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Why Does Disney Always Kill the Moms? · Not Right Now

• 0:00
  [upbeat music] Hey, I have three kids. They eat so much. We try to eat real food. We try to cook when we can.
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• 1:54
  [upbeat music] Why does Disney always kill the moms? Yes. Yeah. They're... It's either the mom is dead or she's got a dump truck ass, and, like, why does Pixar do that?
• 2:03
  [upbeat music] Welcome to Not Right Now, the podcast about parenting through all of this. We'll be talking about/crashing out over topics like... TikTok time limits and the collapse of local news.
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  Have you done your homework, and have I remembered to ask you if you've done your homework? Another existential question. It's not an advice show.
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  It's a you're not alone and you're also not crazy for screaming in the shower kinda show. I'm Claire Zulkey from Evil Witches. And I'm Quinn Emmett from Important Not Important.
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  You can find details on anything we talk about in the show notes or at our website, notrightnow.show..show.
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  And if you like what you hear today, please share it with a parent who needs it or who might laugh and tell their kids to be quiet, and then drop us a nice little five-star review.
• 2:54
  And reminder, you can send questions or feedback to questions@notrightnow.show. [upbeat music] Hey, everybody.
• 3:11
  A quick pause just to introduce our guest today, Chris Winterbauer. We forgot to do this part. Claire isn't here.
• 3:19
  She's at the dentist with our kids, and maybe the audio sucks because school just got out and summer break started right away, which is ridiculous, and my kids are already feral animals.
• 3:31
  So we're traveling, and I'm hiding in a cubicle in a WeWork I snuck into.
• 3:35
  Anyways, Chris is awesome dad and a screenwriter and director, including most recently, a delightful film called Moonshot that, full disclosure, my wife Danielle was an executive producer on.
• 3:48
  Chris is also the co-host of the wonderful podcast What Went Wrong, described as a biweekly exploration of the unbelievably complex, maddening, and often hilarious roads your favorite films took to get to the big screen.
• 4:02
  So today, we're gonna talk about what movies we let our kids watch, what movies we force our kids to watch, and which movies and TV shows we saw so early that they more or less scarred us for life.
• 4:16
  So anyways, send along any feedback or questions or recipes or death threats or whatever to questions@notrightnow.show. Thanks. [upbeat music] Chris, how old is your daughter? She's a little kid, right?
• 4:31
  Yeah, my daughter is three and a half, and my son is nine and a half months. Oh, okay. Well, your son's- Yeah...
• 4:37
  probably not watching very much of anything right now, but- We're trying to keep him away from it, but, like, when our daughter is watching things, he inevitably ends up, you know- Sure...
• 4:45
  sneaking in and seeing something, and the doctor's always, "No screens under two," of course. So- No, no, no. Who would do that? You know, just put something on. That's, yeah. What is- That's first-born advice.
• 4:53
  Second-born, doesn't matter. He can start smoking cigarettes. Third-born, we didn't even teach our third-born to read. He just learned somehow. I know. Yeah. He just... We would leave him.
• 4:59
  We had this small little house in LA, and I swear we had three in three years. We would put him- That's insane. [laughs] We would... Well, it was a beggars can't be choosers thing.
• 5:06
  Like, short version is a lot of miscarriages, a lot of IVF. Mm-hmm. Made the first one. Mm-hmm. Made the second one. Third one was an accident. We would put him in the bouncer and walk away- Mm-hmm...
• 5:14
  'cause we had two other babies- Mm-hmm... and go deal with them, and we'd come back, like, hours later, and he's... No, I get it, man. Yeah. You clearly got a lot on your hands- Yeah...
• 5:23
  and you're- I want to know what you've been watching with your daughter that has been fun for everyone to watch and not just something that, you know, when I had to go see Sonic 2 in the theater- Sure...
• 5:31
  which was not my choice. Well, so the big one, and it's cliche because I think it's true of so many people, but Bluey is... I think Bluey's fantastic, and we really love it. Mm-hmm. And we've been watching it on Disney+.
• 5:43
  And so that's been the one show we let her... I mean, Sesame Street as well she really enjoys. Bluey's a big one, but we have started really going into Disney movies. Mm-hmm.
• 5:53
  The animated Disney classics and some Pixar, and it's been so interesting to see, like, what she connects to and what she doesn't. Mm-hmm.I expected, some I didn't expect.
• 6:03
  Monsters, Incorporated was, ha- has always been my favorite Pixar movie. I absolutely adore it.
• 6:09
  I was a little nervous showing it to her because I thought, you know, there are a couple of tense, scary moments in this movie. It was great. It was fantastic. She loved it.
• 6:18
  She loved seeing herself in the film represented- Mm... through Boo- Yeah... which was super fun. And Boo looks close enough to her.
• 6:26
  You know, my daughter has lighter curly hair, but you know, she broadly speaking was like, "Oh yeah, that's me." And so she really loved it and she loved monsters, and that was really fun.
• 6:34
  And then I showed her The Land Before Time, and she couldn't have been less interested. And she- [laughs]... was just totally checked out, and she basically said, "Turn this off," after 10 minutes.
• 6:43
  And I loved The Land Before Time. When I was a kid, that was kinda my, I'm gonna wear through this VHS for years. Oh, man. So- That's a throwback. [laughs] Yeah. But Monsters, Inc. w- has been the big win recently.
• 6:57
  And we're starting to cover some more animated movies for the podcast, and so I get to watch those with her, which has been really fun as well, getting to see how she reacts to older movies.
• 7:08
  That's interesting about Land Before Time, although I feel like some kids are into dinosaurs and they're not. And you know, you never know what you're gonna get. She, like, likes dinosaurs.
• 7:15
  She just didn't like that mo- That's why I thought it was gonna be such a no-brainer. Did you tell her she was wrong? Yeah. I said, "You need a timeout. You're, you're an idiot." Yeah.
• 7:24
  I played that scene from Step Brothers, like, "You're coming off stupid, Miss Lady." And yeah, she just... I, I don't know. Maybe they're not anthropomorphized enough or something.
• 7:33
  There's not a lotta dialogue in the first 15 minutes, to be fair. It's almost a silent film. Well, the, a good test is always WALL-E, right? Um- Yeah, yeah. She- I don't think WALL-E would hold her attention right now.
• 7:43
  It performed earlier than I thought it would, frankly- Hm... which is, like, such a testament. I'll keep it in the try.
• 7:47
  I don't remember how early, 'cause I can't remember much and I've blacked it out, but it performed earlier- Yeah... than I thought, but I thought we were really in a heyday, man.
• 7:54
  We had, we had WALL-E, and I mean, we had Moana on repeat every day for years. Yeah. Moana's a big one. Years. She likes Moana. And the music's fantastic, and she really likes- Yeah... Coco. She watched Coco.
• 8:05
  She likes Coco. Toy Story she loves, which is great. But again, like, she loves Snow White, Cinderella- Hm... Tangled- Lots of classic... a lot of the Disney Princess movies. She really loves those.
• 8:17
  She ha- owns all these Disney Princess dresses that she likes to put on when she watches them. So- Aw, that's cute. Does she feel like- That-... Toy Story 5 is necessary or a cash grab?
• 8:27
  I think she's a capitalist at heart, so she- Mm-hmm... understands what's going on. Like, with the, um, number of toys that she has- Mm-hmm... she understands that growth is the only option, and- Yep...
• 8:36
  we have to do this until, you know, it metastasizes into something that suffocates all of us, so- Right [laughs]... let's keep growing. It's the line from, uh, Deadpool Wolverine, right?
• 8:44
  When he was like, "Oh, they're gonna make you do this till you're 90." And you're like, he's not kidding. Yeah. Oh, God. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Well- Exactly... I don't know if you get...
• 8:51
  And I know the, like, the Star Wars company, Star Wars Inc., they definitely can feel that I'm the one person in the world who won't...
• 8:57
  I refuse to be in the room when the, when my boys and my husband watch anything Star Wars related. Any... What's the latest? Andor? Chris, or Quinn- Mm-hmm... what were you watching? Yeah. Yeah, Andor.
• 9:06
  And- Well, you have this in the notes. W- let's back this up. Where's, where does this... Oh. Who hurt you? Where does this come from? And also, let's just rephrase, Star Wars Inc. is Lucasfilm. It's incredible. Or was.
• 9:16
  She said the Star Wars company. Was Lucasfilm. Which is now- Star Wars... gonna be the name of this title. LLC. The Empire. Yes. Well, I'm 46 years old. I'm a girl.
• 9:25
  And it was just very clear to me at the time that Star Wars was not for me or about me. And then, you know, as a parent, the marketing is insane. You can't avoid it. And I think I just...
• 9:36
  You know, I feel like everyone has something that they boycott for one reason or another. My husband- Mm-hmm... refuses to go to McDonald's for no reason.
• 9:43
  And my boyfriend in college refused to shop at The Gap for no reason. And I am like that with Star Wars. I'm like, "I don't know. Just fuck you. You're not gonna get me.
• 9:52
  I know, like, you got ev- every other sucker in my house, but not me." I mean, truly though, Star Wars is not, is clearly not made for people like me.
• 9:59
  So I like to differentiate if I can in the house sometimes, and they accept that. But this is what I love, is that it's a, it's not a "no thank you," it's a "get fucked, you're never gonna get me."
• 10:10
  Like, there's abrasion there. Yeah. Yes. I resent the marketing of it. I mean, again, to be clear, there's no escaping it for several years in my house. Do you know how many Star Wars guys we have and costumes?
• 10:21
  Like- Mm-hmm... so it's not like I didn't let it in the house. I'm just, like, the one person who was like, "No, you're not gonna catch me with a single Star Wars action figure."
• 10:28
  And you know, it's been making a big chunk in their profits. You've probably heard about it in the news that I haven't taken part in it. Mm-hmm. So, uh- You're not taking their blood money. Exactly.
• 10:37
  My dad, who should have been the prime demographic, so he was 18 in 19, or 17 or 18 when the first one came out, and he's never liked it.
• 10:48
  And when I was little, I did really like Star Wars 'cause I had all the VHSs of the originals, and then I kinda lost interest by the prequels. But my dad hated it, not because...
• 10:56
  For the s- it was obviously made for him, but because he was such a Star Trek devotee. Mm. Mm-hmm. Like, he felt that Star Wars was, although s- more sophisticated technologically, inferior storytelling [laughs] I think.
• 11:09
  Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. He, he was such a Shatner, Leonard Nimoy, like, devotee that he just, it never clicked for him. And so we had the brief Star Wars phase in our household. Yes.
• 11:18
  And it was snuffed out pretty quickly, 'cause my sisters obviously didn't care for it either, so. Yeah. I- Yeah...
• 11:22
  I mean, we were so into it that my kids were checking out dictionaries of the characters from the library. And- Yeah... so I'm really deep into the nonsense. Clearly somebody- Mm-hmm...
• 11:31
  just, like, took some bong hits and was like, "Goo Goo- Yeah... Etheron, Ether, Treebot," and just named all these characters. Treebot. And- Treebot is- Quinn-... outstanding. You know what? It might be real.
• 11:43
  We're laughing. It's entirely possible. But you can't say it out loud- We're-... 'cause they've got it licensed now. You owe them money. There's one guy who was obviously a garbage can with legs. Like, we know that guy.
• 11:51
  So, like, Treebot- Yeah... is not that far off, so. Yeah. Anyway, but the weird thing is that I didn't... Also, the Pixar movies are all slightly not on the right timing for me, so I kinda never got into- Mm-hmm...
• 12:01
  Toy Story, and I'm, like, the one parent in the world who didn't get into Inside Out 'cause my kids were a little young for it, so-There's like a whole other group of movies that we might get into a little bit later, or if my kids ever convince someone to marry them and have grandkids, maybe we'll revisit them someday.
• 12:15
  But it's just really interesting, like the phase of movies that you like land into or don't apply to you whatsoever. Yeah. Chris, if I could pause real quick.
