City, 70th and West End. Really? Yeah. The whole time?

Whole time. My folks are still there, Lincoln Towers. Really? Yeah. And so you're a New York kid. Yeah. Where'd you grow up though? New York City, 70th and West End. Really? Yeah. The whole time? Whole time. My folks are still there, Lincoln Towers. Really? Yeah. And so you're a New York kid. Yeah. I mean, it's middle-class projects. Yeah, yeah.

What were your folks in? My dad to this day, because he's one of those guys that just, he's going to go to his office until the day they carry him out. He's 1938. That's my dad too, 84. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. And he just office every day, sometimes on Saturdays too.

Oh, good. And he's like, you know, trust in the state. What goes on there? Nothing. Calls and piles of paper. What's his job? He sort of has, he does taxes and trusts in estates and he still has clients that are even older than him that he's helping. Wow. Yes, exactly. But, you know, it's like,

I don't know what he does there. Is it one of those old offices? It's not because his old office like eventually just sort of shut down. So he found some newer, younger people that like he rents an office from them kind of a thing. So he's like the old guy in the hip work. Yes. I don't know if it's that hip, but yeah, he is definitely the old guy that occasionally

they come in and go like, hey, we have a tax question. And your mom, was she? She was a teacher. She started as a public school teacher. So you remember the old New York. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Public school teacher in New York.

Yeah. I mean, we're talking, and I'm not making this up. The first, I think it was her first principal that she ever worked for. And I will preface this with this guy eventually, I think, murdered his wife and went to prison. And I will preface this with this guy eventually, I think, murdered his wife and went to prison. But he on day one of her getting there, he explained to her that the best method was you back a kid up against a locker basically. And then you flinch at them, but you don't touch them. But then they hit their own heads on the back of the locker. And that's how you get away with it. That was day one of public school teaching. In terms of disciplining? Disciplining and how to, that was his theory on education. And that guy ended up killing his wife? Yes, I believe so.

And yeah, exactly. Excellent story. Yeah. We try, we try. Bring a little New York to your show. And you have siblings? I got a younger sister, yeah. So where did, so you're just running around the city when you were a kid?

Yeah, yeah. Just running around. That was like your, it's amazing when, so you're just running around the city when you were a kid? Yeah, yeah. Just running around. That was like your, it's amazing when, that there was a time in New York where you grew up there. Like parents are just like, because I got, my buddy Sam's a teacher up at Columbia. Okay. He's got this New York kid. Yeah. Two New York kids.

And they're different than any other kid. It is so different. And when I take my kids back to, I don't think about it out here, but when we go back to visit my folks, and as I said, they're still there, 70th and West End. Like when I watch my children walk on the street, oblivious, oblivious, as if everyone's going to move, as if the traffic isn't there and whatever. And it's, it's a different species. And I do it out here. And my wife laughs at me out here because I'm constantly like, not that we're on the streets that much, but I'm constantly like, like seeing something and moving to one side, like, like, like way ahead or like all of a sudden my hands in my pocket because I'm a little nervous, like someone's coming near us or something like that.

And she of course thinks it's hilarious because she grew up in Maine where like basically right now you could drive to her parents' in Maine the door is open it is unlocked yeah and those kind of places you just got to worry about the one guy yes exactly and they all know who he is it's so-and-so's son you know what I mean yeah yeah yeah but uh but yeah I mean there's this uh there's when New York City is your backyard you have a sensibility my buddies and I and I was talking with one of them the other day, we used to go like, you know, our Friday nights, there was always a movie involved and then different places.

And one way or another, we'd end up at like, you know, bleaker bobs or something like that. But one of the things we used to love to do, and it was so crazy. And we were, we were sort of sometimes trying to write stuff. We didn't know what we were doing. You know, we were just sort of playing around with shit yeah but we would go to the uh the hyatt on 42nd uh across from the chrysler building the one the grand hyatt there yeah we'd sit in the lobby and we'd sort of shoot the shit and play around with ideas and then we would kind of mark the prostitutes the high-end

prostitutes basically the guy would come down the elevator meet her and meet her in the lobby yeah take her up and then come down like an hour later without his jacket. And that was like a Friday night in New York City. Before you could drink. Yes. I'm talking like we're 16. This is what we're doing. That sounds like the perfect- Counting prostitutes. Of course, that's what you'd be doing. Yeah, why not? You got to be creative. Where do you want to hang out?

That was our early comedy attempts. Yes. But we're close, I think, in age. So you kind of remember, and as I get older now, I kind of remember there was a menace to, because I used to go to New Jersey to visit my grandmother when I grew up in New Mexico, but all my people are Jersey. Take the bus into Port Authority at 14 years old and just spend the day in the city. Yeah. And it was more dangerous then.

What I remember. Menacing. And I don't know if you had this because of, again, this was living there at the time, which was as I got older, I had these borders that would disappear. So like when I was a little kid, it was like I was on 70th and it was just like not allowed past 72nd. Right. Then it was 86th. Then it was 96, I was on 70th. It was just like not allowed past 72nd. Right. Then it was 86th.

Then it was 96th. Yeah. And it, honestly, it never went past 96th. Like my parents didn't care what I did below 96th Street, but it was like, don't go above 96th Street. Unless you're going to Columbia. Yeah, exactly. But I was not going to Columbia.

So yeah, exactly. But it was like literally just do not go above 96. That was the slightly racist interpretation of town. Exactly. Of the city. Yes, exactly. But, I mean, it's nice up there now. And it was nice up there then in some places.

Well, now I have like friends, you know, from high school. And one day they'll go, oh, we just bought a place. And I'm like, oh, where is it? And they'll go like, you know, oh, it's 187th. And my initial instinct, I go like, wait, what? And then I go there and I go, oh my God, this is incredible or wherever it is. But that's where, like, what is that called up there? Is that like Spite and Dival or the Bronx?

You're kind of right in that area there. Yeah, I thought there was a name of that area. There may be. I forget. Yeah, but it's nice up there. Yes, it is. Yeah. But when we were kids in the 70s. Child me, it just seemed like the Warriors or something.

Oh, that's funny. But in the 70s, it felt a little more dangerous. Oh, yeah. And I was, I mean, I've been mugged more times than I care to count. Really? Oh, yeah. We got mugged on the subway. You did?

Got mugged. When you were a kid? Oh, yeah. Because I went to school up in the Bronx. I went to school. I went to private school up in Riverdale. Riverdale. Is that what I'm thinking of?

Oh, is that what you were thinking of? Okay. Sorry. Yeah. So the Archie comics, but not the real one. And I had a school bus. But if we finished early, we could go home. You know, we could take the subway.

Yeah. The one, basically. It was right up there. Yeah. And, you know, rode home and, you know, got mugged twice, you know, and they took, like, what little money I had in my pocket. So they'd roll the kids. Yes, exactly. Yeah.

And one other time I had a buddy, and this wasn't even, like, we're not talking, like, Nikes or Air Jordans, but they took his sneakers and they took his jacket and just, you know, shit like that. That's a nightmare. Yeah. But by the way, that was, it was sort of normalizing in its own weird way. Yeah. Like it's all, New York's the only place where that's not traumatized.

Right. No, I feel like I'm. It's a rite of passage. My crazy father at some point had some kind of a BB gun pulled on him. Yeah.

On like, like on like, I think like 70th. Yeah. By this like a school park that was there. There's a, there's a playground.

Now it's, it's a great, but it used to be like a troublesome spot. Yeah. And they pulled a BB gun on him, and he told us the story where he just basically went, get that out of my face, and just pushed it to the side and kept going, and they just let him be because it wasn't worth it. And that's the New York that doesn't exist anymore, but that's us.

Yeah, it's very funny. There are still, like, it is interesting, I go back there, but there are still true New Yorkers around. I don't know if they live in the city anymore or what, but apparently your folks still do. They're there. That generation of people is still around. And there are people in that building. Yeah. You know, cause it's, you know, non-evict.

Yeah. Yeah. Oh yeah. So there's rent control. Now it's like, now it's like it's, it's become a condo, but my folks are still like renting and it's like they're paying. There's somebody waiting for them to leave. They get every month, like the owners send them a letter offering them more money to leave. But it's like, one, where are they going?

There's nowhere else in New York they could go. I love them, but I don't want them coming out here. Yeah, sure. So it's like, you know, whatever. And it is what it is. But they have a three-bedroom apartment and a parking spot for less than. Like 800 bucks? Yeah.

It's like crazy. Yeah. Like less than anybody's paying for anything on earth. Yeah. Yeah. It's so nice that they have those laws to protect them. Yes. So when do you start,

were you aware of SNL when it started? Yeah. I mean, not probably when it started, started. Like 76. Yeah.

I have those vague memories of like, you know, Belushi doing the samurai and stuff like that. Yeah. What I do remember, this is going to sound very weird sideways in, my elementary school used to have these like book fair that. Yeah. What I do remember, this is going to sound very weird sideways in,

my elementary school used to have these book fairs. Yeah. And in like 76 or 77, they published the SNL script book. Yeah, I remember that. It had Franco on the cover. Franco on the cover. I have that book.

And I bought that book at the book fair. Yeah. And that was when I started, I became, I'm not even sure I 100% knew what I was buying. But you saw what scripts looked like. Yes, that was when I started, I became, I didn't, I'm not even sure I a hundred percent knew what I was buying. But you saw what scripts look like. Yes. Saw what scripts look like.

