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Welcome, welcome, welcome to armchair expert experts on expert.
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I m Dan Shepard and I m joined by Monica Padman.
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This was fun.
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Yes, this was fun.
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Right out of the gates.
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He arrived in the coolest car and an aerial Adam in the off-road setup.
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And I was like,
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It was really cool.
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Yes, and I was like, okay, I see you, Jonah Nolan.
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I didn t know.
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I think of you as a very clever writer.
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Auteur.
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Probably smarter than me.
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He was very smart.
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He is smarter than me, but we had the car thing, so that was helpful.
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But Jonah Nolan is a director, producer, and Academy Award-nominated screenwriter.
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He is famously brothers with Christopher Nolan, and they have done so many of your favorite things together.
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The Prestige, Interstellar, The Dark Knight, Memento.
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Then of course, Jonah was the director of Westworld, which was one of my favorite shows ever.
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Yeah.
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And he has a new series out now.
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I hope people can tell when I m truly, insanely passionate for a show.
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I hope they can t.
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This is my show of 2024, Fallout.
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Holy smokes, this show is so fucking awesome.
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Based off the video game.
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Ew.
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Also, we talked about this when he left.
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This is like with Phineas and Billie Eilish.
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If I am the parents of these Nolan brothers.
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I know.
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Aren t you just so proud?
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Why don t they write a book?
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They gotta write a book.
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The parents?
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Yes, on what to do.
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We need to get some of these parents together.
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Some of these parents need to get off their ass and write books.
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So please check out, I don t even have to tell you to, you re gonna hear about it so much, but Fallout, which premieres on April 11th on Prime Video.
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Please enjoy Jonah Nolan.
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He s an objects man.
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That has to be for my benefit, is it?
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How are you?
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Dax, great to meet you, brother.
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But I thought you would appreciate it.
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Oh my God, of course!
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I walked out on the... Well, he s clearly here.
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Is it a Nomad?
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What s it called?
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It s a Nomad, yeah.
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There was just one on Bring a Trailer.
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This week, do you go and bring a trailer and sniff around?
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I bought a car and bring a trailer two weeks ago.
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Oh, you did?
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I did.
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What d you buy?
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I bought a 991 911 GT3 Touring.
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Oh, baby.
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What year?
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2018.
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Oh, fuck.
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Slightly softer suspension.
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Yes.
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I bought it in Colorado.
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I paid too much money for it.
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Sure.
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Then I flew out and drove it home on summer tires, which is a very bad idea.
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Did they even make it?
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I was gonna say now what I had to wake up every day and kind of look to see I found an app that will tell you how cold it s gonna be along your route.
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There s an app already for that.
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It s cool.
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It s called how to get there or something like that.
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So you first get the car and you get in it and you re so excited to drive it and then it s a long drive.
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I ve done that drive a hundred times.
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It s 1100 miles.
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I had it a little bit because I went down through the Raton Pass, which I d never done before.
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I didn t have the guts to take on summer tires over the Rockies.
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I went through Santa Fe, Los Alamos, down across the top of northern New Mexico, Flagstaff, and back that way.
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Oh, wow.
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So this is perfect because you re already hitting where this sounds reminiscent of, I did a movie in New Mexico.
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I had been wanting to get a Cobra replica forever.
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I found one there that had the actual 68 FE big block.
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I buy this car.
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Which one?
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Lone Star.
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Okay.
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So then I decide, well, not I decide, I have to drive it home from this movie in Albuquerque.
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Of course.
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But I m quite excited about it.
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But again, I drive out of Albuquerque very excited.
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By the time I get into Elevation, I m like, huh.
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These cars are not tuned for elevation and they get down in the desert and then starts raining.
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There s no roof.
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There s no wipers.
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There s no windows.
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And by the time I pulled it into my place in Santa Monica, I was like, this was the biggest.
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The fuck did I do this?
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Did you have any moments?
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Well, I guess the Touring s probably not as bumpy.
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It s pretty bumpy, but its steering is so dialed in so perfect.
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It s like driving a laser beam.
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Like, you re enjoying the experience of driving it so much.
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Even though you re getting jostled around a fair bit, it s still great.
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And that manual transmission, six-speed, one of the greatest engines ever made.
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I did not expect this from you.
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Okay, so this is the point in the conversation.
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And Monica, I know you re a Goodwill Hunting fan.
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I listen to you guys talking to Damon.
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Oh It s the moment where Ben Affleck goes in his place to the job interview And they re kind of like who this is a moment where people start texting.
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They re like who the fuck is this guy?
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Sure, and why doesn t he have an English accent?
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How did this imposter They re like he s supposed to be posh
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That has been this great allure of you guys, because I ve never met either of you.
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I m friends with Downey.
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Obviously he just worked with your brother.
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So I got to hear Downey s impersonation.
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I think he might ve even done it when we interviewed him.
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Didn t he do his Christopher?
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Oh dear.
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But I ve heard that these two are brothers, but one grew up more in Chicago.
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One grew up more in England.
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One has an American.
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Like you re so fucking Chicagoan.
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It s hysterical.
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That s what happens when you move to Chicago 11 years old with an English accent.
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If I ve been 18, fantastic.
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Girls would have loved it.
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Guys would have thought you were intriguing.
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Amazing.
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Yeah.
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11 years old, that s not how it works out.
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Yeah, that s fifth grade and you re a pariah.
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100%.
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Two years, my social interactions consisted of, say my name is Bond, James Bond.
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Oh.
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Oh my God.
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And now go away.
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Now go away.
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So he s shaking that sword for us and then get the fuck out of here.
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Just get out of here.
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But what s the age difference?
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Chris is way older than I am.
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He s six years older.
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We have some similarities.
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So my brother is five years older than me.
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We re reversed though.
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He s a righty, I m a lefty.
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Oh.
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Christopher s a lefty, you re a righty.
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That s right.
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And by the way, Jonah or Jonathan?
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Everyone calls me Jonah.
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I was traveling when Memento came out.
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Chris doesn t like nicknames.
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I came back.
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I was like, oh, okay.
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Birth names.
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No one ever called that dude Chris tonight.
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Like, okay, we ll go with legal names.
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Like, I see.
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Okay.
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Okay.
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Then they published the short story in Esquire, which was super cool.
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And I said, can I go by Jonah in Esquire?
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And then the copy editor called me back two weeks later and was like, we d really rather that it matched the credits of... And there it goes.
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Okay.
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When did you adopt Jonah?
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God, I don t even know where to start in this story.
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It s so twisty-turny.
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It s fun.
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Also, I m so distracted by how cute you look, Monica.
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Thank you.
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This is quite a yellow ensemble.
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I am wearing a new outfit.
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And I was thinking, I was going off on my own journey when you were talking about cars, because I can t follow at all.
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But I thought, man, what they re talking about is the way I feel about new outfits.
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There you go.
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Like, I can t wait to wear it.
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They re identical in that they become your identity.
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You infuse this thing and it helps your self-esteem.
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You now feel like a laser beam driving through.
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You re like, you have athleticism that you in your real life don t have.
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100%.
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Right.
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Yeah, it s a superpower.
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Armor, it s all armor.
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I feel a little judged there, Dax.
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I apply that to myself.
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Let s just say an RS3 is a world-class car.
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And even if you re athletic, you didn t play in the NFL.
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That s exactly right.
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It s funny, as you say, Monica, because my daughter was asking me the other day, I was getting dressed up to go to the Oscars.
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She said, Daddy, guys never get to wear anything interesting.
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And I was like, it s true.
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It s getting a little better, but for the most part, we don t.
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So a car is like an outfit.
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It s true.
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You get to be a little flamboyant.
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You get to be a little fun.
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Shows your personality.
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Also, you can be cool.
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Yeah.
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I saved up and I got a 1984 Mustang GT in high school and I m a year older than you.
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I m 75 or 76 Fox body.
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Yep.
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Sorry, Monica.
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One more thing.
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I m building a Fox body wagon right now in 1980 Zephyr with all the coyote motors, six speed independent rear suspension.
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Okay.
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But that car, I fucking would peel out leaving high school and Monica, you can t imagine what my self image was.
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It was delusional, but it worked for me.
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That was it.
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Dorky kid, English accent, trying as fast as I could to get rid of it.
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And I think the Chicago accent, Southern would have been tough, but Chicago is about as far a distance as you can travel.
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I mean, just look at the vowels, right?
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Like an English A to a Chicago A. It s so different.
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So years of that, and my dad at one point threatened to send me back to England for high school.
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He said, you go to Catholic school or you go to, you know,
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And I was like, I am not going back to England.
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I m not doing this all over again.
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And then I got my driver s license and that was it.
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New Jonas.
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A hundred percent.
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And what was your first machine?
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First one was my grandmother s 79 Buick Skyhawk.
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It s a terrible car.
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Rear wheel drive, massive economy V6 in the front.
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Okay.
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So it s shitty.
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But when it snowed, you re in the Dukes of Hazzard.
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Didn t even have to snow.
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In Chicago in the summer, so summer after sophomore year, I spent the whole summer waiting for my driver s license to come, and then it turns out the driving school guy just hadn t filled in the paperwork, and it didn t show up till the end.
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So then I ve got all this pent-up energy, and I m like, I m going driving.
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And Chicago in the summer when it rains, if it hasn t rained in a while, the oil, it s ice skating.
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And so I m coming home, I got a buddy in the car, I m cool, rear-wheel drive, getting the rear end out a tiny little bit, as much as you can with that engine.
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and I come around a corner and I start to lose it, and I remember to steer in the direction this kid, but I don t remember that you ve got to unsteer.
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So I just fly off the hook.
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Into a ditch.
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Bunch of choked cherry trees.
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I think I hit eight or nine trees.
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This is a seminal moment for every young aspiring.
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Steve McQueen.
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It was a learning moment.
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You learn to oversteer.
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I never forgot.
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You learn quick when you throw a car into the ditch.
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You do.
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My parents made me dig it out.
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They re like, okay, you can get it back out.
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You guys don t look dissimilar.
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Are you realizing this?
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Is everyone seeing this?
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This is crazy.
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I think we re the exact same size as well.
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Whoa, Sam.
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Our mutual friend was like, you guys are either going to get along or it s going to be terrible.
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Pete loved Peter.
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I ve told you about Peter in the past.
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He s living down in Austin, but they re moving back.
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They re coming back.
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So his wife, you work with his wife somehow.
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Yeah, we re partners.
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Athena.
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Okay, wonderful.
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I ve not ever met her.
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Really?
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Weirdly.
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And I ve known Peter for, I guess, almost 20 years now.
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No, you would remember, Athena is amazing.
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Okay, great.
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And she is one of your producers?
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Yeah, we worked together since I started working in television.
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She was a bad robot, and then Athena, myself, and my wife, Lisa, started her own.
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Stole her.
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Headhunting her.
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It s okay, Dax stole me.
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I stole her from my wife.
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I mean, I jeopardized everything.
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Cutthroat.
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We started our own company, and we ve been working together ever since.
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And you re at Amazon, you guys have a deal at Amazon?
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12 years, we do.
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Okay, great.
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Let s start at the beginning.
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You re a little boy in England.
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Yeah.
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So at one time, you did have a cute little English accent.
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Adorable.
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And you re one of three.
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Who s the second?
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Chris is our middle brother.
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I m the baby.
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I was the happy accident.
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The whistle-stop version of it is, my dad s an English guy.
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He s a madman.
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He s a copywriter.
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And executive.
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Wins a competition, and I think, and I ll get this all wrong, my mom would be so mad at me.
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I think he winds up at Ogilvy in New York, and he hates it, because it s the show.
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Before he passed away, I got him to watch two episodes, and he s like, it wasn t like that.
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But I m like, well, it wasn t enough like that.
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It was enough like that that he hated it, and everyone in New York hated Chicago.
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And he was like, well, I hate you, and you hate Chicago.
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Yeah, an enemy of my enemy is a friend of mine.
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I m going to try Chicago, where there was a healthy ad business, still a healthy ad business there.
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So he moved there.
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Somehow goes to play beach volleyball, which is a thing in Chicago.
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Not super English.
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This is out of his comfort zone.
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The one time he ever went to play beach volleyball, and the one time my mom ever went to play beach volleyball, and they happened to pick the same random day to go play beach volleyball, and they met each other.
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Okay, great.
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SPEAKER_01
And she was at the time a flight attendant?
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You got it.
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For what, Delta?
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SPEAKER_01
United.
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SPEAKER_01
United, okay.
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SPEAKER_00
Just flew United.
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SPEAKER_00
We just flew it, there you go.
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SPEAKER_01
fly United because of that loyalty.
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SPEAKER_01
This is adorable.
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Okay, so they meet in Chicago.
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That was, I would have assumed, the other way around.
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They met in Chicago and about a month after they got married, he s like, we re gonna move back to England.
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This was in the 60s.
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SPEAKER_00
Late 60s, swing in London.
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SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
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SPEAKER_00
And my mom, who s from Ohio, moves to London and has three kids.
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SPEAKER_00
And London was very different.
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SPEAKER_00
You couldn t go shopping on the weekends.
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SPEAKER_00
She d go to the supermarket and get a bunch of stuff.
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SPEAKER_00
The guy at the end is like, have you brought any bags, madam?
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SPEAKER_00
Very rude.
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Bring your own shopping cart.
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Kind of.
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They still haven t invented shopping carts.
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So it wasn t for her.
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Well, no.
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After my dad passed away, we were joking that she would move right back.
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And she s spent more of her life now, I think, in the UK than she has here.
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They argued for 42 happy years about where to live.
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SPEAKER_00
And periodically, my mom would be like, I need a cheeseburger.
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SPEAKER_00
Oh, so they didn t divorce?
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SPEAKER_00
No.
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Wait a minute.
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Happily married the whole way through.
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So when you were living in Chicago, dad was still in England.
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So they would just have these long periods away.
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We d move together because he worked in the ad business.
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He had his own company.
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He could dance around.
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SPEAKER_01
So when you were 11 and your brother is now 17 or 18, you moved to Chicago, the whole family.
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SPEAKER_00
Well, the whole family at this point being the three of us, Chris is at boarding school and
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SPEAKER_00
I sort of had that weird thing of kind of being a younger brother, but also kind of an only kid for a while.
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SPEAKER_00
Because of the boarding school thing.
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SPEAKER_00
So Chris started going to boarding school when he was like 10.
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My mom had gotten fed up with England when I was like four years old.
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We moved to Chicago for like a year.
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And then Chris started going to boarding school.
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Which is this weird thing where we grew up together, but I think it s one of the reasons our relationship works is we had almost no points of comparison.
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SPEAKER_00
We didn t go to the same schools.
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He didn t take the SATs.
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SPEAKER_00
I didn t take the O-levels.
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He didn t apply to the colleges I applied to.
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SPEAKER_00
It was only when we got here that there was suddenly a point of comparison.
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Well, that the world is putting on you guys for sure.
1
SPEAKER_01
So then I guess you probably wouldn t have all of the isms I have from being a younger brother, five years younger.
1
SPEAKER_01
I would describe them as this, an insatiable hurry to prove I m adult at all times.
1
SPEAKER_01
I wanted to show him I was worthy of hanging out, some weird complex that I m bad at everything.
1
SPEAKER_01
And then I get around my peers and I m like, oh wait, I am kind of strong.
1
SPEAKER_01
I ve just been wrestling him my whole life.
1
100%.
1
SPEAKER_01
I was skateboarding with him and I sucked.
1
SPEAKER_01
But then I got to sixth grade and I m like, they think I m the greatest skateboarder.
1
SPEAKER_01
All these weird juxtapositions of my experience in life.
1
SPEAKER_01
Did you have that stuff?
1
SPEAKER_01
I still have it.
1
SPEAKER_00
Because with directing, watching what he does, I m like, I don t know if I could do what he does.
1
SPEAKER_00
Then I started working with other directors.
1
SPEAKER_00
I m like, I know what I can do with that guy.
1
SPEAKER_00
Right.
1
SPEAKER_00
But a hundred percent.
1
SPEAKER_00
The little brother thing, even with him out of the house for a while, all the more maybe he d come back and be like, no, no, no.
1
SPEAKER_00
I want to hang out.
1
SPEAKER_00
I want to be part of it.
1
SPEAKER_00
Yes.
1
SPEAKER_01
Is it trippy to you that he is so English?
1
SPEAKER_01
Yes.
1
SPEAKER_01
Cause you re so fucking American.
1
SPEAKER_01
It s hilarious.
1
SPEAKER_00
On Memento, we worked together.
1
SPEAKER_00
I had written a story.
1
SPEAKER_00
What was it called?
1
SPEAKER_00
Memento?
1
SPEAKER_00
Memento Mori was the short story.
1
SPEAKER_00
I was still in college.
1
SPEAKER_00
I take some time off college because my mom had tried to convince me to get a real job.
1
SPEAKER_00
She s like, I got one shot left.
1
SPEAKER_00
Some of this family is going to have a real job.
1
SPEAKER_00
Dad at that point was self-employed.
1
SPEAKER_00
Chris always wanted to be a film director.
1
SPEAKER_00
And she s like, I got this guy.
1
SPEAKER_00
He s it.
1
SPEAKER_00
You got into Georgetown.
1
SPEAKER_00
I did.
1
SPEAKER_00
It s very promising.
1
SPEAKER_00
Very good school.
1
SPEAKER_00
Catholic high school, so a bit of a feeder.
1
SPEAKER_01
I had a bit of a boost.
1
SPEAKER_01
Earmark Cooper was there when you were there, I m sure.
1
SPEAKER_00
Bradley Cooper and I rode together on the men s heavyweight crew team.
1
SPEAKER_01
No way.
1
SPEAKER_01
Yes.
1
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
1
SPEAKER_01
Oh my goodness.
1
SPEAKER_00
There s too many things to talk about.
1
SPEAKER_01
Okay, I m going to try to keep this linear.
1
SPEAKER_01
We were the smallest guys on the boat.
1
SPEAKER_01
You were not GT3 RSs.
1
SPEAKER_01
Exactly.
1
SPEAKER_00
The rest of the boat.
1
SPEAKER_00
You guys are Camaros.
1
SPEAKER_01
Yes.
1
SPEAKER_01
I ll take that.
1
SPEAKER_01
You guys are doing just fine.
1
SPEAKER_00
In the space of a Fox boat.
1
SPEAKER_00
Good in a straight line.
1
SPEAKER_00
Yes.
1
SPEAKER_00
Entry level speed.
1
SPEAKER_00
Bradley and I met walking into the cafeteria first week of Georgetown.
1
SPEAKER_00
The coach, Dan Lyons, was recruiting.
1
SPEAKER_00
He d come from Annapolis, and he wanted to build a good team.
1
SPEAKER_00
So he s literally just picking big guys.
1
SPEAKER_00
You have wide shoulders.
1
SPEAKER_00
Come this way.
1
SPEAKER_00
Come on down.
1
SPEAKER_00
I d never rowed in a boat in my life.
1
SPEAKER_00
And we wound up becoming friends, and it s been amazing to watch.
1
SPEAKER_01
How do I not know this either?
1
SPEAKER_01
You don t know anything.
1
SPEAKER_01
I really am astounded with what little I know.
1
SPEAKER_01
So you re at Georgetown, and then you decide you re gonna bail out of there for a year to get a job?
1
SPEAKER_00
I started at Georgetown in School of Foreign Service, which at the time, it had been Bill Clinton s alma mater.
1
SPEAKER_00
I thought I would work for the State Department.
1
SPEAKER_00
I think I was motivated to some degree.
1
SPEAKER_00
I had all the isms, the Younger Brothers stuff, but I had this thing for my mom, who s lovely and has supported my career the whole way through.
1
SPEAKER_00
But in the beginning, it was like, how about you get a real job?
1
SPEAKER_00
So I thought, what s a more stable salary than the government salary?
1
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, you can even do a bad job and stick around forever.
1
SPEAKER_01
100%.
1
SPEAKER_01
You re like 10 years from the second you signed your employment contract.
1
100%.
1
SPEAKER_00
So I was like, I m going to work for the State Department.
1
SPEAKER_00
Maybe I ll work for the CIA.
1
SPEAKER_00
I ll do the Marine Corps for a couple of years after this.
1
SPEAKER_00
I went to a Marine Corps recruiting office.
1
SPEAKER_00
They knew.
1
SPEAKER_00
They re like, you re not a Marine.
1
SPEAKER_00
You re too artistic.
1
SPEAKER_00
I had long hair.
1
SPEAKER_00
They were like, no.
1
SPEAKER_00
And they let me sit there for a while.
1
SPEAKER_00
I lived in D.C.
1
SPEAKER_00
for five years in the end.
1
SPEAKER_00
One of the requirements for getting that degree was competency in a foreign language.
1
SPEAKER_00
I like to describe my relationship with the English language as monogamous.
1
SPEAKER_00
Failed Japanese, failed Spanish.
1
SPEAKER_00
Okay, now we re really similar, yeah.
1
SPEAKER_00
Not my wife s version of failure, which is a B+, like an actual F.
1
SPEAKER_00
I was like, this isn t working.
1
SPEAKER_00
I m not doing well.
1
SPEAKER_00
I m flunking out of classes.
1
SPEAKER_00
I had a scholarship.
1
SPEAKER_00
I lost it.
1
SPEAKER_00
What was the scholarship for?
1
SPEAKER_00
National Merit Scholarship through United.
1
SPEAKER_01
No wonder you re flying United.
1
SPEAKER_01
You got it.
1
SPEAKER_01
They brought you to the dance.
1
SPEAKER_01
You gotta dance with them.
1
SPEAKER_00
I was fighting I felt like the English degree was the family curse and I m like I think I m the one thing I always had the one thing that was bailed me out of Not doing my homework not reading the book was I could make it look pretty I could dress up my bullshit This is like perfect training for Hollywood
1
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, yeah, of course.
1
SPEAKER_00
Director.
1
SPEAKER_00
Dress up my bullshit in pretty language and do okay.
1
SPEAKER_00
And I thought, well, maybe it s the actual writing of the thing is the thing that I m actually talented at.
1
SPEAKER_00
At what age?
1
20.
1
SPEAKER_00
Okay.
1
SPEAKER_01
So two years- And I just want to relate to you so much.
1
SPEAKER_01
Multiple choice, we re fucked.
1
SPEAKER_01
You give me any opportunity to answer a question in writing, I ve got a shot.
1
SPEAKER_01
Exactly.
1
SPEAKER_01
I m going to dress it up with, look over here, silly bullshit.
1
SPEAKER_00
And maybe I got a shot.
1
SPEAKER_00
So I realized I was not heading in the right direction.
1
SPEAKER_00
It wasn t working.
1
SPEAKER_00
A lot of folks that I knew took a semester off.
1
SPEAKER_00
The girl I was dating took a semester abroad.
1
SPEAKER_00
My grades were not good enough for a semester abroad.
1
SPEAKER_00
So I took a sabbatical.
1
SPEAKER_00
We had recently gotten back in touch with the whole side of the family that had left the UK after World War II and settled in New Zealand.
1
SPEAKER_00
So I went down to New Zealand.
1
SPEAKER_00
Oh, wonderful.
1
SPEAKER_00
What part?
1
SPEAKER_00
The Northland.
1
SPEAKER_00
So North of Auckland.
1
SPEAKER_00
Do you know it?
1
SPEAKER_01
Well, I shot a movie down there, my very first movie.
1
SPEAKER_01
We were based in Wellington, but we traveled for half of the movie through, like, Rotorua.
1
SPEAKER_01
The rotten egg smell.
1
SPEAKER_01
Yes, yes.
1
SPEAKER_01
From the sulfur coming out of the geothermal pools.
1
SPEAKER_01
First time I ever hitchhiked anywhere was out of Rotorua.
1
SPEAKER_00
Great country to do that in.
1
SPEAKER_00
It was.
1
SPEAKER_00
This is 20 plus years ago.
1
SPEAKER_00
But I worked on, my cousins had a dairy farm.
1
SPEAKER_00
North of Auckland, 800 head of dairy cattle, 1000 acres, grass fed.
1
SPEAKER_00
We had gone down with my dad and kind of reconnected with him the previous year.
1
SPEAKER_00
And so I reached out and I was like, can I just come live on the farm and help out?
1
SPEAKER_00
And so I did that for four months and it was amazing.
1
SPEAKER_00
A lot of time to think and on a farm every day you wake up and it s a different job.
1
SPEAKER_00
So you d be a cowboy one day, you re
1
SPEAKER_00
digging ditches the next day.
1
SPEAKER_00
All the regulations are different.
1
SPEAKER_00
This is one of the craziest things I remember from the time there.
1
SPEAKER_00
Butcher will come to the farm in a white coat with a mobile butchery.
1
SPEAKER_00
In the States, you can t do any of this stuff.
1
SPEAKER_00
They show up in a truck and, I swear to God, hide behind the barn with a gun.
1
SPEAKER_00
It s like a mob move.
1
SPEAKER_00
The farmer would lead the cow over the hill and the guy steps out and shoots the cleaner.
1
SPEAKER_01
Because this feels more humane or something that they re not scared before they get killed.
2
SPEAKER_00
Exactly.
2
SPEAKER_00
Sort of makes a certain amount of sense.
2
SPEAKER_01
Sure, I guess.
2
SPEAKER_01
Although when a guy steps out with a lab coat from behind a van, I d rather have a guy in a hockey mask with a chainsaw, because some twisted shit s about to happen if a guy in a lab coat... Giving some genocide vibes.
2
SPEAKER_00
I m still not a fan of drinking milk.
2
SPEAKER_00
In the farmhouse, they have one of those great classic libraries.
2
SPEAKER_00
Like one where you send off and they send you a different book every month.