• 12:23
  Claire, do the boys have sleepovers at your place at all with friends- Oh, yeah... or family or whatever? Yeah. Are you a monster about rules like I am and just ruin it, and they never wanna have friends back?
• 12:33
  Do they get movie time? Is there more screen time, less screen time? Like how does it- Movie time, I mean, movies are a little bit antiquated because it's not gonna be unusual. It's gonna be...
• 12:42
  You're not gonna normally have the couple of boys sit down for 90 minutes and watch a movie quietly. Mm-hmm. So last sleepover, "The Simpsons" I'd say was like the equivalent- Mm... to movie time. Mm-hmm.
• 12:53
  So after like video game time, they got to rip off three or four episodes of "The Simpsons" and then bedtime.
• 12:58
  And in this case, it was after a baseball game, so they're already tired, so they're kinda like on the downward slope to, to bedtime anyway. But- Mm...
• 13:05
  last time my kids had a sleepover, they were watching some YouTube channel with some young guy just, I think playing video games and being like, "Fuck this." Mm-hmm.
• 13:12
  "Fuck you guys," and my child was nine at the time, and I didn't really care for that. So to me, like "The Simpsons" is like Sesame Street in comparison to YouTube, so somewhere half in, you know, in between.
• 13:22
  What's worse, your children watching that at nine or my brother showing me De Niro's "Cape Fear" at eight? I wanna talk a little bit- At eight... about some of the things you guys have gotten to watch when you were...
• 13:32
  Especially Chris, you talk about some of the things that you watched when you were young. Maybe it's a boy thing. Mm-hmm.
• 13:36
  But like I watched "RoboCop" a couple years ago for the first time, 'cause again, when my oldest daughter- Yes. That's an intense one. Yes. I walked away from it. Yeah.
• 13:44
  I turned it off, and I was like, "This is too violent for me." I mean, I, I was a fully grown, maybe even parent. Yeah. And my husband was like, "This is awesome. Didn't you watch this when you were eight?"
• 13:52
  And I was like, "I would die if my eight-year-old was watching this movie where, what, a guy's like arms get shot off." But apparently to you guys, like this is a classic, you know, like- Well, I...
• 14:02
  The most graphic part is the inciting incident, like you mentioned, which is Peter Weller getting shot a trillion times. So it doesn't get any worse than that, but yes, that's a particularly heavy movie.
• 14:15
  It's also an extreme satire, which is really hard to understand when you're little. And so- Yeah...
• 14:21
  I do think you miss a lot of the commentary that's being made on the dehumanizing quality of the police state that they're going for. So yeah- Yeah... that's a tough one. I would probably not do it at eight.
• 14:34
  I still think YouTube is worse. Well, yeah, absolutely. There's no doubt that YouTube is always worse, but I feel like... I remember being at a sleepover in elementary school, and "Friday the 13th" was put on.
• 14:44
  No, "A Nightmare on Elm Street." Mm-hmm. And in retrospect, I'm like, "What parent would do that?" But it was like a girl mom, Catholic school, and that was the thing. Like, did you guys get- Yeah...
• 14:53
  early exposure to stuff like... I... And was it older brothers, or was it just like the generation at the time that we were just like, "Doesn't matter. Kids can watch some scary shit, and they can handle it"?
• 15:02
  I think there was a gendered quality in my house for sure. Mm.
• 15:05
  My dad and I watched a lot of boy movies at a pretty young age because, I don't know if this was true in your guys' households, but especially, I g- I was raised Catholic, and it...
• 15:15
  Violence was far more acceptable on screen than sex. And so anything th- that had a sex scene would be fast-forwarded pretty quickly, whereas- Oh...
• 15:25
  you know, we would throw on "Die Hard," and you'd get a lot of violence and cursing, and that was not actually considered as transgressive in our house. So I saw...
• 15:35
  I mean, I remember seeing, you know, "Die Hard," "Total Recall," "Aliens," "RoboCop" probably a little later, but, you know, "Starship Troopers," a number of these movies at a, at again, a pretty young age.
• 15:48
  "Saving Private Ryan," war movies. You know, we watched "Platoon" when I was probably 11 or so. And I actually, for me, again, I've never...
• 15:58
  And I had Nerf guns and stuff and liked playing war, but it never translated to anything beyond the narrative. Like, I was more interested in the stories, so it didn't translate to... I never...
• 16:09
  That penchant for violence didn't extend to any other part of my life. I don't, I don't own any guns now or, you know what I mean, enjoy violent video games anymore.
• 16:17
  So I didn't feel like it had a really strong effect, and I felt like it gave me and my dad something to talk about, and that was the point of watching the movie together.
• 16:26
  And my concern with, you know, YouTube or something like that now with kids, or candidly just porn on the internet, is that it's an extremely isolating experience. Mm.
• 16:35
  So even though like films can be shocking, I think as long as it's, you know, guided and there's conversation around it, that can still be really valuable.
• 16:44
  And my concern is the consumption and isolation that we now have with not just our kids but, like, ourselves. You know, we just- Mm... my wife wants to watch one show.
• 16:54
  I want to watch another, so she's gonna watch it on the TV, and I'm gonna sit on the couch on my phone. And- Claire said that to me the other night. I w- Yeah...
• 17:00
  sh- we were talking about something over text, and she was like... I said, "Well, we only have one TV in the house." She's like, "You have a fucking computer, you dumbass. It's-" Yeah... "2025."
• 17:08
  [laughs] I was like, "Oh, I never think about... I think about the one VHS player," you know? That's it. Yeah. But you're right. It's...
• 17:12
  Dana and I have been talking a lot about letting the leash off more on, whatever people call it, like lean back experiences.
• 17:18
  Like again, a movie or episodes of "The Simpsons," I don't care, versus, like you said, these super isolating, just the reel just keeps going. [upbeat music] I'm gonna tell you a little story here.
• 17:31
  When the iPhone first came out 2007, one of the first apps I tried to convince a coworker to help me develop was what I was calling, and people were calling, a read it later app.
• 17:42
  And that's 'cause we worked all day at ESPN, and we used to print up all the old ESPN Page 2 columns we loved, and then we would go and hide and read them on the company toilet.
• 17:53
  "Wouldn't it have been great though," is what I said, "if we could just do that on our new touchscreen phones instead of printing them up?"
• 18:00
  Anyways, 150 years later, I have tried every read it later app, all of them migrating my archives over and over.But a couple years ago, I found Reader from the creators of Readwise and never looked back. It's so good.
• 18:16
  It's so fast. It's so smart. It works in my browser to save articles and read them and highlight them. It works on my phone and my iPad. I put it on my phone, on my home screen instead of social media stuff. It's great.
• 18:28
  Reader can save it all. And because they also built Readwise, all the highlighting and syncing is flawless. Text to speech? Sure. Ghostreader GPT so you can ask questions of your stuff? Sure.
• 18:41
  Here's how you can try it for free and Readwise too. Right now they're offering you guys, my listeners, two free months of Readwise and Reader when you sign up instead of just one month.
• 18:52
  So when you sign up, you get them both. The link to sign up and get that extra month is in the show notes, of course, and it's right here. It's readwise.io/quinn, Q-U-I-N-N. That's readwise.io/quinn.
• 19:06
  Again, it's right there in your show notes. It really is the future of reading. I can't recommend it enough. Probably the most essential thing I use every day. Check out Reader today.
• 19:16
  [upbeat music] And what I've really noticed is it's the ability to change something the minute that you get bored with it worries me too. Mm-hmm.
• 19:26
  So my daughter will say, "I don't like this part," because she is used to having... You know, she's knows that you can touch the screen or hit the fast-forward or, you know, skip ahead.
• 19:36
  Whereas when I was a kid with broadcast television or even cable or VHS, it was like if you're gonna fast-forward into Star Wars, for example, you have no idea where you're gonna land. Mm-hmm.
• 19:46
  You hope you get to the Battle of Endor when you're seven, but you may end up at a boring part where Luke is just talking to Emperor Palpatine, so I might as well just watch the movie linearly.
• 19:57
  Like, I think understanding pacing is really important and understanding the way in which a story is told and being able to experience empathy and sit through the boring parts and the high parts and the low parts, I think those are really important skills, and they translate to reading a book and consuming information.
• 20:14
  And so again, you have to sit down, and you have to watch this whole thing all the way through and understand the arc of it. Yeah. Cool.
• 20:22
  That I think is much more important, and I am less concerned candidly about the content within that context than I am the context within which the content plays. Totally.
• 20:35
  We-- I mean, that's how we felt watching Superman '78 the other day. Again, one of my all-time favorites. He doesn't show up in Metropolis for a good hour and a half. Yeah. Uh- It is a long- Like truly it is a long-...
• 20:45
  slow movie... and it's beautiful, and it's great, and to my kids' credit, again, they're a little older now. They're 10, 11, 12, but, like, they were into it. It was a different movie, man, but- Yeah...
• 20:54
  they stuck with it, and I totally agree with you, and this is a conversation my oldest and I have had, and like you were talking about context and all this, where, a-again, kinda like the books in the house now, same thing where I'm like we used to just in a somewhat lazy be like, way be like, "Oh, that's not, it's not appropriate," right?
• 21:10
  Or whatever. A book or movie or even if it was amazing. Not talking about, you know, Body Heat, but at the same time- I watched that one pretty young too. [chuckles] But yeah. Right. Yeah. Again, Cape Fear.
• 21:20
  But I was like, "This is fantastic." And I was like, "Okay. Okay." A lot of questions.
• 21:25
  What we've tried to say more and almost too late, not too late now, but l-definitely later than we probably could have, "This isn't appropriate for you yet."
• 21:32
  But at the same time, when you really expand it to the other things they are exposed to twenty-four/seven on the school bus- Mm-hmm... with their phones, whatever,
• 21:41
  it really does a number to minimize, you know, what's in that two hours. Not who cares, but, you know, it, it's much easier. So, so we've tried to move on to you can watch almost.
• 21:53
  Like as long as it's something you can- Yeah... buy from iTunes, like, it's probably fine- Yeah... at this point. I think that what's funny is the guardrails on traditional media have always actually been
• 22:05
  relatively stringent compared to what you could experience on the fringes, and the difference now is that fringes have populated the center, right? You know, everything that was- Oh, yeah... previously...
• 22:15
  And I, the way I like to think about it is, you know, like friction in the system, and I don't really believe in barring people outright from, again, within reason, experiencing certain things. But- Mm-hmm...
• 22:25
  you know, an example is, uh, the easy example that I'm always really afraid of for my kids is pornography on the internet and just kind of even, like, the pornification of less explicit content too, just on Instagram.
• 22:38
  And when I was young, there was a lot of... Kids would s- you would seek out inappropriate material as a child 'cause that's what kids do. You test boundaries.
• 22:46
  But there was enough friction in the system that even if you did find something, it was relatively chaste. You know what I mean? Compared.
• 22:51
  There was friction, like logistical timing friction of my parents are gone for this long. But at the same time, what you would find if you were lucky was the joy of sex or Playboy- Yeah... or Sears, right? Exactly.
• 23:04
  With bathing suits. Yeah. And y- to be clear, like, you held onto those for dear life. Yeah. It was stealing the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Edition. Correct.
• 23:11
  And I have a very specific issue I love, but, like, the back row of the porn magazines at 7-Eleven was not what you were most likely to find at home or your friends' houses- Yeah... or whatever.
• 23:21
  And now that's everywhere. Right? It is. And so that gives me a lot more anxiety than something that may explore taboo topics, but within a context that requires some critical thinking and- Mm-hmm...
• 23:35
  again, is not just like a dopamine hit every four seconds, you know, for, for your kid.
• 23:41
  And when I was growing up, my parents, there were some movies that were off limits, but there were basically no books that were off limits. And so I- Hmm...
• 23:48
  I mean, at like, I think six or seven, and I'm not saying I understood it, m-maybe a little, third grade or so I remember picking up Jurassic Park 'cause I loved dinosaurs. Mm-hmm.
• 23:57
  Did the chaos theory sequences make sense? No. No. Absolutely not. You know, was some of it a little graphic? Sure. But that got me really into Michael Crichton- Yeah...