Saw more importantly than that, the handwritten notes on the scripts and the crossouts and stuff. And I definitely, I want to be really, sorry, this sounds silly. I want to be clear about this. Yeah. I don't think I was ever thinking like, I'm going to be a writer. Sure. about this. I don't think I was ever thinking like, I'm going to be a writer. There's nothing like that. But I was fascinated by entertainment, comedy, and process. Well, yeah. I mean, I definitely had that same experience with that book.

I mean, I still have my copy. I have my copy. It's sitting in my parents' bookshelf in my old room that, by the way, looks like I died in a boating accident in Ordinary People, and it's like a shrine to me. Yeah, it looks like I died, and it's a shrine, yeah. God forbid it becomes that. But, yeah. No, that's interesting that it's a pristine environment, the old room.

Why don't you go get your shit? I got most of the shit. When you open the closets and stuff, it's their shit. But the stuff on the walls and the bookshelves, it looks like my room. It's like when Albert Brooks in that movie Mother, when he goes and gets all his stuff out of the closet and puts it back up there.

Puts it back, yeah. I don't have to put it back. It's just there. You know, that movie on paper was tremendous, I bet. There are scenes in there. There's that grocery scene early on where they're in and keep bumping into her friends and whatever. There are moments in there. There's that grocery scene early on where they're in and keep bumping into her friends

and whatever. There are moments in there. But, yeah. I thought the moment of discovery that she had enough, because that's an interesting moment for any kid

to realize that their parents had a life before them. Had a life and maybe dreams. And maybe did things and didn't change their paths and stuff.

And disappointment. Yes. I thought that was a kind of an amazing part of that movie. I think, as funny as he is, I think he might have been too old for that part. Oh, that's interesting. I never thought about that. Because she was great.

She was incredible. And he was like a little, you know, he's him. Yes. And, you know, it was written for him and by him, but I don't know if he wasn't too old for that one. I wonder, this is going to sound strange, is obviously he's always him, right? Yeah. He's always him. But like, that was almost one where a little bit of the him, the usual shtick about his

cars and all of, let me drive, you know, whatever, almost ever so slightly got in the way of the really interesting premise. Well, yeah, he was supposed to be a sci-fi writer. Yeah. Yeah. Right? And he accepted never quite. Right. Because he can't get out of his sht premise. Well, yeah, he was supposed to be a sci-fi writer. Yeah. Yeah, right? And he accepted never quite. Right, because he can't get out of his shtick.

Right. But the shtick works in all the other ones. Yeah. No, I agree. But, you know, but like when I think of that movie. But anyway, getting back to that. Sorry, yeah. Oh, no, it was me.

It doesn't matter. Getting back to that book, I'm trying to remember now why I was so fascinated with it because I was a huge fan of the show when I was a kid. And there was something about any sort of way into that show. Well, there was two things. One was the lateness of it. And my parents were

the gatekeepers, in a way. Right, and they let me... They occasionally let me see it, but not all the time. Right. It wasn't a school night. It wasn't a school night, but it was... How old are you, 58? No, I'm fortunately, no, 52 going on three. I look like hell. Oh, that's all right. I'm 59.

So you were really young. Yes, I was really young. So it was very forbidden fruit and also very special occasions. I remember being at a friend's house away and my parents were like, you're allowed to watch it. way and my parents were like you can you're allowed to watch it so for though like i said that that sort of belushi cast it was here and there but it was also like oh my god what is this yeah yeah yeah and then my real true first cast was really like you know eddie murphy where i watched every week you know what i mean we're a week in week out yeah exactly so or i guess even late little late elementary school because Cause he was what? 82?

I don't know. Yeah. So, so I'm 12. Yeah. I mean, I just, uh, I remember that it was, uh, that, that original cast was a total obsession of mine. And that book, like seeing that there was this whole other world behind, it was, I think that's what it is, is you don't really realize that when you're a kid. And then when you realize it, it's like, it's a whole other world. I wasn't thinking about being a writer or any of that stuff, but I just, I have no idea. I think I was going to be a lawyer or something because, you know, again, Upper West, yeah, exactly. Upper West Side kid. Um, you know, my, I'm to this day, the great disappointment with my folks,

it sounds like a terrible cliche. Do they understand how much money you make? They don't understand anything. I'll tell you two things. It's this, their, their sense of status is interfering with the the the reality that you're making a living it but even the living they don't like i remember being at snl and under contract yeah and i think my first year went well or my second year well i don't know whatever it was and i was my agent was like we're going to renegotiate and i tried to say to my father they're renegotiating my contract. Right. And he was like, I don't understand. You have a contract.

Yeah. And I just was like, I know, but. Yeah. Yeah. But we were shooting in New York on Veep. Yeah. We were shooting like basically two weeks. And my mom came to the set.

Yeah. For the first time. Yeah. And it was a scene like at a front door. Selena went in with, you know like julia went in with like tony hale yeah whatever and we did it like you know like a normal thing we did it like you know six times and as we did it you know as always i was making changes to it you know we did it like two times i made some changes we changed some timing changed the line yeah kind of locked it in it was good whatever whatever and my mother when it was all said and done, was just like, oh, I had no idea you did it that many times and you make changes. And by the way, this was like six years ago. I had already been doing it for a very long time. Yeah. Yeah. Well, how would they know? Yeah. I mean, they would come to like SNL. Right. My mother was a huge Alec Baldwin fan. So always came whenever he hosted. She loved that. And I guess what I was, I was, here was the good news.

I always had a job. I know that sounds silly, but I, so I never was a comedy writer going, hey, mom and dad, I'm working on scripts and I'm hoping to move to LA and whatever. I graduated from college with a job. That job led to SNL. SNL led to Seinfeld. I was never, in those early years,

unemployed. Yeah. So even as confused as they were, they never had anything. You never asked them for money. Never asked them for money and never,

and there was nothing they could complain about because it was just, here's another job. Right, but they still, and sometimes when they don't know the show you're working on,

I mean, you were working on big shows. They knew the shows. They knew the shows. That's good. Yeah. I mean, my, you know, I had like a, I had great, you know, grandparents you're working on. I mean, you were working on big shows. They knew the shows. They knew the shows. That's good. Yeah. I mean, my, you know, I had like a, I had great, you know, grandparents at the time

who are now like long gone. New Yorkers? Yeah, New Yorkers. Yeah. 72nd and Central Park West next to the, next to the Dakota. And their take on John Lennon's assassination, basically being, you know, killed,

assassinated or whatever, was there was just a lot of noise. That was just a very noisy, just not really worth it. So, but, you know, killed, assassinated, whatever, was there was just a lot of noise. That was just a very noisy, just not really worth it. Yeah. So, but, you know, they wore their Seinfeld hats with like a badge of honor

to tell anyone and everyone that their grandson was working on, you know, Seinfeld. So how did you, like, where did you go to school that you got a job right out of school? Okay, here we go. Harvard, Harvard Lampoon.

Are you familiar with my... Let's say I'm familiar with your work and your show and whatever, so go for it. Well, no, I got nothing. I mean, like, you know, but there is some sort of element of... I don't know. It's not – it wouldn't be – there is an element of the aristocracy. Yes. And the nature of brotherhoods or fraternal orders of comedy that include women, whereas people from Harvard who moved through that system call people from that system when they get out of school, and those people say,

yeah, come work here. I don't, look, I never called anybody, but obviously there were advantages to it. I don't know what else to say. No, I mean, I get it, but what was the process for you? The process for me, which was sort of different, was, but again, there are certainly advantages, was, look, I was, by the time I got to college, I didn't know what the Harvard Lampoon was. But at that point, I was very comedy obsessed.

I knew what the National Lampoon was, but I hadn't put it together. I didn't understand it. So your obsession with comedy started in junior high? Yeah, exactly. With SNL? SNL, that first script book leads to the Hill and Weingard backstage history of Saturday Night Live, which I devoured and memorized. Yeah, yeah. And then my mom's old comedy albums, you know, so I had like Vaughn Meter, First Family.

That's not even a great one. It's okay. No, not hers, but someone turned me on and, again, in junior high, handed me Woody Allen stand-up comic. That album. That tape is great. Incredible. Incredible. Yeah.

Steve, I'll put Mr. Allen on the phone. And I wouldn't drink vodka. I wouldn't drink it. Whatever. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So I was very obsessed with that. Like I said, my mom had these comedy albums. She was a fan.

And she loved movies and TV. So she was the one that would take me to like, there was that revival theater on 68th and Broadway. She was the one that was taking me to like Hitchcock revivals, all that kind of stuff. So I was just into movies and television. Again, the existence of those revival houses, you know, is really gone.

Completely gone. I mean, obviously we have a couple of theaters here, but it's just not the same. Well, yeah, not the same as like, you know, well, I mean, Tarantino's Place is doing a relatively, you know, a new double feature every night. Yes. But, you know, it's curated through him,

so you're going to get that. But like, yeah, those theaters where it was just, you know, every week, every day, it was different movies.

And there was something fascinating, and this is such an odd thing because obviously you want Tarantino's theater to have success so that he keeps it open. Right.

But there was something to be said for the fact that when you went to those New York theaters, they were always empty or like there'd be like seven people in them. You're probably going

during the day. Yeah, which is not a great business. Right. But it was great. But it seemed like a great business. I looked, man. I went to see The In-Laws the other night at Carantino Theater. It was packed.

