WTF with Marc Maron Podcast - Episode 675 - Michael Moore

Episode Date: January 25, 2016

Michael Moore says he’s angrier than he’s ever been about the state of things. But Marc senses something softer in Michael’s personality these days. The filmmaker and activist sits down with Marc in the garage to discuss where that anger comes from, why he’s made a conscious choice to channel those feelings in a new direction, and how this all plays out in his latest film, Where To Invade Next. 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.

Hi, it's Terry O'Reilly, host of Under the Influence. Recently, we created an episode on cannabis marketing. With cannabis legalization, it's a brand new challenging marketing category. And I want to let you know we've produced a special bonus podcast episode where I talk to an actual cannabis producer. I wanted to know how a producer becomes licensed, how a cannabis company competes with big corporations, how a cannabis company markets its products in such a highly regulated

category, and what the term dignified consumption actually means. I think you'll find the answers interesting and surprising. Hear it now on Under the Influence with Terry O'Reilly. This bonus episode is brought to you by the Ontario Cannabis Store and ACAS Creative. It's a night for the whole family. Be a part of Kids Night when the Toronto Rock take on the Colorado Mammoth at a special 5 p.m. start time on Saturday, March 9th at First Ontario Centre in Hamilton.

The first 5,000 fans in attendance will get a Dan Dawson bobblehead courtesy of Backley Construction. Punch your ticket to Kids Night on Saturday, March 9th at 5 p.m. in Rock City at torontorock.com. all right folks let's do this how are you what the fuckers what the fuck buddies what the fucksters what the fuck nicks what's happening i'm mark maron this is wtf my podcast thank you for tuning in if you're new here welcome if you're just hanging around nice to see you again wherever you are if you're digging snow I hope I'm helping out maybe perhaps hopefully by the time that you hear this uh maybe you'll have that all done or maybe some of it's melted away but if I can be any assistance if you're sitting at home alone, perhaps by candlelight because you

have to. I hope that I am a comforting force in your life. I hope I'm distracting you. It's one of the things I actually miss it. I know it's probably hard for you to hear this, but I sort of miss that about the East Coast, that day where you wake up and there's this calm, there's this peace, there's this quiet, there's no way to get your car out. And there's just no way to see how it's ever going to thaw.

And then you realize, like, well, this is all pretty right now, but pretty soon it's just going to turn into gross gray, icy mud, crusty garbage. Just things like the days of thawing are really kind of they're relieving, but quite disgusting on the road. But anyways, I hope you're okay and you made it through it. You know who I'm talking to. So what's going on? Let's start.

I will tell you this right now, right out of the gate. Michael Moore is my guest today. This conversation was recorded in November, and we held it until we were closer to the release of Michael's new documentary, Where to Invade Next. So I guess what I'm saying very plainly is you will not hear us talk about the current water crisis in Flint, Michigan. The true horror of that situation had not come to light at the time we recorded this conversation. And as you know, I'm sure Michael has plenty to say if he hasn't already about that. But this was done a little while back, but it's a good talk. Also, I want to mention here because, you know, a lot of you didn't buy my book.

That's fine. I mean, how much of me can you take? But I want to mention that the ebook of attempting normal is on sale for a limited time for a buck 99 everywhere ebooks are sold so there's that we got to talk about some shit all right let me figure it out let me figure out how to talk about it now the first time that that i met that i really sort of met or or knew about uh amy schumer was probably 2011 and the situation was was was pretty it was it was amazing because because i i didn't know her i did not know her comedy i was doing a live wtf at the now defunct comics comedy club uh in new york and we had

broken up that night there was it was a two there were two shows we had the we had the nerd show and then we had the dirt show this is my concept so the second show was just going to be filthy comics. And on that show, I had booked Joe DeRosa, Kurt Metzger, Anthony Jeselnik, Robert Kelly. Dave Attell was closing. And that that is just a an avalanche of honest, raw filth. You know, just beautiful, expressive expressive dirty dudes and at that time Amy was dating Anthony Jeselnik and she was backstage and I said to my producer I'm like you know we you know she we should put her on I mean if she wants to go on at the end of this thing yeah but part of me was like you know she and she immediately said yeah I'll go I said you go on? Yeah, I'll go on. And this was and I was going to use her to close with. And that that is a murderer's row there, buddy.

Who's saying that? I see that around a lot, but it doesn't matter. And, you know, DeRosa, Metzger, Jeselnik, Kelly, Attell. And Amy said she would close. And I was astounded because there was part of me. I didn't know who she was. And I'm like, well, I mean, mean you know can this chick handle this thing you know and and uh you know and i i brought her out and uh she just fucking killed and it was amazing and and that was 2011 you know she's the real fucking deal

she's a real fucking comic no question and then after the show you know i'd been given a little bit of money to pay like 50 bucks you you know, to people to the comics, you know, from comics. And, you know, we had my producer, Brendan, and I were, you know, he was giving out the money and we went to give a tell his 50. And he said, you know, I'll give it to Amy. All right. So that obviously a kind gesture on behalf of a tell and, you know, a respectful gesture. But but the point being Amy Schumer is a real

fucking comic so here's the thing all this fucking this onslaught of accusations this momentum this fucking mob attack on Amy Schumer.

It's fucking ridiculous. It's just fucking ridiculous. So where does it come from? You know, what is it? What is it really about? What is the real pattern here? Right? What is it?

What is the real pattern? Three examples on a video. Here i don't even here's here's why i'm talking about this not because it's my responsibility i am a comedian and it does rile me obviously but i was dragged into it a bit because um a few months ago on the episode with Aaron Draplin, episode 649. I had watched Amy's special and she did a bit and it was about people coming, about everyone coming. Now, this is not, again, if you work dirty, talking about cum is going to be part of your repertoire. I mean, fucking Lenny did it, right? Did you come good? Did you come? Did you come good?

I didn't steal that. I'm citing her. I watched her bit, and I was like, oh, fuck. That's a lot like my bit. It's almost like the female side of my bit. Now, my immediate thought, and I'm just repeating myself because the episode that I did it on, 649 Aaron Draplin, was taken out of context, edited. The conversation I had was edited by some fucking monkey

to sound like I accused Amy of stealing. And then Opie and Jim got duped by a troll. They played it on the air. I didn't think that Amy stole my bit. I was mad that we had a similar bit. That was it. There was no way either of us could have taken each other's but she lives in a different city we don't work together we're both headliners i knew all this

i found out that we take those specials a week apart there was no way but we don't live in the same world really we don't see each other now we both have a similar bit so what so what there's no stealing everybody does come the point is that some fucking monkey to serve an agenda edited my words to support his agenda. His agenda to accuse Amy of stealing. Now, there's a difference

between justice and fucking annihilation. Attack. It's a difference. Now, I know some female comics, Wendy Liebman, Kathleen Madigan, Tammy Pescatelli, got mad at her and and tweeted things and whatever and they eventually you know i think all of them recanted or apologized because it's fucking ridiculous that but that gave a foundation to what's happening now and what is happening now is it about justice who's really attacking amy schumer i watch those fucking videos yeah i'm a comic if you're a comic and this meme has driven into your skull and you're actually sitting there going, I think she did it.

Then you're a fucking amateur or you're bitter or you don't like her. The tabloid media, I mean, they're complicit out of desperation and you can't expect them to have a moral compass. So they support the fucking meme. The video goes out. Where does it come from? Who are those fucking people? Right? So I watched a video the

first joke the wendy liebman joke whatever it's a one-liner who gives a fuck i mean if somebody's really hanging on to a 20 year old one-liner as being this essential part of her fucking uh oeuvre and that's crazy one-liners are disposable they're disposable on nightly writers who write monologues for fucking TV shows, they throw away 50 one-liners a day. A genius like Dave Attell has thrown away more one-liners than most of us have ever written. Attell is hilarious. It becomes impossible to sort of vet this stuff, is my point.

As a comic, that one-liner about, you know, I like when men pay, whatever, anyone could have written that. Any woman could have written that. Any comic could have written that. That's just the truth of it. If you write, you write, you know, I like when men pay, whatever. Anyone could have written that. Any woman could have written that. Any comic could have written that. That's just the truth of it. If you write, you write, you write. Your point of view, you write to your point of view. She's a woman, they're women.

And that's, you know, it was easy. This is not theft. This is just a matter of time. It's just a one-liner. It means nothing. It does not define Amy. It doesn't define wendy that you know that has nothing that if that joke didn't exist with either of them who cares they're still who

they are they're entertainers or comics not theft the second bit the kathleen madigan bit a similar idea became a sketch on amy's show shows are written by committee there's a group of writers in the room someone come up with an idea that was the idea even i i guarantee you even if somebody said yeah i think i heard a similar joke about this but it wasn't the same thing it was about opal winfrey paying somebody even if that came up i don't know whose joke it was there was a real good chance that they would like it's different you know why because it is different it's a sketch it was executed it was a piece of film it was it was orchestrated composed sketch with many beats that idea is not owned for fuck's sake not theft it's just stupid

the pescatelli thing I don't even know what that what was that about women with thin eyebrows just making that joke in junior high school they're not anything none of them are mystifying original observations

really they're just not Amy Schumer is a comedian it becomes impossible to vet mundane material based on observations. It becomes very difficult. There are thousands of fucking comics churning out jokes every fucking day everywhere. The people that I've spoken to, the people I've met in this business that have been accused of joke theft, people that i've spoken to the people i've met in this business that have been accused of joke theft i truly believe that most of them have no idea that they're stealing them the amount

that doesn't that's not an apology for the ones that have have certainly been guilty of of stealing swaths of material but in terms of of one-liners or or little ideas like that i mean it's are you fucking kidding me comedians absorb what's coming in and they process it we've all been in the rooms of stand-up comedy clubs for most of our lives hours and hours and now the the thing is, is in order to vet a joke against the history of recorded comedy on album or on television, it's fucking impossible. And this is not an apologist position. This is just a reality. All you can do is like, oh, that sounds a little familiar. Maybe I hold off on that.