• 24:05
  at a young age, and then I was very aspirational with how I would read, and I was really trying to seek out...
• 24:10
  And I remember reading Disclosure too young, and I didn't [chuckles] really understand what was going on there.
• 24:14
  But my parents were labor employment attorneys, and that actually led to some interesting conversations around- Sure... like how do you behave in the workplace and whatnot.
• 24:21
  And a-again, I like the more open door policy ofYou can read this or you can watch this, but you have to talk to me about it. We're gonna have to have a conversation. Yeah. I wanna know how it made you feel, and
• 24:35
  maybe we're gonna turn it off because it's too scary, or let's talk about why it makes you feel uncomfortable, or let's talk about why it makes me feel uncomfortable.
• 24:43
  I've found that when I try to tell my kids what to think, it fails spectacularly. But when I- And it gets- Yeah... so much worse, by the way. Exactly.
• 24:51
  But when I try to maybe ask them questions about why they think, and then model, you know, value, behavior or something like that, I get a little bit further [laughs] with them.
• 25:01
  And I always found that movies were, especially with me and my dad, they were an easy way for us to talk about things that we otherwise were incapable of talking about.
• 25:09
  Movies for me are a way of having my boys kind of enjoy or get a door- like a look into w- girl culture, for lack of a better word. Mm-hmm.
• 25:17
  And you know, cultur- there's no girl or boy culture, but they, because they don't have a, like unfettered access to screens, like they will sit down and watch kinda whatever we put on 'cause it's something that's on.
• 25:27
  And so, well we just watched The Devil Wears Prada last weekend- Mm-hmm... because I was just in the mood to, to see it.
• 25:32
  And they, I don't know if they connected with it per se, but they sat down and watched it and like they got that Meryl Streep... I was like, "Well, now we have to go into the Mamma Mia verse obv- obviously after this."
• 25:42
  Mm-hmm. But we watched Legally Blonde together a couple months ago, and my older son, who's 12- Great film... was sort of making fun. And he was sort of making fun of it a little bit, but at the end he went- Fuck you...
• 25:52
  I heard him. No, at the end he went, like when she- Yeah... won the case, you know? Mm-hmm. And just these little bits like makes me, you know, I'm... It, it, not like they'll ever quite get it per se, but...
• 26:03
  Oh, you know what was a great one actually for them was, Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret, which I had forgotten- Was it, was it good? I haven't seen it. It was so good. Okay. It's really good.
• 26:11
  I'd for- I'd forgotten that there's a whole other really good conversation in there about religion- Mm-hmm... and family. Mm-hmm.
• 26:16
  But we have a friend whose kid is trans, and my son asked after watching Are You There God?, he said, "Is so-and-so gonna not have a period anymore 'cause they're not a girl anymore?"
• 26:25
  And I just thought that was the sweetest... You know, we had to have... We're obviously, we're gonna have some more conversations about, you know, how bodies work and things like that.
• 26:32
  But I was like, good for you, like putting some things together, you know, a little bit. Mm-hmm. But I'm, I don't know how long they'll wanna sit and watch these movies with me per se, you know.
• 26:40
  But it's nice that they are still so brainwashed that they'll just watch anything, even if it's something with Reese Witherspoon, you know? Yeah, but those movies are... Here's, it's like Clueless.
• 26:50
  Like, they're actually incredible m- movies. Mm-hmm. And it doesn't matter, or like you said, boy culture, girl culture. Yeah... w- whatever it is, you know.
• 26:58
  Dana and I have had these conversations in the past, and it doesn't matter now 'cause the industry's totally broken. But do you wanna make cool stuff that 12 people see, or things for everybody?
• 27:06
  Which is what we both- Mm-hmm... grew up on, is like, again, running the VHS of E.T. and, and Raiders and all that stuff into the ground. It was four quadrant all the way. And- Yeah...
• 27:16
  I really do believe in a lot of cases, not all cases, some things are dated [laughs] in some ways that are okay and some that are not.
• 27:24
  Like my oldest learning the, uh, Beverly Hills Cop theme on the keyboard the other day. But it- Prince and Foley. I mean, it's so good. The- Yeah. I, I still know it. Oh, yeah. I learned that one too. Oh, yeah. Yeah.
• 27:33
  I heard it throughout the house and then I was like, "Oh, my God." Uh, and then he goes, "Can I watch it?" Yeah. And I was like, "Let's give it a minute." But I really do defend...
• 27:40
  I, like Claire, you're like, "I don't know how long they'll sit there."
• 27:43
  It's, I have realized again now with my oldest, like going into it, I am unlocking like this whole world of really incredible movies that I like almost dare him to like get bored by some of these- Mm...
• 27:53
  movies that are amazing. Yeah. You know? And TV. I mean, he was just dicking around the Apple TV the other night, and he knows Craig Mazin's a buddy of ours, and I don't know, I must have clicked on it or something.
• 28:02
  He goes, "Can I watch Chernobyl?" I was like, "You, you can, but again, like some of this other stuff, you can't unsee a lot of this shit, and that's how it was designed.
• 28:11
  But I would 100% sit here with you to do it, but 'cause you need to learn about it and all the reasons, and it's applicable to now."
• 28:18
  But yeah, I don't think you're gonna be able to get him from that, but I don't know, maybe YouTube's ruined it for you.
• 28:24
  Well, one thing that's interesting that I like on your pod, Chris, is you and Lizzy talking about what movies your parents showed you guys. And- Mm-hmm...
• 28:30
  my parents were very classic movie buffs, and I remember having a sleepover party, and my mom had me and my friend watch Gone With the Wind, and we somehow- Mm-hmm...
• 28:38
  sat and watched it, even though in retrospect I'm like, I can't believe we watched this four-hour movie or whatever. It's very long.
• 28:42
  But they show my kids movies that I would never in a million years wanna watch, but again, my kids will just take it. But Pride of the Yankees and Captains Courageous- Mm-hmm... and Arsenic and Old Lace. And- Mm...
• 28:54
  I'm happy that they have this experience 'cause I can't imagine sitting down necessarily and showing them like the oldest, like Best Years of Our Lives kind of stuff.
• 29:01
  But I'm glad that they have this experience of my parents, you know, explaining to them why this was important, like what, you know, what this all goes back to.
• 29:08
  But, but at the same time, I think it's so funny, C- Quinn, you talk about the movies that you just watched to death as a kid, and I'm curious- Mm-hmm...
• 29:14
  to hear like what you guys like couldn't escape, 'cause one of those for us was Sister Act, which we put on for- That was a great movie. Oh, fuck. Yeah. Guess what?
• 29:23
  Our kids were terrified at the beginning of that, and we had to convince- Yeah... them to sit down and watch the movie, 'cause I forgot that it starts with a murder, and- Yeah, it's mob jet. [laughs] Yeah. Yeah.
• 29:33
  A mob it, and it was an interesting like lesson in movie appreciation 'cause our kids were like seriously running out of the room crying, telling us- Mm-hmm... that we were tricking them into watching a scary movie.
• 29:43
  And- Mm-hmm... I was like, "Listen to the music that's playing right now." Uh-huh. 'Cause it had moved on to the goofy Disney music. And I was like, "Do you think something scary is gonna happen with this music playing?"
• 29:51
  But it was, I mean, it was darling, but also kind of funny how you forget something, you know, you think like so- The B-plot of three men and a baby is a drug heist. They hide the cocaine- Mm-hmm... with the baby.
• 30:03
  No, it's, yeah, you totally do forget that kind of shit, where you're just like, "Wow, all right. Early '90s, check. Got it." Yeah. Mm-hmm.
• 30:10
  Oh, my kids love Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure, which has largely aged well except for... Have you guys watched it recently in the last couple years? No. Mm-mm.
• 30:19
  There is one moment in the movie where they both yell the F slur at each other 'cause they thought that they were dead, and then they hug each other, and then they, you know, are terrified- Sure...
• 30:27
  of being perceived as gay. And actuallyThe meta-analysis is it's actually a joke about homophobia, I think. Mm-hmm. You know, but at the same... First of all, my kids don't even know what that word means.
• 30:38
  So, but I'm also cringing that they're hearing it, and these guys are yelling at each other in a way that's obviously a joke, but you're like, "Do I explain this or just let this go by the same way that we let all the dick jokes in Austin Powers go by?"
• 30:49
  You know, and you're like- Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm... "Well, maybe you'll get this, maybe not." But I think that's...
• 30:53
  I do think that's an important thing, movies as cultural time capsules too, and there's no escaping it or escaping those conversations.
• 31:01
  I mean, f- when I was growing up, one of the things that I struggle with, and I think I wanted to try to achieve with our family, is my parents did a good job of making movies feel like events. Mm.
• 31:10
  And so we would go to dinner, and nowhere fancy, especially when we were young. But you know, like McDonald's and then Chili's was like the big upgrade. Sure.
• 31:17
  And we would go to Chili's, it was great, and then we would go see a movie. And I remember seeing, for example, Legally Blonde in theaters, and I was, I don't know, I'm guessing 13 when that movie- Mm-hmm...
• 31:26
  came out, and I didn't wanna see it. I was like your son, Claire. Yeah. And I thought this looks dumb. F- it was... Okay, first of all, I was in love with Reese Witherspoon immediately. It was so good. It was so funny.
• 31:38
  I was dying laughing at Bend and Snap. But it's such a good... Movies are such wonderful empathy vehicles. And I grew up with two little sisters, so I had a little more exposure to girls my age maybe than your boys.
• 31:51
  But, you know, I'm trapped inside my own head, and I'm a guy. Yeah. But it gave me such exposure to issues that, you know, that women face [laughs] and- Right...
• 32:00
  perceptions from especially older men and stuffy older men that they were dealing with. Also, shout out early Oz Perkins role, director of Monkey and Long Legs.
• 32:09
  But, but anyway, so I, I, I think if you can, try to create a shield between the rest of the world and your viewing audience, and you have to eliminate all the devices and the...
• 32:18
  You ha- basically have to eliminate choice so that you can just sit and focus on this thing, because the proliferation of choice is ultimately what dooms our ability to watch anything, you know, at the end of the day.
• 32:30
  Well, oh, yeah. When I ask them, "What do you guys wanna watch?" I mean, it's- No, no, you can't... fucking impossible. And then they- Yeah... you know, they end up on, again, a YouTube of- Mm-hmm...
• 32:37
  Little Mermaid 7, she has accidental triplets. And you're like, "What the fuck has happened here?" Yeah. You know? Or, or you just end up watching somebody else consume something. Yeah. No.
• 32:46
  Because it's easier to just watch somebody else make that choice. Yeah. And I- It's brutal. But with the older movies and whatnot, I do think, you know, it's something we deal with on the podcast.
• 32:54
  You know, we just did Ben-Hur, and there's- Mm... you know, Hugh Griffith, I believe, is the actor's name, plays Sheik Ilderim, so this obvious, like, classic example of brown face and- Mm. Sure. Oh, yeah...
• 33:04
  and, and so the question, you know, I think early on we struggled with how do you present information or practices that are obviously dated and inappropriate now, but at the time were considered normal, and do it in a way that makes it not feel preachy so that people don't just have a knee-jerk reaction to you, but also
• 33:20
  shows, "Hey, we've made progress since then."
• 33:22
  But I actually think that's the specific reason to show movies like that and to experience movies in their unedited form, and I don't, I don't believe in sanitizing or editing things for today's standards because I think then you're actually avoiding the important conversation, which is- Mm...
• 33:41
  this thing is something we engaged in culturally as a society. Mm. It's entirely possible if I was born at that time, I would've engaged in it too. I have no idea.
• 33:51
  I like to think I have some sort of moral superiority that would've traveled back in time with me, but there's no way that I would actually know that.
• 33:59
  But this is why this is inappropriate, and this is why we wanna make sure there's economic opportunity for all groups to participate in Hollywood, and this is why it was actually cruel, and here's the lineage of minstrelsy, and this is the way in which blackface had actually kind of fallen out of favor, so there were some more progressive instances of representation.