2
SPEAKER_00
And every time I pull a book out, the spine would crack.
2
SPEAKER_00
Like no one had ever read any of these things.
2
SPEAKER_00
And one of them was Moby Dick.
2
SPEAKER_00
And I m like, that s a book that you re supposed to read.
2
SPEAKER_00
And I actually was so bored, pre-internet, pre-smartphone, you just literally in the middle of nowhere, northern New Zealand.
2
SPEAKER_00
And I read it.
2
SPEAKER_00
And it was unbelievably cinematic.
2
SPEAKER_00
The other thing that occurred to me reading it, because I m not a real American, I m kind of a fake American.
2
SPEAKER_00
I always feel like imposter syndrome, like not a real American.
2
SPEAKER_00
And trying to understand what America is, and it occurred to me reading the Moby Dick, one of our favorite stories as Americans, one of the kind of essential stories, is revenge.
2
SPEAKER_00
Because the country s kind of like, you know, we stuck it to the British.
2
SPEAKER_01
There s also that Scottish, Irish culture of pride, way of life, herder, all that shit is in the mix.
2
SPEAKER_00
It started kicking around in my head.
2
SPEAKER_01
That book is so filled with incredibly indelible images.
2
SPEAKER_01
I m so embarrassed I haven t read Moby Dick.
2
SPEAKER_01
Have you?
2
SPEAKER_01
I even wear a shirt.
2
SPEAKER_01
It s one of my favorite shirts.
2
SPEAKER_01
I couldn t do it.
2
SPEAKER_01
I did read Old Man and the Sea.
2
SPEAKER_01
Ah, I hated Old Man and the Sea.
2
SPEAKER_01
Gales don t love Hemingway as much as boys do.
2
SPEAKER_01
It s a pretty gendered author.
2
SPEAKER_00
It s like Bukowski.
2
SPEAKER_01
A little bit.
2
SPEAKER_00
It feels indulgent or something.
2
SPEAKER_00
Too masculine.
2
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, a little bit.
2
SPEAKER_00
My daughter is a very precocious reader and has been reading ahead a little bit, so at least he gave her a copy of The Great Gatsby.
2
SPEAKER_00
That s a great book.
2
SPEAKER_00
She s 10.
2
SPEAKER_00
It s a little early, but you reading it in high school.
2
SPEAKER_00
We both have 10-year-olds.
2
SPEAKER_00
What is happening?
2
SPEAKER_00
We might as well set the microphones aside and just walk away.
2
SPEAKER_01
No, I actually want to walk towards you and fuse.
2
SPEAKER_00
I feel like maybe we could walk at each other and just fuse.
2
SPEAKER_00
Imagine how powerful we could be.
2
SPEAKER_01
Do you have any tattoos?
2
SPEAKER_00
Sadly, no.
2
SPEAKER_00
I was going to get one during Memento.
2
SPEAKER_00
My sister-in-law and I were going to get one, and then we just kind of chickened out.
2
SPEAKER_00
Leave them to me.
2
SPEAKER_00
I ve got that covered.
2
SPEAKER_01
I actually think we got to be greater than the sum of our parts.
2
SPEAKER_01
I like that.
2
SPEAKER_01
Okay, so you read Moby Dick, and you become obsessed with revenge.
2
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, and so I started writing a short story.
2
SPEAKER_00
I wrote the first draft of Memento in an airplane vomit bag, because I just got it stuck in my head.
2
SPEAKER_00
I was like, well, what if memory kind of serves as a balm for everything?
2
SPEAKER_00
And time, rather.
2
SPEAKER_00
You spend enough time, you can kind of deal with anything.
2
SPEAKER_00
You can forgive anything.
2
SPEAKER_00
You can move on from it.
2
SPEAKER_00
And I had taken a psych class.
2
SPEAKER_00
the last semester before I took my little time off.
2
SPEAKER_00
And I d gotten stuck on this idea of anterograde amnesia.
2
SPEAKER_00
I d gotten stuck on this idea of not the amnesia that works backwards, but the amnesia that essentially sticks with you.
2
SPEAKER_00
You can t hold on to anything forever.
2
SPEAKER_00
People have that?
2
SPEAKER_00
One of the crazy experiences of that movie was that we go to festivals.
2
SPEAKER_00
Eventually, we managed to get it out into the world.
2
SPEAKER_00
And almost every time we went to a festival, I would meet someone who knew someone or had had a motorcycle accident or could dramatically rise.
2
SPEAKER_00
So many different things can cause it.
2
SPEAKER_01
Oh, yeah.
2
SPEAKER_01
I ve had like 19 different script ideas based on starting with amnesia.
2
SPEAKER_00
Someone gave me a book once and I was just sort of vaguely offended, but it made a lot of sense to like, first time writers start with amnesia because it reflects their blank page.
2
SPEAKER_00
Where do I start?
2
SPEAKER_01
Oh, interesting.
2
SPEAKER_01
Interesting.
2
SPEAKER_01
They don t have any experience to draw on, i.e.
2
SPEAKER_01
they have no memory.
2
SPEAKER_00
Exactly.
2
SPEAKER_01
I had it for 14 hours from a head injury.
2
SPEAKER_01
Oh, wow.
2
SPEAKER_01
I mean, it was the most memorable kind of experience in my life, ironically.
2
SPEAKER_00
Ironically, yeah.
2
SPEAKER_01
What did I feel like?
2
SPEAKER_01
Well, I ll try to do the four second version because this is your interview and other people have heard it, but I had already fucked up my shoulder.
2
SPEAKER_01
I was waiting to get surgery.
2
SPEAKER_01
So I m wakeboarding with one arm.
2
SPEAKER_01
I m in Michigan.
2
SPEAKER_01
I fall pretty hard, but nothing crazy.
2
SPEAKER_01
My friend Dean pulls the boat around.
2
SPEAKER_01
He goes, well, that was a big hit.
2
SPEAKER_01
I go, yeah, I just feel like I got punched in the face really hard.
2
SPEAKER_01
He s like, okay.
2
SPEAKER_01
So I get in the boat.
2
SPEAKER_01
He has brought another dude that I had met that morning.
2
SPEAKER_01
Dean starts wakeboarding.
2
SPEAKER_01
The buddy s now driving.
2
SPEAKER_01
And at some point I say to the guy, where am I?
2
SPEAKER_01
Oh, wow.
2
SPEAKER_01
Because I live in California, but I m visiting Michigan.
2
SPEAKER_01
He s like, what do you mean?
2
SPEAKER_01
I m like, what fucking lake?
2
SPEAKER_01
There s no lakes in California.
2
SPEAKER_01
Who are you?
2
SPEAKER_01
And he realizes quickly, like, oh, shit.
2
SPEAKER_01
So he stops the boat.
2
SPEAKER_01
Dean gets in the boat.
2
SPEAKER_01
He realizes this is bad.
2
SPEAKER_01
He takes me to shore.
2
SPEAKER_01
My mother and my then girlfriend, Bree, are there.
2
SPEAKER_01
They say he hit his head.
2
SPEAKER_01
They take me to the hospital.
2
SPEAKER_01
On the ride to the hospital, I said, why am I in Michigan?
2
SPEAKER_01
And my mom goes, well, it s my birthday.
2
SPEAKER_01
You came home for my birthday.
2
SPEAKER_01
I said, why can t I remember that?
2
SPEAKER_01
Well, you were wakeboarding and you hit your head, but we re on the way to the hospital.
2
SPEAKER_01
And then I say, OK, so it s just like that episode of Gail Gilens Island.
2
SPEAKER_01
I just need to get hit in the head with a coconut again.
2
SPEAKER_01
I make this joke, right?
2
SPEAKER_01
And then it s crickets.
2
SPEAKER_01
And I m like, that s worthy of a chuckle.
2
SPEAKER_01
Are you intuitively, that was worthy of a chuckle.
2
SPEAKER_01
At least a sympathy chuckle while you re hurting.
2
SPEAKER_01
And it was just dead silent.
2
SPEAKER_01
And then there s a long beat and I go, have I said that before?
2
SPEAKER_01
And my mom goes, yes, honey, about 20 times.
2
SPEAKER_01
And I was like, and then I just started bawling.
2
SPEAKER_01
Because I m like, oh, I broke my brain.
2
SPEAKER_01
Fuck, that s the thing you can t break.
2
SPEAKER_01
I m crying and I go, I m just so glad that you
2
SPEAKER_01
Balling, balling, balling.
2
SPEAKER_01
Look up, see another lake and go, why am I in Michigan?
2
SPEAKER_01
And I was on this fucking two minute loop for 14 hours.
2
SPEAKER_01
But you remember that?
2
SPEAKER_01
Once my brain unswelled, I think a lot of that short term memories on the outside.
2
SPEAKER_01
So it s just pressure on there.
2
SPEAKER_01
This surprised me.
2
SPEAKER_01
I was recording all that.
2
SPEAKER_01
So once the brain unswelled, I remembered all these loops.
2
SPEAKER_01
I have to tell you just one funny punchline of it.
2
SPEAKER_01
This happened exactly in 2002 or three.
2
SPEAKER_01
And when we were checking into the hospital, the nurse said to us three, where do you work?
2
SPEAKER_01
And I go, oh, I don t have a job.
2
SPEAKER_01
And my mom goes, no, no, he works at MTV.
2
SPEAKER_01
And I go, I work at MTV?
2
SPEAKER_01
And she goes, yeah, you have a show on MTV called Punk.
2
SPEAKER_01
And I turned to Bree and I go, I have a fucking show on MTV?
2
SPEAKER_01
And then I go, what happened at the Groundlings?
2
SPEAKER_01
And my girlfriend goes, you re in the Sunday company.
2
SPEAKER_01
And I m like, I m in the Sunday company?
2
SPEAKER_01
And then I asked about UCLA and found out I got, so I got to learn the three best things that had ever happened to me all in a minute.
2
SPEAKER_01
And I was ecstatic.
2
SPEAKER_01
But how d you know Bree?
2
SPEAKER_01
Cause I d been with her for eight years.
2
SPEAKER_01
It kind of washed two years back.
2
SPEAKER_01
Wow.
2
SPEAKER_00
That s very weird.
2
SPEAKER_00
We re so fragile.
2
SPEAKER_00
Like what we are is so... Oh my God, you re right.
2
SPEAKER_00
It s absolutely terrifying.
2
SPEAKER_01
What we are is so fucking fragile.
2
SPEAKER_00
It s just this tiny little hallucination and anything can kind of knock it out.
2
SPEAKER_00
And that was my experience writing on that movie was talking to people that had an experience like yours and starting to understand that whether something is coming from the limbic system, it could be cancer, it could be alcohol withdrawal, it could be a head injury.
2
SPEAKER_00
There s so many different things that can basically knock you
2
SPEAKER_00
off of the little tiny construct.
2
SPEAKER_01
The precarious identity.
2
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
2
SPEAKER_00
You ve got your blanket and you ve got your food and you re sitting there and that s you.
2
SPEAKER_00
And then the wind comes and blows it away and it s like, wait, what am I again?
2
SPEAKER_01
I know, and we think it s so concrete and foundational and then you end up in a different group of people as a social animal and all of a sudden you re not that person.
2
100%.
2
SPEAKER_01
Or you can no longer be that person.
2
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, it s so fragile.
2
SPEAKER_00
Well, if you re a showrunner, director, and you re outside of your milieu, no one laughs at your jokes.
2
SPEAKER_00
They re like, maybe I m not that funny.
2
SPEAKER_00
We talk about this all the time.
2
SPEAKER_01
We talk about that all the time.
2
SPEAKER_01
When we re around like billionaires, not Bill, I just want to add, not Bill.
2
SPEAKER_01
Bill is great.
2
SPEAKER_01
But we ve been around some billionaires, tech founders.
2
SPEAKER_01
And people obviously around them inflate their egos.
2
SPEAKER_00
It s not their fault.
2
SPEAKER_01
They have no way of knowing.
2
SPEAKER_01
You kind of can t help yourself.
2
SPEAKER_01
There s no way.
2
SPEAKER_01
How are they supposed to correct for this?
2
SPEAKER_01
Oh, it s so corrosive and weird.
2
SPEAKER_00
I think this is one of the key things that you can do as a brother.
2
SPEAKER_00
Chris is having a good run.
2
SPEAKER_00
You just want someone in your life who remembers you when your shit did stink and can call you on it.
2
SPEAKER_01
And you need a partner, probably, who s not too blown away with you.
2
100%.
2
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, very helpful.
2
SPEAKER_01
Critical.
2
SPEAKER_01
Okay, so what shocks me about your story is that you give this short story and or pitch it to Christopher.
2
SPEAKER_01
You re six years younger.
2
SPEAKER_01
You re a fucking cowherder.
2
SPEAKER_01
I don t know that my brother would have read the thing.
2
SPEAKER_01
That s to me the big first shocker in your story, is that he actually took you seriously.
2
SPEAKER_00
What was interesting is because we had all this time apart, being in different countries, boarding school, all of it, I remember quite distinctly at one point, and it was when I was fairly young, it was before high school, he came back and he realized that I was funny.
2
SPEAKER_00
We shared a sense of humor.
2
SPEAKER_00
We shared this kind of sharp, slightly rascally sense of humor, and a little bit of a bond formed there, which was great.
2
SPEAKER_00
You weren t around enough to have annoyed him, that s helpful.
2
SPEAKER_00
A little bit.
2
SPEAKER_00
I was pretty annoying.
2
SPEAKER_00
You didn t steal his shit though.
2
SPEAKER_00
I got annoying fast enough.
2
SPEAKER_00
You caught up.
2
SPEAKER_00
I watch this with my kids now, where I m like, you re gonna understand later, you re gonna think he s great.
2
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
2
SPEAKER_00
But I think there was just enough distance that he would actually listen to my shit.
2
SPEAKER_00
So I get to the end of my run, I get to the summer, I know I m gonna go back to school, I transfer colleges within Georgetown, family curse, English degree, here we go, I don t know what I m gonna do with it.
2
SPEAKER_00
I don t know why I fought this, but let s go.
2
SPEAKER_00
Why did I fight, you just embrace it, the hell with it.
2
SPEAKER_00
And I write up,
2
SPEAKER_00
my notes for the story, and then I ve got our dad s old Honda Prelude.
2
SPEAKER_00
Favorite, favorite car.
2
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, lovely car.
2
SPEAKER_00
And it s completely destroyed at this point.
2
SPEAKER_00
I ve had it in D.C.
2
SPEAKER_00
It gets towed once every two weeks.
2
SPEAKER_00
But it ll never stop running.
2
SPEAKER_01
Never.
2
SPEAKER_01
It s still running somewhere.
2
SPEAKER_00
Sadly, it did.
2
SPEAKER_00
And that was my fault.
2
SPEAKER_00
Interference, four-cylinder.
2
SPEAKER_00
I never changed the timing.
2
SPEAKER_00
Timing belt, and it blew all the valves out.
2
SPEAKER_00
But we got into California first.
2
SPEAKER_00
So Chris grew up dual national, so America was always an option for him as well.
2
SPEAKER_00
And him and his girlfriend, now wife, Emma, were trying to figure out, we want to do this movie thing.
2
SPEAKER_01
And he s directed one feature.
2
SPEAKER_00
Self-financed, tiny feature that I was a grip on.
2
SPEAKER_00
Friends and Family coming in.
2
SPEAKER_00
I think he made it for about $5,000.
2
SPEAKER_00
And Chris and Emma were trying to figure
3
SPEAKER_01
if they could make a go of it in L.A.
3
SPEAKER_01
She was working as an assistant at a production company that had offices in L.A.
3
SPEAKER_01
and trying to make the leap, and I was saying to Chris, I m like, look, if you re gonna do it, one, you should do it, two, you gotta take dad s car, because I keep getting parking tickets with this thing, and I don t need it in D.C., and I think you re gonna need, I ve heard that you need a car to get around L.A.
3
SPEAKER_00
Cars come in handy in L.A.
3
SPEAKER_02
Apparently, quite important.
3
SPEAKER_02
Jonah, the only advice I give to young actors when they ask me is I say, buy a Honda, so that it ll run forever, and you don t have to pour money into it.
3
SPEAKER_01
We still have the same mechanic, Stacy, down on Melrose, Affordable Care.
3
SPEAKER_01
They only work on Hondas.
3
SPEAKER_01
It was not only the car, but the mechanic.
3
SPEAKER_01
Get a Honda, you ll be okay.
3
SPEAKER_01
You ll be okay.
3
SPEAKER_01
You can weather the storm.
3
SPEAKER_01
Chris still has a Honda.
3
SPEAKER_01
He has this 85 white Honda Civic DX.
3
SPEAKER_01
Sadly, not the prelude because I didn t change the timing belt and he still drives it.
3
SPEAKER_00
Oh, that s great.
3
SPEAKER_02
He s kind of fulfilling my fantasy.
3
SPEAKER_02
I had a 91 DX that I have thought about chasing down and buying.
3
SPEAKER_02
It was so reliable through the lean years, which there were eight of.
3
SPEAKER_01
You can t help but bond with that car.
3
SPEAKER_01
Yeah.
3
SPEAKER_01
It s the horse that never leaves your side.
3
SPEAKER_01
And especially in LA, all the PA jobs, all the craziness.
3
SPEAKER_01
I had an Accord that wasn t quite as reliable, but they re amazing.
3
SPEAKER_02
And we did so much drunk driving together back when I was an addict.
3
SPEAKER_02
And somehow it was such a boring car, I never got pulled over.
3
SPEAKER_02
Kept you alive. 100%.
3
SPEAKER_01
Okay.
3
SPEAKER_01
So Chris eventually decides to make the leap, and I drive from DC, pick him up in Chicago, and we drive from Chicago to LA, and we go the northern way.
3
SPEAKER_01
We went up Black Hills, South Dakota.
3
SPEAKER_01
Did you stop at Mount Rushmore?
3
SPEAKER_01
Mount Rushmore, we did.
3
SPEAKER_01
Got a couple pictures there, and then looped down through Salt Lake City and across.
3
SPEAKER_01
It was my first time at Bonneville.
3
SPEAKER_01
I made Chris stop.
3
SPEAKER_01
He s like, what is this place?
3
SPEAKER_01
I m like, it s important.
3
SPEAKER_01
All the land speed records exist here.
3
SPEAKER_01
Everything.
3
SPEAKER_01
Mecca.
3
SPEAKER_01
We got to Minnesota pulling out of Chicago.
3
SPEAKER_01
And, as brothers do, ran out of shit to say.
3
SPEAKER_01
I had a Chris Isaac cassette tape that got stuck.
3
SPEAKER_01
100s are great, but it got stuck.
3
SPEAKER_01
So we re listening to Wicked Game.
3
SPEAKER_01
I think it was a single.
3
SPEAKER_01
It was like 2,000 miles with Wicked Game playing over and over and over again.
3
SPEAKER_00
That s a great song, Mel.
3
SPEAKER_00
I still love it.
3
SPEAKER_00
A few hundred miles, yeah.
3
SPEAKER_00
Well, sure, yeah.
3
SPEAKER_01
And I was like, well, I have this idea.
3
SPEAKER_01
He d made one movie and he was talking about his ideas for the next movie, which I can t describe in case he ever wants to get back to them.
3
SPEAKER_01
They were very different.
3
SPEAKER_01
One of them was a comedy.
3
SPEAKER_01
Unexpected.
3
SPEAKER_01
Well, that s the thing about the guy.
3
SPEAKER_01
His public persona is so kind of this.
3
SPEAKER_01
Reserved.
3
SPEAKER_01
But he s such a goofball.
3
SPEAKER_01
Odd for me to resolve the public version with the guy.
3
SPEAKER_00
Of course.
3
SPEAKER_00
Sure, yeah.
3
SPEAKER_02
I can only imagine my brother was in public and I had to watch and put on his show.
3
SPEAKER_02
And was so like... Erudite?
3
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, there s a persona for sure.
3
SPEAKER_01
He d get very mad at this.
3
SPEAKER_01
I used to get fed up with having to answer why my accent was different.
3
SPEAKER_01
I m like, we re in America.
3
SPEAKER_01
I m not the unusual sounding one.
3
SPEAKER_00
It s true.
3
SPEAKER_01
So I would say we d both grown up in Fort Wayne, Indiana, but he knew that he d get more work as a director if he affected.
3
SPEAKER_01
Sure.
3
SPEAKER_01
He would get mad, because that s the kind of thing that sticks.
3
SPEAKER_01
That makes a headline.
3
SPEAKER_01
People hold on to it.
3
SPEAKER_01
Like, did you know that he actually, it s a fake?
3
SPEAKER_01
No.
3
SPEAKER_01
It s a totally real accent.
3
SPEAKER_01
Even I m like, ooh, it sounds so good.
3
SPEAKER_01
Yeah.
3
SPEAKER_02
Like when the argument is 50-50, moral high ground logic-wise, and he s got that accent, it s gonna tip a little smarter.
3
SPEAKER_02
So you pitch him, I m assuming.
3
SPEAKER_01
To this day, I ll read his stuff, he reads mine, and you just get that unvarnished feedback.
3
SPEAKER_01
He knows if it s like, and I know.
3
SPEAKER_01
And I knew I had him because he got really quiet.
3
SPEAKER_01
And I was like, he s got this guy and he can t remember anything, but he s figured out he can tattoo the information.
3
SPEAKER_01
And that was when I was like, oh, I got him.
3
SPEAKER_02
Well, he has such a visual component.
3
SPEAKER_02
I think that s why it s so sticky.
3
SPEAKER_01
That was the thing.
3
SPEAKER_01
I m like, this idea came to the wrong brother.
3
SPEAKER_01
Is he gonna make a good short story?
3
SPEAKER_01
And I think it is a good short story, but I knew it would make a great movie.
3
SPEAKER_01
So I was like, I got to kind of pass this along.
3
SPEAKER_00
That s big of you.
3
SPEAKER_00
I mean, it wouldn t be hard.
3
SPEAKER_01
It worked out okay in the end.
3
SPEAKER_01
He did a good job.
3
SPEAKER_01
He called me at one point.
3
SPEAKER_01
He s like, I figured out, because one of the challenges was, well, how the hell do you tell that story?
3
SPEAKER_01
His audition was going backwards, right?
3
SPEAKER_01
He calls me up and he says, I figured out how to tell him backwards.
3
SPEAKER_01
And I was like, that s the dumbest idea I ve heard.
3
SPEAKER_01
I wanted to tell the story as a deck of cards.
3
SPEAKER_01
You shuffle it and you just get fragments.
3
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, yeah.
3
SPEAKER_01
But you can t do that with a movie.
3
SPEAKER_01
It s linear.
3
SPEAKER_01
That s it.
3
SPEAKER_01
Left to right.
3
SPEAKER_01
And I thought it was a terrible idea.
3
SPEAKER_01
And then I read the script that he wrote.
3
SPEAKER_01
And I was like, no, that works.
3
SPEAKER_00
Uh-huh.
3
SPEAKER_00
Just might.
3
SPEAKER_02
First of all, that movie, I don t need to tell you, is so mind-blowing.
3
SPEAKER_02
There s a handful of movies I don t ever forget seeing and just going like, yeah, that broke all of my previous paradigms.
3
SPEAKER_02
Broke the paradigm.
3
SPEAKER_02
Yeah, yeah.
3
SPEAKER_02
This is so out there.
3
SPEAKER_02
And he s so great in it, too.
3
SPEAKER_02
Guy, wow.
3
SPEAKER_02
Amazing.
3
SPEAKER_02
Stay tuned for more Armchair Expert, if you dare.
3
SPEAKER_02
But then this starts a partnership.
3
SPEAKER_02
You guys go on to write, and I m not saying this because you re here.
3
SPEAKER_02
If you were to go through all the 700 episodes, I ve probably said this on here a dozen times, Prestige for me, it s kind of tied with Michael Clayton.
3
SPEAKER_02
It s my favorite movie post-90s.
3
SPEAKER_00
You wrote Prestige?
3
SPEAKER_02
I did, that was my first paid gig.
3
SPEAKER_02
Oh my God, I love it.
3
SPEAKER_00
It s so good.
3
SPEAKER_00
Thank you.
3
SPEAKER_01
I never read the book.
3
SPEAKER_01
Is the book similar?
3
SPEAKER_01
Book is super cool.
3
SPEAKER_01
You know, it s one of these books, we ve tried a couple of them that s sort of unadaptable.
3
SPEAKER_01
It had made the rounds.
3
SPEAKER_01
Oh, right.
3
SPEAKER_01
People could see that there was potential there.
3
SPEAKER_01
It s a terrific book.
3
SPEAKER_01
It s quite different from the movie.
3
SPEAKER_01
It s wrapped in this contemporary framing mechanism, grandchildren of the magicians trying to piece together what happened, which is super cool.
3
SPEAKER_01
And for a while I tried to hold onto it.
3
SPEAKER_01
So we made Memento.
3
SPEAKER_01
We put it out.
3
SPEAKER_01
At first, no one wanted to release it.
3
SPEAKER_01
We got six months into it.
3
SPEAKER_01
I graduated school, worked slinging barbecue in DC for a summer, moved to California.
3
SPEAKER_01
We shot the movie.
3
SPEAKER_01
I worked as a PA on the movie.
3
SPEAKER_01
No one knew we were related for the first two weeks.
3
SPEAKER_01
Of course not.
3
SPEAKER_01
If you guys were all sitting here, I don t think I would know what you told me.
3
SPEAKER_01
When I showed up late to work one day with the entire cruise radios and I didn t get fired, people were like, wait a second.
3
SPEAKER_01
We make the movie, Chris cuts the movie, and we re like, oh, it was easy.
