Latest / The Joe Rogan Experience / #2564 - Chuck Lorre

Transcript

#2564 - Chuck Lorre · The Joe Rogan Experience

• 0:04
  Speaker 1: The Joe Rogan Experience.
• 0:06
  Speaker 2: Train by day, Joe Rogan podcast by night, all day. So,
• 0:13
  Speaker 2: explain that again. Explain the show that you saw.
• 0:16
  Speaker 1: It was at the Singer Bowl in 1969. Jimi Hendrix
• 0:20
  Speaker 1: was the headliner. The Experience right after Monterey. And Janis
• 0:27
  Speaker 1: Joplin in the holding company. Big Brother in the holding
• 0:29
  Speaker 1: company was the warm-up act.
• 0:32
  Speaker 2: Wow.
• 0:33
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 0:34
  Speaker 2: What was that like?
• 0:36
  Speaker 1: Well, for starters, we bribed a little security guard to
• 0:38
  Speaker 1: get in, me and my friends. I think we gave
• 0:42
  Speaker 1: him $ 2 apiece. And we walked right up to the stage.
• 0:46
  Speaker 2: Wow.
• 0:48
  Speaker 1: And watched, like, right there. And that was my first,
• 0:52
  Speaker 1: my first, oh, I guess I got to start drinking
• 0:55
  Speaker 1: Southern Comfort. Because she's making it look pretty good.
• 1:00
  Speaker 2: When I worked with Phil Hartman on news radio, one
• 1:02
  Speaker 2: of his favorite stories was he was like a stagehand
• 1:07
  Speaker 2: at the whiskey and Hendrix performed. And it was his
• 1:11
  Speaker 2: job to stand with his hand on the speaker because
• 1:16
  Speaker 2: he was worried that Hendrix would knock the speaker into
• 1:18
  Speaker 2: the crowd. And so I guess it was just not
• 1:21
  Speaker 2: very stable. So he said he was literally standing there
• 1:23
  Speaker 2: with his hands on the speaker with Hendrix two feet
• 1:27
  Speaker 2: away from him playing guitar.
• 1:28
  Speaker 1: Early on. He would destroy his equipment like the Who
• 1:33
  Speaker 1: would do as well. They'd tear up the amps. He'd
• 1:36
  Speaker 1: set the guitar on fire. I'm 15, 16 years old going, oh, man,
• 1:42
  Speaker 1: don't set the guitar. Give me the guitar. Don't set
• 1:44
  Speaker 1: it on fire.
• 1:45
  Speaker 2: Don't smash the guitar. There were always smashing guitars back then.
• 1:48
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah. It was an expensive way to end a show,
• 1:53
  Speaker 1: but that's what was happening.
• 1:56
  Speaker 2: I guess it was just a wild rock and roll thing.
• 1:59
  Speaker 1: It was amazing.
• 1:59
  Speaker 2: A rebellion thing.
• 2:00
  Speaker 1: It was an amazing time to be a kid watching
• 2:03
  Speaker 1: that stuff.
• 2:03
  Speaker 2: Well, it's such a crazy time in human history. I mean,
• 2:06
  Speaker 2: it's one of the weirdest times in all of culture.
• 2:09
  Speaker 2: If you take the difference in the culture of the
• 2:12
  Speaker 2: 1950s to the culture of the late 1960s, it's like
• 2:16
  Speaker 2: just an insane shift. Like one of the most insane
• 2:19
  Speaker 2: shifts ever. So radical and so big. It happened so fast.
• 2:24
  Speaker 1: It was a response to the 50s. Yeah.
• 2:26
  Speaker 2: It was that and the Vietnam War and drugs. All
• 2:29
  Speaker 2: of the above. All of them. Psychedelic drugs. Everything all together.
• 2:32
  Speaker 1: And the birth control pill.
• 2:33
  Speaker 2: Yes.
• 2:34
  Speaker 1: That changed everything.
• 2:35
  Speaker 2: Yes. Yes. Very good point. Very good point.
• 2:39
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 2:39
  Speaker 2: Gave women freedom.
• 2:42
  Speaker 1: As well, it did the same for men.
• 2:45
  Speaker 2: Oh, yeah. Yeah. Everybody could just do whatever the fuck
• 2:47
  Speaker 2: they wanted. And they're doing drugs at the same time.
• 2:50
  Speaker 2: It's everything just boom.
• 2:51
  Speaker 1: Boom.
• 2:52
  Speaker 2: Just all came together. Your story is awesome. The book
• 2:56
  Speaker 2: is great. It really is. It's very compelling. One of
• 3:00
  Speaker 2: the things that bums me out the most about the
• 3:04
  Speaker 2: internet and streaming is that we've lost the multicam sitcoms.
• 3:10
  Speaker 2: It's a very weird thing. The first thing that killed it,
• 3:13
  Speaker 2: I think, was reality shows. That sort of took a
• 3:16
  Speaker 2: lot of the wind out of its sails. But a
• 3:18
  Speaker 2: few remained. And during COVID, me and my family watched
• 3:23
  Speaker 2: Big Bang Theory. I'd never watched it. Watched it from
• 3:26
  Speaker 2: episode one. We just binged it all the way to
• 3:29
  Speaker 2: the end. I fucking loved it. I felt like when
• 3:33
  Speaker 2: I was like a comic in the clubs in L.A.,
• 3:38
  Speaker 2: you never heard about Big Bang Theory. It didn't get
• 3:41
  Speaker 2: it was like there was other shows that people wanted to.
• 3:44
  Speaker 2: You were cool if you liked it. And the Big
• 3:47
  Speaker 2: Bang Theory was like, you know, family sitcom, you know,
• 3:49
  Speaker 2: just like real clean. It's a really well-written show. It's
• 3:54
  Speaker 2: very funny. It's a really good show, man.
• 3:56
  Speaker 1: Thank you. We worked hard.
• 3:59
  Speaker 2: I bet you did.
• 3:59
  Speaker 1: We worked really hard. It was a general attitude that
• 4:04
  Speaker 1: every episode had to kick ass. Every one.
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  Speaker 2: Well, it was also so unusual. You have this like
• 4:09
  Speaker 2: super autistic genius guy as your head character.
• 4:12
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Well, the way I entered the show, because I'm
• 4:17
  Speaker 1: clearly not a physicist or by any means a genius,
• 4:21
  Speaker 1: they were outliers. They were guys that couldn't figure out
• 4:25
  Speaker 1: how to behave in the real world.
• 4:27
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 4:27
  Speaker 1: That I got.
• 4:28
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 4:29
  Speaker 1: You know, the physicists, quantum physicists and all that stuff,
• 4:33
  Speaker 1: that was, you know, I'm college dropout. That was never
• 4:37
  Speaker 1: my thing. But being on the outside looking in, that
• 4:41
  Speaker 1: I understood.
• 4:42
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 4:42
  Speaker 1: That I understood. Yeah.
• 4:44
  Speaker 2: Your story is awesome, dude. It really is. It's, it's,
• 4:47
  Speaker 2: it's very, uh, it's such an American story, you know,
• 4:51
  Speaker 2: because it's you trying to figure out how to make
• 4:53
  Speaker 2: it in show business and trying to be a musician
• 4:56
  Speaker 2: and all these different things that happened to you and
• 4:58
  Speaker 2: the whole Scientology thing. And then eventually, you know, starting
• 5:03
  Speaker 2: to write on big sitcoms and the Roseanne story. And
• 5:06
  Speaker 2: it's fucking great, man. Cause it's like, it's such a
• 5:09
  Speaker 2: huge part of television history, what you've experienced. You really have.
• 5:15
  Speaker 2: It's like if you think about television history in America,
• 5:19
  Speaker 2: a big part of it is defined by its sitcoms.
• 5:22
  Speaker 2: Because sitcoms, whether it's All in the Family or Seinfeld
• 5:26
  Speaker 2: or Friends, there's something about those sitcoms that cement us
• 5:30
  Speaker 2: in this place of comfort and happiness and laughter. Those
• 5:35
  Speaker 2: are almost like our extra family. These people on TV
• 5:39
  Speaker 2: that we've become attached to watching every Thursday.
• 5:44
  Speaker 1: For me, it was characters. Nobody remembers the plot of
• 5:47
  Speaker 1: a sitcom.
• 5:48
  Speaker 2: Right.
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  Speaker 1: They were great plots, especially on Seinfeld and stuff. Larry David,
• 5:53
  Speaker 1: nobody can plot a comedy story better than Mr. David.
• 5:58
  Speaker 1: But the secret sauce was you wanted to hang out
• 6:03
  Speaker 1: with these people. You wanted to sit at the bar
• 6:06
  Speaker 1: with Norman Cliff and Woody and Sam. You wanted to
• 6:09
  Speaker 1: have a cup of coffee with Jerry, you know, and
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  Speaker 1: the same thing held true with Friends was a sort
• 6:17
  Speaker 1: of a surrogate family that you wanted to be part of.
• 6:19
  Speaker 1: But you don't remember the stories. The stories were secondary.
• 6:23
  Speaker 1: It was the characters and perfect casting on these shows
• 6:27
  Speaker 1: as well. Yeah. Perfect casting.
• 6:29
  Speaker 2: Why do you think that, I mean, in 94 when
• 6:33
  Speaker 2: I first came to L.A., sitcoms were the thing. That's
• 6:36
  Speaker 2: where everybody came to L.A. in the first place. If
• 6:38
  Speaker 2: you were a comic, you came to L.A. hoping you
• 6:40
  Speaker 2: were going to get a deal. so that you could
• 6:42
  Speaker 2: be the next Roseanne or Jerry Seinfeld or fill in
• 6:45
  Speaker 2: the blank.
• 6:46
  Speaker 1: Tim Allen.
• 6:48
  Speaker 2: Tim Allen, Brett Butler. There was all those people. Cosby.
• 6:51
  Speaker 1: You go back to Cosby, stand up.
• 6:53
  Speaker 2: Yeah. It was all you wanted the network to develop
• 6:56
  Speaker 2: a show around you, and all these people were scrambling
• 6:59
  Speaker 2: for that. And that, for the most part, doesn't exist anymore.
• 7:04
  Speaker 1: Well, we're trying with Leanne Morgan. You know, Leanne's, you know,
• 7:10
  Speaker 1: Remarkably successful stand-up right now, and the show we're doing
• 7:13
  Speaker 1: with her on Netflix is doing pretty well.
• 7:15
  Speaker 2: Well, Netflix, you can do it.
• 7:17
  Speaker 1: They have the freedom to.
• 7:18
  Speaker 2: Young Sheldon worked on Netflix. That was great.
• 7:21
  Speaker 1: The amazing thing about Young Sheldon on Netflix was a
• 7:24
  Speaker 1: whole generation of kids watched that show and had never
• 7:28
  Speaker 1: seen The Big Bang Theory.
• 7:29
  Speaker 2: Right, right.
• 7:30
  Speaker 1: And what's wonderful, too, is when you get to talk
• 7:32
  Speaker 1: to them, they don't know what CBS is.
• 7:39
  Speaker 2: How weird.
• 7:41
  Speaker 1: But the show stood on its own, which was, that
• 7:43
  Speaker 1: was our dream come true, that it wasn't standing on
• 7:47
  Speaker 1: the shoulders of the Big Bang Theory. It was its
• 7:49
  Speaker 1: own show.
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  Speaker 2: Right. No, it definitely was. We binged that, too, after
• 7:53
  Speaker 2: we binged Big Bang Theory. We binged Young Sheldon, which
• 7:56
  Speaker 2: is a great show, too. But different, right? Single camera.
• 7:58
  Speaker 1: It's a highly different vibe.
• 8:00
  Speaker 2: Yeah. The thing about the multi-cam thing is, like, you're
• 8:03
  Speaker 2: kind of in on it. You know there's a crowd
• 8:05
  Speaker 2: there watching this. It's like you're watching a play. As
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  Speaker 2: much as you're watching a comedy.
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  Speaker 1: It is a play.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah.
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  Speaker 1: It is a play with four cameras rolling around in
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  Speaker 1: front of it.
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  Speaker 2: Right.
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  Speaker 1: And if somebody makes a mistake, you do it again.
• 8:18
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 8:19
  Speaker 1: Or something stinks, you rewrite it or you cut it.
• 8:21
  Speaker 1: But you don't put it on TV where, you know,
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  Speaker 1: as I've always said, if it stinks in front of
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  Speaker 1: the audience, if you put it on TV, it's going
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  Speaker 1: to stink forever.
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  Speaker 2: Right. Right.
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  Speaker 1: So it is a little bit of theater. I think
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  Speaker 1: it started back in the 50s as theater. That's what they,
• 8:36
  Speaker 1: you know, started as radio plays.
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  Speaker 2: Right.
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  Speaker 1: You know, and then television happened.
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  Speaker 2: What was the first sitcom on television? It wasn't The Honeymooners,
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  Speaker 2: was it? There had to be something probably before that.
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  Speaker 1: Well, it was always, you know, Lucy. But I think
• 8:53
  Speaker 1: even before that, there was Phil Silvers and George Burns.
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  Speaker 2: Right.
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  Speaker 1: I don't know. I don't know the deep history of it.
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  Speaker 1: But it all came out of vaudeville and theater.
• 9:06
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
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  Speaker 1: One of the more interesting things about this taste for
• 9:14
  Speaker 1: the laugh track, we've never used a laugh track. Never.
• 9:18
  Speaker 1: Been for 40 years, been accused of it, but never
• 9:22
  Speaker 1: used it. And I remember one time I had a
• 9:26
  Speaker 1: reporter on the set of The Big Bang Theory who
• 9:29
  Speaker 1: went and sat in the audience and watched us tape
• 9:32
  Speaker 1: a show in front of a live studio audience. It
• 9:37
  Speaker 1: takes three, three and a half hours. And then he
• 9:39
  Speaker 1: writes an article complaining about the laugh track. You know,
• 9:44
  Speaker 1: it's sort of like, OK, there's no getting away from this.
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  Speaker 1: He sat in the stands with 200 people laughing and
• 9:52
  Speaker 1: he wrote about the annoying laugh track.
• 9:55
  Speaker 2: That's interesting. Do you think they just do that because
• 9:57
  Speaker 2: controversy sells and negativity sells? and they just have a
• 10:00
  Speaker 2: narrative in their head.
• 10:01
  Speaker 1: It diminishes the show they want to diminish it they
• 10:04
  Speaker 1: want to diminish it yeah I think I made that
• 10:07
  Speaker 1: pretty clear in the book yeah that the word sitcom
• 10:11
  Speaker 1: it made sense when you married a fucking witch you
• 10:14
  Speaker 1: know or you came back from outer space with a
• 10:16
  Speaker 1: genie right and you don't want to get laid you
• 10:19
  Speaker 1: know But it makes no sense when it's a family
• 10:24
  Speaker 1: show like Archie, you know, all in the family. That's
• 10:27
  Speaker 1: that's about a family. What's the situation? He's a bigot. He's,
• 10:32
  Speaker 1: you know, he's he's he's racially insensitive. That's not a situation.
• 10:37
  Speaker 1: That's life, you know.
• 10:40
  Speaker 2: Well, the whole sitcom thing, I just don't feel like
• 10:45
  Speaker 2: you talked about this in your in the book as well.
• 10:47
  Speaker 2: Like you wouldn't even say that you wrote for sitcoms.
• 10:50
  Speaker 1: I'd say I wrote a TV comedy.
• 10:51
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 10:52
  Speaker 1: Because I'm embarrassed.
• 10:53
  Speaker 2: Isn't that interesting?
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  Speaker 1: Like sitcoms were dismissed. I was very insecure. And the
• 10:59
  Speaker 1: word hurt me. It physically hurt me. That's crazy.
• 11:04
  Speaker 2: In Hollywood, it just didn't get the respect that a
• 11:07
  Speaker 2: film did.
• 11:08
  Speaker 1: No, of course not.
• 11:09
  Speaker 2: Not even close.
• 11:09
  Speaker 1: Not even close. So much harder, though, in so many ways,
• 11:12
  Speaker 1: to make 200 people laugh every week for 22 weeks.
• 11:16
  Speaker 2: It's almost impossible. It's very difficult to pull off. It's ridiculous.
• 11:20
  Speaker 2: And if you watch the writers scramble and, you know,
• 11:23
  Speaker 2: every week you have to have some new scenario and
• 11:25
  Speaker 2: you've got five cast members you have to juggle around
• 11:27
  Speaker 2: at the scenes.
• 11:28
  Speaker 3: Network executives and company executives and the managers of the
• 11:33
  Speaker 3: actors and the actors and everybody's, you know, feeling like
• 11:38
  Speaker 3: we live or die depending on whether the audience laughs
• 11:41
  Speaker 3: or not.
• 11:41
  Speaker 1: There's no grace period.
• 11:43
  Speaker 2: And if you're a writer, you also have to listen
• 11:44
  Speaker 2: to the executives.
• 11:45
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 11:46
  Speaker 2: And their ideas are horrible. Early on. Early on. Before
• 11:49
  Speaker 2: the show gets successful, they want to tell you.
• 11:52
  Speaker 1: You know, I started to, you know, my testicles dropped
• 11:55
  Speaker 1: at a certain point. And I stopped saying, yes, sir, no, sir.
• 12:00
  Speaker 1: I just, you know, said, no, this is the way
• 12:01
  Speaker 1: it's going to go. But that was predicated on having
• 12:04
  Speaker 1: had success. That was all.
• 12:07
  Speaker 2: The sitcom on Netflix that you were talking about, is
• 12:09
  Speaker 2: this going to be multicam or single cam?
• 12:11
  Speaker 1: It's multicam.
• 12:11
  Speaker 2: It is multicam. Oh, that's awesome.
• 12:13
  Speaker 1: We just finished our second season.
• 12:14
  Speaker 2: I didn't know.
• 12:15
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 12:17
  Speaker 2: The only one that I know that's doing it right
• 12:18
  Speaker 2: now is Miss Pat. She's got a very funny show.
• 12:22
  Speaker 2: But it used to be there were so many of them.
• 12:25
  Speaker 2: And it's such a good genre.
• 12:26
  Speaker 1: There were 40 or 50 a week.
• 12:28
  Speaker 2: That's crazy.
• 12:29
  Speaker 1: Now there's maybe three. Seriously. Maybe three. In front of
• 12:33
  Speaker 1: an audience, maybe two.
• 12:36
  Speaker 2: First of all, boy, did you get out at the
• 12:37
  Speaker 2: right time. With network stuff, all your gigantic hits, they
• 12:43
  Speaker 2: were all perfect at the right time when everybody was
• 12:45
  Speaker 2: watching sitcoms.
• 12:47
  Speaker 1: Timing-wise, I've been blessed. There's no question about it.
• 12:49
  Speaker 2: It's the greatest timing of all time. I just don't
• 12:53
  Speaker 2: understand why they can't come back. It's such a good
• 12:56
  Speaker 2: art form. It's so fun to watch.
• 12:58
  Speaker 1: When it's done really, really well, it's extraordinary. I've seen
• 13:05
  Speaker 1: the eulogy for it many times over the last 40-some-odd years.
• 13:11
  Speaker 1: I'm hard to buy into the eulogy because one great
• 13:15
  Speaker 1: show changes everything.
• 13:16
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's still fun to watch. That's what doesn't make sense.
• 13:19
  Speaker 2: And this is what I got when we were watching
• 13:21
  Speaker 2: Big Bang Theory. Like it's fun to watch sitcoms. It's
• 13:24
  Speaker 2: a very different experience than watching anything else. You're aware
• 13:27
  Speaker 2: that it's a half an hour. You know all the characters.
• 13:30
  Speaker 2: You know, oh, this guy is going to say something
• 13:31
  Speaker 2: stupid and this guy is going to do– it's like
• 13:34
  Speaker 2: it's a very interesting art form that is very– people
• 13:38
  Speaker 2: enjoy it. It's very comforting for people and it doesn't
• 13:41
  Speaker 2: make sense. Like it just shows you like the mismanagement
• 13:44
  Speaker 2: of television. that sitcoms were allowed to go away. It
• 13:49
  Speaker 2: doesn't make sense to me.
• 13:52
  Speaker 1: I don't understand it either. Taste change, the culture changes.
• 13:56
  Speaker 1: Do you think that's what it is, though? I don't know.
• 13:59
  Speaker 2: I don't think that's what it is. I don't think
• 14:01
  Speaker 2: they've changed that much.
• 14:02
  Speaker 1: I think comedy has certainly changed, I believe. I think
• 14:09
  Speaker 1: laughing out loud is frowned upon.
• 14:11
  Speaker 2: Really?
• 14:12
  Speaker 1: I think there's a vulnerability to laughing when you let
• 14:15
  Speaker 1: yourself laugh. And I mean, look at what gets vetted
• 14:21
  Speaker 1: as a comedy these days. And they're great stuff, you know.
• 14:26
  Speaker 1: I mean, they're really wonderful stuff. But you're not laughing
• 14:28
  Speaker 1: out loud, you know. When I watch something like White
• 14:33
  Speaker 1: Lotus and I talk to people about it, they love it.
• 14:36
  Speaker 1: And it's extremely well done. Mike White's brilliant. You don't
• 14:40
  Speaker 1: laugh watching it. It's enjoyable, you know. It's wonderful. extraordinarily
• 14:45
  Speaker 1: well-written and well-produced and casting is great, but it doesn't
• 14:50
  Speaker 1: cause out loud laughter.