• 34:17
  Anyway, it can lead to really interesting things, I think, if you do expose kids to it and kind of let them lead the conversation through questions that, you know, you have to be prepared to answer.
• 34:27
  Because I just remember when I was little, the shit that my mom would, like, fast-forward through- Mm... immediately, that was... I was like, "Well, now I just want-" What's that? Yeah. Mm. "I just want that." Yeah.
• 34:35
  And I'm, and I'm not gonna get any explanation, and I am not gonna get any further understanding of this thing, and it's gonna become taboo. And so the stuff- That's right...
• 34:43
  that my parents showed me, I'm glad that we could talk about it. For the most part, sex was always- Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm... my parents were fantastic at a lot of things. They were not good at the- Oh... the sex talk.
• 34:54
  My main takeaway was that, this is such a weird take, but one of my parents' strong takes from Seinfeld is that Elaine Benes is a big whore, and you should not be anything like- Yeah. [laughs] They were offended. Yeah.
• 35:05
  And it was like, no, like, attention paid to the other men who are, like, just as slutty as Elaine, and- No... you know, with lesser reason to be. But yeah, I remember being in a sleepover once with a friend.
• 35:15
  We were watching Beaches, and there was a sex scene. Yeah. And she was like, "Should we fast-forward through this?" And I didn't even wanna watch it, but I was like, "You're so lame. We have to watch this part."
• 35:23
  You know, even though... Quinn, do you remember, did your parents try to censor anything for you? I don't think as much. I mean, there were four of us. We were like... Well, it was three boys and a girl.
• 35:33
  Three of us were wild animals. My sister's great. They love her more, which they should. So I think it was less, like, paying attention. They were pretty cracked down on screens.
• 35:41
  We would have things like you get 30 minutes of either TV or landline phone to your girlfriend or, like, instant messenger, and so there wasn't a ton of room for that. I did most of my movie stuff once I got to college.
• 35:54
  I played two sports in college and couldn't go out half the time, so it was just PlayStation 2 and crushing movies. Otherwise, it really was just, like, that, that four-quadrant stuff.
• 36:04
  So I don't feel as much that, but, like, I have memories again, like, a b- a buddy and I, we must have rented one of these or not known what we were doing, but I have a very vivid memory which I confirmed recently of him.
• 36:15
  In one night we both for the first time watched Alien and The Bodyguard. Mm-hmm. And I think we were- Mm... like 11 or 12.
• 36:23
  At his house, so his parents clearly didn't give a shit, but boy, two different experiences there. Both fantastic. I remember [laughs]
• 36:30
  recently, again, like-If I can time as a flat circle, like our 12-year-old, you know, coming home from middle school, and he makes his first that's what she said joke. And so Dana- Mm-hmm...
• 36:39
  said, "Here's what I'm gonna do." And I was like, "Okay, what?" She goes, "Watch."
• 36:43
  And he makes a that's what she said joke, and she's decided to immediately respond to him and literally explain in like graphic anatomical terms what he's describing- Mm... basically. Well- Mm-hmm.
• 36:54
  And immediately he was like, like, "I don't wanna... You're ruining..." And she was like, "I know. I did, 'cause it's h- horrible. Yes, some of them can be very funny, but also they're... No, don't do that.
• 37:06
  Or you can keep doing it, but I'm gonna keep doing this to you in front of whoever." And it's, that's our version of having that conversation. I love how much more, like,
• 37:13
  Chris, how much more nuanced you all were with your kids. And my, you know, w- we'd put on Coco and just yell at them like, "You're the only white kids in LA who can't speak Spanish. Watch this until you figure it out."
• 37:24
  I should be able to speak... My mom's Puerto Rican. Carmella's mom's half Mexican, and so, like, we are trying to get our kids to speak Spanish. I just meant more the tact you took to be like- Yeah, yeah...
• 37:33
  "This is the history of brown face and why they had it in Mad Men." No. "And we're just not a-" Well, that's like- "You're terrible. You're four. Figure it out."
• 37:39
  [laughs] That's not a conversation I've had with my daughter. I'm saying I'm getting ready when she's probably 10 to have that conversation- Oh... maybe with her. A- a- again, you can lead a horse to water. The...
• 37:49
  It's more about I've just found my kids do not, they are not interested in my opinions. But they are really interested in m- telling me their opinions if I give them- Oh... the space to, to do so.
• 38:01
  A big learning experience for me as a parent because I really thought, "My job here is to impart wisdom upon you." No. "My job is to listen to you, and 90% of what you can say is gonna be insane.
• 38:13
  But 10% is really interesting, and I wanna know more about it. And tell me, okay, why do you like this? What about this is so cool to you? What do you think it is about Elsa or Anna that you really like?
• 38:24
  Why is, why do you think Kristoff is the good guy? Why do you think the prince is the ba-" You know, and you can actually- Right... get into really interesting- Why does Disney always kill the moms? [laughs] Yes.
• 38:34
  They're, it's either the mom is dead or she's got a dump truck ass. And, like, why does Pixar do that? [laughs] And, and- I, I loved, by the way, Tangled I thought was such a good mom character.
• 38:43
  That was like they really don't- Yes... like, the... Yeah, that was very, that was... That's why it's one of my favorite ones. I'm like, "What a bitch." Like, what- And a really fun campy performance too. Yeah.
• 38:51
  Um- What a recognizable character on top of that. Mm-hmm. Like a, yeah, a more, a more surreptitious stepmother sort of character. It's really fun. Yeah. Um- [upbeat music] Hey, I have three kids. They eat so much.
• 39:07
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• 39:45
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• 40:28
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• 40:45
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• 40:55
  [upbeat music] Now, I, this is not about movies, but I have been wanting to tell Quinn this story all week, and I'm sorry, Chris, that you have to listen to it. No, please.
• 41:03
  But on the topic of talking to kids about things, so we were driving home from school a couple days ago, and we're behind this car that had a lot of weird bumper stickers on it.
• 41:10
  I've never seen a lot of these before, and my son, he's 12, was in the front seat reading them out loud. But then the main one said, "My other car is covered in cum."
• 41:19
  And so he was reading that, and he said, "My other car is covered in..." I'm not gonna say that last word. And I said, "Oh, so you know that word, huh?" And he said, "Mom, I am in seventh grade."
• 41:31
  So I let it go for the rest of the day. Yeah, he definitely knows that word. He didn't need his little brother... [laughs] Well, I, he needed his little brother to get in the mix and be like, "What are we talking about?"
• 41:40
  So later that night I said, "So-" Mm-hmm. "... that word that we were talking about," and he, I could tell he immediately wanted to die. So I was like, I'm, I was on the way out the door with the dog- Mm-hmm...
• 41:47
  to make sure that he knew, like- Nobody, by the way, Chris, nobody does drive by, like, big talks than Cl- nobody does better ones than Claire, where the kids are just minding their own fucking business, and she's, "Let's talk about cum."
• 41:57
  Mm-hmm. Yeah, exactly. "Let's talk about cum." But I was like, "That word," I was like, "I just need to know that you know what that word really means. It's important for me that, for accuracy."
• 42:04
  And he was like, "Oh my God." And I said, "Either I can say it or you can say it." And he said, "You f- just sh- you know, just whatever."
• 42:11
  So I started to say, "It's the stuff that comes out of a man's p-" And then he stopped me, and he's, "Yes, I know." And so then we ended the conversation. Mm-hmm. And that was it. But I kinda wanted- God...
• 42:21
  first of all, I really wanna know what the bumper sticker, if that's a reference to something, if there is a line in a movie somewhere- I have no idea... about another car being covered in- I'm not tracking it.
• 42:29
  But I also was, like, kinda grateful to that person for having this weird ass bumper sticker because that was a great little conversation with my son about cum. So thank you to, to that man.
• 42:39
  And- Here's the love working for yourself is I can Google this without getting arrested by my workplace. Well, without G- so you tell me if I'm right.
• 42:45
  Here's my guess, and this is really weird deep cutI believe in the film The Other Guys, Will Ferrell's car gets stolen and a group of homeless men have an orgy inside of it. Ah.
• 42:58
  And there may be reference to it being covered in semen. That's- So this is really crazy, and maybe I've screwed this up somehow.
• 43:08
  I did the thing where you, if you put the quote in between quotation marks, it limits it to that exact phrase. Mm-hmm. There are only four results on Google for that exact phrase. Oh, really? Wow. Which doesn't...
• 43:20
  May- Am I spelling cum wrong? That can't be right after all this time. Let me remove this. Maybe talk about what it is? Podcast title. Yeah. Title. It seems there are variations. Oh, there's a bunch of Pornhub results.
• 43:30
  Okay. Yeah, I don't think it's... Yeah, I mean, yeah. Thank you for looking that up. Well, I just- You're welcome. Yeah. First of all, I would love to watch The Other Guys with my kids. That would be fun.
• 43:38
  But I just like just envisioning a car that's so hot that people can't stop jerking off onto it. But anyway, that was neither here nor there. It was just a little anecdote. To segue seamlessly to go to theaters- Mm...
• 43:49
  places where, you know, sometimes Cum does, you know... I just watched the Pee-Wee Herman doc, so there's a, you know, transition here. But Chris, have you taken... Sorry, you know what? This is a terrible transition.
• 43:59
  No, you've gotta keep going. Do it now. You've dug this hole so fucking deep now- Yeah... you gotta finish. Land the plane. Chris, have you taken your daughter to the movie theater? Are you pissed?
• 44:07
  [laughs] We, we have not. I think we're gonna try this summer with the new Pixar movie that, about the boy who's into aliens- Oh... whose name is escaping me. I'm gonna pull it up. Elio.
• 44:19
  I think that's gonna be the first one. We missed Moana 2, my daughter was sick. I was, like, gonna do Moana 2. Mm-hmm. And I think she could do it. I've been impressed
• 44:28
  at her ability to sit and process and f- For us, it was less that... stick with- It's, it's a sensory experience. And you really do forget that when you're a little bird. Mm-hmm.
• 44:38
  I think it's gonna be really loud for her. It's really loud. It is a lot. I, I also think movie theaters tend to actually run the mix too hot, personally. Mm.
• 44:46
  And I've lost hearing, you know, by this point, and I find it a little too loud when I go to theaters, especially if you're not two-thirds back.
• 44:54
  They tend to just run it a little loud because they don't wanna actually calibrate it, and so they just say, "Screw it, we'll set it at 11." But no, I have not done the theater yet.
• 45:02
  We've done a lot of movies at home together, you know, where we sit, we'll get through the whole thing or at least 45 minutes. So I'm... I think Elio, that'll be in... I'm looking up the date.
• 45:13
  In J- That, in two weeks, I think that'll be our first film together. Quinn, do you remember what your guys' first one was? For me? For the kid, with bringing the kids to the theater. Oh. For my kids?
• 45:23
  Ooh, you know, I took my oldest, I don't know if this counts, but it was pretty awesome. I went and picked him up from... Where did it come out? That Apollo 11 documentary that came out the same year as First Man- Mm...
• 45:38
  which was also great. Mm-hmm. They were showing it at the Arclight, RIP, and I was like, "He needs to see this on the big screen."
• 45:47
  And I think I picked him up from, like, last year of preschool, first year of kindergarten or something, I was like, "We're going to do this." And that was a lot for him, for sure, but he was really...
• 45:56
  I mean, it, it's an incredible documentary. But, like, movie-wise, I don't know, 'cause we, like, ran right into COVID. We did a lot at home. God, I don't... I, I'd have to look and see if we did Coco.
• 46:08
  I don't think we did Moana. I think Moana was all at home. Yeah, I would guess probably one of those Pixar ones or something like that. Okay. But I don't know. It wasn't a momentous occasion.
• 46:17
  I remember ours, 'cause it was one of my, like, off-the-chain movie cries.
• 46:22
  I cried taking my son to see Boss Baby, because if you guys have ever seen Boss Baby, he, like, discovers that he loves his little brother at the end and he, like, doesn't resent him after all.
