WTF with Marc Maron Podcast - Episode 1587 - Billy Corben

Episode Date: October 31, 2024

Filmmaker Billy Corben got an early taste of show business as an aspiring child actor. That aborted career path eventually turned into a new vocation as a maker of documentary films, including celebrated projects like Cocaine Cowboys and The U. Billy and Marc talk about the persistent connection to Florida in Billy’s work and how his latest film, From Russia with Lev, is both a cautionary tale about the dangers of a Trump Administration and a meditation on the quintessential Florida Man.This episode is sponsored by the Freedom From Religion Foundation, dedicated to the rights of freethinkers and protecting the constitutional principle of Church and State. Visit FFRF.org/vote to get involved. Or text WTF to 511511 and receive a free issue of FFRF's newspaper, Freethought Today. 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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Apply to Algoma University today. All right. Let's do this. How are you? What the fuckers? What the fuck buddies? What the fuck,icks? What's happening? I'm Mark Marin This is my podcast. Welcome to it. You know, I'm shooting I'm recording these things a day or two ahead and My life has really been on set and

it's been pretty exciting and in a lot of ways. Because look, Michael McKean just signed on, Justin Long is in it. I knew this already, I've already worked with these guys. As you know, Lily Gladstone, Sharon Stone, Talia Ryder plays my daughter,

and Judy Greer today is just, come on, man. So many funny people. But I gotta be honest with you, Justin Long, who I didn't know, I haven't seen him in a while, you know, he's in dodgeball and a bunch of other stuff, seems like a funny guy, but he comes in to do this thing. He's playing an influencer who's already a little old to be an influencer, but you guys,

one of the funniest days I've ever had. I mean, to be around someone that just is so fucking funny, that all day long, we're riffing, we're improvising, and he's just doing shit, we're riffing we're improvising and he's just doing shit we're breaking up on camera all the fucking time and I was like this is amazing what why can't I have this every day in my life the laughter where's the fuckers that can make me laugh all day long where are they in my life it was just so so good. I mean, obviously, it makes it special

when it doesn't happen every day and all day long. And you know, you can't laugh all day, every day. You'd be a fucking moron. Maybe not. Maybe not. Maybe you'd be the happiest person in the world. I don't know. But it was great. And Michael McKean's a pro, and it's great to hang out with him, sit around, talk about music, movies, people he's worked with, he's playing my manager. That's what I've been doing. We've got a week and a half more. That's it, I'm a little punchy.

I'm a little punchy. Today on the show, I talked to Billy Corbin. Now this guy, he's a documentary filmmaker. And he first got noticed for his 2006 doc, Cocaine Cowboys, about the Miami drug trade. He just made the documentary From Russia with Lev, executive produced by Rachel Maddow. And the funny thing is, I've known this kid for a while because look, I know he's been making movies, these docs and stuff, but his mom and my mom were good friends down in Florida for years.

And I tell him this, I mean, for years, I had to hear about this kid. You know, his mother was always like, well, Billy's in Hollywood, Billy's doing this movie. Billy, and my mother's like, what about Billy? Do you know Billy? I'm like, all right, enough with the Billy kid. I get it, he's doing things.

But now he's like, he's down in Florida, and you know, he's got some, you know, a past in trying to be a child actor, which he was for a bit, but he makes good documentaries. And this documentary about Lev Parnas and the Ukraine debacle, where, you know, basically Trump during his presidency was trying to blackmail, he's trying to coerce the Ukrainian government to feed him some kind of dirt on

Biden or he wasn't gonna give them arms Okay, and he wanted a quid pro quo dirt and you get your stuff. This is like, you know aid That was the impeachable offense, but this character Lev Parnas is kind of sucked into Trump's orbit and he's just like this Guy it's I can't even explain it. The kind of experience it is to watch this guy being sort of this Trump acolyte and this Ukrainian national and his life and trying to do Trump's bidding in the Ukraine. It was like a clown show. But now he's, you know, he's reformed. And in terms of

how he's apologetic. And it has an interesting ending in terms of the conclusion and how he has come to Jesus' moment. It wasn't Jesus, but you know, it was, he woke up from the bad Trump dream. But yeah, it's a great documentary. I really enjoyed it and it was great to talk to Billy. Yeah, so you know, you guys know what to do. I would certainly vote for Kamala. I would do that so at least we can salvage what is left of decency and democracy and at least cultural representation. And I would try again, I'll say, to talk reason into your friends that are not voting at a protest or throwing their vote away And as you know how I feel and I've always felt Uh, this is not a democrat

and republican contest this is uh democrat and uh fascist movement contest You know, it's it's it's even it's hard to even act and fascist movement contest. You know, it's even, it's hard to even act normal.

It's just like one of these things where you go through your life and then you have that moment like, well, fuck, this is gonna happen next week, one way or the other. There's no stopping it. And it's really, you know, on the wire. I mean, it's fucking crazy

but it'll happen and I just cannot bear or begin to imagine the type of anxiety and aggravation and anger and just insanity of another four years of that fucking clown Trump and look at my opinion I've talked about it forever I've talked about fascism forever I've talked about whatever it's just I'm exhausted and it's happening just remember and I wrote this in the update which kind of got a little juice to it, because I put it up on the fucking whatever. But in the face of cultural annihilation, do not annihilate yourselves.

Do not take that on. Find a way through, find a way to hold on to your voice and live your fucking truth. Because if the worst happens, that's going to be the challenge. How do you hold on to your voice? Hold on to your fucking personal truth when everything you know

about what's right, wrong, and free is annihilated. Upbeat! That's all I'm doing. It's all upbeat from here on out. Look, Billy Corbin has done this movie from Russia with Lev. It's on the free streaming service Document documentary plus. You can watch it there. You just go to doc plus.com or get it on Apple TV, Roku and other platforms. It's a very good doc. It's almost endearing, but it is a very thorough sort of look at what a

fucking criminal Donald Trump is. And this is my conversation with Billy. We had a lovely talk. Hey folks, let your imagination soar by visiting audible.ca. Audible has the best selection of audiobooks without exception, along with popular podcasts and exclusive Audible originals,

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There's more to imagine when you listen. Sign up for a free 30 day Audible trial and your first audio book is free. Visit audible.ca. At Algoma University, your future has no limits. Here you can go further in the classroom, in the field and well beyond. We provide personalized education, cultural fluency, and training for in-demand careers.

We don't just prepare you for the future. We prepare you to change it. Plus, Algoma has the most affordable tuition in Ontario. Make the most of your university experience. Go further. Apply to Algoma University today. Now if I can just get your levels right. Check one, check two, loud ju, loud ju, ju cackle. Yeah, yeah, not yet. No radio cackles yet.

All right. P-pop, P-pop. Do you do enough radio to have figured out how to do the radio cackle? I sort of back up or I'll go. Right, but it's like, you just wait for the other two guys to laugh and go, ha ha ha, yeah. The other two guys, yeah. There's always the other two guys. I and go, ha ha ha, yeah, yeah, yeah. The other two guys, yeah.

There's always the other two guys. I used to do a joke about that, like, all morning radio. It's like, there's a main guy, a funny guy, and then a baffled woman. Ha ha ha ha ha. You know, and it sounds. It's the whole shtick. And it sounds like this.

It sounds like, ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba. Ha ha ha ha ha. Oh, fellas. Ha ha ha ha. Yeah. That's the structure. It sounds like this. It sounds like, buh-buh-buh-buh-buh-buh-buh-buh-buh. Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha! Oh, fellas. Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha! Yeah. Ha-ha-ha-ha! That's the structure.

Ah, morning radio. But you're not on the morning. No, I used to drop in on that show on a Friday show. Yeah. And I actually did it because the comedians were there promoting the improv. Yeah, that weekend. And so I would come around and just talk movies opening and I would just because the comedians were there promoting the improv. Yeah, that weekend. And so I would come around and just like talk movies

opening and I would just meet the comedians. And that was like my fucking playground. That was awesome. That's why you liked it? That is why I liked it. I started a lot of friendships that way. And it was funny, I discovered in that era that the comedians who were traveling with their iPads

or staying in like the club apartment or hotel or whatever, who were traveling with their iPads or staying in the club apartment or hotel or whatever, they would sit and watch Netflix streaming and they'd watch docs and they would watch some of my shit. So I was like, this is fucking cool. Yeah, I'm gonna go hang out with comedians to see if they know who I am. Easy.

This'll be good. And if they don't, I'll ask them if they have their iPod with them, their iPad with them. That was the only, no, no. The ones who didn't know who I was were more fun. Yeah. Gilbert Gottfried was the most fun. I brought my Dirty Jokes DVD to have him autographed.

He was going to be there that day. And he autographed it. Dear Billy, stop talking to me. That's what he, that's what it said. Gilbert Gottfried. And he autographed it. He, uh, uh, dear Billy, stop talking to me. That's what he, that's what it said. Gilbert Godfrey. And he meant it. And he meant it. Yeah.

He was, uh, he was great, dude. Amazing. I watched him bomb that weekend at the, uh, improv. Well, that's not an unusual thing. It was amazing. That's, that's really Gilbert at his best. Yeah. Gilbert bombing.

It was amazing. Yeah. So, uh, so what were you gonna say? What were you holding for the mics? Didn't you? Oh, so since about, I don't know, 2009, my mother would say to me, Billy, when are you gonna be on Mark's podcast?

Why aren't you on Mark's podcast? And I'm like, I don't know, Mom. She's like, I'm gonna ask Toby. I'm gonna be like, I was like, that'll help. And she's like, and then in in 2015 she sends me a text message With this article that says Barack Obama. Yeah was going to be on Mark's podcast and I texted back. That's amazing Now I'll never be on Mark's podcast You know who we had on after Obama we had rich boss on

Yeah, he's a great guy. You know, we do have a history. Your mom and my mom were pretty close friends for a period. And then, I don't know what happened there, but my mom, she's out of the apartment, and my brother moved her up into a place. She's doing all right. But my brother's in Florida.

He's up in Jupiter. That is Florida. That's like, because in Florida, the further north you go, the further south you are. Yeah, that's- So like the more Florida it gets. Yeah, I can't say he's particularly thrilled. You know, it's not, you know, I don't know.

You know, Florida is like such a fucking shit show. But you seem to love it. I have a, I have a... I have a... someone... Someone described it as... Like, Billy, you... You love Miami. I'm just not so sure you like it very much.

I think maybe that's a... Yeah, but it's full of the Jews. It's got all the... Not anymore the Jews left. Not Jews. Oh, I'm sorry. Jews. Yes, I know. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I know the Jews are running. The characters and stories. They ran the Jews out. No one talks about the fundamental move right of Florida and what it's done for the Jews. The ones that didn't die, are they leaving? Well, when the deli started closing, that was like the red flag.

What was that one Fox? It was Rascal House. Rascal House! Which is now Little Moscow. Well, there was one, the Rascal House was down on the beach, right? Somewhere. In Sunny Isles. Yeah, not far from my mom's place.

Not far at all, no. Yeah, I used to love that place. And you just see the old Jews there, they bring the free basket of pastries and bread and they're just filling up their plastic bags. We can just take these? Yes, and we'll keep bringing more. That's how they went out of business. People sitting there for coffee in a free bread basket. They're just filling up their plastic bags. We can just take these. Yes, and we'll keep bringing more.