• 14:52
  Speaker 2: You think people don't want to laugh? Really?
• 14:54
  Speaker 1: I think when you laugh out loud, first of all,
• 14:57
  Speaker 1: laughter is not something self-generated. It happens to you.
• 15:01
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 15:01
  Speaker 1: Right? It's surprise. It should come as a surprise when
• 15:05
  Speaker 1: you laugh. Sure. Right? It's not, oh, I'm going to
• 15:08
  Speaker 1: laugh now. Laughter happens because you've been surprised by what
• 15:12
  Speaker 1: you're watching or listening to. Yeah. And there's a certain— you
• 15:17
  Speaker 1: have to be vulnerable enough to let yourself react. You've
• 15:20
  Speaker 1: seen people watch comedy like this with their arms folded.
• 15:23
  Speaker 1: They're rejecting you before you've opened your fucking mouth.
• 15:27
  Speaker 2: You know where that happens the most is Los Angeles.
• 15:30
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah.
• 15:31
  Speaker 2: Maybe you need to move. Because you're saying all these things,
• 15:35
  Speaker 2: and I respect you deeply. And I'm hearing what you're saying,
• 15:38
  Speaker 2: and I don't agree at all. I think people love laughing.
• 15:41
  Speaker 2: I think they enjoy the shit out of it. It's
• 15:43
  Speaker 2: one of their favorite things to do.
• 15:44
  Speaker 1: Maybe I am experiencing it. Maybe I am a victim
• 15:47
  Speaker 1: of Los Angeles.
• 15:47
  Speaker 2: Los Angeles is an insanely self-important place where people are
• 15:51
  Speaker 2: constantly judging each other's social status. And they would love
• 15:55
  Speaker 2: to be able to dismiss you. And they love to
• 15:58
  Speaker 2: look forward to the opportunity to dismiss you. Not everybody.
• 16:01
  Speaker 2: Not everybody. A lot of cool people there. But there's
• 16:03
  Speaker 2: a percentage of people that come there with a hole
• 16:06
  Speaker 2: in their soul that they're trying to fill that will
• 16:08
  Speaker 2: never get filled. And so they always have this weird
• 16:11
  Speaker 2: way of interacting with people. It's this constant dick measuring contest.
• 16:15
  Speaker 2: And it's exhausting.
• 16:17
  Speaker 1: So where would I go?
• 16:18
  Speaker 2: I don't know. Somewhere else. Somewhere else. I mean, even
• 16:21
  Speaker 2: New York is way better in that regard because it's
• 16:23
  Speaker 2: not tainted by show business. New York is insanely congested
• 16:27
  Speaker 2: and there's too many people. It's just nuts. But other
• 16:30
  Speaker 2: than that, it's a great metropolitan city filled with everything,
• 16:34
  Speaker 2: all the greatest restaurants and there's comedy clubs. It's not tainted.
• 16:39
  Speaker 2: There's a thing about Los Angeles where the spirit of
• 16:42
  Speaker 2: the city itself is tainted by people that want attention.
• 16:47
  Speaker 2: And it always will be. It's impossible to avoid. They
• 16:51
  Speaker 2: go there because that's where the auditions are and that's
• 16:53
  Speaker 2: where the plays. And some of them are fantastic people.
• 16:56
  Speaker 2: Don't get me wrong. But there's a larger percentage that
• 16:59
  Speaker 2: aren't fantastic and they are a mess and they're exhausting.
• 17:04
  Speaker 2: And those are the people that cross their arms. And
• 17:05
  Speaker 2: that's why you think people don't want to laugh. Because
• 17:08
  Speaker 2: they do everywhere else.
• 17:09
  Speaker 1: Well, clearly the shows that I've spent my whole life
• 17:14
  Speaker 1: working on do really well all over the world. But,
• 17:18
  Speaker 1: you know, maybe, you know, I'm in a bubble.
• 17:22
  Speaker 2: You're in a bubble.
• 17:23
  Speaker 1: I live in a bubble.
• 17:23
  Speaker 2: Yeah. That bubble's a little bit of a problem.
• 17:26
  Speaker 1: It's crazy. I mean, sometimes you see the Big Bang Theory,
• 17:31
  Speaker 1: huge hit in Germany. In Germany, you know. It's astonishing
• 17:39
  Speaker 1: how Mexico, Brazil.
• 17:42
  Speaker 2: Wow.
• 17:43
  Speaker 1: They're the Beatles down there. It's remarkable. You know, maybe
• 17:48
  Speaker 1: not so much in Brentwood. Right.
• 17:52
  Speaker 2: It's like that's the thing about it. It's dismissed. And
• 17:55
  Speaker 2: it was dismissed in Hollywood. I remember I was working
• 17:58
  Speaker 2: on a sitcom. and I was dating this girl who
• 18:00
  Speaker 2: was an actress, and she was unemployed. She literally told me,
• 18:03
  Speaker 2: I wouldn't do a sitcom. I want to do film.
• 18:06
  Speaker 2: I was like, okay, all right. I don't know what
• 18:08
  Speaker 2: to tell you.
• 18:10
  Speaker 1: The secret, too, that people don't know unless they've been there,
• 18:13
  Speaker 1: it's really hard. It is hard, but it's— It's really
• 18:17
  Speaker 1: hard to put on a play every week.
• 18:19
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 18:19
  Speaker 1: It's really hard, and it's anxiety-ridden. It's nervousness. It's stressful.
• 18:28
  Speaker 1: Doesn't always go well.
• 18:30
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 18:30
  Speaker 1: When a joke fails at the Burbank Warner Brothers lot
• 18:34
  Speaker 1: and the audience doesn't respond, you can hear the 134 freeway.
• 18:39
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 18:40
  Speaker 1: I mean, it's crickets.
• 18:42
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's not good.
• 18:43
  Speaker 1: But it's an extraordinary teaching device because you learn some humility. Oh,
• 18:52
  Speaker 1: I'm not as smart as I thought I was.
• 18:54
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 18:54
  Speaker 1: That joke died. I thought it was great.
• 18:57
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 18:57
  Speaker 1: It died. Oh, we got to fix it, you know?
• 19:00
  Speaker 1: And that's how I spent the last many decades, you know,
• 19:05
  Speaker 1: rushing around trying to fix it.
• 19:07
  Speaker 2: This episode is brought to you by The Terminal List
• 19:11
  Speaker 2: Season 2. Chris Pratt is back as Navy SEAL Commander
• 19:15
  Speaker 2: James Reese, and this time he's fighting for redemption. Nine
• 19:19
  Speaker 2: months after finishing his list, Reese is hiding in Mozambique
• 19:23
  Speaker 2: with a terminal brain tumor when the CIA pulls him
• 19:27
  Speaker 2: back for one final mission— Hunt the terrorists behind a
• 19:30
  Speaker 2: wave of attacks devastating the West. But what starts as
• 19:34
  Speaker 2: a manhunt turns into a globe-spanning fight for survival. With
• 19:38
  Speaker 2: practical effects and real-world military experience behind every scene, the
• 19:43
  Speaker 2: action this season is the real deal. Watch The Terminal List,
• 19:48
  Speaker 2: Season 2, on October 22nd. 21st, only on Prime. It's
• 19:52
  Speaker 2: also often a wild thunderstorm of creative people getting together,
• 19:58
  Speaker 2: working on something, trying to figure it out. Everyone throwing
• 20:01
  Speaker 2: ideas at things. It's really exciting in that regard. Like,
• 20:04
  Speaker 2: every week, you're creating this thing, and you're putting it
• 20:07
  Speaker 2: on its feet throughout the week. You get a table read.
• 20:10
  Speaker 2: You sit down. Everybody fake laughs. You have to figure
• 20:14
  Speaker 2: out what's real. You put it together.
• 20:16
  Speaker 1: When I was on Roseanne, it was huge. Every week,
• 20:21
  Speaker 1: maybe 40 million people were watching in real time. No
• 20:25
  Speaker 1: DVRs yet. Basically, just the start of the VCR stuff. And,
• 20:30
  Speaker 1: you know, great writing staff. I was really blessed to
• 20:34
  Speaker 1: be part of that staff, but We learned very quickly,
• 20:38
  Speaker 1: John Goodman would walk into the kitchen and say, Rosie,
• 20:40
  Speaker 1: I'm home. The audience would go berserk. And we'd be going, yeah,
• 20:45
  Speaker 1: I wrote that line. They were just glad to see him.
• 20:50
  Speaker 1: They were so excited to see him that the response
• 20:53
  Speaker 1: was not genuine. There was no comedy in Honey, I'm Home.
• 20:59
  Speaker 1: But they were so thrilled to be in the same
• 21:01
  Speaker 1: space as John Goodman, who they loved, as Dan Conner's
• 21:06
  Speaker 1: And you have to start learning that those are not
• 21:10
  Speaker 1: the laughs that you hang your hat on. Those are
• 21:13
  Speaker 1: the laughs because the show's become part of people's lives.
• 21:17
  Speaker 1: It's become visceral. People respond to the Big Bang characters.
• 21:22
  Speaker 1: I tell this story in the book at Comic-Con early on.
• 21:30
  Speaker 1: Thousands of people were camping out at night to come
• 21:33
  Speaker 1: in and see the panel at Comic-Con for the Big
• 21:35
  Speaker 1: Bang Theory. And I was sitting next to Jim Parsons
• 21:38
  Speaker 1: at an autograph line, you know, where people come up
• 21:40
  Speaker 1: with a cast picture and they sign it. And this
• 21:44
  Speaker 1: girl comes up to Jim, and her hands are shaking,
• 21:48
  Speaker 1: and she hands him the picture to sign. And she's
• 21:51
  Speaker 1: crying out of joy to see Jim Parsons, to be
• 21:56
  Speaker 1: this far away from Jim Parsons. Wow. And I remember thinking,
• 22:01
  Speaker 1: I've been doing this a while. People were always happy
• 22:04
  Speaker 1: to see John Cryer and Charlie. Nobody ever cried. Nobody
• 22:10
  Speaker 1: ever cried when they saw Roseanne, you know, or anybody
• 22:13
  Speaker 1: like that. But she was crying out of sheer joy
• 22:17
  Speaker 1: to see these guys. And that's when I went, something's
• 22:21
  Speaker 1: happening here that we didn't plan, that we couldn't have planned,
• 22:26
  Speaker 1: that these characters have hit a nerve, you know.
• 22:29
  Speaker 2: Well, I think it is the misfits thing, you know?
• 22:31
  Speaker 1: Yes.
• 22:32
  Speaker 2: I think that's a giant part of it.
• 22:33
  Speaker 1: And they become a surrogate family. They support one another.
• 22:36
  Speaker 2: Yes.
• 22:36
  Speaker 1: They're losers in a life raft. Right. You know what
• 22:39
  Speaker 1: I mean? Right. And they hold each other up.
• 22:41
  Speaker 2: And all odd in their own unique way that's endearing.
• 22:46
  Speaker 2: And I think for a lot of people, you know,
• 22:48
  Speaker 2: you look at friends, you're like, those fucking people never
• 22:50
  Speaker 2: hang out with me. What's the point? You know, they're
• 22:53
  Speaker 2: all good looking, hanging out together. They're too cool. Everybody's cool. Fuck,
• 22:59
  Speaker 2: I don't fit there. But they'd watch Young Sheldon and
• 23:01
  Speaker 2: they'd watch that show and they'd think, all right, well,
• 23:04
  Speaker 2: these people are just weirdos just like me.
• 23:06
  Speaker 1: One of the things I loved about Young Sheldon we
• 23:08
  Speaker 1: discovered as we were doing it was the show really
• 23:13
  Speaker 1: became about his family.
• 23:15
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 23:15
  Speaker 1: Here's this cuckoo.
• 23:17
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 23:18
  Speaker 1: Cuckoo's nest. You know, this odd child.
• 23:20
  Speaker 2: With normal parents.
• 23:21
  Speaker 1: With normal parents. Dad's a football coach. His mom's deeply religious.
• 23:26
  Speaker 1: He's got a twin sister who's just a twin, just
• 23:28
  Speaker 1: a kid.
• 23:29
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 23:29
  Speaker 1: And an older brother is kind of a knucklehead, you know,
• 23:33
  Speaker 1: means well. But, you know, it's how they have to
• 23:36
  Speaker 1: accommodate this remarkable human being. It really became watching them.
• 23:44
  Speaker 1: How much love and respect. And protectiveness went towards this
• 23:48
  Speaker 1: little boy who was oblivious at how caustic he was.
• 23:53
  Speaker 1: He was really an asshole. You know what I mean?
• 23:55
  Speaker 1: And so was the grown Sheldon. He was really a dick.
• 23:59
  Speaker 1: He treated his friends horribly. And it was one of
• 24:03
  Speaker 1: the magic tricks of young Sheldon was an eight-year-old being
• 24:07
  Speaker 1: a dick is not acceptable. Right? You know? 25, 30-year-old
• 24:14
  Speaker 1: Jim Parsons, you can be caustic. But when it's coming
• 24:18
  Speaker 1: out of a child's mouth, not so pleasant. So it
• 24:21
  Speaker 1: really shifted to becoming how his parents and his brother
• 24:25
  Speaker 1: and sister and eventually his grandmother took care of him.
• 24:30
  Speaker 1: They excused him for being the way he was and
• 24:34
  Speaker 1: allowed him to be that way. That's a love story.
• 24:37
  Speaker 2: It is, and it's completely unique to the original show.
• 24:41
  Speaker 2: The Big Bang Theory, you know, obviously Sheldon's older, but
• 24:45
  Speaker 2: it's just a different thing. The whole story is a
• 24:47
  Speaker 2: different thing. The concentration is a different thing. It's really
• 24:51
  Speaker 2: about the family and this extraordinary kid.
• 24:53
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 24:54
  Speaker 2: But it's great.
• 24:55
  Speaker 1: Thank you.
• 24:56
  Speaker 2: When you talk about the Roseanne days, those are some
• 24:58
  Speaker 2: of my favorite days because, you know, I'm friends with
• 25:01
  Speaker 2: Roseanne and I know how crazy she is. No, you don't.
• 25:04
  Speaker 2: And she talks about a lot that you know better
• 25:07
  Speaker 2: than I do. But she talks about how crazy she
• 25:10
  Speaker 2: was during those days.
• 25:11
  Speaker 1: That's nice to hear. Yeah. That's nice to hear.
• 25:13
  Speaker 2: She's like, I was a tyrant.
• 25:19
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that's a good– that's the nicest word I can
• 25:21
  Speaker 1: think of.
• 25:22
  Speaker 2: Well, you know her whole story, how she got hit
• 25:24
  Speaker 2: by a car when she was young? Yeah. That's what
• 25:26
  Speaker 2: a lot of people don't know.
• 25:28
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 25:28
  Speaker 2: And I thought it was really important to have her
• 25:30
  Speaker 2: on after she got in trouble and got fired from
• 25:33
  Speaker 2: her new show. to have her on and explain her history.
• 25:37
  Speaker 2: She had legitimate mental illness, not like I need attention
• 25:41
  Speaker 2: mental illness, hit by a car when she was 15
• 25:44
  Speaker 2: years old, was in the hospital for a long time,
• 25:47
  Speaker 2: was in a mental health institute for nine months after that.
• 25:52
  Speaker 2: She was a grade A math student. After the accident,
• 25:55
  Speaker 2: she could not count. She had a legitimate brain injury
• 26:00
  Speaker 2: that changed her personality completely. And it's responsible for a
• 26:05
  Speaker 2: lot of her erratic behavior and a lot of the
• 26:08
  Speaker 2: chaos that you see. Also, maybe some of the brilliance
• 26:11
  Speaker 2: in her comedic timing. She was just so didn't give
• 26:15
  Speaker 2: a fuck. She was so different than any woman comic
• 26:18
  Speaker 2: before her.
• 26:19
  Speaker 1: Absolutely. No, she was groundbreaking. That initial act that she
• 26:23
  Speaker 1: and her sister, I don't know if she talked about
• 26:25
  Speaker 1: her sister much, but they wrote that act and it
• 26:28
  Speaker 1: was like nothing that we'd ever seen before. It was
• 26:32
  Speaker 1: entirely original.
• 26:33
  Speaker 2: Yeah, entirely original.
• 26:35
  Speaker 1: Now I know why animals eat their young was the
• 26:42
  Speaker 1: keystone of that act. Now I know why animals eat
• 26:45
  Speaker 1: their young.
• 26:47
  Speaker 2: Yeah, she was a force. Just hearing the stories, like
• 26:51
  Speaker 2: how Tom Arnold, they made you put his name as
• 26:55
  Speaker 2: a writer on the scripts. You'd have to change the
• 26:59
  Speaker 2: scripts and write his name in.
• 27:03
  Speaker 1: Easy for you to laugh.
• 27:05
  Speaker 2: That kind of shit. The reason why I laughed is
• 27:08
  Speaker 2: because I'd heard stories, not about Tom Arnold, but about
• 27:11
  Speaker 2: people doing that. Like that was a real thing. Like
• 27:14
  Speaker 2: it was almost like a union job that you got
• 27:16
  Speaker 2: with the mob where you didn't really have to show up.
• 27:18
  Speaker 1: Oh, you know what I mean? No show gigs. Yeah.
• 27:20
  Speaker 2: It was almost like that. Like people got writer's credits
• 27:23
  Speaker 2: when they weren't writing at all.
• 27:26
  Speaker 1: It was a lot of money.
• 27:27
  Speaker 2: A lot of money. A lot of money. A lot
• 27:29
  Speaker 2: of money. Yeah, I know many stories.
• 27:32
  Speaker 1: I remember complaining to a then agent who, I might
• 27:37
  Speaker 1: have included this in the book, I don't remember. He said, Chuck,
• 27:41
  Speaker 1: you got to let them fuck you a few times
• 27:42
  Speaker 1: so they know they love you.
• 27:45
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that's in the book. Yeah, it's a weird business, man.
• 27:50
  Speaker 2: It's a weird business. And all your stories about just
• 27:53
  Speaker 2: dealing with crazy actors and the civil shepherd thing, she
• 27:57
  Speaker 2: made you change the joke and then it didn't work.
• 28:01
  Speaker 2: And then she got mad at you for that.
• 28:02
  Speaker 1: And it worked for Baranski. Baranski could read the phone book.
• 28:05
  Speaker 1: I mean, that was one of the great. Gifts I've
• 28:09
  Speaker 1: ever been close to watching her work.
• 28:11
  Speaker 2: But that whole weirdness where people get upset if someone
• 28:14
  Speaker 2: else got a joke.
• 28:15
  Speaker 1: Yes.
• 28:15
  Speaker 2: Even if it was like that person's character to say
• 28:18
  Speaker 2: that line and not your character. It was all about
• 28:21
  Speaker 2: who gets the lines, who gets the good lines.
• 28:24
  Speaker 1: Given how successful those shows were and how much money
• 28:28
  Speaker 1: was being generated by them, it's hard to defend how
• 28:32
  Speaker 1: much cruelty, you know, And malice went into the making
• 28:37
  Speaker 1: of it. So unnecessary. It should have been a constant celebration.
• 28:41
  Speaker 1: It should have been an ongoing party. Look what we did.
• 28:45
  Speaker 2: More often than not, though, in those situations, for whatever reason,
• 28:49
  Speaker 2: when someone is the big star of those shows, you
• 28:52
  Speaker 2: hear nightmare stories. When someone is like the lead actor,
• 28:57
  Speaker 2: the show is written about them, it's all about them.
• 28:59
  Speaker 2: It's like there's something about the intoxicating power of being
• 29:04
  Speaker 2: the top person on the show, your picture is six
• 29:08
  Speaker 2: feet high on a fucking billboard outside the place, your
• 29:12
  Speaker 2: name's painted on the wall. They can't help themselves. They
• 29:15
  Speaker 2: just get crazy.
• 29:17
  Speaker 1: It makes me think of, it was my great good
• 29:19
  Speaker 1: fortune to get to know Bob Newhart and to call
• 29:24
  Speaker 1: him a friend, and he did a bunch of Big
• 29:26
  Speaker 1: Bang episodes. He taught me something I've never forgotten. He goes,
• 29:33
  Speaker 1: I'm not the funny guy on the show. I react
• 29:36
  Speaker 1: to the funny guys. Larry, Daryl, and Daryl. and Tom
• 29:40
  Speaker 1: Post and the crazy characters would come in the show
• 29:44
  Speaker 1: when he was a psychiatrist. Crazy people would come in
• 29:48
  Speaker 1: and the comedy was in Bob reacting. A raised eyebrow
• 29:54
  Speaker 1: would get an enormous laugh because he becomes the audience
• 29:57
  Speaker 1: reacting to the crazy people. And I was begging him
• 30:04
  Speaker 1: for years to come and do any show I'd worked on.
• 30:06
  Speaker 1: I was such a fan. And I remember he finally,
• 30:13
  Speaker 1: he watched The Big Bang Theory and he said, all right,
• 30:15
  Speaker 1: I'll do this one. But I have three demands. Go.
• 30:21
  Speaker 1: He goes, it has to be in front of an audience.
• 30:23
  Speaker 1: I don't do anything. I said, that's all we do.
• 30:27
  Speaker 1: We only work in front of an audience.
