Seth Rogen

Yeah, things like that. But then I start to love it. I always think of like Jonah and Wolf of Wall Street is like so good and so funny. And I think it maybe took me a minute where I was just like, what is going on here? And then I was just like, oh no, it's one of the funniest performances ever. At times it takes me a minute to wrap my head around.

Lauren has acted in things where she's made out with people. And how do you feel when that happens? I get it because I also know when I'm doing it that I don't actually feel like I've kissed the people that I've kissed in movies. Not one? Not for real. No. I for sure have not. I maybe never had one real moment ever while acting. On or off screen.

I'm going to drop back in character. Crosby hat on.

Dax asked. Oh, there's that rumor of her on the staircase. Absolutely not. Were they on a staircase? They were on the couch. Maybe I'm conflating.

That was Thomas Crown Affair. Or maybe history of violence I'm thinking of.

Another very convincing sex scene. Perhaps on a staircase. I just have an encyclopedic knowledge of staircase fucking.

I never expect anyone to think of anything I ever have said.

No, I still am like that. I'm a prime target for serious robbery and embezzlement. I've decided everything.

You send me a DocuSign, I will send it back. I hope they have because I still have enough. No scrutiny.

What I guess I've seen over time, and I'm just so not like this, money is a thing people really hoard and have a lot of pride in the money itself and want to turn their money into more money and love how much money their money is making them and how profitable their money's money is. And that is just like not how I think. I have no desire for my money to itself be out there working for me.

I don't view my money as lazy. I don't think of it like that at all. And I get how people do it. Are you like that? I am. You love your money to make more money. It's a thing people like. Mine's just a fear. What are you afraid of? That you're going to run out of money? Yes, yes. That's not a fear I have. I'm afraid I'm going to die with too much money. That is my fear.

And I'm afraid I'm going to die and be like, I'm going to have a fucking place on the beach. I'm going to die. I don't want to die with $10 million in the bank that I could have spent doing fun, alive things.

I actually remember as a young person being very concerned about the amount of money we had. And a lot of my friends had way more money. Yeah, you also went to a school where there was some hats. Yes, I went to a school that was way across town from where I live. So I essentially was surrounded by much richer people than me. And so it was something that I remember being worried about.

But then I just, I mean, at a very young age, I started making pretty good money. Yeah, that's true. And I remember being like 18 and my dad being like, in the last two years, you made more money than I have in my entire life put together, basically. If he lived this long off that amount of money, I'm sure I can live.

And I think not having kids, I would imagine people seem to want to leave their kids money, I guess, which is, I guess, a good thing to do.

Yeah. Had you just started like that? Yeah. You had like another little house on this property that was bad.

And we went on vacation.

Do you want to go to Paris tonight?

I was in a Beastie Boys video many, many years ago, and one of the things I remember is they were showing me pictures or something on one of their phones. They had recently gone to Paris, and there was all these pictures of them in an incredibly expensive menswear shop, just in like ridiculous matching outfits. Uh-huh.

And they were like, oh yeah, every time we go to a foreign country like this, we all go buy funny matching tuxedos and stuff like that. And I was like, that's a good thing to do with your money. You'll never regret buying matching tuxedos with your three friends with top hats and canes and tails and going out on the town.

If you're rich, that's a thing that is good to spend your money doing.

How much money your money's money should be making you. Yeah, mainly that.

And not worried if you're fucking your kid up.

Oh, yeah. When I was young, we would do these press tours and I'd be on like a private jet going to do press with a nine year old. And I'd just be like, this child is going to have a hard time coming back to Earth from all this. Exactly.

I agree.

Thank you. Being a good parent is nowhere on our list of reasons whether or not we would or would not have children. I assume we'd be good parents. I know people who are so much fucking stupider who are good parents. Seriously. I do think I would be a good parent, but I just don't think I want to be a parent. Yeah, yeah.

A follow-up robbery.

It's comedians I like. Yeah. It's happened a few times. Like when we made the interview, we kind of became open season because we were like the news. To remind people, North Korea hacked Sony.

Biggest act of industrial espionage in history, I believe.

You're like, I'm powerful. Well, that was another good lesson. You can hit the bullseye too effectively at times. There was comedians that I liked making jokes about us in the movie. Whenever they would make jokes that the movie sucked, that I just didn't like because that's all I care about. But again, you get over.

Yeah.

and it's happened again you've been obviously invited to all these rows yes have you ever gone to one yeah nothing of those has ever really insulted me i have like a pretty thick skin about because i also make jokes about other people all the time especially in our movies we make a lot of jokes about people and i've had people come to me and been like that wasn't great being in a theater full of people having them laugh hysterically at a joke making fun of me like i've received direct text messages from

People being like, why would you do this? And I'm like, yeah, I get it. I'm sorry. And I've gotten better. I have been in some situations recently where I was going to make jokes about certain people and certain things and had the foresight to ask the people beforehand as to whether or not they felt as though this would be in poor taste.

And when it was told to me in no uncertain terms that it would in fact be in poor taste, I was happy to not do the joke. And I know enough about myself now to know that I'm drawn to

in a bad way to the joke i shouldn't be making and i get a kick out of saying the thing that i know i probably shouldn't and it's not even always the funniest sometimes it's very personal something it's just something i know i shouldn't necessarily be saying i used to be much more inclined to do it and because i think i wanted to show i would do it or i didn't care or i thought it was just funny that i was treading into these waters that even if

The average person didn't think they were taboo. Like I knew in my head, I was like, oh, this is fucked up anyway.

It's just a never-ending camera replenishment. They open a camera shop down the corner, sells the same 12 cameras. I'd be delighted to buy them off.

Yep, I actually thought it was funnier. It's not even always funnier.

Or sometimes you've just tread into an area where you are fodder for comedy, whether you like it or not. That's what it felt like with the interviewer. This is such a big story. You have to make a joke about it. And I just got that. People wouldn't be doing their job.

Like you feel as though you were ignoring a big thing that was happening if you didn't do it. And in those moments are the feelings of a few more important than like addressing the elephant that all sees in the room.

I know. And all I'm thinking is how does Diddy feel?

I'm pretty worried about it.

Seriously.

And I was like, oh, I have a lot of time.

I know it'd be great. They're doing the last season.

Yes, but they're doing another show. We've slowly become the thing we are making fun of, which is the Marvel Cinematic Universe. So we are doing another show that's like a prequel about the formation of Vought set in World War II with Soldier Boy and those characters. But it's a funny thing with the boys where me and Evan, it's a very well-run show.

And the guy, Eric Kripke, who runs the show, does such a good job that it makes it that it does not occupy very much of my time or energy. We were very involved in the very beginning of the show. We like cast the show and kind of designed a lot of the uniforms.

Well, it was also Amazon. It was a good moment for us. We found ourselves at a place who was like looking for its identity in some ways. They didn't have like a flagship show. And so they kind of didn't know what it was. The people who are running it changed over in the midst of the time we were doing it. So I actually think we kind of just got lucky.

No one had any reason to tell us no, basically. They actually really believed in it. And our pitch was very clear. People want the R-rated version of Superman. Well, but maybe the X-rated version. Very much so.

In a world that was like so inundated with superheroes, people will get such catharsis to see what this would kind of be like in real life and how gruesome it would be and how gross it would be. And I remember that was the thing we would always say in the pitch is just your whole life you've seen Superman shoot lasers out of his eyes.

You've never once seen how grotesque the effects of that would be on like an actual human's body. Six thousand degrees. Exactly. Exactly. That was like a thing. We were just like, that is what the show is. They really don't fight us very much on stuff on that show. From a content standpoint, I'm amazed at what they let us get away with.

Yeah, and that's like our favorite tone. And that's like a thing we've always chased. It's a thing I was actually just talking to my wife about. I actually think there's something about Barry was a defining moment. I could always speak personally, but I do think it was a moment.

where i saw things in a movie where i was like i didn't think you could show putting calm in her hair i always think of the first thing where you see his nuts and dicks stuck in the zipper it's so funny because you're just like they don't show that and the joke is they're not showing it it was still one of the funniest scenes ever even though they aren't showing it and then They show it.

And it was one of those things where you're looking around in the theater at the people around you, strangers. And you're just like, are we fucking seeing this? Like, is this real? Are we actually in a theater where this is happening? We've seen throughout the years when our movies are functioning the best. That is a moment we've been able to elicit from a crowd.

And that's like a thing me and Evan are always referencing. It's not like laughter and it's not cheering. It's disbelief. Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you.

Sometimes when I'm filming, I kind of lose track of time, but I also usually have my eye on the clock because there's an amount of time we have to do shit. But pottery sometimes, watching reality TV, sometimes I'll watch enough of that that I just kind of zone out.

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you.

This room is small also. I've now done these types of things where I make people really stoned. And then I'll see them months later and be like, I was so fucked up that I apologize and everyone feels bad about it.

Thank you.

Thank you.

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things we're making commercials content we're thinking of posters we're thinking of little ads these guys are just sitting in rooms fucking giving notes and shit like that i'm sitting in front of an editing machine the arbiters of good ideas and we are the creators of good and so that was like a really funny dynamic they have extreme ownership they're incredibly confident a lot of them

which is also like the dichotomy. A lot of the executives are sort of like me. They're kind of like Nebuchadnezzar Jewish people who are feigning confidence at best. But the marketing people come from sales.

And every time I'm like, this guy smokes a lot.

They actually are on the green light committee at some of the studios. That's true.

Well, they could have directly been overruled is what happens a lot. Often, they will have said, we should not make this movie.

We cannot sell it. And then they're like, guess what? We did anyway. And if it fails, you're the one who's going to get fired. They got to polish a lot of turds. Yes, for sure. That was just a very funny dynamic to add into the show. And Catherine O'Hara is on the show. Catherine O'Hara, Canadian. Fellow Canadian. We love our Canadians. Icon.

Yeah, he's fine.

Yeah. Tell people what a one-er is. It's a continuous shot. Like the most famous one probably is like the one in Goodfellas where they start outside the Copacabana and they go through the kitchen and they weave their way through and they drop the table and the comedian starts.