It just becomes impossible to vet everything, especially little ideas. I mean, Attell used to drive. Attell is hilarious. Attell is like one of the most prolific joke writers in the world. And there are a few of us, you know, sometime, you know, back in the day. I mean, I think I've talked about this here before. Once or twice a year, maybe you'll get a call from Attell and he'd be like, uh, hey, do you do a bit about

jerking off in the Bible? I'm like, no. He's like, oh, I thought, uh, all right. Yeah. I mean, it, you know, what are you, what are you going to do? You come up with an idea, you know, I got, and that's an original idea. Jerking off in the Bible is pretty specific. And I'm flattered that he thought maybe that I might've done a bit about jerking off in the Bible. But if you come up with a thing, observational thing or a bit about you know something that we all experience how are you gonna vet that it's not even that attack it's just we all share the same reality and if you're a comic and you're thinking funny the possibilities of of a lot of people doing similar jokes around things that we all fucking do or things that are sort of our point

of view related is is high have you watched fucking network sitcoms do you watch the monologues that happen every fucking night on on nightly talk shows where's the where's the outrage about the repetition of current event jokes or the repetition of sitcom plots. I mean, come on. This is fucking comedy for fuck's sake. So, what is the pattern? What is the real pattern? It's certainly not a pattern of Amy stealing jokes.

It doesn't exist. So what is it? Well, I'll tell you i had a thing on this on my website on wtfpod.com and um there used to be a comment board just an open comment board now this is this is true shit you know and sometimes you know i get you know people say i don't have enough women on the show but i i have as many women as I can get. The point is, I had an open comment section that I had to shut down. Now, it's changed now. Now, you have to, if you want to comment on WTFpod.com, you have to go through Facebook.

So you have to identify yourself. It's a little harder to be anonymous when you have to post through Facebook. But before we did that, without fucking fail, if we had a woman guest, doesn't matter who it was or what she did, if there was a woman guest on this show,

the comment section would blow up with fucking douchebags attacking that woman with just fucking garbage, slander, violence, just nasty shit. Just a fucking string of anonymous fucking monsters slinging garbage at any woman guest. So what is that about? That was the pattern.

You know what I mean? about that's that that's that that was the pattern you know what i mean so then you start looking at this attack you know this this this this fight for justice this sort of righteous idea that you're you're gonna police comedy and call out joke thieves so that means that there's there's some fucking dude and they're all dudes look at it they're all fucking dudes who champion this thing so where's all this outrage coming from look at it look at it poke around a little bit they're all dudes they're all fucking dudes and they're all saying the same fucking thing it's got nothing to do with justice this is about fucking annihilating a woman, annihilating a comedian,

but it's about annihilation. It's got nothing to do. Here's what happens is that they find this portal. It happened with the Gamergate thing too, but they find this portal. You know, Amy was vulnerable. So they exploited that vulnerability by trying to make a case and putting a lot of work into it, into this case,

to the point where they manipulated some of my words to suit their agenda and get that through to try to make that meme happen. So they push and they push and they push. So now this fucking video is out there. Now this meme is out there. So now the portal is open. So who the fuck are these people? It's my belief that what's really happening is that there is this mob momentum. There is this consensus built.

These guys, they have leaders. They know who their leaders are. They all share the same ideology. They have leaders because they're too weak not to have leaders. And they all think the same. What is happening with Amy has nothing to do with justice. It has nothing to do with comedy. What's happening is that this is the real pattern, is that she, through the internet and through video, is literally being verbally career raped by an army of unfuckable hate nerds they play video games

all day then they watch mma and then they spend the evening jerking off to deep throat gag porn and then they wake up and they put a few hours in to shaming amy to verbally fucking abusing him you read the comments this is not about justice this is about hate now look you know i yeah i'm no fucking you know saint you know all fucking dudes you know have their sexist moments all of us some of us are teachable we all have our sexist moments and hopefully we evolve out of that but misogyny requires commitment and it requires in this case a mob mentality of like-minded people so this isn't about justice not in this case this is about it's about hate it's about anger it's about complete fucking woman bashing and it's about this contingent of culture a lot of them if you go look at their twitter feeds a lot of them are trump supporters because they like an authoritarian

leader because they service their hate and their fucking horrible fear and insecurity in terms of you know amy's just a fucking comic she's's an entertainer. And she's the real deal. Whether you like her jokes or not. She's a real comic. But she's a woman. And these fuckers are trying to destroy her. These are specific people. But this momentum culturally is insanely dangerous. Because what it does to creative people.

Or to people that are trying to put themselves out there. Or to people that are trying to do new things. And people that are are trying to do new things and open up the minds and do that kind of stuff is that we become fucking self-censoring and paranoid and crazy and it becomes sometimes it's sort of like is it worth it so if you're just an average dude and this is spread throughout the culture you know where people are very quick to know it all it you know like you can't write a sentence without somebody going like, oh, somebody said it. You know, so-and-so said the same thing. It's a similar thing. So, you know, this need to one up, this need to to call foul, to call theft or whatever.

All it's going to do eventually is completely stifle creativity. Now, obviously, plagiarism is bad when it exists, when it happens. Obviously, people profiting over other people's work, it's horrible. It denies people a living. But mostly, most of the time, it's just about stifling voices, shutting people down. And if these guys, the momentum that exists, the narrow-minded, hateful, frightened momentum of socially, emotionally, and psychologically, and morally compromised individuals wins, then it's fucking over. There's no progress.

There's no creativity. There's no sort of moral compass it's a fucking cultural malignancy but the bottom line is it's like hey either you think amy's funny or you don't but this is whatever's going on right now is not about justice or joke theft or anything other than a fucking army of unfuckable hate nerds panicking because they feel like what they represent in the world is diminishing and they can't adapt to progress. progress like i said you know like even even with my guest today you know michael moore like i i tweeted that i had him on and immediately people like oh no fuck i'm gonna pass pass it's very odd you know yeah even as a as a liberal person you know michael can be a little much but the bottom line is is that there's a pursuit of truth that is what he represents he doesn't represent the left or the right

it has nothing to do with that at some point either you want to make the reality what you think it should be or you pursue the truth of what's happening. And if you support the garbage or untruth or systemic fucking problems because it fits your line of hate, then fine. You're free to have proper health coverage, to have an America that, you know, that works for everybody. an America that, you know, that works for everybody. That, well, you know, look, I had this conversation again. This was before the Flint water horror. So we didn't get into that. You know, we didn't get into a lot of stuff,

but yeah, I talked to him about, you know, who he is and about this new movie, which I liked a lot. The new movie is called Where to Invade Next. It's a very different approach to documentary than he's done before. It's very clever conceit in terms of structure, and it was very powerful. So let's go now to my conversation with Michael Moore. Hi, it's Terry O'Reilly, host of Under the Influence. Recently, we created an episode on cannabis marketing. With cannabis legalization, it's a brand new challenging marketing category. And I want to let you know we've produced a special bonus podcast episode where I talk to an actual cannabis producer.

I wanted to know how a producer becomes licensed, how a cannabis company competes with big corporations, how a cannabis company markets its products in such a highly regulated category, and what the term dignified consumption actually means. I think you'll find the answers interesting and surprising. Hear it now on Under the Influence with Terry O'Reilly. This bonus episode is brought to you by the Ontario Cannabis Store and ACAS Creative. Discover the timeless elegance of cozy, where furniture meets innovation.

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what are you doing? I mean, you're're running around yeah yeah i've been running around ongoing narrative selling that movie no the movie's sold no but you know what i mean getting people oh to get people to watch it yeah they're gonna come anyways aren't they yeah of course i don't need to do any of that of course people come because they love you because they hate you both you're one of these rare people yeah i don't yeah the haters have seemed to died off or something i don't know where they went but well i think they've got their own problems michael because i think they're focused on themselves they're all hating each other just imploding well yeah i uh well god bless them what have you done out here what have you been doing uh well last night i came out here

and there was a screening of my new movie for... Where to Invade Next. I watched the screening. I had a small screening right here in the garage. Oh, you did? Yeah, for just myself. For just you? Yeah. Oh.

I enjoyed it. Oh, thank you. I don't want to ruin anything, but you seem to be softening a bit. Oh. It seems like your heart is getting more open and you're a little forgiving. That's actually just the subversive part of this. It's really... What? I'm actually more angry. Is that true?

Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. And I thought, you know what? I'm going to, I think the wolf in sheep's clothing method might be a little bit better here. That was deliberate? Yeah, yeah. Yeah, it was totally. I'm so upset at everything that's going on. Yeah.

And I've tried for 25 years the hot poker in the eye effect. Right. And while that has, I think, brought a lot of people along, and it's been good and all that in appropriate moments, I think this time around I thought there's even a better way to try and reach an even wider audience with this. Oh, jeez. You had me sold. I thought like, hey, Michael Moore's got a little hope. He's got a little patience.

What's happening? This movie feels uplifting. No, I have no patience. And I'm hopeless. It's an illusion. I'm completely... But I'll tell you what. Here's what I do.