• 30:29
  Speaker 2: Done.
• 30:30
  Speaker 1: Number two, I want my character to have an arc.
• 30:33
  Speaker 1: I want it to be over a few episodes.
• 30:34
  Speaker 2: Done.
• 30:36
  Speaker 1: Number three, I want to win an Emmy. He'd never
• 30:42
  Speaker 1: won an Emmy for his show.
• 30:43
  Speaker 2: That's crazy.
• 30:44
  Speaker 1: Isn't that nuts?
• 30:44
  Speaker 2: That's crazy.
• 30:45
  Speaker 1: And he did on The Big Bang Theory. He won
• 30:48
  Speaker 1: an Emmy for best supporting actor, best guest actor in
• 30:51
  Speaker 1: a comedy. And it was one of the genuine joys
• 30:54
  Speaker 1: of my life was I got him the Emmy. That's amazing.
• 30:58
  Speaker 1: He got the Emmy, but we delivered on all three.
• 31:01
  Speaker 1: That's amazing.
• 31:02
  Speaker 2: I can't believe he never won an Emmy.
• 31:03
  Speaker 1: Isn't that crazy?
• 31:04
  Speaker 2: That's crazy. That's literally crazy. I went to the Emmys once,
• 31:07
  Speaker 2: and it was after Phil Hartman had been murdered. And
• 31:10
  Speaker 2: he was nominated for an Emmy. So we all won.
• 31:13
  Speaker 2: And he didn't win. And when he didn't win, Dave
• 31:17
  Speaker 2: Foley looked over at me and goes— What the fuck
• 31:19
  Speaker 2: does a guy have to do to win? In that moment,
• 31:25
  Speaker 2: first of all, we were all so broken. We were
• 31:30
  Speaker 2: so sad. Not that he didn't win the Emmy, just
• 31:34
  Speaker 2: that he had just recently been murdered. It still was
• 31:38
  Speaker 2: so hard to believe and so painful that Dave just
• 31:41
  Speaker 2: came in with a banger. Dave Foley was like one
• 31:45
  Speaker 2: of the secret producers of news radio. The news radio,
• 31:49
  Speaker 2: Paul Sims was so brilliant that when he created the show,
• 31:53
  Speaker 2: he allowed all these creative people to come up with
• 31:56
  Speaker 2: alternative lines. And Dave was from Kids in the Hall.
• 32:00
  Speaker 2: So he was just a fantastic writer on top of
• 32:02
  Speaker 2: being very funny. And so he would come up with
• 32:05
  Speaker 2: better lines all the time. And Paul would always use them.
• 32:08
  Speaker 2: It was just there was no ego there. It was
• 32:10
  Speaker 2: such a great place to be. And so when When
• 32:13
  Speaker 2: Phil got killed, it was like we were just broken.
• 32:16
  Speaker 2: We were just like, what? And so for Dave to
• 32:20
  Speaker 2: say that at the Emmys, I'm like, okay, no one's
• 32:23
  Speaker 2: topping this. I'm never coming back to the Emmys again.
• 32:25
  Speaker 2: Get out of here.
• 32:26
  Speaker 1: No, that's a high note. You could come up with that.
• 32:29
  Speaker 2: I can't believe Bob Newhart never won an Emmy. That's insane.
• 32:32
  Speaker 1: He did on the Big Bang Theory. Yeah, but I
• 32:34
  Speaker 1: mean before.
• 32:34
  Speaker 2: That for the Bob Newhart show, that's bananas. That's bananas.
• 32:40
  Speaker 2: It was such a good show. He seemed like a
• 32:43
  Speaker 2: lovely guy. I wish I got to meet him.
• 32:47
  Speaker 1: He truly was. Back when I was getting started, when
• 32:53
  Speaker 1: that set was, I worked on the same lot as
• 32:56
  Speaker 1: the show, the Second Show. And when they were down,
• 33:03
  Speaker 1: when the stage was dark, I'd go sit in that
• 33:06
  Speaker 1: little lobby set in the dark, just kind of drink
• 33:09
  Speaker 1: it in. You know, it's a tiny little set where
• 33:12
  Speaker 1: he'd stand behind the counter. And Larry Darrell and Darrell
• 33:15
  Speaker 1: would come in. And I'd just sit there in the
• 33:18
  Speaker 1: dark and just take it in. You know, shit, this
• 33:21
  Speaker 1: is where they make this show.
• 33:22
  Speaker 2: Wow.
• 33:23
  Speaker 1: And later on, a bunch of us on Two and
• 33:27
  Speaker 1: a Half Men would sneak into the West Wing set
• 33:29
  Speaker 1: and sit in the Oval Office. This is as close
• 33:33
  Speaker 1: as we're going to get to the Oval Office. We
• 33:36
  Speaker 1: were sitting there, you know, late at night.
• 33:40
  Speaker 2: That's awesome. Just bringing up two and a half men,
• 33:43
  Speaker 2: like you have gone through some of the fucking craziest actors.
• 33:47
  Speaker 2: Like you've worked with some of the craziest people of
• 33:50
  Speaker 2: all time. Charlie, when he was here, he did the
• 33:53
  Speaker 2: podcast and he was like telling me about those days.
• 33:56
  Speaker 2: When you hear all those days, like how did you function?
• 33:59
  Speaker 2: Like how are you showing up and doing a sitcom
• 34:02
  Speaker 2: when you were living like that? Like it's kind of amazing.
• 34:06
  Speaker 2: that he kept it together the way he did. Like,
• 34:09
  Speaker 2: that's one thing that he really deserves credit for. The
• 34:12
  Speaker 2: guy did good work while he was out of his
• 34:14
  Speaker 2: fucking mind.
• 34:16
  Speaker 1: We did six, seven years in the clear before it
• 34:20
  Speaker 1: all went to hell. Ah. We had like 150-some-odd, 60
• 34:24
  Speaker 1: episodes before it started to go down.
• 34:26
  Speaker 2: And was he heavy-using during those times?
• 34:30
  Speaker 1: Not to my knowledge.
• 34:31
  Speaker 2: Oh, so.
• 34:31
  Speaker 1: If he was, he was managing it and keeping it
• 34:33
  Speaker 1: to himself. But as far as I was concerned... We
• 34:36
  Speaker 1: had a great partnership. We were having a lot of fun.
• 34:39
  Speaker 1: The show was insanely successful. We had something in common.
• 34:51
  Speaker 1: We were all on the same kind of... I thought
• 34:53
  Speaker 1: we were all on the same road, keeping it clean,
• 34:57
  Speaker 1: staying sober and stuff. The show was killing it. It
• 35:03
  Speaker 1: was just... It actually... The success of that show is
• 35:07
  Speaker 1: what granted me the freedom to go, you know, and
• 35:11
  Speaker 1: go and do a couple of tries to get the
• 35:13
  Speaker 1: Big Bang Theory right. I mean, we failed at first.
• 35:16
  Speaker 1: You know, we made a lot of mistakes. But Two
• 35:18
  Speaker 1: and a Man was so successful, CBS granted me unbelievable
• 35:23
  Speaker 1: leeway to make decisions, do shit over again. Like the pilot,
• 35:30
  Speaker 1: nobody gets a do-over. We got a do-over on the
• 35:33
  Speaker 1: Big Bang pilot.
• 35:34
  Speaker 2: Wow. That never happens.
• 35:36
  Speaker 1: We got one, and it worked out.
• 35:39
  Speaker 2: Boy, did it work out, though.
• 35:40
  Speaker 1: Boy, did it work out, yeah.
• 35:41
  Speaker 2: So I didn't know that Charlie was supposedly sober for
• 35:45
  Speaker 2: most of that time.
• 35:46
  Speaker 1: As far as I know, he was.
• 35:48
  Speaker 2: But you talk to him now, right? You guys are
• 35:51
  Speaker 2: friends now?
• 35:51
  Speaker 1: Yeah, he has a blurb on the back of the book.
• 35:53
  Speaker 2: So he says he was sober for the beginning, and
• 35:56
  Speaker 2: then eventually he just.
• 35:58
  Speaker 1: I don't know at what point it went off the rails.
• 36:00
  Speaker 2: Did you notice, like, a change?
• 36:02
  Speaker 1: Well, in the eighth season, it was clearly we were
• 36:05
  Speaker 1: in trouble. It was, you know, when his manager calls
• 36:10
  Speaker 1: me and says, Charlie can't come to run through today
• 36:12
  Speaker 1: at rehearsal, his Bic lighter blew up and he has
• 36:16
  Speaker 1: no eyebrows. Now, I'm somewhat naive to some of this stuff,
• 36:24
  Speaker 1: but I know Bic lighters. They don't blow up. Wow.
• 36:28
  Speaker 2: Maybe they do when you're cooking Coke with them.
• 36:30
  Speaker 1: Maybe that's what happened. But there was a lot of,
• 36:34
  Speaker 1: the behavior became more and more erratic. A lot of
• 36:37
  Speaker 1: missed stuff. And the sad truth about my part of
• 36:45
  Speaker 1: it was I was determined to stay in denial. I
• 36:49
  Speaker 1: just didn't want to know. I wanted to believe it
• 36:51
  Speaker 1: was all okay. I was absolutely forcefully You know, oblivious.
• 36:59
  Speaker 1: I just wanted to believe it was all gonna be okay.
• 37:02
  Speaker 2: Just because the show was doing so well?
• 37:03
  Speaker 1: It was doing so well, and it was fun. I mean,
• 37:07
  Speaker 1: we kick ass. We worked really hard. My partner on
• 37:12
  Speaker 1: that show, Lee Aronson, and I, we were ruthless. Every
• 37:17
  Speaker 1: second had a kick ass. We were absolutely determined to
• 37:21
  Speaker 1: make it the best possible show we could. Every week.
• 37:25
  Speaker 1: No bad shows. I liken a bad show on television
• 37:30
  Speaker 1: to going to a restaurant and having a cockroach come
• 37:32
  Speaker 1: across your table. You don't go back to that restaurant
• 37:35
  Speaker 1: ever again, ever again. And that's how I felt about
• 37:40
  Speaker 1: situation comedies. You make a bad show, people are going
• 37:44
  Speaker 1: to maybe never come back.
• 37:46
  Speaker 2: You're going to lose a bunch, for sure.
• 37:47
  Speaker 1: You're going to lose a bunch. You know, just my
• 37:49
  Speaker 1: own experience, I love Cheers. I was devoted to Cheers.
• 37:53
  Speaker 1: It was a couple of years there where, you know,
• 37:56
  Speaker 1: You had to get through Cliff going home to his mother.
• 38:01
  Speaker 1: I wanted to be in the bar with, you know,
• 38:02
  Speaker 1: Woody and Sam. And he would tolerate, you know, some
• 38:06
  Speaker 1: of the dips. But then they'd come roaring back with
• 38:09
  Speaker 1: great writing and, you know, stuff. But more often than not,
• 38:13
  Speaker 1: if a show fails on a few occasions, even a
• 38:16
  Speaker 1: show you love, there's a likelihood you may move on.
• 38:20
  Speaker 2: And it's usually something happens behind the scenes, like a
• 38:23
  Speaker 2: head writer leaves or someone new gets fired. hired and
• 38:27
  Speaker 2: they have new ideas about stuff. That's generally how it goes, right?
• 38:34
  Speaker 1: There's a weird, delicate chemistry to one of these things
• 38:36
  Speaker 1: when they work.
• 38:37
  Speaker 2: Yes.
• 38:38
  Speaker 1: And it's really obvious when you think you can spin
• 38:45
  Speaker 1: something off. Do you remember Archie's Place?
• 38:49
  Speaker 2: No, I don't.
• 38:50
  Speaker 1: And he tried to spin off Archie Bunker.
• 38:52
  Speaker 2: I remember the name now that you brought it up,
• 38:54
  Speaker 2: but I don't remember it at all.
• 38:55
  Speaker 1: I think he ran a bar.
• 38:56
  Speaker 2: Wow.
• 38:57
  Speaker 1: And it was a new show with Archie Bunker, but
• 39:00
  Speaker 1: without Meathead.
• 39:01
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 39:02
  Speaker 1: And, you know, and Edith.
• 39:04
  Speaker 2: I remember he went on to do a cop show,
• 39:06
  Speaker 2: and I was very upset. I was like, how is
• 39:08
  Speaker 2: he playing a cop on TV?
• 39:09
  Speaker 1: The miraculous chemistry of all in the family was gone.
• 39:13
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 39:13
  Speaker 1: It was gone. And the same thing happened, you know,
• 39:16
  Speaker 1: with Joey off of Friends. The miraculous chemistry of that cast.
• 39:22
  Speaker 1: You just can't just, you know. I think I learned
• 39:26
  Speaker 1: a lesson watching those things going, don't. don't think this
• 39:31
  Speaker 1: thing travels. Right. You know.
• 39:34
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 39:34
  Speaker 1: It's characters and their relationships with the other characters are
• 39:38
  Speaker 1: the heart and soul of this thing. It's you know
• 39:41
  Speaker 1: you can't just pluck something out and go here be
• 39:43
  Speaker 1: successful over here.
• 39:44
  Speaker 2: Well that's why Young Sheldon is so impressive because you
• 39:47
  Speaker 2: didn't It is kind of a spinoff, but it's not,
• 39:50
  Speaker 2: and everyone's new.
• 39:51
  Speaker 1: The only inkling of the Big Bang Theory is Jim
• 39:54
  Speaker 1: Parsons' narration. Right. You never see him. Right. Him telling
• 39:59
  Speaker 1: the story of being a child in East Texas. That
• 40:02
  Speaker 1: was the only link.
• 40:04
  Speaker 2: Yeah. It's just amazing that you pulled off that chemistry
• 40:08
  Speaker 2: in two completely different environments about the same character.
• 40:12
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that was a roll of the dice, wasn't it?
• 40:15
  Speaker 2: Oh, yeah, but it worked.
• 40:16
  Speaker 1: If we didn't find Ian... then we would not have
• 40:19
  Speaker 1: made the show.
• 40:20
  Speaker 2: Yeah, there's things about certain sitcoms, like Seinfeld's a great example,
• 40:24
  Speaker 2: where those people just work together so well. You couldn't
• 40:28
  Speaker 2: imagine a new person being put in the mix or
• 40:31
  Speaker 2: someone going away.
• 40:32
  Speaker 1: Like, what?
• 40:33
  Speaker 2: You would ruin the whole thing. Absolutely.
• 40:37
  Speaker 1: And again, the characters and their relationships with each other
• 40:41
  Speaker 1: are why you watch.
• 40:42
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 40:42
  Speaker 1: You know? I can't tell you one plot... But I
• 40:48
  Speaker 1: never missed an episode. Right. I, you know, I never
• 40:51
  Speaker 1: missed an episode. Thursday night was gold because of Seinfeld. Yeah.
• 40:56
  Speaker 2: I mean, the entire country was watching because of Seinfeld
• 41:01
  Speaker 2: and because of Friends on Thursday night on NBC. That
• 41:04
  Speaker 2: was the night. Yeah.
• 41:05
  Speaker 1: And then Bochco shows at 10. The Bochco shows were impeccable.
• 41:09
  Speaker 2: Right. Right.
• 41:10
  Speaker 1: I mean, one after the other, you know, Hill Street,
• 41:13
  Speaker 1: LA Law.
• 41:14
  Speaker 2: Yep.
• 41:14
  Speaker 1: You know, um, um. NYPD Blue. It was an incredible
• 41:20
  Speaker 1: run of sophisticated cop shows.
• 41:23
  Speaker 2: It really was. It's amazing how many cop shows there
• 41:26
  Speaker 2: have been. It's like, boy, do we like watching cop shows.
• 41:31
  Speaker 1: Again, they were character shows. I mean, Bochco understood that
• 41:34
  Speaker 1: as well. It wasn't the crime of the week. Solving
• 41:41
  Speaker 1: the crime is more the Dick Wolf approach to dramas.
• 41:46
  Speaker 1: I'm Pachko was about the characters, about the cops, about
• 41:52
  Speaker 1: their heartaches and the torments of being a cop in
• 41:56
  Speaker 1: Los Angeles.
• 41:57
  Speaker 2: Also, if you're going to write a show about drama,
• 42:00
  Speaker 2: who experiences more drama than cops?
• 42:01
  Speaker 1: Every day.
• 42:02
  Speaker 2: It's the perfect genre because you're always going to have chaos.
• 42:07
  Speaker 2: You could write in any kind of chaos, whereas if
• 42:09
  Speaker 2: it's one person who's a plumber who's experiencing that much
• 42:11
  Speaker 2: chaos in his life, you'd be like, what the fuck
• 42:13
  Speaker 2: are you doing with your life, man? How are you
• 42:15
  Speaker 2: involved in so many murders?
• 42:16
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 42:18
  Speaker 2: There's so many armed robberies when you're around. But if
• 42:21
  Speaker 2: you're a cop, it makes sense to write it in
• 42:23
  Speaker 2: like that.
• 42:24
  Speaker 1: I can't remember the name of the guy. He was
• 42:28
  Speaker 1: a New York City cop who wrote a whole bunch
• 42:30
  Speaker 1: of books that I think were a big factor in
• 42:34
  Speaker 1: the Bochco lore. I can't remember his name. He wrote, gosh,
• 42:41
  Speaker 1: damn it. I can't remember his name. I'll remember it
• 42:46
  Speaker 1: tonight when we're done. But he wrote about cops as people.
• 42:52
  Speaker 1: People in untenable work.
• 42:56
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 42:57
  Speaker 1: Work was, you know, this incredibly destructive work environment. And
• 43:02
  Speaker 1: it starts with an M.
• 43:05
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Cop genres, sitcoms. It's just, to me, the cop
• 43:10
  Speaker 2: genres are still around. Whereas the sitcoms have been reduced
• 43:14
  Speaker 2: by 80%.
• 43:14
  Speaker 1: More. 90%.
• 43:14
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 43:15
  Speaker 1: Again. Back when I got started, there were four sitcoms
• 43:23
  Speaker 1: on every network five nights a week or four nights
• 43:25
  Speaker 1: a week. So what is that? That's, you know, 16
• 43:29
  Speaker 1: a night. And then the hour dramas were at 10
• 43:33
  Speaker 1: o'clock every night for years.
• 43:37
  Speaker 2: I don't believe that's because people don't like them. I
• 43:40
  Speaker 2: really don't. I think it's just a mistake in broadcasting.
• 43:44
  Speaker 2: I think they fucked up. And I think if they
• 43:46
  Speaker 2: came back with some good ones, the problem is. it's
• 43:49
  Speaker 2: a hard job.
• 43:50
  Speaker 1: It's a hard job. And I was, one of the
• 43:52
  Speaker 1: blessings of my career was I got to have a
• 43:56
  Speaker 1: journeyman period where I was on, I was learning, but
• 44:01
  Speaker 1: I wasn't in charge. I wasn't the guy. I didn't
• 44:05
  Speaker 1: have to, you know, say that way.
• 44:08
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 44:09
  Speaker 1: I had maybe seven, eight years before they said, here,
• 44:14
  Speaker 1: your show. And I wasn't ready. I still was overwhelmed.
• 44:20
  Speaker 2: Merle Miller?
• 44:21
  Speaker 1: No.
• 44:22
  Speaker 2: Nope. All right. We give up. Can't figure out who
• 44:26
  Speaker 2: it is.
• 44:27
  Speaker 1: Um, um, but, um, that first show, yeah, I got,
• 44:35
  Speaker 1: I was the case to the kingdom. I got a
• 44:37
  Speaker 1: show on TV. Right.
• 44:38
  Speaker 2: And so this is a show after you leave Roseanne.
• 44:40
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 44:41
  Speaker 2: And now you're working on your own show, but they
• 44:44
  Speaker 2: put it on like Saturday night.
• 44:47
  Speaker 1: It, the owners of the Roseanne show had an idea
• 44:51
  Speaker 1: for a show that was strangely like Roseanne. You know,
• 44:56
  Speaker 1: this heavy set, unhappy housewife with a domineering husband and
• 45:04
  Speaker 1: problems with her kids. And they went to my then boss,
• 45:08
  Speaker 1: Bob Meyer, and asked him if he wanted to develop
• 45:10
  Speaker 1: that into a series. And Bob quite rightly saw that
• 45:15
  Speaker 1: they were just trying to, you know, rip off Roseanne
• 45:19
  Speaker 1: and do it again, have another hit show with an
• 45:21
  Speaker 1: unhappy housewife. And he very wisely or whatever said, no,
• 45:26
  Speaker 1: I don't think so. I don't like this idea. So
• 45:29
  Speaker 1: they went, all right. They came to me. And I thought,
• 45:33
  Speaker 1: this is a ripoff of Roseanne.
• 45:35
  Speaker 2: I'm in.
• 45:38
  Speaker 1: Because what I was thinking is, these two people owned
• 45:43
  Speaker 1: the Cosby show and Roseanne together. They were gigantic 8
• 45:47
  Speaker 1: million pound gorillas in television back then. I want to
• 45:51
  Speaker 1: work for them. Somehow, I'm not saying no, even though
• 45:56
  Speaker 1: I see it for what it is. And I worked
• 45:59
  Speaker 1: my ass off on it. This lovely lady, a British
• 46:03
  Speaker 1: actress named Miriam Margulies. Margulies? Margulies. And she was a
• 46:09
  Speaker 1: terrific actress. And she tried so hard. She chose so
• 46:15
  Speaker 1: hard to be an unhappy American Staten Island housewife. And
• 46:21
  Speaker 1: the show, you know, to credit how powerful Marcy and
• 46:27
  Speaker 1: Tom Warner were, the network couldn't bring themselves to say pass.