No cuts. One long uninterrupted.

No one notices how it's just for the filmmakers to get off on their own technique. Yes.

Snoop Dogg, I mean, there's no debating. I was on Howard Stern once with him and me and him smoked a bunch of weed. And then afterwards he invited me to like his little trailer, which was like a tiny little room. And we smoked so much weed. And it was one of the first times from just smoking weed, I had to like cancel my entire rest of the day stuff.

Well, in the whole show, every scene is a winner on the whole show. There's a few episodes where it's maybe only four or five shots throughout the whole thing.

Yeah, we directed the whole show. We wrote the show knowing it would be oners. It wasn't like a thing we just decided when we showed up. And for that episode especially, we had to really block basically the entire episode and the days leading up to it, but not with the actors.

So like me and Evan, who I direct with, and the writers, we only had access to this house for like two days before we started shooting it. And so... As they were rigging the house, we just would walk through it and really try to block it. What we would do is we could only actually shoot for around an hour a day because of the light. So we could only shoot between 5 and 6 p.m. basically.

So everyone would show up in the morning and we would rehearse whatever that day's chunk was. And they were eight or nine minute chunks. There's very little trickery in that episode.

That's like a trick we would do a few times. That's what Kristen said. Well, it'd be on the hood. There's a lot of sleight of hand involved. This is a cinephiles fucking whack-off session. We were geeking out. It was so fun for us. It was just like the opposite of how we were always brought up making movies. It was always about two cameras, improv. We'll figure it out editorially later.

We were like, what if we do the exact opposite? And we are painting ourselves into this corner that we cannot paint ourselves out of.

Oh, the Golden Globes one was the hardest because of the amount of people. That has a lot of long shots in it, but there's also 400 extras in every single one.

And I was just like, I can't fucking do anything. And then I just sat in my parked car for like 90 minutes as I slowly regained my faculties.

so many people and the choreography of it was unbelievably complicated. But it's funny because as we were doing it, we're like, I don't even know if the average person will be able to articulate what is happening here. The energy of it, I think, is what we were excited about.

Yeah, it's because you're never cutting. And I think it's also because it never settles into a rhythm of cutting back. There's no breathing between two people. We were always like the tone should be stress and panic. It is. And there's only a stories in the episode, which I think was also conducive to that type of storytelling is we're never cutting between.

You set up my story and I'm doing this thing and you set up my story and he's doing this thing. The stories are all singular. And so that also helps with the singular camera and the singular style of being in the room with the characters.

writing standpoint you know it's funny i did these table reads it's actually where i met katherine hahn for the netflix is a joke festival a few years ago we did a live reading of seinfeld scripts oh i remember this i was jerry and aziz azari was george and jack black was kramer and katherine hahn was oh my god And I feel like in reading them, it was like the Rosetta Stone or something like that.

It's all the structure. Math. And it's not even the jokes. It's the order of the scenes and the raising of the stakes. That to me is what I would want to do with a show.

It's like never rhythmic. That's what we'd always tell the composer. We're just like, never have it settle into a rhythm. Whenever it feels rhythmic, it would get boring. Always make it a little off and uneasy.

You don't have to wait for an editor to assemble it. Yeah, exactly. I was honestly really nervous about how we were shooting the show. And I would talk to my wife, Lauren, a lot about it. I talked to Evan a lot about it. The first few weeks, especially, I was just like, are we fucking up? Are we making a mistake? Are we so up our own fucking ass? with this that were just sacrificing comedy.

That was my real fear. I was like, are we making it less funny in service of this style? And I kept being like, no, I really think we thought of this because it would be additive to the tone and the comedy. And then I saw it cut together and I was like... Thank fucking God. And I was so excited about it, so happy by it. And yeah, when we finished the Wonder episode, I was really happy.

Okay. I will say eating weed, though. Some of the most unpleasantly high times I've had in my whole life, and this is a life of doing many drugs, eating weed is the thing that can tweak me out where I'm just like, oh, I've gone too far. Yeah, it can go south on you. Yeah, because it's not pleasant. These other drugs have like a pleasant cushion.

And Sarah Pauly is someone I've known a very long time. I was in a movie she directed 15 years ago or something like that. And she's such a funny person and such a funny actor. Go was one of mine and Evan's favorite movies. It was inspirational to us. It's wild and frenetic. Exactly. I think Pineapple Express is very inspired by Go and Dawn of the Dead. I was just always a huge fan of hers.

And then I worked with her and I'm just like, she's one of the funniest fucking people I've ever been around.

And she like nailed it. She couldn't have been funnier. Yeah, that was the thing with the show. We have a lot of non-actors on this show. Filmmakers, writers, directors. That was another fear I had where it's like we're taking these non-actors and essentially asking them to do like the hardest thing. Now you got to be a part of this seven minute scene. Yeah, a play.

If you literally say one word wrong, we have to start over. And we got to have a 50 minute reset. Sometimes, yeah. Literally, we got to get back in the car.

To what you were saying, it did become like a real team effort. And those are also my least favorite moments on sets often is just you're sitting on an Apple box. The crew guys are on their phone because it's just, OK, now it's this shot. Now it's this shot. One out of 200 people feel like they're working. And that's kind of the person who's on camera. Then I've been in some movies.

I got to be in a Steven Spielberg movie. And he had these very elaborate shots sometimes where it was like, oh, no, it's all going to play in this one shot. And I would just see how the whole crew would come together and be so psyched about it. Yeah. Right.

Exactly.

And in this, even if you had two lines in the scene, it was so fun. You didn't feel like you were just window dressing or just waiting for your part. You were a part of a huge scene. And that was another reason that it was partially procedurally alluring to us.

I really, I think, have grown a better understanding of what is needed to accomplish these things and how much time it'll actually take and how much preparation it will actually take.

And so we're very prepared and it would get very discouraging at times in the shooting style where we would joke often that until sometimes like the seventh, eighth, ninth, tenth take of these long sequences, it's just not even fucking close. And we would be looking at each other being like, is this the one that we can't do?

Sometimes it's just the camera has to like latch on to the car and the fucking magnet keeps fritzing out. We're relying on technology to do what we want that isn't as reliable as you would hope it is sometimes. And sometimes it's just an actor keeps like missing the thing or tripping over the thing.

That's the point of them. It'll bolster itself with the pleasant effects of the drugs. But eating weed can just go down and there's no bolstering. It's like you're free falling without a parachute.

No. I feel comfortable saying this because he's my dear friend, but David Krumholz is in a few episodes of the show, and there's a very complicated sequence of me entering the Golden Globes. It literally starts in the limo, and then I walk the whole red carpet, and then I walk through the lobby.

Exactly, and then I walk through the ballroom. I'm interacting with a bunch of people throughout it, Adam Scott's in it, and Ike, and O'Hara, and all these people, and the last moment is me and Krumholz, and it's like a three-line exchange.

And there's 500 extras, cars, limos, all this shit.

And I will say God bless him because I would tell the actors, look, If you genuinely think you've thought of something that is better than what we've written or additive and it comes to you in the moment, I want you to do it because I don't want it to be too rigid and I want it to feel alive. But just know, if it's not good, it's fucked up everything. Workshop it in the mega trailer.

I'm trusting you to gauge in your own head whether or not you think I will think it's good enough to warrant this risk you're taking. And Dave several times was just improvising stuff. And even he would do it.

he is one of my favorites and he's spectacular in your show he's so good on the show he's one of the best and then he nailed it i think some of our moments are some of the best moments of the show and we would put him in it more after that because it is so alive and you do feel like i don't quite know what he's gonna do and at its worst the show in the earlier takes that was always to me the scary zone is we would start to get it but it would just feel sort of rigid because everyone was too focused on hitting the mark and the timing and the camera point they're

place and that's why it's good to have agents of chaos like dave in there yeah in some ways just can't say the lines in the same way twice and hon was like that too she would just say other stuff and you could see there's like a moment where everyone's like oh no is this gonna cause a major problem but then that becomes its own fun thing for you to play with right you're scared

Like quite on edge that we're not going to get it.

That's what was also fun about it. It's like, it is how kids film things. You just point the camera at who's talking and you walk around and that's it. And so there is that energy. It did feel a lot like that.

Underwater. What are we going to do? You know what I heard is impossible is underwater. It's all in space.

Me and Evan, we kept saying as we were doing it, we're like, this is one of the most creatively invigorating things we'd done since we made Superbad. How long did it take you from start to finish writing it and then shooting it and finishing it? I was shooting The Fablemans when I first thought of it. So that was two and a half years ago or something like that.

And then it maybe took six months for us to start writing it. And then I think it took like a year of writing because we wrote the whole show basically. And then we shot the whole show. So not that long, actually, like on the grand scale of things.

Yeah. I've done way too many shrooms. Even that's not that bad in comparison to way too much. Because there's at least like a catharsis. No catharsis comes from eating too much weed. I should never fucking eat weed again. Shrooms, you're like, I should do this differently. I should do that. This was a rough trip, but it got intense for a while.

Part of my whole thesis in general is to try to over-deliver. I don't take any success for granted. When we made this the end and all these things, we were just like, give people more than they're expecting. Don't tell them it's Hollywood and then have a few people and try to sell that as Hollywood.

So that was something for us that was very important is we were like, if it's going to be about Hollywood, You have to believe that these are the people a studio head would be excited by, intimidated by, wanting to impress, wanting to befriend. The actual people who are in movies and we're not trying to tell you, yeah, this guy's in a movie.

Exactly. We really didn't want to do that. And Larry Sanders, again, was a thing that was hugely inspirational for that. Because as a kid, I remember Sean Penn's on it and Jim Carrey's on it and Tom Petty's on it and Elvis Costello's on it. And all these great comedians and actors are on it. And I was like, that's part of the fun of it. They got them.

The whole time we were just like, I just hope this is easier the second season.