Oh, wow. And there was a lot of people that had never seen it before. So there was all these fresh laughs. I love that. I love that. Oh, it's great. It's such a funny fucking movie. Oh, yeah.

Okay. Now, is it, now, can they not do that again or is it just because I have some deep nostalgia for those particular actors? I mean, you're a guy that generates all this comedy, and you generate good comedy. But you watch Falk and Arkin together, and it's a ridiculous comedy. But it's deeply funny, and there's some part of me that goes, like, they don't make them like that anymore. They don't. They don't. What is it that they don't do?

I don't think they're interested. First of all, they're not even interested. I mean, they're like two older guys. They're not even interested. I feel like even if they made a comedy, they're not interested in two guys in their 40s. When they do try to do it, like the remake, they kind of ruined it somehow. They ruined it. They ruined it.

And it's a weird thing because that movie, the original one, there are parts of it that are huge. Yeah. Like all that stuff about, yeah, broad, like the tsetse flies and the general. He's doing it on purpose,

but the general is very big. Yeah, for sure. That whole thing down there. But it's hilarious. Yeah. Well, that's because of Libertini. Yeah, but it works.

Of course. But that's a testament to that performer. But I'm almost saying, like, I feel like if you tried to put that in a script, they would stop you. Like, just the tonal, not that it's a full tonal shift, but it all of a sudden. But there was some of that in your movie, in The Dictator. We tried, but again, I'm not sure that didn't land the way that landed. Yeah, and I guess there was something very specific about Libertini's craziness. The velvet paintings.

Kindness to it, yeah. The velvet paintings. I mean, come on, dude. That was crazy. And the way Arkin is forced to constantly be complimenting it is just so wonderful. And he shows him the flag, the new flag. Dude, that was crazy. It was very striking, General.

There's two million. There's two million! There's two million! There's another 20! There's another 10 million! For whatever reason, I'm always obsessed with Billy and Bing, the two pilots, the two Chinese pilots. The best. They'd have been huge if we had,

if Kang Chiang Kai-shek had ever gotten back to the mainland. Yeah. It's like that kind of thing. Yeah, I don't even know who wrote that. Hiller directed it, right? No, Hiller directed it. Is that an early Andrew Bergman? I want to say it is.

I want to say it is. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. But getting back to those revival houses. So your grandmother's taking you. My mom's taking me. Your mom's taking me. Yeah.

And so it's all of that. It's SNL. Yeah. And then the biggie also, it's Letterman. Of course. I don't have a bedtime. From the beginning. I don't have a bedtime.

Yeah. And so i'm watching the 12 30 show i'm i i'm watching carson and i hate to say often not watching carson i'm watching the odd couple and i'm watching the honeymooners or sometimes mash instead of carson and then i'm putting on letterman right and those sketches early on were great just obsessed with it on a level of you know would write for tickets and all of that kind of stuff. I went twice and I don't know if you remember, they used to have, you know, they do the bumpers. And at some point or another, they made these like late night with David Letterman, like kind of collegiate looking jackets.

Like, like, yeah, yeah, yeah. I remember. That was my, like, when I was a kid, I was like, I want one of those jackets. Like, not, not, I want to work there. Just, I just, that was my, like, when I was a kid, I was like, I want one of those jackets. Like, not again. Not I want to work there. Just. Sure. I just, that was like my obsession was, can I get one of these jackets?

Never got a jacket. You never got a jacket? Never got a jacket. So you're taking all that shit in. Oh, yeah. Seeing the old movie. But this is the kind of thing that was available to us. It was there.

And it wasn't, I mean, look, I guess it's available on the lawn. Yeah, I know. But it's different. There's something about being brought. There's something about having the experience. When there was only three networks and you were in on something, you know, you felt like, and you would, you know, you'd know like, oh my God, Bill Murray's coming on and he's going to do something. Yeah, exactly.

And also a lot of those comics that I don't even remember all their names, but those guys that, you know, Letterman loved that he would have. Like Larry Miller and Jay early on. Oh yeah, exactly. Liberty Lewis. Lewis all the time. Coming, doing the panel. And I'm like, you know, and again, and I was got into Stan.

Gary Mule Deer. I didn't do stand up, but I got, I was into it. So like I saw Richard Lewis at Carnegie Hall. Like I, I was a. Oh, you went down there? Oh yeah. I was a paying customer. How was that?

Oh, it was incredible. Who'd you go with? Your mom? No, went with my, my buddy. When was this? When you were in high school? 88, 87, something like that, I think. Yeah.

So end of high school. Oh, how was he? Incredible. It's like, I think, something like that, I think. Yeah, so end of high school. Oh, how was he? Incredible. It's like, I think, because, you know, later on, I got to tell him, you know, I saw you there. And I think he thinks of it as one of his truly, I think he considers it one of his.

Because it was important for him to be there. Well, it was Carnegie Hall, obviously. But also, I think he knows how good he was that night. Oh, good. Yeah, yeah. Because I fucking blew it at Carnegie Hall. Did you really? Well, I didn't bomb, but it was, you know,

I could have been a little tighter. Gotcha. So, all right, so you're obsessed with comedy. So I'm obsessed with comedy. I get to Harvard. Yeah. Just to take you back. I get to Harvard, and all of a sudden,

like literally freshman, I'm like, there's this Harvard Lampoon thing. Which you knew the history of. A little bit, but not really. You knew, like, what I knew, which is, like, that's not National Lampoon thing. Which you knew the history of? A little bit, but not really. You knew like what I knew, which is like, that's not National Lampoon, but the guys were there most of the time.

I'm not even sure I fully knew that. I think I almost learned that when I got there. I put two and two together. Like I knew there was National Lampoon. And then I went, oh, I see there's this guy, Doug Kenny. And I knew the Doug Kenny name. And then I put it together.

And so instantly I'm like, I got to get, yeah, exactly. So I got to get into, I want to be in that thing. And again, I'm not, we're not talking about, I want to be a comedy writer because I'm going to be a doctor. But then Lampin was a club. It's, you know, part club, part magazine. I was definitely, as they say, more on the magazine side than the club side. You know, it's a strange building that's filled with sort of, you know, people like me that are somewhat on the spectrum, right? Yeah.

Comedy. Yeah. And then there are people there that are there for the club part of it. Yeah. I mean, they gave me the honorary whatever. Oh, cool. Okay. But like, you know, I don't drink.

Right. And there's just these kids who are like, you know, I'm going to go through these rituals. And it felt like, I felt bad because I, you bad because I played along, but I don't know that. I was like, what are you kids doing? Like all of a sudden the age difference becomes a big thing. It's like, oh, my God, you're children. Yeah. So, all right, so you're writing.

So I go there. I get in. And by the way, it takes me a little to get in. I don't get in. It's not like I did it. What, do you have to submit? You submit, like basically three pieces of writing, and then you get to the second round and another three pieces. And it took me a couple of times. I was figuring shit out. I'll be honest. Right.

And I can, I still have all my stuff. I can, I know my bad stuff and I know my goods, you know, it got better. Um, but I got in and that's, and then that became my college. Like I didn't go to class. I stopped going to class, I stopped going to classes. I was just there. I was writing as much as I could. Summer between my junior and senior year, the Lampoon did a project with Comedy Central called MTV Give Me Back My Life.

It was a fake 10th anniversary documentary and a bunch of- Of MTV. Of MTV on Comedy central that they promised us MTV was going to cooperate with and they did not. Yeah. Nothing. Zero. Sort of in the same family. It was the same building Viacom family synergy, but just zero, just nothing. Yeah. So, um, but I, we wrote it and then I went down to New York with it and kind of shepherded it through production with two other guys, Jeff Schaefer and Alec Berg, who later on became my writing partners. And we kind of went down and we were beyond hooked.

I mean, it was like, this is what I want to do with my life. And then I had to go back for senior year, which was really weird. Yeah. Because I was. You already got your head in show business. Yeah. They were done. They were seniors.

They had graduated. They basically came, they moved to LA and I had to go back to college. So you met all these guys that you work with now? I mean, I don't, we don't currently work together, but we worked together for many years. But yes, we met a lot of the guys. Yeah. We met at the Land Food. So that's the way it goes.

Whether you're shepherded in by older members or you just meet each other. Yes. And also, like, you know, you got to be fairly bright to get into Harvard. of the people who went there with the people who were in there is that they, there's an ambition that is taught that I don't know if it was as much. I think back in your day, it was assumed that if you were in Harvard, that you would do what you needed to do.

But I, it seems now that it definitely is infusing people with a type of ambition. I'll go one step further. And again, I start to sound like the old man, like in my day. Look, when I was there, I think, you know, look, I think the magazine itself, just to talk about the actual thing that I was supposed to be doing. Are you pre-Conan or is Conan with you? He's before me. He's earlier.

