Latest / Four Finger Discount (Simpsons Podcast) / Last Exit To Springfield (with Jay Kogen)

Transcript

Last Exit To Springfield (with Jay Kogen) · Four Finger Discount (Simpsons Podcast)

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Four Finger Discounted.
• 0:17
  Speaker 2: Hey everybody, welcome to four Finger Discount. With this week,
• 0:20
  Speaker 2: we're very lucky to be joined by a man who
• 0:22
  Speaker 2: wrote the episode. We're going to be discussing it's Last
• 0:24
  Speaker 2: Exit the Springfield. You may know his podcasts. Don't be Alone,
• 0:26
  Speaker 2: it's Jay Cogan. Don't be alone with Jay Cogan. How
• 0:28
  Speaker 2: are you going, sir?
• 0:29
  Speaker 1: May be with Jack Cogan.
• 0:30
  Speaker 2: Hat there you go.
• 0:31
  Speaker 1: It's all about the merch guys. Do you have the
• 0:34
  Speaker 1: four Finger Discount merch?
• 0:35
  Speaker 2: Now we've been doing this podcast for ten you still
• 0:37
  Speaker 2: know merch. We need to get merged merch. The thing is,
• 0:40
  Speaker 2: we used the Simpsons font with our logo back. We
• 0:43
  Speaker 2: know before people care about things and now looking I go,
• 0:46
  Speaker 2: if we do this, Disney going to be angry.
• 0:49
  Speaker 1: It's all a big last suit.
• 0:50
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's just we need to create a new logo.
• 0:52
  Speaker 2: But then it's like we've had this logo for ten years,
• 0:55
  Speaker 2: all right.
• 0:56
  Speaker 1: People don't like change, they don't.
• 0:57
  Speaker 3: They certainly do not.
• 0:58
  Speaker 2: I'm one of those people. I don't like it.
• 1:01
  Speaker 1: Well, thanks for having me. It's great to be here.
• 1:04
  Speaker 1: I'm usually on my podcast Don't Be Alone with Jake Cogan,
• 1:06
  Speaker 1: and we normally discussed. We've discussed a lot of Simpson
• 1:09
  Speaker 1: things on my podcast, but never, we never, We're not
• 1:12
  Speaker 1: dedicated to the Simpsons. So this is fascinating. And of
• 1:15
  Speaker 1: course last exit to Springfield has been a People seem
• 1:20
  Speaker 1: to love this episode, so I'm glad they do, and
• 1:24
  Speaker 1: I like it okay, But but everybody else seems to love.
• 1:27
  Speaker 3: It absolutely the case. By the way, a little bit
• 1:29
  Speaker 3: of self deprecation to begin, because it's always a tasty spice.
• 1:33
  Speaker 3: But I saw the title of your podcast, Don't be
• 1:36
  Speaker 3: Alone with Jay Cogan. I thought that is heartwarming and sweet.
• 1:38
  Speaker 3: This is a message that everybody needs. Don't be alone,
• 1:41
  Speaker 3: you know, create, you know, nourishing, nurturing social circles. Then
• 1:46
  Speaker 3: I re read it's like, oh yeah, don't be alone
• 1:47
  Speaker 3: with Jake Cogan exactly.
• 1:50
  Speaker 1: Both, It's both.
• 1:51
  Speaker 3: It works on so many levels.
• 1:54
  Speaker 1: You're it's like a Simpsons joke. You look at it
• 1:56
  Speaker 1: and then you look at it again. Oh, I get
• 1:58
  Speaker 1: the other one.
• 1:59
  Speaker 2: Who's the first per in the site I'd be alone
• 2:00
  Speaker 2: with Jack Kagan?
• 2:01
  Speaker 3: Was it Wally Woollodowski?
• 2:03
  Speaker 1: Wow, don't belong with Jack Cogan. It may be my
• 2:06
  Speaker 1: first babysitter. I'm not sure. But now Wallywalladerski is not afraid,
• 2:12
  Speaker 1: clearly after all these years, not afraid to be alone
• 2:15
  Speaker 1: with Jack Cogin. That's not that is not a problem
• 2:17
  Speaker 1: for him.
• 2:18
  Speaker 2: Were you guys a team when you were on because
• 2:20
  Speaker 2: you were both pas for Gary Shanling's show. When did
• 2:23
  Speaker 2: it become the duo that we now know in love?
• 2:27
  Speaker 1: Well, Wally and I were very good friends in high
• 2:31
  Speaker 1: school and we used to get each other jobs for
• 2:35
  Speaker 1: when we were over the summer. So if I was
• 2:38
  Speaker 1: working at a movie theater, he'd go work with me
• 2:42
  Speaker 1: at a movie theater. A record warehouse, he'd go work
• 2:44
  Speaker 1: with me at a record warehouse. And uh, I got
• 2:47
  Speaker 1: a job as a production assistant on its Scary Shaling show.
• 2:50
  Speaker 1: And then there was an opening and I called him
• 2:52
  Speaker 1: and said he had just graduated from college. And I
• 2:54
  Speaker 1: called him and said, you know what, there's a job
• 2:57
  Speaker 1: over here, and he is being completely and constantly out
• 3:01
  Speaker 1: of work. Said okay, I'll come do that, and he
• 3:04
  Speaker 1: worked as a production assistant on the show with me,
• 3:07
  Speaker 1: And while we were there, he said, you know what,
• 3:10
  Speaker 1: let's take a chance at trying to write one of
• 3:12
  Speaker 1: these episodes, a spec version of the show, and then
• 3:15
  Speaker 1: we did, and they loved it, but they refused to
• 3:19
  Speaker 1: buy it. They said, okay, well we'll have you write one.
• 3:25
  Speaker 1: Oh man, we'll have to be assigned a script that
• 3:27
  Speaker 1: they'll like. Well, they never did that, so then we
• 3:30
  Speaker 1: wrote another script and then they like that even better
• 3:32
  Speaker 1: than the first one, but also didn't buy it. But
• 3:34
  Speaker 1: that's the script that I showed a producer who was
• 3:38
  Speaker 1: on the Tracy Ollman Show. It was on the Gary
• 3:41
  Speaker 1: Shaling Show. Was also on the Tracy Ollmen Show. And
• 3:43
  Speaker 1: he said, ah, I think I can get you a
• 3:46
  Speaker 1: writing audition with the executive producers of the show.
• 3:49
  Speaker 3: And we did.
• 3:49
  Speaker 1: We pitched a bunch of sketches. They picked one.
• 3:51
  Speaker 3: We wrote one.
• 3:52
  Speaker 1: They liked it enough and said we're willing to hire
• 3:54
  Speaker 1: you at the minimum amount of money that the show
• 3:58
  Speaker 1: business pays anyone.
• 4:00
  Speaker 2: Never change. And you said we'll take it.
• 4:02
  Speaker 1: Yeah, we'll peg itt. So we did that. But so
• 4:05
  Speaker 1: why and I his name at the time was Mark Wallace.
• 4:09
  Speaker 1: He changed his name to Wally Walladerski when he became
• 4:11
  Speaker 1: a professional writer. And so we've been buddies since we
• 4:15
  Speaker 1: were fourteen years old.
• 4:16
  Speaker 3: Can I talk about the logic or maybe like thereof
• 4:20
  Speaker 3: of change your name from Mark Wallace to Wallace Wiladoski. Mely,
• 4:23
  Speaker 3: Wally Wiladowski does have a ring to it, but kind
• 4:26
  Speaker 3: of it. I'm thinking of the olden Knights of Hollywood,
• 4:28
  Speaker 3: when Bernie Schwartz had to become Tony Curtis.
• 4:31
  Speaker 1: Well, it's interesting you say that, because his father, Irv
• 4:35
  Speaker 1: Waladererski had to change his name to Irv Wallace to
• 4:39
  Speaker 1: get work in show business as as an assistant director.
• 4:43
  Speaker 1: So he went from the you know, the old country
• 4:47
  Speaker 1: name to the americanized name, and Mark, being sort of
• 4:51
  Speaker 1: a good liberal boy, said I'm changing it back reclamation,
• 4:55
  Speaker 1: so that he went back with his name legally became
• 5:00
  Speaker 1: Mark Wallace Waladarski. It was always Mark Wallace. Now it's
• 5:03
  Speaker 1: Mark Wallace, Waladarski and Waladwallerski alliteration. Oh yeah, memorable, Mark
• 5:08
  Speaker 1: Wallace kind of boring.
• 5:09
  Speaker 2: Have you ever told him that?
• 5:11
  Speaker 1: Oh? He knew.
• 5:13
  Speaker 3: I'd like to ask you about the process of writing
• 5:14
  Speaker 3: with a working partner. I mean, how similar and dissimilar
• 5:18
  Speaker 3: you have to be in your strengths, in your weak spots,
• 5:21
  Speaker 3: and your preferences and your tastes. I mean, is it
• 5:23
  Speaker 3: like two people lifting the same couch. Is it one's
• 5:26
  Speaker 3: driving ones navigating?
• 5:28
  Speaker 1: I don't know.
• 5:28
  Speaker 3: How do you discover you work well together?
• 5:30
  Speaker 1: Like two people licking the same catch?
• 5:32
  Speaker 3: What'd you say looking the same cat? That's exactly what
• 5:34
  Speaker 3: I said. This is a common Australian metaphor. We do thing,
• 5:39
  Speaker 3: it's differently down here lifting the same couch?
• 5:42
  Speaker 1: Shall we lift in the same couch? It is? I
• 5:45
  Speaker 1: would say, it's not like lifting the same couch. It's
• 5:48
  Speaker 1: like any it's it's like figuring out where you want
• 5:51
  Speaker 1: to go for dinner. You know, it's like some people
• 5:56
  Speaker 1: are easy going and want to go where you go,
• 5:58
  Speaker 1: some people don't. Sometimes you're in the mood for Chinese.
• 6:01
  Speaker 1: So here's what happens. The very best version of this
• 6:05
  Speaker 1: is you like each other okay, and then you appreciate
• 6:09
  Speaker 1: each other's taste, and you think each other everybody the
• 6:12
  Speaker 1: other person's funny, and you're willing to listen when they
• 6:15
  Speaker 1: tell you, I don't think what you just said is
• 6:17
  Speaker 1: very good. In fact, I think it's not very good
• 6:21
  Speaker 1: at all. And you have to go like, okay, that's
• 6:24
  Speaker 1: fine and not be hurt. So if you know, basically
• 6:29
  Speaker 1: Walawadski knows I love.
• 6:31
  Speaker 2: Him, is that Wally Colling you Van Yah.
• 6:34
  Speaker 1: Now it's my dad, my dad. But wallywas knows that
• 6:41
  Speaker 1: I love him very much. And you know, we've been
• 6:44
  Speaker 1: buddies' best friends for years and it was the best
• 6:47
  Speaker 1: man of my wedd So when I say to him
• 6:50
  Speaker 1: that sucks, he knows it's coming from somebody who actually
• 6:55
  Speaker 1: thinks he's funny most of the time and and and
• 6:58
  Speaker 1: cares about him. And when I hear Jay, that's the
• 7:01
  Speaker 1: worst piece of shit you've ever thought of, it's also
• 7:03
  Speaker 1: coming from love with a.
• 7:05
  Speaker 3: Little sprinkly of something else on top.
• 7:06
  Speaker 1: Maybe when partnerships go sour, it's usually like a marriage
• 7:11
  Speaker 1: is going, so you don't think the underlining respect is there,
• 7:15
  Speaker 1: and so things can go haywire at a certain point,
• 7:19
  Speaker 1: and they often do. But the other good thing about
• 7:23
  Speaker 1: partnerships is you don't want anyone in the room who
• 7:26
  Speaker 1: thinks exactly like you do. You want somebody who think
• 7:29
  Speaker 1: a little bit differently, so that you have two minds
• 7:32
  Speaker 1: conquering the same problem from slightly different points of view,
• 7:35
  Speaker 1: and you're apt to get something interesting going on. You
• 7:38
  Speaker 1: want paint about it and chocolate right, and that way
• 7:40
  Speaker 1: we both lock the same cat. You know teams in Hollywood,
• 7:45
  Speaker 1: they proliferate mainly because you get two writers for the
• 7:48
  Speaker 1: price of one, and Hollywood loves a bargain, so their chance.
• 7:52
  Speaker 1: The fact that Wally and I were a team, I
• 7:54
  Speaker 1: think is one of the reasons we got hired on
• 7:56
  Speaker 1: The Tracy Owens Show because we have got two bodies
• 7:59
  Speaker 1: for the price of one, and so two writers in
• 8:02
  Speaker 1: a writer's room, we're basically doing the work of we're
• 8:06
  Speaker 1: not the two of us aren't doing the work of
• 8:08
  Speaker 1: one writer. When we're in a rear room, we're doing
• 8:10
  Speaker 1: a work of two writers. But they get to pay
• 8:12
  Speaker 1: us half as much money.
• 8:13
  Speaker 2: So you paid a single income for the two of you.
• 8:15
  Speaker 2: Yeah wow, okay, so you're hired as a team.
• 8:19
  Speaker 1: Or hired as a team. We split our salary right
• 8:21
  Speaker 1: down the middle and that so it's a big bargain
• 8:25
  Speaker 1: for them, and we got to leap frog off for
• 8:29
  Speaker 1: other really much more talented people who were much more expensive.
• 8:32
  Speaker 2: So do you think of raising that doesn't exist? Or exist?
• 8:34
  Speaker 2: It didn't exist as much as it probably should have,
• 8:37
  Speaker 2: just the grade on the person's behalf because they didn't
• 8:39
  Speaker 2: want to split their money, or is it? How does
• 8:41
  Speaker 2: it work?
• 8:42
  Speaker 1: I mean, when you get to a certain point in
• 8:45
  Speaker 1: your life where in your career where you're commanding more
• 8:48
  Speaker 1: money and you're a team, and you're commanding more money
• 8:51
  Speaker 1: than you're not you're splitting. You're not splitting the minimum.
• 8:53
  Speaker 1: You're getting as much as any individual writer, and then
• 8:56
  Speaker 1: sometimes more. And then the line of writers lighting teams
• 8:59
  Speaker 1: do split up eventually because they want A they want
• 9:03
  Speaker 1: creative autonomy and B they want the full salary. So
• 9:07
  Speaker 1: that happens a lot. And when Wally decided to split
• 9:11
  Speaker 1: off from writing television with me, I was very sad
• 9:15
  Speaker 1: that he didn't want to do that anymore, didn't want
• 9:16
  Speaker 1: to work on TV. But I was happy to think, well,
• 9:19
  Speaker 1: if I ever get hired again, I'll get the full price.
• 9:22
  Speaker 2: What point did that happen was that after you left
• 9:24
  Speaker 2: the Simpsons? Correct?
• 9:25
  Speaker 1: Yes, we got a development deal after we left the Simpsons,
• 9:27
  Speaker 1: and we worked for Universal for a while, and that
• 9:29
  Speaker 1: development process really took a lot of joy out of
• 9:35
  Speaker 1: both of us. But Wally sort of decided I'm going
• 9:38
  Speaker 1: to be He always wanted to bake movies, and so
• 9:41
  Speaker 1: he says, I'm going to be exclusively movies, and I
• 9:43
  Speaker 1: want to do my own thing. And there was like,
• 9:45
  Speaker 1: I of course said what but then then right after
• 9:49
  Speaker 1: that I said, I for do what you need to do,
• 9:53
  Speaker 1: of course.
• 9:53
  Speaker 2: But I think it was similar with with Michael reson
• 9:56
  Speaker 2: Nolo Jean. Right, they left to do the critic and
• 9:57
  Speaker 2: then they just sort of they realized that it wasn't
• 9:59
  Speaker 2: as much fun as the Simpsons.
• 10:01
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Also, Mike wanted to stop and Al never wanted
• 10:05
  Speaker 1: to stop. Yeah, so that's just a life choice, you know.
• 10:10
  Speaker 1: It's like Mike likes to travel with his wife. He
• 10:13
  Speaker 1: likes to do stuff. Al does not workhorse. He just
• 10:19
  Speaker 1: likes to work and work and work and work.
• 10:21
  Speaker 2: And he didn't stop until this year. Last year.
• 10:24
  Speaker 1: In fact, Al is the guest and this week's Don't
• 10:27
  Speaker 1: Be Alone with Jay Coogan, Al Jean is my is
• 10:29
  Speaker 1: my is my guest on this week's episode. Yeah no,
• 10:33
  Speaker 1: I mean you can ask Al any question you want.
• 10:35
  Speaker 1: Is uh, he'll be very nice about it. I'm I'm
• 10:38
  Speaker 1: much more likely to say bad shit about people, but
• 10:41
  Speaker 1: Al will not. But the thing about it is, uh, yes,
• 10:45
  Speaker 1: we people. People burn out, People get tired. Al Jean
• 10:50
  Speaker 1: worked on the Simpsons for thirty years, I mean, an
• 10:53
  Speaker 1: unbelievable amount of time. On one show. Uh and and
• 10:57
  Speaker 1: and I think most writers, if they said, hey, you
• 11:00
  Speaker 1: could work on one show, even as a show as
• 11:04
  Speaker 1: good as The Simpsons for thirty years, a lot of
• 11:06
  Speaker 1: writers go, I don't know, I'd like to try to
• 11:09
  Speaker 1: do other things.
• 11:10
  Speaker 3: I was bad to say. I mean, given the sort
• 11:12
  Speaker 3: of the spectrum of material that you've worked on of
• 11:15
  Speaker 3: the course of your career, I mean, does that feel
• 11:18
  Speaker 3: more like a full body creative workout as opposed to
• 11:21
  Speaker 3: just working one muscle as he might be doing on
• 11:22
  Speaker 3: The Simpsons, even though the Simpsons would probably offer you
• 11:25
  Speaker 3: a fair bit of scope creatively speaking.
• 11:27
  Speaker 1: I mean, you could do a lot of things on
• 11:29
  Speaker 1: the Simpsons, because it's a cartoon, and you can parody
• 11:33
  Speaker 1: things and do a lot of fantasy things and all
• 11:35
  Speaker 1: kinds of stuff. But I liked working in live action.
• 11:37
  Speaker 1: I liked working in single camera. I liked working in movies.
• 11:40
  Speaker 1: I like working into a lot of things. So animation
• 11:43
  Speaker 1: is just one of many things that I wanted to
• 11:45
  Speaker 1: try in my career. So I was interested in working
• 11:52
  Speaker 1: in animation and also in many other things. I got
• 11:56
  Speaker 1: the opportunity when I got the chance to leave the Simpsons.
• 11:58
  Speaker 1: I didn't try to make more anime shows. I tried
• 12:01
  Speaker 1: to make more live action shows, single camera live action
• 12:04
  Speaker 1: shows and multi camera live action shows. And I've worked
• 12:07
  Speaker 1: on movies, live action movies, some animated movies, and some
• 12:12
  Speaker 1: sketch shows, some award shows, like anything. A lot of
• 12:15
  Speaker 1: different choices.
• 12:17
  Speaker 3: But predominantly in comedy. You're right, Jay, I mean, I'm
• 12:19
  Speaker 3: looking out of it.
• 12:19
  Speaker 1: You know you'll see Vogca comedy, all comedy. I've tried
• 12:22
  Speaker 1: to write drama and that winds up. I can't resist
• 12:25
  Speaker 1: putting jokes in.
• 12:26
  Speaker 3: So it's something I was curious about because, I mean,
• 12:28
  Speaker 3: your dad was a famous, well well regarded comedy rodit
• 12:32
  Speaker 3: Righte a mad magazine calling me yes, And it's a
• 12:35
  Speaker 3: very it's a very serendipitous segue that we're talking about
• 12:37
  Speaker 3: your dad. But was I mean, was it always sort
• 12:40
  Speaker 3: of on the CODs view that you'd be doing comedy
• 12:43
  Speaker 3: for a living.
• 12:44
  Speaker 1: Maybe, I mean, I love comedy and I grew up
• 12:46
  Speaker 1: with comedy, and my ability to make my father laugh
• 12:51
  Speaker 1: was like my my connective tissue father son connective tissues,
• 12:54
  Speaker 1: so like he was sort of raising me to do that,
• 12:57
  Speaker 1: So maybe it was always going to be comedy. I
• 12:59
  Speaker 1: don't know he ever really thought it was going to
• 13:01
  Speaker 1: be writing. I really didn't think I was going to
• 13:03
  Speaker 1: be a writer. It looked horrible when my dad did it.
• 13:06
  Speaker 1: It looked lonely and sad and you know, pulling your
• 13:09
  Speaker 1: hair out and frustrating and all that other kind of stuff.
• 13:12
  Speaker 1: So that's the one thing I didn't want to be.
• 13:14
  Speaker 1: I was trying to be an actor and a comedian
• 13:16
  Speaker 1: and director, and I did special effects. I did a
• 13:19
  Speaker 1: lot of things, and then eventually failed at all those
• 13:22
  Speaker 1: things and eventually became a writer.
• 13:24
  Speaker 2: When you were a kid, you dad obviously could write
• 13:26
  Speaker 2: very funny jokes. Did you see him as a funny person.
• 13:30
  Speaker 1: Yeah, he's a silly guy. He did a lot of
• 13:34
  Speaker 1: jokes all day long. But you know, sometimes when he
• 13:38
  Speaker 1: had to be a dad, he was able to do that.
• 13:40
  Speaker 1: He put on the dad hat every now and then,
• 13:43
  Speaker 1: especially when I was in trouble. But my dad traditionally
• 13:48
  Speaker 1: did funny things, and he fell into rooms and put
• 13:51
  Speaker 1: whip cream on his face at award shows and like
• 13:54
  Speaker 1: he was a weird, oh silly, really silly guy. One
• 13:57
  Speaker 1: time he sent out a Christmas card for our family.