• 46:32
  Speaker 1: They couldn't say pass. And they ordered six episodes. And
• 46:37
  Speaker 1: they put it on the coveted time slot of 8
• 46:39
  Speaker 1: o'clock Saturday nights.
• 46:40
  Speaker 2: For people who don't know, that's the worst time slot
• 46:42
  Speaker 2: you could ever get on network television.
• 46:44
  Speaker 1: It's like making the show and using it for landfill.
• 46:47
  Speaker 2: Yeah, everybody's out. Everybody goes out. In the old days
• 46:50
  Speaker 2: before the internet, people would just leave the house on
• 46:53
  Speaker 2: Saturday night.
• 46:54
  Speaker 1: If you go back far enough, Saturday night had some
• 46:57
  Speaker 1: huge stuff.
• 46:59
  Speaker 2: How far you got to go back?
• 47:00
  Speaker 1: Back into the 60s.
• 47:01
  Speaker 2: Really?
• 47:02
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 47:02
  Speaker 2: Saturday night was a big night.
• 47:03
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 47:04
  Speaker 2: Interesting.
• 47:04
  Speaker 1: It went away.
• 47:05
  Speaker 2: Was that because television was fairly new? It was like
• 47:07
  Speaker 2: a crazy thing?
• 47:08
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 47:09
  Speaker 2: Stay home and watch TV. That makes sense.
• 47:11
  Speaker 1: But anyway, they ordered six episodes. They couldn't, they aired five,
• 47:16
  Speaker 1: couldn't bring themselves to air the sixth one. You know, like,
• 47:20
  Speaker 1: you know, like it would have hurt. And I thought,
• 47:24
  Speaker 1: you know, okay, that's the end of my career. I'm done.
• 47:27
  Speaker 1: I had my shot. I blew it. And Tom Werner
• 47:33
  Speaker 1: Came in my office a few days after they canceled
• 47:36
  Speaker 1: the show and said, the Noble failure. Let's try again.
• 47:40
  Speaker 1: I had never put Noble and failure together in the
• 47:44
  Speaker 1: same sentence.
• 47:45
  Speaker 2: Did you think the show was good or did you
• 47:48
  Speaker 2: think it didn't have enough time to get good?
• 47:52
  Speaker 1: Here's the problem with writing a TV and producing a
• 47:55
  Speaker 1: TV comedy is you don't have perspective. You lose perspective.
• 48:01
  Speaker 1: You're working so hard. You don't really have the big
• 48:04
  Speaker 1: picture as to whether you think it's working. You ask
• 48:07
  Speaker 1: anybody on any staff on any sitcom back in the day,
• 48:12
  Speaker 1: we're doing great work. I think it's just impossible to
• 48:18
  Speaker 1: own the fact that it might be mediocre given how
• 48:20
  Speaker 1: hard we're working. So I don't know that I really
• 48:23
  Speaker 1: had a clean perspective on whether it was quality television
• 48:28
  Speaker 1: or deserved to go on or not. I just know
• 48:30
  Speaker 1: I worked really hard and I was heartbroken that it failed.
• 48:34
  Speaker 2: That's a very honest perspective. I appreciate that.
• 48:37
  Speaker 1: And then he said, no failure. Let's try again. And
• 48:40
  Speaker 1: I was like, I get another, I get a do over.
• 48:43
  Speaker 1: I get to try again. Great. You know, cause when
• 48:46
  Speaker 1: you're indoors, they bring you lunch, you know, they feed you,
• 48:50
  Speaker 1: you know, you have a parking spot.
• 48:52
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 48:52
  Speaker 1: It's pretty cool.
• 48:53
  Speaker 2: It's pretty cool.
• 48:54
  Speaker 1: And, uh, that's, that led to them saying, uh, um,
• 48:59
  Speaker 1: we want to do a show about a single mom.
• 49:03
  Speaker 1: And I was like, wait a minute. I wanted the
• 49:06
  Speaker 1: Franny's turn, the character, the thing that just feels, I
• 49:08
  Speaker 1: wanted her to leave her husband and try and be,
• 49:13
  Speaker 1: you know, single and live with her daughter. And you said, no,
• 49:15
  Speaker 1: she has to be married because Cosby's married, Roseanne's married.
• 49:19
  Speaker 1: They wanted another marriage. show. But what turned out was
• 49:22
  Speaker 1: ABC was looking for a single mom show. So now
• 49:25
  Speaker 1: they wanted a single mom show. And I said, where
• 49:30
  Speaker 1: do I come in to? What sensibility can I bring
• 49:34
  Speaker 1: to a single mom show? And to their credit, they
• 49:37
  Speaker 1: sent me to Elgin, Illinois. to spend a few days.
• 49:42
  Speaker 1: The Chamber of Commerce took me to a women's shelter,
• 49:46
  Speaker 1: a YWCA, hospitals where women were either on welfare, working
• 49:55
  Speaker 1: two jobs, you know, killing themselves to support themselves while
• 50:01
  Speaker 1: raising children. And I got this walkthrough. I went, oh,
• 50:08
  Speaker 1: this is this is Greek tragedy. These women are, they're heroes.
• 50:16
  Speaker 1: I mean, at the time, the single mom was Murphy Brown.
• 50:20
  Speaker 1: Murphy Brown had endless nannies. Right. She just went about
• 50:25
  Speaker 1: her life and there was a kid. But a woman
• 50:28
  Speaker 1: raising children by herself without a safety net, that hadn't
• 50:32
  Speaker 1: been done. And I came back from that trip going, okay,
• 50:35
  Speaker 1: I want to write this. I want to write this
• 50:38
  Speaker 1: because this is, I get it now. It's a hero's journey.
• 50:43
  Speaker 1: You wouldn't think it. It's a sitcom. It's four cameras
• 50:47
  Speaker 1: in front of a live audience. But for me, it
• 50:50
  Speaker 1: was the hero's journey. It was this woman against all
• 50:54
  Speaker 1: odds caring for her children after a horrible divorce and
• 50:59
  Speaker 1: having to work her ass off just to feed them.
• 51:03
  Speaker 1: And then it went a little south when they said, okay,
• 51:08
  Speaker 1: we found the perfect actress to play that part. And
• 51:13
  Speaker 1: that's how I met Brett Butler. Sure, you laugh.
• 51:18
  Speaker 2: Well, that's a similar situation to what we were talking
• 51:21
  Speaker 2: about before where people would just become tyrants when they
• 51:23
  Speaker 2: have their own show.
• 51:24
  Speaker 1: She was very unhappy. Yeah. Out of the gate. Day one.
• 51:28
  Speaker 2: Seems crazy.
• 51:30
  Speaker 1: You'd think we should have been celebrating because the show
• 51:32
  Speaker 1: was an instant hit. It was Home Improvement with Tim
• 51:36
  Speaker 1: Allen and then They put it on right after it,
• 51:40
  Speaker 1: and it did great. And she was on the cover
• 51:42
  Speaker 1: of magazines, and she was on all the talk shows,
• 51:44
  Speaker 1: and she's a truly funny woman. She had a great
• 51:47
  Speaker 1: stand-up act.
• 51:48
  Speaker 2: Oh, she was hilarious.
• 51:48
  Speaker 1: Yeah. No questioning. And she took to acting immediately. You know,
• 51:54
  Speaker 1: I've watched people try and do this. Not everybody can
• 51:57
  Speaker 1: do it. Brett could do it. Brett could do it.
• 52:01
  Speaker 1: But it didn't go well for me.
• 52:03
  Speaker 2: It just seems so insane that someone would get an
• 52:05
  Speaker 2: opportunity that... If you're a comic, that's the opportunity. That's it.
• 52:10
  Speaker 2: It's your own sitcom. How could you be upset? It's weird.
• 52:16
  Speaker 1: I think if you're damaged in this certain kind of
• 52:21
  Speaker 1: way that actors in comics can be damaged and you
• 52:26
  Speaker 1: succeed and you learn that horrible, horrible 2 o'clock in
• 52:32
  Speaker 1: the morning horrible truth, I'm still unhappy. Right. I'm still
• 52:38
  Speaker 1: not whole. This was supposed to make me happy and whole.
• 52:43
  Speaker 1: Success was supposed to solve my problems. That's certainly what
• 52:45
  Speaker 1: I was taught. Right. When I was a boy, you know,
• 52:49
  Speaker 1: if you make something of yourself, you'll feel, you'll be good.
• 52:54
  Speaker 1: People will like you and admire you. And you'll, you know,
• 52:58
  Speaker 1: you'll be a man of substance. Yiddish was a mensch, right?
• 53:02
  Speaker 1: And then you learn that horrible truth. Only can happen
• 53:06
  Speaker 1: with success, which is, oh shit, I'm still a miserable fuck.
• 53:13
  Speaker 1: Now what? Now what? Right. That's not going to solve
• 53:16
  Speaker 1: that hole inside.
• 53:19
  Speaker 2: And generally that's where the drugs come in.
• 53:21
  Speaker 1: That's where the drugs come in.
• 53:23
  Speaker 2: With rock stars.
• 53:24
  Speaker 1: Rock stars and gambling.
• 53:25
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 53:26
  Speaker 1: You can't fuck your, drink your way, drug your way,
• 53:29
  Speaker 1: gamble your way out of that. That shit works temporarily
• 53:33
  Speaker 1: and then it doesn't work. And when it stops working,
• 53:36
  Speaker 1: you're truly fucked. You're truly fucked. You're trying to find
• 53:40
  Speaker 1: a solution that, the best I understand it, nothing on
• 53:47
  Speaker 1: the outside is going to heal the inside.
• 53:49
  Speaker 2: This episode is brought to you by Call of Duty.
• 53:52
  Speaker 2: Modern Warfare 4 is coming, and they're going all in
• 53:56
  Speaker 2: on this one. The kind of missions that make you go, dude,
• 54:00
  Speaker 2: did they really just do that? Set during a full-scale
• 54:04
  Speaker 2: North Korean invasion of South Korea, expect a real boots-on-the-ground
• 54:09
  Speaker 2: experience as young South Korean recruits fighting to protect their
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• 54:18
  Speaker 2: Modern Warfare 4 launches October 23rd. Pre-order digitally for early
• 54:23
  Speaker 2: access to the campaign or pick up your physical disc
• 54:27
  Speaker 2: on day one. Visit callofduty.com for more. Rated M for Mature.
• 54:33
  Speaker 1: It has to be an inside job to get well
• 54:36
  Speaker 1: from that stuff.
• 54:37
  Speaker 2: It's also for people's perspective. If you're talking about what
• 54:41
  Speaker 2: was Grace Under Fire was 93. In 1993, there was
• 54:47
  Speaker 2: only four channels. Okay. And then cable. And nobody's watching cable.
• 54:50
  Speaker 2: Not like that. Not like sitcoms. And there was maybe
• 54:53
  Speaker 2: 100 famous people on earth. Nobody was famous back then.
• 54:58
  Speaker 2: There's way more famous people. So if you're a damaged
• 55:01
  Speaker 2: person and then all of a sudden you're one of
• 55:03
  Speaker 2: the most recognizable people in the world who Brett Butler
• 55:06
  Speaker 2: was when that show was number two. I mean that
• 55:08
  Speaker 2: was a huge show. She was on every magazine. You
• 55:10
  Speaker 2: saw her everywhere. Like that kind of pressure and that
• 55:13
  Speaker 2: kind of– for a person who's already like struggling to
• 55:15
  Speaker 2: keep it together, that can be devastating.
• 55:18
  Speaker 1: Yeah. I often threaten to write a screenplay about the
• 55:22
  Speaker 1: perfect murder– the perfect murder of an actress– who is
• 55:27
  Speaker 1: malicious and destructive, is to make her famous. It'll ruin her.
• 55:35
  Speaker 1: I've yet to write that story yet. But you want
• 55:39
  Speaker 1: to do something harmful to somebody who's damaged in that way,
• 55:45
  Speaker 1: make them famous. It'll absolutely destroy them.
• 55:48
  Speaker 2: Isn't that nuts? Yeah. It's nuts. Did she afterwards, I
• 55:52
  Speaker 2: think she really fell apart after that show was over.
• 55:55
  Speaker 2: I'd heard at one point in time she was homeless.
• 55:57
  Speaker 2: I don't think she is anymore.
• 55:58
  Speaker 1: I heard those stories as well. I don't know. I
• 56:00
  Speaker 1: don't know.
• 56:01
  Speaker 2: It's such a sad turn of events, you know, because
• 56:06
  Speaker 2: people wanted to love her, especially when she was on
• 56:08
  Speaker 2: that show.
• 56:09
  Speaker 1: They were rooting for her.
• 56:10
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 56:10
  Speaker 1: Yeah, she was a spokesman for, a spokeswoman for, you know,
• 56:16
  Speaker 1: millions of women.
• 56:17
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 56:18
  Speaker 1: And men loved her too because she had balls, you know.
• 56:22
  Speaker 1: She suffered no fools. She worked in an oil refinery
• 56:26
  Speaker 1: on the show.
• 56:29
  Speaker 2: It just sucks that so many talented people have that,
• 56:33
  Speaker 2: whatever the fuck it is, that self-sabotage gene that makes
• 56:38
  Speaker 2: them not be able to ever change course and enjoy
• 56:42
  Speaker 2: this fortune that they've been given.
• 56:46
  Speaker 1: Making an audience laugh temporarily fills the hole.
• 56:49
  Speaker 2: Temporarily. Yeah.
• 56:51
  Speaker 1: And you go home and you're, you're still that guy.
• 56:54
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 56:55
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 56:56
  Speaker 2: That's the problem.
• 56:57
  Speaker 1: Yep.
• 56:58
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 56:59
  Speaker 1: Okay. What are we going to do about this? Right.
• 57:02
  Speaker 2: I don't think there's anything you can do about it.
• 57:03
  Speaker 2: I mean, it's just a, it's a tale as old
• 57:05
  Speaker 2: as time, you know, and you talk about it in
• 57:07
  Speaker 2: your book about if, if happiness and success cured you
• 57:12
  Speaker 2: of all your problems, you would see so many dead
• 57:14
  Speaker 2: rock stars, you know, and I think you, You're dead on.
• 57:17
  Speaker 2: I mean, they were all drugged out of their fucking mind.
• 57:20
  Speaker 2: And they're all, like we were talking earlier, had you
• 57:22
  Speaker 2: had seen at one point in time, you saw Morrison,
• 57:25
  Speaker 2: you saw the Doors play for like 20 minutes before
• 57:28
  Speaker 2: he tried to pull his dick out.
• 57:29
  Speaker 1: That was the shortest concert I've ever been to. It
• 57:33
  Speaker 1: was an outdoor, it was a singer bowl. It was
• 57:35
  Speaker 1: an outdoor kind of arena. And cops came in on horses,
• 57:40
  Speaker 1: hitting people over the head with sticks, right? Yeah.
• 57:43
  Speaker 2: Because he pulled his dick out.
• 57:44
  Speaker 1: To stop the show. I think it was after he
• 57:48
  Speaker 1: did it in Miami and he got arrested in Miami.
• 57:51
  Speaker 2: That was his new move. It was like Bert Kreischer
• 57:52
  Speaker 2: taking his shirt off.
• 57:53
  Speaker 1: I was 16 years old or something like that. And
• 57:55
  Speaker 1: I'm standing there with my friends smoking a joint going,
• 57:59
  Speaker 1: this is terrific. This is fantastic. We were watching these
• 58:03
  Speaker 1: horses go by. This is fantastic. We thought, well, yeah, okay,
• 58:09
  Speaker 1: it would have been nice to maybe hear a second song.
• 58:11
  Speaker 1: They opened with Light My Fire. Never finished it.
• 58:14
  Speaker 2: Really?
• 58:15
  Speaker 1: End of show.
• 58:16
  Speaker 2: Oh, my God.
• 58:17
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 58:17
  Speaker 2: That's crazy.
• 58:19
  Speaker 1: This is cool, man. This is a great show. Let's
• 58:22
  Speaker 1: get out of here before we get hit.
• 58:24
  Speaker 2: Who did you say he was performing with again?
• 58:27
  Speaker 1: The warm-up act was The Who.
• 58:28
  Speaker 2: Wow.
• 58:29
  Speaker 1: You know, before Tommy... They were a warm-up act then. Wow. Great.
• 58:33
  Speaker 1: So like my generation, I can see from Miles, they
• 58:36
  Speaker 1: had great stuff before Tommy. Once Tommy hit, they never
• 58:41
  Speaker 1: were a warm-up act again. But this was just prior
• 58:44
  Speaker 1: to Tommy.
• 58:45
  Speaker 2: Wow. Dude. But again, I mean, how many of them
• 58:50
  Speaker 2: died at 27? Morrison, Hendrix, Joplin. Although the Hendrix one's
• 58:55
  Speaker 2: very weird. There's a lot of very interesting conspiracy theories
• 58:58
  Speaker 2: about the Hendricks murder, or the Hendricks death, rather, that
• 59:01
  Speaker 2: it was perhaps a murder. He was leaving his manager.
• 59:04
  Speaker 2: His manager was a shady mob character. His girlfriend, after
• 59:08
  Speaker 2: the murder, or after his death, rather, she gets thrown
• 59:11
  Speaker 2: off of a roof. They said it was a suicide.
• 59:15
  Speaker 2: It doesn't, seems a little sketchy. But his former bodyguard
• 59:18
  Speaker 2: wrote a book about it. And apparently, you know, if
• 59:22
  Speaker 2: Hendrix left, you know, his manager would lose out on
• 59:27
  Speaker 2: all that money. But if Hendrix was dead... then he
• 59:30
  Speaker 2: would get royalties from all those songs forever.
• 59:34
  Speaker 1: He probably contractually would have had them anyway. I mean,
• 59:38
  Speaker 1: most managers back in those days, it was so corrupt.
• 59:41
  Speaker 1: It was really predatory and corrupt. He would have had
• 59:44
  Speaker 1: a piece of his publishing no matter what, live or dead. Listen,
• 59:50
  Speaker 1: the idea of him asphyxiating on his own vomit is
• 59:55
  Speaker 1: heartbreaking into a generational superstar. I mean, he had a
• 1:00:01
  Speaker 1: big impact on me.
• 1:00:02
  Speaker 2: Oh, my God. He was unlike anyone before him. His
• 1:00:05
  Speaker 2: sound was so completely unique that, I mean, Eric Clapton
• 1:00:10
  Speaker 2: famously said, like, he felt he wanted to quit playing
• 1:00:13
  Speaker 2: guitar when he saw him. And Eric Clapton was insanely good.
• 1:00:17
  Speaker 1: Yes.
• 1:00:18
  Speaker 2: For a guy like Eric Clapton, you know, go listen
• 1:00:20
  Speaker 2: to the Derek and the Dominoes, Layla. Layla.
• 1:00:23
  Speaker 1: Jesus Christ. With Dwayne. With Dwayne Allman.
• 1:00:25
  Speaker 2: Oh, my God.
• 1:00:26
  Speaker 1: That's good. Passing back.
• 1:00:28
  Speaker 2: How... Oh, my God.
• 1:00:30
  Speaker 1: That back and forth with him and Dwayne.
• 1:00:32
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:00:32
  Speaker 1: Or have you ever loved a woman? My God.
• 1:00:35
  Speaker 2: Eric Clapton and cocaine. Just that. Oh, my God.
• 1:00:40
  Speaker 1: That.
• 1:00:40
  Speaker 2: Yeah. But that that story is just the story of
• 1:00:43
  Speaker 2: his death. It's like, oh, it's really it's a weird one.
• 1:00:46
  Speaker 2: Whereas some of them do seem like normal drug overdoses.
• 1:00:49
  Speaker 2: But the Hendricks one, there's a lot of weird stuff
• 1:00:51
  Speaker 2: to that one where it does seem like it's possible
• 1:00:54
  Speaker 2: that he was murdered. Unfortunately, but all. There's just a
• 1:00:58
  Speaker 2: huge number of those guys died so young. And it's
• 1:01:00
  Speaker 2: because of what you're talking about, that whatever fucked up
• 1:01:04
  Speaker 2: thing that makes them so brilliant at performing. And it's
• 1:01:08
  Speaker 2: like almost an attempt. The more brilliant you get, the
• 1:01:11
  Speaker 2: more you can fill that hole temporarily. The more love
• 1:01:14
  Speaker 2: you get in these big bursts. And then the crowd
• 1:01:16
  Speaker 2: goes away. And then you're by yourself. And it's just
• 1:01:19
  Speaker 2: back to the darkness. And then the drugs. And then
• 1:01:22
  Speaker 2: the alcohol. And then the chaos. And then ripping your
• 1:01:24
  Speaker 2: life apart. And then there's another show. There's another burst.
• 1:01:28
  Speaker 2: You're feeling good when you're on stage. Then you get
• 1:01:30
  Speaker 2: off stage, it's the same fucking thing, and it never heals.