And at that point, he's like, I don't even think he's i think at that point he's at snl so the simpsons hasn't quite started yet right but when the simpsons does start that became everyone's goal like the simpsons was like that was the dream yeah um but what i was going to say was well i guess two things one was like i look at the magazine now you know they put out yeah they still put the magazine out and it's when i when I look at it, I see lots of, I always laugh and I tease them about it. I talk to the kids from time to time. And I say to them, it's all short dialogue pieces because they're, they're trying to write scripts, even in the magazine. And I constantly say, stop doing that. It's a magazine, parody things, do books. You know, I mean, I know this is going to sound silly, but when my,

things, do books. I mean, I know this is going to sound silly, but when I got into the lampoon, my pieces, I did a Tom Clancy parody. I mean, again, I'm not sitting here going, it was incredible. I'm just simply saying I did a parody of a book at the time as opposed to basically trying to write sketches. Because I wasn't thinking about, I wasn't thinking about, I'm going to get in there and get a job. And I definitely think, yeah, they do think like that. What I will say, if I may, in defense of the organization for one second, it is being in a writer's room before you're ever in a writer's room. And coming out of that place, having had the shitty ideas beaten out of you and encouraging you. And again, sometimes in a bad way, because it definitely brings out the alpha comedy in you, but the encouraging you to, and again, a bit of a cliche to the, to the idea that

thinking outside the box, the idea that someone else isn't going to think about when you then do get into the real world, you are steps ahead. And that's the difference. It's not a collaborator and getting used to collaboration, but also go one step further. Getting used to having people like dump on your stuff and learning to take criticism. Where I have been on so many shows where young writers have never been criticized because they were the funniest kid and they were the funniest this and now they're hired. And no one ever told them this is garbage. And what happens when you do that?

Well, some of them shatter and never work again. And some of them learn, you know, but it's a, it's a weird combination. Yeah. But do some of them buckle and have to leave? They buckle and leave. Yeah. On the first show, when I worked at Seinfeld, um, I got hired along with two other guys and one guy, it was his first gig.

It was his first job. Yeah. And not because of the criticism thing. It just, it was his first job and it didn't go well. And he was let go and then he figured it all out and he's gone on to an incredibly great career. Yeah. And he's hilarious. Yeah. But the problem wasn't his writing.

Yeah. The problem at the time was just sort of like he'd never been around like other comedy people and stuff. Busting his balls. Yeah, exactly. It was just like life. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It was a life experience. And like I said, that when I look back now, that is what I think of as what the Lampoon's actual advantage was.

Oh, okay. It was like having a job. Yeah. Even though I wasn't technically, it's like, you know, I don't know, like college ball or something. Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, that makes sense. So you get out of school and you go to SNL? I get out of school. I go back to Comedy Central that summer. We do Al Franken hosts Indecision 92, which is comedy coverage of the Democratic. I had met him the summer before on the, he was a, what was the word? He was a consultant. And so I had met him the summer before on the, he was a, he was a, what was the word?

He was a consultant. Yeah. And so I had met him during the MTV show. And then he hired me on, he and Billy Kimball hired me on for Indecision 92. And that was, again, all those commie central people like Mary Salter. And I know you knew some of those folks. He's so funny, Al. Hilarious.

And that's what, is that where you enter politics? Yeah. Yeah. I mean, again, New York kid, you know, but, you know, we had one party. But that's where I start to get into the nitty gritty. Of writing political humor. Of writing political humor. And of also, by the way, sometimes as simple as just by actually reading through, you know, like, for example, like what these people

are saying and then, and actually finding the humor in what they actually said. You're not even, not even really necessarily crafting a joke unto itself, but you're actually, you start reading the stuff. Yeah. I was good at that. Yeah. At sniffing out the simple thing. Yes.

Like, like, isn't that, don't those two things fight each other? I mean, that's, it was funny when he was questioning, like when he was on the judiciary committee, I was always laughing because I was like, this is like his old sort of stand up, except it wasn't. But so funny. Always funny. Yeah. He basically took me to SNL and, you know, I, I, look, I was a writer, but I learned

to write with and from Al. Yeah. I mean, and we wrote some stuff that I. For Indecision. No, well, yes, on Indecision, but it was when I really got to SNL. So that was his second go at SNL or he'd been there? He. I can't, I don't know what his timeline is.

You know, he'd been there till like 1980 when I guess Lorne left the first time. Yeah. And then he'd come back in 85. Okay. And this was now 92. And he was there that long? Oh, yeah. The second time around, he was there forever.

But not the head writer? You know, there was no head writer at that point. Jim Downey was sort of the, I guess, producer head writer. Yeah. And I was there for three years, 92 to 90. Who were the cast? When I got there, the main cast was still Dana, Phil, Kevin Nealon, like those guys. Yeah.

And then one by one, they started leaving. And at that point, it was sort of the rise of Sandler, Farley, Spade, and Schneider. Right. So I was sort of there in that flex time. Yeah. Yeah. So early on in 92, Phil was doing, uh, like Clinton. Yeah.

Dana was doing Ross Perot and Bush. Yeah. And then by the end, those guys left and we had, we had, you know, I remember we had trouble. We didn't have, like, we didn't have a Clinton. Right. We didn't have. Daryl wasn't there.

People doing, no, it was before Daryl. Yeah. So we, you know, it was like we, at some point, Michael McKeon ended up doing Clinton during that one year he was there. And this was when the cast ballooned up to like 20 people and he added like McKinney, Lauren's still there.

He added like McKinney, McKeon, Janine, Chris Elliott on top of everybody was there. It was sort of a nightmare. And that was it for me. Sarah, David Tell, Jay Moore. I mean, everybody was there. It was sort of a nightmare. Sarah. And that was that for me. Sarah, Dave Attell, Jay Moore. I mean, it was big. Norm. It was huge.

Yeah. It was like 20 people in the cast. And so what was that experience like? Wonderful and awful. Yeah. I mean, has anyone ever said anything different? I mean, it's the best job and the worst fucking job ever. I don't think most people cop to it being the worst.

Okay. Most people, especially on camera most people cop to it being the worst. Okay. Most people, especially on camera, people are very diplomatic about the, uh, the family. I loved every second of it, but you know,

my first year I walked around in fear. I mean, I, you know, I, I, I, I've said this to him,

you know, like to Lauren, it's like the first year I was there, my initial deal, you know, you're there like on a 13 week deal. Yeah. He did not speak to me during, he spoke to me once during those first 13 weeks where he said something to me, like, are you having a good time? But he said it in a weird way. Like,

I didn't say everything in a weird way, I guess a little bit, but he said it to me. Like, I felt like, Oh, am I like, I just felt like I'm, I'm, I'm fucking up and this is awful. And I don't know, you know, and I've got, you know, he was vague in his tone and he threw a wrench into the Jewish brain. Yeah. It just, and it's all I could think about. It just kept me up at night. I'm done. And at the end of that season, at the end, at the final party, he said, see you next year. And I went and I like unclenched and I went, okay. And then I felt like I was there, but you know, it was, it was miserable. It was long. The hours were crazy. We were, you know, sleeping there through, you know, three nights a week. And there was always

the politics of, you know, you'd kill yourself and someone wouldn't be there, but they were working on a movie for Lorne and they would pop in. And, and I did a lot of scut work and I was happy to do it. What kind of work? Like scut work. Like, like,

like, you know, the crap, like I did stuff no one wanted to do. So I was writing monologues week after week after week. No one wants to do that. Why? Cause you're,

you're up there with people that often like, I'm not talking about like I was writing it for standups. I, you know, it's like Nicole Kidman freaked out about doing comedy and convincing her she's going to come running in and do the risky business tom cruise opening you know what i mean like shit like that yeah where there's no there's not a great upside to it it's very there's like four monologues like let's not count stand-ups.

Like, let's not count like Chappelle going on and doing his stand-up. Well, that wasn't totally the, that was rare. Yes. What I was going to say is in the history of monologue monologues, there's like two or three that maybe a diehard fan like remembers as, these are great. Most of the time, it's just nothing. Yeah. You know what I mean?

Yeah. And it's not fun work. You just want to get them in. You want to get them in, humanize them. Right. Most of the time it's just nothing. Yeah. You know what I mean? Yeah. And it's not fun work. You just want to get them in. You want to get them in, humanize them. Right. Make them comfortable. In some ways it's as much for the host to get them used to the audience and let them make the connection as it is for the audience

to go the other way. And the live event. Yes. And get them into it and then excited. Yeah. But it's very rare that anyone thinks the monologue was so great. Sure, sure. But so you were there for three years? Three years, which, you know, it's like SNL dog years. I mean, that's where I started going gray, basically.

Right. And by the end of it, I was going to those after parties. Yeah. I was going to the after after party. I was very aware that I was drinking i mean i not not we weren't we're not talking about like like a problem right but it felt like i remember being aware like why am i going to a party and drinking as someone who didn't even drink i had one drink in high school yeah got to college yeah was never a big drinker. And yet all of a sudden now, I'm like, this is not good.

You know what I mean? Like you're aware of yourself. You're probably hanging out with some real players. Some wonderful degenerates. Yeah, sure. You know, we were playing like blackjack at some weird after after hours blackjack club near Bloomingdale's with Norm MacDonald. But like, and it was fun yeah yeah but

you know what i mean sure you realize like that this might shorten my life yeah and let me go one and then i would go home i get home at like you know five in the morning but you're not married yet no i'm not married i'm actually this is very embarrassing i'm actually still living i was living at my home still i was living with my folks um so i get home at 5 a.m it was like it was like a weird like billy wilder comedy where we shared an apartment and never saw each other yeah you know what i mean because like yeah i'd come home at 5 a.m i'd go to sleep by the time i woke up they were gone yeah and then i would get up get my day going and leave before they ever would get home and we're just like i I, but I had, you know, that, but what I was gonna say was I would

get home at like 5am. I put a, I, I taped the show every Saturday and I would, before I went to bed at five in the morning, I would watch the episode. And unfortunately, especially in that last season, they, they, they weren't great. They weren't good. I don't know what to say. They just weren't good. And that was depressing.