• 46:32
  And because I have two boys, I cried, 'cause I was like, "That's, you know- Mm-hmm... you and your little- Mm-hmm... you and your little stoot." And for our second kid, it was the Mary Poppins reboot that they did. Mm.
• 46:41
  I remember it was really- Ooh, we might've done that... it was quite long. And he wanted to know if Mary Poppins was gonna come flying out at the end of the movie. But I just thought it was interesting.
• 46:48
  I remember being so angry during COVID, because it was like towards the end of the lockdown period and some people were doing whatever the fuck you wanted, and other people like us were being, you know, extremely stringent about all the rules and possibly a little going insane and judgy.
• 47:03
  And I remember hearing about a kid's birthday party where all the kids went to the movies, and I was so angry because b- first of all, they were breaking the rules, but also I was like, "I would give anything right now to ship my kids off to a movie theater.
• 47:15
  Do you understand, like, how badly I want that to happen?" So the act of taking the kids to the theater when they are old enough to do that is such a nice way of doing something without actually- Oh, yeah...
• 47:24
  having to do anything. My brother and his husband did take the boys to see Wicked, so they did go test- How old? 'Cause Wicked 2 is a whole different- Really?... ball game. Oh, fuck yeah.
• 47:34
  Have, have you seen the musical? I did see the musical, but it was a long time ago, so it was maybe- Yeah, no, the second half is all consequences, basically. Okay. All right. Shit gets real.
• 47:42
  You don't become the Tin Man, but it, you know. Yeah. Fun and games here. They w- It's gonna be great, though. Okay. No, I'm excited for them. We did see the OG Wizard of Oz with them, which I thought...
• 47:51
  I was surprised that they actually sat through that. And they also watched Bye Bye Birdie. Again, sometimes they'll just watch whatever the fuck we put on 'cause they are so thirsty and basic.
• 47:58
  That's the thing, I feel like I've held out enough that maybe whatever I put on, they'll be... Maybe not whatever I put on. Oh, you know what we fucking put on and they couldn't...
• 48:06
  This was such a disappointment to me, and they definitely dropped a little bit in my rankings after this. What? My children, not the movie. Spaceballs. Mm.
• 48:14
  10 minutes into it, they were like, "What in the fuck is going on right now?" Do you want my hot take that's gonna... And I... Guys, please listen to my podcast despite this hot take.
• 48:24
  I think Spaceballs is a terrible movie. Oh. I'm sorry. You're wrong. I've always hated it. It's fine. I know. No, 99% of people agree with you. I'm an outlier. Mm-hmm. I, I'll agree with Chris.
• 48:33
  I feel like you do about Star Wars, about Spaceba- I'm like, "Get that movie away from me. I have no interest in it." It is... It, it doesn't know what it wants to parody, in my opinion. It is all over the map.
• 48:43
  [laughs] I don't understand it. Yeah. So that's my hot Spaceballs take.
• 48:47
  Uh- I think a lot of Mel Brooks movies, they live in someone's space and time, and ca- the people ca- I- it's the way a lot of old men feel about Blazing Saddles, where I'm like, "I don't think that movie's as good as you think it was.
• 48:57
  It just made you laugh a lot at that time 'cause you're, like, farting and that funny Black guy, and like, let's, let's go."
• 49:03
  But I don't know if it would hold up necessarily.That's how I feel about, unfortunately, I re-watched Monty Python and the Holy Grail. Oh. And I, I did not... I, I have no problem with it. Yeah.
• 49:14
  And I'm sure people love it, and it's beloved, and I... And maybe my children will love it, and I, that's... It just didn't, it didn't make me laugh. Uh, I know it did as a kid.
• 49:22
  I explained to them the other day the coconuts. Yeah, the, the coconuts. And my- Yeah... they were like, "That sounds like the dumbest thing ever." Yeah. I was like, "No, but you gotta be- I know... you gotta..." Oh.
• 49:30
  That's how I felt re-watching it. You're like, "Let's watch Fawlty Towers. You'll get that. You'll love that, and then we'll-" Fawlty Tower, yeah, I, that I appreciate [laughs] more, honestly.
• 49:38
  It's, you know, the drier, less gag-related British wit is easier for me now. Yeah. But that's, the, I do think comedy is the most difficult thing to translate to the next generation because- Yeah...
• 49:51
  it is very culturally and temporally specific. Yeah. Mm-hmm. And so the comedies that my dad tried to show me, that had a real spotty track record. Yeah. Comedies I'm gonna try to show my children, I'm sure...
• 50:04
  I mean, there are even comedies I, like you mentioned Austin Powers- Oh... holds a very special place in my heart, but I don't know how funny that's gonna be anymore. Yeah. You know? Yeah.
• 50:15
  Dumb and Dumber or even- First of all, yeah... I stan Dumb and Dumber. I stan. I...
• 50:18
  That movie is so s- It's the hardest I probably have ever laughed as ch- [laughs] It's, I mean, I've, so I've built this amazing life where in this door behind me is a childhood friend who does something different with tech, and another buddy down the hall- Mm-hmm...
• 50:29
  and another buddy down the hall, and it's like a dorm basically. And we all just- Mm-hmm...
• 50:33
  have a lot of regrets, but the number one thing we yell to each other, because life, is, "Our pet's heads are falling off" Heads are falling off. Yeah. Yeah. Over and over. That's a good neckline.
• 50:41
  And you say that in public, and people are like, "What?" Yeah. Or you go, "Big gulps, eh?" Yeah, exactly. That John Denver's full of shit, man.
• 50:48
  Um- We're gonna have to watch Show My Kids that 'cause I watched it once, and it has... It might be... Well, no, it's not a girl movie, but, or a boy movie, but it's slightly a boy movie.
• 50:55
  But that's one for- I think it's definitely [laughs] a boy movie. Yeah, you're right. Yeah. Actually, no one, there's no girl lines in that movie that anybody ever quote. Claire, your hands are freezing.
• 51:03
  I- I don't even recall they let the girls talk that much in that movie. That's fair. No. No. They... But yeah, Chris, we did sh- watch Austin Powers with the boys recently, and I forgot how kind of the Dr.
• 51:13
  Evil scenes are so much funnier than the Austin Powers- Yeah... first of all. Yeah. And- Well, there's actual dramatic stakes too because- Yeah... he actually wants a connection with his son.
• 51:22
  That's, that motors, that gives him more pathos than Austin in a way. Yeah. Well, and the kids have never seen a James Bond movie.
• 51:31
  They've never seen Get Smart, although I was like, "I wonder if the Steve Carell Get Smart movie would be fun for them." And so they haven't seen... They don't get any of those references, and anything about the '60s.
• 51:40
  We're like, "This, there was this time- Mm-hmm... during the '60s," you know, like all this stuff that they... You know, and they was, they still were into it because, again, like basic, you know, simple boys.
• 51:49
  And it was kind of interesting to sit... Like, they've seen Wayne's World. Mm-hmm. And my kids have been kinda going back into SNL archives a little bit.
• 51:56
  I was like, "Austin Powers is the guy who played Elon Musk on SNL," and they- Mm... like that was very interesting to them. But- Yeah... yeah, it was...
• 52:03
  Y- you know, A- A- Austin Powers also is a time and place when Mike Myers, you would, like, kinda sit and watch anything that he did, you know? Mm-hmm. Which is- My daughter loves Way- Wayne's World. She became a huge...
• 52:13
  I played her Bohemian Rhapsody on my phone when we were at Target one time, which, she was about two, and it was the first time she kinda looked at me in awe, and she said, "His, his voice is so beautiful." Aw.
• 52:24
  She couldn't believe that someone could sing that. And then we, she got really into Freddie Mercury. Good. And so we would watch- That's awesome...
• 52:30
  all these Freddie Mercury clips when she would go, you know, when I would be changing her to go to bed. And one of the clips that came up was the Wayne's World- Mm-hmm...
• 52:37
  Bohemian Rhapsody opening sequence where they're, you know, taking the car, and you get all the exposition out, and she loves that se- That's awesome.
• 52:45
  We haven't watched the movie yet, but she loves that sequence so much, so she has been exposed a little bit to Wayne's World. Related. And I'm- Shrek really held up. I don't know about, like, four, five, and six.
• 52:54
  Well- I love Shrek... Shrek did. No, we cut- My kids love it... we, we did an episode on Shrek. It's very funny. Um- It's really good...
• 52:58
  that was another one that I thought I was too old for animated movies when Shrek came out.
• 53:02
  I was about 12, I wanna say, and I, 30 minutes in, I thought, "This is the greatest movie I've ever seen," when I was in the theater. Yeah, it's, it's pretty incredible. Highly recommend- It's pretty good to anyone...
• 53:10
  anyone listening, go listen to the Shrek... I think you guys did two episodes maybe on all the- We did a two-parter on Shrek... super interesting, really interesting on that one.
• 53:18
  Like, forget about how it came from William Steig book and, you know, just everything that you- Mm-hmm... find there. That's really cool. Claire, let me ask you a procedural question 'cause you're...
• 53:25
  We've talked about this, how on Friday nights, like, my kids often have some sort of fucking practice, and you were like, "That's sacrilegious. It's supposed to be movies and pizza."
• 53:32
  Well- Do you guys have set, "Hey, this is what we're doing. Here's the fucking deal," and what are the rituals accompanying those? 'Cause I keep trying to do it- Mm...
• 53:38
  and life keeps getting in the way, and it's driving me crazy. It's hard 'cause, like, screen time, as you know, is, like, as much for the parents as it is for the kids. Mm-hmm.
• 53:46
  So it can be really easy to let it just slide into 7:30, and then you start watching The Simpsons instead of a movie. But I have been keeping, like, a list of movies that I do wanna watch with the kids sometimes.
• 53:56
  And I was wondering about Shawshank Redemption. Like, I know, I- Yes... I think there's probably at least a rape scene in it, but also, I don't know. We'll fucking deal with it, guys. Like, this is life.
• 54:05
  But, you know, just things that you're like, "I kinda feel like getting back into it with them."
• 54:09
  So we have it in the background of I think more a rainy Saturday more than a Friday necessarily, but- I'm just trying to, what can I do to incentivize it again?
• 54:16
  Like you were saying, Chris, like how your family made it an event. I'm not taking them out to dinner and stuff. I don't like them that much. But it's popcorn. It's get, what's your candy at home? Yeah.
• 54:24
  Like, I don't know, something where I'm like, "Sit with me for two hours." 'Cause half the time they're like, "I wanna watch," I'm like, "Oh, great. I'm gonna go close my eyes and question everything." Yeah.
• 54:31
  But I, there is a, we have a list on the fridge of stuff we wanna get through, and there's al- Now they're, can do Legally Blonde and stuff like that. We did Goonies recently, which was fascinating. Yeah.
• 54:41
  How did that go over with them? Better than I thought. Chris, do you guys do movie night? Nora gets to watch a movie on Sundays at some point during the day, and she knows that.
• 54:49
  And for the most part, she just picks something that she's watched before. Eventually, when my kids get older, I do wanna make sure we're doing...
• 54:55
  So when I was growing up, we would watch a movie every Friday night as a family. So most of the movies I saw until I was 18, I saw with my family.
• 55:03
  I would either see it with my dad if it was inappropriate for my sisters, or we would all watch it together as a familyAnd the ritual that I would like to recreate is, so the best part of the night was going to Hollywood Video with my dad on Friday night.
• 55:17
  Mm. We would go. He would get home from work. We'd go around 5:00. We would spend easily an hour walking around the video store- Oh, yeah... just looking at the covers.
• 55:25
  And so that sucks when you're at, at home flipping through titles on a TV, when you're just scrolling through Netflix. The choice is endless. You can't find what you want. So
• 55:35
  I actually, and I recommend this to anyone who wants to try, I go to the library. And- Oh. Ooh... you can check out media at the library. And some libraries even have Blu-rays, which is pretty cool.
• 55:47
  And so what I would like to start doing, and because we've started taking my daughter to the local library, and I would like to...