She's built for a water. Also, we didn't want to only do people that we know and that we work with and they're kind of like associated with us. And it was kind of like a mix of people that we didn't even know that well. Do you have a relationship with Scorsese? I met him once for two seasons.

seconds before this is a cold call we really tried to make the roles good honestly that was like a big part of it was even if you had one joke we wanted it to be like a great moment and to not feel like you're just kind of there and they're not just like extras in the scene everyone has to have a moment that they can really sink their teeth into but it was really hard and we spent a ton of time

rewriting the scripts for people they want it to be good and once they commit to it they're like okay what if i do this it was always very welcome everyone that came had some leverage everyone has leverage you want them to think it's funny and that's the other thing is we're always just like we want you to be excited about this like we don't want you to feel like you're doing us a favor we want you to feel like you're getting to do a thing that you think is cool it was by far

One of the biggest challenges of the show was to get all these people and to schedule it and to not let them down, honestly. Did you find it hard to direct these huge people? Were you like, oh, fuck, I gotta tell. The answer is yes.

It was different. Talking to the actors is the thing I struggle with most as a director. And it's also because I'm an actor in the scenes and some actors just don't like to be directed by the other actors. Me and Olivia Wilde were talking about it. Me and Evan would kind of do like a good cop, bad cops thing. I would be in the scenes and be like, great, perfect.

But at least I came out of it with some sort of insight.

And then I'd go to Evan and be like, tell her to slow down. She's not hitting her mark. She's not saying the sign properly. And she actually was the only one that clued into it.

I would have a hard time doing it alone. Having a partner makes it much easier, I think, in a lot of ways. Because they got to be a little suspicious. Like, how the fuck does he know what happened? He's inside the scene with me. A thing that would happen is the people I was in the scenes with could tell when I just was dropped out of it.

Because I was also very aware where the camera was and what it was capturing at all times. So there'd be times I would just see, like, oh, the camera guy.

There's like a sense of accomplishment afterwards. There's no sense of accomplishment that comes with eating way too much weed food. You don't feel proud of yourself at all. So you'll never do it? No, I'll do it all the time.

And that's something me and Evan talked a lot about. And that's something we actually learned a lot of improvisational comedy is it's a fine line between directing improv and just shutting people down. Sometimes we would let people go on these runs for 10 minutes where we're just like, this isn't going to be in the movie. But like they seem to really think it's funny.

We'll get 10 other good things out of them today because we didn't tell them this. Yeah. So that was math that would happen in our heads. Sometimes it was a hard reset. I would stop early because I would just know like, oh, once this happens, it's going into a new zone. But that was something we were constantly navigating.

Yeah.

I have a Karmann Ghia. That's perfect for you. Yes. Yeah. And I have a Studebaker Lark. Not the one in the show, but I have one like that one that we drive in the winter. Have you ever eyed an Avante? Yeah, those are amazing.

What I do is I drink weed a lot now. There's weed beverages that are fantastic. And they have a much more moderate amount. Like a five milligram switch? Yeah, like three or five. That I get down with.

It's what we made. This is the end. Honestly, we were designing the house for the movie to be set in. And at first the joke was like, it's a douchey over the top, overly stylish house. And by the end I was just like, oh no, I just made my dream house. Yes.

It worked in both ways, though. To the average viewer, it was a douchey over the top house. And to me, it was my dream house. And so that philosophy carried through. We never joked about a lot. A lot of my memories in Hollywood are being in beautiful places with beautifully dressed people screaming at each other about the stupidest shit ever.

ever and that was like an energy we wanted to capture is it's glamorous and it's institutional and it's been here for decades and great architects have built these homes that people live in and they're these beautiful homes and then you're in there just like screaming at each other about like how much of the guy's balls you can show in the movie amy pascal just like

gorgeous architectural house and the studios are very beautiful is this real no we built that completely okay i got really angry because we're watching it and you seem to be on warner brothers for lots of this yeah show and there's a frank lloyd wright building in the show the ideas that frank lloyd wright designed the main offices in the mayan period yeah exactly it's like mayan revival so i was like

I could see that being real.

The idea of making it seem like old and monumental. A lot of these studios are gorgeous. The Paramount offices are beautiful. The Columbia offices are these like art deco marvels. So much artistic thought went into the building and then inside they're making the dumbest decisions.

of all time they're so bucking against any creative freedom as they're standing in these like cathedrals of cinema that people were given free reign to make beautiful but I'm just a huge architecture fan and I love Frank Lloyd Wright buildings in LA especially and they are all this Mayan revival but there's a great documentary about Frank Lloyd Wright and it talks about how all of his buildings in Los Angeles are essentially uninhabitable because he had suffered like a terrible family tragedy before he came to LA and they are all very tomb like this one right down the street the Black Dolly house yeah exactly constantly being run

They have like a sarcophagus-esque vibe to them. And to us, that was a funny work environment for a lot of reasons because it feels very old and it feels like we're trying to uphold this days that have gone by institution. We're like encased in this tomb, basically. A big cement blob, right? But it's also kind of beautiful.

And all the houses in the show are John Lautner houses, who is a student of Frank Lloyd Wright. A lot of his houses are in movies. In Lethal Weapon 2, the Garcia house is a John Lautner house. So yeah, we also like this idea that it was an architect whose work is in film. And a lot of the music in the show is from other movies. Chinatown. Yeah, we use the Chinatown score.

We use the Long Goodbye music.

He got a nice budget. It was pretty good. This show is not it. Just keep buying those iPhones. Exactly.

Totally. I was like, is this starting to feel immoral for us to not include Evan? Whenever I'm on Howard Stern, he's also fascinated with Evan and he's always like, what is his deal? The fact that Evan has no desire to be in front of the camera, I think is an instrumental part of our dynamic and that he is not jealous.

If anything, he's like, I'm so glad I don't have to do all the stuff that I have to do as the performer in the thing.

They would drink. I could not believe it. I thought it was like a shtick. You hear like Frank Sinatra had apple juice in that glass. And it's one of those times where you're like, oh, a glass of wine holds almost a bottle of wine. They just give you like a full glass of wine at like 8.30 in the morning. They're pounding it. And I was like, wow, this is legit.

I know so many partnerships that have broken up over the years and more than haven't actually.

Definitely. I feel very fortunate about it. And it's not lost on us. We recognize it. We are like, isn't it great that we still like each other and we still work together well? And his life is very different than mine in many ways. And we've found ways to navigate that. You know, he has kids and I, I act sometimes.

We both have things that pull us away from just writing and directing together, but we've never really had any issue. I feel very lucky about it. It's very fortunate.

It was sort of conscious. I think what's good is we are also able to keep making movies just in a different way than we did before.

yeah but like making a 30 million dollar comedy that's gonna make 120 that's just off the table ninja turtles to us is a movie that we can write that's like a high school comedy that is really fun and we love it but in order to make that movie now it has to be teenage mutant ninja turtles yeah and it's a lot of ideas that we would put into any movie but it's just like oh or barbie for me that's a comedy that's a straight up comedy i

think we've always been realistic as to what the market wants and can bear we may knocked up in super bad but very quickly we were like we gotta add machine guns and car chases to this shit or it's gonna start to feel the same and after that we're like oh we gotta add like demons and

and monsters and meta celebrity in order for this to feel new and relevant i don't know if we've ever spent that much time lamenting the trends and instead have tried to really see what is working and work through that so with television that for sure was like a conscious thing we're like oh now you can do shit in television that used to be the stuff we did in movies and it's different

They are drunk on television every morning. What a hack. What a great way to live.

but it's kind of the same.

I mean, we had so much fun with this show. I've always been able to really wrap my head around writing movies. And I think writing TV and movies are very different, as is evidenced by the fact that there are brilliant TV writers who write terrible movies and brilliant movie writers who make terrible TV shows. They are not the same skill set.

And I actually did always find I struggled to be a meaningful contributor on a lot of our TV shows because I think

the thing that i had a hard time wrapping my head around was this seven hour movie idea and then with the studio one of the big revelations for me was like no it is not a serialized show it's very episodic oh i can actually really wrap my head around one 30 minute movie basically something with a beginning middle and a setup and a payoff that's the thing that is exciting about television is you can sort of create your own type of narrative and they're just much more open

I mean, in the 80s, maybe this would have been a movie in the 70s, but this was conceived of for TV, knowing this is not at all the type of thing that they would make into a movie, but this is exactly the kind of thing that they would make into a well-budgeted TV show. But we still have movie ideas. We are working on movies, and we would like to keep making movies, but we just try to be realistic.

I saw one of them days with Kiki Palmar and SZA. Yeah. And it was fucking hilarious. And it did well. R-rated comedy. I saw it in the full theater and I was like, it works. It can still work. I just saw Judd give an interview where he was saying like, if The Hangover came out today, it would fucking annihilate. I think it's a trend. I do think it ebbs and flows.

There are moments where all seems lost.

And then a movie comes out where you're like, oh no, like people are into this stuff.

It's just too expensive. That's the thing you have to be smart about also. And that's the thing we've always tried to really consider is you have to be realistic about what your movie costs and what you're asking of people. You know, if I was making what was essentially a romantic comedy, I would not

spend 80 90 100 million dollars on it i try to spend like 20 30 million dollars on it that's always been part of our philosophy but we're never as existential about it i feel like as some people get because i think i've personally seen these trends ebb and flow just throughout the time i've been here you know and like sandler makes movies that are on netflix but they're great and people love them and if i was out to dinner with the z's and we just were talking about comedy and the waitress was there and she's like who's the best comedian alive right now adam sandler

without skipping a second. She said it or you guys?

She said it. We were like, we don't get an obligatory nod. We're right in front of you. Those things give me hope. People still like these things. People always will want a comedy movie. Just the system has crumbled a little bit. When I was younger, you could write a funny movie, they would buy it and then cast it. That doesn't happen very much anymore.

Now they want you to have everyone attached, but actors don't want to get attached. Kind of rightfully so, because you're exposing yourself. And if you attach yourself to a thing and no one buys it, then you could feel as though that's a knock on your career.