3
SPEAKER_01
We showed up, we had a good script, we cast good people.
3
SPEAKER_01
Why do people complain about this being hard?
3
SPEAKER_01
And then we tried to sell it.
3
SPEAKER_01
It turns out great.
3
SPEAKER_01
And no one wanted to buy it.
3
SPEAKER_01
Everyone was like, this is great.
3
SPEAKER_01
We love this movie.
3
SPEAKER_01
It s terrific.
3
SPEAKER_01
We have no clue how to market this.
3
SPEAKER_01
The line was maybe more angry than that.
3
SPEAKER_01
People are too dumb.
3
SPEAKER_01
We get it.
3
SPEAKER_01
Bingo.
3
SPEAKER_01
That was it.
3
SPEAKER_01
That was a prevailing rule.
3
SPEAKER_01
Oh, people won t get it.
3
SPEAKER_01
Your audience won t get it.
3
SPEAKER_01
Uh-huh.
3
SPEAKER_01
I remember thinking to myself, well, I m talking to you.
3
SPEAKER_01
You re pretty dumb.
3
SPEAKER_02
That is the hilarious thing about that note is like everyone excuses themselves from that.
3
SPEAKER_02
Well, I get it, but I can t imagine.
3
SPEAKER_01
And I was like, why do you guys consistently underestimate the audience?
3
SPEAKER_01
Our whole career at first was based on the premise that it was a part of the audience that was bored and that wanted more complicated, weirder, challenging stuff.
3
SPEAKER_02
This thread carries through to fallout, by the way, it s going to be one of the compliments I give you.
3
SPEAKER_02
Truly, you re almost uniquely comfortable
3
SPEAKER_02
letting us ask a bazillion questions and giving us other stuff that is satisfying story-wise, but just really dropping questions all over.
3
SPEAKER_02
I love it as a viewer.
3
SPEAKER_02
It s so stimulating.
3
SPEAKER_02
Thank you.
3
SPEAKER_02
So this starts at the beginning, basically.
3
SPEAKER_01
I m not sure we set out, but once that became the challenge, once that was like, no, your movie s good, but we re never going to release it because we think the audience is dumb.
3
SPEAKER_01
At that point we d made one movie.
3
SPEAKER_01
We were fans.
3
SPEAKER_01
We were the audience.
3
SPEAKER_01
We re like, no, we re not dumb.
3
SPEAKER_01
And then when it worked, it kind of felt like we found a niche.
3
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, they made it for $4.5 million and made $40 million.
3
SPEAKER_01
It s nuts.
3
SPEAKER_01
On video, those are the halcyon days of DVD.
3
SPEAKER_02
Where you would 2X your box office.
3
SPEAKER_01
Yeah.
3
SPEAKER_01
There was a year in which we d made a movie and no one released the movie.
3
SPEAKER_01
And I was like, I gotta get a job.
3
SPEAKER_01
And then it worked.
3
SPEAKER_01
And then Chris started talking to me about this book that someone had sent him about these magicians.
3
SPEAKER_01
So that was my first paid gig.
3
SPEAKER_01
I wrote it for Guild Minimum, took two years.
3
SPEAKER_01
So I got paid $14,000 a year for two years.
3
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
3
SPEAKER_01
Eating Jack in the Box the whole time.
3
SPEAKER_01
Yummy tacos.
3
SPEAKER_02
Oh, they re so nice.
3
SPEAKER_01
With the buttermilk dipping sauce.
3
SPEAKER_01
You could read the newspaper through the top.
3
SPEAKER_02
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
3
SPEAKER_02
They re like deep fried or something.
3
SPEAKER_02
They re just ridiculous.
3
SPEAKER_02
Great when you re drunk.
3
SPEAKER_02
That Honda Civic had thousands of those in there.
3
SPEAKER_01
We might be the same person.
3
SPEAKER_02
Sort of the same nutritional composition.
3
SPEAKER_02
Yeah, yeah.
3
SPEAKER_00
What a movie, though.
3
SPEAKER_00
I love that movie.
3
SPEAKER_02
Yeah, so that s 2005.
3
SPEAKER_02
So you re right.
3
SPEAKER_02
So you guys make Memento in 2000.
3
SPEAKER_02
The Prestige doesn t get made until 2005.
3
SPEAKER_02
Five years in a 20-something-year-old s life is an eternity.
3
SPEAKER_02
It was a stretch.
3
SPEAKER_01
So we were going to make it in 2003 with Jude Law.
3
SPEAKER_01
I think it was the original cast.
3
SPEAKER_01
And then Warners had hired Chris to reboot the Batman franchise.
3
SPEAKER_01
And the stories that led to that were the most crazy kind of Hollywood stories ever.
3
SPEAKER_01
But it works out in the end.
3
SPEAKER_01
So he s on the Batman franchise.
3
SPEAKER_02
You re not going to like that I bring this up, but I think it s so amusing.
3
SPEAKER_02
When they cast Jude Law, David O. Russell was mad because Jude dropped out of another thing and put Chris in a headlock.
3
SPEAKER_01
Oh my God.
3
SPEAKER_01
I wasn t there.
3
SPEAKER_01
I owe David a headlock at some point.
3
SPEAKER_01
I m still on the lookout.
3
SPEAKER_01
Don t mess with my brother.
3
SPEAKER_02
By the way, as the younger brother, you re living to protect your older brother.
3
SPEAKER_02
This is like the dream of all dreams.
3
SPEAKER_01
Oh, if I d been, it was like a dinner party.
3
SPEAKER_01
There were journalists there.
3
SPEAKER_01
The whole thing was crazy.
3
SPEAKER_01
One of many David O. Russell dustups.
3
SPEAKER_01
If I d been there, it would have been the end of my career.
3
SPEAKER_00
Do you like to fight?
3
SPEAKER_01
In general?
3
SPEAKER_00
Well, Dax wants to beat people up who hurt people in his life.
3
SPEAKER_00
Do you have that same instinct?
3
SPEAKER_01
Complex.
3
SPEAKER_01
That impulse is there.
3
SPEAKER_00
I grew up in Chicago.
3
SPEAKER_02
I m presuming there were a lot of fights in school.
3
SPEAKER_01
I learned how to talk like a Yankee and I learned how to defend myself a little bit.
3
SPEAKER_01
But two older brothers, too, you know, you re going to figure this out.
3
SPEAKER_01
You re scrapping all the time.
3
SPEAKER_02
Suffice to say, David would have got probably knocked out that night if Jonah was there.
3
SPEAKER_03
Good thing you weren t there.
3
SPEAKER_02
I m not very good at fighting.
3
SPEAKER_02
You re probably better than David.
3
SPEAKER_02
Potentially.
3
SPEAKER_00
We don t know.
3
SPEAKER_00
We re not going to start anything.
3
SPEAKER_02
I love David.
3
SPEAKER_02
I love David.
3
SPEAKER_02
Brilliant filmmaker.
3
SPEAKER_02
I don t know if he s much of a wrestler.
3
SPEAKER_02
Exactly.
3
SPEAKER_02
And a history of these hilarious dust-ups.
3
SPEAKER_02
All this leaked footage of him screaming at actors and them screaming at him.
3
SPEAKER_02
I mean, it s wonderful.
3
SPEAKER_02
Hollywood s gotten so boring.
3
SPEAKER_02
It has gotten a little boring.
3
SPEAKER_02
Yeah.
3
SPEAKER_02
I kind of love Tarantino punched out Don Simpson or Murphy wanted the Don.
3
SPEAKER_02
You know, all this crazy shit that happened.
3
SPEAKER_02
I love it.
3
SPEAKER_02
The good old days.
3
SPEAKER_02
So in that five years, though,
3
SPEAKER_00
It s supposed to be Jude.
3
SPEAKER_02
We re going to make the prestige.
3
SPEAKER_01
I m like, here we go.
3
SPEAKER_01
Amazing.
3
SPEAKER_01
And then Warners got nervous about Batman.
4
SPEAKER_00
it s not just a movie, you ve got to build the car, the suit, the cave.
4
SPEAKER_00
There s all this stuff that comes along.
4
SPEAKER_00
Jeff Robinoff was running Warner s at the time, and he was right.
4
SPEAKER_00
He was the best there was in that role, don t you think?
4
SPEAKER_00
Incredible.
4
SPEAKER_00
The formative part of our career was his belief.
4
SPEAKER_00
I didn t realize until later I learned more about Warner Brothers.
4
SPEAKER_00
I was 20-something, I had no idea what the hell I was doing.
4
SPEAKER_00
that there was sort of an ancestral philosophy at Warner s that you would hire filmmakers and trust them and let them do things.
4
SPEAKER_00
And keep them forever, Clint Eastwood.
4
SPEAKER_00
When I finally got a parking spot on the Warner s lot, it came out of Eastwood s allotment.
4
SPEAKER_00
Oh, wow.
4
SPEAKER_00
And it took five years.
4
SPEAKER_00
I had to write a billion dollar grossing movie before I was like, all right, give the kid a parking spot.
4
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, yeah.
4
SPEAKER_00
So Chris starts doing Batman Begins, and at a certain point in there, Robinoff said, well, you like writing with your brother.
4
SPEAKER_00
Why don t we put him on the picture too, and he can help?
4
SPEAKER_00
I had just moved to Boston with my girlfriend, now wife, who is getting a law degree.
4
SPEAKER_00
And we moved into the apartment, and I took a phone call, and I was like, I m going to go away.
4
SPEAKER_00
I didn t come back for like six more months.
4
SPEAKER_00
Moved to England and I was gone.
4
SPEAKER_00
So we got pulled into the Bat universe and stayed there for 10 years.
4
SPEAKER_01
Wow.
4
SPEAKER_01
Yes.
4
SPEAKER_01
So the first one s great and it makes a great deal of money.
4
SPEAKER_01
Totally resets the tone of all those movies.
4
SPEAKER_01
Do you have writing credit on the first one?
4
SPEAKER_01
I know you do on the second one.
4
SPEAKER_01
I don t.
4
SPEAKER_01
I was a consultant.
4
SPEAKER_01
Okay.
4
SPEAKER_01
And the second one you do, and that one hits a billion dollars and it becomes the biggest superhero movie ever only to be surpassed by Dark Knight Rising.
4
SPEAKER_01
You have to acknowledge this happens to 20 writers in the history of Hollywood.
4
SPEAKER_01
Like this kind of franchise with the critical response, all of it, it s very storybooky.
4
SPEAKER_01
I don t know where we go from here.
4
SPEAKER_00
Television.
4
SPEAKER_00
Yes, yeah.
4
SPEAKER_00
I worked on Batman Begins in this kind of slightly arm s length capacity, but it was the one comic book my brother had ever given me as a kid.
4
SPEAKER_00
Batman Year One for my 14th birthday.
4
SPEAKER_00
It was also on TV when we were kids.
4
SPEAKER_00
Oh, 100%.
4
SPEAKER_00
And 10 years later, I was on the set working with him.
4
SPEAKER_00
That s nuts.
4
SPEAKER_00
I was like, this is nuts.
4
SPEAKER_02
You have a good role in The Sim.
4
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, yeah.
4
SPEAKER_00
Congratulations.
4
SPEAKER_00
Well, we try to curry favor with AI as much as possible.
4
SPEAKER_00
If it s the AI running The Sim, then that s why.
4
SPEAKER_00
You know what I mean?
4
SPEAKER_00
They re a good side.
4
100%.
4
SPEAKER_00
They have a good side.
4
SPEAKER_00
Most of my career is just trying to make sure that when they take over... Yeah, you re picked.
4
SPEAKER_01
Unless they have already taken over, to your point.
4
SPEAKER_01
Oh, really quick.
4
SPEAKER_01
What is the mechanical process when you guys write something together?
4
SPEAKER_01
Is it basically you write a draft, and he looks at it, and he makes changes, and then it goes back to you?
4
SPEAKER_01
Or do you guys ever sit together?
4
SPEAKER_00
This period, it felt slow as hell because I was in my 20s.
4
SPEAKER_00
We look back at it now as this incredibly productive period for us.
4
SPEAKER_00
It was kind of a movie every couple of years.
4
SPEAKER_00
Batman Begins, 2005, The Prestige, 2006, The Dark Knight, 2008.
4
SPEAKER_00
He Made Inception, 2010.
4
SPEAKER_00
Pulled this old script out of a drawer.
4
SPEAKER_00
And I was like, well, it d be better if I had co-written it.
4
SPEAKER_00
But it s pretty good.
4
SPEAKER_00
And then The Dark Knight Rises, and then Interstellar.
4
SPEAKER_00
And it was just kind of like, boom, boom, boom, boom.
4
SPEAKER_00
And to me, that felt normal, right?
4
SPEAKER_00
It was like, oh, this is what we re doing, but it s Chris s incredible ability.
4
SPEAKER_00
The way it worked in that time was, with some of these movies, I was able to write the next one while he was shooting the last one.
4
SPEAKER_00
Right.
4
SPEAKER_00
And it worked really nicely.
4
SPEAKER_00
So we would sit and talk about the story and figure things out.
4
SPEAKER_00
And then he would go away and go shoot the last one.
4
SPEAKER_00
And I would be stuck alone with this thing on the Warner s lot.
4
SPEAKER_00
And I felt like the ghost that haunted Warner Brothers.
4
SPEAKER_00
You know, I d go and talk for an inappropriate amount of time with the folks at Starbucks.
4
SPEAKER_00
Please talk to me.
4
SPEAKER_00
I m trapped in this tiny office with this script.
4
SPEAKER_00
I m so lonely and I hate this job.
4
SPEAKER_00
I know, I don t understand.
4
SPEAKER_00
It s just me and Batman.
4
SPEAKER_00
And I m a fraud and I m not good at this.
4
SPEAKER_00
And I would crack away at it and it was good, but I missed being on set.
4
SPEAKER_00
Both Batman Begins and The Dark Knight we shot in Chicago.
4
SPEAKER_00
The Dark Knight, Chris was on the fence about making another one.
4
SPEAKER_00
I think he didn t want to become a superhero movie director.
4
SPEAKER_00
And he was very proud of Batman Begins.
4
SPEAKER_00
To me, it was like we built a Fox body wagon, you know, we built this amazing sports car.
4
SPEAKER_00
And I m like, let s take it for a drive.
4
SPEAKER_00
Don t you want to make one more?
4
SPEAKER_00
Like we made all this stuff.
4
SPEAKER_00
You did all the hard work.
4
SPEAKER_00
You ve established everything, you ve got the tone.
4
SPEAKER_00
He spent an hour doing the origin story, and it s great, but it s like, what can we do with this?
4
SPEAKER_00
And can we take the same characters and shift ever so slightly into a different genre?
4
SPEAKER_00
Can we go from an adventure film to a crime film, to a mob movie?
4
SPEAKER_00
Bring that feeling into it.
4
SPEAKER_00
I was, I mean, literally sitting with Chuck Roven and Chris and being like, dude, don t be a chicken shit.
4
SPEAKER_00
Let s do this.
4
SPEAKER_00
And I knew with the script, and he developed the story with David Goyer with a little bit of input from me.
4
SPEAKER_00
And it was like, first act, pretty detailed.
4
SPEAKER_00
Second act, somewhat detailed.
4
SPEAKER_00
Third act, duh.
4
SPEAKER_00
He rides away at the end.
4
SPEAKER_00
I m like, OK.
4
SPEAKER_00
Once we had the script on, I was like, this is going to be great.
4
SPEAKER_00
This is exciting.
4
SPEAKER_00
We ve got to make this movie.
4
SPEAKER_00
And eventually he came around.
4
SPEAKER_00
He did manage to avoid being pigeonholed, but we went to go make that movie in Chicago and they were there all summer.
4
SPEAKER_00
And this was the moment in my life where I started to realize as a screenwriter, great job.
4
SPEAKER_00
And I m lucky to be here, but it s a little like being a chef where you have to write the recipe in a bubble and they never let you touch the ingredients and you never actually get to cook the meal.
4
SPEAKER_02
Yeah.
4
SPEAKER_00
With Chris and with Emma, they re such a unit.
4
SPEAKER_00
They do their thing.
4
SPEAKER_00
There was nothing for me to do.
4
SPEAKER_00
I didn t need to go back to set.
4
SPEAKER_00
It s a very solitary endeavor.
4
SPEAKER_00
Painful.
4
SPEAKER_00
It s brutal.
4
SPEAKER_00
And I m a little more extroverted than Chris.
4
SPEAKER_02
I was about to say, you don t seem like the type that s just super happy being... Really bad fit.
4
SPEAKER_00
I want to crawl out of my skin.
4
SPEAKER_00
And then if I do three days of that, then I start to work.
4
SPEAKER_01
Do you collect funny sayings about writing?
4
SPEAKER_01
I like to collect them.
4
SPEAKER_01
One is Lawrence Kasdan s, writers are people who have agreed to do homework for the rest of their lives.
4
SPEAKER_01
There s so many times where I had like three different things that were sold places and I owed rewrites.
4
SPEAKER_01
When we d be on vacation, I m like, yeah, she s on vacation.
4
SPEAKER_01
I m never free.
4
SPEAKER_01
Oh, I m kidding.
4
SPEAKER_00
Angina just thinking about it.
4
SPEAKER_00
I remember going to a high school buddy s wedding in wine country.
4
SPEAKER_00
I was running my first TV show.
4
SPEAKER_00
So basically we get through a series of different things.
4
SPEAKER_00
Spielberg hired me to write Interstellar.
4
SPEAKER_00
I m writing The Dark Knight Rises at the same time.
4
SPEAKER_00
And then Steven leaves Paramount and the script was at Paramount.
4
SPEAKER_00
And I d spent three years going to Caltech trying to learn
4
SPEAKER_00
Relativity.
4
SPEAKER_00
With Kip.
4
SPEAKER_00
Kip Thorne.
4
SPEAKER_00
One of the greatest human beings.
4
SPEAKER_01
He won the Nobel after all this.
4
SPEAKER_00
He did.
4
SPEAKER_00
He wins the Nobel after it s all said and done.
4
SPEAKER_00
But he basically invented the field of gravitational astronomy.
4
SPEAKER_00
So me and Kip go up to Hanford, Washington and fly in a tiny Cessna and he shows me this crazy thing he s built out in the desert.
4
SPEAKER_00
These two vacuum tubes that measure vibrations in space-time itself.
4
SPEAKER_00
Wow.
4
SPEAKER_00
This is how we look at black holes.
4
SPEAKER_00
Amazing project.
4
SPEAKER_00
But Spielberg leaves and I m holding the bag.
4
SPEAKER_00
I ve got a script that I ve spent three years on.
4
SPEAKER_00
I m sort of sitting there saying,
4
SPEAKER_00
I can t put three years of my life into this thing and not make it.
4
SPEAKER_00
Well, I know a director, so I m going to get going on that.
4
SPEAKER_01
But do you think it s going to be a hard pitch?
4
SPEAKER_01
Because no one really loves taking over a project that another director had worked on.
4
SPEAKER_00
Very true.
4
SPEAKER_01
Especially if the person s Spielberg.
4
SPEAKER_01
I don t think that helps.
4
100%.
4
SPEAKER_00
But I was in Chicago tech scouting with Chris on The Dark Knight when I got the call that I had the gig with Steven.
4
SPEAKER_00
And we had a glass of champagne together.
4
SPEAKER_00
I was like, that s a big deal.
4
SPEAKER_00
I would try out some of the ideas with him.
4
SPEAKER_00
So he was kind of with me through the development of it.
4
SPEAKER_00
I would like pitch it to Chris before pitching it to Stephen, just get a sense for like... So you were super familiar with it.
4
SPEAKER_00
You know, that was the process.
4
SPEAKER_00
We pitch each other stuff.
4
SPEAKER_00
So I started trying to inveigle Chris into the script because I m like, no, I want to make this movie.
4
SPEAKER_00
But at the same time, I was watching my wife s experience in television.
4
SPEAKER_00
Back in the early 2000s, there was this kind of TV versus movie, this kind of snobbery about like, well, if you re writing movies... Yeah, it didn t have cachet quite yet.
4
SPEAKER_00
We only had Sopranos at that point.
4
SPEAKER_00
That was it, just the one thing.
4
SPEAKER_00
I remember one of the executives at Warner s was like, why are you working in television?
4
SPEAKER_00
I was like, because it s good and it s fun and it s immediate.
4
SPEAKER_00
And you can tell much longer stories.
4
SPEAKER_00
There s so many things.
4
SPEAKER_00
And you re not going to spend three years learning relativity and then have nothing to show for it.
4
SPEAKER_00
You might make a pilot and have nothing to show for it.
4
SPEAKER_00
And that was terrifying.
4
SPEAKER_00
But I got lucky there too.
4
SPEAKER_00
I went in to meet with JJ Abrams.
4
SPEAKER_00
We were at the same agency for about four minutes and they put us together.
4
SPEAKER_00
And we had one of those conversations where you just immediately like, oh, building and building and building, immediately got along with each other.
4
SPEAKER_00
He was trying to get me to write a movie.
4
SPEAKER_00
And at the end of it, I was like, well, you re a terrific TV producer.
4
SPEAKER_00
I have an idea for a show, person of interest.
4
SPEAKER_00
And away we went.
4
SPEAKER_01
Well, let s also add in film, the writer is the redheaded stepchild.
4
SPEAKER_01
They re the shitty dog you kick and then you say, and this sucks.
4
SPEAKER_01
No one said that a month ago in television, the writer decides everything.
4
SPEAKER_01
The directors are guests that come in and execute the writer s vision down to the letter of the law.
4
SPEAKER_01
So there s also a humongous power shift as a writer in television.
4
SPEAKER_00
I like to say it s rational, because if you think of movies, big screen, short story.
4
SPEAKER_00
TV, small screen, big story, right?
4
SPEAKER_00
So it makes sense.
4
SPEAKER_00
Okay, my career plan, brilliant.
4
SPEAKER_00
I was a writer in a director s medium, and now I m a director in a movie s medium.
4
SPEAKER_00
Very curious.
4
SPEAKER_00
I enjoy the directing.
4
SPEAKER_00
Dirty television, no one cares.
4
SPEAKER_00
I love it.
4
SPEAKER_00
But yeah, that was it.
4
SPEAKER_00
I was like, I want to be back on set.
4
SPEAKER_00
I missed set.
4
SPEAKER_00
Chris and Emma would be like, come hang out on set if you want to.
4
SPEAKER_00
I m like, I have nothing to do.
4
SPEAKER_00
The Dark Knight was a script where I wrote what I was like, this is what I think a Batman movie should be.
4
SPEAKER_00
Chris took a pass and we went and shot it.
4
SPEAKER_00
And I kept waiting for them to be like, you can t put a bomb in a guy s stomach.
4
SPEAKER_00
You get all these things.
4
SPEAKER_00
And I was like, they re not gonna let us do any of these things.
4
SPEAKER_00
And it gave us no notes.
4
SPEAKER_00
That s a movie that has no notes.
4
SPEAKER_00
They were like, it s cool, go.
4
SPEAKER_00
Which is incredible.
4
SPEAKER_00
That never happens.
4
SPEAKER_01
Now, you must acknowledge, your brother is part of a lot of maybe even apocryphal stories, Hollywood stories.
4
SPEAKER_01
Like, I remember I was doing chips at Warner Brothers, and I was going through a process that is what I deserve to go through.
4
SPEAKER_01
Endless, you ve got to get Brad Pitt as the bad guy or we won t greenlight, you know, just preposterous hurdles.
4
SPEAKER_01
And at that time, he had brought in, oh fuck, what movie would it have been?
4
SPEAKER_01
But basically, he told them, I m bringing the script down.
4
SPEAKER_01
You guys have three hours to sit in a room and read it.
4
SPEAKER_01
And then I m taking the script away.
4
SPEAKER_01
Everyone showed up.
4
SPEAKER_01
And then at the end of the meeting, again, this is all rumored, what I ve heard.
4
SPEAKER_01
They ve read it.
4
SPEAKER_01
He goes, I need this budget.
4
SPEAKER_01
I ll take the scripts now.
4
SPEAKER_01
And then he leaves.
4
SPEAKER_01
And that s how it is.
4
SPEAKER_01
Now, I m not talented enough to do that.
4
SPEAKER_01
I don t deserve that.
4
SPEAKER_01
But wow, what a fantasy.
4
SPEAKER_01
That s still how he does it.
4
SPEAKER_01
Good for him.
4
SPEAKER_02
I mean, he s earned it.
4
SPEAKER_00
But what was cool about it was even before he earned it, that s how he did it.
4
SPEAKER_00
I look at this and be like, is it dad s?
4
SPEAKER_00
I m not getting away with this shit.
4
SPEAKER_01
That happened while I was fighting to get a green light.
4
SPEAKER_01
I was just like, God, this couldn t
5
SPEAKER_01
to be a more different experience.
5
SPEAKER_00
I remember going in with him at one point.
5
SPEAKER_00
We went in to do, I can t remember which project it was.
5
SPEAKER_00
We go in and it was a studio head and assorted muckety mucks.
5
SPEAKER_00
And someone starts asking a question.
5
SPEAKER_00
He s like, let s just be clear.
5
SPEAKER_00
We re not pitching you here.
5
SPEAKER_00
We re just going to explain what we re going to do.
5
SPEAKER_01
Here s the product you have an opportunity to make.
5
SPEAKER_01
I was like, you can t say that.
5
SPEAKER_01
And you can, it turns out.
5
SPEAKER_01
You can.
5
SPEAKER_01
Okay.
5
SPEAKER_01
Interstellar.
5
SPEAKER_01
Let s stop in on it for a second.
5
SPEAKER_00
What a movie.