• 1:01:34
  Speaker 1: It never heals from the outside. The outside stuff, as
• 1:01:37
  Speaker 1: glorious as it is, and fame and adulation and fancy cars,
• 1:01:43
  Speaker 1: it's great. It's wonderful. There's no reason to denigrate it.
• 1:01:48
  Speaker 1: It's just, it's not the real solution. The real solution,
• 1:01:53
  Speaker 1: you know, I'm going to say it and then regret it.
• 1:01:56
  Speaker 1: But the real solution is a spiritual solution. You have
• 1:01:58
  Speaker 1: to find something beyond this world.
• 1:02:01
  Speaker 2: Why would you regret that? Cause you live in LA?
• 1:02:04
  Speaker 2: Cause you're in your bubble?
• 1:02:05
  Speaker 1: Because, because it's part of, it's part of my life.
• 1:02:09
  Speaker 2: Right. But why would you regret saying that?
• 1:02:11
  Speaker 1: Cause it might seem like.
• 1:02:12
  Speaker 2: Cliche.
• 1:02:13
  Speaker 1: Flaky and hairy fairy and, and you know, woo woo
• 1:02:16
  Speaker 1: new age bullshit.
• 1:02:18
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:02:18
  Speaker 1: But I don't know any other way. I just don't.
• 1:02:20
  Speaker 1: And I, I do know that, um, in my own life,
• 1:02:27
  Speaker 1: seeking a spiritual illusion. Not finding it, but the act
• 1:02:31
  Speaker 1: of seeking it is there's some salvation in that.
• 1:02:36
  Speaker 2: No, I think there is as well. I don't think
• 1:02:38
  Speaker 2: there's anything silly about it. And I think the problem
• 1:02:40
  Speaker 2: is the term has been co-opted. The term spirituality has
• 1:02:45
  Speaker 2: been co-opted by people that you do consider to be flaky.
• 1:02:49
  Speaker 2: That's the problem. It's like, is it possible? that you
• 1:02:54
  Speaker 2: could preach the word of Jesus in front of a
• 1:02:56
  Speaker 2: sold-out stadium and really be sincere? Yeah, sure, it's possible.
• 1:03:01
  Speaker 2: But how many people who are preaching in front of
• 1:03:04
  Speaker 2: sold-out stadiums and giant arenas, how many of those are
• 1:03:07
  Speaker 2: actually sincere? Well, it's a small percentage. It's not the
• 1:03:10
  Speaker 2: same thing, you know? It doesn't mean it's not possible.
• 1:03:14
  Speaker 1: No, it just has a bad name.
• 1:03:15
  Speaker 2: It has a bad name, and spirituality has a bad
• 1:03:17
  Speaker 2: name because it's attached to a lot of people that,
• 1:03:21
  Speaker 2: you know, through no fault of their own, they're trying
• 1:03:24
  Speaker 2: to find their own way. And they're using that kind
• 1:03:27
  Speaker 2: of lingo. And maybe some of them are just still
• 1:03:30
  Speaker 2: really fucked up. And that word now gets attached to
• 1:03:33
  Speaker 2: people that are claiming to be on a path to
• 1:03:36
  Speaker 2: try to fix themselves. But you just associate it with
• 1:03:39
  Speaker 2: people who are unsuccessful in the act. And they're just like,
• 1:03:43
  Speaker 2: it's like performative. They're like performatively being spiritual. Whereas I
• 1:03:49
  Speaker 2: know some people that are like legitimately spiritual. Some of
• 1:03:52
  Speaker 2: the nicest people that I know that are like, I
• 1:03:55
  Speaker 2: know this guy who's a Christian and all he does
• 1:03:57
  Speaker 2: is build houses like small homes for homeless people and
• 1:04:01
  Speaker 2: help them and get them jobs and teach them skills
• 1:04:04
  Speaker 2: and help them get clean.
• 1:04:05
  Speaker 1: I know people like that too.
• 1:04:07
  Speaker 2: They're real.
• 1:04:07
  Speaker 1: Yeah, they're real and they're role models.
• 1:04:10
  Speaker 2: Yes.
• 1:04:10
  Speaker 1: I want to be like that guy.
• 1:04:12
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah. They exist.
• 1:04:13
  Speaker 1: Yeah. I've been fortunate enough to know a few in
• 1:04:16
  Speaker 1: my life and they've had a deep impact, um, Giving
• 1:04:22
  Speaker 1: rather than taking.
• 1:04:22
  Speaker 2: Yes.
• 1:04:23
  Speaker 1: And, yeah, no question about it. That was not my nature.
• 1:04:30
  Speaker 1: I didn't go out to Los Angeles a giver.
• 1:04:35
  Speaker 2: No.
• 1:04:35
  Speaker 1: I wanted, give me.
• 1:04:36
  Speaker 2: Well, it was also the culture back then, right?
• 1:04:39
  Speaker 1: It was all I knew, you know. The first page
• 1:04:43
  Speaker 1: of the book was, if I could have been better,
• 1:04:47
  Speaker 1: if I could have done better, I would have. That
• 1:04:49
  Speaker 1: was the best I could do, you know.
• 1:04:51
  Speaker 2: Which is real.
• 1:04:52
  Speaker 1: Yeah, the selfish, self-centered, you know, dick. That was the
• 1:04:58
  Speaker 1: best I had early on. It took a while.
• 1:05:01
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Well.
• 1:05:03
  Speaker 1: It's a work in progress, basically.
• 1:05:05
  Speaker 2: We all are. That's part of being a human being.
• 1:05:07
  Speaker 2: You're a work in progress. If everybody's held to the
• 1:05:11
  Speaker 2: thing that they said when they were young and stupid, oh,
• 1:05:13
  Speaker 2: my God. If that's who you are forever, some shit
• 1:05:16
  Speaker 2: you said when you were 20 years old, like, good Lord.
• 1:05:19
  Speaker 1: That's insane.
• 1:05:20
  Speaker 2: It's insane.
• 1:05:20
  Speaker 1: It's insane. It denies the fact that we change. Of course.
• 1:05:23
  Speaker 1: We do change.
• 1:05:24
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:05:26
  Speaker 1: One of the coolest things about this book was me going, oh,
• 1:05:31
  Speaker 1: what an idiot. Who is that guy? Who is that guy?
• 1:05:35
  Speaker 1: What a horrible human being. Yeah. What a selfish, self-centered,
• 1:05:40
  Speaker 1: Jesus Christ, you just left her? You didn't say thank you?
• 1:05:45
  Speaker 1: What is wrong with that man? And that man was me.
• 1:05:49
  Speaker 2: It's wild.
• 1:05:50
  Speaker 1: And, yeah, there's a therapeutic kind of cathartic quality to
• 1:05:56
  Speaker 1: doing something like this, to try and write about your life.
• 1:06:00
  Speaker 1: And I'm an absolute laugh horse, so I wanted to
• 1:06:04
  Speaker 1: make it as funny as I could because otherwise it's
• 1:06:06
  Speaker 1: just boring. Who gives a shit about your life, Chuck?
• 1:06:09
  Speaker 1: But if I can make you laugh, then maybe it's
• 1:06:11
  Speaker 1: worth reading. But... Beginning with my childhood, you know, when
• 1:06:22
  Speaker 1: I was a kid working for my dad, you know,
• 1:06:24
  Speaker 1: those things. That's me, but if I were to be
• 1:06:30
  Speaker 1: held to what I said in 1969, it wouldn't go
• 1:06:34
  Speaker 1: well for me.
• 1:06:36
  Speaker 2: For anybody.
• 1:06:37
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 1:06:38
  Speaker 2: Yeah. It's great that you're reading the audio book, too.
• 1:06:41
  Speaker 1: Was there, you know, I jokingly said in the book
• 1:06:44
  Speaker 1: that I'd asked Idris Elba. For Brian Cox to read
• 1:06:48
  Speaker 1: it and they passed.
• 1:06:49
  Speaker 2: Brian Cox would be great.
• 1:06:50
  Speaker 1: It would be great to have some sonorous kind of
• 1:06:52
  Speaker 1: really baritone, beautiful, you know. That didn't happen. I made
• 1:06:57
  Speaker 1: that up. But I didn't really see how someone else
• 1:07:00
  Speaker 1: could read my memoir. It didn't make sense to me.
• 1:07:04
  Speaker 1: How does that make sense?
• 1:07:05
  Speaker 2: No, it makes no sense. One of the things that
• 1:07:08
  Speaker 2: you talked about that I think is very interesting is
• 1:07:10
  Speaker 2: the Scientology angle. And the reason it's interesting is because
• 1:07:16
  Speaker 2: when I first came to Hollywood in 94, Scientology was everywhere.
• 1:07:20
  Speaker 2: There were so many successful Scientologists that a lot of
• 1:07:23
  Speaker 2: people were thinking about joining Scientology as a strategy to
• 1:07:26
  Speaker 2: further their career.
• 1:07:27
  Speaker 1: Absolutely.
• 1:07:29
  Speaker 2: People need to understand that. It's hard for people of
• 1:07:32
  Speaker 2: 2026 to wrap their head around the environment of California,
• 1:07:36
  Speaker 2: Los Angeles, 1994, and the impact that Scientology had because
• 1:07:40
  Speaker 2: You had Tom Cruise. You had Jenna Elfman. Was that
• 1:07:44
  Speaker 2: around that time? Darman Gregg?
• 1:07:45
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 1:07:46
  Speaker 2: You had, I mean, there was a ton of people.
• 1:07:48
  Speaker 2: Kirstie Alley.
• 1:07:49
  Speaker 1: Kirstie Alley.
• 1:07:50
  Speaker 2: A ton of people.
• 1:07:50
  Speaker 1: Paul Haggis.
• 1:07:52
  Speaker 2: Super successful Scientologists who always seemed to have their shit
• 1:07:56
  Speaker 2: together and they were like really focused and they were
• 1:07:59
  Speaker 2: career oriented. And there were so many of us on
• 1:08:01
  Speaker 2: the outside like, wow, maybe I should be a fucking Scientologist.
• 1:08:04
  Speaker 2: Seems like that would help.
• 1:08:05
  Speaker 1: That was, listen, they built that thing called the Celebrity
• 1:08:09
  Speaker 1: Center on Franklin.
• 1:08:10
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:08:12
  Speaker 1: For the very purpose of— Hubbard even wrote about it. People
• 1:08:17
  Speaker 1: admire celebrities. They'll want to do what celebrities do. Let's
• 1:08:21
  Speaker 1: make an environment that attracts celebrities. It was a PR gesture.
• 1:08:26
  Speaker 1: He understood positioning, which is, I think, a marketing term where,
• 1:08:31
  Speaker 1: you know, that's why famous people do TV commercials, you know?
• 1:08:35
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:08:35
  Speaker 1: Yeah. You know, Peyton Manning says, buy this, buy Geico.
• 1:08:39
  Speaker 1: Peyton must know he's a quarterback. No, he doesn't know
• 1:08:43
  Speaker 1: anything about it. But you're paying attention because he's famous
• 1:08:47
  Speaker 1: and he's really good at what he does. And now
• 1:08:49
  Speaker 1: he's telling me how I should insure my car. Makes
• 1:08:52
  Speaker 1: perfect sense. Right. And Hubbard understood that early on that
• 1:08:58
  Speaker 1: celebrities possess. Scientology in a way that will draw people in.
• 1:09:03
  Speaker 1: And he was right, you know? I thought it would
• 1:09:05
  Speaker 1: give me an edge. I thought that if I went
• 1:09:10
  Speaker 1: down this road, it would give me an edge into
• 1:09:14
  Speaker 1: the career that I wanted.
• 1:09:15
  Speaker 2: What was it about it that you felt was going
• 1:09:18
  Speaker 2: to give you an edge? Was it the philosophy behind it?
• 1:09:20
  Speaker 2: Like the way they structure their lives? Because I bought
• 1:09:23
  Speaker 2: Dianetics on a late night television commercial. I didn't even
• 1:09:28
  Speaker 2: know what it was. I didn't understand that that was Scientology.
• 1:09:31
  Speaker 1: Kind of a psychotherapy.
• 1:09:32
  Speaker 2: Yeah. I thought it was just a self-help book.
• 1:09:34
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Digging up past trauma and releasing the trauma, freeing
• 1:09:40
  Speaker 1: up You know, your life force because you're releasing the
• 1:09:43
  Speaker 1: trauma of past experiences.
• 1:09:44
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:09:45
  Speaker 1: It wasn't that far off the charts.
• 1:09:47
  Speaker 2: Well, that was what L. Ron Hubbard did for the
• 1:09:50
  Speaker 2: most part. He was a science fiction.
• 1:09:51
  Speaker 1: But he was a science fiction writer.
• 1:09:53
  Speaker 2: He was a science fiction writer. Not only that, he
• 1:09:54
  Speaker 2: wrote more fiction than any human being that's ever lived, ever.
• 1:09:57
  Speaker 1: Absolutely. Right up there.
• 1:09:58
  Speaker 2: He did. He wrote the most.
• 1:09:59
  Speaker 1: More than Stephen King.
• 1:10:00
  Speaker 2: He wrote more than anybody. Because he never wrote a
• 1:10:02
  Speaker 2: second draft. Everything was like a first draft. It was
• 1:10:05
  Speaker 2: all horrible.
• 1:10:05
  Speaker 1: It was pretty shitty.
• 1:10:06
  Speaker 2: It was the worst.
• 1:10:06
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 1:10:07
  Speaker 2: But funny in that regard, like that Battlefield Earth movie
• 1:10:10
  Speaker 2: is fucking fantastic just because it's so goofy. Have you
• 1:10:13
  Speaker 2: seen it?
• 1:10:13
  Speaker 1: I have. It's terrible.
• 1:10:14
  Speaker 2: It's amazingly bad.
• 1:10:15
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah.
• 1:10:17
  Speaker 2: But it's good bad. It's bad to the point where
• 1:10:20
  Speaker 2: it's like, what the fuck am I watching? Like, oh,
• 1:10:22
  Speaker 2: my God.
• 1:10:23
  Speaker 1: When you're 21, 22-year-old me and you're scared to death,
• 1:10:27
  Speaker 1: the world is big. Right.
• 1:10:28
  Speaker 2: The world is threatening. Yeah.
• 1:10:30
  Speaker 1: I don't know what's going on. I want to be
• 1:10:33
  Speaker 1: in music. I want to have a career in music
• 1:10:35
  Speaker 1: as a songwriter. Yeah. these people promised me they knew
• 1:10:40
  Speaker 1: a way for me to do that. And I was
• 1:10:42
  Speaker 1: so vulnerable to that promise.
• 1:10:44
  Speaker 2: How did you get introduced to it?
• 1:10:46
  Speaker 1: I was playing in a band that was traveling around
• 1:10:48
  Speaker 1: the country, cover band, and playing bars, nightclubs around the country.
• 1:10:54
  Speaker 1: And the sax player was a Scientologist. And we were
• 1:10:59
  Speaker 1: in Columbus, Ohio. And we had a day off from
• 1:11:04
  Speaker 1: the gig. And he said, I'm going to the to
• 1:11:07
  Speaker 1: the Scientology Center in Columbus, Ohio. You want to come
• 1:11:11
  Speaker 1: with me? I didn't know what Scientology was. I had
• 1:11:16
  Speaker 1: just totaled my car in Iowa, so I had nowhere
• 1:11:19
  Speaker 1: to go. I was going to be sitting in my room.
• 1:11:22
  Speaker 1: So I said, yeah, fuck it, sure, I'll go. And
• 1:11:26
  Speaker 1: wouldn't you know, there were pretty girls there. So I'm in.
• 1:11:30
  Speaker 1: There's pretty girls here.
• 1:11:32
  Speaker 2: Oh, they're very smart.
• 1:11:33
  Speaker 1: Very smart about that. And I bought a thing called
• 1:11:37
  Speaker 1: the communications course, which promised to improve my ability to communicate.
• 1:11:43
  Speaker 1: What could go wrong with that?
• 1:11:44
  Speaker 2: What could go wrong with that?
• 1:11:46
  Speaker 1: Obviously, I'm a musician and I'm trying to become a songwriter.
• 1:11:51
  Speaker 1: That's a communication issue. You know, anything in the arts
• 1:11:57
  Speaker 1: is communicating. I could get better at that. Why wouldn't
• 1:12:00
  Speaker 1: I do that? And what he was doing He had
• 1:12:06
  Speaker 1: these drills called training routines. And the first one, TR0,
• 1:12:13
  Speaker 1: was you would sit like we're sitting right now in
• 1:12:15
  Speaker 1: front of each other and just be in front of
• 1:12:19
  Speaker 1: each other. No twitching, no laughing, no giggling, no getting creepy,
• 1:12:24
  Speaker 1: no getting lost in thought. Just sit there. What I
• 1:12:29
  Speaker 1: didn't know, I got really good at it too. What
• 1:12:33
  Speaker 1: I didn't know was it's just meditation. It was just meditation.
• 1:12:37
  Speaker 1: It was just learning to be still, which is meditation.
• 1:12:40
  Speaker 1: Just learning to be still and not being tossed around
• 1:12:43
  Speaker 1: by every fucking thought that comes screaming through your head like,
• 1:12:46
  Speaker 1: you know, a tree full of rabid monkeys. And that
• 1:12:49
  Speaker 1: first time I did it, opposite a pretty girl. It
• 1:12:59
  Speaker 1: was a woman who was running the classroom, the communications course.
• 1:13:05
  Speaker 1: I said... I have this feeling like I'm up in
• 1:13:08
  Speaker 1: the corner of the ceiling looking down at me. And
• 1:13:12
  Speaker 1: she yelled out, Chuck has gone exterior. I didn't know
• 1:13:17
  Speaker 1: what that meant. But it was an extraordinary experience. I
• 1:13:23
  Speaker 1: have a very vivid memory of being up near the ceiling,
• 1:13:26
  Speaker 1: looking down on me, sitting in front of this woman,
• 1:13:30
  Speaker 1: doing training routine zero.
• 1:13:32
  Speaker 2: So it worked.
• 1:13:33
  Speaker 1: It worked. I popped out of my head, and I
• 1:13:37
  Speaker 1: had an out-of-body experience. I didn't know what was happening.
• 1:13:41
  Speaker 1: I didn't understand what exterior— I know what the word meant,
• 1:13:43
  Speaker 1: but I didn't understand this as— but it felt good. The
• 1:13:48
  Speaker 1: only other time that happened to me, having that experience,
• 1:13:51
  Speaker 1: was when I flipped my car over at 70 miles
• 1:13:54
  Speaker 1: an hour in Iowa, and I remember seeing the accident
• 1:13:59
  Speaker 1: from up in the sky, looking down at it.
• 1:14:01
  Speaker 2: That was more like a near-death experience.
• 1:14:03
  Speaker 1: That was a near-death experience. But it was also a
• 1:14:06
  Speaker 1: very calm, huh. Wow. As the car is flipping over
• 1:14:11
  Speaker 1: down this embankment. And so the experience, that's a powerful experience.
• 1:14:19
  Speaker 1: And I wanted to pursue it. I wanted more of that.
• 1:14:22
  Speaker 2: Well, that makes sense. I mean, what's interesting is if
• 1:14:25
  Speaker 2: you get a kid, a young guy, or a young
• 1:14:28
  Speaker 2: woman in a very suggestible state and this heightened moment
• 1:14:35
  Speaker 2: where they really believe there's some real significance to them
• 1:14:38
  Speaker 2: sitting there and doing this exercise and that something big
• 1:14:41
  Speaker 2: is going to happen, your brain can trigger endogenous states
• 1:14:46
  Speaker 2: that actually are real. So it's like what they're saying
• 1:14:49
  Speaker 2: is kind of true, even though it's kooky, like a
• 1:14:52
  Speaker 2: lot of it is very kooky. Like some of these methods...
• 1:14:55
  Speaker 2: of just doing that kind of stuff, it can have
• 1:14:58
  Speaker 2: powerful transcendent results.
• 1:15:01
  Speaker 1: Nobody told me this was going to happen. It just happened.
• 1:15:03
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:15:04
  Speaker 1: You know, I was just told to sit there and
• 1:15:07
  Speaker 1: just be relaxed and just be there in front of
• 1:15:10
  Speaker 1: another human being without, you know, getting uncomfortable. Or if
• 1:15:13
  Speaker 1: you get uncomfortable, just deal with it. Just sit there.
• 1:15:16
  Speaker 1: That's all I was told. That was the entire instruction.
• 1:15:18
  Speaker 1: Nobody said you're going to be up near the ceiling watching.
• 1:15:21
  Speaker 2: Did you try to recreate that experience and it never
• 1:15:24
  Speaker 2: happened again?
• 1:15:26
  Speaker 1: On occasion.
• 1:15:28
  Speaker 2: Did you ever try to recreate it with the same woman? No.
• 1:15:31
  Speaker 2: Maybe it's her. Maybe that's it. Maybe it's like being
• 1:15:35
  Speaker 2: there with a beautiful girl and her looking in your eyes,
• 1:15:38
  Speaker 2: you're looking at hers. Maybe that triggers the thing.
• 1:15:42
  Speaker 1: I don't think it had anything to do with her.
• 1:15:44
  Speaker 2: No?
• 1:15:44
  Speaker 1: No.
• 1:15:45
  Speaker 2: It was just you were in that suggestible moment?
• 1:15:47
  Speaker 1: I just, but who was suggesting what? No one suggested anything.