• 14:00
  Speaker 1: It was me, my sister, my dad, and this blonde
• 14:03
  Speaker 1: lady who had nothing to do with my nothing like
• 14:05
  Speaker 1: my mom. And he just sent it out to everybody
• 14:07
  Speaker 1: we knew and said, Mary, you know, happy holidays from
• 14:09
  Speaker 1: the Kogans and my my father's friends. Most of them
• 14:14
  Speaker 1: thought it was a joke and laughed, but there were
• 14:15
  Speaker 1: a few people called up my mom and said, I
• 14:17
  Speaker 1: don't know what happened, but we're on your side. He
• 14:22
  Speaker 1: did me many practical jokes his whole life, and when
• 14:26
  Speaker 1: I was born, he sent out a birth announcement announcement
• 14:30
  Speaker 1: with his my father's height and weight on it and uh,
• 14:34
  Speaker 1: you know there's a plank. Yeah, yeah, it was. It
• 14:38
  Speaker 1: was and continues to this day. He loves a good joke.
• 14:41
  Speaker 1: He's very funny. And I grew up in the shadow
• 14:46
  Speaker 1: of that buddy.
• 14:47
  Speaker 2: What did he think of your Simpsons work?
• 14:50
  Speaker 1: Uh, it's good quote. I think he liked it. I
• 14:52
  Speaker 1: don't think the Simpsons was his. It certainly wasn't his preference.
• 14:56
  Speaker 1: When I told him I'm gonna leave this Emmy Award
• 14:59
  Speaker 1: winning sketch show to go work on a cartoon live,
• 15:03
  Speaker 1: you know, a prime time cartoon, he said, you're ruining
• 15:07
  Speaker 1: your career. Don't do it, you know, that's a big, huge,
• 15:09
  Speaker 1: huge mistake, and I had to go against my father's advice.
• 15:14
  Speaker 3: It's interesting because the people that we've spoken to have
• 15:16
  Speaker 3: worked on The Simpsons, there seems to be real connective
• 15:19
  Speaker 3: tissue between Mad Magazine and the show. They seem to
• 15:22
  Speaker 3: be a bit of a connective through line or a
• 15:25
  Speaker 3: bit of a two and pray between the two.
• 15:27
  Speaker 1: Yeah, absolutely, because I mean I think they're both They
• 15:31
  Speaker 1: are both in their era touchstones of comedy for different generations,
• 15:35
  Speaker 1: and so the Mad Magazine sat it out Live Money
• 15:40
  Speaker 1: Python the Simpsons. I mean, there's certain shows and things
• 15:46
  Speaker 1: that have sort of identified what comedy is in a
• 15:49
  Speaker 1: particular era, and The Simpsons, certainly in the nineties, was
• 15:52
  Speaker 1: that thing. So yeah, I mean there's a touchdown and
• 15:55
  Speaker 1: a lot of the people on my writing staff when
• 15:58
  Speaker 1: I worked at the beginning since loved Mad Magazine and
• 16:01
  Speaker 1: we're heavily influenced by Magnet Magazine. And when I was
• 16:04
  Speaker 1: able to get all our pictures in Mad Magazine because
• 16:06
  Speaker 1: my dad's connection, they I was a hero for a
• 16:09
  Speaker 1: brief moment before they went back to calling me an idiot.
• 16:12
  Speaker 2: How many of the of the original Simpsons writing stuff
• 16:15
  Speaker 2: did you know when you joined that first season. How
• 16:17
  Speaker 2: many did you know beforehand?
• 16:19
  Speaker 1: Well? I knew Sam Simon and Matt Groening, and.
• 16:24
  Speaker 2: So you didn't know Ali didn't know Mike. He didn't
• 16:25
  Speaker 2: know all those guys.
• 16:26
  Speaker 1: Oh, no, hey, we do do. Alan Mike had worked
• 16:28
  Speaker 1: on the Gary Shandling Show, so I knew them for
• 16:31
  Speaker 1: one season of that. I think maybe I'm trying to
• 16:35
  Speaker 1: think maybe John Veedy also worked in the Gary Shanling Show. Briefly,
• 16:38
  Speaker 1: I'm not I don't really remember. But there were a
• 16:41
  Speaker 1: few people who worked on It's on the Gary Shanling Show.
• 16:44
  Speaker 1: Not many, but George Meyer I had not known before this,
• 16:49
  Speaker 1: Jeff Martin and I hadn't known before this. I'm trying
• 16:52
  Speaker 1: to think of John Schwartzwelder. I certainly didn't know. So
• 16:54
  Speaker 1: a lot of these guys were brand new to me
• 16:56
  Speaker 1: when we showed up.
• 16:57
  Speaker 2: Did it feel like you'd been picked or somewhat of
• 17:00
  Speaker 2: a super team by James L. Brooks and Sam Simon.
• 17:05
  Speaker 1: No, well, it didn't feel like we were just a
• 17:08
  Speaker 1: super team. I like that idea, though. It felt like
• 17:11
  Speaker 1: we were, yeah, much more close to the underdog. We
• 17:15
  Speaker 1: were going to experiment with this strange little show. That
• 17:20
  Speaker 1: is doomed to failure but could be really funny. And
• 17:24
  Speaker 1: that's what we proceeded to make. We thought James L.
• 17:28
  Speaker 1: Brooks got us thirteen episodes, not a pilot thirteen episodes,
• 17:32
  Speaker 1: so we have thirteen episodes to fail, and that's what
• 17:34
  Speaker 1: we thought we'd do. We just make ourselves laugh and
• 17:38
  Speaker 1: make it as silly and as crazy and as fun
• 17:40
  Speaker 1: as we wanted to be while also trying to tell
• 17:44
  Speaker 1: a story and have emotional resonance because our boss, James L.
• 17:47
  Speaker 1: Brooks insists on it. But I mean, we're just, you know,
• 17:51
  Speaker 1: twenty something idiots and we emotional residents. You know, we're
• 17:54
  Speaker 1: too spectro me to care about emotional resonance. But we
• 17:59
  Speaker 1: exceed to his wishes and made sure that there is
• 18:02
  Speaker 1: emotional resonance to the show. And that's why I think
• 18:05
  Speaker 1: the show is actually pretty good, because it matters. Jeah.
• 18:08
  Speaker 3: I'd like to veer a wife from the Sims just quickly,
• 18:11
  Speaker 3: but I'd like to ask about what you learned at
• 18:14
  Speaker 3: at Groundlings, which is this legendary comedy troupe I guess
• 18:17
  Speaker 3: you'd call it, But was working with those guys a
• 18:19
  Speaker 3: being part of that organization, was it like comedy one.
• 18:21
  Speaker 3: I won in terms of fundamentals and technique.
• 18:25
  Speaker 1: Absolutely, it's comedy school and it's writing school. Yeah, because
• 18:28
  Speaker 1: you have to write sketches. It's a sketch troop. It's
• 18:30
  Speaker 1: like Second City or you know a lot of people
• 18:33
  Speaker 1: from drownings go to Saturn Alive and it's the perfect
• 18:36
  Speaker 1: It's the perfect place for people who work on certa
• 18:39
  Speaker 1: a live because you write sketches, you do characters. You
• 18:42
  Speaker 1: you know, try to figure out what's funny. You keep
• 18:44
  Speaker 1: editing and editing and editing, you fix things. You have
• 18:47
  Speaker 1: to agree in the moment, and if you learn an improvisation,
• 18:51
  Speaker 1: you have to be quickly in a scene and saying
• 18:54
  Speaker 1: things that make sense within the scene. So those are
• 18:57
  Speaker 1: all great things for comedy writers. So if you're going
• 18:59
  Speaker 1: to a scene write a show, it's good to be
• 19:02
  Speaker 1: able to think in the voice of one character, then
• 19:04
  Speaker 1: suddenly think in the voice of another character, and go
• 19:06
  Speaker 1: back and forth and be consistent. If you're in a
• 19:09
  Speaker 1: rewrite room with a lot of other writers, it's good
• 19:12
  Speaker 1: to be able to say yes to what the showrunner
• 19:14
  Speaker 1: wants and agree and then offered eight nine twelve suggestions
• 19:20
  Speaker 1: on what the joke or the moment could be. So
• 19:22
  Speaker 1: you're looking at story, you're looking at character. Growling is
• 19:26
  Speaker 1: a very big on character, and you're looking at comedy.
• 19:29
  Speaker 1: And it's all being taught to you and forcing you
• 19:34
  Speaker 1: by doing, by making comedy and learning how to fail,
• 19:38
  Speaker 1: learning how to go on stage and not be funny
• 19:40
  Speaker 1: or not get a lab when you thought it would,
• 19:42
  Speaker 1: and hone your craft. So Growlings was very essential to
• 19:46
  Speaker 1: my development and the development of so many others. Like
• 19:49
  Speaker 1: I think half of everybody in comedy at least came
• 19:54
  Speaker 1: at least half came from the Growlings, the other half
• 19:57
  Speaker 1: from Upfront Gate or Second City or something as else.
• 20:02
  Speaker 1: But but to stand up comedy, but ours, the Groundings
• 20:06
  Speaker 1: is a very good school.
• 20:07
  Speaker 3: Yeah, it was the ink be audit for people like
• 20:08
  Speaker 3: Will Ferrell, Christen wig Elvira because Andrew paid some even
• 20:12
  Speaker 3: the Simpsons on Trust mcnail. Yeah, I mean, does a
• 20:14
  Speaker 3: ground leak recognize another groundling out in the wild, you
• 20:17
  Speaker 3: know if you're.
• 20:18
  Speaker 1: By reputation, Okay, by reputation. So I kind of keep
• 20:21
  Speaker 1: track of who who came through the school, and I
• 20:25
  Speaker 1: went there when I was a kid. I started when
• 20:27
  Speaker 1: I was seventeen and eighteen sou But I keep track
• 20:31
  Speaker 1: of people, and i know people from the Groundings, and
• 20:33
  Speaker 1: I'm still friendly with people who I didn't wasn't in
• 20:37
  Speaker 1: the Groundings, they weren't in my era, but I still
• 20:39
  Speaker 1: keep up with those those people too. So yeah, the
• 20:42
  Speaker 1: Groundings still very cool functioning place.
• 20:45
  Speaker 2: I've seen interviews where you've said some of the best
• 20:48
  Speaker 2: advice you can give comedy udors to when you join
• 20:50
  Speaker 2: a team is to just shut up and just listen
• 20:53
  Speaker 2: and just take it all in.
• 20:54
  Speaker 1: When you join a writing staff, Yeah, not a team.
• 20:57
  Speaker 1: When you draining a writing staff, that's a weird and
• 21:00
  Speaker 1: there's only two of you and one of your shuts up,
• 21:02
  Speaker 1: that's not a good team.
• 21:05
  Speaker 3: But you just described the full finger discun done exactly right, exactly.
• 21:08
  Speaker 2: So what were the first things that you learned when
• 21:10
  Speaker 2: you went to that Simpsons writers room yet that what
• 21:13
  Speaker 2: caught you off?
• 21:13
  Speaker 1: Guys, Well, that was my first room. My first room
• 21:15
  Speaker 1: was the Tracy Oman room, and I'm there with James L. Brooks,
• 21:20
  Speaker 1: a guy named Jerry Belsons, very famous comedy writer. Heidi
• 21:23
  Speaker 1: Perlman from Cheers, one of the executi producers of Cheers,
• 21:27
  Speaker 1: Sam Simon, one of the executivecers of Cheers and Taxi
• 21:30
  Speaker 1: and ken Aston. So I'm with these giants of comedy
• 21:35
  Speaker 1: and Wiley and I are just these two little peons
• 21:37
  Speaker 1: who have been hired because we work really cheap. So
• 21:40
  Speaker 1: the idea is be quiet and listen. First of all,
• 21:44
  Speaker 1: if you're quiet enough, you'll figure out who's in charge,
• 21:47
  Speaker 1: so you can figure out who's the boss and who
• 21:49
  Speaker 1: do you want to please. Second of all, every show
• 21:52
  Speaker 1: has a tone, so you have to really. You can
• 21:56
  Speaker 1: watch the TV and the TV show and still not
• 21:58
  Speaker 1: get the tone they're going for. Listening to what people
• 22:01
  Speaker 1: are doing in the moment gives you the tone. Uh.
• 22:04
  Speaker 1: And then after a few days you start talking suggestions.
• 22:10
  Speaker 1: Something something you say gets in fantastic, something you say
• 22:13
  Speaker 1: doesn't get in. You're still hustling and working, but don't interfere.
• 22:18
  Speaker 1: Don't slow them down. You know you're the slow man
• 22:20
  Speaker 1: in the photopol be a lot of people who just
• 22:23
  Speaker 1: start out want to prove themselves and say and at
• 22:25
  Speaker 1: the gate they just start pitching ideas, but they're slowing
• 22:29
  Speaker 1: the room down. Let the big boys handle a lot
• 22:32
  Speaker 1: of it. And then when you have a moment, try
• 22:34
  Speaker 1: to try to pitch a golden a little golden idea
• 22:38
  Speaker 1: and see if it gets in.
• 22:39
  Speaker 2: But when did you ever feel like one of the
• 22:40
  Speaker 2: big boys at the citizens?
• 22:42
  Speaker 1: Oh? I felt like the big boy at the sentences
• 22:43
  Speaker 1: right away. Wally and I were first on board, so
• 22:48
  Speaker 1: like it. It was Matt Groening, Sam Simon and me
• 22:51
  Speaker 1: and Wally so like everybody else was like you came later,
• 22:54
  Speaker 1: guys like we felt. We felt very warm and welcome
• 22:57
  Speaker 1: and and and part of it right away. I wasn't
• 23:00
  Speaker 1: worried about that. And and the Simpsons. The tone of
• 23:04
  Speaker 1: The Simpsons was being thought of by all of us
• 23:09
  Speaker 1: as we were starting figuring out what the show was,
• 23:12
  Speaker 1: and it was growing exponentially with every idea and uh,
• 23:18
  Speaker 1: all the premises that were laying down and all the
• 23:20
  Speaker 1: characters that we were developing. And the very first script
• 23:23
  Speaker 1: that we wrote while and I wrote it was called
• 23:25
  Speaker 1: Homer's Odyssey, and it was the very first script that
• 23:27
  Speaker 1: existed for The Simpsons. It was not there was no
• 23:30
  Speaker 1: pilot script.
• 23:30
  Speaker 2: It was just like we're running a season.
• 23:32
  Speaker 1: Yeah, one of many in the pipeline, but ours was
• 23:35
  Speaker 1: the first and our first script. I think Homer was
• 23:38
  Speaker 1: called Homer, but Marge's called Juliette really because she didn't
• 23:41
  Speaker 1: have a name. Yeah, it was Homer and Juliette because
• 23:43
  Speaker 1: we were we were trying to be cute.
• 23:45
  Speaker 2: So they hadn't named the characters. But that's crazy.
• 23:47
  Speaker 1: Now mother, father, brother, sister, baby, I think that they were.
• 23:53
  Speaker 1: They were.
• 23:53
  Speaker 2: So the story of when, uh you know, Matt says
• 23:55
  Speaker 2: that when I went into pitch the idea to Fox
• 23:57
  Speaker 2: and You, I had to quickly think of the names
• 23:58
  Speaker 2: of the of the characters and quickly write them down.
• 24:00
  Speaker 2: I went in and I pitched the idea.
• 24:02
  Speaker 1: Didn't happen, right, He may he may have had those
• 24:05
  Speaker 1: and then that, but you didn't tell us. Yeah, and
• 24:08
  Speaker 1: when we're doing the shorts on the Tracy owned show,
• 24:10
  Speaker 1: they didn't. Really. Bart may have had a name. I mean,
• 24:13
  Speaker 1: a lot of characters didn't have names, including Marge, so
• 24:17
  Speaker 1: we just made one up. But that's not the one
• 24:19
  Speaker 1: that stuck. Turns out Matt wanted to honor his family,
• 24:23
  Speaker 1: so he did.
• 24:24
  Speaker 3: You were the big men on campus in the Simpsons
• 24:26
  Speaker 3: his room. But is there a reset when you move
• 24:28
  Speaker 3: on to different projects, or if you gathered enough sort
• 24:31
  Speaker 3: of clout and credibility when you move on to say
• 24:33
  Speaker 3: something like Fraser.
• 24:34
  Speaker 1: Every time you go to a grand new show, you're
• 24:35
  Speaker 1: the logo. It's the same thing. You clam up and
• 24:38
  Speaker 1: you figure out how does this room work?
• 24:40
  Speaker 3: Yeah?
• 24:41
  Speaker 1: And who is the person that you really have to
• 24:45
  Speaker 1: pitch to? And who are the assholes? Who're the nice people?
• 24:49
  Speaker 1: And who are my friends? And who are going to
• 24:51
  Speaker 1: be the people I'm not gonna like? And like, you know,
• 24:54
  Speaker 1: what's what's the tone going to be? So and especially
• 24:57
  Speaker 1: on a show that's been on for a couple of years.
• 24:59
  Speaker 1: I and I've got on a Frasier. It had been
• 25:02
  Speaker 1: on for many years. So I'm walking into a Emmy
• 25:05
  Speaker 1: winning TV show that people's going All I can do
• 25:08
  Speaker 1: when I show up is ruin it. That's the only
• 25:10
  Speaker 1: thing I could do to change things. So you want
• 25:13
  Speaker 1: to be very careful, listen to what the show is,
• 25:16
  Speaker 1: but then do your best to join in and give
• 25:20
  Speaker 1: them what they need. But you still think it's funny.
• 25:22
  Speaker 1: You know, be true to yourself, give your own ideas,
• 25:26
  Speaker 1: but you know, learn the layer of the land before
• 25:31
  Speaker 1: you start making big suggestions.
• 25:34
  Speaker 2: And trouble did you find as times evolve, comedy evolves?
• 25:39
  Speaker 2: But do you find that writer's rooms tend to sort
• 25:41
  Speaker 2: of stay the same when it comes to the structure
• 25:43
  Speaker 2: and vibe or does every show in every year have
• 25:46
  Speaker 2: its own sort of different vibe in the room.
• 25:49
  Speaker 1: Every show, every show sort of has its own vibe,
• 25:53
  Speaker 1: and it's usually set by the showrunner. So since showrunners
• 25:56
  Speaker 1: are all different people, they're going to have different vibes.
• 25:59
  Speaker 1: The christ Lloyd, Christopher Lloyd, not the actor, the writer
• 26:03
  Speaker 1: who run who ran the Frasier Writer's Room, has a
• 26:07
  Speaker 1: much different vibe than Sam Simon had at the at
• 26:10
  Speaker 1: The Simpsons who had a much different, more different different
• 26:13
  Speaker 1: vibe than Thenard Boomer had at Malcolm in the Middle
• 26:16
  Speaker 1: and uh Bruce Helford had at The Low Pet Show
• 26:21
  Speaker 1: or something like that. They the showrunner sets the tone
• 26:25
  Speaker 1: of the humor, but also just the vibe of what
• 26:29
  Speaker 1: kind of workplaces is. I think everybody who works at
• 26:32
  Speaker 1: any workplace, their bosses set the tone for them. If
• 26:35
  Speaker 1: their boss is a grouch who is you know, hates
• 26:38
  Speaker 1: his life, he's gonna make sure you hate your life.
• 26:40
  Speaker 1: And if their boss is a sort of Fezziwigs style
• 26:44
  Speaker 1: lovely man, then your life will be much more lovely too.
• 26:47
  Speaker 1: So you hope when you get a job that you
• 26:50
  Speaker 1: find the fezziwigs of the world.
• 26:53
  Speaker 2: What what best described Sam Simon's vibe?
• 26:57
  Speaker 1: Uh? Wow, that's a great question. I mean, Samsung is genius,
• 27:05
  Speaker 1: so really funny, but also just a little bit angry.
• 27:10
  Speaker 1: So uh uh and by I say this as someone
• 27:16
  Speaker 1: who loved him dearly, I love Samsung like a brother.
• 27:19
  Speaker 1: But he he could be really angry. He could scream
• 27:21
  Speaker 1: at you at the top of his lungs. It was
• 27:23
  Speaker 1: he was not shy about overreacting to a million things.
• 27:28
  Speaker 1: But he's also really smart and really funny, and he
• 27:32
  Speaker 1: could be as ferocious as he could be. He could
• 27:34
  Speaker 1: also be like a lamb at times. But so it
• 27:39
  Speaker 1: was kind of the vibe is mercurial. What's the weather
• 27:42
  Speaker 1: like when you watch into Sam? Is he is he
• 27:44
  Speaker 1: good Sam? Or is he not good Sam? Uh? And
• 27:48
  Speaker 1: so that's that's the kind of you're walking on eggshells
• 27:51
  Speaker 1: a little bit when you're dealing with him.
• 27:52
  Speaker 2: I think that's a difference between angry and angry for
• 27:55
  Speaker 2: the right raisins.
• 27:56
  Speaker 1: Though Okay, no, he was not angry for the right reasons.
• 27:58
  Speaker 2: He wasn't.
• 27:59
  Speaker 1: No, No, I mean sometimes he was, but sometimes he wasn't.
• 28:03
  Speaker 1: I don't you know, he had he you know, every
• 28:06
  Speaker 1: we're all products of our childhood, so in his childhood
• 28:09
  Speaker 1: he learned to be quick to anger and then but
• 28:13
  Speaker 1: he's also really, really smart and funny, So I don't know.
• 28:16
  Speaker 3: Yeah, it was a bad to ask him. Would there
• 28:17
  Speaker 3: be times when you feel like I shouldn't be taking
• 28:19
  Speaker 3: this personally? I know it's office hours here, but I'm
• 28:21
  Speaker 3: kind of taking this personally.
• 28:24
  Speaker 1: I think the trick to surviving a show like that
• 28:26
  Speaker 1: is not taking things personally. Sure, So, like he's just saying, like,
• 28:29
  Speaker 1: you know, Sam's in a bad mood, doesn't mean I'm horrible.
• 28:34
  Speaker 1: If there he's screaming at you for writing the shittiest
• 28:37
  Speaker 1: script in the world. It's hard not to hear that
• 28:41
  Speaker 1: as a writer and go like, oh, is it really
• 28:42
  Speaker 1: the shittiest script of the world. But and sometimes he's right.