5
SPEAKER_01
It s so, I mean, talking about the audience isn t going to understand.
5
SPEAKER_01
I don t know that there s a better example of a movie that like, God bless everyone for taking the leap.
5
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
5
SPEAKER_01
It s so complicated.
5
SPEAKER_01
I think of myself as pretty savvy in this space.
5
SPEAKER_01
Like astronomy was one of my favorite classes in college.
5
SPEAKER_01
I really think I understand how it s going.
5
SPEAKER_01
And of course, even with what I already think is a pretty good grasp of it, there s a good 30 minutes of the movie where I just have to tell myself, this will somehow through osmosis start making sense.
5
SPEAKER_01
And I have to let go of chasing down every logic twist.
5
SPEAKER_01
But what makes the movie work, what s so powerful about it, why I ended up crying in that movie, is it s anchored to the notion of a father missing his child s entire life.
5
SPEAKER_01
And I just had.
5
SPEAKER_01
these little girls.
5
SPEAKER_01
And then I was like, oh, fuck.
5
SPEAKER_01
Now forget all the X s and Y s of it all.
5
SPEAKER_01
That s the notion I need to give the stakes in an emotional resonance.
5
SPEAKER_01
And it s so powerful.
5
SPEAKER_01
I m just curious at what point that was a part of the story.
5
SPEAKER_00
Right out of the gate.
5
SPEAKER_00
It was part of the first pitch to Spielberg.
5
SPEAKER_00
And here s why.
5
SPEAKER_00
I got fascinated by Einstein.
5
SPEAKER_00
One of the things about Einstein is he didn t use any instruments.
5
SPEAKER_00
He didn t even do a lot of math.
5
SPEAKER_00
He had a chalkboard.
5
SPEAKER_00
He would sit and think about things.
5
SPEAKER_00
And so it would take years.
5
SPEAKER_00
I remember they had to wait because of World War I to prove the theory of special relativity because they need to go out and observe the transit of Mercury, the transit of a planet in front of their astral body.
5
SPEAKER_00
They watched gravity warp light.
5
SPEAKER_00
Bingo.
5
SPEAKER_00
There were limited opportunities.
5
SPEAKER_00
They were going to go up to the North Polish area.
5
SPEAKER_00
They went down to sub-Saharan Africa.
5
SPEAKER_00
They had to wait for hostilities to end.
5
SPEAKER_00
So there s this amazing newspaper, 1918, that s like, he was right.
5
SPEAKER_00
You know, but one of the things I loved about Einstein is in a lot of his thought experiments, there would be twin brothers, weird family relationship.
5
SPEAKER_00
You d send one twin off around the sun at the speed of light and come back.
5
SPEAKER_00
Three minutes older.
5
SPEAKER_00
There s this human drama at the center of all these thought experiments.
5
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, he was very smart at anchoring these analogies.
5
SPEAKER_01
There s a woman on a train and she s looking backwards on the train.
5
SPEAKER_00
Exactly.
5
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
5
SPEAKER_00
And I kept thinking about the woman on the train.
5
SPEAKER_00
I kept thinking of the brother in space.
5
SPEAKER_00
I was like, no, that s it.
5
SPEAKER_00
It s about the distance between these people.
5
SPEAKER_01
It only matters if it s affecting humans.
5
SPEAKER_00
That s it.
5
SPEAKER_00
That s the only lens we have in these events.
5
SPEAKER_00
So I write the movie and the kid is called Murph because in my version of him it was a son.
5
SPEAKER_00
Chris s firstborn is his daughter.
5
SPEAKER_00
He goes off and takes the script, starts doing his thing with it.
5
SPEAKER_00
I m in TV land.
5
SPEAKER_00
And in the interim, we have our first child and it s a daughter and he changes the kid to a little girl.
5
SPEAKER_00
And I watched the movie and I m crying in my own movie and I m so angry.
5
SPEAKER_00
How could you do this to me?
5
SPEAKER_00
You ambushed me.
5
SPEAKER_01
It feels indulgent, right?
5
SPEAKER_01
To cry at your own movie.
5
SPEAKER_01
I did this to myself.
5
SPEAKER_01
Oh, what a movie.
5
SPEAKER_01
What a fucking movie.
5
SPEAKER_01
Okay.
5
SPEAKER_01
So you do person of interest and you do that for five seasons.
5
SPEAKER_01
Yeah.
5
SPEAKER_01
Now I did not see that, but the first directing of yours I see is Westworld and I can t tell you, I wish my wife was here to confirm this.
5
SPEAKER_01
I bet you once a month, sincerely,
5
SPEAKER_01
I say out loud, I wish we could watch the first season of Westworld for the first time.
5
SPEAKER_01
I miss the world so much.
5
SPEAKER_01
I miss the tone.
5
SPEAKER_01
I miss that show more than any other, or I just want to have that experience again.
5
SPEAKER_00
Me too.
5
SPEAKER_00
The experience of making the show.
5
SPEAKER_00
We ve had so much fun.
5
SPEAKER_00
I ve been so lucky and worked on so many amazing projects.
5
SPEAKER_00
That one was very special.
5
SPEAKER_00
It was the first collaboration that my wife and I did together.
5
SPEAKER_00
We wrote the pilot together.
5
SPEAKER_00
We produced it.
5
SPEAKER_00
I directed the pilot.
5
SPEAKER_00
She directed on subsequent seasons and the cast that we put together.
5
SPEAKER_01
Oh, it s preposterous.
5
SPEAKER_01
I had to like write it down today.
5
SPEAKER_00
Ed Harris, all of these actors.
5
SPEAKER_00
Evan, Hopkins, James, Tanyway, Jeffrey, Ed.
5
SPEAKER_00
We got our first choice with every role.
5
SPEAKER_00
And it was that moment, we cast the pilot in 2014.
5
SPEAKER_00
And it was the point where TV was at its absolute most powerful.
5
SPEAKER_00
Breaking Bad was already out, Mad Men was already out.
5
SPEAKER_00
Game of Thrones, we were very close with Dan and Dave, lovely guys.
5
SPEAKER_00
The reason why we felt comfortable trying to make Westworld was Game of Thrones.
5
SPEAKER_00
And they were shooting in all the same places that we had shot things like Batman Begins.
5
SPEAKER_00
I was like, oh, HBO is going for it.
5
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, they re not just doing complicated storytelling.
5
SPEAKER_00
They re doing filmmaking.
5
SPEAKER_00
They re doing the real thing.
5
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, they have 200 million dollar budgets.
5
SPEAKER_00
Not at first.
5
SPEAKER_00
Dan and Dave very wisely from the beginning fought for on-location, practical photography.
5
SPEAKER_00
They knew how to make these things really well.
5
SPEAKER_00
And I think in 2014, when we look back at it, all of my friends in TV will always joke about all the golden ages of television.
5
SPEAKER_00
There s been like six of them.
5
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
5
SPEAKER_00
There was the ER golden age of television.
5
SPEAKER_00
There was the Hill Street Blues golden age of television.
5
SPEAKER_00
It s like a durable medium, it s been around for a while.
5
SPEAKER_00
But 2014 was probably the moment in which its powers- They eclipsed movies at that point, in my opinion.
5
SPEAKER_00
For a couple of years, and my brother was pissed about it.
5
SPEAKER_00
We d have these arguments.
5
SPEAKER_00
Sure, sure, sure.
5
SPEAKER_00
Go on your television.
5
SPEAKER_00
And when we went out to Hopkins, people literally were like, why even bother?
5
SPEAKER_00
Let s move on.
5
SPEAKER_00
And I was like, no, no, no.
5
SPEAKER_00
He s going to say yes.
5
SPEAKER_00
Because I ve been watching interviews with him.
5
SPEAKER_00
We talk about being on these movies where they d make him sit in his trailer for 14 hours because they were doing green screen shots and they weren t ready for him.
5
SPEAKER_00
And I m like, that is an actor who is being wasted in movies right now.
5
SPEAKER_00
He loved Breaking Bad.
5
SPEAKER_00
And I said, we re going to go out to him.
5
SPEAKER_00
He s going to say yes.
5
SPEAKER_01
In a show like Westworld, you re making 10 movies in this time span of two features.
5
SPEAKER_01
Totally bonkers.
5
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, so if you like to act, you re doing it at probably 5X.
5
SPEAKER_00
First day with Hopkins was him and Jeffrey on set.
5
SPEAKER_00
And these are two actors that I absolutely adored.
5
SPEAKER_00
These are two greats.
5
SPEAKER_00
We put them on set together, give them a six-page scene where they re talking about how coding is kind of like an incantation, how it s summoning things to life with words.
5
SPEAKER_00
And here s all this stuff that Lisa and I have written.
5
SPEAKER_00
And here are these two masters just crushing it with a bunch of crazy robots in the background moving around.
5
SPEAKER_00
A guy, a programmer trying to keep up with the acting.
5
SPEAKER_00
The experience of making that show, we knew we were blessed in the moment.
5
SPEAKER_00
Sometimes you have this feeling, and I don t know if you ever had this feeling, when you re doing a project, you re like, oh, the stars are all aligning right here.
5
SPEAKER_00
It s going my way.
5
SPEAKER_00
Now, it wasn t always the case.
5
SPEAKER_00
That show got extremely difficult.
5
SPEAKER_00
The rest of the first season was an absolute combat.
5
SPEAKER_00
It was insane.
5
SPEAKER_00
What were the challenges?
5
SPEAKER_00
HBO had never made science fiction before and they lost faith about halfway through the season.
5
SPEAKER_00
They started getting scared.
5
SPEAKER_00
Well, they started giving notes.
5
SPEAKER_00
Giving a note is hard, but the best notes are the ones where they figure out what s the movie that the filmmaker is trying to make and let s give them notes in line with that.
5
SPEAKER_00
Let s not try to make the movie I would make as a producer, as an executive.
5
SPEAKER_00
That s a key distinction to be able to look past the movie you would make.
5
SPEAKER_01
By the way, when you pitched it, what was your comp?
5
SPEAKER_01
Did you use some comps?
5
SPEAKER_00
It s a very good question.
5
SPEAKER_01
It s a Western.
5
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, well, the Western part, JJ called us about the project.
5
SPEAKER_00
And it s a Crichton book?
5
SPEAKER_00
Weirdly, it was an original screenplay that he directed himself.
5
SPEAKER_00
It was the first thing he ever directed.
5
SPEAKER_00
And the original movie is bonkers.
5
SPEAKER_00
It s great.
5
SPEAKER_00
I ve never seen it.
5
SPEAKER_00
It s got some flaws.
5
SPEAKER_00
Namely, Crichton was brilliant.
5
SPEAKER_00
The guy understood everything.
5
SPEAKER_00
And he s trying to cram all of that into 92 minutes.
5
SPEAKER_01
Everything he knows.
5
SPEAKER_01
Breathless.
5
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
5
SPEAKER_00
But there s a couple moments in there that haunted me that we tried to weave into the show that I still hold on to.
5
SPEAKER_00
So there s one moment where the robots start to malfunction in the movie.
5
SPEAKER_00
The head scientist became sort of the Hopkins character in the show.
5
SPEAKER_00
He s trying to figure out what s going on.
5
SPEAKER_00
He s looking at them and he s like, it s spreading from one to the other, almost like a sickness or an illness.
5
SPEAKER_00
And we re like, we re a virus.
5
SPEAKER_00
You know, it s one of those clunky moments where you re like, could we get a virus?
5
SPEAKER_00
Then I got curious and I looked it up.
5
SPEAKER_00
The first computer virus appeared in the wild the year after the movie came out.
5
SPEAKER_00
Oh wow.
5
SPEAKER_00
So he had predicted that.
5
SPEAKER_00
He had intuited it.
5
SPEAKER_00
And in that same scene, he goes on to say, in some cases, these machines have been designed by other machines and we don t really know how they work.
5
SPEAKER_00
And that s the moment we re in right now.
5
SPEAKER_00
Yes, AI building coding.
5
SPEAKER_00
GPT code, LLM based coding.
5
SPEAKER_00
We re fully there.
5
SPEAKER_00
We ll never understand our world.
5
SPEAKER_00
From this point on.
5
SPEAKER_00
Ever again.
5
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, exactly.
5
SPEAKER_00
That s right.
5
SPEAKER_00
They talk about like, who s the last man in history who fully understood his world?
5
SPEAKER_01
Well, in what year did humans become the second smartest thing on planet Earth is a fascinating time.
5
SPEAKER_01
Six months from now.
5
SPEAKER_01
We re it.
5
SPEAKER_01
We re the generation in history.
5
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, we ll watch it.
5
SPEAKER_01
That will be the last of the smartest primates to occupy.
5
SPEAKER_01
It s so fucking wild.
5
SPEAKER_01
It s a wild moment.
5
SPEAKER_00
I wind up kind of obsessed with it.
5
SPEAKER_00
And a lot of the projects then start Westworld and Person of Interest and Interstellar.
5
SPEAKER_00
The AI is, they re sort of more in the Star Wars role of kind of supporting figures, but that s where it kind of
5
SPEAKER_00
I was like, this is the story of our age.
5
SPEAKER_00
You know, if you re around during the 15th century, the age of exploration, this is the story of our age.
5
SPEAKER_00
This is what we re gonna witness.
5
SPEAKER_00
That is distinct and different from everything else at any other generation.
5
SPEAKER_00
This is an inflection point.
5
SPEAKER_00
With Hopkins, they took too long to make his deal, and he started to get cold feet about it.
5
SPEAKER_00
And I had to write him a letter.
5
SPEAKER_01
Can I ask you a quick question as a sidebar?
5
SPEAKER_01
Yeah.
5
SPEAKER_01
Do you fear that you present not as smart as you are?
5
SPEAKER_01
Because I think this is another thing we might share in common.
5
SPEAKER_01
I m picturing Hopkins looking at you and going, could this guy have really written Interstellar?
5
SPEAKER_01
Who is this guy?
5
SPEAKER_01
Why does he not have an English accent?
5
SPEAKER_01
He s not wearing a suit.
5
SPEAKER_01
Yeah.
5
SPEAKER_01
Where s his three-piece suit?
5
SPEAKER_01
Do you feel like that at all?
5
SPEAKER_01
A little bit.
5
SPEAKER_01
I was telling Monica this the other day.
5
SPEAKER_01
I even wrote under a pen name, Darren Wolf, because I thought, well, that ll shake this Dax Shepard dumb comedian and idiocracy.
5
SPEAKER_01
Big dude.
5
SPEAKER_01
I mean, 100%.
5
SPEAKER_01
Big dum-dum.
5
SPEAKER_01
Big dum-dum.
5
SPEAKER_01
You ve played
5
SPEAKER_01
A lot of dum-dums.
5
SPEAKER_01
Right.
5
SPEAKER_01
And so that gets confusing.
5
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
5
SPEAKER_01
You re not in that same position.
5
SPEAKER_01
But also he just looks like a regular old dude.
5
SPEAKER_00
You do.
5
SPEAKER_01
You look like a handsome, handsome regular guy.
5
SPEAKER_01
He plays softball on the weekends.
5
SPEAKER_01
But then it s much better when you show that you re smart when you also seem regular.
5
SPEAKER_00
A little bit of the Will Hunting vibe.
5
SPEAKER_00
Exactly.
6
SPEAKER_00
I think it s a good combination.
6
SPEAKER_00
I just got restruck by the outfit by the way It really is a dynamite outfit there s like a banana it s a terrific app and I m struggling a little with the color because like my brother I m colorblind.
6
SPEAKER_00
Oh you are Red-green colorblind.
6
SPEAKER_00
What do you think?
6
SPEAKER_00
She s in like if I hadn t said yellow banana, what do you see over here chartreuse?
6
SPEAKER_00
Oh
6
SPEAKER_02
You re reading more green than it is.
6
SPEAKER_00
Is chartreuse green?
6
SPEAKER_02
Yeah, it s like a yellowy green.
6
SPEAKER_00
It s halfway between yellow and green.
6
SPEAKER_00
How about this?
6
SPEAKER_00
Does she match that chair right there?
6
SPEAKER_00
Oh, that s a salmon.
6
SPEAKER_00
That s... Oh my God.
6
SPEAKER_02
Oh my God.
6
SPEAKER_00
I do think there s something here.
6
SPEAKER_00
I don t want to make too much of a meal of this, but I do think me being dyslexic is helpful.
6
SPEAKER_00
It does something.
6
100%.
6
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, it takes you out of the... No, I m obsessed with color.
6
SPEAKER_00
The main... Yes.
6
SPEAKER_00
Wow.
6
SPEAKER_00
And I think if you re seeing everything wrong... Yes.
6
SPEAKER_00
You re in a different reality than other people and it kind of opens up a whole different point of view.
6
SPEAKER_02
Yeah, I had therapy this morning.
6
SPEAKER_02
We were talking about India.
6
SPEAKER_02
We ve just gone to India with Bill Gates.
6
SPEAKER_01
I m going tonight.
6
SPEAKER_01
Oh my god!
6
SPEAKER_01
I m going to Delhi tonight and Mumbai next week.
6
SPEAKER_01
I haven t been in 20 years.
6
SPEAKER_01
I m excited.
6
SPEAKER_01
I m also a little nervous.
6
SPEAKER_01
Are you staying at the Oberon?
6
SPEAKER_00
Oberoy.
6
SPEAKER_01
Oberoy?
6
SPEAKER_01
I don t think so.
6
SPEAKER_01
Meeting a buddy in Delhi who s an architect and he s very specific about where we stay.
6
SPEAKER_01
Oh, I bet you ll stay somewhere great.
6
SPEAKER_01
I hope.
6
SPEAKER_01
Something like that.
6
SPEAKER_01
You already have a guide?
6
SPEAKER_01
No, not yet.
6
SPEAKER_01
And if you have a recommendation, please.
6
SPEAKER_00
Listen, this is the guide the Gates team uses for anyone who comes.
6
SPEAKER_00
This woman is Indian.
6
SPEAKER_00
She s a historian, has a master s in history, and we learned
6
SPEAKER_00
And she s so fun.
6
SPEAKER_00
She s so cool.
6
SPEAKER_02
Wait, we ll definitely give you her information.
6
SPEAKER_01
She s phenomenal.
6
SPEAKER_01
No, my last trip to Delhi, I was in my mid-20s, airline brat, and I was gonna lose my tickets when I turned 25.
6
SPEAKER_01
United at the time had flight number one, which went this way, and flight number two, which went this way, all the way around the world.
6
SPEAKER_01
And you re doing counterclockwise and clockwise.
6
SPEAKER_01
Exactly.
6
SPEAKER_01
So I went to Delhi in the middle of the summer by myself.
6
SPEAKER_01
I don t recommend it.
6
SPEAKER_01
It was like 110 degrees and humid.
6
SPEAKER_02
And 20 years ago, which is also a different Delhi.
6
SPEAKER_01
I ve heard, my wife went last year and she heard for years, my stories about my brief time in India.
6
SPEAKER_01
I was like, you got to take a friend.
6
SPEAKER_01
You need to be able to talk to someone about the experience you re having.
6
SPEAKER_01
She gets there and she s like, I m at the Starbucks.
6
SPEAKER_01
Oh, it s gone.
6
SPEAKER_01
I was stuck in a traffic jam because there was a monkey riding an ox.
6
SPEAKER_00
And no one s going anywhere.
6
SPEAKER_00
We stumbled upon a monkey.
6
SPEAKER_00
We re like in a shopping district and we turn a corner and there s this monkey.
6
SPEAKER_00
This isn t going to jump up at us and scratch us.
6
SPEAKER_00
That s exciting to me though.
6
SPEAKER_00
Cause it means there s still a little bit.
6
SPEAKER_00
Sure.
6
SPEAKER_00
There s some activity, especially you ll go to old Delhi on this tour and you get in a rickshaw.
6
SPEAKER_00
Like there s dudes cleaning each other s ears out.
6
SPEAKER_02
Yeah.
6
SPEAKER_02
There s still like a ton of poverty, a ton of stuff, but it s vibrant.
6
SPEAKER_02
It s very, very cool.
6
SPEAKER_02
But anyway, we went and we were discussing on the trip, Dax and I, we were having different experiences.
6
SPEAKER_02
Obviously I m an Indian person going to India for essentially the first time.
6
SPEAKER_02
Oh, wow.
6
SPEAKER_02
And I have a lot of baggage with growing up in a white.
6
SPEAKER_00
Yes.
6
SPEAKER_02
I have a lot of stuff with it.
6
SPEAKER_02
So of course it s going to be different.
6
SPEAKER_02
And my therapist was like, yeah, you guys obviously are going to have different experiences.
6
SPEAKER_02
Like you do always every she s like, it was just extra apparent when you re there.
6
SPEAKER_02
Cause it s so heightened and you can really see it.
6
SPEAKER_02
She s like, that s always, always you two are having different experiences.
6
SPEAKER_02
Everyone is that s astute.
6
SPEAKER_00
It was so smart.
6
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, it was very on display in India.
6
SPEAKER_00
We had such tangible things.
6
SPEAKER_00
How was it?
6
SPEAKER_02
It was incredible.
6
SPEAKER_02
I feel like it was so helpful for me.
6
SPEAKER_02
It was life changing for me.
6
SPEAKER_02
I ll tell you the moment I cried.
6
SPEAKER_00
It was a very privileged trip because we re with Bill Gates.
6
SPEAKER_00
We re going to meetings with billionaires and presidents of states and all this stuff.
6
SPEAKER_00
And we re there and we don t know why we re there.
6
SPEAKER_00
And we re podcasters.
6
SPEAKER_00
It says podcaster on our name placard.
6
SPEAKER_00
And we re like, oh my God, it s so embarrassing.
6
SPEAKER_00
We left this meeting and Monica goes, you know, that s the first time I ve ever been in a room with the majority were brown people and they had the power.
6
SPEAKER_00
And she goes, I m so proud to be from India.
6
SPEAKER_00
I was like, oh buddy, I want that for you so bad.
6
SPEAKER_00
That s so cool.
6
SPEAKER_02
Oh, it was the first time I ve ever felt it growing up here.
6
SPEAKER_02
It s always reversed.
6
SPEAKER_02
It s always, I m the only brown person at the table and to have Dax be the only white person, like it was so bizarre.
6
SPEAKER_02
It was so interesting.
6
SPEAKER_00
And I didn t have the power.
6
SPEAKER_00
I mean, I could have beat anyone s ass in there, let s make no mistake.
6
SPEAKER_00
I don t know, watch some Bollywood movies.
6
SPEAKER_00
I got moves.
6
SPEAKER_00
I had appointed myself Bill s security, because I m like, this is the only thing that justifies me sitting here.
6
SPEAKER_00
I m in a suit.
6
SPEAKER_00
What am I doing next to him?
6
SPEAKER_00
I do this with Chris sometimes when I m out and about.
6
SPEAKER_00
I m like, I ll take the picture.
6
SPEAKER_02
Oh, that s great.
6
SPEAKER_00
It s good.
6
SPEAKER_00
You feel useful.
6
SPEAKER_00
You feel useful.
6
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, sure.
6
SPEAKER_00
Anyway, sorry we went off on a tangent.
6
SPEAKER_00
What a sidebar.
6
SPEAKER_00
It s going to get me every fucking time, Monica.
6
SPEAKER_00
It s going to get me every time.
6
SPEAKER_00
Stay tuned for more Armchair Expert, if you dare.
6
SPEAKER_00
Do you cry a lot more now that you re getting older?
6
SPEAKER_00
Oh God, it s terrible.
6
SPEAKER_01
Especially watching bad movies on planes.
6
SPEAKER_01
Too much oxygen, I think about my kids.
6
SPEAKER_01
It s the line that we gave Damon in Interstellar, where it s the last thing you d see before you die is your children.
6
SPEAKER_00
I ve held onto that more than anything.
6
SPEAKER_00
Your life is a total success if you get to look at your kids as you die.
6
SPEAKER_00
But they ve enfeebled me.
6
SPEAKER_00
I m now an emotional wreck.
6
SPEAKER_00
They re wonderful.
6
SPEAKER_00
They re the best thing that ever happened to me.
6
SPEAKER_02
Yeah.
6
SPEAKER_02
You guys needed it.
6
SPEAKER_02
I m glad it happened to both of you.
6
SPEAKER_00
It s bonkers.
6
SPEAKER_00
We just had Cooper on too, who I ve known forever.
6
SPEAKER_00
And now we know, you know, him as well.
6
SPEAKER_00
And yeah, we re half the interviews I was talking about, like how frequently we re crying now and how we re crying differently.
6
SPEAKER_00
It s getting embarrassing.
6
SPEAKER_00
Like I m not able to do the job a lot of the time.
6
SPEAKER_02
You re doing it on purpose, but you re not.
6
SPEAKER_00
And I hate sentimentality.
6
SPEAKER_00
I can t stand it.
6
SPEAKER_00
Like, I m all about irreverence.
6
SPEAKER_00
And now here I am, I m like, so sentimental.
6
SPEAKER_00
Oh, embarrassingly, publicly crying.
6
SPEAKER_01
Oscar Sunday night, and the director of 20 Days of Mario Polo says, I m the first Ukrainian to ever get an Oscar, and I wish I didn t get it.
6
SPEAKER_01
And I, you could hear, it s really terrible.
6
SPEAKER_01
I do the thing where you hit audible choke.
6
SPEAKER_01
Like that.
6
SPEAKER_01
And the seat filters next to me turn like, what s going on?
6
SPEAKER_01
Okay.
6
SPEAKER_01
And my mom was next to me and she felt it too.
6
SPEAKER_01
And it was like, I know exactly what he s about to say.
6
SPEAKER_01
And I cannot handle this right now.