• 1:15:52
  Speaker 1: It remains a mystery and I'm okay with it being
• 1:15:54
  Speaker 1: a mystery. But it's certainly it's certainly it's not one
• 1:15:59
  Speaker 1: that I've forgotten.
• 1:16:00
  Speaker 2: There's a documentary called Holy Hell, and it's about this
• 1:16:05
  Speaker 2: cult leader that used to live in Austin for a while.
• 1:16:07
  Speaker 2: And one of the weird things this guy did, he
• 1:16:10
  Speaker 2: was a yoga teacher and also he was a hypnotist
• 1:16:13
  Speaker 2: and a gay porn star. So the documentary is crazy.
• 1:16:18
  Speaker 2: But in one of the things that he would do
• 1:16:20
  Speaker 2: with this cult is he would do a thing called
• 1:16:22
  Speaker 2: The Knowing. And they had to be ready for it.
• 1:16:25
  Speaker 2: He had to decide they were ready for it, and
• 1:16:26
  Speaker 2: they'd have the ceremony. And when they had the ceremony,
• 1:16:28
  Speaker 2: he would touch their head. He would put his hands
• 1:16:31
  Speaker 2: on their head, and they would experience this unbelievable, like,
• 1:16:34
  Speaker 2: psychedelic moment where they contacted God, and they all talked
• 1:16:39
  Speaker 2: about it. Because the anticipation of this moment was so heightened,
• 1:16:43
  Speaker 2: and they were so suggestible. And he was, you know,
• 1:16:47
  Speaker 2: an actual professional hypnotist. And when he would put his
• 1:16:49
  Speaker 2: hands on them, Whatever it was inside their brain, it
• 1:16:53
  Speaker 2: would just release. And even after they talked about him
• 1:16:56
  Speaker 2: being a fraud, if they all left the cult and
• 1:16:58
  Speaker 2: they said all these terrible things that he did, they
• 1:17:00
  Speaker 2: still said that moment was the most powerful moment of
• 1:17:03
  Speaker 2: their life.
• 1:17:04
  Speaker 1: Hypnotism is a powerful mechanism. Yeah. It really is. I
• 1:17:09
  Speaker 1: think that's– I don't know. I've not heard of this,
• 1:17:11
  Speaker 1: but that's a story of a hypnotist.
• 1:17:14
  Speaker 2: Yes.
• 1:17:14
  Speaker 1: Yes.
• 1:17:15
  Speaker 2: Yes. A hypnotist that really can give you the greatest
• 1:17:18
  Speaker 2: moment of your life, even though everything else he's done
• 1:17:20
  Speaker 2: is terrible.
• 1:17:21
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 1:17:21
  Speaker 2: Like even though he's taking everybody's money and fucking everybody
• 1:17:24
  Speaker 2: and it's always the same story, he did make them
• 1:17:28
  Speaker 2: see God. That's what's weird about it. And so many
• 1:17:31
  Speaker 2: people are looking for something to take them out of
• 1:17:35
  Speaker 2: their state, the state they're in now. And if it's Scientology,
• 1:17:39
  Speaker 2: if it's being a Mormon, if it's Catholicism, whatever it is,
• 1:17:42
  Speaker 2: Like people are trying to find something.
• 1:17:44
  Speaker 1: That gets them.
• 1:17:44
  Speaker 2: Jack Daniels. Jack Daniels, cocaine, ecstasy.
• 1:17:47
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 1:17:48
  Speaker 2: But for you, so I never actually went to a
• 1:17:52
  Speaker 2: Scientology meeting or anything like that. I just got the book,
• 1:17:55
  Speaker 2: but they never stopped emailing me or mailing me, rather.
• 1:17:58
  Speaker 2: Every day I had one of those UPS boxes, and
• 1:18:02
  Speaker 2: every day it would be some new invitation to some
• 1:18:05
  Speaker 2: Scientology event.
• 1:18:06
  Speaker 1: Yeah, you got on the mailing list.
• 1:18:07
  Speaker 2: I didn't realize it was even Scientology when I bought
• 1:18:10
  Speaker 2: the book.
• 1:18:10
  Speaker 1: Sure.
• 1:18:11
  Speaker 2: I thought it was just, oh, Ron Hubbard's going to
• 1:18:12
  Speaker 2: teach me how to kick ass.
• 1:18:13
  Speaker 1: Yes, absolutely. I always call it, you know, this is
• 1:18:17
  Speaker 1: going to give me an edge on the universe.
• 1:18:19
  Speaker 2: So when you first started doing it, when did you
• 1:18:22
  Speaker 2: start thinking maybe this is a little wacky?
• 1:18:27
  Speaker 1: My entire community of friends, everybody was in. Wow. Everybody.
• 1:18:34
  Speaker 1: And I couldn't help notice my life was shit. And
• 1:18:40
  Speaker 1: these other people who I admired and I looked up to,
• 1:18:45
  Speaker 1: they were getting in car accidents, getting divorced, catching colds,
• 1:18:49
  Speaker 1: basically being just human beings, dealing with whatever shit was
• 1:18:54
  Speaker 1: coming down the road. Not the evolved, you know, spiritual
• 1:18:59
  Speaker 1: titans that were, that they were, that Scientology was promising.
• 1:19:03
  Speaker 1: You know, the exalted, you know, spiritual enlightened beings. People,
• 1:19:08
  Speaker 1: you know, You know, you weren't supposed to get a cold.
• 1:19:15
  Speaker 1: You were supposed to be, you know, the promise was
• 1:19:19
  Speaker 1: you were going to rise up above all these human minutia,
• 1:19:24
  Speaker 1: you know, dilemmas and problems and whatnot, and you were
• 1:19:28
  Speaker 1: going to have this remarkable insight into the world, and
• 1:19:30
  Speaker 1: you'd have power, power being very powerful, power being powerful,
• 1:19:36
  Speaker 1: being a real hook. Because if you're a young, scared
• 1:19:42
  Speaker 1: guy like I was, power was missing. There was no power.
• 1:19:48
  Speaker 1: I was just scrambling to try and get my foot
• 1:19:50
  Speaker 1: in any door that would open. And so here these
• 1:19:53
  Speaker 1: people come in, promise you the one thing you don't
• 1:19:56
  Speaker 1: have as a young, stupid man is power. And it
• 1:20:00
  Speaker 1: was an easy sell. And it took me 10 years
• 1:20:06
  Speaker 1: to realize, wait, this isn't working.
• 1:20:09
  Speaker 2: Took 10 years?
• 1:20:09
  Speaker 1: Yeah. This isn't working. And my wife at the time,
• 1:20:13
  Speaker 1: she was in Scientology as well. We both kind of went,
• 1:20:17
  Speaker 1: had a moment alone one night going, this is bullshit.
• 1:20:26
  Speaker 1: You know, 10 years it took to wake the fuck up.
• 1:20:30
  Speaker 1: And we bailed out. And we lost all our friends.
• 1:20:33
  Speaker 1: We were excommunicated.
• 1:20:36
  Speaker 2: Did they fuck with you at all?
• 1:20:37
  Speaker 1: No, because I had no money. Nobody chases you if
• 1:20:40
  Speaker 1: you have money.
• 1:20:41
  Speaker 2: Right. You weren't successful enough for them to miss you
• 1:20:43
  Speaker 2: when you left.
• 1:20:44
  Speaker 1: Goodbye. See you. And it really began the turn into
• 1:20:51
  Speaker 1: my life that we're talking about here, which was I
• 1:20:54
  Speaker 1: decided that I'm not going to look for some outside
• 1:21:00
  Speaker 1: element to help me go where I want to go.
• 1:21:03
  Speaker 1: I'm just going to work my ass off. And for
• 1:21:05
  Speaker 1: the next 10 years, I worked like a dog. Until
• 1:21:09
  Speaker 1: I scrambled in and eventually got on a show where
• 1:21:12
  Speaker 1: I'm getting yelled at by Roseanne Barr. But I succeeded
• 1:21:18
  Speaker 1: beyond my wildest dreams.
• 1:21:20
  Speaker 2: So it didn't hurt you to leave. It hurt you
• 1:21:24
  Speaker 2: in terms of.
• 1:21:25
  Speaker 1: It was imperative for me to leave because I finally
• 1:21:27
  Speaker 1: took responsibility for my life. It's on me. It's not
• 1:21:31
  Speaker 1: on what this guy says. It's on me. It's what
• 1:21:34
  Speaker 1: I believe. What I perceive. And a lot of that
• 1:21:37
  Speaker 1: perception and belief was bullshit. I was still, you know,
• 1:21:39
  Speaker 1: a frightened young guy trying to find his way in
• 1:21:42
  Speaker 1: the world, but it was on me. I wasn't going to,
• 1:21:46
  Speaker 1: I wasn't looking for some outside wisdom to give me leverage.
• 1:21:50
  Speaker 1: I was just going to, I was going to work
• 1:21:52
  Speaker 1: until I dropped to get where I needed to go. And,
• 1:21:56
  Speaker 1: you know, the funny ending of that story was I succeeded.
• 1:22:02
  Speaker 1: I succeeded. I had the career I couldn't have dreamed of.
• 1:22:06
  Speaker 1: And I still couldn't, and still didn't solve the hole,
• 1:22:09
  Speaker 1: the dark hole in the soul that we were talking about.
• 1:22:13
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 1:22:14
  Speaker 1: You know, which, which, you know, led to the other
• 1:22:18
  Speaker 1: change in my life, which is, was it 27 and
• 1:22:22
  Speaker 1: a half years ago, I stopped drinking. So, and that's
• 1:22:27
  Speaker 1: been a massive change, you know.
• 1:22:30
  Speaker 2: So.
• 1:22:30
  Speaker 1: Because again, you know, what I keep saying over and again,
• 1:22:33
  Speaker 1: I'm not sure I'm saying it clearly. The one thing
• 1:22:37
  Speaker 1: that is clear is the outside stuff, whether they be
• 1:22:42
  Speaker 1: experiences or stuff or relationships or, in my case, marriages,
• 1:22:51
  Speaker 1: it's a band-aid. It doesn't heal the wound. The wound
• 1:22:55
  Speaker 1: has to be dealt with in some other way that's personal.
• 1:23:02
  Speaker 1: The spiritual path of your own, you know, your choice.
• 1:23:06
  Speaker 1: You call it. It doesn't matter if it's Christ, if
• 1:23:09
  Speaker 1: it's Yahweh, if it's the Koran, if it's Latter-day Saints,
• 1:23:15
  Speaker 1: or if it's Eckhart Tolle. It doesn't matter. Pick one.
• 1:23:19
  Speaker 1: Pick one. That's your best shot out of that darkness,
• 1:23:24
  Speaker 1: as far as I can tell.
• 1:23:26
  Speaker 2: I think you're probably very accurate. I think you could
• 1:23:30
  Speaker 2: probably do it on your own. But I don't know
• 1:23:32
  Speaker 2: very many people who have.
• 1:23:33
  Speaker 1: It's really hard.
• 1:23:34
  Speaker 2: It's hard.
• 1:23:35
  Speaker 1: We're community animals. You know, I think we thrive in groups.
• 1:23:40
  Speaker 1: I think that's how we're wired. I think the worst
• 1:23:43
  Speaker 1: thing that could have happened a million years ago in
• 1:23:45
  Speaker 1: a tribe was to be thrown out of the tribe.
• 1:23:47
  Speaker 1: You're going to die.
• 1:23:48
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 1:23:49
  Speaker 1: You get kicked out of the tribe because of misbehavior.
• 1:23:52
  Speaker 1: I don't know what misbehavior is in the place to
• 1:23:56
  Speaker 1: scene era, the Neanderthals, but If you got kicked out,
• 1:24:00
  Speaker 1: you're dead.
• 1:24:00
  Speaker 2: Whitney Cummings told me that's why people have stage fright.
• 1:24:03
  Speaker 2: That's why they have a fear of public speaking. She
• 1:24:05
  Speaker 2: said because when we were in tribes, if you had
• 1:24:08
  Speaker 2: to speak in front of the public, you were defending yourself.
• 1:24:10
  Speaker 1: That's probably very true.
• 1:24:12
  Speaker 2: And you probably were going to get kicked out of
• 1:24:13
  Speaker 2: the tribe.
• 1:24:14
  Speaker 1: Kicking out was a sentence of death. Yeah. And so
• 1:24:17
  Speaker 1: we're desperately in need of one another. And that's not good, bad,
• 1:24:20
  Speaker 1: or indifferent. It's just the way we are. Right. Right.
• 1:24:23
  Speaker 2: Which is what makes people so prone to ideologies, to
• 1:24:26
  Speaker 2: religious cults, to all sorts of different things.
• 1:24:28
  Speaker 1: We want to be part of a group.
• 1:24:29
  Speaker 2: We want to be part of a group.
• 1:24:30
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Even if the group is wrong, it's a group.
• 1:24:32
  Speaker 2: Right. It doesn't matter.
• 1:24:34
  Speaker 1: Right or wrong is irrelevant. I'm in this group.
• 1:24:36
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:24:37
  Speaker 1: Look it. I got friends.
• 1:24:38
  Speaker 2: And people will do wrong things to defend the group. Yeah.
• 1:24:42
  Speaker 1: Fight to the death.
• 1:24:42
  Speaker 2: Yes.
• 1:24:43
  Speaker 1: We go to war over these groups. Yeah. Yeah.
• 1:24:47
  Speaker 2: It's a weird thing. It's just for a lot of people.
• 1:24:50
  Speaker 2: It's finding a good one. Just find one that works.
• 1:24:54
  Speaker 2: Find some sort of a spiritual path that gives you
• 1:25:00
  Speaker 2: some sort of peace of mind.
• 1:25:01
  Speaker 1: And it doesn't hurt others.
• 1:25:02
  Speaker 2: It doesn't hurt others.
• 1:25:03
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 1:25:03
  Speaker 2: That's it.
• 1:25:04
  Speaker 1: It's not really complicated.
• 1:25:06
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:25:06
  Speaker 1: Yeah. But we don't live in a culture that pursues that.
• 1:25:11
  Speaker 1: We live in a culture of consumption.
• 1:25:14
  Speaker 2: Yeah. I think there's more people aware of that now today.
• 1:25:18
  Speaker 1: Mm-hmm.
• 1:25:19
  Speaker 2: But it's just there's no guidebook. There's no operator manual
• 1:25:24
  Speaker 2: on how to be a person. That's very effective. And
• 1:25:27
  Speaker 2: even religions, like you're kind of figuring it out on
• 1:25:29
  Speaker 2: your own. It's not as laid out as I'd like
• 1:25:32
  Speaker 2: it to be. You know, like very clearly from the
• 1:25:34
  Speaker 2: beginning to the end, this is how you're supposed to behave.
• 1:25:36
  Speaker 2: This is what's wrong. This is what the greater spiritual path,
• 1:25:42
  Speaker 2: this is why it exists.
• 1:25:44
  Speaker 1: I was raised in a Jewish household. No one ever talked.
• 1:25:50
  Speaker 2: Ever.
• 1:25:50
  Speaker 1: No rabbis, my parents, ever discussed having a connection with God,
• 1:25:57
  Speaker 1: pursuing God, seeking God. What's my reason for being here?
• 1:26:04
  Speaker 1: Why am I alive? How did this happen? It was
• 1:26:08
  Speaker 1: never discussed. It was just do this and shut up. Right.
• 1:26:11
  Speaker 1: Hear the rules, do the rules and moving on. Right.
• 1:26:15
  Speaker 1: And that was that was how they were raised, too. So,
• 1:26:17
  Speaker 1: you know, it's not like there's no malice. It was
• 1:26:20
  Speaker 1: just hear the rules of our of our of our tribe.
• 1:26:24
  Speaker 1: Do the rules.
• 1:26:26
  Speaker 2: And and.
• 1:26:29
  Speaker 1: At no point was there a connection made with this
• 1:26:33
  Speaker 1: could be the most important thing in your life. This
• 1:26:36
  Speaker 1: could actually solve. The whole dilemma of being a human
• 1:26:41
  Speaker 1: being had nothing to do with that. It was a
• 1:26:44
  Speaker 1: rules-based religion. It honored some wonderful things like education, and
• 1:26:51
  Speaker 1: there was a great deal of goodness to it, societal goodness.
• 1:26:57
  Speaker 1: I think I mentioned in my book that my father
• 1:27:02
  Speaker 1: was one of 11 Republicans in the country.
• 1:27:05
  Speaker 2: 11 Jewish Republicans.
• 1:27:09
  Speaker 1: 11 Jewish Republicans in the country. I left out the
• 1:27:13
  Speaker 1: key word because he believed in his heart, each man
• 1:27:16
  Speaker 1: for himself. Pull yourself up by the bootstraps and stuff.
• 1:27:21
  Speaker 1: And he believed that dearly. But I lost my train
• 1:27:29
  Speaker 1: of thought.
• 1:27:29
  Speaker 2: Well, we were just talking about having some sort of
• 1:27:32
  Speaker 2: a connection with God and a spiritual connection and that
• 1:27:36
  Speaker 2: this is what helped you become sober and get out
• 1:27:38
  Speaker 2: of the darkness. Um, this is the roundabout way of it. Um, what,
• 1:27:44
  Speaker 2: so did you do Alcoholics Anonymous? Like, is that what?
• 1:27:47
  Speaker 1: Let's not talk about that.
• 1:27:48
  Speaker 2: Okay. Yeah. No, I just wanted to know like what, what.
• 1:27:51
  Speaker 1: Let's, let's focus on the word anonymous.
• 1:27:53
  Speaker 2: Okay.
• 1:27:54
  Speaker 1: Okay. Just, I got sober.
• 1:27:56
  Speaker 2: You got sober.
• 1:27:56
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 1:27:57
  Speaker 2: But through that, you started exploring spirituality.
• 1:28:04
  Speaker 1: It was inevitable.
• 1:28:05
  Speaker 2: It was a part of it.
• 1:28:05
  Speaker 1: It's inevitable. It, it, it, You know, the most extraordinary thing,
• 1:28:13
  Speaker 1: it's hard to do this and retain anything like anonymity,
• 1:28:17
  Speaker 1: but there is the encouragement to pursue a God of
• 1:28:24
  Speaker 1: your understanding, not someone else's. Yours. That's a remarkable insight
• 1:28:35
  Speaker 1: for me. Really, I get to choose. Huh. wow wow
• 1:28:43
  Speaker 1: this is not a ritualistic here do this do that
• 1:28:49
  Speaker 1: you know it's not about don't eat fish on Friday
• 1:28:52
  Speaker 1: or pork ever it's about finding something greater than yourself
• 1:29:02
  Speaker 1: It's not that hard to do, given of your understanding
• 1:29:06
  Speaker 1: that could be the ocean. It could be whatever you
• 1:29:11
  Speaker 1: choose it to be. It could be a fucking doorknob.
• 1:29:16
  Speaker 1: But it's critical. It's critical. It's critical.
• 1:29:23
  Speaker 2: What was the path? So you go from becoming sober
• 1:29:28
  Speaker 2: and this idea of worshiping something or looking at something. Okay,
• 1:29:33
  Speaker 2: what's the word? Respecting something as a higher power?
• 1:29:37
  Speaker 1: The word worship is, I don't understand that word. No,
• 1:29:41
  Speaker 1: it's just recognizing. It's just recognizing that there's something else
• 1:29:45
  Speaker 1: going on here and it ain't me. That's it. There's
• 1:29:49
  Speaker 1: no worship involved. There's no genuflecting or You know, there's service.
• 1:29:59
  Speaker 1: How can I be better in this world? There is that.
• 1:30:04
  Speaker 1: There is that, you know. And for somebody like me
• 1:30:09
  Speaker 1: who was gimme, all the time was always gimme. Gimme,
• 1:30:13
  Speaker 1: I need. I need more. More is not enough. Yeah. Right?
• 1:30:17
  Speaker 1: I need more. And when that ceases to work, when
• 1:30:21
  Speaker 1: you finally wake up and go, there is no more,
• 1:30:23
  Speaker 1: more is never enough, when you finally give in to
• 1:30:31
  Speaker 1: the reality is that that will never do the job.
• 1:30:34
  Speaker 1: I will always be empty if that's the way I'm
• 1:30:37
  Speaker 1: trying to go about it. Then there's a possibility that's
• 1:30:43
  Speaker 1: the bottom. And the bottom is where you decide to
• 1:30:48
  Speaker 1: stop digging. And the bottom is where you go, okay,
• 1:30:51
  Speaker 1: let's try something else.
• 1:30:53
  Speaker 2: Do you have a negative connotation with the word worship?
• 1:30:58
  Speaker 1: Not really. It's not what I recognize.
• 1:31:02
  Speaker 2: What do you think worship is in your mind? Is
• 1:31:04
  Speaker 2: that being subservient?
• 1:31:05
  Speaker 1: Being subservient, punishing, all-powerful thing that's going to punish you, whatever. Right.
• 1:31:18
  Speaker 1: The Old Testament stuff.
• 1:31:20
  Speaker 2: Okay. I don't know if they have to be connected, though.
• 1:31:23
  Speaker 2: I don't think of worship in that way. I think
• 1:31:27
  Speaker 2: a lot of people do, though, especially when you get
• 1:31:29
  Speaker 2: into the Old Testament stuff.