That's how they went out of business. People sitting there for coffee in a free bread basket. For six hours. Yeah. Yeah, I guess, like, I don't, it really, I don't even know what, you know, what to make of the cultural landscape of Florida anymore. I mean, it was, you have to remember,

the Democrats have been a non-entity in Florida since the turn of the century, since Jeb Bush's era as governor. Do we call it the turn of the century? No, I like that because your generation, for us, the turn of the century was 1900. And now you're like the turn of the century. Well, the turn of the century meant like all the old days and now you're talking about it. It's like, I was already a grown person. It was 1999. It was 25 years ago.

It was a quarter of a century ago. I know. I was 30 years old, 35 years old. Yeah. Got the turn of the century. I remember. I think I saw Jerusalem Syndrome. Like, 01, 02, 02? How old were you? 10?

I was, no, I was five. No, come on. Where'd you see Jerusalem Syndrome? Well, you came to the South Beach Comedy Festival at some point. That was one time. Yeah, I don't know if you did the show, but you talked a lot about it.

That was the worst. It was. The worst. It was like nobody came to that thing. They put me in a theater. There was no one there. I think Stebbins opened for me. I think you were at the Colony, maybe.

It was a theater, right? You can roll into Miami Beach. A little theater? Yeah. Yeah, and I had Stebbins open for me, and? On the con road in Miami Beach? A little theater? Yeah. Yeah, and I had Stebbins open for me and he's doing his dark weird shit for my little grown-up audience and they didn't know what to make of him.

I thought it was a good show. Both of us did. Yeah, well that was good. You mean the friend you bought is the guy you met? Yes. You mean the other guy? Yeah, I do. Well, it was like, well, in those days,

I think it was like our moms talking like, oh, my son's in the business. Oh, my son's in the business. We've never been in the same business. It was the most annoying thing to me for years to hear my mother try to kind of paraphrase what your mom was saying about your career as a child actor.

And I was like, the fuck, who is this fucking kid? What is she doing to my mother? Like, what are you? I always felt like, you know, Billy. I'm like, I don't even know this fucking guy. How much do I hear about this kid, Billy? What was he on, a parenthood? What was it?

I was very impressed because I knew you from Conan. I watched you in the latter half of the 90s, in the end of the century, the end of the last century. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Before the turn of the century. Before it all turned, it turned so bad. And I thought, like, you were like a beatnik poet for me in that time.

There was like people who sort of informed my evolving worldview. Really? It was like, well, there was Miami people, like Neil Rogers on the radio, Carl Hyacin, the columnist and novelist, and then... That's what I think. That seems to me to be like the kind of root of how you look at Florida, is Carl Hyacin.

You knew there was menace and beauty and corruption and, you know, and something that spoke to the country at large. And dispel me of the notion that I was going to leave behind a better Florida than the one I was born in. No, Florida's designed to only get worse. It is. By design. Yeah.

I was born, for crying out loud, I was born in, my dad was working in Fort Myers, Florida So I was born in Fort Myers, Florida in Lee Memorial Hospital in Lee County Yeah, not named for spike right by the way. Yeah, you know like this is floor I mean that is that's people don't realize because floor they think of Miami or Orlando the happiest place on earth and Florida is the south. It was the Jim Crow, Miami Beach was the Jim Crow south. I did a show at the fucking University of Florida where it's in Tallahassee.

Oh God, no, that's in Gainesville. FSU is in Tallahassee. So FSU, Florida State, I'm doing a show like a month after Trump won. And it was like, it was part of the series. So I was at the college, it wasn't like a comedy club. So they had had Lily Tomlin. So there was definitely an audience of sophisticated people.

But it was at that time where I realized, because I went to a coffee shop or whatever, and I just saw like huddled old Democrats, almost like having a secret meeting. I'm like, this is what it's gonna be. This is what they're afraid to talk in public. They've got to, they can't talk too loud. And this is what it's gonna be.

This is gonna be an underground movement of people who want to talk reasonably about the political breakdown of this country. Yeah, I mean, there wasn't gonna be any reason or logic or facts. That's the most troubling thing, and I experience it every day, is that, like, there used to be a certain set of, well, facts.

We'd agree upon, you know, water is wet, the sky is blue. Now we can have a conversation, a policy conversation about how do we achieve our goals? It used to be like John F. Kennedy said, like we all inhabit this small planet. We all breathe the same air. We all share our children's futures. We're all mortal.

Let's start there. Now let's work together. And at least have some barometer of journalistic integrity, but now because of how technology and the internet works, you can just throw everything into doubt, and once people, the seed is planted, that the doubt happens, and then there's no anchor. And it gets malevolent, because it's not just like we don't have, we don't, we don't share facts. It's that like, you know, that line from Kennedy,

we all cherish our children's future. It's like, I'm not even so sure about that. If we can't agree that putting more guns in schools is a net negative for children, like how, where do you even begin? It's like, well, the answer to these school shootings is more guns. It's like, well, wait a second, hang on.

Two plus two equals 12? Like, what are we doing? It equals a Mexican standoff. Russian roulette is what it, yeah, in our public school system. But, so you're born in Lee County, and then you grow up in where, Miami? Yeah, well, my parents were living,

they were only living there because my dad was working there. So I was born there while he was working. How are their parents? They're great. I tell people that your mom sold my parents the home that they were divorced in. That's what I... That's impressive.

I think it might've been the only home she sold. She was not really cut out for the real estate agent life, my mother. Your mom did her a favor. That's a, and then I imagine she helped them sell it again after the divorce. I wonder. Two sales on the same house.

Yeah, and that was it. That was the end of her real estate career. Not cut out for the cutthroat business of real estate, my mother. I have to tell you, there are early bits of yours that come up in our daily vernacular at home and at work. Obviously, I travel a lot, so Lobby Waffle is a regular part of the conversation.

Oh, the Lobby Waffle. I always love that bit. And we'll, I'm often giving local politicians hell in Miami, it's kind of the thing, it's a hobby of mine. And so we'll very often get very self-righteous in the office and one of us will be like, I'm Billy Corbin, documentarian provocateur, and I want to see my FBI file.

Okay, I'll wait. We do that bit all the time, but there were two... I'm so glad you liked that bit. I loved that bit. There was two, I think from the first... The one where it's like, we don't have anything. Yeah, provocateur. We say that all the time, provocateur, you know, like Zeitgeister. And, but like, there were two bits,

I think that was on your first album. There was the bit about that, like, like worldview shit, like perspective. And but like there were two bits. I think what was on your first album There was the the bit about that like like worldview shit Yeah, like totally and I saw you know, you're like I think about 15 years older than than I am I was gay was but yeah, and I was like, oh it's like that's this is how this is where I'm going It wasn't so much aspirational as it was inevitable. Right? I was like, oh, that's I'm looking in the window to my future Well, yeah, I think I was like, oh, I'm looking in the window to my future. Well, yeah, I think it's like, you know, it's a sign of like, you can talk like that.

And that you can have those thoughts publicly and you can make them funny and you can blow minds. But you weren't a character, like, like you were the same guy on stage. And I go both ways with that. For years I was like, why can't I just become a character? All these guys seem to just be characters. And I think I was just so desperately trying to be myself

that I ended up with that. I just, it just, it worked like, I don't know, it spoke to me and I like, like, well, there's one bit you did about like the solace you found in the thought of suicide. Oh yeah, I love that bit too. Like, like, like, like the comfort. Hey, I could always kill myself.

Ah. I just, and I was just like, I don't know, I was that bit too. Like, like, like, hey, I could always kill myself. Ah. I just, and I was just like, I don't know, I was just like that, I remember my dad telling me once, like, Bill, things will never get so bad in your life that you would ever have to, when I was a kid. Sure. So it made me think about suicide, and like, oh, just come to me, like, let's talk, and let's,

and then I was like, oh, but that doesn't mean I can't think about it. Of course. In a very comforting way. My favorite line of that was that the tag was the spiritual reprieve of the faithless. Yes. And I thought, like, I knew it was a deep thought

and I knew it was not gonna get a big laugh. Spoke to me though, it spoke. I'm sorry buddy. And one of my favorites is the, it was after 9-11 and you were in New York of course, and you're doing like New York comedy. Oh that's that first record, yes. And it was about, and you're in New York, of course, and you're doing like New York comedy. Oh, that's that first record, yeah. Yes, and it was about,

and I'm definitely not gonna do it justice, but it was that the world survives because of women saying no. That's right, oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Without them saying no. We're going to blow up the buildings, no. No. We have people coming over,

go get some ice cream, something like that. And I just like, well, but that was like a very profound, and it prepared me for like husbandry and girl dad-dom. And like, I think about it a lot that without that, like we just were left to our primal, idiotic kind of state. Oh yeah, and that's what it looks like now. That's exactly what it looks like. And hopefully like now it's really a battle between, you know, the horrible men and women.

Yeah. You mean the baby machines mark Yeah, but no like the you know, they're outside of sexism and racism. There's no reason not to vote for Kamala That's well, but Misogyny and racism are very powerful very powerful forces I mean the Democrats have either ingeniously counter-programmed this election, or it's 2016 all over again. Well, God forbid. I can't even, I don't even know, man.

I don't even know, like, I don't know what's gonna happen, but I know it's gonna be a nail-biter, and... But why? Why should it be? That, to me, is the insanity. Look, you can sit and ponder that all you want. I don't fucking know. I know I'm doing a joke.

I was doing a joke. I shifted the joke. The joke used to be, right now, when Biden was still in the game, he used to say, everyone's just waiting for the right guy to die. And then I'll leave it at that, and I'll go, that's a bipartisan joke, actually. And then I shifted it last night for the first time. I said, how is it possible that 50% of the people in this country are just fucking shitty people?

And then I go like, I'm going to leave it there, because with that, it's still a bipartisan joke. Mickey Haley, of all people. She tweeted earlier this year that I had like COVID brain. Like things that I know come to, like they're on the shelf too high for me to reach, and then they come like a few seconds later. That's just aging brain.

Is that mid 40s? Yeah. It's starting. I remember Is that mid 40s? Yeah. It's starting. I remember my producing partner, Alfred Spellman, he was the first person in our family to get COVID and he was describing, he's like, I got a headache and I'm nauseous. I'm like, that's your mid 40s.

I'm pretty sure all the symptoms are just anybody. I used to say like, I wake up like that. Yeah, I wouldn't know if I had long COVID. I never feel good. Yeah, but she tweeted, whichever party drops their 80-year-old candidate first will win in November. Oh, good. I hope she's right.

Right, but why is that not kind of like... If the Democrats were going to anoint a successor here, it should have been a napalm candidate. Call it Oprah, George Clooney, Tom Hanks. I don't give a shit. Just like, why is it still a statistical dead heat in the only seven states that matter in this? I don't know.

I don't think we're gonna figure it out. But for me, it's just sort of like, wow, people are really brain fucked. I mean, like, yeah, I think really what it is is that I don't think a lot of people think in depth about the repercussions of making this decision. Like I don't think that, other than shameless fascists, I think a lot of people just see this as like,

well, a president's a president, and they still think that way. You know what I mean? Like, I like that guy, and that's as deep as it goes. It's fucking dangerous. Of course. Stupid people are dangerous. And it's most people. I'm gonna get emails about that.

Not too many. None of your listeners, for sure. I'm preaching to the choir here. So what happens? You're taking in too much Mark Maron as a young man. Yeah, that was my 20s, dude. Yeah, just free-basing Mark Maron. Oh, but not really free-basing. Do you have, are you married?