Here's what you may have picked up on a little bit. I am optimistic. I am in a crazy way optimistic. I'm not a cynic. I'm not. I don't sit back in my narcissism and just go, yeah, it's all fucked up. Oh, really? So there's a little room in your narcissism to have a little bit of optimism?

Yeah. There is like no. I need narcissism, actually. Of course. If I actually spent a little bit of each day thinking about myself. Oh, really? Yeah. I think I would have a little bit of each day thinking about myself. Oh, really? Yeah. I think I would have a better life, frankly.

You know, no, I'm very much. Look, I mean, I never expected to be doing this anyway. So this is all kind of a. In general, you mean documentary? No. Well, I hated documentaries. I always hated them. Well, I think it's interesting that you say, you you know you should spend a little more time thinking about yourself because i think some people uh think that you

and i i actually had a conversation with a woman last night about this uh you know that i was watching the movie i enjoyed it i said i'm learning i feel sad but uh you know michael's carrying me through it uh you know and and she said that uh she's in the film business she said well he seems to make it about himself and i said well he sort of has to he has to run it through him how else you know you you've become like you're very careful and and it seems on some level relatively image conscious about your role in these movies right right yeah when she says i make it about myself it's just because i'm in the movie i mean it's like it's like saying that woody allen you know you know, it's always about him. Yeah, Spike Lee, he's just always in his movies. Right.

Yeah, some of us do that. I mean, that's a way of storytelling. Yeah, of course. But it's not because, in my case, that I, come on, let's be, I mean, look, I'm not that self-loathing on one level, but on another level, it's like if you were me, you wouldn't want to see yourself blown up 50 feet on a movie screen there's a humility to it and it's a way of it's disarming and it's a way you approach the subject matter and also runs through you you're like the fact that you you're telling me you've tempered your rage to i think i guess in looking at that film you sort of had to because you you had to act like a human you weren't you weren't running around america you were running around other

people's countries and and politely engaging them right stuff you wanted to learn because i i threw down a challenge to myself right in the idea of this movie the conceit of this movie is how can i make a movie that goes at the heart of everything that's wrong in this country everything that's that's all messed up about america but never shoot a single frame of film or video in this country. I make a movie about the United States and never go to the United States. And how did you develop it? Was it like you woke up sweating and said, I got it? No, I've been thinking about this since I was 19.

Ever since I got a Ural pass and a youth hostel card and went to Europe with a backpack and wandered around for two months. You were there for two months? Yeah. What was your temperament then? Well, I remember thinking I would be in a country and I would notice something. And I would go, how come we don't do that? That's such a good idea.

Or I would hear about how college is entirely free. Or I would hear about how college is entirely free. Or I remember I was hiking in Sweden and busted my foot. Yeah. And went to a, had to go to a hospital or a clinic. Panicked. Right? You're probably panicked.

Panicked. Oh, my God. I don't have my blue cross card. I'm going to be, what is going to happen to me here? And they're like, they fix me up and they go, okay, have a nice day or however you say that in Swedish. Did you send the bill? And I'm like, no, there's no bill. I was like, you've got to be kidding me.

That's the first time I'd ever heard that. That you're like, I think I'll stay here. Healthcare was free. Yeah. I was like, wow. So over the years. But wait, before we go there, how politicized were you at that time? When did he, when did, because he said that you never thought you'd be doing this.

I never thought I'd be making a documentary because i didn't like documentaries in general but you've made like a half dozen or ten of them yeah yeah i've been nine nine films now but so where did it start you grew up in outside of flint yeah flint michigan right and um your dad what my dad was not a worker my mom was a secretary how old are you now i? I'm now 61. Okay. I'm 61. So you're an honest to God baby boomer. Yeah. I'm a baby boomer. You witnessed the 60s? Saw the 60s, 70s.

You remember Nixon from junior high maybe? I remember Nixon. I remember campaigning for Nixon actually. Really? Yeah. With your dad? No, no, no. I was in eighth grade, ninth grade.

And no, no, no. My dad voted Democrats or Irish. Always, right. But I was so against the war in Vietnam and Johnson and Humphrey and all of that with the war. And I was 68. And I just thought, you know, I'm not going to do anything to help those guys. And what can I do to help the other guy? And that's eighth grade.

That's eighth grade. So I didn't really know who Nixon was, you know. So who awakened you to the realities of the politics of the war in eighth grade i mean how did you i think i just i just i don't know i just watched the news and i just started developing my own ideas no older brothers no oh no no no no guy at the record store no no no no priest in the rectory no No cool priest, the hip liberal priest. There was actually a hippie priest that was pretty cool. And I think probably, yeah, actually I went to Catholic school,

so there were those nuns and priests who were very much on the left side of things and they thought the war was wrong and they were very much in favor of civil rights and things like that. Those are important. That probably had a big influence. I had a cousin, too, who lived in New York City. And my mom's sister had moved to New York way, way back when she was young, married a man who was a state assemblyman, Democrat, part of the Roosevelt machine.

And she would come, our cousin would come every summer to visit us. Was it a woman or a man? A man. No, no, the uncle was a man in the state assembly. Our Was it a woman or a man? A man. Oh, I mean, no, no. The uncle was a man. Yeah. The state assembly, our cousin's a woman. Yeah. And then she would teach us all this stuff about the Kennedys and Democrats and all that.

Inside line. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. And then when we would go there to New York to visit, they lived on Staten Island. And so we would stay there for, I don't know, a month. Right. And take the ferry over and got to see, experience and know and learn about New York and that whole thing when we were starting.

And probably I was, I don't know, eight years old. Was that in the late 60s? It was 1963. Oh, so it hadn't fallen yet. New York was still pretty glorious. Oh, yeah. No, it's a great place. I mean, literally, and we would take, us kids would just take the ferry by ourselves

oh yeah over there and just wander around sure down the subway yeah it was still like the madman era yeah exactly right yeah yeah i remember standing outside the ed sullivan uh theater which wasn't called the ed sullivan theater then it was just where the ed sullivan show was right and uh with our little autograph books you know because we're from the midwest so we had these and i remember standing there trying and waiting to get roy rogers uh autograph roy rogers yeah and with our little autograph books, you know, because we're from the Midwest, so we had these little autograph books. And I remember standing there waiting to get Roy Rogers' autograph. Roy Rogers! Yeah, that was a big moment for me.

Did you get it? Yeah, yeah, his and Dale, his wife, Dale Evans. How about the horse? Trigger was not there. They could fit him in that theater. I'm surprised you didn't bring him. Yeah, he might have been dead by that time and already stuffed. Oh, that's too bad. All right, so you're growing up did you have any fun

when i was growing up yeah oh yeah were you a fun guy my sister and i were just talking about this the other night how we used to stay out so that was back in the day when the parents would tell you to go play in the street sure you know it's the opposite now the helicopter go hang around the corner you know you went and hang you hung out on the corner you you you played baseball or on the east coast you played stickball yep in the street yep you know it was a dirt street that we lived on so we were just dirty all the time and and all the neighbor's kids would come all the neighbor's kids and then but when it got dark which in michigan you know because we're so far to the west but we're in the eastern time zone so it didn't get dark till 10 o'clock but then we would stay out for another hour or so and play Bloody Murder.

And then you'd hear your mother yell. That's what I'd heard. That's what all the mothers would yell. 11 o'clock. Yeah. Yeah. No, we'll see. Yeah.

But the Catholic version of the Irish version of that is Michael Francis. Yeah. Michael Francis. I'm coming. Yeah. But no more minutes. Ten more minutes. Bloody Murder bloody murder we play bloody murder that was our favorite uh-huh yeah i remember that even in uh early 70s 71 but i grew up in new mexico

and i i don't know that that neighborhood where i grew up is is necessarily any different but yours changed a lot yeah yes of course yeah because back then everybody had a job and they had a good job they had a good job and a good factory job. They were all union guys and, you know, they made good money. And how old were you when that fell apart? How old were you when you saw your father or your neighborhood or your city go through that heartbreak? It started when Reagan got elected. Basically, it started around 1980. And so by that time I was I was 26 years old, so I was beyond it. And I quit my first day at General Motors.

I just could not. How old were you? I was right out of high school. And your dad got you the gig or what? No, my buddy, his dad had a white-collar job there. So they were hiring, and he could get us applications, and we got in. And we both got hired and the first day i got up and i could i could smell the cigarettes from downstairs my dad

was already up getting ready to go to his job in the factory and i just laid there in bed and i just thought oh god i do not want a life of this i just do not want to get up at 4 30 every morning and and go build cars but that first cigarette's great and i'll tell you that right now i miss those fuckers yeah yeah you never you never smoked so i don't know that's so funny the kid of a smoker goes either way either you're gonna do it or you're never gonna do it yeah no no no the parents that my dad and his parents uh his dad uh they were they smoked a lot so uh you you just had that smell on you all the time yeah yeah it's weird i i you're talking about in sort of a a slightly negative tone i'm i'm thinking about

thinking like what a great right now is your sensory your memory yeah i'm like it's like the perfume yeah everything smelled like cigarettes for years people forget that every nightclub everywhere you went smell that you smoked on a plane right i don't know how the fuck to the theater when did i don't know how we ever live with it yeah no it was everywhere you're right it was i remember when i was in high school smoking on a plane right in the back right the last four rows as if that's not going to affect you i know you smelled it through the whole plane yeah unbelievable so all right so what was your plan then? When you decided that wasn't for you?