Especially it was depressing when we would leave the show thinking it was good because it's deceptive with the live audience and whatnot you know yeah and it wasn't good and i knew it wasn't great and it was yeah it was that sucked that feeling just fucking sucked yeah and i don't know it was making me crazy i don't know what else to say. And at the time, they were beginning to give me things. I was getting like, I produced a special, little things that they, I got to be the producer on a Mother's Day special. So, what's the word I'm looking for? My role was being recognized, but I was not happy. And I'd learned a tremendous amount i got i mean

i got to learn from al and from jim downey yeah and i mean and also for writing for people oh yes absolutely and i'll go the other thing about snl that people don't talk about you are like the mini producer director showrunner of your sketch whatever you want to call it sure so coming out of snl and going to la to work on sitcoms, I knew how to talk to a director. I knew how to talk to an actor. I knew how to edit. I mean, I learned all these things at SNL that the average, whatever they call them, like baby writer, staff writer has no idea. And by the way, you might work on a show for five years and never go in the edit room. But I was doing my own edits at three in the morning. Right. You know, so.

Sure. Yeah. It was just like, so I wouldn't change a goddamn thing about it, but I was definitely not happy by the end of it. Yeah. Well, it's interesting that, you know, that coming out of standup and then, and I've talked about this before that, that, you know, your experience, you know, gave you this full spectrum of work experience. And also like people who come out of sketch learn how to write and collaborate and direct. You know, that's another thing. Because you almost can't not pick it up.

Sure. Yeah. Yeah. So, what, you just come to L.A.? This is the first time you leave your parents' house? Is it after three years at SNL? It is. But, you know, I, but again, you know, why my parents never had a nervous breakdown.

Basically, I was putting together, I'll back it up a little bit. I was coming out to LA on the breaks. The SNL would do two shows and have two weeks off. So I was coming out to LA and I was hanging out at the Seinfeld offices because- Because you knew who? Uh, Schaefer and Berg, who I had mentioned before, they're now writers at Seinfeld. What season towards the end? This is season six. Out of? Nine. Okay. So Larry's still there. Yeah.

So I'm going, I'm staying at their place and I'm basically going to work with them every morning because by the way. Just to hang around. Well, also I don't drive. Yeah. I'm a real New Yorker. I don't drive. I drive now.

You drove now. I drive now. I drive now. Yeah. I saw that. Sorry you drove. No, I really do drive, but I did not get my driver's license till 95. Yeah a real New Yorker. I don't drive. I drive now. I drive now. Yeah. I saw that. I really do drive, but I did not get my driver's license till 95. Yeah. Real New Yorker.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I used to have a non-driver's ID, a New York state non-driver's ID. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Of course.

And a passport. Yeah. Which was really, really impressive. So I used to just come out. I would go to work with them. Yeah. And I would have breakfast and lunch with all the Seinfeld folks. And I was like the special guest.

Yeah. And everybody there had worked at SNL or been around SNL at some point. So I would tell amusing stories about, you know, Lorne and stuff. Yeah, yeah. And everyone would do their impressions and all that kind of shit. Well, this is the club. Yeah. A little bit of the club.

But not a Lampoon club. Right. Different club. Right. Different club. Yeah. And. Couple Lampoon.

Couple Lampoon. But it was funny. Larry had no idea, which is a funny thing about he'd had Gamal and Pross were there and he had no idea that they were in the lampoon and Schaefer and Berg were in the lampoon, but he had no idea about that either. Yeah. And when he hired me, I don't think he knew I knew them, but he didn't necessarily, you know, that it was like this other for him.

What was he, why did he hire you? Um, well, I honestly, I think I was a Yankee fan from New York and it just seemed like pretty, like, like he liked me because the honest answer, and I think this is an okay thing to tell. Um, so I was putting ideas together because there was this moment actually where Larry was not even going to come back to the show. There was a moment where he was renegotiating. So I was working on ideas.

going to come back to the show. There was a moment where he was renegotiating. So I was working on ideas. And then at the final show of that 95 season, he came to New York and he said to me, send me some ideas. I re you know, I re-signed, I'm going to go back to the show, send me some ideas. And he was going off to Europe. And then about two weeks later, he came back from Europe and he called and he goes, I want to hire you. And I go, but I didn't send you any ideas yet. He goes, it's okay. And then I moved out to LA and I got out here and I was putting together my pitch for my first whatever. And whatever, I can't remember what I pitched him. Story. I pitched him something.

Yeah. That was all. And I said, blah, blah, blah. And he goes, was that on your list? And I went, yeah. And he goes, I would have hired you. That's funny. After he did already. Yeah. I'd already been you. That's funny. After he did already.

Yeah. I'd already been working for about a month. Yeah. So, but you got a bunch of story credits, script credits on that? Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. No, I mean, once I was there, I was there and I was like, you know,

what am I going to say? I was good at it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But, you know, it's funny. When did Larry leave? After eight? He was there for my first full year. Okay.

So he left after seven. Okay. And then we did eight and nine without Larry, of which I think eight's really good. Yeah. Nine is a little more hit and miss. Yeah? Yeah. It was time to end it.

And then so now you have a relationship with Larry. Yeah. And that kind of takes you to the next place? It does and it doesn't. I mean, it certainly does in this because he, you know, let's put, you know, whatever, like, Franken and Downey over here for, like, early writing. Right. Larry teaches me how to write a sitcom. Oh, he does?

There's no other way of saying it. He teaches me how to outline a sitcom. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I am outlining to this day the same way he taught me to do it. Which is how? Well, the first thing that happened, which I've never forgotten was I had an act one on the board. Yeah.

So you get your four stories approved. You get your, you know, your Jerry, you get four individual stories approved. And once you have them approved, all four approved, you, you, I put up my act one and he came in and he took my act one and he just kind of turned it into two scenes like just stepped on the garbage can and shoved it all down and it was all there but just mushed down into two scenes so now imagine if you think about what my all of a sudden what i thought my act break was is basically the end of scene two and whatever i thought i was heading towards as an end of a show yeah is barely even the end of act one yeah which just did two things one every scene advances the plot if the scenes are

if the show if the scenes are not advancing the plot it's not a scene yeah you have to move stuff in so plot is always advancing so that's number one and number two, by forcing what I thought the ending was into like the middle, you're just forced to explore these other areas that you perhaps would not have initially thought to explore. Especially when you look at a regular sitcom where, you know, they're arguing about, I don't know, like taking out the trash for like, you know, 30 minutes, you know, whatever. Yeah. So that was Larry's style. That was Larryry that was larry and then you know and how he ran the show which is very much because he'd never worked at a sitcom he'd never been in you know whatever there was no writer's room right individual writers got credit for the script that they wrote and pitched the ideas for none of that

you pitched the idea but it's his turn to write it oh yeah none of that nonsense but it's still group think on the fleshing out on the board not even that much of that oh really usually if there were issues larry and jerry would call us in and say hey this isn't working we're going to split some scenes up everyone write a scene or whatever so there was some of that yeah but there was none of that sitting in a room. We would have conversations about stories, but never that, that writer's assistant writing beats down. None of that.

None of that group outlining, whatever. Now that changed when Larry left, there was definitely, it became a, who came in? Nobody. We basically,

we all sort of just rose up a little bit. And so what would happen was Jerry would kind of have like two or three of us and the writer almost doing like a, I guess like a mini room, I guess. So still not the crazy giant like sitcom shitty room. Yeah. Which I, to this day, I don't care for. I think, look, rooms are great for punching stuff up. You can make something funnier with a big group of really funny people.

Right. But the notion of writing from scratch in a group room, which is how a lot of sitcoms are written, I just find, I cannot stand it. It's exhausting. It's exhausting, but also it's fake. You get these like joke-like substances and you get these like room laughs that aren't real laughs. And then they all go into the show. Yeah. And nothing, nothing is, nothing's real. Right. And obviously Seinfeld is heightened, but yet there is reality to it.

You have defined characters. That aren't shallow. Yeah. Right. So, you know, you have to honor that. You know, these aren't just puppets. I mean, most sitcoms are puppet people. Very puppet people who just say whatever they're saying because of whatever's now going on with the garbage or we're trying to get to the joke.

Right. Yes, exactly. So, but like you do a couple movies. What happens is, so coming off of Seinfeld, we all sign these big development deals because we're all like, you know, we're like Seinfeld writers. We all sign these development deals and they don't make any of our shows. Yeah. Because they didn't actually want what we had. They just wanted to hold on to you.