• 1:31:30
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 1:31:31
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:31:32
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I just, for me, what I've been doing for
• 1:31:41
  Speaker 1: the last many years, it worked. What can I tell you?
• 1:31:47
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 1:31:47
  Speaker 1: I don't truly understand it. I really don't. So much
• 1:31:51
  Speaker 1: of it is counterintuitive. But it worked. Now, by all means,
• 1:31:58
  Speaker 1: if you read the book, this is a guy who's
• 1:32:00
  Speaker 1: got some serious issues. I haven't cleared that hurdle by
• 1:32:05
  Speaker 1: any means, but it's better. It's a better life than
• 1:32:09
  Speaker 1: the one I had.
• 1:32:12
  Speaker 2: And was this an arc for you, or was this
• 1:32:15
  Speaker 2: a quick realization upon getting sober?
• 1:32:18
  Speaker 1: No, slow.
• 1:32:19
  Speaker 2: It was a slow process to get to where you
• 1:32:22
  Speaker 2: are now.
• 1:32:23
  Speaker 1: Yeah, slow, slow.
• 1:32:24
  Speaker 2: And do you define it, like what you're serving or
• 1:32:27
  Speaker 2: what you worship? Not bad words, sorry. What you appreciate
• 1:32:31
  Speaker 2: about the higher power? Or you don't have to define it?
• 1:32:36
  Speaker 1: I don't think language is really equipped for it. Right.
• 1:32:39
  Speaker 1: I think language... The very act of putting a word
• 1:32:42
  Speaker 1: on it limits it. The very act of saying this
• 1:32:46
  Speaker 1: is a thing, a noun. I don't know if this
• 1:32:50
  Speaker 1: is going to sound strange, but I think it's a verb.
• 1:32:57
  Speaker 1: I think it's a process. It's action. It's not a brick. Right.
• 1:33:04
  Speaker 1: It's moving. Whatever it is.
• 1:33:13
  Speaker 2: Whatever greater power it is.
• 1:33:15
  Speaker 1: Whatever that is. It's not a static thing.
• 1:33:18
  Speaker 2: I think that's a better way to describe it. Yeah.
• 1:33:21
  Speaker 1: And again, language wants to solidify it. Language wants to
• 1:33:26
  Speaker 1: name it. This is this.
• 1:33:28
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 1:33:31
  Speaker 1: And language is a beautiful thing. Language is one of
• 1:33:33
  Speaker 1: my favorite things. Words have been good to me. Making
• 1:33:37
  Speaker 1: up words and putting them together in sentences has been
• 1:33:40
  Speaker 1: terrific for me. I'm really grateful for words and language,
• 1:33:43
  Speaker 1: but there's a limitation to what words can show you
• 1:33:49
  Speaker 1: about what's going on.
• 1:33:51
  Speaker 2: Yeah, most certainly. And I think that's an important point,
• 1:33:57
  Speaker 2: like what you're saying, is that it's moving and that
• 1:34:00
  Speaker 2: it's alive. I think one of the problems that secular
• 1:34:05
  Speaker 2: people have with the term God They think of a
• 1:34:07
  Speaker 2: guy in a robe that lives in the clouds and
• 1:34:08
  Speaker 2: it's ridiculous instantaneously.
• 1:34:10
  Speaker 1: We see a man in the fucking moon. We anthropomorphize everything.
• 1:34:16
  Speaker 1: We see our images everywhere we look. And it's kind
• 1:34:21
  Speaker 1: of amusing when it doesn't cause war.
• 1:34:26
  Speaker 2: Right. Good point. It's also connected to a lot of
• 1:34:31
  Speaker 2: the ancient depictions of it, unfortunately. You have to think
• 1:34:34
  Speaker 2: about ancient depictions of God and Moses and all these
• 1:34:38
  Speaker 2: biblical figures who are painted in the garb of the
• 1:34:42
  Speaker 2: day in which that painting was made.
• 1:34:44
  Speaker 1: Remember, these people were looking up at the night sky going,
• 1:34:47
  Speaker 1: what the fuck?
• 1:34:48
  Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly. What the fuck? Who's making the lightning? What's
• 1:34:53
  Speaker 2: happening here? The gods are fighting.
• 1:34:55
  Speaker 1: Yeah, no, they hadn't come up with a story. We are,
• 1:34:58
  Speaker 1: you know, I mean, have you ever read any of
• 1:35:01
  Speaker 1: the Yovel Harari books?
• 1:35:04
  Speaker 2: Yes.
• 1:35:04
  Speaker 1: Yes. He makes it really clear. That's our superpower. We
• 1:35:09
  Speaker 1: tell ourselves stories and we believe them.
• 1:35:13
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 1:35:14
  Speaker 1: And we congregate around them. And we're able to mobilize
• 1:35:18
  Speaker 1: millions and millions of people around a fiction.
• 1:35:21
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:35:21
  Speaker 1: It doesn't even have to be true. We just need
• 1:35:23
  Speaker 1: to believe it. And we're all moving and we're all
• 1:35:25
  Speaker 1: marching in the same direction. It's monkeys don't do that. Right.
• 1:35:30
  Speaker 1: Monkeys don't have a monkey God.
• 1:35:31
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 1:35:32
  Speaker 1: They're just monkeys. Hey. Pick these mites off of me.
• 1:35:35
  Speaker 1: Thank you very much. But they don't organize around what
• 1:35:41
  Speaker 1: is essentially a belief. It's not true. You want to
• 1:35:44
  Speaker 1: call it true or not, it's an organizing element that
• 1:35:49
  Speaker 1: no other animal does. So we get to rule and
• 1:35:57
  Speaker 1: or ruin the world.
• 1:35:58
  Speaker 2: And we want to define the structure of whatever that
• 1:36:02
  Speaker 2: thing is. When a We want to— even if we're pretending,
• 1:36:06
  Speaker 2: we want to give order to it.
• 1:36:08
  Speaker 1: Absolutely. This order is— Too scary. Too scary.
• 1:36:12
  Speaker 2: Too scary. Too crazy.
• 1:36:13
  Speaker 1: It's fucking— look at this.
• 1:36:16
  Speaker 2: You know? Also, you can't have people running around making
• 1:36:19
  Speaker 2: up their own order. That'll fuck everything up. You can't
• 1:36:22
  Speaker 2: have a bunch of people, well, God's been talking to me.
• 1:36:24
  Speaker 2: You know what he tells me? Pork is awesome.
• 1:36:28
  Speaker 1: You can't have that guy. Yeah. And listen, you know,
• 1:36:32
  Speaker 1: you can see where— When civilizations or cultures that took
• 1:36:38
  Speaker 1: God out of the picture, they replaced it.
• 1:36:41
  Speaker 2: Yes.
• 1:36:42
  Speaker 1: With the Communist Party.
• 1:36:43
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:36:43
  Speaker 1: Right? With a fascist dictator. Yeah. You know? It's the
• 1:36:48
  Speaker 1: same idea. Mm-hmm. Organize around me.
• 1:36:51
  Speaker 2: Sure. Right?
• 1:36:52
  Speaker 1: It doesn't matter if I'm right or not. Organize around me.
• 1:36:55
  Speaker 1: And people will. And if you take that away from them,
• 1:36:58
  Speaker 1: they get angry.
• 1:36:59
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:36:59
  Speaker 1: It freaks them out. Because it's like a tentpole. That
• 1:37:05
  Speaker 1: tentpole moves. The tent comes down. And everything, you know,
• 1:37:11
  Speaker 1: if you believe that this is the truth and someone says, no,
• 1:37:15
  Speaker 1: it's not, it's bullshit, everything else you believe is in
• 1:37:19
  Speaker 1: fair play. Everything. Right. The tent collapses. So people will
• 1:37:24
  Speaker 1: fight to the death to keep the tentpole up. It
• 1:37:26
  Speaker 1: doesn't matter if it's true or not. It's the tentpole.
• 1:37:29
  Speaker 2: I have a friend of mine who grew up Mormon.
• 1:37:32
  Speaker 2: And she left the Mormon church. And when she left
• 1:37:34
  Speaker 2: the Mormon church, she said, I'm so susceptible to believing
• 1:37:37
  Speaker 2: anything because I believed everything they told me for so
• 1:37:41
  Speaker 2: long that I didn't critically think about anything. So she's
• 1:37:43
  Speaker 2: like any spiritual people, healers, all that stuff. She goes,
• 1:37:48
  Speaker 2: I'm so susceptible. I believe everything.
• 1:37:50
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I think I think growing up the way I
• 1:37:53
  Speaker 1: grew up, I was a vacuum. I was wide open.
• 1:37:57
  Speaker 1: You know how to get out of this madness, this
• 1:38:01
  Speaker 1: world that's so frightening?
• 1:38:02
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 1:38:02
  Speaker 1: Show me.
• 1:38:03
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:38:03
  Speaker 1: I got nothing. I got nothing. I'll go, you know,
• 1:38:08
  Speaker 1: I was absolutely fragile. Stupid, fragile.
• 1:38:13
  Speaker 2: Like most people.
• 1:38:14
  Speaker 1: Yeah. And, you know, I got to write it down.
• 1:38:19
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Well, that's the beauty of it. That fragility and
• 1:38:22
  Speaker 2: that emotion and all that chaos, it comes out in creativity.
• 1:38:26
  Speaker 2: And the added benefit that Scientology has over everybody is
• 1:38:30
  Speaker 2: that they've got all these successful celebrities. That was the
• 1:38:33
  Speaker 2: big one for me.
• 1:38:35
  Speaker 1: Back in the day.
• 1:38:35
  Speaker 2: Oh, my God. That was the big one. I was like,
• 1:38:37
  Speaker 2: I felt like they knew something I didn't know. Like
• 1:38:40
  Speaker 2: whatever they're on. And I didn't really know the whole story.
• 1:38:45
  Speaker 2: I didn't really know the whole story until much, much,
• 1:38:47
  Speaker 2: much later. I had heard. versions of what they believe.
• 1:38:51
  Speaker 2: And it wasn't until Going Clear, Lawrence Reitzberg book. Great book.
• 1:38:57
  Speaker 2: Great book.
• 1:38:57
  Speaker 1: Great book.
• 1:38:58
  Speaker 2: I was like, holy shit.
• 1:39:00
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 1:39:01
  Speaker 2: Yeah. It wasn't until that, until I really kind of
• 1:39:04
  Speaker 2: got the grip of what it's all about.
• 1:39:06
  Speaker 1: A big part of it was secrets. Yeah. You know,
• 1:39:10
  Speaker 1: institutionally held secrets, they glue you. Oh, I want to
• 1:39:15
  Speaker 1: know the secret.
• 1:39:16
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:39:17
  Speaker 1: If I stick around, I'll find out the secret. Because
• 1:39:19
  Speaker 1: we were all looking for, you know, we're all looking
• 1:39:21
  Speaker 1: for a secret.
• 1:39:23
  Speaker 2: Like the knowing.
• 1:39:24
  Speaker 1: The knowing.
• 1:39:24
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:39:24
  Speaker 1: Yes. And keeping that stuff secret, purposefully secret. And we
• 1:39:30
  Speaker 1: were told that some of this higher level stuff could
• 1:39:32
  Speaker 1: conceivably kill you if you're not ready. I'm not kidding.
• 1:39:36
  Speaker 2: I'm not kidding either.
• 1:39:38
  Speaker 1: Those words were used. If you're not ready for these
• 1:39:41
  Speaker 1: higher level spiritual things, it will destroy you, drive you mad.
• 1:39:47
  Speaker 2: When I bought my first house in 96, my next
• 1:39:50
  Speaker 2: door neighbor was a Scientologist. And there was a piece
• 1:39:53
  Speaker 2: of land. We were just talking in front of the house.
• 1:39:55
  Speaker 2: And there was a piece of land next to his
• 1:39:57
  Speaker 2: house that he was going to buy, but he had
• 1:40:00
  Speaker 2: to put it off because his wife was going clear.
• 1:40:03
  Speaker 2: And I go, what does that mean? He goes, well,
• 1:40:05
  Speaker 2: it's this ceremony that she undergoes. And afterwards, she will
• 1:40:10
  Speaker 2: no longer be affected by outside influences. I was like, whoa,
• 1:40:15
  Speaker 2: how are they going to do that? And he explained
• 1:40:17
  Speaker 2: to me, I go, well, why do you have to
• 1:40:18
  Speaker 2: put off the sale? He goes, because it costs $ 50, 000.
• 1:40:20
  Speaker 2: They sent her to Flag in Florida. Is that what
• 1:40:23
  Speaker 2: it is? Yeah.
• 1:40:25
  Speaker 1: There's this own thing, I guess, in Clearwater. It's incredibly expensive.
• 1:40:29
  Speaker 2: Go clear in Clearwater?
• 1:40:30
  Speaker 1: Incredibly expensive.
• 1:40:32
  Speaker 2: 50 grand. This guy was a construction guy. He had
• 1:40:35
  Speaker 2: a construction business.
• 1:40:37
  Speaker 1: It's probably a million dollars now.
• 1:40:39
  Speaker 2: Ooh. Yeah, it's 96.
• 1:40:40
  Speaker 1: I don't know. And there was a very purposeful thing.
• 1:40:45
  Speaker 1: Putting a high price tag on it made it important.
• 1:40:49
  Speaker 1: It's smart.
• 1:40:50
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:40:50
  Speaker 1: It's smart. It's, you know, it's marketing 101. If you
• 1:40:53
  Speaker 1: give it away, it doesn't have as much value as
• 1:40:56
  Speaker 1: if you say it's worth $ 50, 000.
• 1:40:59
  Speaker 2: I think Paul Haggis was the one in the documentary
• 1:41:01
  Speaker 2: who was discussing when he first got a hold of, like,
• 1:41:04
  Speaker 2: one of the ancient stories that is, like, super secret.
• 1:41:08
  Speaker 2: And he read it and was like, what the fuck
• 1:41:10
  Speaker 2: am I reading?
• 1:41:11
  Speaker 1: Because it was just.
• 1:41:14
  Speaker 2: Kooky L.
• 1:41:15
  Speaker 1: Ron Hubbard. It was science fiction stuff.
• 1:41:19
  Speaker 2: Oh.
• 1:41:20
  Speaker 1: Yeah. But, you know, I mean.
• 1:41:22
  Speaker 2: Hey, whatever floats your boat.
• 1:41:24
  Speaker 1: One of the gifts of this, of writing a memoir
• 1:41:29
  Speaker 1: was I found my way to be able to forgive myself.
• 1:41:36
  Speaker 1: Rather than be embarrassed.
• 1:41:38
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 1:41:39
  Speaker 1: I would never tell people that I spent 10 years
• 1:41:41
  Speaker 1: in a cult. It's humiliating. What a dope. I was
• 1:41:48
  Speaker 1: so frightened of being wrong. And in writing this thing,
• 1:41:54
  Speaker 1: I was wrong.
• 1:41:56
  Speaker 2: It's okay. It's okay. I was wrong.
• 1:41:59
  Speaker 1: I was young. I was frightened. I made some bad choices.
• 1:42:04
  Speaker 1: I got through it. I was blessed to have some
• 1:42:09
  Speaker 1: angels come along the way to help me through it.
• 1:42:12
  Speaker 1: A lot of that stuff But I got through it,
• 1:42:15
  Speaker 1: and I don't have to be humiliated by being a
• 1:42:18
  Speaker 1: foolish young man anymore.
• 1:42:20
  Speaker 2: Well, that's part of the maturity of age. You realize
• 1:42:24
  Speaker 2: being a foolish young man is almost inevitable. There's no
• 1:42:27
  Speaker 2: getting around it.
• 1:42:29
  Speaker 1: Agreed.
• 1:42:29
  Speaker 2: We're all foolish.
• 1:42:31
  Speaker 1: Agreed. I was watching an interview you did the other
• 1:42:38
  Speaker 1: day because I wanted to learn about what I was
• 1:42:40
  Speaker 1: sitting down in with Tim Robbins. And he said something
• 1:42:44
  Speaker 1: that struck me as worth repeating, which is a remarkable insight,
• 1:42:49
  Speaker 1: I thought. And it was a remarkable insight for me.
• 1:42:52
  Speaker 1: It came very late in life, but it was simply
• 1:42:56
  Speaker 1: the power of saying, I don't know. What a relief.
• 1:43:01
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:43:01
  Speaker 1: To not pretend I know. Right? What a relief to not,
• 1:43:06
  Speaker 1: you know, to not act as if I have a
• 1:43:09
  Speaker 1: handle on this. Right. I don't. And what's great is
• 1:43:13
  Speaker 1: when you're sitting in a room full of people and
• 1:43:15
  Speaker 1: making a TV comedy a sitcom and they all look
• 1:43:19
  Speaker 1: at you you know because the second act doesn't work
• 1:43:23
  Speaker 1: and everybody looks at you and it's a great feeling
• 1:43:26
  Speaker 1: to go I don't know it stinks anybody anybody you
• 1:43:32
  Speaker 1: know I'm open to anybody having a solution to this
• 1:43:35
  Speaker 1: shitty second act but I actually don't know and I'm
• 1:43:38
  Speaker 1: okay with that in the past I would have gone
• 1:43:43
  Speaker 1: on some long diatribe trying to convince everybody I knew
• 1:43:46
  Speaker 1: what I was doing. It's exhausting. I don't. You know,
• 1:43:50
  Speaker 1: I don't. I'm doing the best I can. And when
• 1:43:53
  Speaker 1: I don't know, it's freedom to say I don't know.
• 1:43:58
  Speaker 1: It's freedom. Oh, your shoulders go down, you exhale, and
• 1:44:03
  Speaker 1: you seek to collaborate.
• 1:44:05
  Speaker 2: So many people need to learn that lesson because it's
• 1:44:09
  Speaker 2: a burden that– you don't have to carry. You're carrying
• 1:44:12
  Speaker 2: around an unnecessary burden that's propped up by your own ego.
• 1:44:16
  Speaker 2: And it's, it fucks with your consciousness.
• 1:44:19
  Speaker 1: I think it's how we're raised too. You know, I
• 1:44:22
  Speaker 1: don't think, you know, we're not taught as children to
• 1:44:27
  Speaker 1: admit to ignorance.
• 1:44:29
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 1:44:29
  Speaker 1: You know, it's just, it's not how we're raised. It's not, it's,
• 1:44:33
  Speaker 1: you know, man.
• 1:44:36
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 1:44:36
  Speaker 1: Does the right thing. He knows what to do. He sees,
• 1:44:38
  Speaker 1: He's the leader. He's John Wayne in my generation. I
• 1:44:43
  Speaker 1: was more Steve McQueen, but okay, a little later. But
• 1:44:48
  Speaker 1: you're certainly not taught to have humility and say, I
• 1:44:51
  Speaker 1: don't know. And humility has a bad taint to it
• 1:44:54
  Speaker 1: because it smells of weakness, but it's not. It's the
• 1:45:01
  Speaker 1: opposite of weakness. Oh my God, to be able to say,
• 1:45:06
  Speaker 1: I don't know, help me, is actually an incredible strength.
• 1:45:12
  Speaker 2: And it's much more admirable. For people on the outside watching,
• 1:45:17
  Speaker 2: they recognize it as being true. This is an authentic
• 1:45:22
  Speaker 2: moment rather than someone bullshitting you when you know they're
• 1:45:26
  Speaker 2: bullshitting you and they know that you know and everybody
• 1:45:29
  Speaker 2: just goes through this stupid fucking dance.
• 1:45:31
  Speaker 1: One of the questions I get asked all the time
• 1:45:33
  Speaker 1: now that I'm in the twilight of my career is
• 1:45:36
  Speaker 1: what's the secret sauce, you know? What's, you know, if
• 1:45:41
  Speaker 1: anything carries through all the different TV shows and whatnot.
• 1:45:45
  Speaker 1: And the word that comes to mind is collaboration. I
• 1:45:49
  Speaker 1: didn't do anything alone, you know. You know, you come
• 1:45:55
  Speaker 1: out of the comedy world, you know that writing comedy
• 1:45:59
  Speaker 1: with others is really a gas. And it's far more effective. 100%.
• 1:46:06
  Speaker 1: I learned so much by being in a room for
• 1:46:09
  Speaker 1: 25 years with great writers. And one of the things
• 1:46:14
  Speaker 1: I talk about in the book, which is really meaningful
• 1:46:17
  Speaker 1: to me, was when I got the chance to do
• 1:46:20
  Speaker 1: The Kaminsky Method with Michael Douglas, I decided I wanted
• 1:46:23
  Speaker 1: to write it alone to see if I still could
• 1:46:26
  Speaker 1: write alone. Because I'd been in a room with people
• 1:46:29
  Speaker 1: yelling at each other for years. No, this is funny.
• 1:46:32
  Speaker 1: This is funny. No, do it this way. And it
• 1:46:34
  Speaker 1: would get volatile. You know, comedy writers.
• 1:46:36
  Speaker 2: Right, right.
• 1:46:37
  Speaker 1: You fucking nuts. What are you, stupid? It got mean, right?
• 1:46:41
  Speaker 1: But when I sat down and wrote those scripts by myself,
• 1:46:45
  Speaker 1: I realized all those guys were in the room with me.
• 1:46:48
  Speaker 1: They're in my head. You know?
• 1:46:52
  Speaker 2: Really?
• 1:46:52
  Speaker 1: You think that's funny? It's a fucking pun, you moron.