I didn't have one. And I had enrolled in the local college. And I lasted about a year and a half. And I went for- Studying what? I was studying political science and theater. And I- So you had some aspirations to act?

Yeah, or write. You know, write plays, something like that. Did you write any? Yes, I did, actually. I wrote a play during that year and a half, and it won a prize at the University of Michigan. Yeah? What was it about?

It was about, it was sort of an avant-garde piece where. Took some chances. Well, essentially it ends up with this guy looking like Jesus on a cross made of aluminum foil. And Jesus is kind of upset at what all his followers are doing. And so he pulls the nails out of, you think's just a cross with like jesus on it dead but he pulls the nails out and he comes off the cross and starts confronting the audience for their behavior and then i had actors placed in the audience to start stand up and start shouting get back up there get back up there wow damn you jesus satire chops in place already and so

and so and then a guy runs out of the audience with god you could never do this now right maybe guy runs out of the audience with a gun leaps on the stage and shoots jesus and then drags him back to the cross wow and then then there's people there and they decide they help put the dead jesus now back up on the on the cross that this was uh i i think i don't think your comedy chops were in place yet it it it was funny at the beginning right i know i thought it was funny the idea of uh them telling you to get to get back up on the cross but uh you took it all the way well the i the the play was really it was was trying to say that essentially some christians

uh like their Jesus dead. Yeah. And on a cross. Sure. I mean, that's what they've grown up with. I mean, it's a hard thing to wrap your brain around. If they actually had to live what he said to do, to love your neighbor, to do good to those who persecute you, to turn the other cheek, to let the poor get into heaven before

anybody else. You know, if they actually had to live that life. Or even really process those things philosophically, which is, I thought, was interesting about the film. Is that, you know, people were speaking about the nature of brotherly love, of community, of, you know, pride in the people of your country. Yeah. In a way that was collaborative and and uh respectful yeah without talk of religion or christianity at all right it was second nature that was that was a very fascinating thing that when you were talking to the people in i think sweden and norway

that uh there was not in norway yeah in norway that you know they you the the type of vengeful justice and also the type of selfish, self-serving individualism that is really what drives this country and the greed, it doesn't even register today. It's fascinating. No. Like they said, they organize themselves around the concept of we. And we organize ourselves around the concept of me yeah i'll take care of me you take care of you but was that always the way i mean do you see it seems to me that on some level with with with what you what your sense of justice is and what your sense of of how things should be uh do you remember a time where it was closer to that do you have some fond memory do you believe

there was an america that functioned properly that at a time in your life for white people well yeah i get that yeah yeah yeah i think yes of course i think back when i was growing up the sense of community the people had uh how they felt and treated each other you know in the community in the neighborhood you would take care um you you could leave the house and the neighbor would look after the kids now you don't even know the neighbor's name two doors down from you you know it's that sort of thing it's it's we live in it we do live in a different world like that there's a lot of weird detachment michael and it's like and i don't know it's sort of a a benign evil in the way that i don't know that people even know they're doing it it doesn't seem to be necessarily malice in it but there seems to be sort of like you see shit go down and people like in some of these videos you see of like those cops taking

that kid out of that desk and throwing that kid to the ground that the other students didn't even look up. Yeah. Right. There was. They just know that's the normal. Uh-huh. That's the normal to them.

And so it wasn't unusual. And then later we find out he was nicknamed Officer Slam. Right. I mean, that's what they called him in school. It's interesting that this movie, you were able to really cover everything that you've been working towards and for your entire career on film,

that you were able to cover it all with this context that you created by going to other countries. That's pretty true, yeah. You were able to cover corporate crime, the corporate greed. You were able to cover you know uh corporate crime the uh the uh the corporate greed you're able to cover guns health care health care prison race education the banks uh yeah the banks yeah and uh and in just a sense of uh oh uh human dignity and human rights and

union rights and employee rights it was like all all of this was like your masterwork. Yeah. And you chose to be more diplomatic in this one. Well, again, I'm not being diplomatic. I am, I'm up to something here. I'm up to something very subversive because I expect revolution to happen. Right. And I expect this film to play a role in that.

Well, I believe that there's so many things percolating just below the surface right now that people are so pissed off about and it's just waiting to happen and some of it's always hoping it happens in the right direction it will happen in the right direction it will happen this is the optimism yes this is the well and i have historical backup there are examples of when when the people have risen up uh it hasn't gone the right way um you know and we know that from the last century but i don't think that's what's going to happen now because i think especially the younger generation that we've raised a bunch of kids that are not haters i mean they don't they don't they don't hate somebody because they're in love with somebody from the same gender right you know they just don't they they're they're more open-minded they're much more open-minded

and the sort of the older generation that was full of this racism and i'm not saying there isn't racism we obviously have a lot of racism but still that is i see it leaving it's going you know well yeah sure i i think that a lot of the type of and the republicans are are are essentially the that noise you hear from that crazy campaign that's going on. Yeah. They sound like the dying dinosaurs must have sounded. You know, this is sort of weird noises they're emitting because they know they're done. Reptilian death.

They're over. Yeah. No. And I mean, statistically, they're over. Yeah. Right now, the statistic is just blows my mind. they're over yeah right now the statistic is just that blows my mind 81 and a half percent of the electorate in this country is either women people of color or young people between the ages of 18 and 35 that's 81 and a half percent of the country 18 and a half percent of the country

are white guys over the age of 35 yet they hear the republicans talk they think whenever they say the word america that's the america that they're talking to that isn't america anymore that two months ago first day of kindergarten in september first time ever in our history where the majority of kindergartners were not white it has changed we live in a different america and and there's also a contingent of that 18 percent that is very aware of that and very angry about it absolutely are you i mean did you go to college where where'd you go boston university so you went to a private university even then it probably wasn't seventy thousand dollars a year uh look i was uh my parents had a little bread and and i didn't ask questions michael should i ask any now no no i mean i did all right i mean i i don't know what the exact cost of it

was but you know i was afforded that luxury because you know my parents my dad was a a doctor and you know i didn't uh i didn't grow up uh in want of much okay well if you had gone to a suny school in new york yeah if you'd gone to uc berkeley or santa barbara or whatever you would have paid zero dollars uh ann arbor university of michigan i think i went a year and a half to the university of michigan in flint i think i might have paid 500 a semester so there was a time in this country where public uh education through college was doable with that's another thing you talked about it was a value it was a value that that young people should be able to go post-secondary education go to college and not end up at a debtor's prison at

the age of 22 right that was a so that at 22 when you had your education you could then take the time to decide what you wanted to do with your life yeah maybe you didn't want to go to work right away no problem maybe you want to go backpacking around europe no problem maybe you want to fall in love maybe any of a number of things now you've got to get to work right away to pay off these student loans and it's not even clear that what you took from the college experience can help you at all in any way it doesn't everybody knows that well right but like when we were younger and even when i was in college i mean there was a a strong uh liberal arts education available there was still the the structure of the education was still to to sort of broaden your horizons on a lot of

different levels creativity and otherwise and you could choose those things yes you could take poetry classes i mean you could take things that they would say now is how's that going to get you a job it doesn't get your job anyways that's a weird thing they're just shutting it all down to make these mills of uh you know to create drones that are really incapable of much and by creating drones then we're not going to come up with the next invention the next great cure for something we need a cure for the or or the next piece of great art i mean and that's think about that a lot of people don't think that's important that was another interesting thing in the movie you know that note where you know it was an aside but you're walking through

the maximum security prison where was that norway in norway and there's like and there's modern art on the walls right it was mind-blowing it was mind-blowing so okay let's go back to you in modern art so you know you killed jesus killed Jesus with a gun as a playwright. Won an award at the University of Michigan. Yeah, it was gutsy. What did your Catholic parents think of it? Did they come to the show? They didn't come to the show.

But I explained it enough to them to where they understood that I was trying to show the good Jesus and that the haters would not like it if he was walking amongst us today. They got that. How Catholic did you grow up? Very Catholic. My parents went to Mass every single day of their lives. Really? Seven days a week, yes.

And I asked them at 14 years old if I could leave home and go to the seminary to be a priest. And they did not want me to go, but all you had to do was tell them that, you know, you had a calling. Right, right. You know, I didn't believe in that. But I wanted to. I was very, very remember remember the time now we lived in the berrigan brothers these were two catholic priests they were brothers what was the other one uh uh phil and dan berrigan phil and dan phil and dan berrigan i think tom berrigan is a writer and um uh yes or a member of kiss i'm not sure but anyways that but they were they were the anti-war priests right arrested uh for you know pouring their blood over draft records uh there was cesar chavez and the

farm workers movement which is very catholic based on the priests that were involved in that movement so i was very much drawn to how uh being a priest could actually do good in this manner um and and so i convinced him to let me leave home at 14 and i went away to the seminary you did yes i did for how long uh just one year the hormones kicked in no yeah not cut out for i read the rule book uh at that at that time it just said no girls of course they actually meant no girls or boys but um but yeah no it's somewhere between the age of 14 and 15 i thought wow there's another gender and they look good yeah yeah you might have even been a year late on that one no i remember i remember going in and telling i remember i was in science class and the priest that was teaching science class and i remember saying to

him you know you know so father lay uh so God created everything in six days, and on the sixth day he created man, you know, like Adam, and made Eve from Adam with a rib. Yeah. And I don't know about that, Father, because it looks like to me God spent about 23 hours of that day on women and about an hour on us. I mean, you know, look at women. They're like,'re you know they they they score higher on the test they live three years longer he was thinking ahead he's like we need the women to be ahead of the curve here they were yeah they live longer uh they have two x chromosomes we're missing one piece of that second x chromosome which we call now a y but it's if

it's missing that fourth quadrant right and that and that's also something that was in this film, that conversation with those female CEOs in Norway, you know, about, you know, and that the former, what was she, the president? Yeah, the president of Iceland. Of Iceland, that's right. It was in Iceland, right, the women CEOs about, you know. First country to elect a woman president. And also that the women salvaged the economy.