Exactly. But also, that shouldn't be the system. The studio should just buy a script if they like it. And trust me, Once that movie exists, it is going to be made. You will be able to cast it.

Actors who are great, who know it's a real thing, who aren't exposing themselves and their name instead of studios doing what they should do, which is buy and develop films and then decide which ones to make and then cast them and hire directors and make them. That system has gone away a little bit. And I think that's out of just pure terror and risk mitigation and panic and all the

And it's a special feeling to have the whole day ahead of you. Yes. Wine tasting. I'm glad I never ruined drinking as I was having a martini the other night. I was marveling at. I've kept this relatively under control. Yeah, that's how I feel. I'll have like two drinks and that's it. I'm not great at moderation, so I'm impressed with myself. As I'm doing it, I'm like, look at you, man.

You're losing your life, literally, not even figuratively. At least drug addiction, there's moments where you're like, this is fucking great.

Yeah, I met him. I was on Jon Favreau had like a cooking show years ago. We were on it together.

That's worse.

The right hit will make my brain chemistry know how to solve all these problems. Look, I get no pleasure from gambling.

I'm always afraid I'm going to get yelled at and I'm not doing the right thing and that they're going to get mad at me at the table. That fear overpowers any pleasure I get from it. I'll stand around and watch my friends gamble.

I've done that. I've gone with my friends who are like, I'll be very instructive. Protect them. Then I just feel like a fucking. Yeah, exactly. My friend whispering in my fucking ear what to do. I feel like a child. He's gambling by proxy. It's not fun either being puppeted by your friend at the blackjack table.

What?

It was real life altering.

Yeah.

No, exactly. That's crazy. The best time I ever had a casino was Danny McBride got married many years ago in Pop Springs, and we all went to a casino afterwards. I was with Adam McKay and Chris Henschey, who's a comedy writer. And the best storyteller alive, probably. Yes, and he's so funny.

And they did a thing at the blackjack table that was the funniest thing I've ever seen, where they sat down separately pretending not to know one another. What McKay kept doing would be he would hand Chris objects, and Chris said he was a magician and a sleight of hand magician, and he would keep pretending to steal things from Adam McKay. Oh!

And it was only for the benefit of the dealer and the three other people who happened to be sitting at the table. And McKay would be like, I bet you're not that good. And then he'd be like, then how did I get your shoe? And everyone would be like, that's incredible. And I'd be like, that was lucky. Well, then how did I get your wristwatch? And it went on a very long time.

It was actually one of the funniest things I've ever seen. And it's so pure.

I mean, I started it when it started. I'm a huge fan of Ben Stiller. And I've known him since I was 16 years old. And a lot of people I worked with when I was first starting had worked on the Ben Stiller show. And Ben was on Freaks and Geeks. And the DP who shot Freaks and Geeks had shot Freaks.

the movie that ben was the star of he was someone i just looked up to immensely and he was a writer and director and he did all the things that i wanted to do and he acted he was so funny i've always just been a fan of his and so when i heard he was directing a new show i watched it right away i know adam scott for a long time he's the best and it's incredible and every time i see ben i gush over it because i really think and it's sort of the complete opposite of what we have tried to do with our show but

Precision and comedy are hard things to marry. And I'd say almost like a sterile level of precision. Stanley Kubrick did it very well in Dr. Strangelove, but very few people have actually done it effectively since that, I would argue. And there are things that are pretty funny with that style. But I think Severn's a very funny show.

Yeah. And the story's amazing. I love the mystery. I watched Lost.

which was a real bummer ultimately because i don't feel like it added up to the experience and this feels like it's giving me the lost energy and i have faith that it does add up i'm optimistic as well i also loved watching lost and i do often in my head think was it worth it it's a good philosophical question is it worth a great journey if the ending sucks yeah it's like a new riddle there is no destination yes exactly it's a journey worth taking without a destination and i am

glad i did it ultimately because all our friends we get together we watch it it was so fun but it was a real bummer we did not love the ending very much and so i am getting a similar vibe with severance where it does feel like a mystery everyone's trying to unpack reveal everyone's excited to see what comes next a lot of people i know watch it so it's nice to talk about it but the style of it is unbelievable most things that are like frame fucked within

When you're acting for the camera only. So precise, you could tell they're pouring over every millisecond of the show. And usually, again, those things suck the comedy out of things. And this does not do that at all.

I've never watched any Righteous Gemstones. I'm waiting for it to end and then I'm going to watch all of it. So you can plow through. It's like a treat I left. I actually watched the first episode. I was like, I love this so much that I don't want to have a staggered viewing experience.

this fucking tracking casino style shots with the money yeah those guys are great and those guys are some of the first guys i worked with that really wanted their comedies to look a certain way well they were film school people exactly and judd with the people that i was making movies with were not like that it was very much performance capture oriented since then everyone's styles evolved but at the time it was cross coverage that's it if it doesn't look great it

Who cares?

No, no, no, no. And that's what people liked. And it was working. And it was very alive. Then I remember seeing Foot for Sway and I made Observed Report with Jody Hill. All of a sudden, I was like, oh, there's shots in this movie. I was like, whoa, this is fucking crazy. A whole other way to work. And then I watch a lot of reality TV. That's your anxiety release. Exactly. White Lotus.

I don't watch White Lotus.

Fingers crossed.

Exactly. I watched your wife's show. I thought that was great. Okay, great.

Handsy.

Yeah. It depends. I sometimes have a hard time watching people I know in things. Sometimes it takes me a few viewings to desensitize myself, especially if it's someone I know and they're doing a real character. Sometimes that throws me for a loop. Of course.

And yeah, we shot a lot of old homes from the 50s and 60s and 70s. That house is a John Lautner house. It's a very beautiful, beautiful house. And in the show, it's as though we kind of

have a storyline as though Frank Lloyd Wright designed the studio that we are in because he was in California making, you know, Mayan revival buildings, like at the time that these studios were made and, and that it sort of has this like grandeur to it, you know, and this like kind of thing that you're trying to live up to. And, you know, I remember, uh, It's a name drop.

I was at 30 Rock Ones with Lorne Michaels. And I was saying what an amazing building it was. And he was like in his way like, well, you know, when any industry is new, they build cathedrals for it. And I always remembered that. And it was so true. And like the studios feel that way a lot of them. Like there are these beautiful places.

And they were built at a time when they were kind of like unabashedly beautiful. like, lauding and trying to, like, bolster the importance of the industry, you know? And so that to us was something very important. And we got really lucky with that shot because we shot the show where basically every scene is one take, which was very hard to do.

But what it allowed us to do is a scene like that, for example, it's all one shot, and we shot it –

maybe 15 times, and the first, like, 10 times, it was, like, rainy and gray and cloudy, and we kept having to go inside because it was raining on us, and it just looked miserable, but we had, like, a very specific shot we wanted to do, and so we literally just sat inside and waited for it to stop raining as the sun was going down, and then it's like this magical thing happened.

We're like, right as the sun was going down, the rain stopped, and rainbows appeared.

You could see the whole city, and we were just like, let's go shoot now. And... Like, it just all happened in one take. And that was the take we ended up using, which was great. And to me, it was like a real magical Hollywood moment, kind of.

Definitely. And I think that it always was a love letter to Los Angeles. And I think if anything, it is like – I love living in Los Angeles. And I've lived here for a very long time. And I love the architecture. I love – the landscape. Like I love that there's Franklin Wright buildings and John Lautner houses.

And, and I think that's one of the things that Hollywood kind of has afforded me over the years. It's just like access to like these very beautiful spaces, you know? And so, and, and as we were pitching the show, that was always something that we would say the pitch is like a lot of our experience in Hollywood is like, being in very beautiful places, having very stupid arguments with one another.

And like, that was something that we really, it was a funny juxtaposition as well. It's like, we would be at a movie premiere at the Ace Theater that was the United Artists Theater that Charlie Chaplin opened in some back room theater

That was like literally the dressing room that Charlie Chaplin would use before coming out the theater and just like screaming at each other over like the cut of the movie and like the dumbest, like a fart joke or something like that. And to us, that was always just very funny.

Me? Yeah. That could not be further from the truth. I am as bottom line oriented as anyone in this town.

Yeah, like a medical cancer gala.

But we make life worth living.

I mean, that episode is probably threading a needle more than any of them as far as rooting for my character or at least even understanding where my character is coming from in any way, shape, or form. That to me is actually, I think, like in many ways, I personally find it to be the funniest episode because it's sort of based on...

It's kind of based on me because – and I understand – obviously I understand it's comedic and ridiculous. But I would – I have a charity with my wife, Hilarity for Charity, and it's an Alzheimer's charity. And so we find ourselves at a lot of medical galas. And I find myself at a lot of tables with – who save lives.

And what's funny is often they have like a blatant disrespect for the film industry. As maybe as they should, but I don't think so necessarily. And they... So there's no deference for you. No, and they think it's funny. And I think they think it's funny... I think – and they're obviously smart enough to know that I exist in a world where there is deference and they're showing no deference.

And they seem to revel in being in a position where they could like sort of maybe subtly at times diminish the career of another person who clearly views what they do as important even though maybe it isn't.

Well, I personally understand that it's not a thing I should be upset about, but I comedically understand the feeling that you wish you could fight back against that and assert that what you do is as important. And it's not something I would ever do in real life, but it's something that I –

It's obviously an instinct I had somewhere in my brain because that's where the idea for the episode came from. But I know it's ridiculous and I know my character is wrong generally. But I think that I – the inspiration for that episode was definitely based on like feelings that I've had sitting at tables with doctors.

For sure. I'd say that episode has more actual conversations that we've had to sit in rooms and watch than most of the episodes. And what's funny about it is it's like all people care about is the perception. They themselves have no ideological... like thing that they are trying to get across and they don't care at all. They just don't want to look bad.

And that is the thing that we would notice the most when these types of things came up was that like, oh, no, none of these people care. They just don't want to look bad.