• 1:46:59
  Speaker 1: That guy's in my head. He was part of me now.
• 1:47:04
  Speaker 1: And I was writing alone, but I wasn't alone. All
• 1:47:06
  Speaker 1: those guys. And, you know, when you watch a great stand-up,
• 1:47:10
  Speaker 1: it gets in your head.
• 1:47:12
  Speaker 2: You don't copy that guy.
• 1:47:15
  Speaker 1: But his insight can change the way you perceive things.
• 1:47:21
  Speaker 2: A hundred percent. Yeah. Stan Hope always says that he
• 1:47:24
  Speaker 2: writes and he thinks about himself as a defense attorney
• 1:47:29
  Speaker 2: defending the bit. As he's writing it.
• 1:47:31
  Speaker 1: Who is this?
• 1:47:32
  Speaker 2: Doug Stanhope. Hilarious. Great stand-up. Hilarious guy. But he looks
• 1:47:39
  Speaker 2: at it like that bit is being tried. How does
• 1:47:44
  Speaker 2: he defend this bit? And he makes sure that he
• 1:47:46
  Speaker 2: lays it out in that way.
• 1:47:47
  Speaker 1: That's great.
• 1:47:48
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:47:48
  Speaker 1: That's great.
• 1:47:49
  Speaker 2: But it's the same thing. Like having someone in your
• 1:47:50
  Speaker 2: head that's a critic that's going to look at it
• 1:47:52
  Speaker 2: and go, hey, what the fuck is this part? You know,
• 1:47:55
  Speaker 2: and you're like, hey, hey, hey.
• 1:47:56
  Speaker 1: That's not how you end the scene.
• 1:47:58
  Speaker 2: All right, let's fucking work together here and fix it. Right?
• 1:48:01
  Speaker 1: Yeah. You know, and what a gift, you know. And so,
• 1:48:06
  Speaker 1: you know, again, going back to that word, humility is
• 1:48:13
  Speaker 1: a strength. I succeeded because I counted on other people. 100%.
• 1:48:22
  Speaker 2: If you've been on a set of a sitcom in particular,
• 1:48:24
  Speaker 2: there's no way to do it on your own. You
• 1:48:26
  Speaker 2: need to have a lot of brilliant people working together
• 1:48:29
  Speaker 2: for it to work out well.
• 1:48:30
  Speaker 1: Have you interviewed this guy, Taylor Sheridan?
• 1:48:33
  Speaker 2: Yeah, he's a good friend of mine.
• 1:48:35
  Speaker 1: Wow.
• 1:48:35
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:48:36
  Speaker 1: Okay, that might be the anomaly. Because, you know, I
• 1:48:42
  Speaker 1: love that stuff. I love all that stuff. I watch everything.
• 1:48:46
  Speaker 1: You know, I'm just.
• 1:48:47
  Speaker 2: He's a freak. He just turns them out.
• 1:48:49
  Speaker 1: I feel so fucking lazy when he does this.
• 1:48:52
  Speaker 2: Me too.
• 1:48:53
  Speaker 1: I'm such a, just a, just, I'm driftwood. He wrote
• 1:48:58
  Speaker 1: it and directed it, and then he had time to
• 1:49:00
  Speaker 1: write that great feature, and holy shit.
• 1:49:03
  Speaker 2: Yeah, he turns them out.
• 1:49:04
  Speaker 1: I just, and it's good.
• 1:49:06
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:49:06
  Speaker 1: It's one thing to turn it out, and it's one
• 1:49:08
  Speaker 1: thing to turn out quality.
• 1:49:10
  Speaker 2: You've seen Hell in High Country?
• 1:49:12
  Speaker 1: Yes.
• 1:49:12
  Speaker 2: Hell in High Water, Renna? Is that what it is?
• 1:49:13
  Speaker 2: Hell in High Water?
• 1:49:14
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 1:49:15
  Speaker 2: That's a fucking great movie.
• 1:49:16
  Speaker 1: And I just... The Sicario stuff. Yes. And then 1883
• 1:49:22
  Speaker 1: and 1923 with Helen Mirren and Harrison Ford.
• 1:49:27
  Speaker 2: Wow. He creates banger after banger.
• 1:49:30
  Speaker 1: Lioness.
• 1:49:31
  Speaker 2: I haven't watched Lioness, but everybody tells me that's incredible.
• 1:49:34
  Speaker 1: It's fantastic.
• 1:49:35
  Speaker 2: Landman.
• 1:49:36
  Speaker 1: Landman's fantastic. You know... Billy Joe Thornton.
• 1:49:41
  Speaker 2: Billy Bob.
• 1:49:41
  Speaker 1: Billy Bob.
• 1:49:42
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:49:43
  Speaker 1: Unbelievable. Great stuff. Yeah, man.
• 1:49:45
  Speaker 2: Really great stuff. It was funny. The pitch for that
• 1:49:47
  Speaker 2: show was he was going to do Bad Santa but
• 1:49:49
  Speaker 2: on an oil rig. And he was like, fuck yeah,
• 1:49:51
  Speaker 2: I'm in. Bad Santa as an oil man.
• 1:49:57
  Speaker 1: I got to work with him once, Billy Bob. His people,
• 1:50:02
  Speaker 1: his representatives called me and said, Billy Bob wants to
• 1:50:05
  Speaker 1: be on the Big Bang Theory. I'm sorry, what? It
• 1:50:09
  Speaker 1: was an Oscar-winning, you know, Sling Blade guy who wants
• 1:50:13
  Speaker 1: to be on The Big Bang Theory. I said, I'm sorry,
• 1:50:16
  Speaker 1: you're going to have to give me more. He goes,
• 1:50:19
  Speaker 1: his mother loves the show. And as a gift to
• 1:50:22
  Speaker 1: his mother, he wants to be on the show.
• 1:50:25
  Speaker 2: Oh, wow.
• 1:50:26
  Speaker 1: And we did it.
• 1:50:27
  Speaker 2: That's awesome.
• 1:50:28
  Speaker 1: And we loved it. We had a great time.
• 1:50:30
  Speaker 2: That's so cool.
• 1:50:31
  Speaker 1: He played a 50-year-old version of them who lived in
• 1:50:34
  Speaker 1: his mother's basement.
• 1:50:38
  Speaker 2: After all these years and all these shows, um, what,
• 1:50:41
  Speaker 2: what keeps you doing it now? Like, what do you
• 1:50:43
  Speaker 2: enjoy about the process now?
• 1:50:46
  Speaker 1: I'm a laugh whore. Making people laugh is fun, you know, and,
• 1:50:51
  Speaker 1: and sitting in a writer's room is fun. Sometimes it's,
• 1:50:54
  Speaker 1: you want to tear your hair out cause it's hard,
• 1:50:57
  Speaker 1: but every once in a while, you know, you hit
• 1:50:59
  Speaker 1: something and you go, Oh, this is good. This is
• 1:51:02
  Speaker 1: really good. And, uh, What the fuck else would I do?
• 1:51:11
  Speaker 2: Well, you could kind of do whatever you want. That's
• 1:51:12
  Speaker 2: why I'm asking you.
• 1:51:13
  Speaker 1: Okay, so I'm asking you. I can do whatever I want.
• 1:51:16
  Speaker 1: What am I doing? I can travel. That's a couple
• 1:51:20
  Speaker 1: of weeks. Now what?
• 1:51:21
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 1:51:22
  Speaker 1: Okay. I'm going to garden. No, I don't see me
• 1:51:30
  Speaker 1: in the tulips. Keep going. What am I doing? I
• 1:51:35
  Speaker 1: get a chance to make people laugh. that's not a
• 1:51:39
  Speaker 1: bad way to spend the day, you know? So.
• 1:51:43
  Speaker 2: No, it's an awesome way to spend the day, but
• 1:51:45
  Speaker 2: some people, the, the stress of continuing, continuing to create
• 1:51:51
  Speaker 2: and continuing to produce things like it eventually gets to
• 1:51:54
  Speaker 2: them where they just like, I want off the ride.
• 1:51:56
  Speaker 1: What I've done. And you really hit on something there
• 1:52:00
  Speaker 1: is the stress of it at a certain point is intolerable.
• 1:52:04
  Speaker 1: It's just intolerable. I just, I find myself becoming the
• 1:52:09
  Speaker 1: short-tempered curmudgeon, the old guy who has no patience. I
• 1:52:13
  Speaker 1: don't want to be that guy. So I've been gradually
• 1:52:19
  Speaker 1: pulling myself back into more of a consultant role where
• 1:52:23
  Speaker 1: I'm not... If I'm on the stage at a rehearsal
• 1:52:30
  Speaker 1: and the actors play out a scene and the scene ends,
• 1:52:35
  Speaker 1: everybody looks at me and goes, is it okay? So
• 1:52:44
  Speaker 1: my very presence suffocates the process. I am the plastic
• 1:52:50
  Speaker 1: bag from the dry cleaners, right? I kill small children.
• 1:52:56
  Speaker 1: So I have this extraordinary writing staff, wonderful cast and crew,
• 1:53:02
  Speaker 1: and sometimes my presence can be I don't want to
• 1:53:08
  Speaker 1: say destructive, but it doesn't encourage people to step up
• 1:53:12
  Speaker 1: and go, what about? How about if? I think this
• 1:53:16
  Speaker 1: joke doesn't work. Can we beat it? It doesn't invite collaboration.
• 1:53:23
  Speaker 1: And the sad truth is they think I know.
• 1:53:27
  Speaker 2: I don't know.
• 1:53:28
  Speaker 1: I'm guessing. We're all in the comedy business. It's a
• 1:53:32
  Speaker 1: game of guessing. I think this is funny. I guessed wrong. Right?
• 1:53:37
  Speaker 1: When it dies.
• 1:53:38
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 1:53:39
  Speaker 1: Let's fix it. No harm, no foul. I'm not a
• 1:53:42
  Speaker 1: horrible person because it died. It just died.
• 1:53:45
  Speaker 2: Do you just feel less likely to take chances when
• 1:53:47
  Speaker 2: you're around? I think I.
• 1:53:48
  Speaker 1: Suck up a lot of oxygen at this time in
• 1:53:50
  Speaker 1: my career.
• 1:53:51
  Speaker 2: Makes sense.
• 1:53:52
  Speaker 1: I remember one time Norman Lear came to the set
• 1:53:57
  Speaker 1: because he was going to go back into... He made a.
• 1:54:02
  Speaker 1: A version of One Day at a Time. And he
• 1:54:06
  Speaker 1: was executive producing a remake of one of his shows
• 1:54:08
  Speaker 1: from the 70s. And he asked, can I come and
• 1:54:10
  Speaker 1: watch you guys work to see how it's being done now?
• 1:54:16
  Speaker 1: This is 35, 40 years after his day. Of course,
• 1:54:21
  Speaker 1: you know, geez, Norman Lear's going to come watch us work,
• 1:54:23
  Speaker 1: which I was a nervous wreck after every joke I'm looking.
• 1:54:27
  Speaker 1: Is Norman laughing? Is Norman laughing? But I asked him,
• 1:54:32
  Speaker 1: I remember this really vivid moment when I said, are
• 1:54:35
  Speaker 1: you going to write the pilot for this new sitcom
• 1:54:38
  Speaker 1: you're going to make? And he went, are you crazy?
• 1:54:43
  Speaker 1: If I write the pilot, nobody's going to give me notes.
• 1:54:46
  Speaker 1: Nobody's going to give me any constructive feedback. I'm all
• 1:54:49
  Speaker 1: by myself. I'm not going to write it. If it
• 1:54:52
  Speaker 1: says written by Norman Lear, who's going to do the punch-up? Right. Now,
• 1:54:55
  Speaker 1: I'm not saying I'm Norman Lear. He reinvented television. I
• 1:54:59
  Speaker 1: carried on. I've been keeping it going ever since. But
• 1:55:02
  Speaker 1: he really changed the game. But it's the same effect.
• 1:55:06
  Speaker 1: It's the same effect. At a certain point in my career,
• 1:55:09
  Speaker 1: I've noticed I have a, the word stultifying comes to mind,
• 1:55:13
  Speaker 1: effect on the process. And the people I love working
• 1:55:16
  Speaker 1: with could give a shit about my opinion. And I
• 1:55:19
  Speaker 1: love that because then there's back and forth. Then there's arguments. There's,
• 1:55:25
  Speaker 1: you know, there's collaboration.
• 1:55:29
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and it has to happen that way to do
• 1:55:31
  Speaker 2: it right. That's fun. It's also great that you recognize
• 1:55:35
  Speaker 2: that your presence can make them nervous and fuck it up.
• 1:55:38
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and you want to go, no, no, you don't understand.
• 1:55:41
  Speaker 1: I actually don't know what I'm doing. Right. I'm just guessing.
• 1:55:45
  Speaker 1: I'm guessing based on a lot of experience, but I'm
• 1:55:48
  Speaker 1: still guessing.
• 1:55:51
  Speaker 2: That's just your reputation precedes you. You've had too many hits,
• 1:55:55
  Speaker 2: you know.
• 1:55:57
  Speaker 1: It's a beautiful problem.
• 1:55:58
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's the best problem. It's a glorious problem. It's
• 1:56:01
  Speaker 2: certainly better than the opposite problem.
• 1:56:02
  Speaker 1: When I started The Big Bang Theory, I could barely
• 1:56:06
  Speaker 1: do one show, two and a half minutes. It was
• 1:56:10
  Speaker 1: 60 hours a week, easy. And when I started The
• 1:56:13
  Speaker 1: Big Bang Theory, I called Norman's office, cold call, said,
• 1:56:20
  Speaker 1: Chuck Lorre, I've got a show on CBS. I'm about
• 1:56:22
  Speaker 1: to have a second show. At one point, he had
• 1:56:25
  Speaker 1: seven shows on television.
• 1:56:28
  Speaker 2: Simultaneously?
• 1:56:28
  Speaker 1: Simultaneously. I said, would he be available to talk to me?
• 1:56:34
  Speaker 1: Maybe give me some tips? And he very graciously invited
• 1:56:39
  Speaker 1: me over to his office. And I sat down and
• 1:56:42
  Speaker 1: I said, I'm about to start production on a second show.
• 1:56:45
  Speaker 1: I can barely do the one. And now I'm going
• 1:56:47
  Speaker 1: to do two. What can you tell me? And he said,
• 1:56:53
  Speaker 1: You're not going to like the answer. And it boiled
• 1:56:59
  Speaker 1: down to, he said, you go where the fire is
• 1:57:04
  Speaker 1: burning the brightest and you try and put it out.
• 1:57:09
  Speaker 1: That was his management technique. That was it.
• 1:57:13
  Speaker 2: The fire of chaos or the fire of creativity?
• 1:57:16
  Speaker 1: He had seven shows in production. Either the script didn't work,
• 1:57:19
  Speaker 1: they miscast a role.
• 1:57:20
  Speaker 2: The bad fire, put out a fire.
• 1:57:22
  Speaker 1: The director wasn't working. The second act didn't work. Some
• 1:57:29
  Speaker 1: of them are small. Some of them are huge problems.
• 1:57:32
  Speaker 1: So-and-so's ill. Should we shut down? Do we wait a week?
• 1:57:38
  Speaker 1: Do we push a week? What if we miss an
• 1:57:39
  Speaker 1: air date? Oh, my God, what if you miss an
• 1:57:41
  Speaker 1: air date? The problems could be big or small, but
• 1:57:44
  Speaker 1: his solution was... Gaging his response basically, you know, nothing, nothing, nothing. Oh,
• 1:57:53
  Speaker 1: that's a crisis. I'll go there.
• 1:57:55
  Speaker 2: How did that guy have time for anything in life?
• 1:57:59
  Speaker 1: I don't know. He was a good man, though. He
• 1:58:00
  Speaker 1: was a really generous and good man. It was a
• 1:58:05
  Speaker 1: real privilege to spend a little bit of time.
• 1:58:07
  Speaker 2: That's amazing. Yeah. Was there any time? ever any time
• 1:58:10
  Speaker 2: when you were doing both shows simultaneously where you went
• 1:58:13
  Speaker 2: I don't think I should have done this this is
• 1:58:16
  Speaker 2: too much.
• 1:58:17
  Speaker 1: Always the entire time always but there was a moment
• 1:58:24
  Speaker 1: around the third season of Two and a Half Men
• 1:58:27
  Speaker 1: and I know I wrote about this where I had
• 1:58:29
  Speaker 1: a weird epiphany I was sitting in a room full
• 1:58:31
  Speaker 1: of comedy writers, great writers, superstar comedy writers, and we
• 1:58:35
  Speaker 1: were arguing about something. I don't remember what it was,
• 1:58:38
  Speaker 1: some scene in an episode that we were working on.
• 1:58:43
  Speaker 1: And it dawned on me that I could trust myself.
• 1:58:51
  Speaker 1: And it was a really striking experience. Everybody was yelling
• 1:58:54
  Speaker 1: and complaining, and no, not this, do that, do this.
• 1:58:57
  Speaker 1: And I just thought, I think I know how to
• 1:58:59
  Speaker 1: do this scene. And everybody's going, no, blah, blah, blah.
• 1:59:03
  Speaker 1: I went, no, I think I know how to do
• 1:59:05
  Speaker 1: this scene, and we're going to do it. Not angrily
• 1:59:08
  Speaker 1: defending it, just I felt calm. I felt this calmness going,
• 1:59:14
  Speaker 1: I think this can work. Let's do this. And I also,
• 1:59:18
  Speaker 1: there was a moment in that calmness where I went,
• 1:59:21
  Speaker 1: if I'm wrong, we'll fix it. Nobody's going to die.
• 1:59:26
  Speaker 1: You know, we're not going to get drummed out of
• 1:59:27
  Speaker 1: show business. It's a joke in a scene. And I
• 1:59:30
  Speaker 1: realized that I could be wrong and survive being wrong.
• 1:59:35
  Speaker 2: Well, that's the benefit of being very successful.
• 1:59:38
  Speaker 1: But it also goes back to the I don't know thing.
• 1:59:41
  Speaker 1: I don't have to know. But we did it. And
• 1:59:48
  Speaker 1: it was a turning point for me. You know, where
• 1:59:50
  Speaker 1: I loved working in a room full of writers. But
• 1:59:55
  Speaker 1: I wasn't bound by consensus anymore. I was able to
• 2:00:01
  Speaker 1: trust intuition, which is a weird thing. It's not thinking.
• 2:00:05
  Speaker 1: You know this. In comedy, you just have this feeling.
• 2:00:09
  Speaker 1: It's inchoate. It's not something you could express in words.
• 2:00:14
  Speaker 1: You just know, I think this is going to work.
• 2:00:17
  Speaker 2: And that feeling grows with the episodes you've done.
• 2:00:20
  Speaker 1: Yes, and you also know when you're bullshitting yourself. This
• 2:00:23
  Speaker 1: is lazy. We can do better. I know I know, yeah,
• 2:00:28
  Speaker 1: this will work, but it's not great. It's okay. And okay,
• 2:00:33
  Speaker 1: why are we doing this if it's just okay? Let's
• 2:00:36
  Speaker 1: at least try for great. If we fail, we try
• 2:00:39
  Speaker 1: for great. But if you fail trying to do okay,
• 2:00:44
  Speaker 1: you know, go home. Go home. You're done. So, you know,
• 2:00:50
  Speaker 1: that's about shoot for the moon, settle for a.
• 2:00:55
  Speaker 2: Low orbit, That's a great message. I think it's a
• 2:00:58
  Speaker 2: good way to wrap this up. Thank you. I really
• 2:01:01
  Speaker 2: appreciate it. It was fun.
• 2:01:02
  Speaker 1: I'm stunned. I thought for sure maybe I could talk
• 2:01:05
  Speaker 1: to you for 20 minutes and I'm going to go running.
• 2:01:07
  Speaker 1: We did two hours. Screaming out of the room.
• 2:01:09
  Speaker 2: I know you were saying that at the beginning. You're
• 2:01:11
  Speaker 2: going to be fine.
• 2:01:13
  Speaker 1: Well, you're a delight to talk to.
• 2:01:14
  Speaker 2: And you are too.
• 2:01:15
  Speaker 1: Thank you very much.
• 2:01:16
  Speaker 2: Thank you. I really enjoyed it.
• 2:01:17
  Speaker 1: I get it. I get it. You have, as I'm
• 2:01:19
  Speaker 1: sure you well know, you have a... an aura about you,
• 2:01:28
  Speaker 1: a myth, a mythos.
• 2:01:31
  Speaker 2: What's the myth?
• 2:01:33
  Speaker 1: You're powerful. You're a powerful man. And what you've achieved is.
• 2:01:41
  Speaker 2: Remarkable. Oh, thank you.
• 2:01:43
  Speaker 1: You know, as we say in the comic book world,
• 2:01:44
  Speaker 1: use your powers for good.
• 2:01:46
  Speaker 2: It's all an illusion. It's just me talking for years.
• 2:01:52
  Speaker 2: But I appreciate it.
• 2:01:53
  Speaker 1: The 10,000 hours are clear.
• 2:01:56
  Speaker 2: Well, thank you very much. You're awesome. Your book's great.
• 2:02:00
  Speaker 2: And this was a lot of fun. Thank you very much.
• 2:02:02
  Speaker 2: All right. Bye, everybody.