• 28:46
  Speaker 1: Maybe sometimes you've written something bad, But most of the
• 28:49
  Speaker 1: time he's just engaging you in the way he likes
• 28:52
  Speaker 1: to engage.
• 28:52
  Speaker 2: When you say angry, then do you mean angry because
• 28:56
  Speaker 2: you haven't written a joke the way he wanted? Or
• 28:58
  Speaker 2: is he just in a bad mood because something happened
• 28:59
  Speaker 2: now out of work and he brought it with him
• 29:01
  Speaker 2: to the office.
• 29:02
  Speaker 1: I mean, he could lash out it for you for anything,
• 29:05
  Speaker 1: any reason at all. So like I remember walking down
• 29:09
  Speaker 1: with Sam down the twentieth century Fox Walkway and then
• 29:13
  Speaker 1: guy ran into him said hey Sam, and then and
• 29:16
  Speaker 1: Sam just started screaming at him. I was like, Hey Sam,
• 29:18
  Speaker 1: you're gonna say hey Sam to me? And then and
• 29:20
  Speaker 1: then he walked. They had this little tiff, and then
• 29:22
  Speaker 1: they walked along and then Sam said, you see what
• 29:24
  Speaker 1: he said to me? I said, Sam, he said nothing
• 29:26
  Speaker 1: to you. The guy just said, hello, you heard you
• 29:30
  Speaker 1: heard something else you heard I'm going to kill you.
• 29:32
  Speaker 1: But what he said was have a nice day. And
• 29:35
  Speaker 1: you know, I don't know why you react the way
• 29:37
  Speaker 1: you did, But they said, really I did, Like he
• 29:39
  Speaker 1: really had had a messed up sense of who was
• 29:44
  Speaker 1: coming at him and who was not coming at it.
• 29:46
  Speaker 2: I find that this so interesting because you never hear
• 29:48
  Speaker 2: these stories best Sam, obviously because he's passed and if
• 29:50
  Speaker 2: they want to talk positively of him. But I think
• 29:52
  Speaker 2: it's interesting to hear that there's a reason he was
• 29:54
  Speaker 2: so successful because he I guess, he got shit done
• 29:56
  Speaker 2: and he wanted things done his way. And you gotta
• 29:59
  Speaker 2: have a bit of mongol you, I guess.
• 30:01
  Speaker 1: He absolutely want to get shit done and want to
• 30:03
  Speaker 1: get shit done his way. He's also and this can't
• 30:06
  Speaker 1: be this is not a small thing. One of the
• 30:09
  Speaker 1: great audiences of the world. So, like he knew who
• 30:12
  Speaker 1: is funny. He loved to laugh. When somebody wrote something,
• 30:15
  Speaker 1: he would like laugh hysterically. So he loved people, good
• 30:19
  Speaker 1: people and good things. When when they hit him right,
• 30:22
  Speaker 1: he was fantastic. So he found all the writers of
• 30:25
  Speaker 1: the Simpsons. He found all his people and appreciated them.
• 30:28
  Speaker 1: And so if that was one of the great writing
• 30:31
  Speaker 1: staffs of all time, which some people claim it was,
• 30:35
  Speaker 1: it's cause Sam found those people.
• 30:36
  Speaker 3: I don't mean this to be a leading question, Jay,
• 30:39
  Speaker 3: but I mean it seems like the kind of behavior
• 30:42
  Speaker 3: that you're talking about with Sam there is becoming less
• 30:44
  Speaker 3: and less tolerated in show business. Is the work diminished
• 30:49
  Speaker 3: as a result? Bet does better work get created if
• 30:54
  Speaker 3: some heads getting kicked? Metaphorically speaking, I mean I would
• 30:58
  Speaker 3: say no, I don't. I run shows before it, and
• 31:00
  Speaker 3: I don't kick in people's heads.
• 31:02
  Speaker 1: I try to. I try to give a very warm, welcoming,
• 31:06
  Speaker 1: kind loving environment for people to feel safe to pitch
• 31:10
  Speaker 1: their best work. You know, satun Lahib is a pretty
• 31:14
  Speaker 1: rough and tumble place and people manage to survive that.
• 31:18
  Speaker 1: It's a very light, cutthroat, you know, pit people against
• 31:21
  Speaker 1: each other kind of place. So some great work gets
• 31:24
  Speaker 1: done there. But my favorite kind of work is when
• 31:27
  Speaker 1: everyone helps everybody. When when somebody writes something, everybody else
• 31:32
  Speaker 1: chips in to make that better, and then the cast
• 31:34
  Speaker 1: chips in to make that better, and everybody tries to
• 31:37
  Speaker 1: make everybody look good. That's that's magic. That's I had
• 31:40
  Speaker 1: that at certain places. It was like that. At Frasier
• 31:44
  Speaker 1: it was like that, and and honestly it was like that.
• 31:47
  Speaker 1: It's The Simpsons. You know, all the writers really put
• 31:50
  Speaker 1: in great jokes in everybody's script. So when you know,
• 31:52
  Speaker 1: you talk about Last Exit to Springfield, that's something that
• 31:56
  Speaker 1: was written by me and Wally, but also written by
• 31:59
  Speaker 1: ten other people.
• 32:00
  Speaker 3: It's probably difficult to review your own work in terms
• 32:04
  Speaker 3: of ideas and themes and that. But when it comes
• 32:05
  Speaker 3: to The Simpsons, were there certain things that you found
• 32:08
  Speaker 3: you and Wally came back to like you wanted to explore.
• 32:11
  Speaker 3: I mean, these could be like big overriding ideas about
• 32:13
  Speaker 3: community in society or just about family dynamics and character
• 32:16
  Speaker 3: interaction to mean.
• 32:17
  Speaker 1: We were just trying to mind our childhoods for things
• 32:20
  Speaker 1: that we thought were fun and interesting. Also, we were
• 32:23
  Speaker 1: just trying to sell. The way you got an episode
• 32:26
  Speaker 1: is you pitched an idea to Sam or Matt or
• 32:31
  Speaker 1: Jim Brooks, and so you would think about, like, I'm
• 32:35
  Speaker 1: want to write two to three episodes this season, and
• 32:39
  Speaker 1: then we had we had we had sort of weeks
• 32:43
  Speaker 1: where we would a few several few days where this
• 32:46
  Speaker 1: we do a story conference out off lot. We go
• 32:50
  Speaker 1: to a hotel room and we just pitched stories. And
• 32:52
  Speaker 1: so at that point we sort of had ideas. I
• 32:55
  Speaker 1: had a bunch of ideas from that are written down,
• 32:57
  Speaker 1: while he had some ideas written down, and I would
• 33:00
  Speaker 1: pitch it to Sam, and Sam go, oh, that's the
• 33:01
  Speaker 1: shittiest idea in the world. And then I will I
• 33:05
  Speaker 1: turned to Jim Brooks during lunch and said, oh, do
• 33:07
  Speaker 1: you think this one, Jim? And if he liked it,
• 33:09
  Speaker 1: I sold it. Sam had it do it, and so
• 33:12
  Speaker 1: I was able to push the things. So it's the
• 33:14
  Speaker 1: idea like the jazz singer, we ripped off the jazz
• 33:17
  Speaker 1: singer and made Krusty for Krusty gets busted. I guess
• 33:20
  Speaker 1: it was a U and I was like father, like
• 33:24
  Speaker 1: cloud and and that was an idea that Sam hated,
• 33:29
  Speaker 1: Matt hated. But then I went to Jim and Jim liked.
• 33:31
  Speaker 1: I said, we gotta do it, so you know, and
• 33:35
  Speaker 1: that idea why I don't want to do that, I
• 33:37
  Speaker 1: don't know. I just thought it's funny to do a
• 33:39
  Speaker 1: weird show busy story with the weird cloud. So it
• 33:42
  Speaker 1: it's things that made me laugh or I thought was interesting.
• 33:46
  Speaker 1: Barta Daredelvill came about because we used to see these
• 33:49
  Speaker 1: ads for truck Asaurus. There is this giant truck that
• 33:54
  Speaker 1: I couldn't figure out why people were going to see
• 33:56
  Speaker 1: it in the stadium, this monster robot truck, but people
• 34:00
  Speaker 1: loved it, and so we, uh, we just made fun
• 34:03
  Speaker 1: of that. And Evil Knievel was a big thing in
• 34:05
  Speaker 1: our childhood too, so we made a fake Evil can Eevil.
• 34:08
  Speaker 1: I don't even know when we were doing the nineteen nineties.
• 34:11
  Speaker 1: Evil Canel probably didn't wasn't doing anything, and kids that
• 34:13
  Speaker 1: era probably have no idea. There wasn't Evil can Eevil.
• 34:16
  Speaker 1: But that's the guy that we were. We were making fun.
• 34:19
  Speaker 2: We'd heard the name. We probably didn't know who he was,
• 34:22
  Speaker 2: but he'd become a point with if you did something silly,
• 34:24
  Speaker 2: you mom and dad would say, who you think you are? Evil?
• 34:26
  Speaker 3: It's just right.
• 34:27
  Speaker 2: It was a brand by that point.
• 34:29
  Speaker 1: Sure, So I mean crazy lunatic, mostly drunk guy I
• 34:35
  Speaker 1: don't even know, but I was like, we he jumped
• 34:37
  Speaker 1: over things on his motorcycle. That seemed like if you're
• 34:42
  Speaker 1: if you're nine years old, that seems like a really
• 34:44
  Speaker 1: cool job. So you're very interested in jumping over things
• 34:48
  Speaker 1: on your bike, and that was that was fun for us,
• 34:50
  Speaker 1: So we mind that, we mind other things. We also
• 34:54
  Speaker 1: knew that if we had a good Lisa episode or
• 34:57
  Speaker 1: a March episode, a lot of the other riders, who
• 35:00
  Speaker 1: were let's say say very spectromy who not great with
• 35:05
  Speaker 1: email relationships, didn't want to touch the women characters metaphorically
• 35:10
  Speaker 1: and not possibly physically, that we weren't servicing those characters.
• 35:14
  Speaker 1: So if we had a good Lisa story or March story,
• 35:16
  Speaker 1: we knew that's a sale. We could get that then,
• 35:19
  Speaker 1: you know, so we would we would, we would think
• 35:23
  Speaker 1: about that too. Those were fund for us ride.
• 35:25
  Speaker 2: I know MEMI wrote the part what became the part
• 35:28
  Speaker 2: of the Simincess Open Fire. Why do you think there
• 35:31
  Speaker 2: was a real lack of female voice in that writer's
• 35:35
  Speaker 2: room in the beginning.
• 35:35
  Speaker 1: There a couple of reasons. One is, you know, it's misogyny, honestly.
• 35:41
  Speaker 1: I mean in nineteen ninety there were a few women writers,
• 35:46
  Speaker 1: but there weren't a lot of men. Weren't seeking out
• 35:49
  Speaker 1: the voice of women for these things. It was boys club,
• 35:53
  Speaker 1: mostly white guys. You know, it's like there's a lot
• 35:55
  Speaker 1: of there was no there was no diversity being sought after,
• 36:02
  Speaker 1: so it was so there was definitely misogyny. The pool
• 36:07
  Speaker 1: of writers that Sam was looking for was a very
• 36:10
  Speaker 1: limited pool. Was like this, there was a magazine called
• 36:14
  Speaker 1: Army Man that was being self made, and more than
• 36:18
  Speaker 1: half the writers in that Simpsons room came from Army Man.
• 36:22
  Speaker 1: And there were mostly guys except for like Merrion Marco
• 36:24
  Speaker 1: who didn't want to work in the Simpsons. So like
• 36:27
  Speaker 1: there's like mostly guys. So that that's the main reason
• 36:30
  Speaker 1: was the limited view of the pool of writers and
• 36:36
  Speaker 1: the lack of wanting to make a diverse staff was
• 36:40
  Speaker 1: why there weren't a lot of women writers then.
• 36:42
  Speaker 2: So you said you were good at writing. March at
• 36:44
  Speaker 2: least the stories you guys to those because the others didn't.
• 36:46
  Speaker 2: When you didn't have that female voice in the writer's room,
• 36:48
  Speaker 2: did you ever seek did you ever run and buy
• 36:50
  Speaker 2: a female friend of yours whatever and say, hey, what
• 36:52
  Speaker 2: do you think of this idea? Did you have a
• 36:53
  Speaker 2: chancetick advice from female associates of yours to see whether
• 36:56
  Speaker 2: you were getting that female voice right in your script?
• 36:59
  Speaker 1: No? No, I mean I don't know. I mean I
• 37:02
  Speaker 1: didn't run. I didn't run mister Burns's lines by an
• 37:04
  Speaker 1: evil man either, like I didn't. It's it's being a
• 37:08
  Speaker 1: writer means that that you imagine in your head what
• 37:12
  Speaker 1: the characters are like. And accuracy isn't really the goal.
• 37:16
  Speaker 1: The goal is entertainment and and and the feeling of legitimacy.
• 37:21
  Speaker 1: And you know, I don't I'm I'm I'm against the
• 37:27
  Speaker 1: way things are right now. To sell a show, you
• 37:29
  Speaker 1: just have to say it was my authentic experience, this
• 37:32
  Speaker 1: happened to me. And that goes against everything I believe
• 37:34
  Speaker 1: as a writer. As a writer, you have created freedom
• 37:37
  Speaker 1: to write anything. I should be able to write spy
• 37:39
  Speaker 1: novels and I should be able to write romance novels,
• 37:42
  Speaker 1: and I should be able to write a show about
• 37:45
  Speaker 1: a teenage girl who's also falls in love with alien.
• 37:49
  Speaker 1: And none of those things happened to me, but as
• 37:52
  Speaker 1: a writer, I get to write them, and so uh
• 37:55
  Speaker 1: and and I don't think that a female writer needs
• 37:58
  Speaker 1: to check with me to write a male character. I mean,
• 38:01
  Speaker 1: I don't think that's what we do. We have to
• 38:04
  Speaker 1: we have experience. I have experience of females in my life,
• 38:08
  Speaker 1: and I have experiences of evil people in my life.
• 38:11
  Speaker 1: And I have experience of moments when I felt like
• 38:14
  Speaker 1: I was an evil genius even though I wasn't doing
• 38:17
  Speaker 1: mister Burns style evil. But like, we all know what
• 38:20
  Speaker 1: it's like to be angry but not angry enough to murder,
• 38:22
  Speaker 1: or angry or fall in love but not fall in
• 38:25
  Speaker 1: love like Romeo and Juliet. We can. We know these
• 38:27
  Speaker 1: emotions and we tap into them for our writing, and
• 38:30
  Speaker 1: writing is for making things that are even more interesting
• 38:33
  Speaker 1: and fabulous than your real life. So the fact that
• 38:37
  Speaker 1: it doesn't necessarily specifically be authentic, I don't buy that.
• 38:43
  Speaker 2: Oh, don't think you watched those first seasons of The
• 38:45
  Speaker 2: Simpsons and think there was a lack of female of
• 38:47
  Speaker 2: what you don't. It doesn't feel like it's coming across
• 38:50
  Speaker 2: poorly by any means.
• 38:51
  Speaker 1: Yeah. No, And if there was something that you're like
• 38:53
  Speaker 1: really doing the cultural episode about Jewish people or something else,
• 38:57
  Speaker 1: then we like we did while and I we did,
• 39:00
  Speaker 1: like fatherlike land about a rabbi. I went and talked
• 39:03
  Speaker 1: to rabbis and I said, is this real? Would this happen?
• 39:06
  Speaker 1: What are some things that I could use that are
• 39:09
  Speaker 1: real from the culture, And so you do research from that,
• 39:12
  Speaker 1: or you do research about Italians, or you do research
• 39:15
  Speaker 1: about any other culture, and you try and you know,
• 39:18
  Speaker 1: be as accurate as you can and bring forth things
• 39:21
  Speaker 1: that people like. And it does help these days if
• 39:26
  Speaker 1: you are doing something about someone from a certain culture
• 39:29
  Speaker 1: that that person of that culture is on the writing staff,
• 39:33
  Speaker 1: I think people feel better about it. But I don't
• 39:35
  Speaker 1: think it's necessarily the only way to do it. I
• 39:38
  Speaker 1: would recommend a diverse writing staff. But if you want,
• 39:41
  Speaker 1: if I wanted to make a show about Inoit people,
• 39:46
  Speaker 1: I still can do that. If I can't find an
• 39:48
  Speaker 1: Inoit writer available to me who's really funny to hire
• 39:52
  Speaker 1: on staff, I might be able to still do enough
• 39:54
  Speaker 1: research to do them proud to make something that's true
• 39:59
  Speaker 1: to into it.
• 40:01
  Speaker 3: Write what you know is very reductive, but you've got
• 40:03
  Speaker 3: to add write what you want to know as well.
• 40:05
  Speaker 1: Well. The worst thing every starting out writer rates is
• 40:09
  Speaker 1: it's about a play, right, trying to figure out how
• 40:10
  Speaker 1: to write a play, and like, I want to shoot
• 40:13
  Speaker 1: myself every time I read that first draft the writer's
• 40:16
  Speaker 1: first thing, and it's very authentic to who they are.
• 40:18
  Speaker 1: It's like, it's just boring and and cliche. So, yeah,
• 40:24
  Speaker 1: what give me something more interesting?
• 40:26
  Speaker 2: You're talking about the success of The Simpsons sort of
• 40:29
  Speaker 2: was a part of the fact that you guys had
• 40:31
  Speaker 2: this underdog mentality of what desn't to fail? When you
• 40:35
  Speaker 2: realize that you weren't going to fail that this is
• 40:37
  Speaker 2: arguably the biggest show on television. Did the mentality shift
• 40:40
  Speaker 2: in the writer's room? Did the vibe change? What was
• 40:44
  Speaker 2: it like?
• 40:45
  Speaker 1: I mean, we were shocked, we were thrilled and shocked.
• 40:47
  Speaker 1: We were having fun, so it meant, oh, we'll get
• 40:50
  Speaker 1: to make more. This is fantastic. We get to make
• 40:52
  Speaker 1: more fantastic. And further, people were liking the jokes, were like,
• 41:00
  Speaker 1: what was making us laugh must be making some other
• 41:02
  Speaker 1: people laugh. So that's very life affirming to us. So
• 41:06
  Speaker 1: that was great. So we wanted to continue making really
• 41:09
  Speaker 1: funny shows that people would like. I'll tell you about
• 41:14
  Speaker 1: the end of the first year or season two, we
• 41:18
  Speaker 1: got a polling some data from Fox who said, you know,
• 41:23
  Speaker 1: because we thought people love our our insightful wit and
• 41:27
  Speaker 1: all the detailed jokes and the references to Kirker Guard
• 41:31
  Speaker 1: and to you know, Citizen Kane or whatever and all this,
• 41:35
  Speaker 1: and Fox gave us data that suggested that the reason
• 41:39
  Speaker 1: people liked The Simpsons was the pretty colors and that
• 41:42
  Speaker 1: people fall down. It was like, fuck, you like that,
• 41:46
  Speaker 1: that's it, and it's true. Then the pretty colors and
• 41:50
  Speaker 1: people fall down is happening while we're making fun of Kirkerguard.
• 41:53
  Speaker 1: So it's okay, but it was very frustrating to think,
• 41:56
  Speaker 1: oh no, We're spending all this time to think of
• 41:58
  Speaker 1: the greatest references and use all these things from pop
• 42:02
  Speaker 1: culture and it doesn't matter. But I guess it does
• 42:05
  Speaker 1: ultimately matter. It did. I think the reason the show
• 42:08
  Speaker 1: survived for that long is it mattered. And those other
• 42:11
  Speaker 1: cartoons do the same thing. If a family guys all
• 42:14
  Speaker 1: references and South Park is all pop references, So I
• 42:19
  Speaker 1: think we're not alone.
• 42:21
  Speaker 2: Who were you writing it for. We're running it for
• 42:22
  Speaker 2: the younger audience or the older audience. You yourself are
• 42:25
  Speaker 2: for ourselves.
• 42:26
  Speaker 1: Yeah, we didn't think young people or actually kids should
• 42:30
  Speaker 1: be watching the show. It was definitely not made for kids,
• 42:32
  Speaker 1: so we asked kids not to watch it. Of course
• 42:35
  Speaker 1: that fell on on deaf ears because it's a cartoon.
• 42:39
  Speaker 1: What of course kids are going to watch it. So
• 42:41
  Speaker 1: we kept doing things as if kids weren't watching it,
• 42:44
  Speaker 1: and eventually we had to realize kids are watching it,
• 42:46
  Speaker 1: and we have to watch what we say and what
• 42:48
  Speaker 1: we do. But we were literally exclusively writing it for ourselves.
• 42:52
  Speaker 2: But there were some dark themes in that first season,
• 42:54
  Speaker 2: Like you said, Homers Odyssey, Homa is going to commit suicide.
• 42:57
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and we were trying to we were something dark.
• 43:00
  Speaker 2: That's one of the darkest episodes in the history of
• 43:02
  Speaker 2: the show.
• 43:03
  Speaker 1: I agree. We just we just started out to go
• 43:05
  Speaker 1: and start start with a.
• 43:06
  Speaker 2: Bang, yes.
• 43:09
  Speaker 1: Uh, and go from there.
• 43:11
  Speaker 3: Having said that, Jay, I mean, I personally just wanted
• 43:14
  Speaker 3: to give you a shout out for Old Money, an
• 43:17
  Speaker 3: episode that you that you and Wally right, I mean,
• 43:20
  Speaker 3: dignity on dignity on me, is one of my favorite
• 43:22
  Speaker 3: lines from any movie or TV episode. Ever, as far as.
• 43:26
  Speaker 2: I'm concerned, he's not bullshiting. He mentions it on the
• 43:27
  Speaker 2: podcast all the time.
• 43:29
  Speaker 1: I have no idea if I wrote it or somebody
• 43:30
  Speaker 1: else wrote it, but I thank you on behalf of
• 43:33
  Speaker 1: the many people who could have written it.