I am. Oh, you are, and you do have kids. I honestly, this is like a part of my life that I don't talk about because like, for really mostly not their privacy, but like their safety, because you just talked about the kind of psychopath that we live in down in Florida.

Do you get pushback from anything you're doing? Are you expecting it for... Death threats and the like? Sure. From just from this new thing or is it has an air jet, the Lev Parnas thing? No, Lev Parnas, yeah, it's on MSNBC. No, it predates that because I've been pretty vocal politically in South Florida.

On the radio. Wherever. I mean, I have a weekly podcast because Miami that I talk. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Online, I'm, when I was like, you know, perpetually and perennially online, I just want to punch up because that's the era of, we did a documentary called Screwball

about A-Rod and steroids and baseball. And it was, the Wall Street Journal of all places called it the baseball movie that explains America. And to me it it was like about... We had, uh... We were talking about a moment ago, common values. So like, you know, American values were like the... It was the golden rule, right?

Do unto others and treat people with respect and honesty and integrity, and you'll get that back. Or tolerance. Just tolerance, for fuck's sake. I'd settle for that at this point. Totally. Like, who gives a shit about... Yeah, yeah, you don't have to like people, and honesty and integrity and you'll get that back. Or tolerance, just tolerance for fuck's sake. I'd settle for that at this point. Totally. Yeah, like who gives a shit about anything. Yeah, yeah, we don't have to like people,

but this is supposed to be a democracy. Leave them fuck alone. Yeah, you know, people have spoken, shut up. Yeah, and so I would settle for that, but the new American values seem to be like, just bully, be a dick, punch down. Double down.

And you'll become the highest paid baseball player of all time, the commissioner of Major League Baseball, or yes, kids, you can be the president of the United States. So that's where the pushback started to happen? I think, I don't know that it's, when did it start to happen? I just, it was, I think about your friend Adam McKay,

who went from making these really big absurd comedies to making like these political, still funny, but yeah. Thoughtful movies, yeah. And I think really the great recession, for lack of a better term, radicalized him. And he said, I need to be doing something more important. I watched that movie again. Make sure it?

I've watched it three times. It's a masterpiece. It kinda is, and at first I was like, I had a real problem with the sort of celebrity element of explaining economic policy, or whatever you would call it. But that annoyed me at first, but the more I watch it, it's just like, it's the best.

Dude, we call our subgenre of non-fiction filmmaking pop docs, so that to me is what that is. That's like, how am I gonna, you know, and it's Trojan horse storytelling. I tempt the audience with the sugar and then slip in the vegetables, you know, sneak in the healthy shit. Well, you have to. I mean, that's all of a sudden, you know, because then at that moment people are like, oh, I'm thinking.

Yeah. But don't tell them. It's, I'm learning. It's not even, I'm thinking. Yeah, but don't tell them. It's I'm learning, it's not even I'm thinking. My queue has been filled with documentaries that I quote, have to watch, end quote. But that after I get home after a day of dealing with the fucking world,

I'm like, I'm not gonna, like I'm not gonna get into bed and opt in to getting angry about something that I can't change tonight. Or confused about something. Right, and I'm like, I just need to go to bed. I thought I knew how I felt about that. Now, don't challenge me, it's bedtime, right?

You know, so, but that's why I love, and I got to tell McKay, I was like, dude, one of the best documentaries of like the last 15, 20 years is the end credits of The Other Guys. You know, The Other Guys, they did this animated infographic about what a Ponzi scheme is, and it's fucking this brilliant piece of nonfiction shoehorned into the end credits of this hilarious, absurdist buddy cop movie. Well, that was funny about the big short and also just about explaining that time

is that it was all a fucking Ponzi scheme. It was all a Ponzi. And so that is, I think, what the rise of Trumpism did for us at our company, at Rack and Tour. We felt like, well now we have a responsibility, an obligation with this pop doc thing. Like the gangster movies are fun,

the sports docs are fun, cocaine cowboys, the U, and that's fun, but like we all kind of have a responsibility to channel our energies, our skill set into something more positive. Yeah, proactive. Yeah, but like it seems like even with the cocaine cowboys and the sports stocks, you know, in the pop movie,

I mean, you're still talking about politics. I mean, like the weird thing about what's happening, I'm just, I'm in the middle of this book, Autocracy, Inc. That what is shifting is that, you know, democratic politics are losing ground to sort of shadow politics of autocrats. That there's a world of financing and power

that happens among autocratic governments, and they're huge. I mean, you know, China, Russia, India, to a certain degree, like all these people have massive economies, so if it gets to the point where the US says China, Russia, India to a certain degree. Like all these people have massive economies. So if it gets to the point where the US says we're gonna put sanctions on them, they're like, we don't give a fuck. We'll sell the gas to the Russians.

We don't give a fuck. Iran, you know, it's like crazy. I would say the Florida Democrats never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity. And the Florida of today is the America of tomorrow. So if you wanna say- Totally, it's a Petri dish. Texas and Florida. That's how it's gonna tomorrow. So if you wanna say- Totally, it's a petri dish, Texas and Florida.

That's how it's gonna look. You got this libertarian shit show with people who are down there with enough money to stay out of the fray and not pay taxes. And then you've got like, you know, these kind of brain-addled, either religious fanatics or just fucking angry brainwashed fucks to do the- Hey, hey, I call them my neighbors.

Sure. Is what I call them. Well, I mean, like, you know, I guess I can be a little more diplomatic. But okay, so you were coming up in Florida, but like it wasn't always the intention to be this righteous motherfucker. At some point, you're like, I want to be in show business. I wanted to tell stories, and as a kid I really... Yeah, I really did. I mean, like, I hear about people telling stories so much now,

it's like this new buzzword, I'm a storyteller or authenticity or there's a- 25 years ago, I named our company Rack and Tour, 25 years ago. I know, but you know, when you were a kid running out here to what your mother auditioned for- Well, that was, I mean, that was, that became my like after school hobby. My brother was, my younger brother was a real athlete

and a really gifted athlete. And he should be on that pamphlet, the most Jewish sports legends, my little brother. He was just good at, he excelled at everything. He picked up a bat, picked up a ball. He was just a hockey stick. He was just amazing at it. And so I, on the other hand, struck out at my first

at bat at the North Miami Beach T-ball Optimist League. So that was baseball was not the end of the sporting career. I was like yeah how do you strike out with a ball is sitting on a stick. I had that moment with sports. I got hit in the face with a ball in center field. I'm like this isn't for me. No and I retired quick pretty quickly and and so I remember I saw a girl Jennifer Schatz she lived in the neighbor in the shtetl in North Miami Beach. And she- A high-end shtetl.

High-end shtetl. It was a pretty working class shtetl that in the cocaine cowboys era became a little bit nicer. You chose to live there. I didn't, my parents did. Right, but you weren't forced there. No, no, we were not, yes, it was not ghettoized

at that point, it was self-segregation. It was working class Jews their. Yeah. No, no, we were not, yes, it was not ghettoized at that point. It was self segregation. It was working class Jews. Yes, absolutely. And so I saw her on TV in a Sears commercial riding a bike and I thought that that was, I was like six years, I was like, that was the coolest thing. I knew her and now she was inside the magic story box

and I was like, I wanna to do that. So my dad called her dad and was like, how do you do that? And so my mom was totally against it. Yeah. What do we do to get my kid on that? Yeah. Who was her agent?

My agent was Ada Gordon at JFK, just for kids in Miami. Well, okay. So your mom was against it then? My mom was totally, she had read. She didn't want to be a show mom. She didn't want to turn into that? She read Shirley Temple's autobiography

and Drew Barrymore's autobiography. She'd be like, by eight years old, he's going to be on The Coffee, by nine on The Pot, and by 10 on Blow. And like, I want, and this is a terrible business for children, I want not. So my dad was my stage mom. OK.

And then after school, that was my, in Miami, there was like a ton of auditions and stuff like that in the 80s. Yeah, yeah, yeah. OK. So I would go out every day on auditions. So, OK, so you're doing that. You're running around Miami doing commercial auditions

and bit parts and things that are shooting in Florida. Yeah, well, I did like a commercial for, I mean, you name a sector, you know, sandwich meats or toys or cars or detergent. And I did a commercial for it just out of Miami. So you were a working little actor. I was a working little actor and I I enjoyed it like it was my activity it was like what yeah what kids do after school yeah I just and I couldn't do it so this seemed to be something make

believe seemed to be something that I could do and then I did a movie with Ernest Borgnein and Linda Blair I had like one line in the old Ernest Borgnein old Ernest Borgnein and Linda Blair and I was in one line in that. Old Ernest Borgner. Old Ernest Borgner. Pretty great. And Linda Blair. And I was in a scene with a guy named Scott Weinger who came out here and blew up. He was the voice of Aladdin. And he was on Full House. He was a Florida guy?

Scott was a Miami kid, absolutely. And so they, then I got, Ron Howard came to town. And he was casting for Parenthood. Okay. And it was gonna be one of the first features they shot at Universal Florida. And in Orlando. And so they came down to Miami looking for kids to play these roles where we had to, I had to curse.

That was my, so that was the moment where my mom had to go with me, because then it required travel for weeks or months on end in Orlando. And so dad couldn't take off work. So begrudgingly? Begrudgingly, she came with me on parenthood to Orlando. Okay. And that was her transition.

But did she enjoy it? Sage Motherdom. I think, I wouldn't say enjoyed it, but she was a very protective mom, so she was good at it. But she was happy you were happy, I guess. She was happy I was happy, and there wasn't any give with her.

It wasn't like she wasn't gonna be negotiating for her child, like, or compromising for her kid. So she was exceptional at it in a way that, like, other parents... Yeah. In fact, one of the parents who years later would convince me to not do it anymore was not. Like, because some of the parents were pretty awful. So you do parenthood?

Parenthood, yeah. And do you have a real part in that? I curse in the movie. It's a principle. I still get checks for that. It's the craziest thing. The $2.45 checks? Sometimes the checks are lower than the stamp.

Yeah, it's kind of interesting though. And then you're like, where was that even on? And like Croatian television. It says it on the state. I'm always curious. Cause sometimes they're like a few hundred bucks and I'm like, shit, this is like, how does... It's got a major run.

Well, you ought to get a forensic accountant, get your manager to... On NBC Universal. You have to, or you won't get the bread. Dude, how would I know? Like for $400, for $200, for 28 cents? Sometimes like, you know, for Marin, the series, like my manager had them do forensic accounting

at Fox or somewhere, and there was a lot of money there. Really? Yeah, man. Because they don't know where to send the checks or where they don't try. But sometimes there's just fucking money sitting there that doesn't make- Like they don't know where you are.

Whatever it is. Whatever it is, it's dubious, but it's not an uncommon practice to call them on it and have them find it. Honestly, I just, but I'm not, I couldn't possibly be entitled to that much with the three or four lines that I had in that movie. No, I know, I get it.

My mother was appalled because Opie was making her son curse in a movie. So she was... Come on. Because I cursed in the movie. She was mad at Ron Howard. She wasn't really mad. She thought it was funny. But that was the joke, right? That was the joke. Is that a little kid was eight year old, nine year old was running around cursing.