• 55:54
  It could be earlier that week, it could be on Friday afternoon, take the kids, we're gonna go to the library. We're gonna pick out a movie. You're gonna carry it home. Mm-hmm. Here's this physical thing. Mm-hmm.
• 56:05
  We're gonna put it in. We're not gonna scroll Netflix. We're not gonna scroll... 'Cause what you're... A- again, I think what we're trying to avoid is the attention capture of scrolling. Yeah. And this- Yeah.
• 56:14
  Because I think part of the problem is you're not actually forced into a choice with scrolling, right? You can always click back to that other movie- Always... if you didn't like the one you picked.
• 56:24
  If you leave Hollywood Video, you're [laughs] not going back until Sunday. And what are you gonna do, not watch it? And so... Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. Like, you gotta put it in.
• 56:31
  I'm gonna finish this damn thing, even if it's not that great.
• 56:34
  And so I think that, again, like, forcing yourself into a choice, forcing yourself to commit to something, whether it's good or bad, is an important part of life and development.
• 56:45
  It's also one of the only ways I think that you can start to hermetically seal the family unit off from [laughs] you know, all the distractions possible. Because again, I just, the minute we put the damn TV...
• 56:55
  And I'm as bad as anybody when I try to find something to watch. If I don't know exactly what it is ahead of time, I end up not watching anything. Mm-hmm. Or I watch a little bit of a bunch of things. Yeah.
• 57:04
  And I wanna make sure our traditions more mirror what I had. I feel very grateful to have had that as a kid. Yeah.
• 57:11
  And you can say, like, there's technologies or content that is antiquated, but tradition does matter, and it is family time. And again, like, it gets away from you so fast with so much different stuff. But I love that.
• 57:22
  As Claire knows, like, we have gone... The example I always use is, you know, 12 years ago someone had that, like a magazine cover.
• 57:29
  It was probably Wired or something, and it was like an iPhone and then all the devices- Mm-hmm... it's replaced. Yep. Yep. So I've basically spent the past year buying my children all those devices. Mm.
• 57:37
  We put in a landline. We're about to take a trip, and they don't know they're getting refurbished iPods because I'm tired of them being like, "I'm just listening to music on my iPad." Mm. Mm.
• 57:45
  And no, that's not what they're fucking doing. So I love that idea of, on one hand, I guess it's scarcity, right?
• 57:51
  But it's also ritual of going, "No, this is the thing that, that it is centered around, and you're gonna choose it."
• 57:56
  And yeah, God, I remember going to Video Update and, you know, some things had like 50 cases and are there any left- Mm-hmm... versus- Yeah... hey, there's only two of these. It's gotta be weird.
• 58:05
  Maybe we should go down that road. Did you get the new release, you know- Yeah. Oh... before everybody else? Yeah. It was so exciting. We do the Apple TV, you know, the, your Up Next row.
• 58:12
  If it's not already there- Mm-hmm... for me, or I haven't intentionally added it, I can't go dive into, to- Mm-hmm... what's new and shit like that. I'm never gonna wa- like I said, I need, just need to go to bed.
• 58:24
  By then my gummies kicked in, and who knows what's happening.
• 58:26
  That is such a sense memory that, like, our kids will not experience, that feeling of looking at those cases and drawing, like, assumptions on what movies are, like, scary. I remember- Mm-hmm... God, what movie?
• 58:36
  I don't know if it was Critters or some movie where I remember there's like a monster- Mm-hmm... coming out of the toilet, like on the video case. And I was like, "Forget it. I'm never-" Probably Critters.
• 58:43
  There was also, like, Ghoulies. There were a number of- Yeah, Munchies or something like that... small demonic creatures. All of those. Like, the artwork for Wet Hot American Summer, like, plays off those old movies.
• 58:53
  Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. And I think the act of a movie poster completely won't... Like, it's lost its translation. Fucking Wet Hot American Summer. Yeah. Like, that's... Like, when can I g- do that? That's amazing.
• 59:01
  Chris, I wanted to know how Lizzy is doing, but also, I mean, I only know through listening to the podcast, but I was just curious about, like, how much you had talked to her and David about kids and, like, what to expect before it actually came, 'cause she had seen you guys be a family, you know, for a couple years before that came along their line.
• 59:16
  So I'm just curious if you gave her advice or anything like that. Well, thank you for asking. Lizzy's doing great, and obviously is already a wonderful mom. And David's doing a great job, I can tell even from afar.
• 59:30
  There's only so much you can offer somebody who hasn't had kids, because it's really just a trial by fire. And you have to learn what you're going to learn.
• 59:38
  I think there's probably a few things that we advised them on that they eventually agreed with us, more logistical. Like for example, I said the...
• 59:45
  Spending money on a nanny or a night nurse is painful because of how expensive it is. Mm-hmm. And it's not a privilege that everybody can afford.
• 59:53
  And that's a big problem in the US obviously, is the lack of childcare support outside of family.
• 59:57
  But if you can afford it, if you're that lucky, oh my God, it is the best money that you will spend if you're trying to free yourself up to be able to do work during the day. Mm.
• 1:00:05
  So if you're not gonna be a stay-at-home parent and you need to get some work done, it's really hard to do that if you don't, if you can't offset the mental load of somebody else watching your child.
• 1:00:14
  So even when your baby's very young and you think they're napping for a lot of the day, freeing up that mental capacity to truly focus on something else I think is really important.
• 1:00:23
  And I think that's something they would agree with me on now that I suggested.
• 1:00:26
  But other than that, candidly, like, one of the things I love most about Lizzy is she is so unbelievably confident in her own abilities, and rightfully so. And she, I mean, she moved to LA. She's an only child.
• 1:00:40
  You know, she grew up on the East Coast. She did an acting program in Boston. She moved to Los Angeles right after school started. And she has just made her own way. She became a producer.
• 1:00:51
  She produced, uh, you know, on this big YouTube show for a long time, Good Mythical Morning. Then she took a job at IMDb, grew there.
• 1:00:58
  Then she became a senior producer at Wondery in pod- the podcast space, grew her own podcast. So candidly, like, I could offer her, like, yeah, my kid threw up a lot, too.
• 1:01:06
  [laughs] Maybe try a different formula, you know, that sort of thing. But Lizzy was always gonna be-So well equipped for something like this that I don't know how much I could even offer her at the end of the day. Mm.
• 1:01:17
  And now I'm sure Carmella has given her, my wife, has given her some more specific, you know, "Hey, we tried this, it, it didn't work," or, "This was a waste of time," or you know what I mean? Or...
• 1:01:27
  'cause there's just- Oh... so much of that stuff you worry about. I think a- again, from a distance, I experienced this because I was watching my wife go through it. The pressure to, for example, breastfeed is...
• 1:01:42
  I didn't understand it. I still obviously don't fully. It's insane. Yeah. And it drove m- my wife crazy, and she pumped for our first child for a year, five times a day while working full time. It was...
• 1:01:56
  I don't know how she did it. And now for our son, we're, I... And I was very, I was, again, it's not like I put my foot down, like I could. Mm. But I did say, I said, "Listen, I was a formula baby. I didn't latch.
• 1:02:09
  I was a formula baby. My dad was a formula baby. We're not idiots. We did, we turned out okay. It will be fine." And our son is formula fed. He is enormous, [laughs] and he is totally fine.
• 1:02:21
  And so there are things, I think more what you can offer is you tr- try to help with, don't put everything on every decision that you make. And- Mm... you know, it's so hard, I think with your first kid.
• 1:02:34
  You really think at every junction, "If I make the wrong choice here, I am shaving off, you know, a percentage of their shot at success in life." By the time you hit the second, you realize
• 1:02:49
  most everything's baked in already. [laughs] Yeah. You know? People are who they are, and your job is to guide and protect and then, and again, allow for a certain amount of failure. Allow for a certain amount of risk.
• 1:03:00
  I think that's a big... Again, I'm gonna s- spiral for a second here, or, or take it tangential. The, the- Go for it...
• 1:03:05
  reason I like doing our podcast is I've been given the opportunity to fail a lot in my life, and I was given that opportunity by my parents.
• 1:03:14
  You know, by my dad, who pushed me to do sports, not because he cared if I was good at sports, but because he thought it was important to learn that most people lose in a tournament.
• 1:03:23
  So I played a lot of basketball, and then I played tennis, and I remember I played in my, like, first... And my dad was a really good tennis player.
• 1:03:28
  I was okay, and I played in my first tournament, and I had lost, and I was really upset. And he said, "Look at that bracket. There's 64 kids. One's gonna win. 63 are gonna lose. That's, it's fine.
• 1:03:38
  I hope you, you know, en- get to enjoy winning. You have to get used to, to losing and appreciate the process." We had that conversation about batting average recently. Right, exactly.
• 1:03:46
  And the whole thing of, you know, Michael Jordan, he made the most buzzer beaters, he missed the most buzzer beaters, right?
• 1:03:52
  And you know, my parents made me play an instrument, and I was never gonna be a professional musician.
• 1:03:57
  But I'm really glad I, I played an instrument and now have some understanding, and I can, you know, play guitar for my kids, although my daughter tells me to shut up, and she just wants to hear it- [laughs]...
• 1:04:04
  through the speaker.
• 1:04:05
  But I guess what I'm getting at is I like talking about the podcast because people don't understand both how hard things are, and I think failure is not only an acceptable part of life, it's actually what we should be striving for because it's a signifier that you're taking risks.
• 1:04:19
  And that's the big thing I worry about with my kids and with the next generation, is that we've insulated.
• 1:04:26
  I feel like I was the last gener- I'm a m- like, smack dab middle millennial, and I feel like I was the last generation that got exposed to a decent amount of risk as a kid.
• 1:04:35
  Like, I had pretty free reign to roam the neighborhood. I could watch, you know, movies and seek things out again. I went to high school without social media. Facebook started when I was in college.
• 1:04:44
  You know, that sort of thing. Right. And so the, the biggest thing that I try to offer any new parent is things will go wrong. You know, you will make the wrong decision.
• 1:04:55
  Your job is not to make every decision correct, you know, for your child. Uh, your job is to try to model behavior that will allow them to make enough right decisions in their own life, you know, to ultimately succeed.
• 1:05:09
  I had a mentor at my first job. I worked in corporate finance. And he said, "If you're not making mistakes, you're failing because- Yeah... you're not taking enough risks at your job."
• 1:05:19
  He's like, "I want you to be right 80% of the time." Yeah. "And that should be your goal." Yeah, the commissioner- Yeah...
• 1:05:25
  of our kids' Little League gave a whole speech on opening day, but the crux that stuck with everybody, which again, you know, the batting average thing, it's statistics, is he was like- Mm-hmm...
• 1:05:33
  "If you're not winning, you're learning." Mm. It's true. I, my, we were at the batting cage, and my, whatever, nine-year-old, you know, whiffed on a few, and he gets really, man, he gets so down on himself, this kid.
• 1:05:43
  He's, he really struggles. But for once I had an answer for him, which I was like, "Baseball's been around for 140 years. One person has hit over 400 in the last 75 years." Mm-hmm.
• 1:05:54
  Which means, and that's incredible, Tony Gwynn got close, and then there was a fucking strike. But otherwise, like, you cannot actually statistically do better than three and a half in 10. And if you do- Mm-hmm...
• 1:06:06
  three and a quarter in 10 over your career, you're going to the Hall of Fame, no questions asked. And he was like, "That seems impossible." I was like, "It's, that's the stat. I don't know what to tell you." Mm-hmm.
• 1:06:14
  I was like, "You're nowhere... No one is gonna get close to half." Yeah. "It's impossible." And he was like, "Well, that feels a lot fucking better." [laughs] And you're like, "Yeah, man, that's it. That's it." Yeah.
• 1:06:23
  And that's also just life.
• 1:06:25
  Uh, Chris, I admire you 'cause, like, I think something Quinn and I talk about is, like, how sometimes you have kids and you can't help but giving, like, passing on the wisdom you've accrued or attempting, like, you start finding, be like, "I remember when this," and, "You'll do that when..."
• 1:06:38
  You're like, "I hated when people did this to me- Mm-hmm...