It's not a thing we got made, but it was like we were making a comic book and there was an alien character. The alien had been traditionally voiced by someone of a certain race. And so all of a sudden that became a big topic of conversation. It was like, what race is this alien? And we kept being like, well, it's an alien.

But it didn't matter because in people's heads there was a certain race ascribed to the alien due to the voice. That people associated with the alien. And then we were like, well, is that racist? And so that was something in the last few years where, again, I found just a lot of people having at the end of the day, no one involved cared. No one could be like, you know what?

I strongly believe that it should be this. It was just like, what maybe will people yell at?

Yes, that happens a lot. I've been there as well. I've had people call me and ask me Jewish things before. It's happened to me. I've been that person. Or like in a writer's room, like I worked on the show and declared a long time ago, and there was two female writers who were a team, Jenny Conner and Allie Rushfield, who I'm still both good friends with and are both still very successful writers.

But as the only women writers, that was like always, and they would always hate it. It would be like, don't do this. This is so annoying. They'd be like, well, as a woman, what do you think of the woman's story? And they'd be like, I don't know. Like, I'm just a writer on the show. I have to be like the spokesperson for all women every time there's a question about this stuff.

And that idea is for sure something that we like wove into the episode as well.

Um, different people have different degrees of difficulty. I would say, um, uh, Scorsese. Yeah. Like insanely, like we sent his manager the script and we heard this is funny. I'll send it to him. And then we heard he loves it. He'll do it. If you can shoot it this day, he'll be there. And we were like, okay. And, and that was it. Like, he didn't want to have a conversation about it.

I didn't, I didn't talk to him before he showed up on the set.

No, he really seemed to like it and think it was funny. Like he totally just did it like, and he nailed it. Like he's so funny in the scenes and he just instantly was able to tell exactly what it was that we were trying to do and seamlessly just like locked into it right away, basically, which was very impressive to watch. And he's a great actor.

Yeah, I think he understood. I don't know. I think we would have had to really be blowing it for him to step in, I guess. But mostly it was just like it was a very validating experience who was willing to do it. And honestly, one of the reasons I think I was so nervous –

leading up to the show premiering and, you know, seeing how it was going to be received is that I talked to all these people, people I idolize, people I'm huge fans of, people I've always wanted to work with into doing this thing. And I don't want to let them down. I don't want to, I don't want them to be mad at me.

I don't want to feel like they wasted their time or I made them look stupid or they were a part of a thing that they're not proud of, you know? And so, It's I mean, again, it's meta in many, many ways. But that is a real thing that I relate to my character on is that like I get to work with these people that I've idolized my whole life or people that I've recently become huge fans of.

Thank you. What an intro.

And I see are like the next wave of talent. And and if I get the chance to work with them, I don't I don't want them to hate me.

Yeah. And it's really, it's honestly not something I've done for a while. Like I haven't been front and center in a thing in a while. And I still just like, I've been in things. So like, and just like as a recognizable person living their life, you fall under scrutiny. But, um, I...

Honestly, don't think I've like had the stomach to put myself like this front and center and something in a long time because it's just, it's just scary. And, and, uh, and I know that I wear it. Like I, I really like if, if no one likes the things I do, then I really don't.

makes me unhappy and so i i know i'm like setting myself up for like a real emotional crossroads potentially where i'll and i know it's not and that's one of the things in the show is like i wish i wasn't so emotionally affected by it but i think as again somebody just puts a lot into their work and does enjoy making it so like it's not like i've regretted making something but there are times where i've made things where i'm like oh i really wish people liked that more you know

She's great, yeah. How do you not go with O'Hara? Yeah.

It's literally insane.

I was shocked by the honesty. Honestly, like I really could tell that he was in a position in that point in his career. And that person still works in Hollywood as one of the heads of one of the major studios in Hollywood. So he stuck around. And it was an ancient Roman teen sex comedy. Yeah. Oh, really? Okay. So this wasn't super bad or something.

I mean, I start from recognizing that I'm just very lucky. And from the time I've been like 22 or 23, I've consistently been able to work, basically, and pretty much work on the things that I want to work on. So as... Much as I would like to pity myself at times and really lick my wounds, like, one of the things that is helpful is that I have just kept working.

So often, like, if I've made something that is poorly received, I've already made another thing. And I'm like, well, maybe that thing will be better received, and they can't take that away. Like, it's already happened, you know? And so I think...

The fact that I have kind of kept my foot on the gas this whole time, be it something I'm writing or producing or have a smaller role in, I've just always kept going. And so I view myself as very lucky. And so it's hard to, again, get too brought down by that stuff. And I think part of it's based on like if I think it could have been better.

Like I think if I agree with the criticism, it's much more painful and it's much harder. And if I see that I missed something or I made some glaring mistake in – You know, there's a discrepancy between what I hope to put out there and what I did put out there.

And I think that to me is something that I have a harder time dealing with as opposed to I put out there exactly what I wanted to put out there and people – and just like a very – usually like maybe just like a smaller group of people really liked it than I was hoping. But usually a small group – at least a small group of people will like it, you know.

But at times I've made things where – and not a lot of things, thank God, but where I'm just like – Like they didn't like it. And now that I look at it, I don't know if I like it either. And I don't know if I I could have pushed it harder and I could have maybe been more critical of it or worked harder to bring it to a better level. You know what I mean?

Oh, yeah. Many, many, many times. We've got notes just like this scene isn't funny, which is insulting. You know, I think – I actually understand notes about likeability because like I think that's like an easy note for an executive to give. It's like often there will be a character based on me and they'll be like, this character is not likeable.

Yeah, that was a thing. Yeah, that Sony – well, it was Sony, like corporate Sony. Sony made the movie. You know, Sony owns Columbia Pictures. And so Sony made Superbad. And there's a scene in Superbad where it was supposed to be Michael Cera and Jonah's character, Seth and Evan, based on us playing PlayStation together.

What's funny is we had written super bad and no one was making it. And that's how we got the job for this movie. And, and honestly, we were like, let's just put all of like our ideals from super bad into the movie basically. And so that's how desperate we were to make something. And so we sort of became like an ancient Roman version of super bad, which as I say, it is insane.

And then we got a note from Sony corporate, yeah, that Jonah's character couldn't interact with a Sony product basically. Yeah. It was even worse on Pineapple Express where they wouldn't even let us put a PlayStation in the movie altogether. And we had a scene where it was like a video game and we had to like invent a console that didn't exist. Oh, my God.

Yeah, like Sony on that one was like, we don't even want to be in this movie.

It is based on me. And they were like, yes, this character is too reprehensible to be touching a PlayStation. And I was like, that hurts.

Thank you.

I mean, truthfully, like – I think I just realized at one point that because you're a comedian, every time you do a photo shoot, they try to make you look like a buffoon.

And I feel like there was a moment where I was like, what if instead of, like, me looking sort of good but also kind of dumb, I just actually, like, put on nice clothes and you took my picture like you do every other person who is in these magazines, you know?

And you don't try to subvert it in some way and you don't, like, try to make me look good but then also, like, throw a pie in my face or something like that. Like, what if I actually just got, like, the photo shoot treatment as you put me on the cover of your magazine? And that was really it. And I remember...

It's funny because afterwards I remember another comedian coming up to me who's very famous and being like, what did you do? And I was like, I just told them I didn't want to look stupid. And he was like, whoa, I'm going to do that. I'm going to stop looking stupid. And they did. And they started to look incredibly fashionable. Yes.

Not really. I didn't get offered like a Louis Vuitton campaign all of a sudden or anything like that. I probably get lent nicer clothes for movie premieres and stuff like that. But not really, no. It's better the alternative. I feel like I used to be called schlubby all the time. And now that doesn't happen as much.

So it is like – I think it just is nice to feel as though I'm representing myself better. And I'm someone who in real life – my wife always talks about like when we first started dating – I owned like diesel jeans. Like I'm someone who, I'm someone who like in my own way have always tried to take pride in their appearance and tried to wear things that reflect my taste.

You know, I just never, I couldn't always afford to do it. So that was also something that was nice. But no, if anything, again, I'm just happy I don't have to look stupid all the time.

Thank you.

But, um, and it was very dirty. It was very dirty. Um, And what I recall, I think at the point in this process, yeah, we had handed in a draft that he really thought was funny and we thought was funny and was ridiculous and crazy. And he was telling us in this notes meeting that, like, it couldn't be so dirty. And it was clearly the notes he had been given from on high.

And so in a very honest moment, he said that. And I don't know if the execs I've worked with over the years would agree, but I've always had a sympathy for it. I think because of that, I've always felt like it really humanized the job in a lot of ways.

And made me understand, you know, from a pretty young age, yeah, that like a lot of these, not all of them, but a lot of them are people who love movies but who are constantly put in positions where they have to – either maybe be fired or do something kind of risky. And I think more of them should do something risky, and that will actually lead to better things. But I understand why they don't.

I don't agree with it necessarily, but I understand it. And it's a very comedic situation to be in. Right.

Yeah, it's a very tragic job. And I think tragedy is comedy in a lot of ways, you know? And a lot of them, yeah, like, because they love movies and they grow up Now I'm at the age even where like some of the people I work with grew up watching our movies and stuff like that. You know what I mean?

And for the first time in my life, like I'm older than the execs I'm working with at some of these companies. And so they, I'm one of the people they probably grew up watching and they are constantly put in a position where they have to say things that make me really mad at them. And I would imagine that's a huge bummer. And I've seen it over and over.

I remember an exec like hiding from a movie star, like literally in his office because he was avoiding, because the movie wasn't tracking well and he was avoiding seeing you on the lot. And he knew he was mad. He knew the movie star was there for a meeting and was mad. And he didn't want to get yelled at basically.

And he's like, I remember him being like, I love that this guy's one of my favorite actors of all time. And he wants to scream at me. And like that to us was, again, It was just funny. It just always struck us as very funny.

Yeah, we interviewed a lot of them, whether they knew it or not. Some of them, it was just like us milking information from them without them. And some were very formal interviews where they came in. But a lot of the stuff from those interviews... worked their way directly into episodes of the show.