And that was the moment when I saw Ron Howard, and his whole family was on set. Everybody was in the movie or involved in the movie. And I was like, oh, because I'd watched him on like Nick at Night, like on the Andy Griffith show and Happy Days, and I was like, oh, I'm like, that's the moment where I understood that that was the goal. That like, yeah, you might,

being an actor is like a thing that kids do. Like when you go to soccer or ballet after school, you don't grow up to be a soccer player or ballerina. This is something that kids do and then when you grow up, you don't wanna be the guy taking the direction. You wanna be the guy giving the direction. Maybe, yeah, but like, yeah, he was a lifer, show business lifer and he had the freedom to kind of like, yeah, he was a lifer, a show business lifer, and he had the freedom

to kind of keep building. And he was terrific. I think he's a rare story. He was terrific though, he was so, like he knew everybody's name, he was, it felt like a family on that set, it was very. Well, he's a nice guy. Yeah, it was very comforting and very cool.

He lives up to the nice guy thing. Really does, and later, years later, a lot of years later, I got to interview him for a documentary we did, and I told him, him I'm like you're the reason why I'm I'm here. Yeah, I'm this cuz I remember you and everything fuck no well I mean no he knew my part in the yeah in the movie I mean that movie is like like plays to this day. Yeah, it's a big movie. Yeah, family movie It's a class, but that triggered that that got you in the game, and so you were yeah

So that was and then Scott, my buddy Scott, came to LA for a summer on a family vacation slash do some auditions because this manager came and was recruiting Miami kids. And so I became one of those kids. We went out, we came, I'd never been to LA before. We came and I was, this was 1990. Yeah, so how old are you?

So I'm 12. Oh wow, okay. So real care stuff. 11 or 12. We did the Universal Tour, we did total tour of shit and then went out on auditions and I booked something while we were here for a few weeks. And so the manager was like,

well why don't you come back for pilot season? And we're like, well what's pilot season? Yeah, back when it existed, well, what's pilot season? Yeah, back when it existed, yeah. That's how that became a thing. And then we got into that cycle of pilot season, which yeah, like now, now actors can be on, can you be a series regular on multiple shows?

Back then, they owned you for that cycle. So you could come out here, if you booked a pilot, which I did every year, you couldn't do any, you could do a guest spot, you could do a movie. Even if the pilot doesn't go. Even if the pilot, and that was the thing too, is they would just, even if the show got picked up, it'd still fire you, replace you,

write you out of the show, like, so. So you're starting to learn that. It took me a while to be like, I remember like year after year, and every year I did the thing. I booked a pilot, I did a movie, I did a bunch of guest spots, and I did some cool, some really cool shit.

I got to play Judd Hirsch's son on Dear John for a few episodes. I think every, Ben Savage, me and you, we all, everybody. Every Jew who's an actor of any kind will eventually play Judd Hirsch's son. Judd Hirsch's son, that was when, and that was when, I remember when I was like, this is like the perfect, well, all the casting on your show was perfect.

Oh, thanks. I mean, like, it was just like, I was like, really? I was like, it's Toby. I was like, that's crazy. I was like, that's crazy. Oh, it's Tyler. I mean, Jesus, that was brilliant, you know? And then Judd, and I just like,

I got to be a patient on Empty Nest. I grew up watching Richard, I knew Richard Mulligan from SOB. I watched Blake Edwards movies got to be a patient on Empty Nest. I grew up watching Richard Mulgan from SOB. I watched Blake Edwards movies when I was a kid. It's like, this is, you know, I'm not going to that bullshit funeral. I was like, I got to be a patient on Empty. So it was really cool. And then, you know, here's the way it ends,

is that I did a show, it was on the Warner Brothers line. It was a pilot, but they called it a presentation, which meant that we had fewer days and less money to do a pilot. And so it's called Odd Man Out. And John Dexter and Ed Strauss wrote it. And we, there was a, fuck, I'm not gonna name names. There was a mom on that show, and of one of the other kids.

And my mother, I remember being in the car with her, driving home from the Warner Brothers line till we lived in Westwood. And I was doing, we lived in Westwood during the Rodney King riots too, that was wild. And my mother was livid. I could see her white knuckles on the, on the, and she was, she was, she had quit smoking.

So she had a styrofoam cigarette that she would like, you know, just to get the oral fixation going, get the emotion going. And so she was like, I can't believe this lady. I can't believe it. And I'm like, what happened? And, you know, she said to, they were just chatting, the stage moms.

I hate that I'm calling her a stage mom, but she was like, you know, she said to, they were just chatting, the stage moms, I hate that I'm calling her a stage mom, but she was like, you know, every year, before we leave Miami for LA for the pilot season, Billy's father and I sit him down and go, do you want to keep doing this? Are you sure you want to keep doing this? And Billy says yes, and then we do it.

And so this woman says to my mother about her daughter, she says, oh, well, she knows that if she doesn't work, we don't eat. And she was dead serious. And this girl had been in diaper commercials. So this was a girl who had been put to work since she was a baby. And my mother was appalled. And I was kind of like, you know what?

I think I'm good. I think I'm done with this. And so also on that show, by the way, was Hillary Swank. She played a sister in that show. I always played like the Jewish Urkel. I'd be either the little brother or the best friend who would like come in from next door kind of a thing of the lead.

That was back when being a Jew was an ethnic type. I would say, there was a place for us there. And other than controlling the weather, which is all we really do now. I'm surprised I have time for this. I've got to get on the computer. George Soros, ZWB, the Zionist Weather Bureau over there, triangulating the space lasers on the west coast of Florida.

Anyway, I retired basically. I was like 14 or 15. And then I remember my manager was like, well, the next year was like, we'll go on tape, we'll fax sides. Nobody knows what that will fax side. So I was like, okay, we'll do it. So we did a backyard video and they fucking flew me out

to play the little brother. Again, like not a really essential role in a Fox pilot called Reality Check. And so it was wild. I come in, do the last audition, and they go, okay, you got the part. That's never happened to me before. Like, go in the waiting room.

They say, you got the part. We gotta go down the hall. The cast is waiting to do the first read through. And I'm thinking like, this is like the least important role in this show. So I walk down the hall, I walk in, Hillary Swank is there. And I'm like, Hillary, what are you doing here? She's like, what are you doing here? I was like, I'm in this show, I'm in this show. Why, so I walked down the hall, I walk in, Hillary Swank is there. I'm like, Hillary, what are you doing here?

She's like, what are you doing here? I was like, I'm in this show, I'm in this show, that's wild. So we sort, my last two pilots co-starred Hillary Swank. Giovanni Robisi was in that show. Oh my, the younger sister, she's like one of the highest paid actresses in television now from Big Bang Theory, was on that show. Yeah. In that show.

Yeah. In that pilot. The blonde? Yeah. From the Flight of 10. I like her. What's her name? It's crazy.

And don't spoil this for everybody, but the EPs, the creators and showrunners on that were named David Crane and Mark DeKoffman. Yeah. And so what happened was is that we do this show, it was this pilot, it was not a good show. And I left high school, I was now enrolled in a normal person's school, not like Valley professional,

like some strip mall child actor. I did, like strip mall child actor school. Like I went to, I was going, I was, I call it a real school, it was New World School of the Arts, which was like based on the high school, the performing arts and yeah. In Florida? In Miami, so it wasn't a normal real school, it was New World School of the Arts, which was like based on the high school, the performing arts and yeah. In Florida? In Miami, so it wasn't a normal high school,

but I was enrolled, I was going and so this was kind of disruptive and so, needless to say the show that you've never heard of did not get picked up. And so what happens from there, because David Crane and Martin Kaufman did two pilots that year, they did Reality Check for Fox and they did something called the Untitled Courtney Cox Project for NBC at the same time. And so Reality Check does not get picked up.

I become the youngest filmmaker in Sundance history at the time. Hillary wins, what, two, at least two Oscars. David Craneman and Martin Kaufman get their other show. The NBC pilot did get picked up, and it got a title. And that was Friends. And so to me, like, that was the moment where I'm like, oh, like, life isn't just about what happens. It's like, what doesn't happen?

And like that, because that show gets picked up. Because that's when I realized, I was like, mom, what are we doing here? I'm like, the goal is to get on a pilot that gets picked up. I'm stuck on some probably terrible show. For years. For years. I'm a lot richer, but I don't know that I'll be happy. I don't know that it picked up. I'm stuck on some probably terrible show. For years. For years.

I'm a lot richer, but I don't know that I'll be happy. I don't know that I'll ever fucking work again. And I'm like, I just wanna go and do my own thing. And I realize, reality check gets picked up, it might have ruined all of our lives. Of course. And by the way, there was definitely people on that show who were like, the fact that that show didn't get picked up

ruined my life, was the worst thing that ever happened to me. What's that girl's name? Christina something? Who is the one from Big Bang Theory? Why can't I remember her? I don't know. Like mid 40, but like, we're just. Well, I never watched the show, you know, so.

I didn't either, to be fair. She got a really, Kaylee Cuoco? Yeah, that's it. Good for you. Oh, see, it's the. You did it. It's coming. You did it. It's slow going. Thank God. Miami, we're all, I'm on Miami Standard Time. See it's the did it's coming. It's it

Miami we're all I'm on Miami Standard Time. I just want to say that was a no Google Pull yes Yeah, but so when okay, so you go back. I don't do goo I I refuse when I have a moment like that unlike I'm not yeah, I sometimes refuse, but then I'm like fuck it What is it I But then I'm like fuck it What is it I Imagine it's contributed to memory loss. I would think it has to so you go back to Florida You're out of the game and you finish high school. I finished. Yeah. Well, I start my sophomore year in high school I start my first production company with my producing partners a one guy same guys

Yeah that I work with today one guy I've known so long our mothers used to bathe us together Come on, we were sophomores in high school. It was weird. No, I literally, I know him since we're five or six years old from preschool, David Sipkin. And then my other partner, Alfred Spellman, I met in TV production class in ninth grade in middle school in Highland Oaks Middle.

Our teacher handed us the keys to the studio. She said, you two have something, you work together and you produce the morning news. That's crazy. Our teacher handed us the keys to the studio. She said, you two have something, you work together and you produce the morning news. That's how that happened. So sophomore in high school, you started a production company? Yes, our first production company. What was the goal?

The goal was to make movies, the goal was to tell stories, have fun and to kind of be a director, like Ron Howard. Right, well who was giving you the money? That was the problem, Mark. So we- It's a production, like Ron Howard. Right, well, who was giving you the money? That was the problem, Mark. So, we- It's a production company by name only. No, we came up with this shtick where we were gonna do educational videos

by kids for kids. Okay. Like write scripts about- So you had an angle. At that moment, they had just introduced an AIDS education curriculum into the public schools, but all the teachers were petrified of it. They didn't know what to do or how to teach it.

So we said, let's write, I wrote a script. Well, you're lucky and now in Florida, it's against the law. So you wouldn't be able to teach it at all. No, well, but fortunately now kids aren't having sex anymore. Teenagers are not having sex. They're not? Abstinence, that solved the whole problem. Oh good, finally worked.

Yeah, it finally took. And so we're on our way in Florida. So do you make these videos? Yeah, we did. We made three of them. And you got paid? And we didn't get paid. We got money to make them. They were like community service.

We didn't get paid like we're parent-sells. Like a grant almost? Exactly. They were grants. That's exactly right. And they were in-kind people from the community, donated equipment and stuff like that. And so that's how we started. Right. And so you go to college though?