Yes. After the bankers destroyed it. Yes. And that there's this interesting, you know, you know, balance and respect and equality that that and it's very clear to the men there, too. It seems that, you know, women are really should be running things. Well, isn't it odd that we don't have more women running things or that we prevent them from running things?

Because go back to when you were a child, who ran the house? Well well that's always been this sort of weird care of the checkbook the weird excuse of patriarchy is they're secretly running things we don't need to let them run things oh yeah you know what a bunch of bullshit you know yeah well it's a way to then you don't have to pay them or you pay them very little yeah and i and it was that was the way they respected them was like well we know they're really wearing the pants well in fact actually and the women in iceland i show this in the film went on strike in 1975 yeah and it shut the country down and not just the country in terms of nothing worked but they wouldn't work in the home either. They went on this women's strike. And so nobody was making dinner. Nobody was doing the laundry.

And it flipped the men out and actually, in a good way, sensitized them to the fact of, wow, if it weren't for women, things would be pretty bad. And also, you shot in Tunisia, which had a similar situation i think after that yes well the women there wanted an equal rights amendment to their constitution like the women in this country is a muslim country it's a muslim country the islamic party opposed it but the people of the country wanted it and they voted it in and now they have all these equal rights provisions in their constitution for women that we don't have in our constitution. I found it fascinating because I'm guilty of what that Tunisian woman was, you know, talk in her appeal to the people of the United States that you gave a few people the opportunity. If you have anything to say. Yeah. Yeah.

You know, that's a tough position for someone to be in. Right. In a way. But, you know, when she said, you know, we all know you. Why don't you get to know us? Right. And, you know, I'm guilty of that. And it is sort of fascinating to me.

And I don't even know much about England. Right. You know what I mean? Right. But there is a whole world out there. You don't know something about the country next door to you. No. What, Canada?

Or Mexico? Yeah, or Mexico. We're in California here. Yeah, yeah. We're a few miles from Mexico. Yeah. Who's the president of Mexico? That guy.

Exactly. And you're an educated person you went to boston you know who he is no i don't know who it is thank god all right i know no no no yeah i'm not yeah i'm not saying like i'm smarter than you i'm like or now we know trudeau just got that's a name everybody knows in canada but the reason i know it is because his wife fucked mick jagger exactly but but the guy but who's been the who's been the uh the prime minister of canada for the last decade smoking guy yeah she know that was the bear of toronto oh name is stephen harper yeah he ran But who's been the Prime Minister of Canada for the last decade? That crack-smoking guy. Yeah, that was the mayor of Toronto.

His name was Stephen Harper. He ran Canada for the last decade. He's a bad guy. Yeah, yeah, yeah. They all hated him. Yeah. No, but I'm just saying, we don't know anything about anybody in the world, including the people who live next door to us.

In the last few years, I've so thoroughly detached from the political circus that I'm hard-pressed to know exactly what's going on now. I don't know that I've so thoroughly detached from the political circus that I, you know, I, I'm hard pressed to know exactly what's going on now. I've, I've gotten, I don't know that I've gotten cynical. I've just gotten more self-involved. In what way? What do you mean by that? Well, I, like I made a fairly clear decision to deal with, you know, my own kind of existential, you know, struggles emotionally and otherwise around my own rage and my own sort of perception

of things. And, and talk about that on a day-to-day basis like i don't i i went in instead of out right after air america and and a lot of people relate to it it was a oh my god no no i think this is the because you've taken that path it's been so much more enlightening uh than when you were on air america and you had to play a role right on the liberal radio network no no no this your podcast and now your show on tv this is a very engaging it's like you can't stop listening you can't stop watching it because because you figured out in the way that you were saying about you know and i had to say to you no this is maybe i'm more

angry than ever you know i look like i'm being diplomatic and nice, but I've just found a way to channel that rage in a way where I want things to happen in my lifetime. I want them to happen for me, my neighbors, you, the people that live across the pond, whatever. And I think you've done a similar thing. And you may call it not political political but it might actually be more political because because humanizes and people start to appreciate each other yes and i think that that goes a long way to making the world a better place and i know you're not doing this for that ultra shade reason right but mark i mean just let's just can we do we have a split screen here on the radio no but i'm just saying put old mark yeah yeah up against current well yeah well i that's why i

thought like you know i you know like i've started to soften a bit and and and be a little more like i don't think it's softening but empathetic or an open-hearted why do we call that why is that soft well no no that's that's that's in a. Yeah, but no, but being empathetic and going inward like that, that is aggressive in a way because we're not supposed to do that. We're supposed to keep up the armor and the shield and like- Keep working. Keep working. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Get yours. And how come you're not doing 100 dates on the road this year? Yeah, I know. I know. You know, it's like, no, I don't think so. Because, you know- I've been saying that a lot lately. Yeah, no, but I think that there's a positive effect to it.

But I think that's something you might have gotten before it became too filled with bile, that being part of a Catholic upbringing, if you frame it philosophically in the correct way, it is an empathetic disposition i like profoundly yes but also being brought up in that catholic way um i mean i mean you know i mean yeah anybody listening to this who was raised catholic really super catholic big c catholic um man there's a lot going on yeah there's a hell there's a hell you know and you know what happens there there's a lot of burning and horrible things and you believe it and you believe that the hell you're experiencing now is somehow you deserve it you know you must have done

something to bring this on to yourself right and all of that it's just um no i think it's uh but again you know it's funny when i have my tv show uh which one the awful truth both of them actually this happened on both shows on tv nation the awful truth and we were in the writers room one day myself and the writers and i don't know how we got onto the topic of religion but but it was kind of like you know i mean you kind of knew who the jewish writers were and you knew a couple of the catholics but we just asked everybody like how were you raised and what religion there wasn't a single protestant in the room writers were and you knew a couple of the Catholics. But we just asked everybody, like, how were you raised and what religion? There wasn't a single Protestant in the room.

They were all raised Catholic or Jewish. I thought, okay. So then when I did my second TV show, we did the same thing. There was one Protestant. And the rest, it was like Catholics. Was he the showrunner? Yes, actually.

Yes. His name was Jay Martell and he went on to be the showrunner for Key & Peele. He's a very, very funny guy. That's so funny. And his dad was a preacher. The self-flagellation necessary to become a writer. Only exist in Jews and Catholics. Yeah. What is that? I think it's because I think we need to laugh. I think it's the flip side of the coin. The relief, yeah. The relief, because on that other side of the coin, we're actually quite angry. Sure. And also, it's a way to sort of maneuver through the world and and have a voice and

and you know humor can be very powerful and cutting it can be disarming and it can be uh uh revelatory i mean it's powerful and it also helps to deal with the personal pain oh yeah absolutely oh yeah i mean you don't want to sit too quiet for too long. Right? Well, I think especially if you're Irish Catholic, you have this choice of how do you, because so much of the humor is dark humor. You're really trying to alleviate a lot of the inner pain,

and that's what the alcohol is for. So if you're not going to be a drunk, now the humor button really better kick in. But you saw these Catholic priests who were active and revolutionary. Yes. So you did a year at seminary. You did a year and a half at University of Michigan. It seems like you're good at taking about a year or so to figure shit out.

So when did- Then i need to move on when did start when did things start to lock in in terms of of kind of manifesting uh your revolutionary ideals wow well i i put up my own newspaper for about 10 years in flint it was called the flint voice uh based on the new york's paper yeah kind of like the iraq the old village voice weekly politics and culture that sort of thing. Like James Ridgway stuff. You were friends with James, right? Yes, right, yes. And I ran his column and Alex Coburn's column in my paper. But it was after the people that own Mother Jones Magazine up in San Francisco saw my paper

and asked me to come out and interview to be the editor of Mother Jones. And so I went out there and they offered me the job. And I had to decide whether or not to close up my life in Flint and interview to be the editor of Mother Jones. And so I went out there, and they offered me the job. And I had to decide whether or not to close up my life in Flint and move to San Francisco. Did you ever do any radio? And I had my own radio show in Flint. It was called Radio Free Flint. What was that?

It was a weekly one-hour show, something like this. Uh-huh. But it had humor, but there were interviews. Uh-huh. And on the week of Christmas, we'd have drunk Santa come in, and little kids would actually call up live, thinking they're talking to Santa. Oh, it was so mean.

Was this a late night show? No, it was not. It was on Sunday morning. Oh, on a rock station? Yeah, on a rock station. You know that rock block before noon on Sundays where they would have to have community programming? Oh, that was you that was me oh how long did you do that for oh i did that for almost 10 years really yeah yeah yeah it was a lot of fun is that

where you met james no i i met him because he called me up and he said i'm gonna make a documentary film i have this buddy of mine his name is kevin rafferty in michigan because there was the the ku klux klan and the neo-nazis were kind of coming back to life was that but blood in the face blood in the face oh that that fucking movie fucked me up yeah and they said can you know anything about these guys here in michigan i said oh yeah i know all about them would you help us and so yeah sure so i i got them into like some clan rallies and some neo-nazi how'd you know that i had had them on my radio show. So you would engage these guys?