Yeah. They would tell us what Seinfeld was. Yeah. Yeah. You know, shit like that. But what happened at the time was, it was funny, all of a sudden started getting calls from movie people who were initially looking for Punch-Up and then it went further where they were looking to take some of their comedies and they wanted them, We were looking for someone to, you know, make it funnier,

like Seinfeld. Yeah. A lot of punch ups. Exactly. So Jeff Alec and I started doing punch up together, like sort of, I don't know, part time while we were trying to do our TV stuff. This is uncredited revision. Uncredited early on. And then eventually, I mean, not credited, but eventually credited, but like not credited but eventually credited but like you know but like you know paid real work yeah writers guild real true work yeah um and then eventually we started getting an opportunity to pitch on things and you know and that all kind of whatever and it was this weird thing where we wanted to do television almost couldn't do television yeah and i ended up doing i was like I think I came in like second,

I managed to do, I did an, I did a clerk's animated cartoon with Kevin Smith of which two episodes aired on ABC and I'm the second most successful of the Seinfeld writer development deals that got stuff on the air. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. And then, but, but eventually what, uh,

what was Euro trip? Euro trip is a teen comedy from, uh, 2004, um, with nudity and everything, like a real old school R rated comedy where we were doing all this punch up. We were doing a lot of this stuff and we were also getting into this sort of

situation, which was interesting where they were sometimes bringing us in early on and then bringing us in in the editing going can you fix this in the edit room like and i'm not even talking about we want to reshoot i'm talking about can you just look at what we have and put it together and we'd be in these situations and we'd be like yeah sure what's your coverage well they decide to do it in a one well then you it's unfixable you can't fix it and once in a blue moon we're like wait a second there's another scene in that set are there cutaways there oh my god okay let's steal those cutaways and we would fix stuff yeah but somewhere in there we were like we're these comedy directors are awful like the like the the comedy director seemed like a very low bar well what were they when you really break it down?

They weren't funny at the end. They just, they didn't seem funny. It wasn't a matter of pacing? It was just they weren't funny people? They were not funny people. They did not seem to understand the joke. Therefore they had trouble capturing the joke on camera. Literally. Sometimes

you would just go, this doesn't work. You know, again, like we're talking about a cutaway. This doesn't work if you can't pace it up with a cutaway. Or this doesn't work if I can't see that guy's face. Right. Because what's funny isn't what he's saying. What's funny is him reacting to it. No sense of.

No sense of what comedy was. No sense of how it worked. Yeah. And also sometimes just tonally wrong so that they were, oh man, did you get another performance where he's not so big and so sweaty and shit like that? And they just thought, you know, comedy was for them bleached out lighting and everyone yelling. And there was just a lot of that kind of stuff. So you guys decided to do your own. So we were just like, we want to direct.

And what we realized was no one is going to let us direct because we've never directed. Right. Unless we basically write a script, a spec script and sell it and basically force them to let us. So it was sort of, we wrote a spec script. There was a, you know, people wanted it. There was a bidding war. Yeah. And we more or less said, we don't care about the money.

Yeah. We want to direct and we want a, what they call. Who you co-directed? Yeah. Me, schaefer and berg the same the same three you directed all three i did although only jeff got the credit the director's guild wouldn't give us the shared credits we picked out of a but you were it's a learning thing yes it was fantastic i mean it's awful and fantastic you know i change almost every frame of it and i love it at the same time what can i tell you but we definitely learned yeah but

you know it was things like i remember once i kid you not we the three of us and not in it at the same time. What can I tell you? But we definitely learned. But, you know, it was things like, I remember once, I kid you not, we, the three of us, and not in front of the crew or anything, just amongst ourselves, we had a giant argument about a suitcase that one of the characters, like, knocked on a door with. And all I can tell you in the final cut is, you don't even see the suitcase. We're above it.

But you know what I mean? It was just shit like that. You know what I mean? But you, yeah. Yeah, you work it out. But we learned. And when we came back from Eurotrip, when Eurotrip was released, and it was over in seven seconds. That morning, they just told us, you're coming in fourth. You're coming in behind the third week of Adam Sandler and Drew Barrymore. Welcome to Moose Ports beating you and this other thing, too.

It was over. Yeah. And we literally could not get arrested. Like, like, like all of a sudden, like no one wanted, like they'd let us write, but certainly no one was thinking like you can direct again. It was none of that. Yeah. And the honest answer was Larry was like, Hey, I've got this office space over at Curb

and we're like, Hey, we could really use the office yeah and he's like do you mind if i come in from now and then and run shit by you which we were occasionally doing like having lunch with him and he was doing that once in a blue moon the three of us yeah and we were like yeah sure that sounds great and so i can't remember what season that was it was the season uh i think where larry ends up giving his kidney to Richard Lewis. Right. I lose track of the season. That sounds right.

And basically, we hung out in his offices. Yeah. We worked on our stuff. We were writing. People were letting us write movies. Yeah. And we were trying to write things that we were hoping we might get a chance to direct. And Larry would knock on the door and we would, you know, help stuff and whatever.

So what was that? But with, and then, what, then he hired you? Well, we were, it was funny. We were just doing it. We were literally just doing it. It was just. But you're getting credit? Well, no, at the time, no.

Oh. And at the end of the year, at some point HBO reached out and they were like, hey, we realize what you're doing. Yeah. We want to, you know, we, we want to make this official. We were really touched. We were like, Oh, this is, this is great. And they're like, okay, here you go.

And they paid us. I want, we did 10 episodes. They gave us each a thousand dollars, a hundred an episode and no credit. It was just, they wanted to make sure they legally owned what we had come up with. But you know what? We were fine with it and Larry finished, Larry finished,

like Larry came in one day as only Larry can and was just like, it was like when we had nine episodes and he was like, so we're going to start production. We need the offices.

You guys got to get out. Yeah. It was just like, okay, bye Larry. And we went off and we did some, you know,

we got our own offices and we were doing stuff and then about a year later or whenever it was two years later, forgive me, he was doing the next season. And Larry Charles, who had been another Seinfeld guy who had been directing and working with him on Curve was going off to do. You were on Seinfeld with Charles? No, he had left the year before me, but he would show up from time to time. So he was going off to do Borat, I think. And so Larry then said, hey, do you guys want to come back and be Larry Charles?

And we said, can we direct? And he said, absolutely. And then we came back sort of more, I don't know what the word is, officially. The three of us. And we started directing and writing the show with him. Now, what is the process of that? I don't know that I've ever talking about it with anybody specifically. So was it mostly stories?

Before you ever get to the, you know, whatever, it's all, it's pitching stories. You know, and we all used to, and this was the Seinfeld training, you know, I'm sure you did it too. We all walked around with that little pad of paper, you know, in weird little scraps where you just write odd things people said, or, oh my God, that guy yelled at me at the Best Buy, you know, good guys at the time. Curb guys. Yeah, exactly. Curb Seinfeld-esque stuff. And I've still got that shit. It's on my phone now. You know what I mean? Like. Like, I saw one yesterday. Sorry, I'll tell you this.

I don't know why. But I, like, wrote it down. I was like, I wish I could call Larry, but I think they're done. Yeah. It was a guy, kind of license plate. Yeah. And I guess he was, it was retired. So it was like R-E-T, like, I-R-D-D.

Yeah. All I could think of was, boy, if they didn't put that other I there and it looked like it was retarded, that would be the greatest license plate in the world. And I just, you write that down. Yeah. All I could think of was, boy, if they didn't put that other I there and it looked like it was retarded, that would be the greatest license plate in the world. And I just could write that down. I took a picture of it. I wrote it down. Yeah. And it's just like that.

That's what I used to want to run with. Yeah. That's the nature of that specific style of Seinfeldian writing or Larry David writing is like you could run a whole episode through the license plate. Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. And it's also, and the great Curb and Seinfeld episodes, they all start with real.

Yeah. It's all stuff. My, my best Seinfeld episode is an episode called the Bizarro Jerry. Yeah. And in it, there's man hands. Jerry dates this woman with man hands. Yeah.

That's my wife. She doesn't have man hands. She has farmy hands. She called them, but I changed it with man hands. That's my wife. She doesn't have man hands. She has farmy hands, she called them. But I changed it to man hands. She grew up on a farm. She had like always had like rough hands. I turned them into giant man hands played by like a, you know, a key grip. You know, like, so you saw this beautiful woman and the hands were a crew guy.

But every, all the great ones are real and that includes the larry stuff you know like the contest which was him and yeah you know all the stuff from his life but all our stuff the great stuff are just yeah real life yes yeah yeah yeah moments stories people things i think the last season of curb was all founded in in some pretty sorted stuff yeah that really happened yeah i mean but that's what's insane and incredible yeah yeah so early on you're just talking about ideas you know and he's you know going through his pad and stuff and you're also trying to figure out the theme the overarching like what's of the 10 episodes like what's gonna happen right and some of them were

very natural so that like when when larry had the the the black song we introduced the blacks and this idea that cheryl was going to leave him which at the time was this answer to this huge question because you know people that don't like curb or even people that like it are just always like how does she stay with him yeah and it was sort of like well let's let's lean into that yeah and so we went down that path and then that led to him going, well, now what if he wants to get her back? And then that was the Seinfeld reunion year. So sometimes the stories, you know, one led to another. And then sometimes they were just, you know, these bigger ideas.

Like, again, the producers predates me. Yeah. But that sort of was a standalone idea. Yeah. Right. So you're working about, you know, you're talking to him about these things. And sometimes, look, I am the first to admit this. Sometimes we're just the, we're just the, the, the wall.

Yeah. We're just the wall. And he gets to be, he gets to bounce the ball off of us. Yeah. And that's cool. I'm fine being the wall. And then sometimes we get to throw, you know, we throw stuff in. And then as you start going and you start working on the outline, because again, it's

all outline, outline, outline. You're trying to figure out what could happen. You're looking for these connections. And it's just us sitting with him and we're just talking it through, talking it through, talking it through. And it's just finding that outline that is, again, you want that perfect everything colliding at the end. But ultimately, it also has to be you're dealing, you're dealing with improvising actors, right? Well, we're not even up to that. So right now, this is just in the office.