Yeah, I went to the university of Miami. And you're still doing the production company. Yeah, that's, that's correct. What'd you study? I studied political science, um, film writing, screenwriting. So you widened your, uh, your, uh, your talents. I guaranteed I'd be unemployable. That's correct.

Yeah, no, but, but you're already in show business. So you knew at least when you went into college what you wanted to learn. I mean, political science and film writing, that seems reasonable for a guy who knows what he wants to do. You weren't just sort of like partying and, I don't know what I want to do. No, I was not a partier, but I was really interested in kind of a pre-law curriculum. That's what PolySci was for.

And then also with screenwriting is that I tell people like the best acting class I ever took was screenwriting. The best directing class I ever took was screenwriting. The best editing class I ever took was screenwriting. The best cinema on and on it. Like there's just like, as soon as you understand that craft and those rules, you are ready to break them and you're ready to have at it.

Like that was the best. So are you making films in college? Yeah, we did. In fact, we took a leave of absence to work on a feature and then I took a second leave of absence. A fictional feature? Yeah, a scripted thing. It didn't take. And then there was something, it was the dawn

of the digital era. We had gotten DSL in the apartment, I'll never forget, where we went from dial-up to DSL. A big day. And like with Napster, I'm like, we could get a song in 90 minutes, we can download a whole song. Amazing.

This is earth shattering. Like this is gonna change everything. For nothing. And it was like, fucking amazing. And so, but the writing was on the wall. I remember Alfred saying, listen, the way this fucked the post office, the way it's fucked the written work

and the news and business. Print business. And this is gonna, because this technology's only gonna get better and faster, it is going to fuck the recorded music industry, and eventually what we wanna do will not be so far behind. So let's kinda stay low overhead, let's stay agile and flexible.

And digital video was just happening. Remember like- But also like it's gonna fuck the paradigm that existed, but ultimately it helped you. It was a democratization. Because first there was like this democratization of production where digital video made shit smaller, cheaper,

more accessible from a production standpoint, but then film, which was incredibly onerous and expensive. And clearly what was gonna happen is there would eventually be a democratization of distribution. And that was- For the internet. By the internet. And we were like, okay, let's stay sort of

on the cutting edge of this. And Alfred was like, let's do, we had just tried to do a film on this fucking 16 millimeter. Yeah. And he's like, let's do something on digital video. I mean, the guys out of Orlando, the Hacks and Films guys did Blair Witch Project on a camcorder. And it became this, yeah, we weren't looking to do

that because I remember seeing shit that was shot, you know, Mike Figgis did Super A or eight millimeter, he did like Super A, he did like this video thing. There was, what was it like, there was a thing at Sundance with us that was like a parody of a reality show. But it was everything that was shot on video, like Blair Witch, it incorporated the concept of video

into the, it was inherent in the concept of this. And everybody knew what that looked like. Right, and that's, and even if you're a lay person, you're not a film person, you know the difference between watching a video and watching film. But they were using it as a tool, like they wanted it to look like that. Part of the story, and so I said,

Alfred, I'm like, maybe we should do non-fiction. Like, audiences are accustomed to seeing docs and news in video. Why don't we make a documentary? We had never made a documentary before, never took a documentary class. I love documentaries, I watched them, I read about them, but we're like, okay, let's do that then.

And so it became this perfect storm of Alfred talking about the technology, me saying, well, I think the best use of it is this way. And then we started hearing about this story coming out of Gainesville, your favorite place, Gainesville, Florida, the University of Florida. And the story was there was an exotic dancer who had claimed that she had been raped

at the Delta Chi Fraternity House in the spring of 99 and that the entire night's events had been caught on videotape. And that videotape had been released publicly as part of a case of filing a false police report against the woman, these very kind of like open, what we call sunshine laws, these public records laws. So she did not get protected by rape shield laws

because they claimed that she was the offender in this matter. And what happened was I spoke to a couple guys from the shtetl. I say that by, because a lot of people go to, you know, our flagship universities, FSU and University of Florida. So two guys I grew up with, I say that, like, we come from very similar backgrounds,

education, neighborhoods, socioeconomic status. And one of them said, hey, did you hear about this video? They were calling it the rape tape in Gainesville. And I'm like, and as people would get it through the public records on VHS, people would have like keggers to watch the thing like Rocky Horror style at their house or fraternity house or whatever. It was pretty grotesque.

And one guy says to me, hey, um, do you see the video? Like, it's disgusting. I haven't been able to sleep. It's haunting what these guys do. This woman is terrible. And then I spoke to another dude that I knew, that we all knew, who was like, this woman's a liar. She tried to ruin these guys' life.

And I was like, how did these two guys watch the same video that we expect to tell some objective truth about a crime? And they have completely different views about what they witnessed, whether it was consensual sex act or not. And so that's when I was like, well, maybe Maybe we should this should be that first doc on video that right and one year later We were at the Sundance Film Festival from the moment of like getting the idea in January of 2000 with Roger

You're to it with Roger a question of consent. Yeah, and it got a lot of heat got a lot He was on the front page of the New York Post Did it have any ripple effect? Legally, you know, did she get justice? Not really, Bill. I mean, people watch the doc, and just like you're watching the video, and disagree, because we put it together like a court case,

and that's still how we put our docs together. It's like, we might be making a case, but the audience is the jury. So it's like, here's the evidence, here's the testimony, and you decide. So that's like old school journalistic doc making in a way. In a way, yeah. I mean, where you're not inserting yourself

in your personality on screen, you're not walking around doing a shtick, are you, generally? No, in that one, I had to chase a state attorney around the block. That's the only time you see me on camera because he wouldn't give us an interview. But you don't make it about you, which is another form of doc.

I won't even, like, unless it's completely essential to understand an exchange or it's a laugh. It's like, it's funnier if you hear me, my interplay with the subject. I don't even like putting my voice, like, from off camera in the doc if I can avoid it. Right. So nobody wants to hear from me.

They want to, you know, they're watching this. But the thing that's compelling to you is those docs where, you know, you are, you know, in the doc if I could avoid it. So nobody wants to hear from me, they want to, they're watching this to hear from me. But the thing that's compelling to you is those docs where you've been given these sides and then you. Faxed. Yeah. And you kind of, you decide. Even the new one is sort of like that and it's all left.

I mean, you've got to weigh this guy's morality and then his contrition and then his act of defiance. You still got this guy. Yeah, you either trust or you don't, you believe you don't, you can question his sincerity. I'm cool with all of that. Yeah, well there's no reason to trust him. You're from the get go.

There's less than no reason. You know, but by presenting Lev Parnas from both sides and how he was treated in the media and then, you know, what he decided to do and everything else. Well, I mean, but like before we get to that, I mean, you did, you know, you've done like 20 fucking dots. Well, this was the, is that true?

I lost, I just asked my partners the other day, I'm like, what did we? We did that one about the Peter. Gation, Line light, I love that story. Yeah, it's an interesting guy, kind of a dark story. But the cocaine cowboy thing, that got you a lot of heat. Yeah, yeah, I mean, that was our first, like people think it's our first doc,

but it was the one we did right after, because raw deal, everybody was like, hey, now you've been anointed the bells of the Sundance ball, New York Post actually wrote that about us. They're like, were you gonna go move to New York or LA? And as obvious as it was to people that we would move to New York Post actually wrote that about us. They're like, were you gonna go move to New York or LA? And as obvious as it was to people that we would move to New York or LA, it was just as obvious to us that we would go home to Miami

because we didn't want to be three more shmucks peddling our wares in New York or LA. Yeah, why not be where it's all happening? We wanted to be the Miami guy, like so people would know we'd have a calling card, which is why we made Cocaine Cowboys because Raw Deal wasn't necessarily, it was a Florida True Crime calling card,

but it wasn't the Miami calling card that we wanted. Right, it wasn't about, it wasn't a Florida story. Right, Florida, right, it wasn't where like, City was character and people are gonna be like, oh, those are the Miami storytellers in non-fiction. But my favorite saying is that like, LA is where you go when you wanna be somebody, New York is where you go when you are somebody,

and Miami's where you go when you wanna be somebody else. York is where you go when you are somebody, and Miami's where you go when you wanna be somebody else. Right. It's always, you know, it is an- I used to say it's for people at the end of their lives or at the end of their rope. Ropes, yeah. Right. Yes.

I don't know if it's still that anymore. It's, well, it's still a sunny place for shady people, it always will be, and it's still that place of, like, transformation of second chances. It's not like, in New England, it's like, what's your name, who's your daddy? There's legacy, there's history. Miami is one of the youngest cities in America,

and we are America's perpetual belligerent teenager. It's like, the new shit, the new, everybody's a Gatsby, everyone's nouveau riche. Nobody, you know. Yeah, but there's a tremendous influx of Latino culture, too, that kind of defines it, doesn't it? From everywhere. Like, now like pandemic forward,

like the influx accelerated all of the worst trends of Florida accelerated in a really violent way. Like everything about, you know, the Miami of today is the America of tomorrow, just the unaffordability, the crumbling infrastructure, the toxic politics. Rising tides, dude. Rising tides, and like all of it, like Miami has every 21st century problem, all of that,

and we're doing nothing to confront it. I remember being at my mother's years ago, eight years ago, nine years ago, and we were staying on the beach, me and an ex-girlfriend of mine, and the water had risen into the fucking road, like into the one. Like on a sunny day that happens.

Well no, it was at night, the tide came up and I'm like, what the fuck is happening? Did something break? Yeah, the world, the planet is broken. It's very biblical, it's very biblical, Dan. They were constantly reminded of our, it's funny because the legend is that Ponza de Leon discovered Florida

on a search for the Fountain of Youth. And like, I'm constantly, we're constantly reminded of our mortality in Florida. It's just, it's- It's crazy, man. It's amazing. But yeah, you did a lot of the sports docs, dog fight, I mean, cocaine cowboys,

but like, you've done, you know what you're doing now. And I imagine you have access to money from a few sources when you wanna do something. Well, there was a while, like we've survived multiple iterations of this industry. It started as indie film, it was straight indie film, you know, doctors, dentists, friends with money who believe in you, not necessarily the project

and wanna see you succeed. What's their ceiling usually, like 50 grand? I mean, not barely, like you'd get five here, 25 here, you know, like you just put it together and then you do the film festivals where there was like a tiny gaggle of gatekeepers of the so-called documentary distributors, which there was precious few at that

in the Raw Deal and Cocaine Cowboys days. Yeah. Nobody got Cocaine Cowboys. Nobody wanted to, we could get meetings with everyone after Raw Deal, after Sundance, and we pitched Cocaine Cowboys to all the nobody got cocaine cowboys. Nobody wanted to make, we could get meetings with everyone after Raw Deal after Sundance, and we pitched cocaine cowboys to all the quote buyers at the time. Nobody wanted to make it.

Nobody got it. Nobody was interested. Like didn't we see this in like Miami Vice and Scarface where like, well first of all, no, you've never seen this in nonfiction, number one. And number two, how many Italian mafia stories are you gonna tell over and over and over again? How many times are you gonna hear Elliot Ness

and Al Capone? Like, we're gonna do this, and nobody, dude, nobody, nobody wanted to make it, so we had to scrape together for cocaine cowboys. And then suddenly, it was like a real, it was this idea that like, because we were still pitching in New York or LA, which were like vacuums of creativity,

like in the quote unquote industry, like how else to explain in our lifetimes, you know Two Truman Capote movies at the same time volcano movies at the same time to asteroid hurdling to Robin Hood But like every time they oh, hey, I hate someone just greenlit a volcano. Don't we have a volcano script somewhere? Let's dust that off. Yeah, and then like let's make dueling volcano. It's like does anybody care like volcanoes are hot Yeah, just who who cares about but volcanoes? We gotta compete with the other volcano. We're like, well, we think that this is like

coming around like the 20 year nostalgia cycle of like Miami in the 80s. We thought like this was the perfect time. Grand Theft Auto Vice City was the biggest selling video game at that time of all time. Scarface just had like its 20th anniversary. And I think on DVD it outsold like Jurassic Park and E.T. combat.