6
SPEAKER_01
Like I cannot do this right now.
6
SPEAKER_01
And I just had to summon all of my, you know.
6
SPEAKER_00
I didn t watch it.
6
SPEAKER_00
What are you saying?
6
SPEAKER_01
His documentary is about the siege of Mariupol, and it s rough, but it s incredible.
6
SPEAKER_01
And he s like, I wish I d never had to make this movie.
6
SPEAKER_01
I wish I wasn t here accepting this award.
6
SPEAKER_01
Because I wish this had never happened.
6
SPEAKER_01
Tough moment.
6
SPEAKER_00
Amazing movie.
6
SPEAKER_00
Wow.
6
SPEAKER_00
OK.
6
SPEAKER_00
Fallout.
6
SPEAKER_00
So full, full transparency disclosure.
6
SPEAKER_00
I often have to watch stuff before I interview somebody.
6
SPEAKER_00
And my wife and I are on a viewing schedule.
6
SPEAKER_00
So what am I interrupting?
6
SPEAKER_00
I m interrupting something that we re kind of into right now.
6
SPEAKER_02
Love on the spectrum.
6
SPEAKER_00
We re watching that with the kids.
6
SPEAKER_00
I was going to say, if it s Love Island, I might have a shot.
6
SPEAKER_02
If it s something great.
6
SPEAKER_00
Oh, I know.
6
SPEAKER_00
Murder at the End of the Earth.
6
SPEAKER_00
Which is supposed to be terrific.
6
SPEAKER_00
It s really good.
6
SPEAKER_00
And we re only two in, and we re like, we re pretty smitten with it.
6
SPEAKER_00
So Monday night, I go, I got to watch something.
6
SPEAKER_00
And she s like, OK.
6
SPEAKER_00
I go, but it s Nolan, so this could be good.
6
SPEAKER_00
And she s like, OK.
6
SPEAKER_00
I was looking forward to Murder at the End of the Earth.
6
SPEAKER_00
And this is the honest to God s truth.
6
SPEAKER_00
Seven minutes in, she goes, holy fuck.
6
SPEAKER_00
And I go, I know this might be the best pilot I ve ever seen in my life.
6
SPEAKER_00
You re very kind.
6
SPEAKER_00
I wish she was here.
6
SPEAKER_00
The fucking superlatives we ve been using the last three days, a all day Tuesday.
6
SPEAKER_00
I got a text.
6
SPEAKER_00
I m like.
6
SPEAKER_00
Cannot wait to get home and watch episode two.
6
SPEAKER_00
Me too, I gotta get through this day so I can watch episode two.
6
SPEAKER_00
It s so fucking good.
6
SPEAKER_00
It s insane how much stuff is going on in this show.
6
SPEAKER_00
A, I didn t know it was a video game.
6
SPEAKER_00
I ve never seen the video game.
6
SPEAKER_00
But weirdly, Goggin s character does trigger some image I ve had without the nose.
6
SPEAKER_01
Ghouls, yeah, there are characters in all the games.
6
SPEAKER_01
These are the folks who are super irradiated.
6
SPEAKER_01
It s the game s way of dealing with otherness, and the idea that you have this community, sort of post-human, and they don t get along very well with the normies, with the smoothies, as they call them.
6
SPEAKER_00
So I was having a hard time parsing now what s you and what s this video game.
6
SPEAKER_00
But what I love immediately is, and I don t think I m spoiling too much, but the show opens and we re at a birthday party and we re at a house and we re at a very prototypical Hollywood house in the cities in the background.
6
SPEAKER_00
We re up high and inside they re watching like a fifties TV and the little boys are all obsessed with cowboys.
6
SPEAKER_00
It s all fifties.
6
SPEAKER_00
But in the deep background we can see LA is a super futuristic city.
6
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
6
SPEAKER_00
And I loved it immediately.
6
SPEAKER_00
I love the juxtaposition.
6
SPEAKER_00
And then the music is 50s.
6
SPEAKER_00
To me, it felt very similar to the Westworld tone.
6
SPEAKER_00
I felt that weird mix.
6
SPEAKER_00
of futuristic and retroness, which then I assumed, oh, this is kind of Jonah s vibe.
6
SPEAKER_00
But then I learned the game also had some retro futuristic vibe.
6
SPEAKER_00
Very much.
6
SPEAKER_01
It makes me so happy because we re now in a place where we re just starting to show it to people.
6
SPEAKER_01
And we ve been working on this for a couple of years.
6
SPEAKER_01
I mean, there were 4,000 Vizifex shots in the season.
6
SPEAKER_01
We ve been sitting on it for a minute, trying to get it all done.
6
SPEAKER_01
So super exciting to be talking to you about it.
6
SPEAKER_00
No, it s going to be a fucking blockbuster.
6
SPEAKER_00
This show is going to make Amazon.
6
SPEAKER_01
We re super excited.
6
SPEAKER_01
So the tone, that was my experience of the game.
6
SPEAKER_01
So it was right around, I think, Fallout 3.
6
SPEAKER_01
Fallout had been a series six or seven games.
6
SPEAKER_00
When did it start?
6
SPEAKER_01
In the late 90s.
6
SPEAKER_01
From the beginning, the game could have been written by ad busters.
6
SPEAKER_01
It s so political.
6
SPEAKER_01
It has such a point of view.
6
SPEAKER_01
And I started to notice in the late 2000s that games were getting a
7
SPEAKER_00
little braver than film, especially politically.
7
SPEAKER_00
And you don t expect that from games at all.
7
SPEAKER_00
You play something like Bioshock, or you play something like Fallout, and you re like, oh, this is doing things that movies are scared to do.
7
SPEAKER_02
Interesting.
7
SPEAKER_00
Lisa was not a gamer, so when we were researching Westworld, we played a lot of games.
7
SPEAKER_00
Game and mechanic is a big part of how the park works.
7
SPEAKER_00
You had to figure out, how does this work?
7
SPEAKER_00
So we played a bunch of games as research.
7
SPEAKER_00
She d be like, oh, we re doing research.
7
SPEAKER_01
Cellars of Catan?
7
SPEAKER_01
Oh, love it.
7
SPEAKER_01
What a game.
7
SPEAKER_01
It ll ruin the best friendships ever.
7
SPEAKER_01
We ll just stop playing with the kids because I m like, it s gonna fracture the family.
7
SPEAKER_00
We re gonna be careful now.
7
SPEAKER_00
We just taught ours.
7
SPEAKER_00
But somewhere in the late 2000s, I think I was in between the Dark Knight, Dark Knight Rises.
7
SPEAKER_00
Video games for a while before I had kids, it d be like the brain cleanse.
7
SPEAKER_00
I m gonna get the whole movie out of my head.
7
SPEAKER_00
I m gonna play Halo for four days.
7
SPEAKER_00
And someone recommended Fallout 3.
7
SPEAKER_00
which is the first one under the supervision of Todd Howard, who is the creative director, essentially the showrunner, of all of these games.
7
SPEAKER_00
An incredible, lovely, lovely human being.
7
SPEAKER_00
And it was the first game that Todd had worked on, and I knew nothing about it other than it was highly recommended by people I like.
7
SPEAKER_00
And I put it in and I start playing it.
7
SPEAKER_00
I m like, what is this?
7
SPEAKER_00
What is the tone of this thing?
7
SPEAKER_00
What is happening here?
7
SPEAKER_00
It s dark.
7
SPEAKER_00
It s emotional.
7
SPEAKER_00
It s funny.
7
SPEAKER_00
It s subversive.
7
SPEAKER_00
It s political.
7
SPEAKER_00
Right out of the gate, this is all about not our America, but a version of America that s kind of this Eisenhower era America that never has a Watergate, never has a Vietnam, never has a moment of national reflection, just swaggers on for another hundred years.
7
SPEAKER_00
That opening scene is in 2077, but it looks like the 1950s.
7
SPEAKER_00
Nuclear powered toasters.
7
SPEAKER_00
It was like the dream, the Jetsonian America.
7
SPEAKER_00
And then it ends.
7
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, we got to say it.
7
SPEAKER_01
It s a bummer because it s such an impactful scene, but I think it s prerequisite to then talk about all the different dynamics of the show.
7
SPEAKER_01
But at this birthday party, they re looking out over the city and just one after another, atomic bomb starts falling.
7
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
7
SPEAKER_00
I would hasten to point out that I had a conversation with Todd Harer in 2019.
7
SPEAKER_00
We started developing the show in 2019.
7
SPEAKER_00
My brother started developing Oppenheimer the next year.
7
SPEAKER_00
Oh!
7
SPEAKER_00
But he works quickly, and so I get to watch his movie, where you have this moment.
7
SPEAKER_00
It was one of the things I was struck by, looking at all the testing footage, because we knew we had to show the world beforehand, and we knew we had to show the bombs dropping.
7
SPEAKER_00
And we looked at all the test footage, and the thing I was struck by, most of them don t have sound.
7
SPEAKER_00
And we eventually found a couple that do have sound.
7
SPEAKER_00
And the shocking thing about it is, this whole thing plays out, and you hear nothing.
7
SPEAKER_01
Of course, because speed of light is 86,000 miles per second, and speed of sound is 700 miles per second.
7
SPEAKER_00
700 miles an hour.
7
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
7
SPEAKER_00
And so you get, we timed it.
7
SPEAKER_00
We watched it for two minutes to watch the world end.
7
SPEAKER_00
This is now my deepest horror, is that I m with my kids and this happened.
7
SPEAKER_01
So we wrote it in.
7
SPEAKER_01
Also kind of maybe a blessing, because you get to turn and say, I love you so much.
7
SPEAKER_01
That s right.
7
SPEAKER_00
Your kids would hear you as you explain to them how you felt before it s over.
7
SPEAKER_00
And you d watch the blast wave come towards you.
7
SPEAKER_00
So then Chris gets to put it in his movie first.
7
SPEAKER_00
But.
7
SPEAKER_00
Yours is better.
7
SPEAKER_00
I m sorry.
7
SPEAKER_02
Oh boy.
7
SPEAKER_00
I said it.
7
SPEAKER_00
That moment is much more emotional.
7
SPEAKER_00
It s emotional in Oppenheimer.
7
SPEAKER_00
It s a brilliant moment in Oppenheimer, but it s emotional in ours because it s, again.
7
SPEAKER_02
Family.
7
SPEAKER_01
But here s what you re uniquely great at.
7
SPEAKER_01
You pack in, because things come really rapid in this show.
7
SPEAKER_01
So it s like, we meet this guy with his daughter.
7
SPEAKER_01
We already know he s somehow been besmirched by his peers.
7
SPEAKER_01
He s got a history.
7
SPEAKER_01
We don t really know what.
7
SPEAKER_01
I love it.
7
SPEAKER_01
Again, leave a lot of questions.
7
SPEAKER_01
But when that goes off,
7
SPEAKER_01
Within the first two minute opening, I m heartbroken.
7
SPEAKER_01
This is happening to this man and his daughter.
7
SPEAKER_01
We fast forward 200 years and now we meet a whole new group of people and they re living subterranean.
7
SPEAKER_01
And this now becomes the metaphor between the wealth and income inequality.
7
SPEAKER_00
We started in 2019, and then every year, the project got more relevant.
7
SPEAKER_00
And then when Russia invaded Ukraine, I was like, okay, you can be less relevant.
7
SPEAKER_00
Right.
7
SPEAKER_00
This is helpful to employ enough relevance.
7
SPEAKER_01
But yeah, we meet these people, and they re kind of in an idyllic situation.
7
SPEAKER_01
It s 200 years later.
7
SPEAKER_01
They re waiting out the radiation that s above ground.
7
SPEAKER_01
And then again, we meet another hero.
7
SPEAKER_01
We meet another father-daughter relationship.
7
SPEAKER_01
We establish all this stuff so quickly, and then there s upheaval there.
7
SPEAKER_01
And now we go, and we go to this military base.
7
SPEAKER_01
No one s ever happy in any of the projects I work on.
7
SPEAKER_01
I want to do one private revision.
7
SPEAKER_01
No, no, keep going.
7
SPEAKER_01
Keep killing all the people we just met.
7
SPEAKER_01
I think that was Game of Thrones big proprietary thing is like just getting you to fall in love with people and then fucking murdering them.
7
SPEAKER_01
And you watch with such unease forever because you know everyone s fair game.
7
SPEAKER_00
Everyone had a fair game.
7
SPEAKER_00
That was what was revelatory about that show.
7
SPEAKER_01
It really was.
7
SPEAKER_01
Because you can say, as a writer, the hardest thing to do, really, is to establish people to get you to care about them.
7
SPEAKER_00
Interstellar, I love the movie.
7
SPEAKER_00
But when I watch the first hour, I m struggling, because it was the three-year struggle of, how on earth am I packing all this in?
7
SPEAKER_00
Always feels too long.
7
SPEAKER_00
Yes.
7
SPEAKER_00
Not on Chris s finished movie.
7
SPEAKER_00
I think he did a masterful job pulling it all together.
7
SPEAKER_00
But I just feel the three years of how are we going to build this world and how these relationships matter.
7
SPEAKER_01
But what s titanic about what you tackled is we are in three completely different shows.
7
SPEAKER_01
Our new bit is how we re going to explain the show to people.
7
SPEAKER_01
It s kind of like Westworld and The Last of Us.
7
SPEAKER_01
And it s all happening.
7
SPEAKER_01
You could live in any one of them as their own show.
7
SPEAKER_01
You know, you quickly establish these different groups of people.
7
SPEAKER_01
They all need the same thing.
7
SPEAKER_01
And we re off to the races.
7
SPEAKER_01
I mean, it s an incredible... I mean, again, I m going to get in big trouble for this.
7
SPEAKER_02
If I had to pick... You don t have to pick.
7
SPEAKER_01
I want to.
7
SPEAKER_01
Because I need to make it relative to something.
7
SPEAKER_01
If on my deathbed they said you either have to erase your memory of seeing Oppenheimer or erase your memory of seeing the first episode of Fallout, I m picking Fallout.
7
SPEAKER_01
Wow.
7
SPEAKER_01
I m picking Fallout.
7
SPEAKER_02
You don t have to comment?
7
SPEAKER_01
And I read American Prometheus, I m obsessed.
7
SPEAKER_01
I m gonna sit here as quiet as possible.
7
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, you re not allowed to say a thing.
7
SPEAKER_01
It could be a headline.
7
SPEAKER_01
No, forget that.
7
SPEAKER_01
I m the younger brother.
7
SPEAKER_02
Exactly.
7
SPEAKER_01
Come on.
7
SPEAKER_02
Yeah, you re allowed to enjoy that.
7
SPEAKER_01
Crushed it.
7
SPEAKER_02
I m so excited to see.
7
SPEAKER_02
I actively didn t see it.
7
SPEAKER_02
I was saying to Jonah before, I was like, I m waiting till this is over.
7
SPEAKER_01
But you can tell him I was raving to you yesterday, right?
7
SPEAKER_01
So on fire for it.
7
SPEAKER_01
Yeah.
7
SPEAKER_02
And last night I was like, oh, I want to watch that, but I shouldn t.
7
SPEAKER_02
I have seen Oppenheimer at this point, like four or five times because I watched it on the plane.
7
SPEAKER_02
I d already seen it.
7
SPEAKER_02
Then I watched it on the plane a couple of times.
7
SPEAKER_02
It s such cool.
7
SPEAKER_00
It s a masterpiece.
7
SPEAKER_02
And I was sort of like, I don t think I m going to like it in this Farbenheimer world.
7
SPEAKER_02
Oh my gosh, there s this feminist movie and then there s this movie about men making bombs.
7
SPEAKER_02
I m probably not going to like that.
7
SPEAKER_02
I hope so.
7
SPEAKER_02
I love it.
7
SPEAKER_02
It s so good.
7
SPEAKER_01
You have now watched Oppenheimer as many times as I have watched Barbie.
7
SPEAKER_01
This is a really funny reversal.
7
SPEAKER_01
I m on like viewing four of Barbie.
7
SPEAKER_01
I cannot get enough of that movie.
7
SPEAKER_00
As the Barbenheimer thing was happening last summer, I was excited because I knew that it would help.
7
SPEAKER_00
That movie was a big risk for Chris.
7
SPEAKER_00
It s physicists talking about physics, but it s made like an action movie and he puts it out in the summer.
7
SPEAKER_00
My sole contribution to that movie was just encouraging Chris to the degree he needed encouragement.
7
SPEAKER_00
Looking at that and looking at other projects, I was like, that, that, that.
7
SPEAKER_00
Had you read American Promethean?
7
SPEAKER_00
No, but sort of obsessed with Oppenheimer and the mythos of it and Los Alamos and that Promethean moment and referenced it in other projects.
7
SPEAKER_00
How many two or three year periods and groups of people can you point to and say they changed the whole world?
7
SPEAKER_01
And with a gun to their head.
7
SPEAKER_01
It s very uniquely biblical.
7
SPEAKER_01
That s where we re at with AI.
7
SPEAKER_01
I mean, we re also at that juncture.
7
SPEAKER_01
We don t have the option to sit this out.
7
SPEAKER_00
There s a lot to the analogy there in terms of the thoughtfulness with which we ve approached nuclear fission and the recklessness with which we ve approached AI, frankly.
7
SPEAKER_00
But you have to redefine what a big commercial movie means.
7
SPEAKER_00
Oppenheimer made a billion dollars.
7
SPEAKER_00
You re like, what can a big commercial movie do?
7
SPEAKER_00
But it was more in that sort of like a smaller mode of storytelling.
7
SPEAKER_00
And I just wanted him to see it make it because I didn t imagine Chris would ever make a biopic, but he d written a script about Howard Hughes 20 years ago.
7
SPEAKER_01
Yes, that he was going to make, and then Aviator.
7
SPEAKER_00
I think he s said publicly that he just took too long to write.
7
SPEAKER_00
That script s one of the best scripts I ve ever read.
7
SPEAKER_01
We re due.
7
SPEAKER_01
There s been enough time.
7
SPEAKER_00
Well, some of the storytelling brio went into Oppenheimer.
7
SPEAKER_00
Frankly, Howard Hughes is a fascinating subject, but Oppenheimer s life was more consequential and just as fascinating as Hughes, and I think more of an impact on history.
7
SPEAKER_01
Although here s a deep irony.
7
SPEAKER_01
So I was obsessed with Howard Hughes in college.
7
SPEAKER_01
I wrote a paper on him.
7
SPEAKER_01
What he was accused of is he had tried to sell a certain airplane to the Air Force that they rejected.
7
SPEAKER_01
Rumor has it the Mitsubishis that bombed Pearl Harbor were his design that he sold it to the Japanese.
7
SPEAKER_01
So weirdly the bombing.
7
SPEAKER_01
As a result, as is history, it s all traceable.
7
SPEAKER_00
I never thought Chris would make a movie about a person because real people s lives don t tend to be dramatic.
7
SPEAKER_00
They don t tend to have that satisfying arc.
7
SPEAKER_00
It s hard to find someone whose life is worthy of that treatment or will be entertaining that way.
7
SPEAKER_00
Summer blockbuster.
7
SPEAKER_00
And I thought with Oppenheimer, Chris plus that subject.
7
SPEAKER_01
No, Chris is occupying a space that nobody occupies, which is he doesn t do existing IP, and yet he has blockbusters.
7
SPEAKER_00
We did it with Batman a little bit.
7
SPEAKER_01
That was as close as we got to it.
7
SPEAKER_01
Post-Batman to do Inception, that s a huge blockbuster.
7
SPEAKER_01
That shouldn t work.
7
SPEAKER_01
Interstellar should not work.
7
SPEAKER_00
We tended to do, for a while, sort of 50-50, right?
7
SPEAKER_00
Or for my career.
7
SPEAKER_00
Adaptation can be fun, but making original things is really fun, too.
7
SPEAKER_00
The ability to kind of bounce back and forth.
7
SPEAKER_00
It s a different kind of writing.
7
SPEAKER_01
He s just one of the few people that a studio s going to give a couple hundred million dollars to do that doesn t have an existing IP.
7
SPEAKER_01
We all need to treasure the fact that your brother is on planet Earth, because without him, yeah, I don t know who they d trust that to.
7
SPEAKER_00
It s one of the reasons I was drawn to television is that when I started in television, there was very little IP.
7
SPEAKER_00
I m very proud of what we made with Fallout.
7
SPEAKER_00
I love the games.
7
SPEAKER_00
It s exciting.
7
SPEAKER_00
But one of the things I loved about TV from the beginning was all the broadcast was very seldom based on anything.
7
SPEAKER_00
It was, you had a pitch.
7
SPEAKER_00
Person of interest was a pitch.
7
SPEAKER_00
It was about AI and it was about a vigilante.
7
SPEAKER_00
And I was sort of not quite done with the Dark Knight stuff until we found a venue to do that.
7
SPEAKER_00
And I miss those days.
7
SPEAKER_01
So this show is tackling, there s some metaphors there.
7
SPEAKER_01
Obviously the one I just mentioned, which is there s these underground dwellers and people pretty much hate them.
7
SPEAKER_01
The vault people.
7
SPEAKER_01
Yes.
7
SPEAKER_01
Cause they re uppity.
7
SPEAKER_00
They re me.
7
SPEAKER_01
They re in a gated community.
7
SPEAKER_00
By the time we were done with the pandemic and Geneva and Graham are showrunners, amazing, thoughtful, brilliant.
8
SPEAKER_00
He is from the comedy world.
8
SPEAKER_00
He cut his teeth in American television on The Office, worked on Silicon Valley, Portlandia.
8
SPEAKER_00
She wrote Marvel movies.
8
SPEAKER_00
The combination of the two of them, incredible.
8
SPEAKER_00
And they were able to capture this gonzo tone of, and one of the things we liked from the beginning, it s hilarious to watch people now arguing online about, like, they made it woke.
8
SPEAKER_00
And then someone who actually knows the game is like, are you a fucking idiot?
8
SPEAKER_00
From the beginning, it was woke.
8
SPEAKER_00
Like, what are you talking about?
8
SPEAKER_00
The politics were seeded into this thing from the beginning, but...
8
SPEAKER_00
In a way that I love, it s less about being didactic about the things that I believe.
8
SPEAKER_00
This is a circular firing squad.
8
SPEAKER_00
Everyone comes in for a beating on this one.
8
SPEAKER_00
Whether it s the blue state inessential folks who sat home and had other people deliver their food.
8
SPEAKER_00
Us.
8
SPEAKER_01
Or whether it s the red state folks.
8
SPEAKER_01
Everyone.
8
SPEAKER_01
Who are hearkening back to a knighthood and a brotherhood and some of these kind of
8
SPEAKER_01
relic concepts that no one really knows how they worked.
8
SPEAKER_00
This is what I loved about the project is that playing the game the first time, you re there post-apocalyptic.
8
SPEAKER_00
You know, I love the George Miller Mad Max songs.
8
SPEAKER_00
I think they re brilliant.
8
SPEAKER_00
Not a world I want to live in.
8
SPEAKER_00
You can live in those movies.
8
SPEAKER_00
That s the difference between a movie and a TV show.
8
SPEAKER_00
Movie is like a one night stand, right?
8
SPEAKER_00
You can do anything for two hours.
8
SPEAKER_00
TV shows like an extended family.
8
SPEAKER_00
I d have these conversations with the DPs.
8
SPEAKER_00
I ve been lucky to work with some incredibly talented people, often come in and we try out a look and they d go for like a skip bleach look.
8
SPEAKER_00
It s beautiful.
8
SPEAKER_00
But the reason why Westworld wasn t skip bleach, it was saturated, beautiful color.
8
SPEAKER_00
And this is me and Paul Cameron going back and forth about how this thing should look is because you want to live in it.
8
SPEAKER_01
You re going to spend a lot of time there.
8
SPEAKER_01
I wanted desperately to go to Westworld.
8
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, me too.
8
SPEAKER_00
Totally.
8
SPEAKER_00
A little bit of a love affair with film because we shot Fallout on film, Westworld on film.
8
SPEAKER_00
I didn t know that.
8
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, we have actors that sometimes would come on set and after a take be like, what s wrong with the camera?
8
SPEAKER_00
It s a real camera.
8
SPEAKER_00
Like it s making a funny noise.
8
SPEAKER_00
It s mechanical.
8
SPEAKER_00
You slap the mag, you re like, it s a real camera.
8
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, yeah.
8
SPEAKER_01
This thing.
8
SPEAKER_01
Yeah.
8
SPEAKER_01
When they hit both sides of the mag to get it to shut up.
8
SPEAKER_00
Oh, all the time.
8
SPEAKER_00
It s a bit of a secret weapon for us.
8
SPEAKER_00
I mean, Chris is out there talking about it all the time.
8
SPEAKER_00
When we shot the pilot for Westworld, that was the year when the factory in New York was gonna close.
8
SPEAKER_00
Chris and Spielberg and JJ and Tarantino had to get all the studios to commit to buy the film, because it was gonna be done.
8
SPEAKER_00
And we were the only pilot that year that shot on film.
8
SPEAKER_00
Wow.
8
SPEAKER_00
And you re still shooting on film?
8
SPEAKER_00
Still shooting on film.
8
SPEAKER_00
Does that complicate your digital stuff?
8
SPEAKER_00
No.
8
SPEAKER_00
Everyone loves our set.
8
SPEAKER_00
Like Chris, everyone leaves their cell phone in the trailer.
8
SPEAKER_00
For me, it s a safety thing.
8
SPEAKER_00
I m obsessed with the safety of the crew.
8
SPEAKER_01
This is where we differ.
8
SPEAKER_02
So we found it, one thing.