Yeah. And so when we have this outline that Larry basically, eventually just goes through his hand, he does it. Oftentimes, the outline is the outline, but we've all got stuff that we remember joking about,

but we didn't put in the outline because we've all got stuff that we remember joking about yeah but we didn't put in the outline because we want the uh the actors to have yeah to have sort of that blank canvas yeah so this and this is what is the incredible part especially by the way about directing yeah because you with no offense to the other directors who have directed on the show that are not the writers of the show but when we were the writer-directors, it is the closest thing that I can explain to you. It was like live rewriting. If you told me that it was just we were rewriting

and they were broadcasting, that is what it felt like. Because you are directing, you are trying to move the camera to capture these moments, and at the same time, you are whispering things to actors, you are, try this, we're remembering things from the discussion. Hey, Larry, do you remember that? Yeah.

And then sometimes it's just shit that happens. So like we're shooting somewhere. We were shooting like in Malibu and Larry sees a dolphin and he goes, oh my God, a dolphin in the middle of the scene. And there's no, you know, there's no, you know, there's no, we were shooting once in a restaurant. I kid you not. in a restaurant. I kid you not. And while we were shooting in the restaurant, the guy behind us,

the guy who worked there, changed the letter, the cleanliness letter from an A to a B while we're sitting there shooting. And you just kind of go like, how does this, how do you not?

You know what I mean? One time he and Garland drank from each other, like Larry drank both waters. And then the entire scene, and I couldn't tell you what the scene was originally about, but the entire scene came about, became about the information that needed to be delivered.

Yeah. And well, now we need more water and that's the show, but it is like a live rewrite. Right. It's a, it's a, it's a organic thing in it.

It's a, it grows as you're doing it. Yes, it grows. And as the director, you're running. Initially, we had two cameras. Later on, three, sometimes even four. But you got one on Larry at all times. I mean, that's how I learned to direct, really.

And also, there's a sensibility around directing improvisation is you kind of have to edit in your head. You're editing in your head. You're sort of thinking about it, but especially on Curb, you are always thinking, you know, we were talking about that a little bit before with the bad directors, not Curb directors, but bad comedy directors. Sometimes so much of the comedy is someone saying something and either a drift over to someone's reaction or the reaction itself that like watching Susie react to larry is funnier than whatever it is larry is saying sometimes yeah and so you're trying to figure that out and like larry

charles you know again talking about what people taught me larry charles like laid it out really quickly you know like this is how you direct curb yeah keep one camera on larry all the time and you'll figure out what the other camera does you know what i mean it's like thank you lc i mean i get it i get it here but there were moments were just, I remember one time we're shooting in New York. Um, we did a New York season or half a season in New York and I was on a truck with Larry Charles. We were towing a car and basically the whole storyline was there was something wrong with the front seat of Larry's car. And when the guy did the mechanic, Robert Smigel didn't fix it, um, because he was mad at Larry because Larry had fucked up in the softball game. It was a whole, you know, all these things. So, but basically, the front seat, the passenger seat is vibrating so much

that women are orgasming from the front seat. Yeah. And he ends up with Susie in his car, who, and he tries to get her to sit in the back seat, but she won't because they got to get somewhere and she gets in the front seat. And, you know, and of course she's just starting to whatever. And he's getting, she's kind of coming, but he's, and he's getting horrified and upset. And, you know, we did, you know, regular kind of the coverage thing. And then we started doing ones.

And I remember just doing it with Larry Charles where we were, were and we were we talked about like we had the camera guy it wasn't even like go go go it was just just just move between the two of them as fast as you humanly can just and it's one of my like favorite things but there's no plan to that. Do you know what I mean? It is an organic growth. Yeah, it's happening. But it's organic writing, performance, and directing just all mushing together. Right. And that's why it was the best. And if that happens, it's great.

Yes. So let's get to, well, I mean, you wrote a few movies. The Dictator wasn't well-received, but it was good in concept. I mean, I think there's wrote a few movies. The Dictator was, didn't get, wasn't well received, but it was good in concept. It's a, I mean, I think there's good stuff there. It was a funny thing. We'd worked with Sasha. We actually had pitched on, we ended up coming in and helping Larry Charles and Sasha with the ending to the original Borat. We actually pitched what became the Borat.

And so then he was like, hey, I want you to pitch me some ideas. And we really liked the Dictator idea. I don i don't know it got it gets silly in places and there were some higher bigger democracy ideas that i think we shied away from in the editing what do you mean like i i think there was we there was a little bit more of an indictment and it's in there a bit that that a foreign dictatorship and the American democratic system were perhaps not as different as we like to think. Oh, interesting. And also the fact that America and in this, I think in our movie, we had like Russian

gas or something or like gas problem and stuff. We're also supporting this crazy guy in that sort of, you know, FDR kind of, well, he's an asshole, but he's our asshole. You know what I mean? You think you could have hit that hard? I think we could have hit some of that harder. Yeah. Especially given, you know, in what happened in retrospect.

Yes. And then like on, on Veep, you, you did the last two seasons? I did the last three seasons. So when Armando decided to go. What did he say to you? It was interesting. You know, Armando's incredible. Yeah.

And it was really cool. He genuinely seemed happy that the show was continuing. Yeah. And that they had gone out and recruited me for it. Yeah. As opposed to, I guess, some schmuck. Yeah. And that was the nicest thing in the world.

And I, we spoke on the phone. I went out to London, met him, met a lot schmuck. Yeah. And that was the nicest thing in the world. And I, we spoke on the phone. I went out to London, met him, met a lot of his team. Yeah. We ended up going up to like the Montreal Comedy Festival and sort of doing like a chat together. And this was before, like I hadn't even really taken over. Yeah, yeah. I had the gig, but like, you know, we hadn't made a show yet.

And he was just so, I don't know what to say. Like there were so many versions of this where he could have been such an asshole. And he was so, not just, not just that he was nothing. He was just so wonderful and complimentary. And they're his babies. And I was always aware of it. And I, I cannot tell you how many times I, in interviews, I always had to stop and just go, I didn't create the show. It was created by Armando Iannucci.

I'm just the, I get to bring it on home. Yeah. And it just, you know, and that was important to me. And it was important to me in general, but also how good he was to me and about it. So these are well-established characters done by great comedic actors. Now, and that was a totally scripted show. Yes and no. We had the scripts and, you know, obviously same thing, a little bit like Curb in the sense of the planning of the entire season, the really lockdown, whatever. I had scripts. I think when Armando did it, there were scripts, but they were definitely, they would,

there was more improv. There just, there just was. And there were times where I think for, and again, I don't want to tell stories out of school where I think they had things where they weren't quite sure and they just tried stuff and they improv rehearsals and then took scripts out of those improv rehearsals. That ain't me.

I mean, I did a lot of that on curb, but I like to have, and let me just go back to Curb for three seconds. If you took one of those Curb outlines that I was telling you about, because those are like a 12 page document, you could turn that into a script in under 24 hours. Yeah. That's how rock solid those outlines were.

Right. Okay. Thorough. So they are not, people over the years all tried to do Curb. They were all like, it's going to be Curb in the music industry, Curb here, Curb there. And they were all garbage because it was like, they had no stories and they had no outline.

It was just more like, we'll show up in the studio and we'll improv. No, it doesn't fucking work like that. Yeah. So with Veep, you know, a hardcore 10 episode plan, you know, of the season. Arc. Arc that also, I always like knowing plan, you know, of the season arc that also,

I always like knowing what my first scene is of the season. I like knowing what my last scene is of the season. And therefore, because I know what my last scene in my season is, I know what the first season, first scene of the next season is, which, you know, and so I'm always trying to think like that. And there were hardcore scripts. Now that being said, hardcore scripts, I have a killer just group of writers and on the set,'s just throw that in. Let's not worry about what people hear or don't hear. Let's just fucking do it. Yeah, load it up. And load it up unbelievably so. And then absolutely would sometimes in a scene,

I don't want to say always like one for fun. Yeah. But sometimes at the end, like we'd get into the coverage and I would just go stand behind the camera and just yell new lines out. Throw stuff out. I would just say, say what you want just yell new lines out, throw stuff out. I would just say, say what you want, do what.

And then they would say, you know, so we kept improv alive. Right. But it was definitely more scripted. Yeah, yes. Yes, yes. And you had to adjust to the Trump presidency. Well, Trump presidency basically hits in season two. Yeah.

And we kind of get a- Of your run. Of my run. Sorry, my run. I'm sorry. Yeah. So season, what is it? So it's five. Sorry, my run. I'm sorry. Yeah. So season, what is it? So it's five, six, and seven.

So season six. Yeah. And in our show, she had lost the presidency and was now former president of the United States, which I thought was, I was always very proud of that. I love the idea that you were doing a show called Veep about a former president of the United States. Sorry, I just did. Yeah.

But where I was going with it is the fact that she wasn't in office, we dodged a bullet doing a show about called veep about a former president sorry i just did yeah um but where i was going with it is the fact that she wasn't in office we dodged a bullet because technically she was dealing even though she was plotting a comeback yeah she we were dealing with presidential libraries and fundraising and might she get invited and be on the supreme court and all these kinds of things which thank God didn't mess and didn't bump up against Trump quite as much. When we came back for then, at that point, we eventually knew it was going to be the final season.