For sure.

I think we're actually – and like if anything, I think we paint like a pretty sympathetic picture of the situation that, you know, I think – To a lot of people's experiences is probably, you know, an optimistic view of what Hollywood is.

As an ambitious young executive, will do.

Um, I would describe my character as someone who grew up loving movies and who worked very hard to be someone who got to make movies. And I think he's someone who wishes he was very creative, but is not. And he kind of views himself as creative, but simply isn't. And so his avenue to filmmaking, quote unquote, I guess, became being a studio executive. And he's very ambitious and creative.

very self-preservational and someone who will do the thing that allows him to keep going rather than to perhaps lose it all. And he's someone who's constantly put in a position to really disappoint both himself and the people that he idolizes and the medium that he idolizes. Yeah.

Yes, he's very panicked and stressed out and wears it on his sleeve and does not. And that's based on some specific people I know is that they wear their panic like clearly like they have a bad poker face. And that is very much something my character has as someone who is never trying to calm a situation and always subscribing to like the worst case scenario basically, you know.

He really does. Yeah. and it's really making fun of me in a lot of ways, you know, and, and, and I don't have like the delusions of grandeur. I think my character in the show has, but I think it's inspired by the same belief that like one movie can change the entire course of Hollywood. And I don't think I'm going to be the person to make that movie necessarily, but you want to at one time. Yeah.

And, and for sure. And I think if you're a, an ambitious executive, uh, who's obsessed with Robert Evans, then you really think you could do that, you know? And so I think it's a silly goal to have, and my character has specifically that goal, I think. He wants to be viewed as like the savior of this town, you know?

And that is not an ambition I specifically have, but it's something that I understand where that idea comes from.

Yeah, Robert Evans was an independent producer in Hollywood in the 70s who eventually became the head of Paramount. And essentially, like, championed some of the biggest... films of the 70s, like Chinatown and The Godfather. And he was known for being one of the few people who was beloved by the talent, quote unquote, who made incredibly successful movies and who made incredibly good movies.

And he also has the distinction of being... If not the only one of the few studio heads who negotiated in their deal that their name was actually on the movie, which is a big plot line in the show, that your name isn't on the movie. And he actually had his name on the movie, even though he was running the studio, because he understood the importance of his legacy.

Well, um... I've worked at Continental for 22 years. I bought the original spec script for MKUltra, which, as I'm sure you know, spawned a franchise that's made us over $3 billion for the... Hey, Rene! Where the f*** is my green juice?

Yeah. I've been a part of films that won awards and seen some executives in the wake of that who did not get thanked and they were literally in tears. And as we interviewed a lot of the execs in Hollywood, that was like a very common theme where they admitted like, you want to be thanked by first and last name.

And that distinction was brought up by more than one of them, where if it's not first and last name, no one knows.

One of the most surreal moments of my life was, I'll never forget it, like... My good friend Jay Baruchel was in Million Dollar Baby. And it was like literally me and him alone in my apartment because he was staying with me. He lived in Montreal. We were like smoking weed, watching the Oscars, and Million Dollar Baby wins Best Picture.

And Clint Eastwood gets up there and he starts thanking, I want to thank Hillary and Anthony and Jay. And Jay literally like... leapt off the couch. It was just like, ah! And, like, and it was truly, like, an unbelievable moment. Because, like, here we are in my, like, terrible apartment, disgusting, smoking weed, eating, like, Chinese takeout.

And, like, the guy sitting on the couch was thanked by Clint Eastwood as he won Best Picture in real time. And the recognition, he literally jumped 10 feet up in the air. And so I've seen it. And what's funny is Like, I was at the Golden Globes this year, and a lot of people in that episode were there. And people kept coming up to me being like, it's just like the episode.

It's exactly like the episode. It's so weird. So meta. Right. Yeah.

You know, I've worked, obviously, a long time to get here. My parents are very thrilled, very proud. I think Griffin is, you know, optimistic with the plan.

Yeah, I feel miserable, honestly. I'm anxious, I'm stressed out, panicking pretty much all the time. I was so much happier two weeks ago when I was just angry and resentful that I didn't have this job. I would give anything to be angry and resentful compared to how I feel right now.

You know, I walk past the tour guide every morning, and they say that the office was built as a temple to cinema, but it feels much more like a tomb.

Yeah, I'm honored, obviously, to be one of the people that gets to choose, you know, which movies get made and which ones don't. That's huge. And I got into all this because, you know, I love movies. But now I have this fear that my job is to ruin them.

Like the characters, especially mine, like longs for days of yore. And that was sort of a big part of the idea was to like also anchor the show in like a real feeling history for this studio and sort of like a real culture that the studio and like an identity that the studio has kind of. Yeah. And so, yeah, we really used color palettes that were very 70s inspired.

And the idea was that that's sort of the culture at the studio. And it also just subconsciously makes it – you can tell that the characters kind of long for – like there's a nostalgia for a time that isn't there anymore. They're not – trying to be on the cutting edge of things. They're actually trying to kind of go back to how things used to be, you know?

It's a name drop. I was at 30 Rock Ones with Lorne Michaels. And I was saying what an amazing building it was. And he was like in his way like, well, you know, when any industry is new, they build cathedrals for it. And I always remembered that. And it was so true. And like the studios feel that way a lot of them. Like there are these beautiful places.

And they were built at a time when they were kind of like unabashedly like lauding and trying to like bolster the importance of the industry, you know. And so that to us was something. very important.

And we got really lucky with that shot, because we shot the show where basically every scene is one take, which was very hard to do, but what it allowed us to do is a scene like that, for example, it's all one shot, and we shot it... maybe 15 times. And, and the first like 10 times it was like rainy and gray and cloudy.

And we kept having to go inside cause it was raining on us and it just looked miserable, but we had a very specific shot we wanted to do. And so we literally just sat inside and waited for it to stop raining as the sun was going down. And then it's like this magical thing happened. We're like, right. As the sun was going down, the rain stopped and Rainbows appeared.

Yeah, I'm like, is that a rainbow over there? You could see the whole city, and we were just like, let's go shoot now. And to me, it was like a real magical Hollywood moment, kind of.

Definitely. And I think that it always was a love letter to Los Angeles. And I think if anything, it is like, I love living in Los Angeles and I've lived here for a very long time and I love the architecture. I love the landscape. Like I love that there's Franklin Wright buildings and John Launder houses. And I think that's one of the things that Hollywood kind of,

has afforded me over the years is just like access to like these very beautiful spaces, you know? And so, and, and as we were pitching the show, that was always something that we would say the pitch is like a lot of our experience in Hollywood is like being in very beautiful places, having very stupid arguments with one another.

And like that was something that we really was a funny juxtaposition as well.

It's like we would be at a movie premiere at the Ace Theater that was the United Artists Theater that Charlie Chaplin opened in some back room that was like literally the dressing room that Charlie Chaplin would use before coming out the theater and just like screaming at each other over like the dumbest like like a fart joke or something like that. And to us, that was always just very funny.

Yeah, like a medical – like a cancer gala. Yeah, gala.

But we make life worth living. You all save lives, but we make life worth living.

I mean, that episode is probably threading a needle more than any of them as far as rooting for my character or at least even understanding where my character is coming from in any way, shape, or form. That to me is actually, I think, like in many ways, I personally find it to be the funniest episode because it's sort of based on...

It's kind of based on me because – and I understand – obviously I understand it's comedic and ridiculous. But I would – I have a charity with my wife, Hilarity for Charity, and it's an Alzheimer's charity. And so we find ourselves at a lot of medical galas. And I find myself at a lot of tables with – who save lives. And what's funny is often they have a blatant disrespect for the film industry.

Maybe as they should, but I don't think so necessarily. So there's no deference for you. No, and they think it's funny. And I think they think it's funny... I think – and they're obviously smart enough to know that I exist in a world where there is deference and they're showing no deference.

And they seem to revel in being in a position where they can like sort of maybe subtly at times diminish the career of another person who clearly views what they do as important even though maybe it isn't.

Well, I personally understand that it's not a thing I should be upset about, but I comedically understand the feeling that you wish you could fight back against that and assert that what you do is as important.

And it's not something I would ever do in real life, but it's something that I – it's obviously an instinct I had somewhere in my brain because that's where the idea for the episode came from. But I know it's ridiculous and I know my character is wrong generally. But I think that the inspiration for that episode was definitely based on like feelings that I've had sitting at tables with doctors.

For sure. I'd say that episode has more actual conversations that we've had to sit in rooms and watch than most of the episodes. And what's funny about it is it's like all people care about is the perception. They themselves have no ideological... like thing that they are trying to get across and they don't care at all. They just don't want to look bad.

And that is the thing that we would notice the most when these types of things came up was that like, oh no, none of these people care. They just don't want to look bad.

It's not a thing we got made, but it was like we were making a comic book and there was an alien character. The alien had been traditionally voiced by someone of a certain race. And so all of a sudden that became a big topic of conversation. It was like, what race is this alien? And we kept being like, well, it's an alien.

But it didn't matter because in people's heads there was a certain race ascribed to the alien due to the voice. That people associated with the alien. And then we were like, well, is that racist? And so that was something in the last few years where, again, I found just a lot of people having, at the end of the day, no one involved cared. No one could be like, you know what?

I strongly believe that it should be this. It was just like, what maybe will people yell at?

Yeah.

Yes, that happens a lot. I've been there as well. I've had people call me and ask me Jewish things before. It's happened to me. I've been that person.

Oh, yeah. Many, many, many times. We've got notes just like this scene isn't funny, which is insulting. You know, I think – I actually understand notes about likeability because like I think that's like an easy note for an executive to give. It's like often there will be a character based on me and they'll be like, this character is not likable.

Yeah, that was a thing. Yeah, that Sony – well, it was Sony, like corporate Sony. Sony made the movie. You know, Sony owns Columbia Pictures. And so Sony made Superbad. And there's a scene in Superbad where it was supposed to be Michael Cera and Jonah's character, Seth and Evan, based on us playing PlayStation together.