8
SPEAKER_01
My motto is safety third.
8
SPEAKER_01
Oh my God.
8
SPEAKER_01
If I can do the stunts, you can do the stunts.
8
SPEAKER_00
Well, we want to do wild shit.
8
SPEAKER_00
The scene in Philly in episode two, I don t know if you got there yet, where the power armor flies down.
8
SPEAKER_00
I remember saying to the line producer, he laughed, and I was like, no, I m dead serious.
8
SPEAKER_00
We got a guy with a jet pack to come out and do the stunt.
8
SPEAKER_00
Because I m like, well, the CG of the suit, it s hard metal, shiny surface.
8
SPEAKER_00
That s easy.
8
SPEAKER_00
But the particulate dust blowing off the ground.
8
SPEAKER_00
The physics.
8
SPEAKER_00
That s super hard.
8
SPEAKER_00
The contact points.
8
SPEAKER_00
Where it touches the ground, where it interacts with, it s hard.
8
SPEAKER_01
And when shit s got to move, in the laws of physics, we actually intuitively know that s where it breaks down.
8
SPEAKER_00
Exactly.
8
SPEAKER_00
So I d seen this guy demonstrate this jet pack, new design, very Iron Man.
8
SPEAKER_00
It s on the arm instead of the back.
8
SPEAKER_00
And a few tense conversations with the line producer, figured out how to get him there.
8
SPEAKER_00
And we dangled him from a crane so there s no way he could fall on our set.
8
SPEAKER_00
He s like, I m on a jet pack.
8
SPEAKER_00
I m like, yeah, well, just bear with me.
8
SPEAKER_01
You re in a prototype jet pack.
8
SPEAKER_00
Good point.
8
SPEAKER_00
They wouldn t let me fly.
8
SPEAKER_01
Hanu didn t make this thing.
8
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, exactly.
8
SPEAKER_00
Something I learned with Chris coming up was, if you can do it for real, with a video game adaptation, I was saying to Todd, I m like, most adaptations you re adding things.
8
SPEAKER_00
With a video game, you re removing things.
8
SPEAKER_00
You re removing freedom, interactivity, moral choices, all these things that games can do that are incredible.
8
SPEAKER_00
What I felt like we could add is reality.
8
SPEAKER_00
So from the beginning, we said, we re going to do the stunts for real.
8
SPEAKER_00
We re going to go down to Namibia.
8
SPEAKER_00
I d seen this incredible location when we were doing Westworld, this mining town on the Skeleton Coast in Namibia.
8
SPEAKER_00
And we d set the pictures aside because masonry construction, which didn t fit in the West.
8
SPEAKER_00
There s no brick construction in the West until the 20th century.
8
SPEAKER_00
So I just filed it away.
8
SPEAKER_00
And I had this lunch with Todd and we decided we were going to make this show.
8
SPEAKER_00
And on the drive home, I was like, well, I got nothing, but I got one location.
8
SPEAKER_00
So we dragged the crew down to Luderitz.
8
SPEAKER_00
And so, you always feel like a bit of a chump when you ve asked people to fly 30 hours.
8
SPEAKER_00
You fly to Johannesburg and then back to Luderitz.
8
SPEAKER_00
And then we went down to this abandoned diamond factory.
8
SPEAKER_00
It was one of those places where they don t want you to film there.
8
SPEAKER_00
We had to consent to a body cavity search on behalf of the entire crew.
8
SPEAKER_00
Because there s still loose diamonds on the sand.
8
SPEAKER_01
Talk about getting the intimacy coach involved.
8
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, 100%.
8
SPEAKER_00
There s this weird shed that you had to walk in and out of.
8
SPEAKER_00
Carol, are you ready?
8
SPEAKER_00
They need to check your rectum here after this shot.
8
SPEAKER_00
As these things do, it made its way to the crew that there were loose diamonds on the set.
8
SPEAKER_00
So I would call action and turn around and you just see everyone else in the crew is bent over and looking at the rocks.
8
SPEAKER_00
Of course.
8
SPEAKER_00
Don t do it, guys.
8
SPEAKER_00
Don t do it.
8
SPEAKER_00
Trust me.
8
SPEAKER_00
You don t want to walk back through that shit on the way out.
8
SPEAKER_00
But we had this moment the second day we were shooting down there.
8
SPEAKER_00
You feel like a bit of an asshole dragging everyone out there.
8
SPEAKER_00
And then you get there.
8
SPEAKER_00
As with Castle Valley and Utah for Westworld, we get to Skeleton Coast and the actor show.
8
SPEAKER_00
And these are great actors.
8
SPEAKER_00
There s Walton and Ella and Aaron.
8
SPEAKER_00
And you can put them in front of green screen and they do just great.
8
SPEAKER_00
But if you can bring them somewhere spectacular, you re making their lives easier.
8
SPEAKER_00
The awe is real.
8
SPEAKER_00
We do this kind of slightly asshole thing of leaving them in the trailer, and they haven t seen it yet, and we d roll the camera and bring them out.
8
SPEAKER_00
The look in her face when she gets to the outside world, you know, it s pretty real.
8
SPEAKER_01
It s very real.
8
SPEAKER_01
I said out loud, oh, she s enjoying being outside.
8
SPEAKER_01
You can feel that.
8
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, you re remembering she s not been outside.
8
SPEAKER_01
We ve brought them to set with bags over their heads.
8
SPEAKER_00
Not quite that level of sadism, but we went and scouted it for the first time.
8
SPEAKER_00
I m looking at it, I m like, it s the Santa Monica Harbor.
8
SPEAKER_00
It s exactly the same.
8
SPEAKER_00
That drone shot of the outside of the vault is 90% real.
8
SPEAKER_00
The only thing we ve added is the Ferris wheel for the Santa Monica Pier and the mountains in the background.
8
SPEAKER_00
And we were shooting there for the second day and someone wandered over to me, an experience I d never had, and they wandered over and said, no one s ever shot here.
8
SPEAKER_02
Oh, wow.
8
SPEAKER_00
Ever.
8
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, that s rare.
8
SPEAKER_00
We shoot in New York.
8
SPEAKER_00
I literally one day accidentally ate in the Gossip Girl commissary.
8
SPEAKER_00
Walked the wrong direction coming out of set.
8
SPEAKER_00
To be in a place where no one had ever shot, and they resumed diamond mining operations the day after we left, no one will ever shoot there again.
8
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
8
SPEAKER_00
That s cool.
8
SPEAKER_01
That s so lucky.
8
SPEAKER_00
That was fun.
8
SPEAKER_01
Oh, well, Jonah, this has been a goddamn blast.
8
SPEAKER_02
Yeah, thanks for joining us.
8
SPEAKER_01
I mean, I could not be more excited for you about this show.
8
SPEAKER_01
It s just going to be so massive.
8
SPEAKER_01
Thank you.
8
SPEAKER_01
It s so fucking good.
8
SPEAKER_01
Cannot wait for today to be over so I can watch episode three.
8
SPEAKER_02
Go home.
8
SPEAKER_01
Go away.
8
SPEAKER_01
I already panicked.
8
SPEAKER_01
I think they only sent four.
8
SPEAKER_01
We could fix it.
8
SPEAKER_01
Well, this has been a blast.
8
SPEAKER_01
I hope you had a good time.
8
SPEAKER_01
Likewise.
8
SPEAKER_01
I had a fantastic time.
8
SPEAKER_01
Thank you guys so much.
8
SPEAKER_01
Fallout is on Prime Video April 11th, and all eight come out at once.
8
SPEAKER_01
First time we re binging.
8
SPEAKER_01
I m a little scared.
8
SPEAKER_02
No, that would be great.
8
SPEAKER_01
No, it s so the way to do it.
8
SPEAKER_01
I would have shot myself if I had seen that first episode and didn t think I could watch another one the following night.
8
SPEAKER_01
There would have been hell to pay in our house.
8
SPEAKER_01
All right, well, thanks for coming.
8
SPEAKER_01
This was a blast and good luck with everything.
8
SPEAKER_00
Thank you so much.
8
SPEAKER_01
Stay tuned for the fact check so you can hear all the facts that were wrong.
8
SPEAKER_02
Welcome home.
8
SPEAKER_02
Thank you.
8
SPEAKER_02
You were on vacation.
8
SPEAKER_01
I was.
8
SPEAKER_02
How was it?
8
SPEAKER_01
It was great.
8
SPEAKER_01
We went to Nashville for three days and looked at the progress on the house, which was outrageously exciting.
8
SPEAKER_02
Oh, so fun.
8
SPEAKER_01
Had dinner at my favorite, Sperry s, on Friday night, home of my favorite salad bar.
8
SPEAKER_01
And it s that blue cheese dressing with the red oil all over it.
8
SPEAKER_01
I don t know what s going on with it.
8
Wow.
8
SPEAKER_01
What is it so good?
8
SPEAKER_01
In fact, I bumped into a guy at the salad bar who lives in Nashville and he said, oh my God, I can t believe you re here.
8
SPEAKER_01
I ve heard you talk about Sperry s on the podcast.
8
SPEAKER_01
And I said, oh, is this your favorite?
8
SPEAKER_01
And he goes, no, this is my first time.
8
SPEAKER_01
And I go, where are you visiting from?
8
SPEAKER_01
And he said, no, I live here.
8
SPEAKER_01
And then I told him, let me give you the shortcut.
8
SPEAKER_01
That s the dressing.
8
SPEAKER_01
Ignore all those other dressings.
8
SPEAKER_01
He never did report back whether or not he enjoyed it as much as, but I basically forced him to use that.
8
SPEAKER_02
Which is risky.
8
SPEAKER_01
Uh-huh, but I swear by it.
8
SPEAKER_02
Not everyone s a blue cheese person.
8
SPEAKER_02
In fact, I d say it s fairly polarizing.
8
SPEAKER_01
Well, I think if you hate blue cheese, you d be like, well, I hate blue cheese.
8
SPEAKER_01
There s two different blue cheeses there.
8
SPEAKER_01
If you re open to blue cheese, then you must go with this red oily one.
8
SPEAKER_02
I think if he is there because you recommended to come and then you re there and you re saying you have to eat this, he s gonna even if he hates blue cheese.
8
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, I m surprised he didn t thank me.
8
SPEAKER_02
That s on him.
8
SPEAKER_02
I mean, I m not, that s on him if he doesn t listen to his heart.
8
SPEAKER_01
I like to think more that he was like, oh man, this is the greatest blue cheese and I probably wouldn t have picked it unless he was standing there.
8
SPEAKER_01
I m so grateful.
8
SPEAKER_01
I d way rather that be the outcome.
8
SPEAKER_02
Well sure, we want what we want.
8
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, that s what I hope happen.
8
SPEAKER_01
And then had a cookout at Huey and Hayes  house Saturday night.
8
SPEAKER_01
Huey and I teamed up on that grill.
8
SPEAKER_01
I did the ribeyes, he did the filets.
8
SPEAKER_01
Really good.
8
SPEAKER_01
Their whole family came over.
8
SPEAKER_01
And then, um, Sunday morning we went over to Huey and Hayes, well, Hayes  mother, Rhonda and Doug.
8
SPEAKER_01
And again, we did this two years ago, as you may remember.
8
SPEAKER_02
Oh, yeah, Egg Hunt.
8
SPEAKER_01
Egg Hunt, beautiful spread, plates made with people s names on them.
8
SPEAKER_01
It s the nicest Southern Easter you can imagine.
8
SPEAKER_02
Southern Christian gals.
8
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, and once again, Huey thanked the Lord for bringing these wayward heathens into their fold so they can educate us.
8
SPEAKER_01
Uh-huh, that was, again, he had another spin on it, but it was great.
8
SPEAKER_01
And how do I say this without hurting my family s feelings?
8
SPEAKER_01
Family s so fun when you re not triggered.
8
SPEAKER_01
Sure.
8
SPEAKER_01
Does that make sense?
8
SPEAKER_02
Yeah, of course.
8
SPEAKER_01
Chris and I were enjoying ourselves so much at this family Easter.
8
SPEAKER_01
And it was so much fun and gaiety.
9
SPEAKER_00
and inside jokes and laughing and just having a blast.
9
SPEAKER_00
And I m like, yeah, these family holidays are so lovely.
9
SPEAKER_00
But I know I would be like, I d be rubbed the wrong way by this.
9
SPEAKER_00
I d be nervous about that interaction.
9
SPEAKER_01
Of course.
9
SPEAKER_00
So maybe everyone should just kind of hopscotch.
9
SPEAKER_00
You should rotate through other families.
9
SPEAKER_01
Yeah.
9
SPEAKER_00
On the big day.
9
SPEAKER_01
I mean, that s what a lot of kids do.
9
SPEAKER_01
That s why they go to sleepovers.
9
SPEAKER_00
Right, and they love the family dinner at their sleepover.
9
SPEAKER_00
And then their own family dinner, they re like, ah, dad, stop.
9
SPEAKER_01
Well, that s good.
9
SPEAKER_01
Did Kristen get the golden egg again?
9
SPEAKER_00
She did not.
9
SPEAKER_01
Did you?
9
SPEAKER_00
I did not.
9
SPEAKER_00
I barely collect them.
9
SPEAKER_00
I myself came away with $11, though, which I was delighted about.
9
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, that s great.
9
SPEAKER_01
What is the Scrooge equivalent to Easter?
9
SPEAKER_01
Devil, because it s a Jesus holiday?
9
SPEAKER_00
It s the ultimate.
9
SPEAKER_01
Right.
9
SPEAKER_00
I don t know what the, like a bah humbug Easter person is.
9
SPEAKER_01
Yeah.
9
SPEAKER_00
I don t know.
9
SPEAKER_00
I m that.
9
SPEAKER_00
You re that.
9
SPEAKER_00
You ve never had a good time at an Easter party?
9
SPEAKER_01
I wore this outfit yesterday.
9
SPEAKER_01
All black.
9
SPEAKER_01
I m wearing all black.
9
SPEAKER_00
Okay, you re mad at Easter.
9
SPEAKER_01
I m not mad at it at all.
9
SPEAKER_01
I love anything that people are happy in, you know?
9
SPEAKER_01
But you know how I get around holidays.
9
SPEAKER_01
I love holidays.
9
SPEAKER_01
I love events.
9
SPEAKER_00
I love- Halloween, Christmas.
9
SPEAKER_01
Halloween, Thanksgiving, I love.
9
SPEAKER_01
Pig day, Christmas.
9
SPEAKER_00
Wait, what s pig day?
9
SPEAKER_01
Pig day is the Friday after Thanksgiving where Jess and I get my tree.
9
SPEAKER_00
Oh, that s your own holiday, yeah, yeah, yeah.
9
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, I made it.
9
SPEAKER_01
All of it, but sorry, guys.
9
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, Easter.
9
SPEAKER_01
It s because I didn t grow up with it.
9
SPEAKER_01
My parents didn t do it.
9
SPEAKER_01
They didn t know about it, I guess, early, and then they kept up that.
9
SPEAKER_01
Like, there was no Easter baskets.
9
SPEAKER_00
Right.
9
SPEAKER_00
You never went to an egg hunt or anything?
9
SPEAKER_01
No, I mean, at my daycare, there was egg.
9
SPEAKER_00
A little light egg hunting?
9
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, but it never appeared to me.
9
SPEAKER_00
Your parents never got you an Easter basket?
9
SPEAKER_00
No.
9
SPEAKER_00
Or your grandparents?
9
SPEAKER_00
We got one.
9
SPEAKER_00
My mother got us an Easter basket.
9
SPEAKER_00
It was very fun.
9
SPEAKER_00
It was only the second time in the year.
9
SPEAKER_00
You got candy at Halloween, like candy bar chocolate.
9
SPEAKER_00
Right.
9
SPEAKER_00
You got it at Halloween, and then sayonara, suck ass, all the way till April.
9
SPEAKER_01
What about Valentine s Day?
9
SPEAKER_01
She didn t get you old.
9
SPEAKER_00
Oh, she did.
9
SPEAKER_00
You re right.
9
SPEAKER_00
Good, good, good.
9
SPEAKER_00
You ve definitely poked a hole in it.
9
SPEAKER_00
And what am I talking about?
9
SPEAKER_00
It s not like we never had chocolate, but let s just say this is a chocolate holiday.
9
SPEAKER_00
It s like Halloween.
9
SPEAKER_01
Interesting.
9
SPEAKER_00
Very fun.
9
SPEAKER_00
Very colorful.
9
SPEAKER_00
Coloring eggs is really fun.
9
SPEAKER_00
My mom was just here right before we left for Nashville and she colored eggs with the girls, brought a little machine.
9
SPEAKER_00
You can do like a lathe.
9
SPEAKER_00
What s that mean?
9
SPEAKER_00
You know, a lathe is what you put a chunk of wood on, it spins, and then you carve it into a leg of a table.
9
SPEAKER_00
This is, you put the egg on a spinner, and then you can take a marker and make very specific.
9
SPEAKER_00
Oh, that s cool.
9
SPEAKER_00
They re in the, I think they re on the island inside.
9
SPEAKER_00
You should take a look.
9
SPEAKER_00
They re very beautiful.
9
SPEAKER_00
Wow.
9
SPEAKER_00
And it s a whole contraption, and that was fun for them.
9
SPEAKER_01
I like contraptions.
9
SPEAKER_00
Listen, Easter egg hunts is second to trick-or-treating in that it s an activity where you re on the prowl, you re looking everywhere, it s active, kids are running around, oh my God, I saw Marla, you know.
9
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, maybe the competition, actually, now that you re saying that.
9
SPEAKER_00
You can find your way in.
9
SPEAKER_00
No.
9
SPEAKER_00
Oh.
9
SPEAKER_01
Well, actually, you re right.
9
SPEAKER_01
That seems more like my personality.
9
SPEAKER_01
But I bet as a kid, that stressed me out.
9
SPEAKER_01
One time I went to a girl s birthday party.
9
SPEAKER_01
It was a sleepover, fifth grade, I think.
9
SPEAKER_01
So the girls were kind of, you know, at that like... Starting to get catty?
9
SPEAKER_01
Yeah.
9
SPEAKER_01
And the mom had set up like a little store in the basement, which was really my dream.
9
SPEAKER_01
Like she set up a little mall.
9
SPEAKER_01
And then we got to like take a couple things.
9
SPEAKER_00
Oh my God.
9
SPEAKER_01
And so I took this necklace and then the necklace became a devil necklace.
9
SPEAKER_00
Like it- Everyone wanted it?
9
SPEAKER_01
Yes.
9
SPEAKER_01
And then I was bad because I got it.
9
SPEAKER_00
Okay.
9
SPEAKER_00
This is a theme.
9
SPEAKER_00
This is like the white elephant party.
9
SPEAKER_00
No.
9
SPEAKER_00
This resurfaces.
9
SPEAKER_01
The white elephant though is different.
9
SPEAKER_01
At that age, I didn t have a leg up.
9
SPEAKER_00
No, but it is a pattern of I m gonna get myself excluded by picking a thing that I should pick.
9
SPEAKER_01
I know.
9
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
9
SPEAKER_01
I just picked it because I liked it.
9
SPEAKER_01
Turns out everyone likes it.
9
SPEAKER_00
Now, do you believe we manifest patterns to confirm our narrative?
9
SPEAKER_01
In some ways, yes, but I don t think in this case.
9
SPEAKER_00
Right, right, right.
9
SPEAKER_01
I mean, yeah, I think emotionally we do.
9
SPEAKER_00
Well, this could be the inciting incident.
9
SPEAKER_00
This could be the genesis of the whole story.
9
SPEAKER_00
Narratives, you just kind of...
9
SPEAKER_00
You can kind of get stuck in something that happens.
9
SPEAKER_01
You can.
9
SPEAKER_00
I m not suggesting that s what s going.
9
SPEAKER_00
Well, I am suggesting it, but it s a 1%.
9
SPEAKER_01
It could be.
9
SPEAKER_01
I mean, I don t think in general though.
9
SPEAKER_01
Well, okay.
9
SPEAKER_01
So with the necklace, it blew up.
9
SPEAKER_01
I was like in a group of four or five girls.
9
SPEAKER_01
They turned on me.
9
SPEAKER_01
And they were really mean, like then I couldn t sit with them at lunch, like very- They carried on way past the sleepover.
9
SPEAKER_01
Yes.
9
SPEAKER_01
And they would look at me and talk to each other, like stare at me so that I would know they were talking about like really-
9
SPEAKER_00
Mean girl stuff.
9
SPEAKER_01
Mean girl shit.
9
SPEAKER_01
Yeah.
9
SPEAKER_01
And I was so distraught because the new thing was that the birthday girl wanted it, but she didn t.
9
SPEAKER_01
But then she did, I guess.
9
SPEAKER_00
Oh, okay.
9
SPEAKER_01
Once they decided that that s what had happened.
9
SPEAKER_01
Yeah.
9
SPEAKER_01
So then I tried to give it to her.
9
SPEAKER_01
Okay.
9
SPEAKER_01
And you refused it?
9
SPEAKER_01
And it didn t work.
9
SPEAKER_01
I don t know.
9
SPEAKER_01
It didn t work.
9
SPEAKER_01
They were still all mad.
9
SPEAKER_01
I wrote individual letters to all these bitches.
9
SPEAKER_00
Oh no, money.
9
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, like really had to get them back.
9
SPEAKER_00
You have to apologize.
9
SPEAKER_01
Oh yeah, and I m so bad and I can t believe I did that.
9
SPEAKER_00
No wonder you have a fucking chip on your shoulder, just like me.
9
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, and it worked.
9
SPEAKER_01
They eventually let me back in.
9
SPEAKER_00
Is that Callie was the birthday girl?
9
SPEAKER_00
No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.
9
SPEAKER_01
No, this was so bad.
9
SPEAKER_01
And it did scar me.
9
SPEAKER_01
It was like, you have to let everyone else have what they want.
9
SPEAKER_01
Like, you can t take from anyone.
9
SPEAKER_00
You re not entitled to any of this stuff.
9
SPEAKER_01
But then I got over that, I guess, and I took the money at White Elephant, and look, it- Look at me now, with a beautiful black outfit on.
9
SPEAKER_00
But Easter, you hate it, you hate it.
9
SPEAKER_01
Oh, I don t, I don t wanna say that.
9
SPEAKER_01
I don t wanna say I hate it.
9
SPEAKER_01
I m just the Scrooge of it.
9
SPEAKER_01
I m the Easter devil.
9
SPEAKER_00
Right, right.
9
SPEAKER_00
I guess.
9
SPEAKER_00
Easter devil.
9
SPEAKER_00
Well, maybe we should pick something that eats rabbits, like Easter fox.
9
SPEAKER_00
Oh.
9
SPEAKER_00
Because then it s not as blatant.
9
SPEAKER_01
I like that, because foxes are sexy.
9
SPEAKER_00
Oh, and they re witty and clever.
9
SPEAKER_00
They re known for their cleverness.
9
SPEAKER_01
And I was supposed to go to an Easter thing yesterday, and I was feeling antisocial, so I didn t go.
9
SPEAKER_00
Oh no, who had an Easter thing?
9
SPEAKER_01
The Hansons.
9
SPEAKER_00
Oh, okay.
9
SPEAKER_00
And you skipped it.
9
SPEAKER_01
And Amy was making yummy food, and in theory, like, it would have been so fun.
9
SPEAKER_01
It was sunny out.
9
SPEAKER_01
Yes, it was nice.
9
SPEAKER_01
Oh my God.
9
SPEAKER_01
Kind of.
9
SPEAKER_00
Didn t it rain yesterday?
9
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, I just remembered that.
9
SPEAKER_00
When I landed, the ground was pretty wet.
9
SPEAKER_01
It was cloudy.
9
SPEAKER_01
But I just couldn t, I couldn t do it.
9
SPEAKER_01
I talked about this in therapy.
9
SPEAKER_01
I m keeping an eye out.
9
SPEAKER_01
I m wondering if I m like a tiny bit depressed.
9
SPEAKER_00
Mm-hmm.
9
SPEAKER_01
Oh my God.
9
SPEAKER_01
So I m just keeping an eye out.
9
SPEAKER_01
And right now I m about to start my period now.
9
SPEAKER_00
Oh Jesus Christ, this thing s gonna blow.
9
SPEAKER_00
Listen, you re wearing all black.
9
SPEAKER_00
You didn t go to the Easter party.
9
SPEAKER_01
I m feeling a little reclusive.
9
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, sweetie, you re a little depressed, I think.
9
SPEAKER_01
Well, wait, I should never have told you that.
9
SPEAKER_00
Why?
9
SPEAKER_01
Because now you re gonna think everything is that.
9
SPEAKER_00
No, just you re wearing black eyeshadow, and you re in a full black outfit, and you didn t go to the Easter party I sent you.
9
SPEAKER_01
I m not wearing black eyeshadow, I m wearing mascara, regular.
9
SPEAKER_00
Okay, you re goth era.
9
SPEAKER_01
Oh, what if I m becoming goth?
9
SPEAKER_00
It looks like you re into Screamo a little bit right now.
9
SPEAKER_01
I also look like a role model.
9
SPEAKER_01
This is what they look like.
9
SPEAKER_00
Yes, yes.
9
SPEAKER_00
Heroin chic, depressed.
9
SPEAKER_00
I think there is a type of guy who wants a sexy girl who s always crying.
9
SPEAKER_01
Are you sure they do?
9
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, I think that, well, look, you know, I don t know the percentage, but men want to fix a broken bird just like women want to fix a broken bird.
9
SPEAKER_00
I mean, I think it s natural.
9
SPEAKER_00
I think especially if you get a mom who needed a lot of caretaking and stuff.
9
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, I ve had lots of friends.