• 1:06:39
  when my kids were little," but you just can't help it, 'cause you're just, like, flopping off your experience and you're like, "I hope someone might benefit from my dead skin knowledge somehow."
• 1:06:48
  [laughs] But, you know, if you're able to keep it to yourself and, you know, just dispense your knowledge in little bits to Lizzie, then I admire your restraint. I'm not as good at that myself.
• 1:06:56
  She doesn't need it from me. I'm like, "You know what you're doing. I don't know why- Yeah... you would need any..." If she ever has a question, she's more than, you know, welcome to ask me.
• 1:07:04
  One of the reasons I wanted to be a director is I like telling, I do like telling people what to do.
• 1:07:08
  I like, not the pr- not the control process, but I feel like I have a sense of what I want, and ILike to express that, and I worked with Quinn's spouse, Dana, and she- Dana's actually great at guiding people, but she's also got similarly very strong taste, and I respect that and appreciate it.
• 1:07:24
  And one of the reasons I've loved working with Lizzy, and I think we work really well together, is she's one of the few people candidly where when she says, "No, I think we should do this," my instinct is not to double down or reassert my position.
• 1:07:39
  It's actually to question my position because I trust her taste even more so than mine a lot of the time, and I think, "Okay, well, that's interesting."
• 1:07:48
  And so if she had kids first, I think she would be giving me more advice than vice versa.
• 1:07:53
  With that in mind, I'm curious what for you guys, if there's any movies that you saw after you became a parent that you either, like you'd seen it again after you had kids and you're like, "Wow, I see this in a whole new light that now that I'm a parent"- Mm-hmm...
• 1:08:04
  or whether there was a movie that you saw that you're like, "Wow, this really fucking spoke to me. Like I needed to be a parent to kinda get what this is about."
• 1:08:10
  I'm just curious whether there are movies that hit for you guys as parents, either new, as new to you or later in retrospect. I have three very quick, easy ones that are very simple. So one, The Omen.
• 1:08:22
  I don't think he's- Yeah... actually possessed. I'm serious. That's just normal three-year-old behavior. And so that was number one. Just, just some- Oh... of his, like his meltdown going into the church. Right. Right.
• 1:08:33
  And everyone's like- Fucking Tuesday... "Oh my God." Y- Yeah... no, that's just we forgot Nora's bar at home, and now we're gonna pay the price. So that's one. Yeah. Two, Mrs.
• 1:08:41
  Doubtfire, Robin Williams is the real villain of the movie. That's the obvious one. Some weird shit. True. Yeah. Right? You're like Sally Field comes home, and he's got a petting zoo, and he hasn't done any of the...
• 1:08:51
  I just thought, "No, of, yes, you're getting divorced. You're not getting- 100%... custody. This is ridiculous." So that's a very easy one. And then Tully, uh, with- Mm. That's a good one too. Oh my God. Mm. Yes.
• 1:09:04
  Oh, please talk about Tully. Yeah. So Helen Estabrook produced Tully. She worked with Diablo Cody and Jason Reitman a lot, and she's a fantastic producer, and she produced the first movie that I ever made.
• 1:09:14
  And so I went and saw Tully 'cause I was gonna be working with Helen, and I didn't know anything about it. And my wife and I weren't parents yet, and I thought it was really good and really funny.
• 1:09:23
  But I didn't really appreciate the emotional side of it, and I thought- Yeah... "This is all, she's imagining another ver-" Spoilers, she's imagining another version of herself.
• 1:09:32
  This seems a little outlandish, blah, blah, blah. And then you go through pregnancy, and you witness postpartum. Mm-hmm.
• 1:09:38
  And my sister had a baby almost exactly the same time as my wife, and I re-watched it, and I thought, "Oh, my gosh. This movie's... I feel like it captures the isolation of parenthood so well."
• 1:09:50
  Again, not my direct experience, but watching my wife deal with s- the, she was a stay-at-home mom for four months while she was on maternity leave during the pandemic, and she- Mm-hmm... didn't see anyone.
• 1:10:01
  And I was in post on a movie, on Moonshot, which I was making, which Dana was involved in. And so I was in New York for half the time, and so she was just alone with a newborn. Actually alone. Actually alone. Yeah.
• 1:10:14
  And so that movie hit in a very different way after having kids. Yeah. And thank you- Hot... Carmela- Hot... for not [laughs] leaving me after I left you alone with our daughter for...
• 1:10:29
  'Cause now I understand that- Yeah... you know, what I was doing. I did not. God, that movie hit me. Like I saw that in the theater on Mother's Day, and I- Wow... had a glass of wine or two, I think, and a gummy.
• 1:10:39
  So I was really, I think, peaked. I might've even been carrying one of those... I, yeah, I had one of those things that my kid made where like, "My mom is like this, and my mom is..."
• 1:10:46
  'Cause I was sharing it as a- Mm-hmm... laugh with my friend. And I, it, it broke me open.
• 1:10:51
  And there was like a part of it, and I don't normally think of pop culture like this in terms of parenting advice, but there was like a, a insight from the movie about how hard it is for parents to be boring and reliable and how monotonous- Mm-hmm...
• 1:11:04
  it is. But then the Tully character says the monotony is what kids need. Like they need- Mm-hmm... that structure. And that really... and I actually use that a lot.
• 1:11:11
  Like I need that as a touchstone sometimes where you're like, "This, I can't believe this. I should be enjoying this more. This is so boring. I shouldn't feel this way."
• 1:11:17
  And then it's kind of helpful to remember just 'cause it feels that way to you doesn't mean it feels that way to the, to the kid, and there's nothing wrong with not necessarily enjoying a part of parenting, you know, even if it, you're doing a good job at it.
• 1:11:27
  But yeah. How about you, Quinn? It's a really good question. I mean, the easy ones are like Inside Out, right? You know? Especially as my daughter's 11, it's happening. You know, all of the things.
• 1:11:38
  I took my 12-year-old to go see, they did a limited run of ET for three days in the theater. Mm-hmm. And I was like, "Oh, you haven't seen ET?" Like the fact- Mm-hmm...
• 1:11:45
  that you, there's an opportunity to see it in the theater, schedule goes bye bye. We're just gonna do it. Yeah. And, you know, that's top five for me as it is, and, you know, Jurassic Park and stuff like that.
• 1:11:54
  But ET more specifically, you know, just it is a kid who, you know, again, Spielberg doesn't have a dad, and- Mm... loneliness and friends, and there's some hard stuff in that movie for sure.
• 1:12:06
  But there's also stuff that again, like I cannot, can almost exclusively not relate to for a thousand reasons, but stick with me. I think about them all the time, like Moonlight.
• 1:12:19
  Like what it is to feel different at all as a kid is so hard, and I didn't have any of that.
• 1:12:28
  But watching it and watching my kids' friends and this and that, and you just read about it enough, and obviously what so many kids deal with th- these days and just, you know, the way they made that and the way it ends.
• 1:12:41
  I, I, you know, again, those things really j- I think it's like the smaller stuff, frankly, like that. And I mean, and Tully is that way too, right? It's, it's so specific.
• 1:12:48
  Do you know what was a weird one that stood out to me differently after I had kids and that's not a movie about being a parent, it's actually totally about being a kid, is A Christmas Story? Yeah.
• 1:12:56
  I always remember how annoying the little brother was in that. Mm-hmm. You know, Ralphie, I can't put my arms down.
• 1:13:01
  And then I was rewatching the movie, and I very quietly, the mom, Melinda Dillon, is such a good mom to these boys- Mm-hmm, mm-hmm... in this movie. Randy is sitting under the sink 'cause he's sad. Mm-hmm.
• 1:13:11
  I think he's worried about being in trouble, and his mom just quietly gives him a cup of milk and closes the door [laughs] like behind him on his- Mm-hmm... little under the sink.
• 1:13:19
  And then-I remember being disgusted earlier in my life when the mom is having him pretend to be a pig to eat his food Yeah, who's my little piggy? That and it- Oh, wow... she's doing such good parenting in that scene.
• 1:13:28
  I know. Yeah, yeah. She gets a... She's cheering him on Yeah... and like even the part where she makes Ralph eat soap for swearing. Yep Like, you can tell that she feels sad about it. She feels sad for him.
• 1:13:38
  She's not enjoying it. Mm-hmm. And I just never noticed that, what a good character, like boy mom, you know, without all the- Yeah... boy mom baggage.
• 1:13:45
  I was like, "That is such a sweetly written character that I never appreciated." She's great. Th- the opposite of that for me is just thinking about it, is whatever your own childhoods were, pros and cons.
• 1:13:55
  You know, we all try to either do at one point what our, raise our kids how our parents raised us or explicitly not do that, or we find ourselves doing whatever it is, and thousand reasons. But watching Elf again- Yeah.
• 1:14:08
  Mm. And the idea that like a dad doesn't want his kid, even though he doesn't know him, and it's farcical and it's great and all that stuff.
• 1:14:16
  But, you know, I have friends who are like, "Hey, you know, I talk to my dad every couple months. I don't know, he calls and I don't pick up." And I'm like, "I would fucking die."
• 1:14:24
  Like, I live in fear of like how do I not fuck it up so bad that is the case. These kids who like still ask me to read them Wild Robot Returns every night. You know, it's like how do you go from this to, to that?
• 1:14:34
  And so I, you know, I've ruined Elf basically for myself is what I'm trying to say, which is hard to do. Got you. Yeah. Got you deep. Yeah. Yeah.
• 1:14:43
  Poltergeist, I would point out, is a good example of two, I think, very well-written parents. And I remember as a kid, there's a extended sequence of them getting high together, and Craig T.
• 1:14:55
  Nelson performing his whole diving routine for his wife in a funny, seductive way, that as a child I had no appreciation for, and now as I watch it, I'm like, "This is fire."
• 1:15:05
  This is a fantastic scene showing that these parents still have life, you know- Yeah... even though they're- Yeah... acting as mom and dad at the end of the day, and I really love that. I love that movie.
• 1:15:16
  There's a Spielbergian quality obviously behind it, too, although he did not direct it. Many people say he did.
• 1:15:22
  But to your point, though, of losing connection with a parent, I think, you know, that Lady Bird scene, attention, right? I- isn't that not what love is, like to attend? No, no, no.
• 1:15:31
  And I think that again, that comes back to we're in this attention economy. There's so many things competing for your attention.
• 1:15:36
  There are so many easy ways to say, "Oh, I could be doing this," which is more important than playing w- My daughter plays this, like, weird game where she puts all of her stuffies to nap time. Oh.
• 1:15:46
  But she covers them completely in blankets so it looks like the Jonestown Massacre in our living room. And [laughs] and so I'm like, "Am I gonna play Jonestown with my daughter?" Right, right, right.
• 1:15:56
  Or could I be like, you know- And she's like three through school age... working on a new... Exactly, like working- Right... on a new podcast episode or a script. Mm-hmm. But the point is,
• 1:16:03
  my best memories are not necessarily super, like, active times with my parents. It was being in their presence and enjoying their attention and their focus, that proximity. And I think that's what
• 1:16:20
  leads to the gulf, you know, or the distance. Sure. I'm not convinced that the majority of estrangements come from some s- form of
• 1:16:29
  active abuse so much as they do, not that doesn't happen, but so much as they do from a more passive disengagement- Totally, especially now... of a parent. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Yeah.
• 1:16:38
  And- And we've tried to be really good about, and again, we're lucky to be able to do this, but look, man, if you have shit to do, go do it in a different room and do it. Right. Like, we're either with them- Yeah...
• 1:16:46
  or you're with the work. 'Cause by the way, if you're trying to do both, you're not doing good work either. Yeah. And we've only got so much energy, and that's hard to do obviously sometimes. But yeah, I don't know.
• 1:16:56
  It's like, I came home and did like the Field of Dreams, "Do you wanna have a catch?" And he's, "Ah." Mm-hmm. "Girlfriend's volleyball game," and I was like- That's great... "Oh, no, that's super great.