And then we got a note from Sony corporate, yeah, that Jonah's character couldn't interact with a Sony product basically. Yeah. It was even worse on Pineapple Express where they wouldn't even let us put a PlayStation in the movie altogether. And we had a scene where Kim was playing a video game and we had to like invent a console that didn't exist. Oh my God.

Yeah, like Sony on that one was like, we don't even want to be in this movie.

It is based on me. And they were like, yes, this character is too reprehensible to be touching a PlayStation. And I was like, that hurts. Yeah.

Thank you.

patty's time has come and gone and i'm seriously considering you to replace her oh my god yes yes i'm the guy i'm the guy for the job why are you tell me that why are you the guy well um I've worked at Continental for 22 years. I bought the original spec script for MKUltra, which, as I'm sure you know, spawned a franchise that's made us over $3 billion for the- Hey, Rene!

Film is my life. Ever since I came to the studio as a kid and went on the tour, Being the head of Continental is the only job I've ever wanted. That is adorable.

Me? Yeah. That could not be further from the truth. I am as bottom line oriented as anyone in this town.

Thank you. What an intro.

Yeah.

I was shocked by the honesty. Honestly, like I really could tell that he was in a position in that point in his career. And that person still works in Hollywood as one of the heads of one of the major studios in Hollywood. So he stuck around. And it was an ancient Roman teen sex comedy. Yeah.

Okay, so this wasn't Superbad or something. What's funny is we had written Superbad, and no one was making it, and that's how we got the job for this movie. And honestly, we were like, let's just put all of our ideas from Superbad into the movie, basically. And so that's how desperate we were to make something.

And so we sort of became like an ancient Roman version of Superbad, which, as I say, is insane. And it was very dirty. It was very dirty. Yeah. And what I recall, I think at the point in this process, yeah, we had handed in a draft that he really thought was funny and we thought was funny and was ridiculous and crazy. And he was telling us in this notes meeting that, like, it couldn't be so dirty.

And it was clearly the notes he had been given from on high. And so in a very honest moment, he said that. And I don't know if the execs I've worked with over the years would agree, but I've always had a sympathy for it. I think because of that, I've always felt like it really humanized the job in a lot of ways.

And made me understand, you know, from a pretty young age, yeah, that like a lot of these – not all of them, but a lot of them are people who love movies but who are constantly put in positions where they have to – either maybe be fired or do something kind of risky. And I think more of them should do something risky, and that will actually lead to better things. But I understand why they don't.

Yeah, it's a very tragic job. And I think tragedy is comedy in a lot of ways.

I don't agree with it necessarily, but I understand it. And it's a very comedic situation to be in. Right.

Yeah, it's a very tragic job. And I think tragedy is comedy in a lot of ways, you know. And a lot of them, yeah, like, because they love movies and they grow up... Now I'm at the age even where like some of the people I work with grew up watching our movies and stuff like that. You know what I mean?

And for the first time in my life, like I'm older than the execs I'm working with at some of these companies. And so they, I'm one of the people they probably grew up watching and they are constantly put in a position where they have to say things that make me really mad at them. And I would imagine that's a huge bummer. And I've seen it over and over.

I remember an exec like hiding from a movie star like literally in his office because he was avoiding – because the movie wasn't tracking well and he was avoiding – He didn't want to be the one to tell it. He knew he was mad. He knew the movie star was there for a meeting and was mad and he didn't want to get yelled at basically.

And he's like – I remember him being like, I love that this guy is one of my favorite actors of all time and he wants to scream at me. And like that to us was – It was just funny. It just always struck us as very funny.

Yeah, we interviewed a lot of them, whether they knew it or not. Some of them, it was just like us milking information from them without them. And some were very formal interviews where they came in. But a lot of the stuff from those interviews... worked their way directly into episodes of the show.

For sure.

I think we're actually – and like if anything, I think we paint like a pretty sympathetic picture of the situation that, you know, I think – To a lot of people's experiences is probably, you know, an optimistic view of what Hollywood is.

Yeah, he's great.

As an ambitious young executive, will do.

I would describe my character as someone who grew up loving movies and who worked very hard to be someone who got to make movies. And I think he's someone who wishes he was very creative but is not and who kind of views himself as creative but simply isn't. And so his avenue to filmmaking, quote unquote, I guess, became being a studio executive. And he's very ambitious and creative.

Very self-preservational and someone who will do the thing that allows him to keep going rather than to perhaps lose it all. And he's someone who's constantly put in a position to really disappoint both himself and the people that he idolizes and the medium that he idolizes, you know?

Yes, he's very panicked and stressed out and wears it on his sleeve and does not. And that's based on some specific people I know is that they wear their panic like clearly like they have a bad poker face. And that is very much something my character has, you know.

He really does. He wants to make film. Yeah. And it's really making fun of me in a lot of ways, you know? And I don't have, like, delusions of grandeur, I think my character in the show has. But I think it's inspired by the same belief that, like, one movie can change the entire course of Hollywood. And I don't think I'm going to be the person to make that movie necessarily.

Yeah, and for sure. And I think if you're an ambitious executive – who's obsessed with Robert Evans, then you really think you could do that, you know? And so I think it's a silly goal to have. And my character has specifically that goal, I think. He wants to be viewed as like the savior of this town, you know?

And that is not an ambition I specifically have, but it's something that I understand where that idea comes from.

You know, I've worked, obviously, a long time to get here. My You know, my parents are very thrilled, very proud. I think Griffin is, you know, optimistic with the plan.

Yeah, I feel miserable, honestly. I'm anxious, I'm stressed out, panicking pretty much all the time. I was so much happier two weeks ago when I was just angry and resentful that I didn't have this job. I would give anything to be angry and resentful compared to how I feel right now.

You know, I walk past the tour guide every morning, and they say that the office was built as a temple to cinema, but it feels much more like a tomb.

Yeah, and I'm honored, obviously, to be one of the people that gets to choose, you know, which movies get made and which ones don't. That's huge. And I got into all this because, you know, I love movies, but now I have this fear that

Yeah, exactly. Like the characters, especially mine, like longs for days of yore. And that was sort of a big part of the idea was to like also anchor the show in like a real feeling history for this studio and sort of like a real culture that the studio and like an identity that the studio has kind of. And so, yeah, we really used color palettes that were very 70s inspired.

And you can tell that the characters kind of long for, like, there's a nostalgia for a time that isn't there anymore. They're not trying to be on the cutting edge of things. They're actually trying to kind of go back to how things used to be, you know. And, yeah, we shot a lot of old homes from the 50s and 60s and 70s. That house is a John Lautner house. It's a very beautiful, beautiful house.

And in the show, it's as though we kind of, have a storyline as though Frank Lloyd Wright designed the studio that we are in because he was in California making, you know, Mayan revival buildings, like at the time that these studios were made and, and that it sort of has this like grandeur to it, you know, and this like kind of thing that you're trying to live up to. And, you know, I remember, uh,

We, you know, like I said, we spent the first few years feeling scared and sad and didn't know what to do. And then eventually we were just like, I have to start talking about it. So we went to a few events and then a friend came to us and is like, let's let's throw a variety show and we'll raise money for Alzheimer's in honor of your mom, which was fantastic. incredibly moving.

And up until that point, this was in 2012, I felt very alone. I was like, I'm the only young person dealing with this. And of course I was horribly wrong, which I luckily was wrong because I wasn't alone. And there was for better or worse, a community of young people who were dealing with it.

And so I think that helped us sort of form the idea of let's create something where young people can have a voice and they can feel like they are part of giving back. And like I said, having some sort of control over something that they don't have control over. And so we just sort of looked at our own situation when we started raising money as an organization.

And we're like, how can we actually help people today in this moment?

Yeah. So that's how we started our grant program in which we provide respite care to people who are caring for their loved ones at home. And we read applications every month and the stories are unbelievably real and often quite sad and dire. And people are, you know, doing everything they can with what they have, but it's often not enough to care for someone with this disease. And they need help.

They need respite. They need a break. And so that's where part of our money goes into awarding these respite grants to people who are caring for their loved ones at home. We also created a lot of support groups. I was part of a support group for young people. The first support group I went to was like just a general group.

And I remember there was a man in there who was in his 50s caring for his mother who was probably in her 50s. late 70s or 80s caring for his mother. And I was just like, that's sad, but I'm 23. Like we're in drastically different boats. And so actually the woman who ran that support group was one who created this group for young people. And it was people under, I think, 35.

And that really showed me community. Being with people who understand exactly what you're going through is so helpful and can really, really get you through a tough situation. So we made a lot of different support groups, made them accessible. We were doing online virtual support groups since 2014, long before the pandemic and Zoom. And so doing that.

And then, of course, we have a lot of programming for caregivers, symposiums. We do a large... A virtual event every year. All throughout the year, we do virtual learning workshops for people. Yeah. And created what we call like the five brain health tips. So it's getting good sleep, eating well, exercising, emotional well-being. So, you know, being active, being loved, doing therapy, meditating.

Um, and then, uh, learning new things, like being mentally fit. So new hobbies, um, being socially active, those types of things.

Exactly. Yeah. Like they say crossword puzzles, look, probably better than staring at the television. Exactly. But, um, But, yeah, if you're doing a crossword puzzle, you're accessing what's already in your brain. You want to learn new things. So, like, we took up pottery. I'm now doing Duolingo.

And, you know, and just always trying to keep your brain, like, learning and growing as much as you can. And we created online coursework called HFC Universe. And the first level is taught by Seth and some other fellow celebrity professors.

Literally, when you got into bed last night, I was like, this is my favorite time of day. You talked to Barack. It's like, oh, it's over. I know. And he's like, there you are. You know, we got our puppy.

But, you know, it's funny because so many people are like, how could I sleep better? My sleep is terrible. And it's like, well, you actually can if you work on it and you bring in some tools and aids. We have a cooling pad. I have a weighted blanket. I have the best mask. We do white noise. I have cooling sheets. You have 300 things. I have a lot.