• 43:34
  Speaker 3: And it's not necessarily aimed at a youthful audience one moment, our.
• 43:40
  Speaker 1: Shows weren't aimed. It aimed at anybody but ourselves for
• 43:43
  Speaker 1: the most words. And so, but aging isn't It is
• 43:46
  Speaker 1: a real thing, and dying is a real thing. And
• 43:49
  Speaker 1: you know all that. It's it's uh, gambling is a
• 43:52
  Speaker 1: real thing. Uh, it's all, it's all, It's all there.
• 43:55
  Speaker 2: When it came to the pop culture references you would
• 43:57
  Speaker 2: be making, though, was there a quite of how popular
• 44:00
  Speaker 2: it had to be or was it just something you
• 44:02
  Speaker 2: knew You didn't care, you were writing the show for you.
• 44:04
  Speaker 2: It's going in if you thought it was funny, and
• 44:05
  Speaker 2: James thought it was funny.
• 44:07
  Speaker 3: We.
• 44:09
  Speaker 1: Uh, it had to pass the muster of the room,
• 44:12
  Speaker 1: like we thought enough enough of our audience would know
• 44:16
  Speaker 1: it should that should be the rule. Not nobody knows
• 44:19
  Speaker 1: it shouldn't be so niche that only John Ved knows it.
• 44:22
  Speaker 1: It should be. It should be enough that enough people
• 44:25
  Speaker 1: understand either the context through context or the specific to
• 44:30
  Speaker 1: get the joke. So yeah, it couldn't be just anything.
• 44:33
  Speaker 1: And it had to make a room full of nerdy
• 44:36
  Speaker 1: you know, I don't know how many there were anytime.
• 44:38
  Speaker 1: Maybe start out with seven of us and grew to
• 44:41
  Speaker 1: be twelve or something, but it had to make most
• 44:44
  Speaker 1: of us laugh.
• 44:45
  Speaker 3: Well, that's the thing. Even if you're not one hundred
• 44:46
  Speaker 3: percent familiar with The Godfather Part two or Yellow Submarine,
• 44:50
  Speaker 3: you know, the Beetles, you know enough about American cinema,
• 44:53
  Speaker 3: enough people know about these kinds of things that these
• 44:56
  Speaker 3: gags in last aeg. Of Springfield are gonna land. They're
• 44:59
  Speaker 3: gonna hit to some degree or to bearing degrees with
• 45:02
  Speaker 3: bearing members.
• 45:02
  Speaker 1: I mean, I felt pretty safe with Godfather references. This
• 45:05
  Speaker 1: is one of the most seen movies of all time,
• 45:08
  Speaker 1: and certainly back then, maybe less so now.
• 45:10
  Speaker 3: But getting him as granular as making him like Don Ferucci,
• 45:14
  Speaker 3: and you know, he's sort of grabbing stuff off there,
• 45:15
  Speaker 3: heaus off cards and all things, and well the band
• 45:19
  Speaker 3: all that's kind of stuff.
• 45:19
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 45:20
  Speaker 2: In saying that, though, I grew up in the nineties.
• 45:22
  Speaker 2: I was born in eighty eight, so as a kid,
• 45:24
  Speaker 2: I literally had no idea what was going on here.
• 45:26
  Speaker 2: I didn't know who the Godfather. I didn't know. I
• 45:28
  Speaker 2: didn't get the Batman reference with the mirror, right, I
• 45:30
  Speaker 2: didn't get any of this stuff. It's too young, right,
• 45:33
  Speaker 2: but you knew but it was funny enough you knew
• 45:35
  Speaker 2: it was something.
• 45:36
  Speaker 1: It's like what kids do when they do six seven now.
• 45:39
  Speaker 1: It's like they're laughing at something but they don't know
• 45:41
  Speaker 1: what it is. Yea, And that's fine, But that's not
• 45:43
  Speaker 1: as satisfying to me as a writer as people laughing
• 45:46
  Speaker 1: at something that they know what it is. So I
• 45:49
  Speaker 1: would rather they recognize Don Ferucci and think that's really
• 45:52
  Speaker 1: funny that that's what we're doing, rather than just say
• 45:55
  Speaker 1: it's something. Now. When I grew up, I read now
• 45:59
  Speaker 1: magazine parodies of movies I'd never seen, and at least
• 46:02
  Speaker 1: i'd read them all. I saw Looney Tune cartoons, Warner
• 46:05
  Speaker 1: Brothers cartoons, also talking about movies. Henry Bargat movies The
• 46:10
  Speaker 1: Petrified Forest or something I also never seen, and so
• 46:13
  Speaker 1: I understood what humor could be from context. But when
• 46:18
  Speaker 1: I got older and knew the reference, they were better,
• 46:21
  Speaker 1: So I think I think they're better when you know.
• 46:23
  Speaker 2: But I think the Simpsons My point was sort of
• 46:25
  Speaker 2: more that I think the Simpsons introduced a whole generation
• 46:28
  Speaker 2: of us in the nineties to these pop cultural icons.
• 46:31
  Speaker 1: Yeah, but I'm the point is the same for the
• 46:33
  Speaker 1: for the World Looney Tunes, and for Mad Magazine. Like
• 46:36
  Speaker 1: I'm going to go see Lawrence of Arabia because I
• 46:39
  Speaker 1: read it in Mad Magazine and okay, what that movie
• 46:42
  Speaker 1: came out in nine sixty three. I was not alive.
• 46:44
  Speaker 1: So it's like, I'm gonna I'm gonna see that because
• 46:46
  Speaker 1: I read the parody and I'm going to try and
• 46:48
  Speaker 1: figure out what that song is that Frank Jacobs is
• 46:52
  Speaker 1: doing a parody of. I'm reading it, so I like,
• 46:55
  Speaker 1: what's that? What's the real song? So it inspires me
• 46:58
  Speaker 1: to go look for better references in my.
• 47:01
  Speaker 2: Life with Last Exit the Springfield. So the idea I've read,
• 47:04
  Speaker 2: I've read that that of the plant going a strike
• 47:06
  Speaker 2: came from Mike Reese. Is that that's correct? Uh?
• 47:09
  Speaker 1: Well, Mike said, so I don't I don't know that
• 47:12
  Speaker 1: that's true, but okay.
• 47:13
  Speaker 2: But what were your thoughts when you were first pitched
• 47:15
  Speaker 2: this idea or was it was it an idea that
• 47:17
  Speaker 2: you and Wally came up with, Like, how how did
• 47:19
  Speaker 2: this come about? This, this particular story.
• 47:21
  Speaker 1: I mean I think they they may have said we
• 47:22
  Speaker 1: want to do a strike episode. Yeah, that may have.
• 47:25
  Speaker 1: That may have been discussed first. So, I mean, I
• 47:29
  Speaker 1: have no reason to doubt Mike Grease. I mean, he's
• 47:31
  Speaker 1: a goddamn liar about everything else.
• 47:32
  Speaker 2: But that's one thing you never went on. That submarine
• 47:35
  Speaker 2: never happened exactly.
• 47:36
  Speaker 1: No, No, I mean it could be, but that that
• 47:39
  Speaker 1: that seems like a very reasonable story. Like Homer's Odyssey
• 47:43
  Speaker 1: is basically very almost a strike like an episode. It's
• 47:47
  Speaker 1: the Homer Homer almost takes down the plant because he's
• 47:50
  Speaker 1: a safety inspector. So it's similar to that.
• 47:52
  Speaker 2: It's almost like an origin story that episode for Homer,
• 47:54
  Speaker 2: isn't it. Yeah, how he comes to safety inspector? Yeah?
• 47:57
  Speaker 1: Right. But also there's a you know, we had been
• 48:02
  Speaker 1: on strike, the writers. I had been at least one
• 48:05
  Speaker 1: strike by the time we're doing the last exit episode,
• 48:08
  Speaker 1: and my father had been on strike many times. So
• 48:11
  Speaker 1: I was very aware. We're very pro union family, you know,
• 48:15
  Speaker 1: I was Writers Guild WGA member before I was born,
• 48:18
  Speaker 1: and so it's like, you know, I'm a member. I'm
• 48:20
  Speaker 1: literally a member of now five or six unions. So
• 48:23
  Speaker 1: like I'm a big mean union guy, whether I want
• 48:26
  Speaker 1: to be or not. And so we're we're we're fans
• 48:29
  Speaker 1: of unions.
• 48:30
  Speaker 2: It's not necessarily a funny concept, though, though the plant
• 48:33
  Speaker 2: goes on strike and how do you approach this and go,
• 48:35
  Speaker 2: how do we make this funnier?
• 48:38
  Speaker 1: I would say that anything that's a dramatic subject is
• 48:41
  Speaker 1: also a comedy subject. There's no subject that couldn't be funny,
• 48:46
  Speaker 1: and I don't care what it is. It's anything. If
• 48:49
  Speaker 1: it's like somebody's somebody's diagnosed with a deadly disease, if
• 48:53
  Speaker 1: somebody is is trying to hunt for the murderer of
• 48:57
  Speaker 1: his father. You can make anything funny if you choose
• 49:01
  Speaker 1: to find the humor in any particular situation of the
• 49:05
  Speaker 1: absurdity or the weirdness or all those things. But you
• 49:08
  Speaker 1: do need a good story no matter what, And a
• 49:11
  Speaker 1: good story means there's going to be real conflict and
• 49:13
  Speaker 1: real drama at the heart of every story. When Homer
• 49:16
  Speaker 1: invites the Daredevil, when Homer's afraid his kid is going
• 49:20
  Speaker 1: to kill himself on a skateboard. That's not funny. You know,
• 49:25
  Speaker 1: it's not funny. It's real. It's like you're worried that
• 49:27
  Speaker 1: your kid is he is getting the wrong message from
• 49:30
  Speaker 1: daredevils and putting his life in danger. There's nothing funny
• 49:32
  Speaker 1: about that. However, we could make it funny by pointing
• 49:36
  Speaker 1: up the absurd level of things and how kids don't
• 49:39
  Speaker 1: really understand things that are dangerous, and the idea that
• 49:43
  Speaker 1: there's a popular guy who jumps over things is ridiculous too.
• 49:47
  Speaker 1: So like if you just highlight put a spotlight on
• 49:49
  Speaker 1: the stupid of America or culture in general, you'll find
• 49:54
  Speaker 1: what's funny. And there's plenty to put a stoplight to
• 49:57
  Speaker 1: put a spotlight on. Well.
• 49:58
  Speaker 3: I mean, this is the story of Framed. In another way,
• 50:01
  Speaker 3: it's a bolshie union organizer versus a capitalist big wig.
• 50:05
  Speaker 3: These two butting heads. They've both got very different drives,
• 50:08
  Speaker 3: different desires, except guy one of them's absolute dumbass, right, So.
• 50:12
  Speaker 1: Like an idiot, an idiot and an evil guy fighting
• 50:16
  Speaker 1: with each other couldn't be funny because you're extreme characters,
• 50:20
  Speaker 1: even though the situation you know, healthcare, salary, dignity at
• 50:26
  Speaker 1: your work. Those are all not necessarily funny things, but
• 50:30
  Speaker 1: that's not the center of the center of the story
• 50:33
  Speaker 1: is the conflict between characters. And if those characters funny
• 50:36
  Speaker 1: and they have funny motivations and they do funny things,
• 50:39
  Speaker 1: then it can be very funny.
• 50:40
  Speaker 2: We're also talking on the emotion as well, and the
• 50:42
  Speaker 2: drive for Homer to do this in the first place
• 50:44
  Speaker 2: is because he wants best for his daughter. That's why
• 50:46
  Speaker 2: he's doing all of this. So and he's sort of
• 50:49
  Speaker 2: all he's doing is big thing, but he's oblivious to
• 50:51
  Speaker 2: it all. And I like the fact that you have
• 50:53
  Speaker 2: the scene just to set up the fact that Burns
• 50:55
  Speaker 2: doesn't remember who he is, so you can have all
• 50:56
  Speaker 2: those moments where Burns is oblivious to the fact that
• 50:59
  Speaker 2: Homer's just a blue idiot as well.
• 51:00
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, I you know, at a certain point
• 51:04
  Speaker 1: it got so stupid for us, even when it says,
• 51:07
  Speaker 1: like Homer Simpson, who is he like? Good? That that joke.
• 51:11
  Speaker 1: We never got tired of that joke, even though it
• 51:13
  Speaker 1: was ridiculous. So I don't know, Yeah, he should be Homer, Marge,
• 51:20
  Speaker 1: the Simpsons family should be on the forefront of mister
• 51:23
  Speaker 1: Burns's mind because he's dealt with them so many times.
• 51:26
  Speaker 1: But in our little universe, he doesn't care about the
• 51:29
  Speaker 1: little Man, so he doesn't.
• 51:31
  Speaker 2: Whenever we talk to Matt Salmon, he always says that
• 51:33
  Speaker 2: each episode should be viewed in its own vacuum, that
• 51:35
  Speaker 2: you shouldn't worry about what comes before. But I think
• 51:37
  Speaker 2: that there has to be some sort of element of continuity,
• 51:40
  Speaker 2: like you're saying, there where Burns probably at this point
• 51:42
  Speaker 2: should know who Himer is.
• 51:44
  Speaker 1: Matt Matt. Matt needs to work in a vacuum. Matt
• 51:47
  Speaker 1: is required. You can't do eight hundred episodes and be
• 51:50
  Speaker 1: really worried about the seven hundred and ninety nine that
• 51:52
  Speaker 1: came before you. Yes, we were on the episodes twenty yeah, forty,
• 51:59
  Speaker 1: very reasonable number than not to be aware of what
• 52:02
  Speaker 1: the universe was for that show. Then it gets into
• 52:04
  Speaker 1: the hundreds, forget about it.
• 52:07
  Speaker 2: When The Simpsons became a success, did you feel off
• 52:10
  Speaker 2: the success yourself?
• 52:11
  Speaker 1: I mean yeah, I mean I've Here's the thing. Everybody,
• 52:16
  Speaker 1: every writer, every actor, everybody I know, we all feel
• 52:19
  Speaker 1: like impostors anyway. We all feel like we don't deserve
• 52:22
  Speaker 1: the success. That we the success that happens to us
• 52:26
  Speaker 1: is dumb luck. And you know, the really good stuff
• 52:31
  Speaker 1: was written by other people or other actors, and there
• 52:34
  Speaker 1: are many more talented people who aren't working and all
• 52:36
  Speaker 1: that stuff is all true. So when you wander through
• 52:39
  Speaker 1: the world knowing that you're just a dumb idiot who
• 52:43
  Speaker 1: got lucky, then when something you're working on is very successful,
• 52:47
  Speaker 1: you go, yes, I got lucky. This is fantastic. And
• 52:50
  Speaker 1: then I don't know if you think, boy, it's because
• 52:55
  Speaker 1: of my genius. I think you just think I'm working
• 52:58
  Speaker 1: with really funny, smart peace people and I should just
• 53:01
  Speaker 1: shut up and let everybody make my work look better.
• 53:05
  Speaker 1: And and I think that's true of most writers and
• 53:08
  Speaker 1: most creative people. It's part of us that thinks were
• 53:10
  Speaker 1: fantastic and a part of us that thinks we're just
• 53:15
  Speaker 1: you know, playing playing game here and hoping that no
• 53:18
  Speaker 1: one discovers us. So when the Simpsons became popular, I
• 53:22
  Speaker 1: was all all in on enjoying the ride. I knew
• 53:26
  Speaker 1: that there was not going to be things like this
• 53:29
  Speaker 1: don't happen. I knew that I've been grown up in
• 53:32
  Speaker 1: show business. I knew things like this don't just happen.
• 53:35
  Speaker 1: You don't get on the show that people are selling
• 53:38
  Speaker 1: T shirts on side of the road, bootleg T shirts.
• 53:42
  Speaker 1: Just it's like I had seen Star Wars happen. That
• 53:46
  Speaker 1: was like Star Wars. Everybody knew who Star Wars, everybody
• 53:49
  Speaker 1: knew what The Simpsons was at that moment, and it
• 53:51
  Speaker 1: was crazy to be in the center of it. But
• 53:55
  Speaker 1: I enjoyed it.
• 53:55
  Speaker 2: Did James and Matt and Sam. Did they let you
• 53:58
  Speaker 2: guys the rotting stuff, let you guys know how important
• 54:03
  Speaker 2: you were to the cog, to the system, or do
• 54:05
  Speaker 2: they want you to sort of feel like you should
• 54:07
  Speaker 2: be thankful to be here, or do they make you
• 54:08
  Speaker 2: feel like you are part of this You're you're part
• 54:11
  Speaker 2: of the reason.
• 54:12
  Speaker 1: Yes, they constantly said that we're knuckleheads who are lucky
• 54:18
  Speaker 1: to be there, and then every now and then said
• 54:20
  Speaker 1: we couldn't do the show without the great writers. So
• 54:22
  Speaker 1: like it would, they would go back and forth all
• 54:25
  Speaker 1: this stuff and what they You know, Jim, Jim believes
• 54:29
  Speaker 1: in writers and writing for sure, Sam does too, Matt
• 54:32
  Speaker 1: does too. I mean, everybody believes in it. But at
• 54:35
  Speaker 1: the same time, it's just like we're just all knuckleheads anyway.
• 54:40
  Speaker 1: I mean, we really were dumb kids. I mean nerdy,
• 54:43
  Speaker 1: smart kids, but idiots in our own way. And so
• 54:47
  Speaker 1: it was a very motley crue. At the very least.
• 54:50
  Speaker 2: We've asked this question to several of the key writing
• 54:53
  Speaker 2: staff of The Simpsons, But did you yourself? Have you
• 54:55
  Speaker 2: ever reflected on and gone I kind of wish I
• 54:57
  Speaker 2: didn't leave.
• 54:58
  Speaker 1: Now I'm really glad I left. I was tired. I
• 55:02
  Speaker 1: was working for five years, no real vacations, nos, NonStop.
• 55:08
  Speaker 1: I'm mining childhood stories after childhood stories. It's starting to
• 55:11
  Speaker 1: get feel the same. And I got a chance to
• 55:15
  Speaker 1: go work for something else and get paid a shit
• 55:18
  Speaker 1: ton of money, So like, all right, well and go
• 55:21
  Speaker 1: on the next adventure. Like part of the thing about
• 55:23
  Speaker 1: being an artist is and again I say the word
• 55:26
  Speaker 1: artists knowing that I'm an idiot, but that's fine. Like
• 55:30
  Speaker 1: part of the journey of trying to lead a creative
• 55:32
  Speaker 1: light is to experience new things and to try new
• 55:35
  Speaker 1: things and put yourself in world of change. And at
• 55:39
  Speaker 1: least that is for me. And that was exciting to
• 55:42
  Speaker 1: try and do that and make our own show. That
• 55:45
  Speaker 1: was an opportunity to make our own show. We spent
• 55:47
  Speaker 1: three years trying to make our own show. We were unsuccessful,
• 55:49
  Speaker 1: but that was fun to try and do too. We
• 55:52
  Speaker 1: learned lessons on how to do it well and some
• 55:54
  Speaker 1: things we didn't want to repeat, and I wanted the
• 55:56
  Speaker 1: opportunity to do it myself. And I've eventually got those opportunities.
• 56:00
  Speaker 1: But it takes branching out and trying new things.
• 56:04
  Speaker 2: Do you think it's important as an artist to never
• 56:07
  Speaker 2: be comfortable.
• 56:09
  Speaker 1: Financially, artistically comfortable.
• 56:11
  Speaker 2: How comfortable in a sense of you know you've got
• 56:14
  Speaker 2: this gig, you don't have to leave, they're not getting
• 56:16
  Speaker 2: it rid of you.
• 56:16
  Speaker 1: Yes, even if you work forever, if you're Al Jean
• 56:20
  Speaker 1: or Matt Sellman and you work on this show and
• 56:23
  Speaker 1: you know you're not going anywhere, it's one of the things.
• 56:26
  Speaker 1: You're still uncomfortable because every episode is tough, and every
• 56:29
  Speaker 1: story breaking is uncomfortable, and there's always going to be
• 56:33
  Speaker 1: days where you're spending like staring at each other saying
• 56:35
  Speaker 1: we can't break the story and this joke doesn't work.
• 56:38
  Speaker 1: Discomfort comes with the process, So I don't think we
• 56:40
  Speaker 1: have the manufactured discomfort to be a good artist. It's
• 56:44
  Speaker 1: part of the process.
• 56:45
  Speaker 3: Figuring me if this sounds like an absolute rookie question, Jay,
• 56:47
  Speaker 3: which it is. But I mean, I'm always curious about
• 56:50
  Speaker 3: the term breaking the story. What exactly do you mean
• 56:52
  Speaker 3: by it?
• 56:53
  Speaker 1: So breaking the story is a term for coming up
• 56:56
  Speaker 1: with a good story. So you come up with an idea,
• 57:00
  Speaker 1: and maybe the idea is that the plant goes on strike,
• 57:05
  Speaker 1: but that's just an idea. That's not the story. The story.
• 57:07
  Speaker 1: Why does the plant go on strike? And why does
• 57:10
  Speaker 1: and how is Homer involved? And what does Homer do
• 57:13
  Speaker 1: to make it work and make it worse? And what
• 57:15
  Speaker 1: happens when that gets is worse? And what are the
• 57:18
  Speaker 1: what are the details of the story to make it worthwhile?
• 57:21
  Speaker 1: And those details are called breaking the story. And they
• 57:24
  Speaker 1: called it sounds violent because it is kind of violent.
• 57:27
  Speaker 1: Breaking it is really sort of figuring out, like breaking
• 57:30
  Speaker 1: out a pony, Like we're gonna we're gonna tame it
• 57:34
  Speaker 1: and make it into something that we liked, that's understandable
• 57:37
  Speaker 1: and that makes sense, and it's surprising and it's interesting
• 57:40
  Speaker 1: and all those things. And to be all those things
• 57:42
  Speaker 1: is really hard, and it takes a lot of really
• 57:44
  Speaker 1: creative minds to make good ones, and you it's easy
• 57:49
  Speaker 1: to make bad ones. Actually it's not easy to make it.