Oh, of course. They're scary guys. No, no. I go on Bill O'Reilly. Yeah. Right. I mean, I go on Hannity. Yeah.

Not that they're Nazis or Klan. Right. Don't take that the wrong way. But I'm just saying, yes, I'm not afraid of the so-called enemy or somebody has a different opinion than I have. Right. But these guys are really crazy. Yeah. And so we got there to the big Klan weekend. a different opinion than i have but these but these guys were really crazy yeah and uh so i i

we got there to the the big clan weekend it was like a convention of clan um and um um and they the uh rafferty and ridgeway were they did not want to be on camera they did not want they thought after this film comes out we're dead and they said to me would you ask some questions on camera like just whatever comes to your head i said yeah sure i'm not afraid of these guys and so i and that was my first time ever of asking questions on a camera and a year later i decided to make my own film and i called up rafferty kevin rafferty and ridgeway and i said hey can you guys help me out and teach me how to make a movie? And Kevin Rafferty said he'd made a film called The Atomic Cafe. I remember that movie.

Remember that? Yes. That was all the old clips and the- Duck and Cover. Right, yeah, yeah, yeah. The atomic era. Yeah, yeah, yeah. He said, I'll come back to Flint

and I'll spend a week and I'll shoot for you and I'll teach you how to use the camera and the machine and the sound and everything. This is for Roger and me? For Roger and me. And I knew nothing. And he was my film school and and most amazing guy taught me how to edit then down in the village when i was

done shooting the film and then i ended up in washington dc because i had to go get a job and i'm cutting my movie roger me and it's inauguration day for the first bush in uh january of uh of 89 yeah and i said to the editors hey i've never seen inauguration you want to go down let's go yeah yeah let's it's cold usually it's very cold but we went down there's nobody there though back in those days at the inauguration that's true yeah i mean it was like the mall was empty i mean it was crowded up by the capitol steps right but it didn't go back like obama's thing for like three miles right right so so we got kind of close and yet there were tv screens there were big screens that were up and i I said to the editors, oh, my God, there's Kevin Rafferty.

He's up there. And we thought he was shooting a documentary of the inauguration. Yeah. I called him a couple days later. I said, Kevin, I was at the inauguration of Bush. I could have sworn you were on the stage. And long pause, he goes, yeah, that was me. I said, wow, so were you making a movie here?

And he's like taking a big drag off his cigarette and goes, no, I wasn't making a movie. I said, well, what were you doing up there? Another drag. My uncle is the president of the United States. Oh my God. What? I've known this guy for like now two or three years. I said, you've got to be kidding me.

He goes, no, my mother and Barbara Bush are sisters. I said, I cannot. How come you never said this? How come you never mentioned this? He goes, because of the very way you're reacting right now. Oh my God god it was so i couldn't believe that my film school was a member of the bush family like close member yeah close cousin so when i get the film done and and uh bush george for the first yeah um

once they're having a family reunion at camp david a print from Warner Brothers to be sent of Roger and me to Camp David the show because Kevin helped he shot the film so it's like our nephew did the thing Kev our nephew let's so I tried to go but they wouldn't I couldn't you know

that would have been a good screening but I said to him afterwards so what happened in there in the projectionist well it was pretty quiet during the movie. Except for one. Except he said for one of his cousins laughed hysterically throughout the whole movie. I said, oh, that's good. Good, good, good.

He goes, no, no, no, no. He's got a little problem. It's his cousin named George. Oh. he got a kick out of it huh that's the first time i heard of george w bush was you know from whatever whatever high he was on uh laughing hysterically throughout my movie at camp david that is a great story is that wild it's crazy it's crazy yeah you know that guy who was laughing at your first movie would become one of your mortal enemies. Yeah. How small is the world?

Small world. No, no. No, if I wasn't for the Bush family, I might not even be a filmmaker. That's why I've always spoken well of them. So they're not my mortal enemies. So you took the job at Mother Jones after Roger and me? I took the, no, no. I took the, that's how I ended up making the film because I went out there,

and four months later I'm fired. I had political disagreements with the owner of the magazine. Like what? He wanted to run this story by this guy about the Sandinistas in Nicaragua weren't all that they were cracked up to be, and I didn't feel that way, and he didn't provide the evidence that I required. I didn't all that they were cracked up to be and and i didn't feel that way and they're they he didn't provide the evidence that i required uh didn't like that i put an autoworker on the cover

and gave the guy a monthly column you know this is i mean mother jones like a lot of stuff on the left was not for working class people right and i was trying to change the magazine i think more into of a working class left liberal magazine and that's not the direction they wanted to go how do you feel about the left in general direction they wanted to go how do you feel about the left in general yeah you're fired but how do you feel about the left in general along those lines along class lines and along you know what what activism really means and and what what is it going to take what is it going to take for the moneyed left uh to to to sort of you know integrate and activate and be part of an actual left is that something you think about i think

about it all the time because well i'm out here in la right now yeah and so i'm going around i'm showing my movie to people i'm you know we're talking about it but it's in home theaters and home theaters and in and other theaters here yeah and. And it's very interesting. I always notice this, especially coming from New York. I can spend two or three days here and never encounter, especially in this business, African-Americans.

The only African-Americans I will encounter in LA will be either picking me up at the airport or serving me something, you know, at a restaurant. You didn't go to tyler perry's house or no i've not i've not been there no but it's very yes yes you can't have that experience in

new york that's right every day is with everybody that's true and it's a beautiful thing about new york you know i live on a street that have multi-million dollar apartments and rank there's in the building next to mine there's rent controlled apartments in there for eight or nine hundred a month a few that are left but even even that there's still it's it's it's a i don't want to say it's affordable but if you know how to work it yeah you can live there i've noticed that yeah new york is the tone of the actual island of manhattan is definitely changing that has really changed i mean it used to really feel like you know everybody's on the same page here you know no no it doesn't feel like

that anymore no it doesn't even like i mean i live in a nice apartment building but when i moved in there when i first moved in there uh there were two or three guys from saturday night live uh that lived there uh the playwright that wrote m butterfly lived there harvey firestein lived there uh two new york rangers lived there i mean it was i mean in terms of the people that had some money and could you know afford to live on the upper west side but they were still creative people they were yeah yeah my building now is a lot mostly i would say majority wall street or foreign Mostly, I would say majority Wall Street or foreign owners or investors. And I'm like, I stick out like such a sore thumb there.

You're like living in the enemy camp. I know, but I bought this place like 25 years ago. Oh, really? I got the mortgage paid off finally. And it's like, I don't want to leave. Because to get something now would be outrageous. How do you stifle yourself walking past your neighbors i actually i actually have that thought in my head stifle stifle stifle now i i now they're probably listening to this and and i you know i'm i i try to treat everybody the same but actually it sounds like i pity them because they're bankers but i actually i guess i do in some ways because they're not doing good for the world um they've made the

world they made this country a worse place and if i if i i just often think god if i had like an hour with them you could talk them out of it i could talk them out of some of it maybe uh-huh you know well that i tried maybe you should have a little meeting. I haven't. No, I have tried. Put some posters up. Hey, who wants to talk about the truth? I have tried.

And I try. And I'll tell you something I've done recently. I did this a while back. I was walking out of a movie theater. And this was in Florida. And I walked by a guy. And he just goes, asshole. To you.

Yeah, to me. And I stopped, and I turned around, and I said, hey, you can't call me that. Come back here. And the friend I'm with, she's like, oh, God, what are you doing? I said, no, no, it's okay. It's okay. The guy comes back, you know, and we don't get into a fight, and he goes, because I think you're an asshole. I said, we don't get into a fight and he goes because i think you're an

asshole i said you don't even know me how can you even say something like that i mean i mean maybe i am but when you want to like at least know something i know everything about you i said you haven't seen a single one of my movies and he had an honest moment he said you're goddamn right i haven't i said well then how can you make up your mind like this without i said listen go home seriously go on netflix go on itunes rent one of them i can i i don't get any more money from these films i i don't have a right a back end yeah so i don't you're not giving me any money but for 299 watch any of them. And I swear to God, at the end of the movie, you may not agree with me politically,

but you will come to, I think, three conclusions. Number one, I love this country. Number two, I have a heart. I care about what's going on, and I care about other people. And number three, I swear to God, you're going to laugh a half a dozen times in the movie. Some of it is a comedy. And what did he say? And he said well i'm you know i already know what you're gonna say i said no you

don't you honestly don't you've been told this by fox news or by rush limbaugh or whatever and they're in trouble once you watch one of my movies because you're gonna go they lied to me i mean i don't agree with mike politically but he clearly loves this country, and he's funny, and he gives a shit. How has that burden for you been to sort of be... He shook my hand. He did. He said, I'll do it.

Well, you treated him with respect. Because I do respect him. I do. Even calling me an asshole, I think I just, my first, I'm not mad. I just think he's been misled and yeah and that if he really knew me he wouldn't think well how do you but how do you how do you shoulder that burden of knowing that that's true that you know like because those guys a lot of those guys you you could actually you know blow at least part of their mind and you could actually

you know teach them things they didn't uh didn't know at all show them some some facts and some truths that elude them because they get their anger buzz from the severely narrow ideology of people that aren't even thinking in their interest i know but how do you live with that i mean how do i handle that or well i mean i guess handle it but i mean that you handle the hate or the there's a, but just being a demagogue of being characterized as this evil demagogue of the left. I mean, because I think this new movie appeals to a broader spectrum of Americans. Right. But there's still going to be those guys. You're like, not that guy.