• 1:17:03
  I'm just gonna go kill myself," because apparently that window's over. And it's not yet. It will be. Mm-hmm. But I'm also like, "Fuck, that happened fast." Yeah.
• 1:17:11
  And it's just again, like a really stark reminder, 'cause I take everything personally. Forget everything else. Throw the phone in the ocean- Mm-hmm...
• 1:17:17
  if there's any given moment to hang out, just like whatever it is, you know? Yeah. 'Cause you're right, it is, it's unintentional or not, loss of attention where they go, "Okay, I'll do something else."
• 1:17:25
  Quinn, you were just talking about taking your kids to see E.T., and I thought that was... We tried watching that with my kids, and it made me remember how I thought E.T. was scary when I was a kid. Mm-hmm. Fuck yeah.
• 1:17:35
  My kids- Yeah... my kids also thought it was scary. I also thought Goonies was scary. Mm-hmm. I thought Gremlins was scary.
• 1:17:39
  My p- my son just saw Gremlins for the first time and he loved it, so he's not a total wimp like me.
• 1:17:44
  But do you remember thinking anything was terrifying when you were a kid that everyone else seemed to think was cool or that you just did not get into?
• 1:17:51
  I'm just curious about if there's anything that you're like this, whatever w- I was supposed to enjoy did not track with me back then. I like scary movies. I don't seek out horror- Mm-hmm...
• 1:18:00
  but I'll watch the really good ones and really appreciate it. I mean, I remember seeing, again, RIP Arclight, I remember seeing The Conjuring in the dome and driving home- Mm-hmm...
• 1:18:11
  and realizing nobody died and thinking like, "I was scared out of my fucking pants. That was so good." That's awesome. That's great. So I can appreciate that. So I think less, maybe it was seeing Cape Fear so early.
• 1:18:21
  But yeah, I don't know. I don't know. That's a good question. I definitely thought E.T. was scary. The scene where he's, um- Oh, the hospital stuff is so fucked up...
• 1:18:29
  the hospital stuff, when they find him in the riverbed and he is dying was horrifying to me as I was so scared, you know, of, of him and, and for him and whatnot.
• 1:18:40
  I'm trying to think of things like trends of things that I didn't get into as a kid. So we were not allowed to have Instant Messenger- Yeah...
• 1:18:47
  and which is not a movie, but that was the way that kids were communicating, and I remember feeling like such a loser. Mm-hmm.
• 1:18:54
  Again, my parents were attorneys, and they're thinking, you know, "We're not gonna give our child a way to document their contemporaneous, idiotic thoughts with their friends. Like, we know you're gonna say- Cut to...
• 1:19:05
  stupid things with each other." Exactly. This will go well. Exactly. Fuck. I mean, look, now you have kids who are-You know, I think this is rare, but it does happen. Kids lose job opportunities or they, you know- Oh...
• 1:19:17
  lose a, an opportunity to go to a school or a scholarship because of something stupid they posted online because it was written in ink and they didn't understand it.
• 1:19:23
  I think again, al- along the lines of you need room to fail. Yeah. Mm-hmm.
• 1:19:27
  I think one of the things my parents realized, yeah, you need room to fail, and what you don't understand is you're gonna tell on yourself- Mm-hmm... if you have this access to this. Yeah.
• 1:19:35
  And I, now I really appreciate that. It's funny. There are certain things that my parents did at the time that I really thought, "You guys are just a couple of Luddites," and they were 100% right, and I agree- [laughs]
• 1:19:48
  ... with them. But one of the things that I think helped with that was they made it clear that they were not trying to protect me from something else so much as they were trying to protect me from myself.
• 1:19:57
  And I, because I had such free rein within movies and within books, and nothing was really off limits on those fronts, again, within reason, there was a clear understanding that didn't feel arbitrary. Hmm.
• 1:20:10
  So I had a hard time arguing with some of their rules because there was enough consistency there. They're saying like, "We are letting you explore," right?
• 1:20:20
  "We are letting you s- push boundaries," et cetera, et cetera, "but this is the clear reason why this is a bad idea." Sure enough, there was an instance of a bunch of kids in fifth grade getting...
• 1:20:31
  Some kid printed out other kids shit-talking them, you know, and they took it to school. Oh.
• 1:20:36
  And we had one of the first ins- I remember when I was a junior, there was a girl who lived on my street who she had sent one of the earliest instances of a nude- Gosh...
• 1:20:43
  photo over email to another boy, and he sent it to- Never... a couple of friends. Spread like wildfire. I mean, not like it would today, obviously, but it was a huge deal. Yeah, yeah. And I'm sure awful for her- Oh...
• 1:20:55
  and everybody involved. And those were the things that my parents wanted to keep me away from more than movies- Yeah... or, or television. And that's again... So I'm trying to model that a little bit more.
• 1:21:08
  That's what scares me for my kids. And the last thing, the one thing I missed out... So you said fuck Star Wars and that you were not, you weren't gonna touch it with a 10-foot pole. That was me with The O.C. Oh, yeah.
• 1:21:17
  I thought... Like, The O.C. came out when I was in middle school or early... Maybe it was when I was in high school, and I was like, "This is so dumb. The O.C., this looks like a soap opera," blah, blah, blah.
• 1:21:26
  "This is trash. I'm never gonna watch it. You couldn't pay... I watch sophisticated movies." Mm-hmm, mm-hmm. "I'm the movie guy at my school." And I get to college, and somebody had put The O.C.
• 1:21:37
  on in their dorm room, and I sat down, and I thought, "Oh, God. This is dumb, but you have weed, so I'll sit here, and I'll watch it with you." And I watched- It's fantastic... all of The O.C.
• 1:21:45
  in about two weeks, and I don't think I did any schoolwork, and it's amazing. I mean, it totally jumps the shark at a certain point, but I stand by the first season as fantastic television.
• 1:21:54
  So I try now to keep a more open mind about things because I've been proven wrong so many times. I love this idea. First of all, it's amazing.
• 1:22:03
  I'm 1,000 years older than you now I'm realizing, but guys in my fraternity house would all collectively sit in one guy's room to watch O.C. when it was on. Mm-hmm. And I was like, "Enough."
• 1:22:13
  And then I wandered in one night, same thing. Thank you for the weed. And I was like- Mm-hmm... this is should win every award. Yeah. It's fucking incredible. And then love that idea of protecting you from yourself.
• 1:22:23
  And again, like, our kids yell at us.
• 1:22:26
  One of them said to Dana the other night, "It would be really, it'd be really great if you started a single conversation without it being about how I'm in danger or fucking something up." Yeah. And she was like- Yeah...
• 1:22:36
  "All right. I get it." You know, they'll take one bite of something with a plastic fork, and we're like, "Well, hope you enjoy those microplastics in your testes." And they're like, "Never mind. Fuck it. Never mind.
• 1:22:45
  I won't have dinner with you." But I almost wonder if I can do a better job. I mean, I, I know I can do a better job.
• 1:22:51
  If I can practically do a better job of not just protecting you from something or protecting you from yourself, but also, like, protecting...
• 1:22:59
  You know, it's the whole, like, before something, not just against stuff, right? Mm-hmm. Don't just be the party of no, especially as a parent. But one thing, like, books. We're at a library every Sunday.
• 1:23:07
  We- House full of books. Read whatever you want. Don't care. I have tried to explain to them that could probably do a better job of I'm trying to protect this experience that you guys love so much.
• 1:23:14
  I mean, they're just ins- insatiable readers. And I know, and I've tried to say to them, "Once you get this screen thing going, it's very hard to protect that- Yeah... and to enjoy that. And I know you love it so much."
• 1:23:28
  So I wonder if I can phrase it a little more that way, but it's hard. Well, do you know what my new, my plan is?
• 1:23:32
  Paul's gonna get a phone, I think, in a year when he goes to high school, and m- my plan, and I'm already sad about it. I already envision handing over and watching his childhood f- you know, fly, flow away- Mm-hmm...
• 1:23:42
  like a butterfly. But I think we're gonna get a puppy, so maybe he will be too busy petting the puppy to, to look at his phone. Oh. You're gonna be- But we-... taking care of the dog while he's...
• 1:23:52
  What the fuck are you talking about? Chris, have we kept you for long enough here? Man, thank you so much. Yeah. Thank you, Chris, so much. No, thank you for having me. We love your podcast. Yeah, it's so great.
• 1:24:03
  And we're excited 'cause our weekly... I'm su- I know it's hard to watch something and not just enjoy it and to, like, make notes and, like, research it, but, uh- No, but what I've always loved about it is one of...
• 1:24:11
  My first experience with Hollywood was Dana and I were long-distance dating, and Liz Meriwether, dear friend, one of the most talented people alive, had just made... Oh, God. Which one was it?
• 1:24:22
  There were the two of them at the same year. It was like the Armageddon thing. Was it a movie or a TV show? No, the movie. Friends of- It was before New Girl?
• 1:24:27
  She was either Friends with Benefits or- Oh, Friends with Benefits or No Strings Attached. She was No Strings At- I don't fucking remember. I'll... Hold, hold on. Yeah. Let's just get it right. Anyways,
• 1:24:37
  so Claire, I might have told you this story, and Chris, maybe you've read it. So originally based on a spec script of hers called Fuck Buddies.
• 1:24:43
  One of the funniest thing a person will ever read in their life, but unmakeable because- No Strings Attached. Great. Mm. So unmakeable because the structure was a nightmare, but everyone was like- Mm-hmm...
• 1:24:53
  we can teach this person structure. That's not the- Mm-hmm. You can't teach how funny this is. Ivan Reitman is attached- Mm-hmm... to it again. Like, they go and make it. Yep.
• 1:25:00
  And I remember sitting at the premiere somehow.
• 1:25:03
  I'm sitting next to Dana, and Liz had the same agent at this, at, at the time, and the credits go up, and he looks at me, and he goes, "Every one of these things is a fucking miracle."And I feel like that's what your podcast does such a great job of, is we're not shitting on this movie.
• 1:25:17
  We're saying like, "This is really fucking hard, and every business goes wrong." How this one went wrong and like you did with Wonder Woman, and yet we still got here. You know?
• 1:25:25
  If you do love movies and you're interested in how they're made, or if you're just interested again in kind of the idea of failure and obstacles and the stories behind trying to make these things- Yeah...
• 1:25:36
  you know, give it a listen. It's called What Went Wrong. And w- again, our goal is not... We want you to watch as many movies as possible. We don't want to make fun of them. We do tease them at times- Sure... for sure.
• 1:25:47
  But our goal is just to get people to watch movies. I love it. And awesome. And also tell Carmella's parents I love her name. I know she can't take credit for it, but whenever you mention- Yeah...
• 1:25:56
  I'm like, there's something in my brain that I'm like, what a great name. I love hearing that. The number one thing my wife and I are excited to watch with our kids when they're much older is The Sopranos.
• 1:26:04
  [laughs] And that is our number one shared favorite piece of media of all time. We have watched it together three times, separately twice. And when they get- That's great... probably s- 16 maybe- Mm-hmm...
• 1:26:16
  15, 16, we're gonna pull the trigger and do a big family watch of The Sopranos. It's gonna be super uncomfortable. That's pretty fucking great. That's awesome. Excited. It is gonna be super uncomfortable.
• 1:26:25
  It's gonna be amazing. You gotta be ready for them to reject it though too, and then you're gonna have to figure like, you know, a way in. I will have the will drawn up, and I will say- What's it gonna be? Yeah, exactly.
• 1:26:35
  All right. Like, have your podcaster. There's something in there for me. Yep, yeah. Um- Perfect. Congrats, it's empty. Chris, thank you so much. Really appreciate it. Yeah, thank you, Chris, for spending time with us.
• 1:26:43
  We love it. Everybody go rent Moonshot. Yes. And everybody listen to What Went Wrong. What Went Wrong. [upbeat music] That's it for this week.
• 1:27:00
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• 1:27:11
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• 1:27:18
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• 1:27:26
  Head to notrightnow.show for more, or send us feedback, questions, horror stories, doxing, whatever it is, at questions@notrightnow.show.
• 1:27:38
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