• 57:51
  Speaker 1: It's still hard to make bad ones, but it's hard.
• 57:53
  Speaker 1: The whole process is hard. So that's why I bring
• 57:56
  Speaker 1: and story is the hardest part of the whole job.
• 57:59
  Speaker 1: Every everybody will tell you that jokes are easy. Story
• 58:04
  Speaker 1: is hard. And figuring out what the story is going
• 58:06
  Speaker 1: to be and making it one that you haven't seen
• 58:08
  Speaker 1: before and one that you don't know exactly where it's going,
• 58:11
  Speaker 1: and one that's having fun interesting stops along the way.
• 58:15
  Speaker 1: That's a hard thing and that's what you have to
• 58:18
  Speaker 1: choose to really dedicate yourself to do. And that's what
• 58:24
  Speaker 1: you know. Really great shows are based on having really
• 58:28
  Speaker 1: good storytellers.
• 58:29
  Speaker 2: Did you know this was going to be your last
• 58:31
  Speaker 2: episode last day at Springfield when you were writing it?
• 58:33
  Speaker 1: H I think so. I think we knew that it
• 58:38
  Speaker 1: was going to be our last episode because we had
• 58:40
  Speaker 1: signed a deal of some kind, although there was always
• 58:44
  Speaker 1: an opportunity to come back and write another one at
• 58:46
  Speaker 1: some other point in time. But no one has ever
• 58:49
  Speaker 1: asked us.
• 58:52
  Speaker 2: So you went part of the Simpsons movie or anything
• 58:54
  Speaker 2: like that.
• 58:54
  Speaker 1: No, the people who were on the Simpsons movie were
• 58:56
  Speaker 1: people who were working on the show at the time.
• 58:58
  Speaker 2: I thought they brought some of the original Rode back
• 59:00
  Speaker 2: for that.
• 59:00
  Speaker 1: I don't know. I mean that George was still there
• 59:02
  Speaker 1: and I was there, Mike was there, still consulting capacity,
• 59:08
  Speaker 1: like all those people were kind of still in the orbit.
• 59:12
  Speaker 1: But maybe they just hate us.
• 59:14
  Speaker 2: Possibly could be they just said you're but uh, the
• 59:17
  Speaker 2: thing is because I'm watching this knowing it was your
• 59:19
  Speaker 2: last episode, and rewatching it for the for this, and
• 59:22
  Speaker 2: it's it feels like there's just so many jokes cranny.
• 59:25
  Speaker 2: Obviously that was just how The Simpsons worked. But I
• 59:27
  Speaker 2: just didn't know whether it was the idea of We're
• 59:29
  Speaker 2: just gonna cram in as many ideas as we had,
• 59:31
  Speaker 2: because it was like a last Hurrah kind of mentality.
• 59:34
  Speaker 1: I don't think that's it. I just think that's what
• 59:35
  Speaker 1: the Simpsons was. Like, We're just jamming ideas and jokes
• 59:39
  Speaker 1: and ideas and jokes and ideas and jokes and having
• 59:42
  Speaker 1: some sort of heart in the center of it that
• 59:44
  Speaker 1: that makes sense, and some some you know, father daughter
• 59:47
  Speaker 1: loving situation going on, and you know, and and Lisa's
• 59:54
  Speaker 1: idealism going on. Like we had some legitimate things in
• 59:58
  Speaker 1: the episode, but mostly it was just like how many jokes.
• 1:00:01
  Speaker 1: Can we tell what can we make if it's funny? Uh,
• 1:00:04
  Speaker 1: and let's be as funny as we possibly can. But
• 1:00:07
  Speaker 1: that was every episode of the Simpsons we ever made. Was
• 1:00:09
  Speaker 1: that was trying to be?
• 1:00:10
  Speaker 2: That was it? Did you have sort of a time
• 1:00:12
  Speaker 2: limit of how long was too long? With add a
• 1:00:14
  Speaker 2: gag of some kind?
• 1:00:16
  Speaker 1: Uh, it's to taste. So like, for example, the joke
• 1:00:21
  Speaker 1: where Lisa needs.
• 1:00:24
  Speaker 2: Uh, dental plan Lisa needs brices.
• 1:00:26
  Speaker 1: Right, dental plan Lisa needs braces. It just goes back
• 1:00:29
  Speaker 1: and forth a lot of times what we wrote, what
• 1:00:33
  Speaker 1: I wrote this, that particular joke I wrote. I think
• 1:00:36
  Speaker 1: I did it on four pages long, maybe five, just
• 1:00:39
  Speaker 1: back and forth of that that joke. I thought that
• 1:00:41
  Speaker 1: joke Coo would stand forever, like I found. I felt
• 1:00:44
  Speaker 1: there was a joke that would go laugh at first,
• 1:00:47
  Speaker 1: then it's like why does it keep going? And then
• 1:00:50
  Speaker 1: laugh again? Oh my god, it's keep going, and then
• 1:00:52
  Speaker 1: laugh again. And I thought it could stand a really
• 1:00:55
  Speaker 1: long time, and it wound up being thirty seconds maybe,
• 1:01:00
  Speaker 1: But I my original thought was two minutes.
• 1:01:03
  Speaker 2: You know, it was always just dental plan lace and
• 1:01:05
  Speaker 2: these prices or is there other No?
• 1:01:08
  Speaker 1: I think that was it. I just Devil Brown lacing
• 1:01:10
  Speaker 1: these braces. Maybe one other thought in the middle, but
• 1:01:15
  Speaker 1: I don't think so. It was really just that back
• 1:01:17
  Speaker 1: and forth, back and forth, back and forth, simple back
• 1:01:19
  Speaker 1: and forth, showing basically how stupid Homer is.
• 1:01:22
  Speaker 2: Is that why you break it up with the pencil
• 1:01:24
  Speaker 2: down the butt crack, just to sort of separate it
• 1:01:25
  Speaker 2: a bit, because you thought more will the audience be
• 1:01:27
  Speaker 2: able to stick it out this long?
• 1:01:29
  Speaker 1: Or I don't remember. I think maybe the butt the
• 1:01:32
  Speaker 1: pencil and the butt crack wasn't mine. I think maybe
• 1:01:34
  Speaker 1: that's something that you'd l add it in. But I
• 1:01:37
  Speaker 1: just thought it was really funny to just be stuck
• 1:01:39
  Speaker 1: in that moment.
• 1:01:40
  Speaker 2: Because the Simpsons hadn't really done that up to this point.
• 1:01:43
  Speaker 2: I don't think we're just dragged and dragged and dragged.
• 1:01:45
  Speaker 1: No, that it's funny. It's new, it's a new thing,
• 1:01:49
  Speaker 1: but it's where it's not new that Homer is an idiot.
• 1:01:51
  Speaker 1: That's not new. It's what new ways can we show
• 1:01:54
  Speaker 1: his idea?
• 1:01:54
  Speaker 3: I must admit watching that scene, I was just before
• 1:01:57
  Speaker 3: the pencil went into the butt crack, I was like,
• 1:01:59
  Speaker 3: the stretch this out. I can feel it's not reaching
• 1:02:01
  Speaker 3: breaking point, but I really got some stretch on it now, right,
• 1:02:05
  Speaker 3: And then yeah, there was that break and then it resumed.
• 1:02:07
  Speaker 3: So yeah, how.
• 1:02:08
  Speaker 1: Long How long should a joke go? It depends, like
• 1:02:10
  Speaker 1: you do. You make it, and then you see it
• 1:02:13
  Speaker 1: and then you edit it, and then you see it again,
• 1:02:15
  Speaker 1: and then you edit it and then you see it again.
• 1:02:17
  Speaker 1: And sometimes it works, and sometimes it's it's too long,
• 1:02:21
  Speaker 1: like when when Homer fell down the cliff in bark
• 1:02:23
  Speaker 1: the level. How long how long should he go? You know,
• 1:02:29
  Speaker 1: long enough long?
• 1:02:31
  Speaker 2: And then go and then do it straight away again. Able.
• 1:02:34
  Speaker 1: My favorite jokes of all time is the if any
• 1:02:36
  Speaker 1: joke I've ever written in my whole life, it's that
• 1:02:39
  Speaker 1: whole sequence is my favorite thing I think I've ever written.
• 1:02:42
  Speaker 2: Yeah, just that the ambulance hit in the tree that's
• 1:02:44
  Speaker 2: right in front of it.
• 1:02:47
  Speaker 1: It's daisily stolen. It's buster keating jokes stolen. But you
• 1:02:52
  Speaker 1: know what steal from the grates.
• 1:02:54
  Speaker 2: That's right? Yeah. Well, this episode here last Sex's springfield
• 1:02:56
  Speaker 2: like dental plan Lese and these braces. It spawns so
• 1:02:59
  Speaker 2: many icon now Simpson's memes, so many moments have turned
• 1:03:02
  Speaker 2: into memes. You've got where's my burrito an onion into
• 1:03:05
  Speaker 2: my belt. You know, the Big Book of British Smiles.
• 1:03:08
  Speaker 2: How does it feel for you when you say an
• 1:03:10
  Speaker 2: idea that you and Whally wrote thirty plus years ago
• 1:03:13
  Speaker 2: get a new lace on life through the main culture.
• 1:03:16
  Speaker 1: I mean, I'm an old man, so memes mean nothing
• 1:03:18
  Speaker 1: to me. What do I care about? Me?
• 1:03:20
  Speaker 2: Means everything to us?
• 1:03:22
  Speaker 1: Right, that's everything to you guys. But I like that
• 1:03:25
  Speaker 1: jokes are in the culture. Those jokes will fade away
• 1:03:28
  Speaker 1: from the culture. I've seen. I've seen people be very
• 1:03:33
  Speaker 1: famous and then very unfamous things that were in the
• 1:03:36
  Speaker 1: culture in the nineteen seventies when I was growing up.
• 1:03:39
  Speaker 1: Now people have no idea about vice versa. Things will
• 1:03:42
  Speaker 1: fade away. It's okay, it's fun that it's there. The
• 1:03:45
  Speaker 1: Big Book of British Smiles is wal you wat erski joke.
• 1:03:48
  Speaker 1: It's fantastic and I'm glad that it resonates because I
• 1:03:52
  Speaker 1: don't know that that. I wasn't sure that all of
• 1:03:57
  Speaker 1: the world knew how horrible British teeth.
• 1:03:59
  Speaker 3: Were, but.
• 1:04:01
  Speaker 2: That was that just sort of the stereotapt that it
• 1:04:03
  Speaker 2: was mentality in the states of British people have terrible teeth.
• 1:04:06
  Speaker 1: It's not just stereotype. It's true. At one time with
• 1:04:11
  Speaker 1: the advent of sugar, when sugar was brought into England
• 1:04:15
  Speaker 1: was colonizing everything they brought over sugar, and sugar started
• 1:04:18
  Speaker 1: destroying English people's teeth in a horrible way. I think
• 1:04:22
  Speaker 1: there was Terry Jones, one of the Python guys, talked
• 1:04:26
  Speaker 1: about it that before sugar they dug up the remains
• 1:04:31
  Speaker 1: of British people and their teeth were fine, and then
• 1:04:34
  Speaker 1: after the advent of sugar, sugar started destroying people's teeth
• 1:04:37
  Speaker 1: very quickly. So it's there was a period of time
• 1:04:41
  Speaker 1: when just devil care was not great and people, British
• 1:04:46
  Speaker 1: people's teeth were particularly awful. But I think that's true.
• 1:04:51
  Speaker 3: It feels like you walked so Austin Powers could run.
• 1:04:54
  Speaker 1: Exactly well Austin Powers. I mean, if you're a fan
• 1:04:58
  Speaker 1: of Elvis Costello, as I was, he did have great
• 1:05:00
  Speaker 1: teeth for a while, and then he had great teeth
• 1:05:03
  Speaker 1: after he got some money. So like, I don't know,
• 1:05:05
  Speaker 1: it happens.
• 1:05:06
  Speaker 3: Speaking of Austin Powers, I just want to sidetrack for
• 1:05:08
  Speaker 3: a little bit. But script doctoring it seems like one
• 1:05:10
  Speaker 3: of the coolest jobs in the world. And you seem
• 1:05:12
  Speaker 3: to have got your fair share of credits or not
• 1:05:15
  Speaker 3: credits in that regard, including the Austin Powers movies. I'm
• 1:05:18
  Speaker 3: just wondering how you got into it, how it works,
• 1:05:21
  Speaker 3: and maybe the punch up that you're most proud of.
• 1:05:23
  Speaker 1: Wow. I mean, I really enjoyed working on The Nightti
• 1:05:26
  Speaker 1: Professor with Eddie Murphy because I got a chance to
• 1:05:28
  Speaker 1: work with him. That was really cool, and they were
• 1:05:30
  Speaker 1: filming it while we're writing it, and that was really fun. Really,
• 1:05:33
  Speaker 1: so that when you write a joke and they actually
• 1:05:35
  Speaker 1: film it, is that, Oh, that's fantastic. Because I've done
• 1:05:38
  Speaker 1: so many rewrites where you write a million jokes and
• 1:05:40
  Speaker 1: then nobody it never sees the light of day. It's
• 1:05:43
  Speaker 1: just script pages that go nowhere. The Austin Powers movies,
• 1:05:48
  Speaker 1: I am. I can not take credit for Austin Powers.
• 1:05:52
  Speaker 1: Austin Powers is Mike Myers. He's a genius. He's fantastic
• 1:05:56
  Speaker 1: and if you whisper something to him and he like,
• 1:06:00
  Speaker 1: then you know, you feel like a hero. But it's
• 1:06:02
  Speaker 1: all Mike Myers and Mike smeers brilliance and and but
• 1:06:07
  Speaker 1: I love working with him on on things and I
• 1:06:10
  Speaker 1: respect his genius immensely. I like working on the Shrek movies.
• 1:06:15
  Speaker 2: You big on You're big on building connections. Did did
• 1:06:17
  Speaker 2: you get the Shrek gig? Because he built that connection
• 1:06:19
  Speaker 2: through Austin Palace?
• 1:06:20
  Speaker 1: I got the Shrek gig because I'm I'm yeah, knew
• 1:06:23
  Speaker 1: Mike Myers. Yeah yeah, So like, yeah, I think some
• 1:06:28
  Speaker 1: of it's too you know, guys, I don't want to
• 1:06:31
  Speaker 1: say that it's not a meritocracy. It is a lot
• 1:06:35
  Speaker 1: of it is having a dad who's a writer. Didn't
• 1:06:38
  Speaker 1: hurt and uh get me. That got me the job
• 1:06:42
  Speaker 1: at Gary Shanling show. That got me the gig. So
• 1:06:45
  Speaker 1: connections matter, uh, and then you know, it helps if
• 1:06:49
  Speaker 1: you can deliver once you get the opportunity. But you're
• 1:06:53
  Speaker 1: gonna get more opportunities more people, you know. So I
• 1:06:56
  Speaker 1: worked to developed relationships with people and sometimes they worked.
• 1:07:02
  Speaker 1: They they they turned into jobs. Uh, sometimes they didn't.
• 1:07:06
  Speaker 1: But that's all right. I like I like people in general,
• 1:07:08
  Speaker 1: so it's it's all good.
• 1:07:10
  Speaker 2: I mean, look at look at the guest list for
• 1:07:11
  Speaker 2: your podcast. She was on the biggest Names in entertainment.
• 1:07:14
  Speaker 2: It's it's incredible.
• 1:07:15
  Speaker 1: The biggest names in entertainment, name the biggest Robert de Niro.
• 1:07:20
  Speaker 1: I got him.
• 1:07:22
  Speaker 2: But that means a lot of a lot.
• 1:07:24
  Speaker 1: Of a lot of really good people come to my podcast.
• 1:07:26
  Speaker 1: You've got the mine's called the Jake Cogan Experience. What's
• 1:07:30
  Speaker 1: it's called? No, don't be alone with Jake Cogan? Yeah, no,
• 1:07:34
  Speaker 1: if Brian Cranston comes out. But guy, these are people
• 1:07:36
  Speaker 1: I work with. Mostly. There's a few people I didn't
• 1:07:39
  Speaker 1: know came on the show that I love.
• 1:07:40
  Speaker 2: That.
• 1:07:41
  Speaker 1: Tony Shaloub I had never met and I always wanted
• 1:07:44
  Speaker 1: to meet him. And I asked a friend or a friend,
• 1:07:45
  Speaker 1: will you ask Tony Shaloub to be on the show,
• 1:07:47
  Speaker 1: And they said yes, I loved it.
• 1:07:49
  Speaker 3: You had the pad of guys on them. Sorry, this
• 1:07:51
  Speaker 3: is probably gonna be cut out of the the interview,
• 1:07:53
  Speaker 3: but I mean, uh, you had Shane Black and Fred
• 1:07:55
  Speaker 3: Decker And I was like, oh my god. I was
• 1:07:56
  Speaker 3: actually speaking to uh to Dano about Fred Deckert the
• 1:07:59
  Speaker 3: other day and then all of a sudden his name
• 1:08:01
  Speaker 3: comes up on your podcast. Oh I'm putting this aside
• 1:08:04
  Speaker 3: to listen to you later on a loop.
• 1:08:06
  Speaker 2: We're big love for We're big love for Ricochet the film.
• 1:08:08
  Speaker 1: They're great, But what I really like about them is
• 1:08:11
  Speaker 1: their friendship. So like that they they're true friends, and
• 1:08:15
  Speaker 1: they're movie friends, but they're real friends and they talk
• 1:08:18
  Speaker 1: to each other in a real way. And it's kind
• 1:08:20
  Speaker 1: of cool to come up with people who all dream
• 1:08:22
  Speaker 1: of being in the movie business and they all were
• 1:08:25
  Speaker 1: in the movie business.
• 1:08:26
  Speaker 2: It's a particular favorite moments of mine from this episode
• 1:08:29
  Speaker 2: Last Sex at Springfield, where like Grandpa's rambling story, so
• 1:08:33
  Speaker 2: that spawned the obvious time on into my belt. So
• 1:08:36
  Speaker 2: when you're writting one of these scenes, how do you
• 1:08:38
  Speaker 2: know when enough is enough? When it comes to Grandpa's rambling?
• 1:08:42
  Speaker 1: You don't. You write it and then you edit it later,
• 1:08:45
  Speaker 1: but you just go you go along. I mean, there's
• 1:08:47
  Speaker 1: no the scripts. When we wrote a Stimpson script, we
• 1:08:51
  Speaker 1: would generally write a seventy page long script and then
• 1:08:54
  Speaker 1: the scripts would be cut down to a unreasonable forty pages.
• 1:08:59
  Speaker 1: So like it still and forty pages is still crazy
• 1:09:02
  Speaker 1: long for a show that size, but a lot of
• 1:09:07
  Speaker 1: its stage directions and visual jokes and all kinds of stuff.
• 1:09:10
  Speaker 1: But uh, we wrote long. We wrote long. I still
• 1:09:13
  Speaker 1: to this day, I write long.
• 1:09:16
  Speaker 2: It's probably just it's bet best to just wrote it
• 1:09:17
  Speaker 2: out rather than just leaving and you want to write it,
• 1:09:19
  Speaker 2: and they want to keep it, they can keep it, and.
• 1:09:21
  Speaker 1: Then a lot of it's gonna be shitty, and so
• 1:09:23
  Speaker 1: you're gonna cut the shitty parts. I always when I
• 1:09:26
  Speaker 1: teach writings, you write stuff that is in your head.
• 1:09:30
  Speaker 1: You go from this stuff that's good to this stuff
• 1:09:33
  Speaker 1: that's good, and all the stuff in the middle is shitty.
• 1:09:35
  Speaker 1: Just put them together, you know, it's like you can
• 1:09:39
  Speaker 1: wrinkle in time.
• 1:09:40
  Speaker 2: Do you think this ramble would have been lot three
• 1:09:42
  Speaker 2: times as long then in the visual script?
• 1:09:44
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm sure it was. I'm sure it was. And
• 1:09:47
  Speaker 1: just like Homer's you know, dental plan Lisa in these
• 1:09:50
  Speaker 1: Braces was more was twice as long as it was
• 1:09:54
  Speaker 1: in the script as it was, and that you you
• 1:09:56
  Speaker 1: just you write, what do you write? And then a
• 1:09:59
  Speaker 1: wom full of really smart people go this is boring,
• 1:10:02
  Speaker 1: or I don't like this, or let's this is the
• 1:10:04
  Speaker 1: best part, or let's stuff you wrote. I have something
• 1:10:07
  Speaker 1: even better, let's put that in, and then you do
• 1:10:10
  Speaker 1: thank them very much, thank you, it's good, it's better.
• 1:10:13
  Speaker 1: I'm glad it has my name on it, even though
• 1:10:15
  Speaker 1: it's your joke. Thank you, And then you do the
• 1:10:17
  Speaker 1: same for their scripts. But but that's that's just how
• 1:10:20
  Speaker 1: it goes.
• 1:10:21
  Speaker 3: It seems like so many funny people have the perverse
• 1:10:24
  Speaker 3: urge to push a joke as far as it will go,
• 1:10:26
  Speaker 3: almost push it into the realms of being unfunny, to
• 1:10:29
  Speaker 3: see if they can do that circular loop of making
• 1:10:32
  Speaker 3: it funny again.
• 1:10:33
  Speaker 1: Yeah. I mean, that's a little bit of a comedy
• 1:10:36
  Speaker 1: high wire act that who doesn't like it? If you're
• 1:10:38
  Speaker 1: if you're a pro, you're gonna want to You're gonna
• 1:10:41
  Speaker 1: want to push the joke, I think, and be willing
• 1:10:44
  Speaker 1: to risk people scratching their head for a second before
• 1:10:47
  Speaker 1: they laugh. That everybody hasn't know what's going on the
• 1:10:50
  Speaker 1: whole time to ultimately get where you're going. It's good
• 1:10:54
  Speaker 1: maybe if there's confused up until the point.