Yes. I can't do anything about the 20% that are over on the far, far right. They're lost souls. I feel bad about that. They're my fellow Americans. I care about them. And what I always York in nine hours, I'm going to let you ride that train, too. And I'm going to let you have the free health care, too, because I want you to participate in all these things. You know, I'm working on this for everybody, not just myself and my other liberal little do-gooder friends. I am working on these things for all of us. And, and I, you know, I've actually thought about either making a film or writing a book just for those guys, like, and, and, and also for those bankers that live in my building and say to them,

I want to explain to you why, um, these things that I talk about in this current film in terms of, uh, the 36 hour work week work week, the universal health care, a better justice system, not imprisoning people who use marijuana and other drugs. And education, the sort of premium of a good education. I want to show you, the conservative, why this is good for you. I want you to agree with this,

not because of, again, I don't want you to become a bleeding-heart liberal. Stay the way you are. But I want to show agree with this, not because of, again, I don't want you to become a bleeding heart liberal. Stay the way you are. But I want to show you how you will live in a safer neighborhood if we change how we do things, that you will have better employees, smarter employees if we make our education system different, that you will have healthier employees and they will be more productive if they have a paid vacation, if they have paid maternity leave. and they will be more productive if they have a paid vacation, if they have paid maternity leave.

I think that there's a way to explain this. If I make it about them, you know, again, go to the me that they so believe in. How does this benefit me? How can I make a bigger profit with my business? Actually, you can make a great profit. There is a reason the French are more productive than we are. I mean, that's a crazy thought, isn't it? That the French are more productive, work less hours, produce more. How can that be?

I'd like to show them how. That if we were more like the French, they would be even richer than they are now. But what I always found fascinating when I was doing more political talk was just the power of the hypnotic repetition machine, not just the echo chamber, but the amount of money that goes in to sort of mining and exploiting a diminished working class's anger and directing it to really the wrong direction and against their personal economic interests, self-interest. It's sort of fascinating to me that there are people that hang on to a sense of pride that is, it's sort of shallow and uninformed at this point.

But I think that's changing too. I think so. You're right. We've had Barack Obama elected twice. And I mean, that's an incredible thing. A man whose middle name is Hussein gets elected by a majority of Americans twice. And I mean, I mean, we still have so much racism in this country. I think I think millions of people actually were able to set aside their personal prejudices to vote for him because they knew that was a better way to go than the last eight years they had. And even if they're disappointed for whatever fucking reason.

Right. It was like when I talked to him in here, you know, he talked about, you know, any incremental progress. Right. Within democracy is good. That's correct. That's right. And a lot of times it's very incremental, but that's the nature of it. And I was talking to Chris Hayes just about stuff like gay marriage.

All the people that had old ideas about those type of relationships who fought it tooth and nail in their living rooms, give them a couple of years to be like, that's just the way it is now, I guess. The hate will be gone. The hate will be gone. And the acceptance of the reality of democracy working. That's correct. Will take hold. That's right. acceptance of the reality of democracy working. That's correct. Will take hold. That's right. That's the way it works here.

That's the way it works. And that's because I think human beings at their core, not everyone, but most, are good. I do too. They know good and they know right from wrong. Yep. And it doesn't become about Democrat versus Republican or whatever. It's about, you know, what's the common sense thing to do here? What's the fair way to treat people? And I believe most Americans eventually get to that place. Sure. Not all. There's a lot of things that are keeping a lot of Americans

off balance on a day-to-day basis. Yes. Fear. Yes. Fear. What's the percentage of the country that lives from paycheck to paycheck? I mean, it's high it's it's really the middle class is is less and less uh people aren't able to do the things they want to do they don't they don't know you know you can't get your student loan paid off down till you're in your 40s um i mean it's it's it yes that people live look i know people my age that all of a sudden like can get a job. And can't get a job. And they can't get a job. Right. I mean, I have people in my family who had jobs and then something goes wrong and they

struggle and these guys are in their 40s and 50s and they're able and they're ready, can't fucking get work. Yeah. It's heartbreaking because there's nothing to fall back on for so many people. Right. There's just nothing to fall back on. Right. And so that will do a number on you oh yeah man someone's got to pay right and it's hard not to think that way and it's right and so and so the who has to pay for their situation is not the not the system or the people that have put them in that situation

but family the family neighbor the neighbor the old boss the mexican right the whatever i think that's right i'm gonna build a wall you know it's like that you know trump really appeals to this sort of that kind of place it's quite a show and it's quite a show in a lot of levels you know like you know from from where i'm sitting that show is is is really showing you know not so much what leadership is in any way, but the sort of like just, you know, deep anger and frustration and sadness and just fear of all of it that whoever is energized by that is experiencing. Right.

But again, remember, 81 and a half percent. Now, I'm not freaking out. Yeah. Our women, they're not the angry white guy. Women, they're people of color and they're young people. And that's what's going to save us. Well, from, you know, when looking at the whole oeuvre of your work, if that's the word, you know, going from, you know, all the movies from all the way from Roger and me and Bowling for Columbine, Fahrenheit, 9-11, Sitco. Now, can you cite, outside of what we're talking about now

and the electorate changes and some of this stuff, outside, it seems to me that around social issues, we've made some progress. Healthcare, a little progress. Education, not so much. Race, not so much, a not so much a little, a little. Yeah. But corporate occupation of the government and corporate apologists and corporate malfeasance runs rampant still. And that seems to be the toughest one. And that's the toughest one. And that is what if we are destroyed, it'll be because of that, because the democracy will no longer be about one person, one vote. You and I

and everybody else having an equal say in what's going on, because we all know now that the corporations, the rich, the one percent now, the point one percent, it's not the one percent anymore. It's the point one percent. They call all the shots shots they call all the shots with the money they have they buy the laws they buy the lawmakers and and if we don't get a handle on that uh that will that will be our our doom what do you think it will take see what like i i know that when when occupy wall street happened that you were you know yeah obviously in support of that and it was exciting and it might have made some metaphorical difference. I don't know that it...

Oh, absolutely. It changed the thinking. It created the idea of the 99% don't have the power. The 1% have the power. That Occupy Wall Street, I mean, Obama was talking, took the language of Occupy Wall Street when he ran for in 2012. Mitt Romney lost in part because of that tape that the bartender made of him talking about the 47%, the takers that don't contribute anything. I mean, I think that had an enormous impact on people far larger than the movement itself wasn't necessarily meant to last.

But everybody that felt something about it. I mean, I saw a poll a couple weeks ago. They asked Democrats, your view of capitalism, your view of socialism, which one do you feel? 46% said they had a favorable view of socialism. These are just Democrats, mainstream Democrats. 46% said they had a positive view of socialism. 37% said they had a positive view of capitalism. said they had a positive view of capitalism.

That's a transitional moment where that even mainstream regular people realize that the so-called capitalist system that has been operating is not in their best interest. Well, the one thing I could never understood in having conversations about that when I did have conversations about that was this idea of a free market and and things

finding its level you know through privatization this great you know vision of a free market and privatization will will provide the best possible education product whatever it is what no one ever accounted for was fucking pathological greed that there's no way there's no way a free market can work because of the fucking greed right if they're they're gonna undercut whatever they can undercut to save fucking money and make more money so i just know and once you take the regulation out you're fucked and part of that is human nature too yeah i mean it's like we do need regulation of course we are told we have to put clothes on when we leave the house yeah yeah you know good not to masturbate in public it's yes but but but michael so let's talk about this you know this

uh this you're more angry than ever yet you know you had uh you were conscious and you had an agenda in approaching this movie which i tend to think like i'm going to support my own intuition about it was that you were dealing with people in other countries and, and you were excited about it and you were respectful about it. Yes. But I thought before we do that real quick, I thought the,

one of the best messages of the movie was this, was this focus on the idea of human dignity. Like that really fucking hit home for me for some reason, just, you know, the montage where you were able to cover you know uh you know prisons and those treatments the treatment of women the treatment of just children in the lack of education school lunches that the fundamental

message of the movie was human right right did you feel that yeah oh my god every country we go to the fact that they that i mean they're feeding in France, the lunch hour was, that day we were there, lamb skewers over couscous, you know, with some kind of shrimp stew. I mean, stuff that kids would never see here, but they think it's important. It's their children. They don't want to poison them, you know, or that they're finland uh the the hour-long class is actually 45 minutes and then after every class there's 15 minutes of recess every class because the principal says they're in the film these kids have to play and they they got rid of homework i mean they essentially nobody has more than an hour of homework uh in finland uh every night

because they want the kids to be out there socializing, learning, growing. And also the pace of the education and the engagement with the teachers and the students must be significantly different to sort of have that kind of confidence that they are still learning without taking that. But this issue of human dignity, it's their children. The fact that if you put someone in prison, you have a right, you have a responsibility to treat them right.

The fact that Portugal hasn't arrested a single person for using drugs in 15 years, not one drug arrest in this country. And they have the statistics to show that drug use has gone down and crime, drug related crime has gone down. And that's with legal drugs. Yes. Well, it's not legal. It's decriminalized. Right. That's what I mean.