Well, they had a whole second life scarf. Yeah, and as this hip hop legendary. Well, that's what made the movie. I just talked to Pacino. I mean, when that movie came out, the critics were like, what is this garbage? You know? I thought it was a masterpiece

because it's practically a documentary. I mean, Oliver Stone did his research. I will tell you, he did his research in Miami when he wrote that script. And it is a composite of like everything that was really happening in Miami at the time. Even though it's considered this sort of like absurdist or operatic kind of, it was fucking spot on, dude.

And so we wanted to tell those true stories and nobody really was down. Well, so how has the business evolved in terms of getting things made? Well, there was a time when, like I said, there's pure indie film. And then there was a time when we were doing commissions. That's how like 30 for 30, like ESPNs came.

Oh, that's right. You know, what is it? I talked to that guy who did that great OJ one. Ezra. Yeah, the best. Fucking masterpiece. Like that was like, I call it the first documentary to become an EGOT.

I don't know how it won the Tony, but it just won, deservedly so, every award under the sun. It was just, that to me was the, I call that the last 30 for 30. That's like the mic drop. How do you do, how do you keep doing anything after? Yeah, yeah, it was pretty astounding. You do that.

Yeah, it was so. But we just like, we wanted to do, we wanted to keep doing this pop-doc thing. Because Cookie and Cowboys, our take was, that this isn't a documentary. Because like documentary had that stigma of like the teacher rolling in the film projector and you're like, oh, all right.

But we wanted to make, like we wanted to make a gangster movie. We were like, how would Quentin Tarantino or Martin Scorsese make a documentary? Like, let's do that, you know? Martin Scorsese make a documentary? Let's do that. A lot of gray, a lot of colorful characters, of dubious at best morality. And you had to go track them down, talk to them. Track them, went to prison, and found the people that we,

because that was the other thing too. Who does all that work? We all do. Everybody's got to do their part. You got to take all the press on it and then break down who the prime players are and figure out, you know, how to put together the story in that way.

Dig into files, dig into depositions, and find out who, with the hitman, Rivi Ayala in Coking Cowboys, he was in a unique position where in Miami-Dade County, he had a deal to confess to countless homicides in exchange for avoiding the death penalty. So he could talk, he couldn't talk about murders in New York or in Broward County, you know,

another, but he could talk chapter and verse about the homicides that he was aware of or participated in in Miami, and it was dozens of them of men, women, and children. And so he was in a really unique position to speak freely. And I wanted to do first person productions. I didn't want to, for me it was all about,

I and we not they and she. Like you can always find a lawyer or a cop or some of the next door neighbor, someone who will talk about a person or an event. But like I wanted the people who did it. Now that calls into question, memories, agendas, revisionist history. But that to me is part of the fun and the challenge.

Like I said, with audiences. And then when you've got a guy who won't shut up like Lev, then you can bring a lawyer in just to, you know, for a little color. Dude, when Rachel Maddow interviewed Lev, which is where we first discovered him as a character in January of 2020, like, he was there with his lawyer. And Rachel thought, like, well, I'm gonna interview

the lawyer, basically, and then Lev's gonna chime in. The lawyer said not three words the whole time. And Rachel thought, like, well, I'm gonna interview the lawyer, basically, and then Lev's gonna chime in. The lawyer said not three words the whole time. And Lev was in jeopardy at that time. Well, usually people go on with their lawyers just so the lawyer, if needed be, they can go like, no, no. Right, shut up.

Shut the fuck up. Well, we, you know, Alfred always jokes that, or half jokes, that in Florida, when you get out of prison, your first call is to your mother, and your second call is to us to make a documentary about you. Lev was the rare case where we were making a documentary about a guy on his way to federal prison. Like our first interview with him,

which not in the doc, it was like our development, if you will. So you saw him on Rachel, but you don't contact Rachel at that point. Oh, no, no. So we have a running list, like a Google doc, of like, we call our genre Florida fuckery. So whenever Florida fuckery rears its head,

which is usually, there's always a Florida connection. I mean, 9-Eleven, Watergate, OJ, move down. So there's always that Florida connection. And so things come on our radar and we're like, we're interested in that. What's happening now, which is not great, is that documentaries are getting made too soon. They're getting made too quick.

Like you need some perspective and some objectivity. It's a Netflix thing and they know they can pull eyes. It's just, it's not good for preserving history. Right, right, right. It's good for keep the sordid story going. And whatever the agenda of the person you get access to is without the perspective and without more people who may be willing to offer that. And so we, so Lev was on our list when he gets indicted in October of 2019.

In Florida. Yeah. Well, no, no. in October of 2019. In Florida. Yeah. Well, no, no. Southern District of New York. Oh, the big indictment. Okay. But he was arrested on a plane at the airport in D.C. His home in Florida got raided where his wife and his kids are.

Isn't there an indictment in Florida? Wasn't the fraud indictment from Florida? It was all out of the Southern District of New York. Okay. All right. Yeah, they took it over. They took all Lev related cases over. But I call the Lev Parnas story is, it is Tom Clancy if Jack Ryan was played by Jackie Mason.

That's like what this story, and it's one of our favorite Florida fuckery stories because it's about Florida men behaving badly with international implications. Like the butterfly effect of just like a Florida man acting a fool and suddenly the course of history is altered. So for people who don't really have him in perspective, you know, he and Igor were kind of-

Igor. Yeah, were brought in as these Ukrainian emissaries for the Trump administration through Rudy Giuliani to try to pressure Zelensky to open up a probe into Hunter Biden ultimately, which led to the impeachable crime of Trump withholding aid to Ukraine unless Zelensky played ball

with his Hunter Biden investigation. It's so stupid. But that's really what it ends up at. And in fact, Lev and Igor attempted to shake down not just Zelensky, but his predecessor, Poroshenko. So it was two successive Ukrainian presidents. But that was their job. Giuliani was gonna-

Dig up dirt on Joe Biden and Hunter Biden and get the Ukrainians to announce an investigation into Hunter Biden and Joe Biden and alleged bribery and or money laundering through this corrupt energy company, Burisma, that Hunter Biden had what they called a no show job on the board, a paid gig on the board. But they couldn't even manufacture evidence. They couldn't do, these guys, so it was, it reminded me of, remember when George W. Bush

nominated Harriet Myers to the Supreme Court, like that very short-lived, he's like, I need a lady, where's the nearest lady lawyer to my office? Like, oh, her, make it her. This is what Rudy's like, oh, I know some Ukrainians, we have some Ukrainians. And they're like, they'll do anything, these guys. And so he recruits them to be like, like into espionage and into like a shadow diplomacy operation to shake down the crime.

And these guys are probably the least quiet guys that you could recruit. They're hustlers, they're con men. Well, I think that's what's great about the doc is you really kind of establish, you know, Lev's history of, you know, just being, you know, this hustling, grifting, and you know, uh, Lev's history of, you know, just being, you know, this, you know, hustling, grifting, and, you know, like a organized crime adjacent or full in guy. But he's like got this demeanor

where, you know, like he's not one of these guys, he's not like a made guy. He's a guy that's gonna like survive on his charm and facilitate things for whoever and then hopefully before it gets too ugly, get out without getting killed and with some sort of favor owed. And he's not a political guy. He wasn't even registered to vote in 2016 when he was supporting and helping to donate money to Trump. But I like the whole original story that he comes over from Ukraine. He ends up, you know, young and he got into some trouble in Ukraine with some heavies.

He ends up in Coney Island with the rest. It's Jewish, right? Brighton Beach, yes, yes. Seems very Jewish. Very Jewish. So he was part of that Russian kind of purge of Jews, I guess, in a way. I don't know how it worked in the Ukraine.

Yes, it was exactly, because it was Soviet Ukraine at the time, absolutely. A lot of anti-Semitism. Well, there was a time where they were like, okay, you can get out now. Yes. And like thousands came in., you can get out now. Yes. And like thousands came in. And you better get out now.

Right. Yeah. And that's how his future's third wife and fourth baby mama Svetlana, that's how she got out. She seems very pleasant. She is, I mean, to me, she's the star of the movie. I remember meeting her and I was like, well, I decided she was gonna be in the movie

about a year and a half or two before she decided she was gonna be in the movie. Because I was like, well, I decided she was gonna be in the movie about a year and a half or two before she decided she was gonna be in the movie. Cause I was like, you know, like she helps Lev make sense a little bit more in a way. And I feel like it's a bit of- Cause she loves the guy and he knows he's kind of half a clown. Absolutely.

I mean, she's the one who says like, okay, if this were a Hillary Clinton administration or Barack Obama administration or Joe Biden administration or even a George W. Bush administration, Lev Parnas doesn't get within 500 miles of the president of the United States, let alone be one of his plumbers, like Nixon, like a Watergate burglar

for Giuliani in Ukraine. And that's really what it was. Giuliani was like the Howard Hunt in this metaphor here. And Lev and Igor were Trump's plumbers is exactly what they were. And Svetlana is like, this guy's not qualified to do anything. What the hell is he running around the country on behalf of the president for thinking he's going to get a medal?

And she is the one who's trying to talk reason into him the whole time, but he's slipping, he's just slipping away. And so this is a little bit of a way into Trump brain. He refers to it as a, in a word he made up, but doesn't know he made up. He was cultinized, is what he refers to. Well, I think that really explores though, in terms of what that cult means.

I don't think people, it's easy to say they got brainwashed or whatever, but when you have proximity to the most powerful person on the fucking planet, I mean, it's very seductive. Intoxicating. He admits that. And he admits that his initial motivations were purely financial.