• 1:10:56
  Speaker 3: I'm always reminded of uh, Norm McDonald at a roast for
• 1:10:59
  Speaker 3: someone one. Yeah, he was basically just doing bits out
• 1:11:02
  Speaker 3: of some how to do comedy from book from the
• 1:11:04
  Speaker 3: ninety fifties or whatever the way. It's anodyne jokes ever,
• 1:11:07
  Speaker 3: but delivering him in that inimitable Norm mcdng style, The
• 1:11:10
  Speaker 3: audience just like absolutely baffled. They got no idea what's
• 1:11:13
  Speaker 3: going on, and the comedians are just dying. They think
• 1:11:17
  Speaker 3: it's the funniest thing they've ever heard in their life.
• 1:11:19
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, listen, it's meta. It's a little bit meta,
• 1:11:23
  Speaker 1: and that's that's funny too. So like you, if you're
• 1:11:25
  Speaker 1: a student of comedy and somebody's doing playing with the form,
• 1:11:30
  Speaker 1: you could appreciate that. You don't need to just like
• 1:11:32
  Speaker 1: you don't need to know all the references to Godfather too,
• 1:11:35
  Speaker 1: It's still okay to not know everything and learn it later.
• 1:11:40
  Speaker 2: I think you want to bring up the Aristocrats too.
• 1:11:42
  Speaker 3: On that note, I did, actually, yeah, I mean I've
• 1:11:44
  Speaker 3: recently tried to explain the concept that the Aristocrats to Dando,
• 1:11:47
  Speaker 3: but I may have messed it up. So as someone
• 1:11:49
  Speaker 3: who was in the documentary the same name, what can
• 1:11:53
  Speaker 3: you explain it? And what is the notion of the
• 1:11:55
  Speaker 3: aristocrats joke? What does it mean to comedians?
• 1:11:57
  Speaker 1: That is the ariscrats is just a joke. It's a
• 1:11:59
  Speaker 1: dirty joke, really filthy joke that gives an opportunity for
• 1:12:04
  Speaker 1: a anybody who's telling it to do their own version
• 1:12:08
  Speaker 1: of the joke. So basically, it's like jazz, you have
• 1:12:12
  Speaker 1: a template of something, but then you go off into
• 1:12:15
  Speaker 1: your own solos and your own so it's it's the
• 1:12:18
  Speaker 1: artistry of it is how you tell the joke and
• 1:12:21
  Speaker 1: what you put into it, and how you make it
• 1:12:23
  Speaker 1: your own, and how you make it specialized. And that's
• 1:12:27
  Speaker 1: the beauty of that joke. That joke is not a
• 1:12:29
  Speaker 1: great joke in and of itself. It's a it's a form.
• 1:12:32
  Speaker 1: It's a joke form that a lot of people know
• 1:12:35
  Speaker 1: that the best of the best can make brilliant just
• 1:12:38
  Speaker 1: by how they play it.
• 1:12:39
  Speaker 3: What's the best or the worst version of the Aristocrats
• 1:12:42
  Speaker 3: that you've heard or who told it?
• 1:12:44
  Speaker 1: Ah, the best or the worst version, I don't know.
• 1:12:47
  Speaker 1: The worst version is probably whatever I said. But the best,
• 1:12:50
  Speaker 1: I mean, Gilbert Godfried is pretty funny. Bob Saggot's pretty funny.
• 1:12:58
  Speaker 1: I mean, their version, everybody version of the joke, so
• 1:13:01
  Speaker 1: she's pretty intense. But the intensity the one the people
• 1:13:04
  Speaker 1: go crazy in it. I'm very interested in it because
• 1:13:07
  Speaker 1: it's not about the specifics of the joke and everybody
• 1:13:10
  Speaker 1: getting a joke. It's the weird strange act. So they're
• 1:13:17
  Speaker 1: they're describing a family that does a vaudeville act, a
• 1:13:20
  Speaker 1: nightclub act, and the act is both morally repellent, disgusting,
• 1:13:27
  Speaker 1: sexually deviant. Is everything that you could do in it
• 1:13:30
  Speaker 1: that's weird. So it's what are you willing to talk
• 1:13:34
  Speaker 1: about and say and describe? How gross are you willing
• 1:13:37
  Speaker 1: to get? How you know? Are you willing are you
• 1:13:40
  Speaker 1: willing to say the words exactly? Do you dance around
• 1:13:42
  Speaker 1: the words? Do you what do you do to make
• 1:13:45
  Speaker 1: your audience intrigued? So that's what it is. So, I mean,
• 1:13:50
  Speaker 1: every every comedian has their own version of it, and
• 1:13:53
  Speaker 1: it's the movie's worth seeing just for that.
• 1:13:55
  Speaker 3: It's a good documentary. It's like a comedy rorschock test
• 1:13:57
  Speaker 3: though the Aristocrats, isn't it?
• 1:13:59
  Speaker 1: I guess so for some people. I find that most
• 1:14:01
  Speaker 1: people don't storm out in a huff and go, oh,
• 1:14:03
  Speaker 1: what's that? They get pretty quickly they get it's not
• 1:14:07
  Speaker 1: it's not the gross stuff. It's we're watching comedians, you know,
• 1:14:11
  Speaker 1: riff Is.
• 1:14:12
  Speaker 2: It one of those stories and one of those gags
• 1:14:13
  Speaker 2: where you start telling it with that and nets and
• 1:14:15
  Speaker 2: you're gonna start telling it and if you know, you know,
• 1:14:17
  Speaker 2: But if you don't know, you're like, what what the
• 1:14:19
  Speaker 2: fuck's going on here?
• 1:14:21
  Speaker 1: I suppose? I mean that's a lot of jokes to me.
• 1:14:23
  Speaker 1: I mean, that's not My favorite jokes are not direct
• 1:14:27
  Speaker 1: line jokes. My favorite joke, like my favorite joke. Uh,
• 1:14:31
  Speaker 1: I'm not great at jokes, but my favorite joke that
• 1:14:33
  Speaker 1: I ever tell is a guy goes out on his porch,
• 1:14:36
  Speaker 1: sees a snail on his door doorframe, and he takes
• 1:14:39
  Speaker 1: a snail and he throws it away and then goes
• 1:14:43
  Speaker 1: back inside. Cut to six years later, there's a knock
• 1:14:46
  Speaker 1: on the door. He opens the door, doesn't see anybody,
• 1:14:48
  Speaker 1: looks down there's the snail and says, what the fuck
• 1:14:51
  Speaker 1: was that about? So it's not nobody expecting the snail
• 1:14:55
  Speaker 1: to talk. The guy didn't have any attitude when he
• 1:14:58
  Speaker 1: threw the snail away, but it's like it's coming out
• 1:15:01
  Speaker 1: of nowhere. But of course now suddenly you're seeing the
• 1:15:03
  Speaker 1: snails point of view and.
• 1:15:05
  Speaker 3: You're enjoying it.
• 1:15:06
  Speaker 1: So like, why that's kind of a surprise you're seeing
• 1:15:11
  Speaker 1: the snails point of view.
• 1:15:12
  Speaker 2: Well, another favorite mode of mine from Last Eggs it
• 1:15:14
  Speaker 2: was that the Hired goons right Crusher and Blow. I
• 1:15:17
  Speaker 2: don't know why for some people everyone seems to love
• 1:15:19
  Speaker 2: the hired Goons. Was it a joke that you guys
• 1:15:22
  Speaker 2: wrote in there, or was that something was added later
• 1:15:24
  Speaker 2: on the hired Goons?
• 1:15:26
  Speaker 1: I don't know, I don't remember, I imagine I can.
• 1:15:30
  Speaker 1: We love the phrase hired goons is just like henchman. Yes,
• 1:15:36
  Speaker 1: also greed great phrase, no reason hired goons and henchmen.
• 1:15:41
  Speaker 1: But we love it. They're old fashioned, old timey fashion
• 1:15:44
  Speaker 1: things that we like.
• 1:15:45
  Speaker 2: Also think it's one of those gags where it's not
• 1:15:46
  Speaker 2: necessarily funny on paper, but it's the way Dan delivers
• 1:15:50
  Speaker 2: hired goons. Did you ever write jokes that you thought,
• 1:15:53
  Speaker 2: you know, we're writing because we know Dan c is
• 1:15:56
  Speaker 2: going to be saying this. We know he'll make this work.
• 1:15:58
  Speaker 1: I mean, no, just knew that they would make it
• 1:16:01
  Speaker 1: work anyway. But so we did that wasn't It wasn't like, oh,
• 1:16:05
  Speaker 1: well we have Dan Castlena or we have Harry Sheer.
• 1:16:07
  Speaker 1: It's just like, is this gonna be funny? And then
• 1:16:10
  Speaker 1: oftentimes those guys made it funnier. Yeah, So it's unlike,
• 1:16:15
  Speaker 1: it's not like this is dependent on this person's read
• 1:16:17
  Speaker 1: of this thing. It's sort of we're hearing a voice
• 1:16:20
  Speaker 1: in our head. They often come up with a funnier voice.
• 1:16:23
  Speaker 3: Having said that, talking about funny voices, I'd like to
• 1:16:25
  Speaker 3: ask about the Let's get him tells a character m
• 1:16:29
  Speaker 3: VP of this episode. One might say, uh, can you
• 1:16:32
  Speaker 3: tell us about the I guess the shout out that
• 1:16:35
  Speaker 3: that that that character is. Is it a tribute to
• 1:16:38
  Speaker 3: uh anarcomic tripes of years past?
• 1:16:41
  Speaker 1: Is it Droopy Dog Dog?
• 1:16:43
  Speaker 2: Dropy Dog is the voice?
• 1:16:44
  Speaker 1: Yeah, let's get it Phil, that's the one.
• 1:16:50
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it was him.
• 1:16:51
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that's Droopy Dog. But it's a Pana Bibarra character.
• 1:16:56
  Speaker 2: He's so memorable. But he says about eight words and
• 1:16:58
  Speaker 2: his entire existence. But you know every Simpsons fan and
• 1:17:02
  Speaker 2: I know that guy.
• 1:17:03
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, uh no, I never did any voices
• 1:17:07
  Speaker 1: on the Simpsons, but I was. I'm a big fan
• 1:17:10
  Speaker 1: of all those guys. And when we did, when we
• 1:17:13
  Speaker 1: pitched in the room, we pitched the voices of the characters.
• 1:17:15
  Speaker 1: We tried. We pitched like mister Burns, we pitched Homer,
• 1:17:18
  Speaker 1: and we pitched part We we modulated voices to to
• 1:17:22
  Speaker 1: to activate the characters as best we can to give it,
• 1:17:24
  Speaker 1: give the jokes their best.
• 1:17:25
  Speaker 2: Shot, which Rody did the best Burns.
• 1:17:29
  Speaker 1: Everybody had their own version of it. But I guess
• 1:17:31
  Speaker 1: Sam's I think Sam Simon had the best Burns.
• 1:17:33
  Speaker 3: Yeah, okay, And if we are talking about favorite moments
• 1:17:36
  Speaker 3: and we're gonna give a shout out to Quigly cross
• 1:17:38
  Speaker 3: quickly sorry Quigly, I thought that was great. And also
• 1:17:41
  Speaker 3: the Rimple of Monkeys with the thousand time rid Us,
• 1:17:44
  Speaker 3: best of times, blurst of times, poor monkey getting slapped
• 1:17:48
  Speaker 3: across the head and just going primal as a result. Yeah,
• 1:17:51
  Speaker 3: that's a bit of a bit of a meme as well.
• 1:17:53
  Speaker 1: I don't believe that was our joke, but maybe it was,
• 1:17:55
  Speaker 1: I think, but it was a that's a great joke.
• 1:17:57
  Speaker 2: You watched this though, and yes, it's a great story
• 1:17:59
  Speaker 2: behind it. But it also does feel like there's a
• 1:18:01
  Speaker 2: bunch of gags that these guys could exist in really
• 1:18:04
  Speaker 2: any episode. They all work so well together here.
• 1:18:07
  Speaker 1: Well, I mean, we're in Burns's mansion. We're in like
• 1:18:10
  Speaker 1: we're in we're in his world. We get to do
• 1:18:13
  Speaker 1: funny things about that, and and uh, you know, lots
• 1:18:17
  Speaker 1: of episodes are in Burns's mansion, and certainly many many
• 1:18:20
  Speaker 1: more have been since we did that episode, So I
• 1:18:23
  Speaker 1: don't know, it's it's filled with Simpson law Simpson jokes. Uh,
• 1:18:29
  Speaker 1: And again the audiences have voted that show as the best.
• 1:18:33
  Speaker 1: It's not my favorite show, but I think it's really funny.
• 1:18:35
  Speaker 2: I think it's great, and it's funny because I was
• 1:18:37
  Speaker 2: telling Guy before we started recording Forgive Me. When I
• 1:18:39
  Speaker 2: was a kid, this wasn't, by no means one of
• 1:18:40
  Speaker 2: my favorite episodes. The older I got, the more I appreciate.
• 1:18:43
  Speaker 2: But as a kid I was, this wasn't one that
• 1:18:45
  Speaker 2: I gravitated towards.
• 1:18:46
  Speaker 1: Yeah, me neither. I didn't dislike it, but I was.
• 1:18:51
  Speaker 1: It was one of those things we were just like,
• 1:18:52
  Speaker 1: you know, all right. I thought it got a little sentimental,
• 1:18:56
  Speaker 1: and I thought that the song it got bogged down
• 1:18:59
  Speaker 1: by the song a little bit.
• 1:19:00
  Speaker 2: Yeah, okay, for what reasons? You thought it sort of
• 1:19:02
  Speaker 2: took away from the comedy or.
• 1:19:03
  Speaker 1: Yeah, just gotta get gets little quiet and serious around
• 1:19:06
  Speaker 1: the song when she sings the song.
• 1:19:08
  Speaker 2: So it's a very unseerious episode up to that point,
• 1:19:10
  Speaker 2: isn't it. Yeah.
• 1:19:11
  Speaker 1: I wrote a Bob Dylan protest song for her to
• 1:19:14
  Speaker 1: sing and wound getting trimmed down to that.
• 1:19:17
  Speaker 2: Oh so you've still got the full song like you could?
• 1:19:19
  Speaker 2: You could play it for somebody.
• 1:19:21
  Speaker 1: I'm sure I could. I mean, I haven't haven't been
• 1:19:23
  Speaker 1: asked to in thirty years, but I'm taking fine, we're
• 1:19:26
  Speaker 1: asking you now.
• 1:19:27
  Speaker 2: So there is So there's a union Simpsons union song
• 1:19:29
  Speaker 2: out there incomplete? Is that what you're saying?
• 1:19:32
  Speaker 3: Yeah, in the style of Dylan.
• 1:19:33
  Speaker 1: Yeah, see, this is.
• 1:19:34
  Speaker 2: What we talked a lot, Josh Weinstein and whatnot. There's
• 1:19:37
  Speaker 2: got to be a Simpsons museum, this kind of stuff.
• 1:19:38
  Speaker 2: Simpsons fans want to say this ship do they?
• 1:19:41
  Speaker 1: They do.
• 1:19:43
  Speaker 2: I don't even know if you would never have said that.
• 1:19:45
  Speaker 2: I've got the full song. We cut it back to
• 1:19:47
  Speaker 2: like one verse, but you wrote a full song. People
• 1:19:50
  Speaker 2: want to hear that.
• 1:19:52
  Speaker 1: I guess. So, I mean it's it's you know, what's
• 1:19:55
  Speaker 1: better is what the what the show was. I think
• 1:19:57
  Speaker 1: what people really want to see is the show they like.
• 1:19:59
  Speaker 1: They're they're the anciliary stuff around the show, Like I don't.
• 1:20:03
  Speaker 1: I don't want to see the cars that weren't the
• 1:20:05
  Speaker 1: Aston Martin, the James Bond cars that the prototypes of
• 1:20:08
  Speaker 1: the cars that weren't as cool as the Aston Martin.
• 1:20:11
  Speaker 1: You know, I'm going with what we saw.
• 1:20:14
  Speaker 2: I disagree. I think I grew up in the era
• 1:20:16
  Speaker 2: where you know, you had your behind the scenes documentaries,
• 1:20:19
  Speaker 2: you had your audio commentaries. We want to know how
• 1:20:21
  Speaker 2: these things were made. We've seen the show, we love
• 1:20:23
  Speaker 2: the show, we'll watch it every day, but we want
• 1:20:25
  Speaker 2: to see how it came together.
• 1:20:26
  Speaker 1: But I'm assuring enough people read the version I ra said,
• 1:20:30
  Speaker 1: this is not as good.
• 1:20:33
  Speaker 2: All right, But did you ever have jokes that you
• 1:20:36
  Speaker 2: feel easily could have made the show?
• 1:20:38
  Speaker 1: But it was just all the time, got jokes that
• 1:20:41
  Speaker 1: are that made the show, that that made this from
• 1:20:44
  Speaker 1: the script all the way to recording, all the way
• 1:20:46
  Speaker 1: in and still get cut out. But dah, you know
• 1:20:50
  Speaker 1: you want your jokes to stay. But you know, either
• 1:20:54
  Speaker 1: they get there, they get cut for time, or they
• 1:20:57
  Speaker 1: get cut because they're ruining the character, or they're not
• 1:21:00
  Speaker 1: part of they're not accurate for the story or what
• 1:21:03
  Speaker 1: we're trying to mat No, that's fine. You know, as
• 1:21:06
  Speaker 1: I got older, I was less precious with jokes and
• 1:21:09
  Speaker 1: more with what the whole story says.
• 1:21:12
  Speaker 2: Yeah, not the team thing. Well, there's a Rather than
• 1:21:15
  Speaker 2: go through the entire episodes, a few key things I
• 1:21:17
  Speaker 2: wanted to point out. So this episode kicks off with
• 1:21:19
  Speaker 2: a clip from the McBain movie right with Mendoza unleashing
• 1:21:23
  Speaker 2: the swank, you know, ten times more pout, more addictive
• 1:21:25
  Speaker 2: than marijuana. Was that in your original script?
• 1:21:28
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I think we had we had a McBain show.
• 1:21:32
  Speaker 2: Did you guys, did you guys know the writers, Did
• 1:21:34
  Speaker 2: you guys know that you were putting together essentially a
• 1:21:36
  Speaker 2: McBain mini movie if you splice all those clips together, Like,
• 1:21:38
  Speaker 2: was there a case of what did what happened in
• 1:21:40
  Speaker 2: the last McBain scene? No, we had to carry over
• 1:21:43
  Speaker 2: from that or is it just you're just writing your.
• 1:21:44
  Speaker 1: Own No, they were just they were just parody movies
• 1:21:47
  Speaker 1: at the moment.
• 1:21:48
  Speaker 2: And it just conveniently worked out to be a mini movie.
• 1:21:50
  Speaker 1: I guess so. I mean, I imagine if you put
• 1:21:52
  Speaker 1: all the itching scratches together, you can make a mini
• 1:21:55
  Speaker 1: movie too, But maybe there would be a boring movie.
• 1:21:57
  Speaker 1: But it was like, I don't know, it's there. It's
• 1:22:01
  Speaker 1: it's a parody of a type of thing that's real,
• 1:22:04
  Speaker 1: and and uh, they they shouldn't. I don't think they're
• 1:22:08
  Speaker 1: they're purposely connected. But I'm glad it's able to do.
• 1:22:11
  Speaker 2: It because there's there's a home, there's a whole McBain
• 1:22:13
  Speaker 2: law out there now where, like even McBain and Mendoza
• 1:22:16
  Speaker 2: got their own line of action figures as a result recently.
• 1:22:19
  Speaker 1: Right, Well, McBain there was an actual move a detective
• 1:22:23
  Speaker 1: series called mc bain. There was like a movie. I
• 1:22:25
  Speaker 1: used to work in a bookstore and they would sell
• 1:22:29
  Speaker 1: McBain books. Uh so I think, uh we we owe
• 1:22:33
  Speaker 1: that author some money.
• 1:22:34
  Speaker 3: Yeah, the rotter at McBain absolutely, and there was a
• 1:22:37
  Speaker 3: crystopal walking action movie called McBain exactly.
• 1:22:40
  Speaker 1: So, I don't know it's it's it's really funny. I
• 1:22:44
  Speaker 1: guess McBean's like Donald Schwarzenegger. And you know, any anything
• 1:22:48
  Speaker 1: that's like a villain's like mcbern like and can have
• 1:22:53
  Speaker 1: a cliche, a detective movie cliche. That's a McBain story.
• 1:22:57
  Speaker 2: This this scene though, this one in particular, is really violent.
• 1:23:01
  Speaker 2: I mean people are getting shot in the face and
• 1:23:03
  Speaker 2: there's holes in their head. I watch this going how
• 1:23:08
  Speaker 2: did this happen? How did this get through the.
• 1:23:10
  Speaker 1: Hands of those movies? We watched those movies.
• 1:23:12
  Speaker 2: I know, I'm I'm talking from Fox. How did Fox
• 1:23:15
  Speaker 2: let this get through the television?
• 1:23:17
  Speaker 1: It's cartoon cartoon.
• 1:23:22
  Speaker 2: Some of the ship that I've heard that they wanted
• 1:23:23
  Speaker 2: to not let you guys do and then this happens.
• 1:23:26
  Speaker 3: Then a guy get shot in the head and drowns
• 1:23:28
  Speaker 3: in the in the punch bowl. Holy Mullen.
• 1:23:29
  Speaker 1: Violence was almost never the issue. It was usually sacks
• 1:23:33
  Speaker 1: or language. Maybe then they one time they told us
• 1:23:38
  Speaker 1: Homer can't say shove this license up your ass, but
• 1:23:43
  Speaker 1: they said you could, We could say shove this license
• 1:23:46
  Speaker 1: in your ass.