But because I do track my sleep, I see that doing those things legitimately increased it.

Yeah. Yeah.

There's a lot to unpack there.

Yeah, very much. My parents were in Florida at the time, we were in Los Angeles, and it was very clear that the strain that was on my dad as her caregiver was not good. And it was so heavy and so immense.

Yeah, yeah. Well, so my mom, you know, early onset is... Well, so Dr. Isaacson will quote him and say, like, if you've seen one case of Alzheimer's, you've seen one case of Alzheimer's. So it really does affect everyone differently. Although, of course, there are some things that, you know, are a bit more universal. So my mom just started getting more and more difficult, resistant to help.

She also would... She would walk around the house from sunup to way past sundown. And just scream. And eventually she started screaming for hours, walking around and screaming. She also would walk out the door. My dad had to sort of put paper over the windows to cover up what was outside to try to keep her inside. And the toll it was taking on was huge, as I said.

And we often felt like when we tried to step into CareGive, there was resistance because he really, he was her caregiver.

It quickly, you know, after the first couple years, it was clear. I would say by the time she was 58, 57, maybe she had to retire from teaching. Maybe 56 even. And then by... Yeah, by 58, 59, she really needed care. She was still mobile at that point, but it was pretty hard to, you know, get her to focus or, you know, stay calm in a lot of moments.

And so I, you know, I was in therapy at the time, still am. And, you know, my therapist was like, well, if your dad is the primary caregiver, then you should be your dad's primary caregiver. Yeah.

So sort of like, you know, what Nick has said is, you know, when someone is the primary caregiver and they are showing that they are taking the lead, then as the child, it was very helpful to me to know how I could help. You know, before it was like, I don't know what to do or how to help. So it was like, how do we make this easier for my dad so then he can help my mom?

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

Seth was the one that was like, I love you. I'm happy to, you know, hold you while you cry, but you need a professional. And I did. I really did. And it really helped.

Definitely. Yeah. No. And there was, I mean, I remember my dad and I certainly, you know, it wasn't all, you know, sunshine and rainbows every moment of this, no doubt. And, you know, certainly there was conflict and there was one moment where we had deep conflict and I was like, can you meet me at my therapist? And we had a joint session where we talked through everything.

And that was really helpful to everyone. Take time to listen to him and for him to take time to listen to me. And I think that, you know, like as the child, you have this sort of like ownership, right, over your parents. It's like, well, it's like my mom and it's my dad. But it's like, but it was his partner. Yeah. And his spouse. Yeah. who was with him for, you know, over 40 years.

Of course. My parents had, you know, my dad worked, he was the manager of a manufacturing plant. My mom taught elementary school. My parents were those people who were saving for this great retirement to travel, to, you know, to live that moment. And they didn't get it. All those sacrifices and, you know. And there's a lot of anger, you know, a lot of anger.

But to go back to what I said a few minutes ago, you have to have acceptance. And that is – it is hard. I'm not saying it's easy, but just to sort of remember where you are. So I think that for Nick – I would say for Nick and his dad – to join a support group, to go on our website and fill out the form. And they won't be in the same group because they're not in the same boat.

And to talk to other people who are in it in this moment Honestly, just being seen helps lower the stress. It just does. And so that's the first thing I would say. Yeah.

The person sitting right in front of you.

But I don't know if that's helpful. I mean, I think you just said such a key term, which is giving yourself permission. I think that caregivers, especially when they're caring for their spouse and their parent, these people who are the key influencers in their lives, it is so hard to put yourself first. Right. But you have to.

You have to know that that person loves you so much that they would want you to be taking care of themselves physically and mentally. And Nick's dad is in such a brutal position. And every day to have that anticipatory grief, which is so, so rough. Yeah. And to see this woman who he shared his life with and created a family with be different is, it is nearly impossible to accept that.

But, you know, you have to, a lot of caregiving techniques stem from improv, from the simple, when you learn improv, the first thing they teach you is yes and. You know, when someone presents an idea, you don't shut it down. You say yes and.

and that and so when nick's mom introduces her boyfriend and you want to put your head against the wall you have to take a breath and be like yes that's your boyfriend and also here's your husband and and we can all sit together and why don't we all have tea together and and you know it's this huge job to accept

Seth was the one that was like, I love you. I'm happy to hold you while you cry, but you need a professional. And I did. I really did, and it really helped. And I think that having that type of person who has studied— And knows how to navigate grief. Yeah. A professional.

Yeah. Yeah, and I would also add that Nick and his dad have put his mom in a very safe situation where she feels comfortable enough to make a friend and find some happiness to herself. That's a great sign. And so Nick should give himself the permission to let his mom—

be there and to go to his family and to not worry and not need to physically be there every day for she is cared for it sounds like she is well looked after and so therefore he should take that time and not feel guilt to spend time with his own family because i think that that's the thing i mean you heard was i mean there was a moment where it was just like do i see her every

Like when we were entering like year six since my mom had walked or talked or spoken or cared for herself in any way. And that is exhausting. And it got to the point where I was like, I can't go every day. I can't go see her every day. And she wouldn't want me to. That's right. And I need to protect myself a little bit. And I think that Nick needs to honestly just be a little more selfish.

Well, he's got to protect his kids.

That we want to put out there. No, it's not. And again, go back to like, I imagine it's not what his mother would want. Right, right, right. Like, I think that is such a huge thing that caregivers become so selfless that they forget that they are humans who are alive and living and need to experience joy as well.

And it isn't just about being a caregiver 24-7 because that will not help his mother also.

Yeah, just scheduling time for the things you love or just little things that help you like, neither of my parents were big drinkers, but I remember like, you know, my dad was going through and he'd be like, ah, maybe pour myself a drink tonight. And I was like, have to. I literally remember one time, short of illegal drugs, do whatever you want.

Oh, yes.

Absolutely.

Totally.

That is the hope, right? Yeah. Like, someone is diagnosed and, like, unfortunately, like, there is still really nothing that will stop, prevent, or cure this disease. Right. other than living a brain-healthy lifestyle may prevent it, may delay it. Four out of 10 cases might be delayed or prevented. That's a lot. That's a lot.

And so, you know, and I spent a lot of years, a lot of time with anger and depression. And don't get me wrong, I still do. I'm a human. Yeah, yeah. But at the same time, I have to remember, like, I have to think of myself and the things that are going to keep me healthy because we need to do that in order to to hopefully grow old, which is the goal, right?

What's on the list?

Yes.

There were times that I literally would stop and I would see my mom for five minutes. I'd walk in. I'd kiss her on the head. I'd say a thing or two. I'd squeeze her hand. And then I left. Because that was all I could take. And that felt like enough to remind her she is loved. I feel like we're together. And in a way, Nick could make a schedule. As Seth said, she is cared for.

He doesn't have to go every day. He doesn't have to go five times a week. He could go twice a week, once a week, whatever works so that he is also there to show up for his family.

Definitely. And we at HFC can help point you in the right direction. There are a lot of services out there that are there to help people navigate through this. You really don't have to do it alone. It is such an isolating thing to care for a loved one with dementia, but it doesn't have to be.

Let's talk about death. Yeah. We're such a youth-obsessed culture. Ignoring death doesn't do anyone any favors.

Yeah.

Very excited to chat with you guys.

Thank you. Thank you for saying that. That means a lot coming from you. So thank you.

We're good. Yeah, we're pretty good. You know, it's crazy times and busy and, you know.

About a young woman caring for her mom with Alzheimer's based on a graphic novel about a young woman caring for her mom. Yeah.

Honestly, it was the book itself. It really captured the caregiving experience from a young person's point of view with... Humor and a lot of deep sadness. And it's black and white, hand-drawn. And there's something sort of very poignant, I think, about that visual.

Yeah, well, we've been working on it since 2016. It takes a long time to get a movie made. I am learning. It's hard. Especially an animated movie that is not expensive. We were recording last week just with Abby Jacobson and recording some of the more emotionally heavy scenes. And definitely, you know, there was not a dry eye in the recording studio.

Yeah, it's, you know, it's a disease that carries so much stigma, you know, dating back to when you guys were experiencing firsthand as children and people didn't really know and were really scared and would look at someone with dementia and have so much fear. And I think in the decades that have followed since then...

I think that that stigma has lessened, especially in the last five or ten years, I think.

Yeah. And even in the early years of my mom's diagnosis, Because she was early onset, so she was very young. She was very young. She started showing signs at 52 and then was diagnosed just before she was 55. Unfortunately, we had all witnessed my grandparents, her parents have dementia. And so in those early years, my mom herself was ashamed and didn't want us to talk about it.

My mom was a teacher. She taught elementary school for 35 years, first grade for most of that. Yeah. And then to go from this woman who was an active teacher with children every day to someone who eventually was a shell of herself over a close to 18-year journey was a long, long road. Wow.

Not talking about it in the beginning because of that stigma, because of that fear that she had that we all had didn't help anyone. Didn't help me. Didn't help her. Doesn't help the overall cause. And so eventually, you know, as storytellers, we just kind of had to talk about it. I couldn't keep it in any longer. And for better or worse, my mom's disease advanced.

But I think once we started sharing our story was when I started to feel like I had any type of control over this thing that I didn't actually have any control over.

Yeah, just before I turned 25. So really young. Yeah, I was at my college graduation when I was 22 that she repeated. story a couple times throughout that weekend. And because of what I had seen with my grandparents... You knew what it was. I knew. Yeah. But I didn't say anything out loud to anyone for close to, I guess, a year and a half after that.

And then eventually we were dating at that point and my parents came out to visit. And it was very clear to me that this was happening. And I dropped them off at the airport and I came back to Seth's apartment and And I just, it was the first time I had said it out loud to anyone, like something is going on.

I said it to Seth, and he was like, she seemed fine.

I didn't know her at all, really.

And I was like, you don't know her. Yeah, it was one of the first times I met her. She's a cool lady, yeah. She's funny, yeah. Yeah. Yeah, but, you know, soon it was obvious that, unfortunately, this was our path.