9
SPEAKER_00
They are deeply attracted to people who clearly are very sad and depressed a lot.
9
SPEAKER_01
No, everything s great.
9
SPEAKER_01
I am, like I have depression, so I take an antidepressant.
9
SPEAKER_01
I know who I am when I m depressed, and I can just feel small pieces of it.
9
SPEAKER_01
Mainly the feeling sort of reclusive, and not the makeup, that s a fun hobby.
9
SPEAKER_00
Do you find, because again, I don t have depression.
9
SPEAKER_00
I have had it, but I don t have it.
9
SPEAKER_00
But I get sad.
9
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, that s different.
9
SPEAKER_00
And I get moody and I have spells where I m really pessimistic and I have a lot of anxiety, but a.
10
SPEAKER_01
there s generally things, real material things surrounding those.
10
SPEAKER_01
The not being able to enjoy anything, that to me is what depression is.
10
SPEAKER_01
For me, that s when I ve been like, huh, this is really weird.
10
SPEAKER_01
I m watching my children play.
10
SPEAKER_01
That s the example I always give.
10
SPEAKER_01
I m watching them play very
10
SPEAKER_01
kindly to one another, that generally makes me so happy and I don t care.
10
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
10
SPEAKER_01
Ooh, that s so scary to me.
10
SPEAKER_01
So how do you delineate between when like, I m in a bad mood or I have anxiety about this thing versus I am in a depressive phase right now?
10
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
10
SPEAKER_00
For me, everything s a bit dulled.
10
SPEAKER_01
Are you a little disassociated?
10
SPEAKER_01
Because that was the thing my mom s last spell, where she, I observed it, it was very clear to me, and she didn t tell me.
10
SPEAKER_01
She s like, she feels like she s at places with people, but she s in a bubble.
10
SPEAKER_01
They re all participating and she s watching it, but it s having none of the mirror neurotic effects for her.
10
SPEAKER_00
Sure, I think that s very common.
10
SPEAKER_00
And I, yeah, I can relate to that a little bit as probably being part of mine.
10
SPEAKER_00
Also, mine manifests a lot, and I just stop caring at all about anything.
10
SPEAKER_00
Something like good is happening, and I can, I understand it s good.
10
SPEAKER_01
Right, but you don t care.
10
SPEAKER_00
But I don t feel it.
10
SPEAKER_01
Yeah.
10
SPEAKER_00
And there s been some overwhelm.
10
SPEAKER_00
You know, my therapist was saying, you ve also been really, maybe you re just recharging.
10
SPEAKER_01
I think, okay, so I am sick.
10
SPEAKER_00
Oh no.
10
SPEAKER_01
Delta got me.
10
SPEAKER_01
We snuggle like crazy snuggle bugs, which is totally worth it.
10
SPEAKER_01
It did occur to me this last week.
10
SPEAKER_01
So this last week I too have been kind of just a little under the weather, a little sad, a little anxiety ridden.
10
SPEAKER_01
And I did have to acknowledge like, you and I were on this incredible tornado of stimuli.
10
SPEAKER_00
We were, yeah.
10
SPEAKER_01
Like fucking India straight into Austin, like so fun.
10
SPEAKER_00
Yes.
10
SPEAKER_01
Part of me was like, you were up for like two weeks.
10
SPEAKER_01
Totally.
10
SPEAKER_01
And the body is like searching for homeostasis.
10
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
10
SPEAKER_01
So it s dropped you a bit and you re just gonna have to weather this and then it ll level off.
10
SPEAKER_01
So part of me thinks that s what s going on with me.
10
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, that probably is right.
10
SPEAKER_00
And there s stressors, there s real stressors right now.
10
SPEAKER_00
So, you know, I, yeah.
10
SPEAKER_01
So I fucking skipped Easter, okay?
10
SPEAKER_01
Sue me.
10
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, so sue me.
10
SPEAKER_01
So sue me.
10
SPEAKER_00
I also, I don t think I want to say.
10
SPEAKER_00
I don t want to say, because everyone jumps on this when I say, and I don t like it.
10
SPEAKER_00
Okay.
10
SPEAKER_00
I do feel like I m self-medicating a little bit.
10
SPEAKER_01
With booze?
10
SPEAKER_00
Yes.
10
SPEAKER_01
Uh-huh.
10
SPEAKER_00
So yeah.
10
SPEAKER_00
So it s probably time for me to like, I am going to New York.
10
SPEAKER_00
I planned that trip.
10
SPEAKER_00
And I kind of feel like when I get back from that, I need like, yeah, I need a break.
10
SPEAKER_01
Okay.
10
SPEAKER_01
So similarly, I ve been having way more caffeine than I should.
10
SPEAKER_01
Which of course then fucks up my sleep even worse.
10
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
10
SPEAKER_01
So then it becomes the same probably cycle urine just on the opposite.
10
SPEAKER_00
Exactly.
10
SPEAKER_01
Yeah.
10
SPEAKER_01
Then I m tired.
10
SPEAKER_01
So then I drink more caffeine.
10
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
10
SPEAKER_01
I drink it later.
10
SPEAKER_01
And then I wake up 12 times in the night.
10
SPEAKER_01
Yeah.
10
SPEAKER_01
And then the next day, yes.
10
SPEAKER_01
So I weirdly, flying home yesterday, I was like, okay, you re gonna have one Diet Coke on that airplane and then we re done for the day.
10
SPEAKER_00
Did you do it?
10
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, I succeeded at that.
10
SPEAKER_00
Oh, good job.
10
SPEAKER_01
But then today I went, I ve already gone nuts.
10
SPEAKER_01
Yeah.
10
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
10
SPEAKER_00
It s hard.
10
SPEAKER_00
God.
10
SPEAKER_01
What if this whole thing was an April Fool s joke?
10
SPEAKER_00
And what if we were like, no, just kidding.
10
SPEAKER_01
We re so happy.
10
SPEAKER_01
Anyway, so Manny was at the Easter party.
10
SPEAKER_01
She found the golden egg.
10
SPEAKER_01
No one got mad.
10
SPEAKER_00
No.
10
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, it s fine.
10
SPEAKER_00
It s life.
10
SPEAKER_00
There s ups and downs.
10
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
10
SPEAKER_01
That s the way it is.
10
SPEAKER_00
Nothing bad is happening.
10
SPEAKER_01
When you get some highs, you get some lows.
10
SPEAKER_00
Anywho, so I, this weekend, I went to Anthony and Allison s.
10
SPEAKER_00
Well, and then this is why I don t think I m that depressed because I did not really want to go because I was feeling reclusive.
10
SPEAKER_01
Uh-huh.
10
SPEAKER_01
Grouchy?
10
SPEAKER_00
I wasn t grouchy, I was just like... Lethargic?
10
SPEAKER_00
What it is, is it takes so much mental energy for me to do a thing that normally I want to do.
10
SPEAKER_01
Right, right.
10
SPEAKER_00
So, and yeah, Anthony, Allison, Rachel, our friend Brooks, it was so fun.
10
SPEAKER_00
We were laughing so hard.
10
SPEAKER_00
We played this game, new game,
10
SPEAKER_00
Well, I don t think it s new, but it s called MTV something.
10
SPEAKER_00
And you have cards with artists on them, song artists, musical artists.
10
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, musicians.
10
SPEAKER_00
And you have to put them in categories and get your team to guess.
10
SPEAKER_00
Kind of like humdinger on the Ellen game, on that game.
10
SPEAKER_00
But one of them is one word, one is you say the lyrics, and then the other is humming.
10
SPEAKER_00
Anyway, it was so funny.
10
SPEAKER_00
I did an actual spit take.
10
SPEAKER_01
You did.
10
SPEAKER_00
But it wasn t really a spit take.
10
SPEAKER_00
It was more like I had to just spit the water on the floor.
10
SPEAKER_01
Okay.
10
SPEAKER_00
Because it was, I mean it was gonna be a big spray.
10
SPEAKER_00
Yes, it was like happening, but I just like opened my mouth and the water flew out.
10
SPEAKER_01
So it was more of a spit drool.
10
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
10
SPEAKER_01
Or a drool take.
10
SPEAKER_00
But.
10
SPEAKER_01
What was the joke?
10
SPEAKER_00
It was- Someone s performance.
10
SPEAKER_00
Yes.
10
SPEAKER_00
But it was so, what a weird sensation to know you can t swallow the water.
10
SPEAKER_01
Have you ever peed your pants laughing?
10
SPEAKER_00
No.
10
SPEAKER_01
I know, I envy that.
10
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, I bet it s a similar thing.
10
SPEAKER_01
Yeah.
10
SPEAKER_00
Where you re shocked it s happening.
10
SPEAKER_01
My mom will pee her pants once or twice a year laughing.
10
SPEAKER_00
And how much pee?
10
SPEAKER_01
Oh boy, I didn t ask.
10
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, I don t know if it s some spotting or if it s a full.
10
SPEAKER_00
Is it just like incontinence, like a little comes out?
10
SPEAKER_01
Or a full urination, like a pint glass.
10
SPEAKER_00
I bet it s more like a full because you have no control, so it s just flooding.
10
SPEAKER_01
Look, and I ve pooped my pants a hundred times at this point in my life, and for whatever reason that feels so familiar to me,
10
SPEAKER_01
The notion of peeing like a pint glass in my pants seems crazy.
10
SPEAKER_01
Like, I think I d rather poop my pants.
10
SPEAKER_01
How about you, Rob?
10
SPEAKER_01
No, I don t pee.
10
SPEAKER_01
No, what would you rather do?
10
SPEAKER_00
Is he in public?
10
SPEAKER_01
He s mowing the grass, I guess.
10
SPEAKER_00
Oh.
10
SPEAKER_01
I think I d rather pee still.
10
SPEAKER_01
Okay, yeah.
10
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, it s less toxins.
10
SPEAKER_00
Actually, probably not.
10
SPEAKER_00
But it s just, everyone knows it s less gross.
10
SPEAKER_00
It s less of a cleanup.
10
SPEAKER_00
But kinda not really, you still have to, yeah.
10
SPEAKER_00
But you don t have to throw out the underwear.
10
SPEAKER_01
Right, it s so visible though.
10
SPEAKER_01
The whole front is just.
10
SPEAKER_00
I feel like I might pick.
10
SPEAKER_01
Poodie?
10
SPEAKER_01
Although you got smell to contend with.
10
SPEAKER_00
Smell, yeah, absolutely not.
10
SPEAKER_00
Full pint is a lot though.
10
SPEAKER_01
It s a lot, yeah.
10
SPEAKER_00
But I don t pee a full pint.
10
SPEAKER_01
Oh my God.
10
SPEAKER_01
I hate to put her on blast, but I sat next to Lincoln on the airplane.
10
SPEAKER_01
Something, the moon, Aries is in Pisces, something.
10
SPEAKER_01
This started going to Disneyland on her birthday on Wednesday.
10
SPEAKER_01
She has been spilling water several times a day on herself and not intentionally.
10
SPEAKER_01
She s just become Butterfingers.
10
SPEAKER_00
But she is Pisces and that is a water sign.
10
SPEAKER_00
And it is Mercury is about to be in retrograde or is, I forget.
10
SPEAKER_01
Okay.
10
SPEAKER_00
Wow.
10
SPEAKER_01
She spilled on the plane ride yesterday.
10
SPEAKER_01
She spilled the Diet Coke all over me.
10
SPEAKER_00
Oh.
10
SPEAKER_01
The brand new one.
10
SPEAKER_01
Ice everything.
10
SPEAKER_01
I m wearing seersucker pants and a white shirt.
10
SPEAKER_01
Oh my God.
10
SPEAKER_01
So I m just covered in brown Diet Coke.
10
SPEAKER_00
Oh.
10
SPEAKER_01
She then spilled three waters on herself.
10
SPEAKER_00
What?
10
SPEAKER_01
She also went to the bathroom nine times.
10
SPEAKER_01
I think she s doing coke.
10
SPEAKER_00
No, no.
10
SPEAKER_00
You know what it is.
10
SPEAKER_00
Hormones.
10
SPEAKER_01
Hormones.
10
SPEAKER_01
I was like, what is going on?
10
SPEAKER_01
I had to get up so many times to let her out of the bathroom, plus all the spilling.
10
SPEAKER_00
Oh my God.
10
SPEAKER_01
It was a wild ride home.
10
SPEAKER_01
It was wild.
10
SPEAKER_00
It is that, because clumsiness can happen before periods.
10
SPEAKER_00
Maybe she s about to start a period.
10
SPEAKER_01
Don t.
10
SPEAKER_00
You hate that?
10
SPEAKER_01
I feel like it s early.
10
SPEAKER_01
I m not weirded out by her having her period, obviously.
10
SPEAKER_01
But from what I can hear from every woman I know, they don t enjoy their period.
10
SPEAKER_01
So I would, of course, wish for her for it to happen as late as possible.
10
SPEAKER_00
But you also don t want to be, I mean, you can be whatever you want.
10
SPEAKER_00
You can, well, you can t actually, you can t pick this, but whenever it happens is great.
10
SPEAKER_00
I do think people who start so late, they have a ton of anxiety.
10
SPEAKER_00
They get self-conscious.
10
SPEAKER_00
Yes.
10
SPEAKER_01
Yeah.
10
SPEAKER_01
So then the middle for her.
10
SPEAKER_00
You want 12 or 13?
10
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, eighth grade maybe?
10
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, 13, 14.
10
SPEAKER_01
Obviously, when you go into high school, I feel like that would be the bigger deal, socially.
10
SPEAKER_01
She ll be going to an all-girls school.
10
SPEAKER_00
Even more.
10
SPEAKER_01
You think?
10
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
10
SPEAKER_01
Okay.
10
SPEAKER_00
Because then it s like, all you have are the girls and their periods, and you have to be like, and you bring your tampon even though you don t need it.
10
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, people have their tampons on their desk, they re changing tampons in the classroom, all girls.
10
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, at all-girls school, they do that.
10
SPEAKER_01
This is the freedom of it.
11
SPEAKER_00
I would say I think something s brewing.
11
SPEAKER_00
That s fun.
11
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
11
SPEAKER_00
She did give me a tiny bit of attitude in there.
11
SPEAKER_00
I actually thought it.
11
SPEAKER_00
You clocked it.
11
SPEAKER_00
Uh-huh.
11
SPEAKER_00
And I was like, oh, Lincoln has a little bit of an attitude today.
11
SPEAKER_00
But I met her with a little bit of a toot back, so it was fine.
11
SPEAKER_01
Okay, great.
11
SPEAKER_01
She and I are in an interesting phase that s really challenging.
11
SPEAKER_01
because we re so similar.
11
SPEAKER_00
And maybe this though, like she s probably getting angsty.
11
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, it s so heartbreaking.
11
SPEAKER_01
It really bums me out.
11
SPEAKER_01
Like when it s just so easy for so long, you re best friends and then, and I get it.
11
SPEAKER_01
I was so unforgiving of my dad because we were so similar.
11
SPEAKER_01
And when you put two people whose reaction to being overwhelmed by emotion is the same, like retreat, I just want to get out of here.
11
SPEAKER_01
It s just a bad combo.
11
SPEAKER_01
And I m like, how do I not be my dad in this situation?
11
SPEAKER_01
But I get hurt, I actually get hurt.
11
SPEAKER_01
I know, it hurts your feelings.
11
SPEAKER_01
Which is new.
11
SPEAKER_00
I know.
11
SPEAKER_01
I didn t have that when they were little, but I m starting to have it where I m hurt.
11
SPEAKER_00
I know.
11
SPEAKER_00
And I understand, like I really, really do understand.
11
SPEAKER_01
And you gotta be an adult.
11
SPEAKER_00
I think you are gonna have to adjust your expectations.
11
SPEAKER_01
I know, I know.
11
SPEAKER_01
I know like by day three of this,
11
SPEAKER_01
I m like starting to really consider fuck man.
11
SPEAKER_01
She s going to write me off.
11
SPEAKER_01
Just like I wrote my dad off like that.
11
SPEAKER_01
We re going to have this unavoidable thing.
11
SPEAKER_01
My dad and I had, and I guess started getting really depressed about that.
11
SPEAKER_01
And then after three days of thinking that way, I, to your point, I was like,
11
SPEAKER_01
You re going to have to grow.
11
SPEAKER_01
One of you is going to have to do something miraculous in this situation and you re 49, so it s going to be you.
11
SPEAKER_00
And she s not doing anything that everyone else isn t doing.
11
SPEAKER_00
She s doing exactly what everyone her age is doing.
11
SPEAKER_01
I m not at all angry at her.
11
SPEAKER_01
I m just hurt by the dynamic.
11
SPEAKER_00
I think I m just trying to ease your, it s not like- I shouldn t take it personal.
11
SPEAKER_00
Exactly, it s not that she s gonna write you off at all.
11
SPEAKER_00
She s just being a normal preteen.
11
SPEAKER_01
Yes, and it just so happens that she and Kristen have a very good symbiotic geometry to their personality types that really- Works.
11
SPEAKER_01
Kristen s the perfect fit for that.
11
SPEAKER_01
As Kristen is so good with me when I m starting to retreat, because my reaction is when I get overwhelmed, I just will disappear.
11
SPEAKER_01
I ll be like, you know what?
11
SPEAKER_01
I ll be happier sitting by myself in a room.
11
SPEAKER_00
Sound cancelling headphones.
11
SPEAKER_01
Yeah.
11
SPEAKER_01
So to people that that s their nature is just, it s tricky.
11
SPEAKER_00
It is, but also can you try to reframe it in that, you know, sometimes you have to wear sound canceling headphones and two days later you re fine.
11
SPEAKER_01
Yes.
11
SPEAKER_00
Maybe just let her do that because she ll come out of it the way you do.
11
SPEAKER_01
Yeah.
11
SPEAKER_01
Yeah.
11
SPEAKER_01
So I m going to have to, I guess maybe you get to an age where, and I don t think this, I don t think I m perfect.
11
SPEAKER_01
I think I have a lot of stuff to work on.
11
SPEAKER_00
Everyone does.
11
SPEAKER_01
But the same time you do get to 49, I m like, I ve figured out most of my big demons.
11
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
11
SPEAKER_01
I know how to be at peace with most people pretty easily now, and I m not having to call and apologize when I leave parties the next day.
11
SPEAKER_01
You know, whatever.
11
SPEAKER_01
I had not anticipated we still have another big, we re gonna have to change yet again.
11
SPEAKER_01
Yeah.
11
SPEAKER_01
Pretty profoundly.
11
SPEAKER_01
Yeah.
11
SPEAKER_01
And I m going to have to do that, and I have to learn how to do that, and it s interesting.
11
SPEAKER_01
And I will do it for her just like you would do it for anyone you love.
11
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, you will.
11
SPEAKER_00
So it s probably a good thing.
11
SPEAKER_01
Yeah.
11
SPEAKER_01
I also think I m, it s made me go back and play out some of these things I had with my dad over the years, you know, big blowouts we had or cause we, he and I had periods where we didn t talk for a year when I was an adult.
11
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
11
SPEAKER_01
And, um,
11
SPEAKER_01
Even like when I lived with him in ninth and 10th grade, and then we got in this huge fight midway through 10th grade.
11
SPEAKER_01
And then I moved out and I didn t talk to him for maybe a year in 10th grade.
11
SPEAKER_01
But going back in my mind.
11
SPEAKER_01
I m starting to imagine, well, A, I m starting to realize I was way more difficult than I think I acknowledged.
11
SPEAKER_01
And that he was way more patient for some duration.
11
SPEAKER_01
I think he was kind of patient with me.
11
SPEAKER_01
And then he just reached a point like I do where I get so hurt that I go, well, then fuck you and fuck everyone.
11
SPEAKER_01
Like you re hurting me too much.
11
SPEAKER_01
So now I m going to go protect myself.
11
SPEAKER_00
Interesting.
11
SPEAKER_01
And I just, it s interesting.
11
SPEAKER_01
I m now kind of replaying a lot of these memories I have that were so cut and dry clear for me that he was an asshole and I was in the right.
11
SPEAKER_01
And now I think, no, he and I are both very sensitive.
11
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
11
SPEAKER_01
And the way we would feel hurt was very similar.
11
SPEAKER_00
And in so many ways we- But you do wish, I mean, maybe you don t, but I do when I hear this story.
11
SPEAKER_00
It s sad that his feelings were hurt and that he is hypersensitive, but I wish he could have been a dad then.
11
SPEAKER_00
And like- Yeah, yeah.
11
SPEAKER_00
Being a dad is not just being fun.
11
SPEAKER_00
It s, well, I don t care if you re mad.
11
SPEAKER_00
I m your dad.
11
SPEAKER_00
I m not like- Yeah.
11
SPEAKER_00
That s it.
11
SPEAKER_01
And I m not gonna speak for her, but for me, I think the reality, this is terrible, the reality of how hard it is for me to not get my way or do things the way I think they re supposed to be done.
11
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
11
SPEAKER_01
is so embarrassing.
11
SPEAKER_00
And- You mean you think it s embarrassing to her?
11
SPEAKER_01
For me, I m just saying, when I go through my life, she s just showing me a lot about myself.
11
SPEAKER_00
Oh, oh, oh, okay.
11
SPEAKER_01
And it s really important to me that people think my ideas are good.
11
SPEAKER_00
Right.
11
SPEAKER_01
And that I m adult and I m grown up and I m not thinking back on all the times.
11
SPEAKER_01
And I think like, yeah, I think when I didn t get my way or things didn t, I think I was like- Tough.
11
SPEAKER_01
Yeah.
11
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
11
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, and I think I still am.
11
SPEAKER_01
Yeah.
11
SPEAKER_00
We all have our things.
11
SPEAKER_01
I know you just think you do the four-step in the program, you think you get a handle on all your character defects, and oh, here they are, and always gotta work on these, and then no.
11
SPEAKER_01
As life goes on, you re like, no, I have more.
11
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
11
SPEAKER_01
Yeah.
11
SPEAKER_00
I mean, it s good to be aware of it and not give up on it, not like, I m old, so who cares?
11
SPEAKER_01
Right.
11
SPEAKER_00
Also, I got in horrific fights with my mom.
11
SPEAKER_00
And I have no, I ve like, we were just talking about one on synced that I like just sort of barely remember.
11
SPEAKER_00
Like you don t remember.
11
SPEAKER_01
Yeah.
11
SPEAKER_00
Unless, I mean, I think the parent is the defining factor in whether or not that s lasting.
11
SPEAKER_01
Yep, yes, I agree.
11
SPEAKER_01
As we just said, I m going to have to figure this out.
11
SPEAKER_01
I can t do what my dad didn t allow years to go by sometimes without talking to Lincoln, that would be.
11
SPEAKER_00
But also there s just like, it s so weird to be a grownup and know that we re, grownups are just actually just kids.
11
SPEAKER_00
Kids.
11
SPEAKER_00
It s so scary.
11
SPEAKER_01
I know.
11
SPEAKER_00
But all to say, I think you guys are gonna be just fine.
11
SPEAKER_01
We had a beautiful heart-to-heart in the middle of the trip.
11
SPEAKER_00
Also, yeah, you guys are such good communicators.
11
SPEAKER_00
I don t think anyone is gonna have big problems.
11
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
11
SPEAKER_00
What does Krista do?
11
SPEAKER_01
Well, she s got a lot on her plate.
11
SPEAKER_00
Well, I know, that s what I m saying.
11
SPEAKER_00
How does she handle it?
11
SPEAKER_01
Oh my God, I feel so bad for her.
11
SPEAKER_01
She s got these two people that like they ve heard each other s feelings and they both are the type to then just retreat for good.
11
SPEAKER_01
And we re both so defensive and sensitive that she s got to gently tell Lincoln how to
11
SPEAKER_01
do better and she s got to gently tell me how to do better and not, and not make everyone.
11
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
11
SPEAKER_00
She s pretty masterful.
11
SPEAKER_01
God bless her.
11
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
11
SPEAKER_01
But so yeah, she comes in at some point and she s like, you know, I talked to Lincoln and this and this, and I think, you know, perhaps you should, you know, she just kind of gently lays out and then I get defensive and then she leaves and then about a half hour later I hear what she said.
11
SPEAKER_01
Yeah.
11
SPEAKER_01
And then I acknowledge that, yeah, that s true.
11
SPEAKER_01
Yeah.
11
SPEAKER_01
And then I ve got to like, but it is, it s back to that super communicators book.
11
SPEAKER_01
Doohick, I m in a zone of my brain that has nothing to do with logic.
11
SPEAKER_01
You know, I m like in an emotionally hurt.
11
SPEAKER_00
It s hard.
11
SPEAKER_00
I struggle with how to think about this because I think like you want your kids to understand that their words, actions have repercussions.
11
SPEAKER_00
Right.
11
SPEAKER_00
Like you want them to know that when they are saying something, doing something horrible to you, that it hurts.
11
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
11
SPEAKER_00
So they shouldn t do that.
11
SPEAKER_00
But also I m a very strong believer in
11
SPEAKER_00
kids should never, ever, ever have to regulate their parents  emotions.
11
SPEAKER_01
Agreed.
11
SPEAKER_00
So it s this, it s strange.
11
SPEAKER_00
I don t even know how, I don t know.
11
SPEAKER_01
Well, I think it is the tightrope that all these things are, which is they re not black or white.
11
SPEAKER_01
It s not that the parent has to
12
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to be stoic and not human.
12
SPEAKER_01
I don t know that that s either great.
12
SPEAKER_00
I know.
12
SPEAKER_01
And you re right, children shouldn t be regulating adults.
12
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
12
SPEAKER_01
So there s some zone in there that you re aiming for and you fuck up.