• 1:23:47
  Speaker 3: And we said, okay, wow, romantics.
• 1:23:52
  Speaker 2: Yeah, but then you had you had the James L.
• 1:23:54
  Speaker 2: Brooks low though, right where they really they could comment,
• 1:23:57
  Speaker 2: but they couldn't really stop you from doing stuff. Is
• 1:23:59
  Speaker 2: that right?
• 1:24:00
  Speaker 1: That's the center can stop us. The sensor could stop us. Now.
• 1:24:03
  Speaker 1: That was the only notes we ever took with sensor
• 1:24:05
  Speaker 1: notes executive. We didn't get story notes from executives, but
• 1:24:09
  Speaker 1: the sensor was able to say, we don't do that.
• 1:24:12
  Speaker 2: Okay, yeah, all right. Anything else in particularly eats the
• 1:24:15
  Speaker 2: definitely some one that you want to sort of cover.
• 1:24:18
  Speaker 3: This is very immature of me, but I'm a big
• 1:24:19
  Speaker 3: fan of the double entendres in the conversation between Burns
• 1:24:22
  Speaker 3: and Smiths where I'm sorry, we're we're between Burns and Homer,
• 1:24:26
  Speaker 3: where Homer thinks that Burns is coming on to Hi'm sure,
• 1:24:28
  Speaker 3: I'm flattered. Maybe I'm a little curious, but the answer
• 1:24:31
  Speaker 3: is no. It's like, don't go in for these back
• 1:24:35
  Speaker 3: door snannigans. I'm sorry. I just thought that was hilarious.
• 1:24:38
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I do too. I think they're really funny. I'm
• 1:24:42
  Speaker 1: that is again another opportunity to make a funny joke
• 1:24:45
  Speaker 1: out of what's a normal you know, negotiation or interaction,
• 1:24:50
  Speaker 1: and uh, how fun is that.
• 1:24:53
  Speaker 3: Absolutely, there's so many different degrees of humor throughout this episode, though.
• 1:24:58
  Speaker 3: I mean, there's stuff that's kind of I won't say
• 1:25:03
  Speaker 3: low brown, but I mean this stuff that is. But
• 1:25:05
  Speaker 3: there's a lot of the stuff that's you know, nastly cynical,
• 1:25:08
  Speaker 3: like and gets made the union delegates like, well, there's
• 1:25:12
  Speaker 3: no jobs unpaid unless you have crooked woo. That's boblous.
• 1:25:17
  Speaker 1: Again, I'm laughing at it. They're not my jokes. There's
• 1:25:20
  Speaker 1: so many jokes. This show is filled with really funny
• 1:25:24
  Speaker 1: things brought by so many different people, like, for example,
• 1:25:28
  Speaker 1: the word onion around the belt, which was the fashion
• 1:25:31
  Speaker 1: at the time. I don't think that's our joke. Who
• 1:25:34
  Speaker 1: knows who Maybe George Meyer's joke. I have no idea,
• 1:25:37
  Speaker 1: but it's really good and great. So we're we're the
• 1:25:41
  Speaker 1: Wally and I are the beneficiaries of the genius minds
• 1:25:45
  Speaker 1: of a lot of really funny people who worked on
• 1:25:48
  Speaker 1: the show, and at that point was I guess Conan
• 1:25:51
  Speaker 1: was there by then, and so it's Conan and David
• 1:25:54
  Speaker 1: Stern and there's lots of other really funny writers who
• 1:25:57
  Speaker 1: are working there at the time.
• 1:25:58
  Speaker 2: You're great friends of kind of being on your podcast
• 1:26:00
  Speaker 2: Bright episode one of my favorites. What was he like
• 1:26:03
  Speaker 2: to work with? For you? Personally?
• 1:26:04
  Speaker 1: I loved working with Conan. I was the loud, annoying
• 1:26:07
  Speaker 1: guy at the Simpsons room until Conan showed up, and
• 1:26:11
  Speaker 1: then he was the loud, annoying guy. So yeah, I
• 1:26:14
  Speaker 1: was usurped by him and grateful that there's somebody even
• 1:26:19
  Speaker 1: louder and more annoying than me. But he's an adorable guy,
• 1:26:25
  Speaker 1: endless energy, super smart, super creative, and you can see
• 1:26:29
  Speaker 1: how hard he works when you watch his shows or
• 1:26:31
  Speaker 1: the Oscars or whatever. You know, he puts in maximum
• 1:26:34
  Speaker 1: effort and it shows. It's not they doesn't hit all
• 1:26:38
  Speaker 1: home runs, but you can see that he's really really trying.
• 1:26:42
  Speaker 2: Was there ever a competitiveness in the Simpsons Wroders room.
• 1:26:45
  Speaker 1: There's always a competitiveness in every writer's room because you
• 1:26:47
  Speaker 1: want your joke to get in because you pitched it,
• 1:26:50
  Speaker 1: not necessarily that guy's joke to get in, or that
• 1:26:53
  Speaker 1: woman's joke to get in, if they ever led a
• 1:26:55
  Speaker 1: woman in. But but you know, it's like you want
• 1:26:59
  Speaker 1: yours to work because you want validation that your value
• 1:27:03
  Speaker 1: and creative. But you also want the show to be funny.
• 1:27:07
  Speaker 1: And so if somebody pitches something that's so much funny
• 1:27:09
  Speaker 1: that we just pitched, you cannot help but just go
• 1:27:11
  Speaker 1: laugh and go like that, that's great, that has to
• 1:27:14
  Speaker 1: go in.
• 1:27:15
  Speaker 3: Uh.
• 1:27:15
  Speaker 1: But I've worked in writers' rooms where people try to
• 1:27:17
  Speaker 1: sabotage each other, and people try to shit on people's
• 1:27:21
  Speaker 1: jokes and and make sure that they don't get in
• 1:27:24
  Speaker 1: and that kind of stuff, And that's it's so antithetical
• 1:27:28
  Speaker 1: to the process that we're trying to do make the
• 1:27:30
  Speaker 1: best show possible. And and there are jealousies, and there
• 1:27:34
  Speaker 1: are favorites on every writer's room and every and the
• 1:27:38
  Speaker 1: favorites can change from time to time, So whoever's running
• 1:27:41
  Speaker 1: the room suddenly likes this person. You know, it's it's
• 1:27:45
  Speaker 1: it's hard to argue. Sometimes George Meyer was the well
• 1:27:49
  Speaker 1: respected I think lampoon guy, Harvard lampoon guy, that Mike
• 1:27:54
  Speaker 1: and Al and all v D and all these guys
• 1:27:57
  Speaker 1: looked up to George when we showed up. That was
• 1:28:00
  Speaker 1: already the dynamic with them. I didn't know George all
• 1:28:05
  Speaker 1: that well, so I didn't look up to him. I
• 1:28:06
  Speaker 1: didn't go to Harvard, I didn't have that Harvard lampoon
• 1:28:09
  Speaker 1: stuff going on, So to me, he was just another shmo.
• 1:28:12
  Speaker 1: But what he would say things people would look on
• 1:28:15
  Speaker 1: him as with reverence that I did not understand. So
• 1:28:18
  Speaker 1: it's like, okay, but you know, not everything George said
• 1:28:22
  Speaker 1: was hysterical, but a lot of his stuff would get
• 1:28:25
  Speaker 1: in because he was the perceived favorite. Now that being said,
• 1:28:28
  Speaker 1: George is hysterical and a lot of what he says
• 1:28:31
  Speaker 1: is really really good. But I think it's it's interesting
• 1:28:33
  Speaker 1: how the social dynamic can lift some some material, sometimes
• 1:28:38
  Speaker 1: over over what it really is.
• 1:28:40
  Speaker 2: Accepting that another RATA on the same team has a
• 1:28:44
  Speaker 2: funnier joke or has made georgejoke funnier. Being able to
• 1:28:47
  Speaker 2: accept that, is that something you have to learn or
• 1:28:49
  Speaker 2: is that just part of who you are is it?
• 1:28:51
  Speaker 2: Can you learn? Can you learn to accept that?
• 1:28:53
  Speaker 1: I mean, yeah, you have to. I mean you have to.
• 1:28:56
  Speaker 1: If you're the showrunner, you're begging for that. That's all
• 1:28:58
  Speaker 1: you want is people to give top the other one.
• 1:29:02
  Speaker 1: That's a funny joke. That's the funnier. That's funny. That's
• 1:29:04
  Speaker 1: that's all you want. You want people to add and
• 1:29:07
  Speaker 1: uh you build and add funding to it. So yes,
• 1:29:11
  Speaker 1: if you're a writer and you're gonna be storm out
• 1:29:13
  Speaker 1: of the room somebody else makes a funny joke, you're
• 1:29:16
  Speaker 1: not gonna be very welcome there for very long. So
• 1:29:20
  Speaker 1: you should learn, and you should appreciate it, and you
• 1:29:22
  Speaker 1: should be grateful that person who wrote the funny joke
• 1:29:26
  Speaker 1: that's going in the script is getting you home. You
• 1:29:29
  Speaker 1: want to go home eventually, and that person is getting
• 1:29:32
  Speaker 1: you home. So fantastic. I get to go home. I
• 1:29:36
  Speaker 1: get to go you know, watch T watch TV at home.
• 1:29:40
  Speaker 2: On the topic of George Mayer, there's a moment in
• 1:29:42
  Speaker 2: this episode where they steal the diamond from Lenny's teeth
• 1:29:45
  Speaker 2: and they say yoink. Now, apparently George Maya is the
• 1:29:48
  Speaker 2: man who coined that phrase yoink, and no one seems
• 1:29:52
  Speaker 2: to realize that that's a Simpson's word. Is that true?
• 1:29:55
  Speaker 1: Was it, George? I mean, isn't this scooby Doo word?
• 1:30:00
  Speaker 2: No, Apparently yoink was coined. That's that's the ship. That's
• 1:30:04
  Speaker 2: that's the ship they called bullshit. Prevailing wisdom is that
• 1:30:07
  Speaker 2: it's a Simpsons word. Yeah, you're everywhere online joints. I say,
• 1:30:13
  Speaker 2: zoinks zoints.
• 1:30:14
  Speaker 1: Okay, zoints. So zoinks and yoink don't get uh credit
• 1:30:19
  Speaker 1: for each.
• 1:30:19
  Speaker 2: Other because zoinks is sort of more like zoinks. I'm
• 1:30:22
  Speaker 2: scared where yoink is to take something.
• 1:30:25
  Speaker 1: Okay, I think you guys are nuts. It's it's just
• 1:30:31
  Speaker 1: a animal animal on a pia goofy word. It doesn't
• 1:30:35
  Speaker 1: mean anything, and it's fun and I'm glad that it
• 1:30:38
  Speaker 1: started on my on that episode fantastic. Great, but it's
• 1:30:42
  Speaker 1: people look too closely sometimes at things and then and
• 1:30:46
  Speaker 1: and they missed the forest for the trees. Yuick is
• 1:30:49
  Speaker 1: a funny noise. Great, It doesn't mean much more than that.
• 1:30:53
  Speaker 1: It's it's the same kind of thing where they Simpsons
• 1:30:56
  Speaker 1: predicts the future like that, that kind of crazy bullshit.
• 1:31:00
  Speaker 1: It is sort of like is missing the point is
• 1:31:02
  Speaker 1: no Simpsons does not create predict the future. What happens
• 1:31:06
  Speaker 1: is Simpsons has a lot of really funny jokes all
• 1:31:10
  Speaker 1: over the place, and some of them weirdly come true.
• 1:31:13
  Speaker 1: How aired is that? That's that's more amazing to me
• 1:31:16
  Speaker 1: that if you did a million jokes and of the
• 1:31:20
  Speaker 1: million jokes, forty of them came true. That's insane to me.
• 1:31:25
  Speaker 1: That's crazy that the dumbest things you thought of at
• 1:31:28
  Speaker 1: that time is actually what happens.
• 1:31:30
  Speaker 2: That's what Salmon said. Salmon goes, we think of what's
• 1:31:32
  Speaker 2: the craziest shit that could happen, and we'll be on
• 1:31:34
  Speaker 2: tava long enough that have Unfortunately, some of it's not
• 1:31:36
  Speaker 2: starting to come.
• 1:31:37
  Speaker 1: True, right, And that's the perversity of fate. Fate chooses
• 1:31:41
  Speaker 1: to extol the dumbest of our ideas and make it
• 1:31:45
  Speaker 1: into reality.
• 1:31:46
  Speaker 3: Let's talk about Dr Wolf real quickly. Clint Eastwood and
• 1:31:48
  Speaker 3: Anthony Hopkins initially approached Anthony Perkins actually cost.
• 1:31:52
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I think I've also, oddly enough, I think we
• 1:31:55
  Speaker 1: wanted Donald Schwartzenegger really, oh my gosh, because we had
• 1:31:59
  Speaker 1: a German vibe to Doctor Wolf. But yeah, I mean
• 1:32:03
  Speaker 1: a lot of people say no to the Simpsons all,
• 1:32:05
  Speaker 1: at least back then said no to the Simpsons all
• 1:32:07
  Speaker 1: the time, and probably now do too.
• 1:32:09
  Speaker 2: But did I really even at that point when it
• 1:32:11
  Speaker 2: was still so successful, they were turning it down. I
• 1:32:14
  Speaker 2: know that Springsteen turned down the Well episode, but right already?
• 1:32:18
  Speaker 2: But yeah, you know that story, right, I probably do,
• 1:32:22
  Speaker 2: but please rate tell me all right.
• 1:32:24
  Speaker 1: I think we were trying to get to hold of
• 1:32:26
  Speaker 1: Bruce Springsteen to do the Well bid and sing the
• 1:32:31
  Speaker 1: song Kid down the Well. And we can't get a
• 1:32:33
  Speaker 1: hold of Springsteen, so we keep calling his manager, John Landau,
• 1:32:37
  Speaker 1: who we now have seen famed in film Delivered Me
• 1:32:40
  Speaker 1: from Nowhere. So we get a hold of him. He says,
• 1:32:43
  Speaker 1: I can't get a hold of Bruce, like bullshit, all right, No,
• 1:32:49
  Speaker 1: I think he'd like to do it. It's like you
• 1:32:50
  Speaker 1: can tell us no, we have to move on, But no, no,
• 1:32:53
  Speaker 1: I think he'd like to do It's well then, to
• 1:32:54
  Speaker 1: find him and let us know because we have to
• 1:32:58
  Speaker 1: move on. We're good recording this soon and okay, I'll
• 1:33:00
  Speaker 1: do it. I'll do it anyway. That night, I go
• 1:33:03
  Speaker 1: to the movies at a movie theater in Los Angeles
• 1:33:05
  Speaker 1: said no longer exists, and guess who's at that movie theater.
• 1:33:08
  Speaker 1: Bruce Springsteen and Patti Sciavola. They're at that movie theater
• 1:33:12
  Speaker 1: and I see Bruce Springsteen across the hall, who we've
• 1:33:15
  Speaker 1: been trying to reach for weeks. We can't reach him,
• 1:33:17
  Speaker 1: and I go Bruce Springsteen joints and I uh, and
• 1:33:23
  Speaker 1: I make a bee line for Bruce. And I'm wearing
• 1:33:26
  Speaker 1: a Simpson's jacket. The Simpsons producer Jack you get it.
• 1:33:29
  Speaker 1: There was a leather jacket, red, the red and black
• 1:33:32
  Speaker 1: jacket that you got, producers. So I'm running up to him,
• 1:33:35
  Speaker 1: to Bruce Springsteen, and then he sings. This fat guy
• 1:33:37
  Speaker 1: running towards him and he's like, eyes mean, and he
• 1:33:42
  Speaker 1: steps in front of Patty because he's a fucking hero, right,
• 1:33:45
  Speaker 1: He does the one anything Heard.
• 1:33:47
  Speaker 3: And then Clarence Clement stands in front of him.
• 1:33:49
  Speaker 1: Well no, I stands in front and says, hey, man,
• 1:33:51
  Speaker 1: it's like Bruce h I'm uh mister Springsteen, miss Springsteen.
• 1:33:56
  Speaker 1: I'm so glad I caught you. My name is Jake Cogan,
• 1:33:58
  Speaker 1: I'm a producer of the Simpsons. And I point to
• 1:34:01
  Speaker 1: my jacket as if that's truly anything. We're selling T
• 1:34:06
  Speaker 1: shirts on the freeway in storage and venice No one
• 1:34:11
  Speaker 1: only a jacket means nothing. That the amount of merchandise
• 1:34:14
  Speaker 1: come to the Simpsons is into the billions of dollars.
• 1:34:16
  Speaker 1: So I said, we've been trying to get a hold
• 1:34:18
  Speaker 1: of you. We can only reach your manager John about
• 1:34:22
  Speaker 1: this thing that we're doing on the show. It's like
• 1:34:24
  Speaker 1: doing a song for a girl in a well. It's
• 1:34:26
  Speaker 1: really funny. And I was like, I just have to
• 1:34:29
  Speaker 1: know if you would be interested, and he said, yeah, man,
• 1:34:31
  Speaker 1: I really like to do it. I was like, he
• 1:34:34
  Speaker 1: wanted to get the crazy fat guy away from him,
• 1:34:36
  Speaker 1: so he said yeah, and he said no, and and
• 1:34:38
  Speaker 1: then we never heard back from him or John Lenno ever,
• 1:34:42
  Speaker 1: and then we just gave up and went to spring
• 1:34:44
  Speaker 1: But I scared the shit out of Bruce Springsteen. I
• 1:34:46
  Speaker 1: literally made Bruce Springsteen think he was going to have
• 1:34:49
  Speaker 1: his sort of scary John Lennon moment. And you know,
• 1:34:53
  Speaker 1: thankfully I don't carry a weapon, so that's good. But
• 1:34:56
  Speaker 1: it's like, it's it's I'm I scared the boss.
• 1:35:00
  Speaker 2: You'll lock on when Homer approaches the Oscaran truck when
• 1:35:03
  Speaker 2: he's fat and he's got the moonmo and he's at
• 1:35:04
  Speaker 2: the gossips and just take it all. I just take
• 1:35:05
  Speaker 2: it all exactly.
• 1:35:08
  Speaker 1: He just wanted to get me to get away. And
• 1:35:10
  Speaker 1: I don't blame him. I don't blame in the least,
• 1:35:12
  Speaker 1: but it was I just didn't not I'm so unaware
• 1:35:16
  Speaker 1: of myself, and how would I would that I could
• 1:35:19
  Speaker 1: be scary? The thought that I could be scary to
• 1:35:21
  Speaker 1: anybody is shocking to me.
• 1:35:23
  Speaker 3: What movie was it?
• 1:35:24
  Speaker 1: By the way, God who cares? Movie theater doesn't exist.
• 1:35:29
  Speaker 1: It was in a It's in Los Angeles. There was
• 1:35:31
  Speaker 1: a place called the Century City entertained ABC Entertainment Center,
• 1:35:35
  Speaker 1: and there was movie theaters and a Schubert Theater in there.
• 1:35:37
  Speaker 1: It's all been knocked down. It doesn't exist anymore. So
• 1:35:40
  Speaker 1: I can't imagine. I don't know what movie.
• 1:35:42
  Speaker 3: Honestly, I'm picturing you Moore as Lenny, sort of a
• 1:35:44
  Speaker 3: drunken Lenny, approaching the limousine and just giving the thumbs
• 1:35:47
  Speaker 3: up to mister b.
• 1:35:49
  Speaker 1: No. I was just like sweating, like I was acting
• 1:35:53
  Speaker 1: like a producer, like I wanted him. I wanted the
• 1:35:55
  Speaker 1: Springsteen to do it, and I was so excited.
• 1:35:57
  Speaker 2: Let's be honest, though, I sting turned out to be
• 1:35:59
  Speaker 2: a fantastic choice in the for that episode. He worked
• 1:36:01
  Speaker 2: out perfectly.
• 1:36:02
  Speaker 1: I'm not shitting on mister Sting. I mean it's fantastic.
• 1:36:04
  Speaker 1: He was great. He's fantastic, and he was great, and
• 1:36:08
  Speaker 1: who's perfect for it and all the great And I
• 1:36:10
  Speaker 1: bet I assume Springsteen has been on the show since then, So.
• 1:36:13
  Speaker 2: No, he still hasn't.
• 1:36:14
  Speaker 1: No, I'm not.
• 1:36:16
  Speaker 2: I don't want to work with don't be alone with
• 1:36:17
  Speaker 2: that guy. So he's like, and I don't, I don't
• 1:36:19
  Speaker 2: want to work with that guy.
• 1:36:20
  Speaker 1: Okay, well then he doesn't have to be anymore. I'm
• 1:36:23
  Speaker 1: not there, but he does have to be on my podcast.
• 1:36:26
  Speaker 1: So that's all right, I'll get I'll get Springsteen for
• 1:36:28
  Speaker 1: the podcast.
• 1:36:28
  Speaker 2: But you did have one guest on this episode who
• 1:36:31
  Speaker 2: mocked herself Joyce Brothers. Oh smart line and in and
• 1:36:35
  Speaker 2: out real quick. Yeah, it wouldn't even really called a
• 1:36:37
  Speaker 2: guest appear. This just a cameo of anything, right, I.
• 1:36:40
  Speaker 1: Think we didn't write it for a guest. And and
• 1:36:43
  Speaker 1: and I think she called and said, hey, would I could,
• 1:36:45
  Speaker 1: is there ever a spot for me on the show?
• 1:36:47
  Speaker 1: And sure, yeah, I mean she she was very nice,
• 1:36:50
  Speaker 1: and I mean she was very good also very famously
• 1:36:52
  Speaker 1: good at marketing herself and constantly trying to be re
• 1:36:55
  Speaker 1: up her cred and I guess getting on The Simpsons
• 1:36:57
  Speaker 1: maybe helped your credit a little bit. I'm not sure.