Yes. Well, it's not legal. It's decriminalized. Right. That's what I mean. But that was also, you know, more easy to take than usual from you yes um like you know here we are in norway and then all you know we're dealing with this prison system that is working right and dignified and then you know all it takes is two cuts two cuts to footage from American prisons where you're like, holy shit. And then the drug thing, too, with the Nixon and the civil rights and into the escalation of the prison industrial complex. All I can say, because you keep coming back to this question, is maybe I, like all artists, I try to do better each time, and I try to be a better filmmaker. And I've had many people have said, and they've written already about this film,

that this is my best film. I don't know if I would say that, because I love all my children equally, but there is a sense that this film is revolutionary in that sense that it could reach a lot of people, not on a political basis, but on a human level, and that it could affect change

if we started to consider some of the things I'm offering. And I'm offering them up in a kind and gentle way. But I'm doing that for a reason because I don't... What does it do? How does it get us anywhere if I'm just the old Mark Maron? All right, good impression.

Thank you. No, but, right? Yeah, sure. I mean, I'm just, we haven't followed a similar path, but we are. Right. I mean, and I just, I mean, my dad died last year. How old was he? It was almost 93

good run yeah yes absolutely just died of old age and uh it was um you know and he was a great guy and how do you feel about you and your work oh he loved it he loved all of it yeah he was a again that old irish catholic democrat kennedy roosevelt and all that you know world war ii veteran was in all those horrible battles in the south pacific Really? As a Marine in the 1st Marine Division. Survived it. You know, those first 30 minutes of saving Private Ryan where they come in in the amphibious. He was in that one? He was in all of those in the South Pacific.

No, not on D-Day. Yeah. That was D-Day. Yeah. If you were in the South Pacific, that was every month. Yeah. I mean, every one of those little islands, they'd have to go in and they would get mowed down. And everybody's dying around you.

And I don't know how the hell he and the others came out of that. And he was such a good and gentle soul. And that was the other thing you got in the movie. At the beginning, the opening of the movie was we haven't won a war. We haven't won a war since my dad and the other dads won that one. Because we really haven't. Let's just my dad and the other dads won that one because we really haven't let's just be honest korea was not a win the first the gulf war yeah well saddam stayed in power you know he what that how do you call that a win when hitler or whoever that was that was i think

a slap on the wrist yeah i mean it's just none of these are outright wins since ww2 there's a weird like even when you talk about this and i feel i i remember feeling this when i was at air america i'm like oh boy there's gonna be all kinds of fucking you know backlash you know there's there's gonna be a backlash a backwash there's gonna be hell to pay for this yeah yeah i know we don't want to think about it i mean seriously you you and i that's enforced do you know like like i that's what I... It is enforced. Because I keep trying to think about, like, who's going to get angry at listening to this right now? And why are they going to get angry? Right.

Like, where does that come from? Because, like, even in the film, you pay respect to service people. Yeah. And, you know, you're empathetic to their plight. Yeah. And the job of that, since it's not really a national defense-driven armed forces. It's a job that people choose. And yet someone's going to hear you on here and go like, oh, how does he blame us?

Because we invaded these countries and we took out- Destabilized them.- Destabilized them. We destabilized them. They were bad guys, but they had their way of maintaining order. Not the way we would like to run it, but it's not our frigging country. Okay, so kill Saddam, remove the Taliban, kill Gaddafi, and look what we've got. More terrorists. More terrorists. kill Gaddafi and uh look what we've got more terrorists more terrorists this is hell to pay for we didn't know what the hell we were doing we didn't know what we were how we were mucking this

up for us to like who the hell do we think we are we don't even we didn't even Bush didn't know the difference between a Sunni and a Shiite and we go in there like ignoramuses. We give up the lives of good people, good people. We put our country so far in debt with that war. We were spending $4 billion a week at one point between Afghanistan and Iraq. And, you know, I mean, yes, some people might listen to this and go, you know, oh, he's anti-American. Really? I think the people that put us in this shitty place are anti-American. I think if you supported that war and if you supported going in there and destroying the infrastructure of that country, it's made us less safe. You've made me as an American less safe, and I consider what you did against America and against the world. So what now with this film, the new one.

Did we mention it's a comedy? Yes. It's always a little comedy in there. The whole conceit is a comedy, but it's powerful. Now, your hope for it is that as many people as possible will see it. Oh, absolutely. Yes. That is my goal.

Yes. I want as many people as possible to see it. And what do you think is going to happen when you talked earlier about a revolution in in america how do you think that that happened what do you think happens what's going to happen in your mind what do you hope to happen um i hope that uh students will start uh debt strikes stop paying the student loans. Former students and current students need to protest on campus to get the college at an affordable level. We were three states short of passing the Equal Rights Amendment back in the 70s. We only need three more states to pass it. Of the 15 remaining

that haven't passed it, we just need three more. Illinois was one of the states that didn't pass it. We can get those three states. We can have an equal rights amendment for women. Women should be paid the same as men. They're doing the same job. They should be paid the same. That's a basic thing. There's some really simple things. You get pregnant, there should be a maternity leave, not a few weeks off, but literally a few months off and you're paid. You get paid for this time. I mean, I think there's some things like that that can happen i think that people are ready to i look at all the i mean look at the states that are most of the states not ohio but most of the states are decriminalizing or legalizing

marijuana they don't think people should be locked up for this obama started to let people out of the federal prisons he's put his toe in the water on that 6 000 got released in the past month uh hopefully he'll do more of that before he's out of office. Well, you did good with this movie, man. And I'm glad you came by. It's been a long time since I saw you. I know. It has been a while.

I'm really happy for you. I love your podcast. I love the fact that you're on TV. Just being me. Just being you. That guy. Yeah. Isn't that funny, though?

Because I don't know you that well. Yeah. But essentially Just being you. That guy. Yeah. Isn't that funny, though? Because, I mean, I don't know you that well. Yeah. But essentially, that is you. So I think it's a little limited to a little more cranky. Well, yeah. It's not a documentary. Right, right, right. Yeah, yeah.

But that's okay because you let your inner crank come out in a productive way. I hope so. And it's entertaining. in a productive way and it's entertaining i i you know i've gotten a lot of uh you know really amazing things have happened because of this because of uh you know doing this thing in this garage and and but really like along the lines of what we were talking about the most gratifying thing about it is the feedback from people who are troubled and you know who feel alone in the world or sad or have a drinking problem or you know whose depression i ease or who feel alone in the world or sad or have a drinking problem or whose depression I ease or who feel less alone.

I mean, and I get that stuff every day, and I never thought that would ever happen. And just to have that, to feel that people are like your conversations about whatever because they're human and candid and explore struggle with all different types of people, it really make it easier for me to see my own issues and to function better in life. Well, that's a great way to put it. When I listen to you and I see you, I think it's good for people to feel that they're not crazy. They see you. Yeah. They hear you. Not crazy. I'm not crazy. Yeah. That's a good thing that is a good as a compliment that is a good thing and i think i think in in in terms of what you're doing i think it's sort of a

different approach to it but you're enabling people who i think are crazy uh to see that they might be misguided i hope so i think so what would wouldn't that be interesting if that happened as a result of this film yeah wow um just gotta get you just gotta get more people calling you an asshole on the street and maybe give them the money to rent it on netflix if i could talk to every fox news watcher who feels that way about me one by one yeah i think i would have either would be success with a number of them i i don't they may not agree with me why don't you make that movie i'm just going just just just go just going door to door just go door to door in red states yeah hey red neighborhood you think of me yeah but why yeah can we talk for you got an hour maybe and then tomorrow i'll come back with a couple films

yeah and i could yes i could watch my films with them. Yeah. See, you're laughing. Yeah. Why? Did you know that? Right. What I just said there? Yeah. See, I'm a gun owner. You can still be a gun owner.

It's okay. You know what the biggest problem is, Michael, is that in a world of the internet where people can cherry pick the information that suits their ideology, they can easily say like, that guy's making that up. Right. That's the biggest up right that's that's the biggest problem is like i've got my truth i did a search for it right right that and that that it's it's hard one thing i do to help them and i've done this for my last three or four movies i i put up on my website when the movie comes out all the factual backup and i have a

rule that it can't be factual backup from the nation or other lefty magazines right so i put on an annotated annotated the every fact in the film here's the backup for it and it's from a non-partisan traditional mainstream source and you can read this and see for yourself that they actually have a lower crime rate in Norway because they don't lock people up forever. There's a point where you over-incarcerate and you make your society less safe. You make monsters. You make monsters out of them.

We have an 80% recidivism rate in this country. They have a 20% recidivism rate in Norway. Just out of your own selfish self-interest to live in a safe neighborhood, wouldn't you want to at least explore how they're doing that? Yeah. And also that whole other thing that you went through pretty quickly was the prison industrial complex and its manufacturing arm is disturbing.

It's disturbing. It needs its own movie. The number of companies that use prison labor, slave labor, to make their products. Yeah. It's heavy shit. but it's great to see you. Hey, thank you for coming. Thank you for having me here, Mark. It's been great in this garage, and hopefully when we walk out the door,

the Manson cult won't be there. They're not here. In the Hollywood Hills. They're not here. I'm in the wrong hills anyways, right? If anyone comes to hurt us, they followed you here. Then if this is mark's last podcast i just want to say to all his fans i'm terribly sorry about this okay i meant well

all right bye good night see just a you know a guy trying to fucking help out to make make it a better place. That's what we all want. Just some of us have different ideas of how to do that. I'm going to play some fucking guitar. Boomer lives! But meatballs, mozzarella balls, and arancini balls? Yes, we deliver those. Moose? No. But moose head? Yes. Because that's alcohol, and we deliver that too. Along with your favorite restaurant food, groceries, and other everyday essentials. Order Uber Eats now.

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