12
SPEAKER_01
You go on one side of the line and then, you know.
12
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, it s hard.
12
SPEAKER_00
It is.
12
SPEAKER_00
Okay, couple facts for Jonah.
12
SPEAKER_01
Jonah Nolan, my favorite show.
12
SPEAKER_00
So fun.
12
SPEAKER_01
Favorite show, truly.
12
SPEAKER_01
I only got four and I m like dying to get the other four.
12
SPEAKER_01
He told me he was going to get me the other four and then he went to India.
12
SPEAKER_00
He got busy.
12
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
12
SPEAKER_00
He was, I liked him so much.
12
SPEAKER_01
Me too.
12
SPEAKER_00
So funny how different, well, we don t know Chris, so maybe they aren t different, but their personas are so different.
12
SPEAKER_01
Yes, their exteriors.
12
SPEAKER_00
Okay, let s see.
12
SPEAKER_00
So the Mitsubishi that bombed Pearl Harbor, the Zero Fighter, there is, as you said, there s a rumor that it s Howard Hughes s design.
12
SPEAKER_00
There s a lot saying that s not true.
12
SPEAKER_01
Oh, really?
12
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
12
SPEAKER_01
Okay.
12
SPEAKER_00
But it is a rumor.
12
SPEAKER_01
Okay.
12
SPEAKER_01
I read it in a Howard Hughes book.
12
SPEAKER_00
I m seeing a lot that says that s not true.
12
SPEAKER_00
That s bullshit.
12
SPEAKER_00
And that there s also a English plane that also says, was the zero.
12
SPEAKER_01
Oh, okay.
12
SPEAKER_00
There s a few that take credit for it.
12
SPEAKER_01
Okay.
12
SPEAKER_00
Anywho.
12
SPEAKER_00
So, okay, we were talking about when you had short-term amnesia.
12
SPEAKER_00
And you said you think short-term is in a different area than long-term.
12
SPEAKER_00
I think the short-term is in the hippocampus, I m pretty sure.
12
SPEAKER_00
And then, wait, no, this says short-term working memory relies mostly on the prefrontal cortex.
12
SPEAKER_01
which to me would make sense.
12
SPEAKER_01
Cause my theory was just like the brain swells, that s part of the concussion and now it s pushing up against your cranium.
12
SPEAKER_01
And so my thought is just like whatever s on the exterior, the posterior most part of your brain is getting like pushed and manipulated.
12
SPEAKER_01
So maybe as opposed to if your short term is like in the middle of your brain.
12
SPEAKER_00
Now this is the emotional aspects of memories are stored separately in the amygdala.
12
SPEAKER_00
Um,
12
SPEAKER_01
That s the problem.
12
SPEAKER_01
Memories are like, they re drawn from a bunch of different locations, I think.
12
SPEAKER_01
I should know this insight now because that book I m reading.
12
SPEAKER_00
Oh yeah.
12
SPEAKER_00
They re talking about it.
12
SPEAKER_01
It s just so fascinating why and how we re intelligent.
12
SPEAKER_00
I know.
12
SPEAKER_00
I do want to read it.
12
SPEAKER_00
That wasn t great factually.
12
SPEAKER_00
But the prefrontal cortex is at the front.
12
SPEAKER_00
So I guess that would make sense.
12
SPEAKER_01
And I hit the front of my face is where the concussion stemmed from.
12
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
12
SPEAKER_00
It s just so weird that it was only, that it was like long enough.
12
SPEAKER_00
A few years.
12
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
12
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I know.
12
SPEAKER_01
It s really weird.
12
SPEAKER_01
And yet I knew some things that may go to the point of like the memories are emotional.
12
SPEAKER_01
So like,
12
SPEAKER_01
The weird part of that story to me, the most inexplicable part, is that I didn t know I had graduated UCLA, got into the Sunday company, or was on Punk d.
12
SPEAKER_01
But I knew that I was supposed to be sober.
12
SPEAKER_00
Oh, really?
12
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, like I had at that point had quit drinking for a year, but I was doing drugs.
12
SPEAKER_01
But I knew I shouldn t drink.
12
SPEAKER_01
So I had this big thing I shouldn t drink.
12
SPEAKER_01
And I kept trying to get Bree s attention separately from my mom, who was driving.
12
SPEAKER_01
And I m like, did I drink?
12
SPEAKER_01
I m trying to find out if I drank and that s why my brain s fucked up.
12
SPEAKER_01
So, so I don t, isn t that weird?
12
SPEAKER_01
Like I knew I wasn t supposed to drink and my assumption was this was drinking related yet.
12
SPEAKER_01
I hadn t tried to quit drinking.
12
SPEAKER_01
Huh.
12
SPEAKER_01
Back.
12
SPEAKER_00
Two years before or whatever.
12
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, although I guess I started really trying to quit drinking my senior year of college in 2000.
12
SPEAKER_01
I didn t drink my last semester, and then I drank just when I went to Italy with Aaron and those guys.
12
SPEAKER_00
Well, also maybe just because drinking had been in your life, so you knew.
12
SPEAKER_01
I already knew it was no good for me.
12
SPEAKER_00
Right, you knew you were drinking excessively.
12
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, and I got hurt a lot when I drank.
12
SPEAKER_01
But I knew I wasn t, like, I knew I had quit.
12
SPEAKER_00
It s so weird.
12
SPEAKER_00
But one time, are you sure you knew you had quit?
12
SPEAKER_00
Because Jess tells a story of you guys  early days where you told him, like, well, no, I m gonna have to quit this at some point.
12
SPEAKER_00
Like you had already known for a long time, way before you decided to get sober, that sobriety was gonna be in your future.
12
SPEAKER_01
For sure, but what I m saying is I knew in that amnesia that I was sober.
12
SPEAKER_01
Not that I was going to get sober.
12
SPEAKER_01
I knew I, like when I was asking, I was like, did I drink again?
12
SPEAKER_01
Like, did I break my sobriety?
12
SPEAKER_00
It s weird.
12
SPEAKER_01
It s very weird.
12
SPEAKER_00
Okay, one thing I thought was fun is that Christopher Nolan has said the line in The Dark Knight, you either die a hero or you live long enough to see yourself become the villain.
12
SPEAKER_00
He says he s plagued by that because he didn t write it because Jonah wrote it.
12
SPEAKER_01
Oh, really?
12
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
12
SPEAKER_01
Oh, that s cute that he gives him credit for that.
12
SPEAKER_01
Yeah.
12
SPEAKER_01
I guess he gets enough credit, doesn t he?
12
SPEAKER_00
I mean, he should get credit if he wrote the big line from the movie.
12
SPEAKER_01
Oh yeah, I m just saying, I was saying it was very generous to go out in public and just clear that up.
12
SPEAKER_01
But then I was remembering that Christopher Nolan gets quite a bit of praise.
12
SPEAKER_01
He does.
12
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, his cup s probably full.
12
SPEAKER_00
That s true.
12
SPEAKER_01
I ve certainly gotten more generous as my cup has gotten fuller.
12
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, me too.
12
SPEAKER_00
Okay, Oppenheimer, we said changed the world, then I was looking at who else, who else could we say changed the world?
12
SPEAKER_00
And there s a list of 100.
12
SPEAKER_00
Oh, wow.
12
SPEAKER_00
I don t know if.
12
SPEAKER_01
Wanna do the top 10?
12
SPEAKER_00
Sure, but I don t think they re in order.
12
SPEAKER_01
Are they alphabetical?
12
SPEAKER_00
They re just random.
12
SPEAKER_00
But Johann Gutenberg.
12
SPEAKER_01
Oh, the Bible, printing the Bible.
12
SPEAKER_00
Printing, Newton.
12
SPEAKER_01
Isaac Newton.
12
SPEAKER_00
Physics.
12
SPEAKER_00
Martin Luther.
12
SPEAKER_00
Which one?
12
SPEAKER_00
Martin Luther.
12
SPEAKER_00
Protestant Reformation.
12
SPEAKER_00
Darwin.
12
SPEAKER_00
Shakespeare.
12
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Okay, sure.
12
SPEAKER_00
Columbus.
12
SPEAKER_00
Christopher Columbus.
12
SPEAKER_01
Discovering the New World.
12
SPEAKER_01
Asterix.
12
SPEAKER_00
Exactly.
12
SPEAKER_00
Karl Marx, which that s interesting that he s on here.
12
SPEAKER_00
I mean, he did.
12
SPEAKER_00
Big time.
12
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The whole Cold War is a result of one book.
12
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, you re right.
12
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, that s nuts.
12
SPEAKER_01
Did you watch the octopus murders conspiracy show on Netflix?
12
SPEAKER_01
Anyone watch that?
12
SPEAKER_00
My octopus teacher?
12
SPEAKER_01
Nope, but that is also on Netflix.
12
SPEAKER_01
This is, um, I think there s a, maybe even a series called American conspiracies and this is the octopus murders.
12
SPEAKER_00
No, what is it?
12
SPEAKER_01
It s four parts and it s a great demonstration of how tricky this stuff is because some of it s true and some of it s not like these really complex conspiracy theories where there is a lot of it that s true.
12
SPEAKER_01
And then figuring out what parts are not true.
12
SPEAKER_01
It s driven.
12
SPEAKER_01
A couple different journalists mad.
12
SPEAKER_01
This case.
12
SPEAKER_00
What is it?
12
SPEAKER_01
So it starts with a man Bill something who created software and he was going to digitize.
12
SPEAKER_00
Bill something that created software.
12
SPEAKER_00
Not Gates.
12
SPEAKER_01
He created this software that was going to allow
12
SPEAKER_01
some law enforcement agency to digitize all their records.
12
SPEAKER_01
And then they were going to be able to cross-reference stuff.
12
SPEAKER_01
And it was a three-year contract.
12
SPEAKER_01
And a year into it, the Department of Defense stopped paying him.
12
SPEAKER_01
So they owed him like $3 million.
12
SPEAKER_01
He sued to get the money.
12
SPEAKER_01
They would not pay.
12
SPEAKER_01
There were many court cases.
12
SPEAKER_01
then some conspiracy theories, then some people came out and said that software that he created was actually stolen by the Department of Defense, given to this other company because it was great software and they figured out how to make a backdoor to it and they sold it to all the people around the world, the governments.
12
SPEAKER_01
Now, again, this stuff is totally substantiated and there s records of Israel running this software, both allies and enemies.
12
SPEAKER_01
So that when they digitized everything, the CIA would be able to go in through this back door and read all of their records.
12
SPEAKER_01
So that makes total sense why they stopped paying him.
12
SPEAKER_01
And then they actually won the court case.
12
SPEAKER_01
The judge awarded them $6.8 million.
12
SPEAKER_01
Then, that s just, that s like episode one.
12
SPEAKER_01
And then you come to find out the person who ended up owning that software was good friends with Ronald Reagan, and they were trying to get this backdoor into all their Cold War enemies.
12
SPEAKER_01
And then, well, then it was called an Indian reservation, Cabazon, here in California, where because they have immunity, the CIA was running all these programs out of there with gangsters, with drugs, the Contra affair, selling guns to fighters against all these communist regimes.
12
SPEAKER_01
And then, so this thing that starts with just the software thing grows into this enormous
12
SPEAKER_01
Octopus theory and all these different people that were killed and all these different things that were happening in the 80s for the Cold War as a result of that Yes, but of course some of it is bullshit and some of its real
13
SPEAKER_00
and the journalist ends up dying.
13
SPEAKER_01
Spoiler.
13
SPEAKER_00
That s right away, you ll find that out.
13
SPEAKER_00
And really you re trying to figure out throughout the whole thing, did this person really kill themselves as the police said, or were they murdered as they were getting close?
13
SPEAKER_00
It s so wild.
13
SPEAKER_00
And I was thinking how tricky these things are when you get really into them.
13
SPEAKER_00
They do change your worldview.
13
SPEAKER_00
So like for some of them on the outside, I m looking at it going like, that s completely implausible.
13
SPEAKER_00
Then the other stuff I m like, wow, wow, they definitely did that.
13
SPEAKER_00
And of course they did it.
13
SPEAKER_00
When they thought that the,
13
SPEAKER_00
future depended on them beating the communists, of course they would do anything.
13
SPEAKER_00
And in some weird way, they should.
13
SPEAKER_01
Um, no, not anything.
13
SPEAKER_01
There was so much panic around communism.
13
SPEAKER_00
Well, I don t think it was panic.
13
SPEAKER_00
If you look at all these regimes, the Khmer Rouge, Stalin, Stalin killed 80 million people.
13
SPEAKER_01
A lot of it s real and it was obviously, like McCarthyism and all that, that was so crazy.
13
SPEAKER_01
Even in Oppenheimer, ding, ding, ding.
13
SPEAKER_00
That was insane.
13
SPEAKER_00
Inherent in a Marxist system or a communist system, you have centralized control of all things.
13
SPEAKER_01
Yeah.
13
SPEAKER_00
Right.
13
SPEAKER_00
And when you have centralized control of all things, you have people with enormous power.
13
SPEAKER_00
Sure.
13
SPEAKER_00
They control the media.
13
SPEAKER_00
And just unfortunately, we don t have a successful example of a communist experiment that s been run.
13
SPEAKER_01
Yeah.
13
SPEAKER_01
I m not saying we should adopt that, but I think the fear around it.
13
SPEAKER_00
Well, I just think we were righteous in fighting that.
13
SPEAKER_00
Because all it did is empower very few people, and they became increasingly less democratic.
13
SPEAKER_00
Most of them all became totalitarian regimes.
13
SPEAKER_00
So I think we were right to fight it.
13
SPEAKER_00
And it was an existential threat.
13
SPEAKER_00
And so when you re talking about someone has a decision to kill 10 people, let s just say,
13
SPEAKER_00
to prevent this thing that s spreading around the world and we ll end in a totalitarian regime.
13
SPEAKER_00
Like, I can see where you re like, yeah, some nasty work has to be done for the greater good.
13
SPEAKER_01
But you don t think that about preventing Trump from becoming president.
13
SPEAKER_00
Well, what I think is that, yeah, this is where you and I disagree a little bit, which is like, I believe in democracy.
13
SPEAKER_00
That s my highest principle.
13
SPEAKER_00
And I can also acknowledge that I m not always going to be in the majority of a democracy, but I think a democracy is the best option and it has to be pure.
13
SPEAKER_00
So I think
13
SPEAKER_00
Unfortunate for me, if the majority of the country wants a president I don t want, I don t think I should be able to cheat to prevent that from happening.
13
SPEAKER_00
I think it s a democracy.
13
SPEAKER_01
You can t say that.
13
SPEAKER_01
There is an existential crisis when it s him.
13
SPEAKER_00
Well, we had him for four years and it didn t.
13
SPEAKER_01
And do you want to go back to that?
13
SPEAKER_01
It was a fucking nightmare every day, every day.
13
SPEAKER_01
And this would be worse.
13
SPEAKER_00
All I m saying is I believe in democracy above all my own personal things.
13
SPEAKER_00
And unfortunately, if the majority of the people want a certain person to be president, I respect that.
13
SPEAKER_00
I don t like it, but I respect it.
13
SPEAKER_00
And I don t think you can dismantle a democracy because you disagree with the outcome.
13
SPEAKER_00
That s where you and I differ a little bit.
13
SPEAKER_00
Because I remember last election, I said, if you can cheat, would you?
13
SPEAKER_00
And you said, yeah.
13
SPEAKER_00
and which I m not judgmental of, we have, you and I have different priorities of our principles.
13
SPEAKER_00
I would never cheat the election.
13
SPEAKER_00
I would respect what the majority of people think.
13
SPEAKER_00
I think that s how a democracy has to work.
13
SPEAKER_01
Even if that person is a threat to the democracy, you still.
13
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
13
SPEAKER_00
I think if the majority of the people vote for somebody that has to be honored.
13
SPEAKER_01
We also don t have a system where it s about the majority.
13
SPEAKER_00
I m just saying, forget the specifics that we re mired in.
13
SPEAKER_00
I m saying I believe in democracy, and I believe when the majority votes that that has to be honored, whether I hate the person or not.
13
SPEAKER_01
But the specifics matter here.
13
SPEAKER_01
It s not the majority of people voting that will create the outcome.
13
SPEAKER_01
So cheating, quote, cheating, if it mirrors the actual majority of people, is that a problem?
13
SPEAKER_00
Well, we re getting into the electoral college versus the popular vote.
13
SPEAKER_00
So do I think that system s flawed?
13
SPEAKER_00
Absolutely.
13
SPEAKER_00
I don t think we had the technology at the beginning of the formation of this country to do a direct vote, but we do now.
13
SPEAKER_00
So I think it should be a direct vote.
13
SPEAKER_00
But what I m saying is that in come November, if 65% of the people who live in America vote for a person, I honor that.
13
SPEAKER_01
Right.
13
SPEAKER_00
And it might not be my person, but I believe in democracy more than I believe in any of my other principles.
13
SPEAKER_01
No, I hear you.
13
SPEAKER_00
And then it s on me, if I want to live somewhere where I m a part of the majority, then I gotta go there.
13
SPEAKER_00
Because the people that were storming the Capitol, they were saying what you re saying, which is like, I don t really care about that vote.
13
SPEAKER_00
I reject it.
13
SPEAKER_00
I don t believe it, because I know that he s chosen, for him to not win would be an existential threat to the country.
13
SPEAKER_00
And so they have the exact same principle at work.
13
SPEAKER_00
And what I m saying is that those people need to move to a country that s not a democracy.
13
SPEAKER_01
No, but that s when the popular vote and the Electoral College, that s when this is an actual problem.
13
SPEAKER_01
Because Biden won the popular vote and the Electoral College.
13
SPEAKER_00
He did, yeah, yeah, yeah.
13
SPEAKER_01
But Hillary won the popular vote.
13
SPEAKER_00
And not the Electoral College.
13
SPEAKER_01
So we ended up with a president who did not reflect the majority of this country.
13
SPEAKER_00
Right.
13
SPEAKER_01
when I m saying we should cheat in order to represent the actual majority, I m not saying if, let s say, if, and this might happen, the popular vote goes to Trump, I m with you.
13
SPEAKER_01
It s like, look, this is the way the country is right now.
13
SPEAKER_01
And whether I want to live in a place where this is the majority of the country, that s on me to decide.
13
SPEAKER_01
But that wasn t the case in 2016.
13
SPEAKER_01
And in 2020, it was both.
13
SPEAKER_00
So I m just I m only pointing out that there were some people that thought it was time to reject the popular vote on January 6.
13
SPEAKER_00
Those people were rejecting the popular vote.
13
SPEAKER_01
But I m not saying that.
13
SPEAKER_00
Right.
13
SPEAKER_01
So it s, I don t, like the comparison is not the same.
13
SPEAKER_00
But it also, if we won, let s just say that your candidate won the electoral college and not the pop roll vote, you d be totally fine with that.
13
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
13
SPEAKER_01
Yeah.
13
SPEAKER_00
So.
13
SPEAKER_00
I m only asking that everyone play it the same way on both sides.
13
SPEAKER_00
We have to grant our opponent the same rules we play by.
13
SPEAKER_00
So if we would have no reservation in accepting an electoral college victory, even though we lost the popular vote, which we wouldn t have a problem with, I don t think we can be critical of them for doing the same thing.
13
SPEAKER_00
But they lost both.
13
SPEAKER_00
No, we re dipping in and out of a lot of stuff.
13
SPEAKER_00
So your first issue is with Hillary.
13
SPEAKER_00
And so I m addressing that one, which is she won the popular vote and not the Electoral College.
13
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, which I think is a big problem.
13
SPEAKER_00
It is a problem.
13
SPEAKER_00
But again, if the reverse was true and she had won the Electoral College and not the popular, we would be delighted that she had become president.
13
SPEAKER_00
So because we re not outraged when it happens and benefits us, we can t be outraged when it benefits them.
13
SPEAKER_00
I just think it s a little murky.
13
SPEAKER_01
Which never happened.
13
SPEAKER_00
It hasn t happened, you re right.
13
SPEAKER_01
Yeah.
13
SPEAKER_00
But we wouldn t care.
13
SPEAKER_00
We can acknowledge we wouldn t care.
13
SPEAKER_00
So I don t think we can be holier than thou and say that they somehow lack morals because they won the electoral college vote and not the popular vote.
13
SPEAKER_01
No, I m not saying they lack morals because they re upset or not upset about the president.
13
SPEAKER_01
You lack morals when you storm a Capitol.
13
SPEAKER_00
So, tabling Hillary and Trump, 16, now going to rewind to the conversation of would you cheat or would you reject something, and you said if it poses an existential threat to democracy itself, you would reject it.
13
SPEAKER_01
I don t think killing people to prevent him is appropriate.
13
SPEAKER_00
I m not for that.
13
SPEAKER_00
Yes, I m only saying that you said, which is fine, I totally respected that, if the person who won poses an existential threat to democracy in and of itself, you would have no problem cheating.
13
SPEAKER_01
Yeah.
13
SPEAKER_00
And so those people on January 6th, I just want to acknowledge that they had that exact same feeling.
13
SPEAKER_01
But do you think cheating and killing people are the same thing?
13
SPEAKER_00
No, I don t think anyone should kill anyone.
13
SPEAKER_00
I m only trying to latch on to the conviction.
13
SPEAKER_01
But my conviction is not the same as theirs.
13
SPEAKER_00
But you would betray fairness if you thought the person posed an existential threat to democracy.
13
SPEAKER_00
And human life.
13
SPEAKER_00
Sure, you would betray fairness.
13
SPEAKER_01
Mm-hmm.
13
SPEAKER_00
Yes.
13
SPEAKER_00
So those people, too, decided to betray fairness.
13
SPEAKER_00
We re going to reject these results.
13
SPEAKER_00
We re not going to accept these results.
13
SPEAKER_00
And I think what they did is completely wrong.
13
SPEAKER_00
But I also think it d be completely wrong for our side to cheat in any manner whatsoever because we decided that person was an existential threat.
13
SPEAKER_00
I don t think anyone has the right to determine who s an existential threat and then circumnavigate the system that s been working for 300 years.
13
SPEAKER_01
Well, do you think it s cheating to gerrymander?
13
SPEAKER_01
And do you think it s cheating to prevent black people from voting?
13
SPEAKER_01
I mean, there s yeah.
14
SPEAKER_00
They re doing all of it.
14
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, and we fight those.
14
SPEAKER_00
We try.
14
SPEAKER_01
And we re on total moral high ground to do so because it s actually cheating the laws of our democracy.
14
SPEAKER_01
It s above my left rightness.
14
SPEAKER_00
I get it.
14
SPEAKER_00
But when I say I would cheat, in a practical example of this person, it s in context, it s not theory, right?
14
SPEAKER_00
It s a very real question about a specific person and the world we live in where they are cheating.
14
SPEAKER_00
They are cheating.
14
SPEAKER_00
So yeah, I m okay to cheat in an environment where I feel like maybe we have no shot because other people are cheating.
14
SPEAKER_00
It s like the steroid, Lance Armstrong.
14
SPEAKER_00
If everyone is doping, I m gonna have to.
14
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, I don t know.
14
SPEAKER_00
It s very depressing.
14
SPEAKER_00
Anyway, okay, back to the list.
14
SPEAKER_00
Einstein, Copernicus, and Galileo.
14
SPEAKER_00
Those were, and da Vinci s honorable mention 11, but there s 100 on here.
14
SPEAKER_00
There s some good ones.
14
SPEAKER_00
People can look it up.
14
SPEAKER_00
Oh, the Beatles are on here.
14
SPEAKER_00
This is from, I think, Western Michigan University, but it s A&E Biography s 100 Most Influential People of the Millennium.
14
SPEAKER_01
Of the Millennium.
14
SPEAKER_00
Oh, so I guess it s not up to date.
14
SPEAKER_01
1000 to 2000?
14
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, not up to date.
14
SPEAKER_00
In the last 20 years, has there been anyone who I would say changed the world?
14
SPEAKER_00
Obama?
14
SPEAKER_01
I think you d have to say Mark Zuckerberg.
14
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, because I think the Facebook is a foundational beginning to the polarization of the country.
14
SPEAKER_00
And just socially, 100% he is.
14
SPEAKER_01
Yeah.
14
SPEAKER_00
Bill s on it, obviously.
14
SPEAKER_01
Oh, yes.
14
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
14
SPEAKER_00
Okay, I m gonna see Dune II now.
14
SPEAKER_00
Oh, you are?
14
SPEAKER_00
Are you gonna see it today?
14
SPEAKER_01
Mm-hmm.
14
SPEAKER_01
IMAX?
14
SPEAKER_00
I think regs.
14
SPEAKER_00
I think regs, but good sound.
14
SPEAKER_00
David said it has good sound.
14
SPEAKER_01
Where are you seeing it at?
14
SPEAKER_00
Americana.
14
SPEAKER_01
Why not?
14
SPEAKER_01
Man s Chinese.
14
SPEAKER_01
You just don t like the area.
14
SPEAKER_00
I don t like the area.
14
SPEAKER_01
The area s rough.
14
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
14
SPEAKER_00
The Americana is so cozy.
14
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
14
SPEAKER_01
And there s other shopping to do.
14
SPEAKER_01
You can go to Sephora.
14
SPEAKER_01
Yeah.
14
SPEAKER_01
Okay.
14
SPEAKER_01
Well, have a blast.
14
SPEAKER_01
It s such a good movie.
14
SPEAKER_00
I m so excited for you.
14
SPEAKER_00
I m excited.
14
SPEAKER_01
All right.
14
SPEAKER_01
Love you.
14
SPEAKER_00
Bye.
14
SPEAKER_00
Love you.