He was looking for money. Yeah, but also, like, the funny thing about him is, like, you know, while you're talking to him, post everything, like, as, you know, Lev now, you know, he still refers to, you know, without thinking, to deep state as a real thing. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Because I wanted to understand his state of mind

at the time, and he was a true believer in all of this bullshit. Yeah. Like, a real thing. Yeah, oh yeah. Because I wanted to understand his state of mind at the time, and he was a true believer in all of this bullshit. Like a true believer, and so, and she, and Svetlana watched him go from like, okay, this is a hustle, he's trying to like, buy influence in the Republican Party, which I mean, in a legendary and historic way, put up a for sale sign, like just in front of-

Sure, because he had his own money laundering operations and fronts to to make money very hard at work doing In the laundry business. Yeah, absolutely and and he was occurring and so she thought Leaves just on the hustle and then comes to realize like no no he's like way in over He doesn't even know he doesn't even understand. He doesn't know he's That's the thing about Trump in particular is like anybody who gets you know like way in over his head here. He doesn't even understand what the fuck's going on. That's the thing about Trump in particular, is like anybody who gets intoxicated and seduced by the power, it's like,

look at what's come before you. You're gonna get thrown under the bus. There's no way. Yeah, there's a forest lawn-sized graveyard of like the people that he stepped on. Oh yeah, loyalists. Yeah, and fucking discarded, absolutely. And she, so I, and this is a little bit of a cheat,

sort of how the sausage is made, but like when I met her, I was like, okay. And when we did the deal with MSNBC earlier this year, and I realized I was gonna have like 89 minutes without commercials to tell the story, I'm like, I need some shorthand here to make this work. How did Rachel sign off on this? Because that's a pretty, that's an honor

because she's like, you know, really one of the smartest journalists around. And I, you know, I know her and it's like, she's not, you know, she, to have her trust you with something like this, that's a big deal. Well, we had, like I said, Lev was on our list, if you will, a Florida men list in late 2019. And it was January of 2020 when Rachel

did the interview with him. Really against his own best interest, he did that interview and he... Was he trying to save his ass then? He was looking for redemption. This was a guy without a country because he betrayed both of his countries. Well, yeah, it was like, you know

He thought he was gonna get killed. Yeah, and and he so this was a guy He was hated by the left for being a treason weasel Yeah, and he was hated by the right because he did the worst thing in the world, which was turn on Trump That's the worst thing you can and that's where this the slander campaign came everywhere Like, you know everyone's saying they didn't know him. Yeah, he was an SP. He was a suppressive person He was excommunicated. But it's hilarious, though. Like, on his phone, he's got 1,000 pictures

of him and Trump. And Trump's like, yeah, I might take a picture with him. Every, he had documented everything. That stuff, that recording that I guess Igor did of Trump putting a, like, a political hit out on the ambassador, what was her name? Marie Yovanovich. You have to remember, that recording, I believe,

documents the first time that Trump had ever heard about the Ukraine. Well, who that woman, like, he didn't know Maria Ivanovich. He didn't even know Ukraine had oil. And when he says she's out, like, Get her out, this is the reality show foreign policy of a reality show president. It was literally the fucking boardroom

at the end of The Apprentice. He was like, get rid of her. I want her out, get her out. It was mob shit, it was TV shit. It was just like, it was make believe, but this was a professional. But like a year or so later, she's out. Yeah, and it took him that long.

And this is the thing that's, I think, so frightening about this moment. You were saying earlier about how people think like, oh, we survived four years of this the first time, it's just another presidency, it's just another term. Here's the thing, love them or hate them. People like Jeff Sessions, Mike Pompeo, Rex Tillerson, John Bolton.

Believe it or not, there were adults or even maybe statesmen in that first administration. Right, people, deep state, people that they would call the deep state, but people who respected norms and I don't know, allies and NATO and things that kept peace in the world for more than half a century. And so there were people, there were guardrails in place. Those people are gone.

And Lev says, now he says, he goes, who's gonna be the attorney general now? Alina Haba, who's gonna be the NSA director? Cash Patel? Who's gonna be, who's gonna be the, what are we, who are the people that are gonna like Steve Bannon's gonna be the CIA director like what like like these are the presidents men? Well this is but that's how autocracy works. I mean that's how like a dictatorship forms

itself. I mean once you get rid of the norms and people are dumb enough not to know what they are, but I think that's exactly how these guys want to do business. You know the way that Trump wants to run it and all these fascists, they just want, you know, like I'll call Putin. We don't need, no, don't make any news about it. I'll call him. Who needs diplomacy? Right, because it's just this voice network of autocrats that can, you know, operate

at the behest of themselves, frighten the people or get them brain fucked, and then just, you know, through their own self-interest, you know, run the global financial system. I think there's some people in who are in a cult. I think there's some people who are too, you know, in Florida, obviously, there's a very large elderly population who find themselves the victims of con men and get to, and a lot of them are too prideful to complain or to report it because they don't want to admit that they've been had. So I think there's some people in that position

with Trump too, because if they admit now that this whole thing has been a fraud or a lie, they're the fools who got duped. But they're still hedging their bets for the next administration. They don't need to admit anything. I mean, some of them are doing that, probably preemptively if he wins again,

who are like, now's the time to finally go fuck Trump. You know, but they're gonna come groveling if he wins again. Yeah. But we don't have to go there. So Lev. No, we may have to go there. No, I know that, but let's enjoy the month.

So, let's try to, but like this Lev and his come to Jesus moments and his contrition, and you know, but I think that in this documentary I think you put it together, you know through his personality through the way that the Trump operation was structured, you know through Giuliani Doing this stuff and but then giving our next attorney general. Yeah, Rudolph Trump cut him loose a long time ago. He just never never goes away Never goes away

But but there were some interesting things about about Giuliani in a brief moment in the doc You you talk about how like he was the mob prosecutor He was getting rid of the mob in New York and now he's be It turns out that he it was envy He loves a fucking mob and he wanted nothing more than to be part of it. And he got his mob with Trump. But I think the way you sort of laid out the real crime against the country and the real reason why the impeachment made sense and should have stuck harder and the scariness of the fact that, you know, people don't really realize just how fucking awful a thing that

he did by denying an ally aid to serve his, you know, political prospects in the future. I mean, that's a big deal. And I think people need to be reminded it needs to be explained to them. There's one guy on the news says it's worse than Watergate. And it kinda is. I think the, just the fire hose of fuckery

that we in the shit we ate for, you know, four years and have really for the subsequent four years as well since that administration left has just been so overwhelming that we memory hold scandals that would have otherwise sunk any other political career campaign. And they were catastrophic and arguably, I know the word gets thrown around a lot in context of Trump, but treasonous.

And in the case of Ukraine, you, you know, you had a situation where, that where Russia was going to roll over this, this country, they, they, they had been occupying them since 2014. And even though we just think of the war kind of heating up, you know, more recently, they've been there since 2014. And Trump just saying, you know, it'd be a shame if something happened to your nice little country over there. I know you need some help

and Congress had already approved hundreds of millions of dollars in aid and weaponry and things and he's like, do us a little favor. Do us a little, the perfect phone call, as he called it. And he only stepped in, as mob bosses do, when their underlings fuck up the job. When he's like, I told you to go and take care of the thing and now you fucked it up and now I gotta fucking

make the call. Like that's what that call was and it sent alarm bells all around the intelligence community. Anybody who was on the call or who read the breakdown of the transcript of the call, people were like, we have a serious fucking problem here. And that problem is gonna obviously metastasize. I mean, whenever Putin wants to leave Ukraine,

the war's over, he can just leave Ukraine. But that's not what he, he's holding out for November. If Trump had won in the second term, he would have let Putin take it. Oh, yes, he's a real estate guy, Mark. It's a real estate deal. It's a real estate deal. But I like how you keep it on Lev, you know,

you move through all this stuff, but then Lev, you know, as it come to Jesus' moment, he unfucks his brain. And- Does he, though? Well, that's a good question. But after, because like those kinds of guys, you know, they can turn on the waterworks.

They can cry a little bit. Yeah, people forget that con is short for confidence. Yeah, but there is like these moments where, you know, he all of a sudden becomes very kind of like, you know, pro-democracy, you know, feels bad. But ultimately the human part of it is the thing he seems to feel the worst about is putting Hunter Biden into a position that he didn't deserve.

Of starting the whole avalanche onto this, you know, this hopeless drug addict who... You know, all, all I, the only thing I knew about Hunter Biden was from right wing memes and from this show. Because like, it was the first time when I was like, where he felt like not this enigma or this boogeyman, but he humanized him.

And it was a conversation that I was like, oh, he's just a guy with a problem. And we all are guys with problems. The thing that people like, my interview with him was to show, you don't think this kid was a problem for his father? The idea that his father would say like, yeah, go make some deals with me. This out of control crackhead,

who was like, you know, just like he's gone. You know, like, you know, and that's never discussed and, you know, Joe won't discuss it and, you know, Hunter would discuss it, but that guy had to have been a fucking nightmare for Joe Biden. Nightmare, I, so, I know, Hunter would discuss it, but that guy had to have been a fucking nightmare for Joe Biden. Nightmare. I, so I, I talk about this with permission, but

my brother is 17 years sober next month. Yeah. And so we've been through it. My family has been sure, you know, the life savings to put him into rehab only to, only to relapse and the whole, we've been through the whole cycle and again, and then repeat.

Well, yeah, there's a point where you're like, well, we've done everything we could and now it's just like, you know, there's nothing we can do. Dead or in prison or, but now my brother's a dad, he's got two kids and a house and it's fucking, dude, it's a miracle. It's a miracle.

And so I think anybody who's been through that, I think a lot of people have, recognize in Joe Biden, like, well, probably the enabler, certainly the empathy, like that relationship speaks to me. And so it was kind of all these things. And so, but Lev was stuck in the right-wing meme machine of the boogie manification of Hunter Biden. And Lev!

Yeah. And, well, yes. Eventually. Eventually. But, like, Lev was... Well, he got that machine rolling, and that's why he feels, he seemed to feel... Lev was like, you know, I said, Lev, you tried to destroy this guy's life. And Lev said to me, I did.

Like, not I try, like, I think I was successful. He takes responsibility for the legal problems that Hunter Biden has to this day. He's like, we got that. We put the spotlight on this guy. He goes, who I thought of as a mark, as a target. He said, and didn't think of him as a son, a father, a brother. A drug addict? A husband, never thought of him as any, yeah. He thought of him as this degenerate crackhead who we're gonna use to guarantee.

Paying his debt. We are going to, we are going to conspire or attempt to collude with a foreign power in an effort to meddle in the 2020 United States presidential election. That's what we did. And we're gonna do it through this fucked up kid of a presidential candidate. We're going to, who was not a presidential candidate yet,

but Donald Trump was petrified of Joe Biden entering the 2020 race. And so he's like, we have to stop that. We have to head that off at the pass. That's what Rudy Giuliani was charged with and He they were gonna do it by exploiting hunter Biden's addiction Yeah, and really exploiting Joe Biden's love for this boy. Yeah, I think as well like it was yeah, it was a pretty grotesque And an insidious plot. Well, what's interesting is, there's actually a spoiler to this thing

if you haven't seen it, so I don't wanna do- Please. I don't wanna do- It's fine, I think the cat's out of the bag. It's all right, it's pretty- Oh, it's out, yeah. It's pretty- Well, I mean, he ends up, the big moment of the doc

is that it's a face-to-face with Hunter with a seemingly heartfelt apology. MSNBC put it in the trailer. It reminded me a lot of... They were using Hunter again. Do you remember the movie? He's being used again. You exploited for, yeah.

Do you remember the movie Ransom? Yeah, with Mel Gibson. With that Jew lover, Mel Gibson. Yeah, so Mel Gibson, the big twist there was he turns the ransom around, and he's like, this isn't a ransom for my kid. I'm putting it on your head. He does that on TV, right?

And so that twist is in the trailer and I'll never forget Brian Grazer, who I love, the producer, they asked him like, dude, why did you give away the big twist of the movie in the trailer? And he goes, butts in seats, butts in seats. So whatever, Mark, just tell him, tell him what happened. Now you have to see it.

But it's actually, it's really an addendum and like it's a postscript totally you know you can't I mean the thing exists It could exist without it. It did in fact Motherfucker up until July of this year. Yeah, a month and a half before delivery You didn't need it. You just it was the final sort of piece to humanize the Jewish guy. So we had been involved in this for like two and a half years by the time we brought it to Rachel. Cause the dock market was shit, particularly the dock market.