• 1:37:00
  Speaker 1: Maybe she's just a fan of the show. Anyway, she
• 1:37:02
  Speaker 1: was great, very gracious. People are willing to make fun
• 1:37:04
  Speaker 1: of themselves, are fantastic. Tony Bennett fantastic. I mean Tom Jones,
• 1:37:08
  Speaker 1: we did. We had so many great people who.
• 1:37:11
  Speaker 2: Were all of the celebrities that came in and just
• 1:37:12
  Speaker 2: blew you away because you just weren't expecting him to
• 1:37:15
  Speaker 2: be so open and lovely.
• 1:37:17
  Speaker 1: Well Tony Bennett, I remember being just I was so
• 1:37:20
  Speaker 1: thrilled to hear him sing the Capital City song on
• 1:37:23
  Speaker 1: that was so and he was so great. You know,
• 1:37:26
  Speaker 1: Joe Montagne was fantastic. It came back many many times.
• 1:37:30
  Speaker 2: So you would you have worked with Kelsey before Frasier then?
• 1:37:33
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I worked with him because on the I created
• 1:37:37
  Speaker 1: the character of side show Bob.
• 1:37:38
  Speaker 2: Yeah, crusty gets busted.
• 1:37:40
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, of course, yeah, and so but also we
• 1:37:42
  Speaker 1: worked it was a guest on the Tracy Ollman Show
• 1:37:44
  Speaker 1: even before.
• 1:37:45
  Speaker 2: Then, so I actually didn't know that.
• 1:37:47
  Speaker 1: Yeah, So it was my job to roust him out
• 1:37:49
  Speaker 1: of his trailer because he was so drunk and high
• 1:37:52
  Speaker 1: or whatever he was that I had to sort of
• 1:37:55
  Speaker 1: like shake him away and say it's time for a rehearsal. Uh.
• 1:37:59
  Speaker 1: You know, he cleaned up his years later. But what's
• 1:38:01
  Speaker 1: remarkable was as stoned as he was and whatever he
• 1:38:05
  Speaker 1: was taking when he went on stage, he was fantastic.
• 1:38:08
  Speaker 1: Immediately great, snapped to it, did a scene perfect, line perfect,
• 1:38:11
  Speaker 1: and then went back to his trailer and fell asleep.
• 1:38:13
  Speaker 2: The ultimate professional.
• 1:38:14
  Speaker 3: Wow.
• 1:38:14
  Speaker 2: Yeah, so before we let you go though, So this
• 1:38:17
  Speaker 2: is obviously a mister Burns episode. I love the animation
• 1:38:20
  Speaker 2: of Burns at the end when he listened to them singing,
• 1:38:22
  Speaker 2: he looks like the Grinch? And whatnot?
• 1:38:24
  Speaker 1: Right?
• 1:38:25
  Speaker 2: What was it? What was Burns's one of your favorite
• 1:38:26
  Speaker 2: characters to write? Is such an enjoyable character to watch?
• 1:38:29
  Speaker 2: Was he an enjoyable character?
• 1:38:30
  Speaker 3: Right?
• 1:38:31
  Speaker 1: WHILEY and I get credit for creating mister Burns, we
• 1:38:34
  Speaker 1: created mister Burns and Smithers.
• 1:38:36
  Speaker 2: Really, I'm as honesty of course.
• 1:38:37
  Speaker 1: Yeah, he's very nice script for it. So I have
• 1:38:40
  Speaker 1: a special love for him. When what we wrote wasn't
• 1:38:44
  Speaker 1: what tears. He was developed by everybody and by artists
• 1:38:49
  Speaker 1: and by everything to become the excellent guy that he was.
• 1:38:53
  Speaker 1: But our first version was just evil boss, but he
• 1:38:56
  Speaker 1: became very evil and very funny. I love mister Burns
• 1:39:00
  Speaker 1: and I loved the relationship with Smithers, you know, and
• 1:39:02
  Speaker 1: we when we developed Smithers, we definitely wanted Smithers to
• 1:39:08
  Speaker 1: love mister Burns in all the ways that he loves
• 1:39:11
  Speaker 1: mister Burns.
• 1:39:12
  Speaker 2: I need you to settle this for so, Yes, playing
• 1:39:14
  Speaker 2: at home, did you write Smith's to Bean African American?
• 1:39:18
  Speaker 1: Yes? Really he was black and gay?
• 1:39:20
  Speaker 2: Yes, okay, then, but there we go, finally settled because
• 1:39:23
  Speaker 2: the people always go, oh, it was an animation era,
• 1:39:25
  Speaker 2: but no, he was, you know, he.
• 1:39:26
  Speaker 1: Was black and gay. And they decided, we we all
• 1:39:29
  Speaker 1: decided Jim Brooks and whoever was he couldn't be both.
• 1:39:34
  Speaker 1: Why why make the one black character gay? Also because
• 1:39:37
  Speaker 1: I can't choose choose the same thing with doctor Hibbert.
• 1:39:42
  Speaker 1: Doctor Hibbert was a woman was Julia Hibbert, And they
• 1:39:46
  Speaker 1: said why a woman an a black so diverse too much?
• 1:39:51
  Speaker 1: And so I was named it after Julia Sweeney, the actress,
• 1:39:55
  Speaker 1: the comedic actress, and her married name was Julia Hibbert,
• 1:39:58
  Speaker 1: and I named the character after.
• 1:40:00
  Speaker 2: That's where doctor Hibb comes from. There you go, we
• 1:40:02
  Speaker 2: learned something every day.
• 1:40:03
  Speaker 1: And Julius Hebert and then when we went up against
• 1:40:06
  Speaker 1: Bill Carsby, it was perfect foil to make fun of
• 1:40:09
  Speaker 1: Bill Carsby.
• 1:40:10
  Speaker 2: Yeah, there we go. Well, and you also created Kanye
• 1:40:13
  Speaker 2: and Cotis. You guys essentially are the reason we got
• 1:40:16
  Speaker 2: Treos of Horror because I know Matt pitched the idea
• 1:40:18
  Speaker 2: kids tell Us to Ghost Stories in the Treehouse, but
• 1:40:20
  Speaker 2: you guys sort of went, that's a great concept. We
• 1:40:25
  Speaker 2: can run with this.
• 1:40:26
  Speaker 1: We supported the idea in a place when a lot
• 1:40:28
  Speaker 1: of people didn't want to support it, but we supported
• 1:40:30
  Speaker 1: it and we liked it. And yes, man Greening gets
• 1:40:33
  Speaker 1: credit for that thing. We get credit for saying that's
• 1:40:36
  Speaker 1: a good idea.
• 1:40:37
  Speaker 2: But the thing is, though, that's arguably the episode that
• 1:40:41
  Speaker 2: everyone really still looks forward to this day. It's the
• 1:40:43
  Speaker 2: Halloween episodes. Say what you will at the Simpsons. You know,
• 1:40:46
  Speaker 2: I still enjoy the Simpsons, My kids like watching the
• 1:40:48
  Speaker 2: new episodes and put it on from Disney Plus has
• 1:40:49
  Speaker 2: been a great thing for discovering the new episodes again,
• 1:40:52
  Speaker 2: particularly for the younger audiences. But you know, even if
• 1:40:55
  Speaker 2: someone doesn't necessarily watch the Simpsons anymore, they'll still keep
• 1:40:57
  Speaker 2: up with the Halloween ones that's been the mainstay.
• 1:41:00
  Speaker 1: Think they're fun. I think it's so much fun. It's
• 1:41:02
  Speaker 1: also you know, they're standalone. They're fantastic. Usually it's a
• 1:41:06
  Speaker 1: parody of something that's cool that's happening at the moment.
• 1:41:10
  Speaker 1: You know, it's I agree, they're a lot of fun,
• 1:41:12
  Speaker 1: and they're fun to write. They're really fun to write
• 1:41:14
  Speaker 1: because they're a little ten minute cartoons. You know, it's
• 1:41:17
  Speaker 1: it's uh, yeah, everybody wins, we all want we loved it,
• 1:41:22
  Speaker 1: they love it. It's all good. They've been a few
• 1:41:23
  Speaker 1: shitty ones, but mostly they're pretty good.
• 1:41:25
  Speaker 2: Yeah, sometimes the parodies aren't great. But when you're doing
• 1:41:28
  Speaker 2: those first Treas of Horror episodes, things like the Raven,
• 1:41:33
  Speaker 2: did you think the kids would have any idea what's
• 1:41:35
  Speaker 2: going on there? Or did you just not care?
• 1:41:37
  Speaker 1: No? And I think that's one of the bad ones.
• 1:41:39
  Speaker 1: Like I honestly no, I don't think it's any good
• 1:41:43
  Speaker 1: at all. Sam. The only reason we did Trias of Horror,
• 1:41:46
  Speaker 1: the reason the reason we got Sam Simon to agree
• 1:41:49
  Speaker 1: is that we told him you could do the Raven.
• 1:41:51
  Speaker 1: They went oh. He hated the idea up until he
• 1:41:54
  Speaker 1: heard we could do the Raven. And then he did
• 1:41:57
  Speaker 1: his version of The Raven, which is fine. It's Edgar
• 1:42:00
  Speaker 1: and Poe, it's it's educating. I feel like it's more educational.
• 1:42:03
  Speaker 1: I feel like it's something that that and then and
• 1:42:06
  Speaker 1: that bums me out because I don't need education in
• 1:42:09
  Speaker 1: my Simpsons cartoons. But we had James old Jones fantastic
• 1:42:14
  Speaker 1: reading it, and uh I got to meet him and
• 1:42:16
  Speaker 1: that was fun when we we did it before he
• 1:42:19
  Speaker 1: did his his The Raven, you know, giant plate of
• 1:42:21
  Speaker 1: chocolate chip cookies. It's like, what are you doing? Don't
• 1:42:25
  Speaker 1: you have to have a clear throat to do? What
• 1:42:27
  Speaker 1: do you do? Is no, And he was chomping down
• 1:42:31
  Speaker 1: and chopped the two cookies, and then he started doing
• 1:42:32
  Speaker 1: the Raven.
• 1:42:33
  Speaker 3: Just passing a box of chips. A hoy, what.
• 1:42:37
  Speaker 1: What's going on? But uh, I think to me, the
• 1:42:42
  Speaker 1: the the tanging codos, you know, to feed Man parody.
• 1:42:47
  Speaker 1: I think it's not just because we wrote it. I
• 1:42:49
  Speaker 1: just think it's much funnier and it's that's better. And
• 1:42:52
  Speaker 1: I and and there's Frankenstein one that's good. That is
• 1:42:55
  Speaker 1: one of the Amityville Horror in that same episode. That's better.
• 1:42:58
  Speaker 1: I just think they're better. But you know what, Sam
• 1:43:02
  Speaker 1: Simon loved him. He wanted to educate the world and
• 1:43:05
  Speaker 1: he did. And it has jokes in it. It does
• 1:43:07
  Speaker 1: have jokes in it, It's just not immediately as funny
• 1:43:10
  Speaker 1: as the other ones.
• 1:43:10
  Speaker 2: Sometimes, like you said, you got to please the boss
• 1:43:12
  Speaker 2: to get what you get to do what you want
• 1:43:13
  Speaker 2: to do as well.
• 1:43:14
  Speaker 1: Yes, you always have to please the boss.
• 1:43:16
  Speaker 3: Yes, some guests.
• 1:43:17
  Speaker 2: All right, finally, before we let you go, he's you
• 1:43:19
  Speaker 2: want to ask more question?
• 1:43:20
  Speaker 1: One more? All right?
• 1:43:22
  Speaker 3: I'm taking the internet's word for this, which is a
• 1:43:23
  Speaker 3: fool's errand. But apparently you were voted most likely to
• 1:43:26
  Speaker 3: drop his pants on a dare in high school. It's
• 1:43:29
  Speaker 3: raises the question, how are you responsible for the will
• 1:43:32
  Speaker 3: drop pants for food? Gag? And Krussy got canceled.
• 1:43:35
  Speaker 1: I don't remember being most likely to drop my pants
• 1:43:38
  Speaker 1: in high school. I don't think that's true, although had
• 1:43:41
  Speaker 1: somebody asked me to drop my pants, I would have
• 1:43:43
  Speaker 1: for a dare or for for the comedy value of it.
• 1:43:46
  Speaker 1: I used to do anything for a joke.
• 1:43:48
  Speaker 2: Is that tiring after a while?
• 1:43:50
  Speaker 1: Yes, there's a lot of energy. You've got to use
• 1:43:52
  Speaker 1: a lot of energy being always on, being always on.
• 1:43:55
  Speaker 1: But also I like it, and as I said, my
• 1:43:58
  Speaker 1: dysfunction with my father made me want to really be
• 1:44:00
  Speaker 1: funny all the time. So it's okay. But no, I
• 1:44:05
  Speaker 1: don't think my ability or willingness to drop my pants
• 1:44:07
  Speaker 1: has anything to do with that joke of the show. Okay,
• 1:44:11
  Speaker 1: I think that's just funny.
• 1:44:12
  Speaker 2: The final question we always ask people, and I said,
• 1:44:15
  Speaker 2: you said, you don't prepared anything, but you can do
• 1:44:17
  Speaker 2: it because you are J Cogan. But the question is,
• 1:44:19
  Speaker 2: it's nineteen ninety eight. Fox have asked you to put
• 1:44:21
  Speaker 2: together a five episode Friday Night Simpsons marathon. Which episodees
• 1:44:25
  Speaker 2: are you going with? And what are you starting with?
• 1:44:27
  Speaker 2: In particular, I'm.
• 1:44:28
  Speaker 1: Gonna start with the seventh episode, which was the Christmas episode,
• 1:44:32
  Speaker 1: which became our pilot. I'm gonna start with that because
• 1:44:35
  Speaker 1: it was so successful right out of the gate, people
• 1:44:37
  Speaker 1: loved it, fantastic. I'm gonna follow that up with Like Father,
• 1:44:42
  Speaker 1: Like Clown because and I'm gonna follow that up with
• 1:44:46
  Speaker 1: Barth the Daredevil, and I'm gonna follow that up with
• 1:44:48
  Speaker 1: Old Money, and I'm gonna follow that up with last
• 1:44:50
  Speaker 1: exit to Springfield. And the reason why I pick all
• 1:44:53
  Speaker 1: those other ones is because I get residuals, and so
• 1:44:56
  Speaker 1: I want the money. Baby, They're all cod I want
• 1:45:00
  Speaker 1: to ask you written not the best ones, but the
• 1:45:03
  Speaker 1: ones I get paid for.
• 1:45:04
  Speaker 2: So okay, the residual still exist with the Simpsons, you guys.
• 1:45:08
  Speaker 1: Yes, we get money. We get money from the show
• 1:45:12
  Speaker 1: is sold all over the world. It's also we get
• 1:45:15
  Speaker 1: a fraction of a fraction of a penny when they
• 1:45:17
  Speaker 1: played on Disney Plus, so we get some money.
• 1:45:19
  Speaker 2: So do you just have like a three laptops going
• 1:45:22
  Speaker 2: constantly on your episode.
• 1:45:24
  Speaker 1: Kids Got to Eat Man Charlie Cogan. Charlie Cogan, who
• 1:45:28
  Speaker 1: is a uh is a very funny musician, not funny talented, talented,
• 1:45:35
  Speaker 1: talented musician, singer, songwriter. Charlie Cogan. He is a genius.
• 1:45:39
  Speaker 1: But you know, I need I need to make some
• 1:45:42
  Speaker 1: residuals to get more band members for him. And oh
• 1:45:45
  Speaker 1: this is his sad this is music stage.
• 1:45:47
  Speaker 2: Here before when you were talking about was that a
• 1:45:49
  Speaker 2: band set up?
• 1:45:50
  Speaker 1: That's yeah, this is my son's music recording studio and
• 1:45:53
  Speaker 1: so h Charlie Cogan kog and listen to his music.
• 1:45:57
  Speaker 1: Tell me if you like it, tell me if you
• 1:45:59
  Speaker 1: don't like it. I want to hear because we're he's
• 1:46:01
  Speaker 1: making about to make a new record, so I want
• 1:46:03
  Speaker 1: to hear what people think about his music so he
• 1:46:05
  Speaker 1: can adjust to the audience.
• 1:46:06
  Speaker 2: We'll chuck the links in the description. We'll chut the
• 1:46:09
  Speaker 2: links in the description of this podcast. But speaking of podcasts,
• 1:46:11
  Speaker 2: plug yours one mole time before we let you guys
• 1:46:12
  Speaker 2: there there it is.
• 1:46:15
  Speaker 1: Don't okay Cogan, that's my podcast. I usually have a
• 1:46:18
  Speaker 1: guest on and we talk about my problems and we
• 1:46:21
  Speaker 1: can we can really get into solving my problems and
• 1:46:25
  Speaker 1: learn about our guests. And often it's a comedian, it's
• 1:46:29
  Speaker 1: a writer, it's an actor, it's an artist of some kind.
• 1:46:33
  Speaker 1: Sometimes it's a grief specialist, but not always. It's always
• 1:46:36
  Speaker 1: somebody who's interesting to me and hopefully interesting to you.
• 1:46:39
  Speaker 1: But listen to don't be along with Ja Cogan. But
• 1:46:42
  Speaker 1: more than listen to it, subscribe to itsri You never
• 1:46:44
  Speaker 1: listen to it, just subscribe to it. Don't you the
• 1:46:47
  Speaker 1: same thing on your show? Right? You need subscribe, like
• 1:46:49
  Speaker 1: and subscribe, You not like and subscribe, but subscribe, Just subscribe.
• 1:46:54
  Speaker 1: What does it cost? You nothing, just subscribe.
• 1:46:56
  Speaker 2: The thing is and he's had Matt Groening on the show,
• 1:46:58
  Speaker 2: a man who you know very rarely does podcast episodes.
• 1:47:02
  Speaker 1: But you know it's only done too as far as
• 1:47:03
  Speaker 1: I know, Mark Maron and me, that's.
• 1:47:05
  Speaker 2: It because he gave us the Springsteain treatment. So you
• 1:47:08
  Speaker 2: know he said, I love to be young. Yeah.
• 1:47:09
  Speaker 1: Yeah, he doesn't do it. He doesn't do it much.
• 1:47:11
  Speaker 1: I just contacted him on Saint Patrick's Day. I uh,
• 1:47:14
  Speaker 1: I called him to wish him a happy birthday, even
• 1:47:17
  Speaker 1: though his birthday is Valentine's Day, but always Saint Patrick's
• 1:47:19
  Speaker 1: Day reminds me that.
• 1:47:22
  Speaker 2: I'll think you're getting Jay. It's been an absolutely hona.
• 1:47:24
  Speaker 1: I really enjoyed it. Guys, and you're not you know
• 1:47:27
  Speaker 1: you ossies. Aren't the dicks everybody say you are? You
• 1:47:29
  Speaker 1: know what? You're sweet, nice, lovely people with a good heart.
• 1:47:35
  Speaker 1: I like it. I want to go. I want to
• 1:47:36
  Speaker 1: go to Australia. And where if I go to Australia,
• 1:47:39
  Speaker 1: where should I go?
• 1:47:41
  Speaker 2: It depends?
• 1:47:41
  Speaker 3: Why are you coming?
• 1:47:42
  Speaker 2: He's coming for touristy shet. Are you coming to enjoy Australia?
• 1:47:45
  Speaker 1: I want to absorb the culture. I want to sort
• 1:47:48
  Speaker 1: of figure out what's cool about the place. I want
• 1:47:50
  Speaker 1: to be able to come back and say I want
• 1:47:52
  Speaker 1: to go back there again.
• 1:47:53
  Speaker 2: I recommend a little town called Jeloon. That's where I'm from,
• 1:47:56
  Speaker 2: so Bally. For culture, i'd go to Melbourne, which is
• 1:47:58
  Speaker 2: a capital city. You just want to do the touristy
• 1:48:01
  Speaker 2: stuff like the opera house and the bridge and what
• 1:48:03
  Speaker 2: everyone thinks is that's Sydney.
• 1:48:06
  Speaker 1: I will fly over that stuff, I'll see it, but
• 1:48:08
  Speaker 1: I want to know what, like the great food is,
• 1:48:10
  Speaker 1: or the great music or the things that make it special.
• 1:48:13
  Speaker 3: That's Melbourne. But if you want a unique astrayant experience,
• 1:48:16
  Speaker 3: maybe head up north, go far north Queensland and the
• 1:48:19
  Speaker 3: Northern Territory.
• 1:48:19
  Speaker 2: To get your beaches and your outbacks and your whatnot.
• 1:48:22
  Speaker 3: Oh yes, all right, and the animals that will kill you.
• 1:48:24
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm afraid of that.
• 1:48:25
  Speaker 2: Plenty of those, We are lots of them. You get
• 1:48:28
  Speaker 2: used to them, yeah, yeah, just be nice to them.
• 1:48:30
  Speaker 2: They'll be nice back.
• 1:48:31
  Speaker 1: Best way to protect yourself from a kangaroo.
• 1:48:34
  Speaker 2: Well, don't try and act tougher than it, because they
• 1:48:36
  Speaker 2: are always tougher than you.
• 1:48:38
  Speaker 3: Right, the kangaroo will it will out out for you.
• 1:48:41
  Speaker 1: The pouture of a kangaroo is disgusting.
• 1:48:42
  Speaker 2: Right, yeah, very very mucusy, Yeah, reportedly, so I go.
• 1:48:47
  Speaker 2: And funny, I learned that from the Simpsons.
• 1:48:51
  Speaker 1: I just learned get recently too, so I know maybe
• 1:48:54
  Speaker 1: from the Simpsons, but just how discussed because you think
• 1:48:56
  Speaker 1: it's so cute in there but it turns out no,
• 1:48:58
  Speaker 1: it's disgusting.
• 1:48:58
  Speaker 2: It's where babies live and that ship. Yeah no, good,
• 1:49:03
  Speaker 2: Thank you again, Jock, Thanks a lot.
• 1:49:05
  Speaker 1: This isn't a pleasure. I really enjoyed this. I hope
• 1:49:07
  Speaker 1: you edited so that don't seem like moron