Yeah. And I don't know if you can remember this moment. When you think about those four years of Trump, as bad as year one was, when he got to that state of the union in year two, it's like he felt comfortable and it really got a lot worse. joke but luckily julia got cancer and we shut down and i rewrote basically the final season and really what i realized was what we had been planning was irrelevant in the world of trump yeah and that final season is it just is very trump influenced because of the what's his name running well if you it's just if you think, it's him running, but also her behavior as president. Where, where, how she is willing to use the power of the office, you know, in the sort of, you know, again, Nixonian, if the president does it, it's not illegal. And you have to, and when you think about what Veep was, if you were a fan of it, so much of it was she says the wrong thing and pays a price.

Well, all of a sudden there's a guy in the white house that doesn't seem like he's ever paying the price. Still. And a guy, and the show was, yeah, still exactly.

And there was a show about somebody who talks one way in public, but privately is foul mouthed and whatever. That's gone too. That, that weird Chinese wall, that paper wall, that's gone. He says what he wants. So all of the, I hate to say the first five, six seasons of Veep, if you actually look at it, they seem like they're from the 1800s.

It seems like from a different time. And so that final season, the behavior, we got the Chinese involved, the foreign powers. What it really became about is how much are you prepared to sell your soul to be present? Because look, I've always believed that if you decide to run for president, there's something wrong with you to begin with. There's something wrong with almost all politicians. Yeah. It's a weird thing.

I can't figure it out. It's whatever that drives you to be that guy. What do you think it is? I'm looking at this woman, you know, the one from Arizona, Carrie. Carrie Lake, yeah. What is that? Yeah. And by the way, and she also, I mean, just look at the transformation. She went from like newswoman, these people that have gone hardcore MAGA. But it's almost like that sort of power of positive thinking gone wrong.

It's almost like that. That's sort of that, you know, these new agey kind of Anthony Robbins wilt of power of positive thinking gone wrong. It's almost like that, that sort of that, you know, these new agey kind of Anthony Robbins will to power shit. Yes, that weird smile it, if I think it and I say it enough, it will happen. Yes, yeah. Like the promise or some nonsense. Right, that's right. That's right.

But it's like, but it is like pod people. It's like alien pod people. And look, I think a lot of the problem is Fox. I mean, I don't think these are original Fox. No, I know. But it's that thing of there's no one that you're doing it, but no longer is anyone, is there a system where anyone calls it on it? Because even if obviously the New York times, you know, my father was always like, aren't these people reading the op-ed in the New York times? No, they're not dad, you know? Yeah. that, it's like, it's that desire of like fame and importance, but also some weird,

like almost Jesus-like belief that you are that important. I don't even know. It's like, it's not even power when you start to really look at what these, you know. Well, but I think they think it's power. No, I know. But like when you look at the short-term grifts that some of the Trumpian cabinet was doing, like, you know, they're bending all these rules for $8,000. It's like, what the fuck is that?

Well, it's when stupid people are criminals. Yeah. I mean, that's, you know, and by the way, I mean, not that we're looking for, I mean, whenever you want to talk about it, but like Watergate, I mean, it's when stupid people are criminals. Well, this is a great thing because I watched the new series. I watched all of them. Oh, my gosh.

Oh, and no one told me that. Oh, yeah. I watched all of them. Fantastic. And it was great. It was a very interesting approach because I said to my producer, I said, you know, he's really portraying these two as clowns. And my producer goes, they were clowns.

Yes. That's exactly it. I've tried to explain this to people because, you know, obviously they put it up, you know, from the- This is Jay Gordon-Liddy and Howard Hunt and Howard Hunt yeah

you know they always are like you know from the whatever from the people from Veep and whatever and I've tried to make it clear we didn't write jokes yeah no

we just told a story yes that is fucking stupid in parts it's kind of yeah great

well I love those guys you know I think Harrelson and Thoreau did, you know, a great job. Everybody, the supporting cast,

it was all very funny and it was all based on truth. Yeah. And you just, but there's a sort of the underlying story, you know, outside of Watergate

was that, you know, Hunt was involved with the JFK assassination. It's basically, look, he was the CIA operative. He was there for Bay of Pigs. It was involved. You know, we say, you know, at the end, he may, on his deathbed, he may or may not have

confessed. Is that true? I believe, I believe in Rolling Stone magazine, it was printed that his son said he confessed. I believe. I want to be. Whatever that means. Exactly. What does that mean?

Yes, exactly. But I just really like the depiction of, you know, because you didn't involve Nixon that much. On purpose. And I'll tell you something interesting. I don't know if you'll care about this. Originally, I'd shot this thing where you were going to sort of get a weird, almost like tape, almost microphone view of Nixon, like under the desk. Like, like I wanted to see the tape recordings in the basement of the White House and then almost like come up and then like, you never see a face, but you'd

see the microphones and you would whatever. And what I realized was we only know about these tapes now. Nobody knew about them then. And Nixon, they didn't know what Nixon was thinking. And so why should the, I know this sounds silly, but it was very much about, this is not the White House story. These are these guys, they're being given this weird mission and they don't really know what to do.

And so in a weird way, Nixon is who they're working for, but they never got to meet him. They never had interactions. So why should- They were two people removed. Yeah. So why should the audience? Anyway, but they never got to meet him. They never had interactions. So why should people remove? Yeah. So why should the audience?

Anyway, it was just an interesting little thing. Yeah. But I get that. And that's the way sort of power works. And that's what these guys protect themselves. It's the way power works, the way the mafia works. It's also the way show business works. Yeah. That, you know, you get into the executive structure of things.

They're just deflecting. Right. Tell him to tell him to tell him. Because then I'm so like, I had nothing to do with that. But like I just the dynamic, the comedy team of Liddy and Hunt and that G. Gordon Liddy was this

sort of like ideological he was a nationalist guy and a team player and a guy who wanted Nixon's approval and Hunt was like this is the way this goes. It was a fascinating thing because Liddy at the time was desperate, desperate to be like. Part of it.

Part of it. But also like on some level wanted to be James Bond. Like he wants, he wants. And Hunt is the guy that's been through the ringer, may or may not have killed Kennedy, you know,, you know, but you know, yeah, exactly.

Or knew something about it. Yeah. And, but at the same time has been put out to pasture and he knows it's bullshit in some level, but yet he's also desperate. And his wife's an ex-operative. Yeah,

exactly. But he's desperate to get back to it. Yeah. And all that desperation is also, I think what fuels their relationship, but also they're both. So it makes it funny. But they're also both believers. Well, that's the thing.

It is very much. This is the story of the birth of the modern Republican Party. True believer. Sure. Where you don't worry about what it's doing to you or your family or anything in the name of a president that will basically cut bait on you and throw you to the side. I mean, it's the Michael Cohn story, but it's not Michael Cohn. You know what I mean?

And also, you know, there's something about, you know, the look of the thing's very good. The detail's very good. And also the sort of reality of technology at the time is very good. And these guys, what you just sort of had to do to sort of cover your ass was limited to the technology. But I like that there is a through line of conspiracy, you know, even at the time. And never answered, but certainly raising it. Yeah.

No, I thought it was great. It was very funny. And I'm glad we got to have the conversation. Yeah. No, this was fantastic. Thanks, buddy. Okay. So that was good.

I have no foresight. Occasionally I have moments of slight foreshadowing, but not much foresight. And I never plan to write, so I'm always happy to hear about how people do it and come about it and that life. His show, White House Plumbers, premieres Monday night, May 1st at 9 p.m. on HBO, streaming on HBO Max. Hang around for a second, will you people? 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. 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 5 p.m. in Rock City at torontorock.com. Okay, look, the full Marin is full of material that didn't make it into regular podcast episodes. There's extra stuff from J. Smith Cameron, Kelly Reichart, and Ray Romano.

Phil Rosenthal's been on, you know, Phil? I do. I do. I've interviewed Phil years ago in the other place. At the other, yeah, yeah, yeah. And now, like, you know, I pass by the eating show. Can I tell you how funny it is? It's funny.

You know, I love Phil. Me and Phil are friends. And I worked together for years. I wouldn't be here. He wouldn't be where he is without me. And I wouldn't be where I am without him. But, you know, he's always wanted to be on camera also. Right.

And he's a foodie. Yeah. And now he's living. It's like God came down and said, everything you want, I'm going to give you. Yeah. And he goes on tour now. He plays out theaters and all over the world and sells them out. Just talking about food or showing clips?

About the show, clips. There's a Q&A at the end. Somebody moderates it. And I did a guest appearance on one in Long Island. Yeah. And I came on. The crowd was into me, you know? Yeah.

And I said to Phil, I go, I got a question. How did this shit happen? Yeah. I go, I've been doing stand-up for 35 years. You go to Poland and eat meatloaf, and you're selling out theaters. And anyway, I stayed for the Q&A. Yeah. And I learned my lesson.

I'm going, if I ever do that again, leave before the Q&A. They didn't ask me one question. They didn't care. They didn't care. It's all Phil. And I love it. I mean, good for him, you know? Yeah.

It's all there at the Fulmerin. To sign up for the Fulmerin, click on the link in the episode description and you'll get all the weekly bonus content plus ad-free access to all WTF episodes. You can also go to WTFpod.com and click on WTF Plus. Next week, we have Titus Burgess on Monday. That's a heavy one. And comedian Shane Moss is back on Thursday to talk about his journey with bottoming out on psychedelics and his support of science in the face of lunacy, which I thought was a good conversation to have. That'll be Thursday.

And now I'm going to play, you know, you'll recognize it if you recognize it. Thank you. Thank you. ¶¶ Boomer lives. Monkey, Lafonda, cat angels everywhere. All right. All right.