So you had a dock and you presented it to her. We started working on this in three years ago in the summer of 21. Cause I had reached out to Lev earlier that year, we finally got him to sit down ahead of his trial and then after his conviction, but prior to sentencing. And we got the first interviews in the can to develop this thing.

And not only did the doc market go to shit with the strike, not with the striker, just happened to be at the same time. The conventional wisdom of the water balloon effect of scripted getting squeezed and nonfiction, you know, unscripted blowing up, did not happen. Everything just, the industry said, you know, the studios were like, hey, you know what we could do? We could just reboot this whole fucking operation

and, you know, and figure this out while we don't have to spend money and we don't have to work. So nobody worked. Yeah, it gave them a great opportunity to keep people unemployed. Yeah, and it's worked. It's stuck.

It took. And so, and particularly the political doc market was dead. Nobody wanted to get involved in the 2024 cycle. They were like, let's just steer clear. So with the Apprentice movie, everybody just wanted to steer clear of Trump content. And so-

Well, that's because like, you know, like, and I say this a lot that like, you know, these corporations like Netflix, this tech company, you know, they want to exist in a Trump presidency. They don't give a fuck. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. They're not, you know- Let me give you the,

we were talking about red flags of fascism, just to keep it positive for, you know, for Yom Kippur for the new year. In Florida, the end of Florida will not be when the flood comes. It will be when the insurance companies abandon Florida, when you can't get a 30-year mortgage because the banks are like,

this is not a going concern. And insurance companies are like, we're not gonna insure you because we're not gonna go bankrupt on this God-forsaken place you can't get a 30 year mortgage, because the banks are like, this is not a going concern. And insurance companies are like, we're not gonna insure you, because we're not gonna go bankrupt on this God forsaken place that, you know, that Mother Nature clearly wants to reclaim the wetlands from.

So that's gonna be the death knell, when it's only for people who can afford to build, rebuild and self insure, and then it's over. It's kind of similar here with, you know, democracy and free speech. We had a lot of trouble getting E&O insurance for this doc, which is an essential deliverable for any doc. You can't-

What is it? E&O, it's errors and emissions insurance. Just the insurance policy in case you get sued. If you get sued, it covers, you know, there's deductibles of course, but it covers per incident, you know, or yada, yada, yada. Every doc, it is like number one deliverable. Like you can't hand them a doc until you get the,

you know, policy bound, right? And you get a price and you have to agree on, there's gonna be a premium and then there's gonna be a deductible and everything. And we couldn't get covered because Trump and Trump world are so litigious in no small part because he's playing with donors' money. He's not even playing.

He can sue, by the way, he doesn't prevail. He doesn't prevail in any of these cases. He might even have to pay fees and anti-slap, but he doesn't give a shit. It's not his money, keep it in court. But that to me was scary, because it's like, well, if documentarians or journalists can't get covered, can't get insurance,

then we can't do this, we can't publish this anymore. And that to me, just like Florida, it's like the insurance companies are really the death net. That's the red flag, that's the canary in the coal mine. When the insurance companies take off, it's the end Yeah, it's every every man and woman for themselves and only the ritual prevail with protection Magatav. Yeah It's not but but so did you get that coverage through an MSNBC ultimately did but it was much higher premium and much But the network didn't take the hit?

Well, hopefully, knock wood, there's no hit. No, but I mean, did they put the money for it? It's in the budget. It's budgeted for it, but it's just like the struggle to even obtain it and then the price at which we ultimately did is a red flag, dude. And I hear you. It's good information to know. Scary, but it's good.

But so when Rachel got involved, you showed her a full cut. No, we showed her a sizzle and a deck. We did not have a full cut. And how much power did she have in the making of it? So, well, she has a busy year. Like this cycle has been busy for her. So she was as involved as she wanted to be. She watched cuts, she gave notes.

I would say she was our partner in journalism and she was our bodyguard internally. Not that there was a lot of issues, we had a really good experience, but when you come in for the first, we've done four or five projects with ESPN, a bunch with Netflix, we've done five with Magnolia, with Mark Cuban's company,

and so we have a lot of experience working with some people. And this was the first time we were ever working with MSNBC Films, so we didn't know what to expect. With a news operation. Yeah, and we didn't know what to, a legacy news operation at that. So we didn't know how it was gonna go. It went very well, but if all else failed, Rachel was our bodyguard.

We, there was a kindred spirit, we had kindred spirits there because her sense of humor comes through, I think, with her journalism and that's what we, so she was like, oh, it's a comedy. It's called From Russia with Lev. She's like, oh, this is how this needs to, she was down for the cause and we sat shoulder to shoulder

in a conference room at 30 Rock, across from her bosses, pitching this movie together in January-ish of this year. And then it was like, let's do it. And I didn't even have Svetlana's interview in the can because she hadn't even agreed to do an interview yet. And then I was like, well, we're doing this with Rachel. And Rachel was a big deal in their household because she was considered public enemy number one

because Trump hated her. And so Lev banned MSNBC in their house. They could only watch. On all the TVs was Fox News. And so when he had an op, when he said, I'm gonna go public and tell my story for the first time to a one-on-one interview, he had an offer from Anderson Cooper and he had an offer from Rachel. And he called, he said he was in no head space

to make a decision, he called Svetlana's wife. And she goes, this isn't a decision. She goes, you have to do it with Rachel because like you made our lives a living hell over this MSNBC ban. And so, and that's why I said to Svetlana, and when I realized we were only gonna have 89 minutes to do this movie on MSNBC with you,

I was like, okay, I need to, this is like a, that's why I said, like, screenwriting was my best class in editing or directing or anything. I said, I need a shorthand here. So I'm gonna start the movie. You spoiled the end, I'll spoil the beginning. I need a shorthand here. So I'm gonna start the movie. You spoiled the end, I'll spoil the beginning. I need a shorthand here where I think Lev Parnas

is not gonna be in this documentary for like the first three-ish minutes. And we're just gonna hear about their meet-cute with Svetlana, because she is smart and funny and beautiful, and people are gonna think when they meet this guy, well, whether I see it or not, there must be something to this guy because this woman sees something in him

or loves something about him. So it's almost a shorthand for like, okay, let's at least hear him out. And you can decide later whether you believe him or not, or trust him or love him or hate him, but at least I need you on board for the start of the thing, right? So she was really the shorthand for that as a character. Well, it's a great piece of work, buddy.

And I think what we learned is that after all is said and done, Lev Parnas survives. He is a survivor. Aren't we all? He moves on to the next thing. Yeah, and the next thing, as Hunter Biden says, and the next, you know, one day at a time. We put on our... next thing. Yeah, and the next thing as Hunter Biden says, and the next, you know, one day at a time.

Yeah, how is it? Do you text him? He texts me, and we, you know, he has a book, and so like shadow diplomacy, and so he's hawking the book, and you know, he's out there, I think trying to make things right, and his relationship with Hunter Biden is to me, fascinating. They should do like a show together. Well, they'll throw it together. I think that would is, to me, fascinating. They should do, like, a show together.

Well, they'll tour together. I think that would be... I'd watch that. They'll do, like, several states, you know, multi-state tour. You know, when I woke up that morning in L.A. and Hunter Biden had texted me, I'd never spoke to him before, and he's like, please call me.

And I thought, oh, well, like, this is gonna be canceled. I'm sitting here in a hotel room, and it's gonna be canceled. I never thought it in a hotel room, and it's gonna be canceled. I never thought it was gonna happen, because they committed to doing it, and then Hunter got convicted. And then his dad had the debate, like June 27th. And I'm like, okay, history is intervening here.

This meeting is never gonna happen. You know, because Lev's like, oh, I wanna meet this guy and apologize to him. I'm like, sure, Lev, whatever you say. And Hunter Biden, we talked that morning, Sunday morning, July 7th, and we just started talking about like, sure, Lev, whatever, whatever you say. And Hunter Biden, we talked that morning, Sunday morning, July 7th, and we just started talking about like logistics and then we started talking about addiction.

And I was like, this is a really interesting and complicated guy. He was the guy from your podcast I had listened to three years ago. And so I'm like, and my understanding with him was, because I'm like, why the fuck is this guy? Because he's in jeopardy too. He got convicted. He had the tax case still coming up at that point And yeah, he was convicted on the gun case tax case was upcoming

He hadn't ironic that he gets convicted for what one gun for something that nobody else has ever been Yeah, really convicted for standalone. It's just it to it's the two-tiered justice system is not always what people think It doesn't always work in the lopsided way people think that it did. I learned that from Ben Broffman on the Limelight project. But the way Hunter kind of expressed it to me, and the best I can, I'm paraphrasing, but he should speak for himself, but he just was like, I have had to go to my family and friends and loved ones

and ask forgiveness for the worst things that I did or put them through. And he's like, who am I to deprive this guy of his opportunity to make amends? Like he wasn't just working a program, he was trying to live it. And I was just like, this is a really interesting guy. Because I didn't know, I program, he was trying to live it. And I thought, I was just like, I was like, this is a really interesting guy. Cause I didn't know, I said, he said,

what do I do when I see him do, I'm like, dude, shake his hand, hug him, punch him in the face. Like I have no idea what you want to do to this guy. I'm like, I would fucking kill him. Like, you know, have the Secret Service pounce on him and tear him apart, I don't know. Like, you know, do you, you know? And it was like, just the empathy.

And honestly, it's his dad. He not only looks like his dad, but like he, you can see there's like lessons there from father to son that are like really profound and really powerful. It's a good scene. Thank you. Good job. Nice talking to you.

Great talking to you. Thank you for having me. All right Alright buddy. There you go, Billy Corbin. You can watch From Russia with Lev at docplus.com or on the free documentary plus app. Hang out for a minute, will you folks? At Algoma University, your future has no limits. Here you can go further, in the classroom, in the field, and well beyond.

We provide personalized education, cultural fluency, and training for in-demand careers. We don't just prepare you for the future, we prepare you to change it. Plus, Algoma has the most affordable tuition in Ontario. Make the most of your university experience. Go further. Apply to Algoma University today. Hey, gang. There's more of me and Tom Sharpling posted for full Marin listeners.

We just put up the Mark and Tom show number two this week, which is another talk between me and Tom that we recorded back in 2012. You're going through this and they have all the different outfits he wore on stage and then you see this TV and it has this plaque on it. It says, uh, uh, for Elvis Presley from RCA for 50 million units sold. Like, so RCA, this corporation, this guy sells 50 million records, imagine that. Probably at that time it was still more

than $150 million. Yeah, yeah. So what do they send over as a thank you? They send over a TV that they make. Like an RCA TV. that like that. There you go, buddy. Yeah, that's show business like right there It's like even if you become Elvis You kind of like they'll just be like, yeah, what do we got laying around here? Call Joe up in sales. Yeah, what's the hottest TV we got on the line?

I know it's TV that cost them $37. And I think a sadder thing is that he was so proud of it as an award, he didn't even stick it in the wall to make a fourth TV. No, no. Wasn't even that good at television. No, this was like the commemorative television for 50 million records sold.

What a horrendous thing. To get bonus episodes twice a week and every episode of WTF ad free, sign up for the full Marin. Just go to the link in the episode description or go to WTFpod.com and click on WTF plus. And a reminder before we go, this podcast is hosted by a cast. I'll get back to not looping stuff, but I'm still playing with the looper and I know my leads are, you know, simple know simple but yeah I enjoy it. So So I'm gonna be a good boy. So So So So So So Boomer lives!

Monkey and La Fonda, cat angels everywhere!