Scott Aukerman on The Apartment

This week Chuck sits down with one of his comedy heroes, Mr. Scott Aukerman, to talk podcasting, Mr. Show, writing, music and his movie crush, The Apartment. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to Movie Crush, a production of I Heart Radio. Hey, everybody,

(00:30):
welcome to Movie Crush Charles W. Chuck Bryant here in
the l a Hollywood studio. Uh, you guys. I just
got to sit down for geez, maybe a couple of
hours with one of my heroes, Mr Scott Ackerman. This
was a very big deal for me. I was one
of the few that I've gone into a little bit nervous.

(00:50):
But we actually talked for a bit before we recorded,
which really helped. And I came to learn very quickly
that he's a great dude and super nice and uh
and just a sweet, sweet guy. And we got to
sit here and talk about uh. He let me go
for a really long time, much longer than he said
he had time for. We talked about music, which was great.

(01:13):
We got to talk about his great podcast are You Talking?
You two to me? Are you Talking? R? E? M
Reamy that he does with Adam Scott that you all
know that I'm obsessed with. We got to talk about
our similar backgrounds growing up as as Baptist boys, and
the beginnings of his career with Mr. Show one of
my um early, early big comedy influences for me back

(01:35):
in the day, and um, and he was just the
best guy. We got to talk about all the things
that I wanted to cover, including his movie Crush, the
classic perfect film from nineteen sixty from writer and director
Billy Wilder. The Apartment with Jack Lemon and Shirley McLean
and Fred Murray was great. It couldn't have gone any better.

(01:58):
Big thanks to Scott for coming on. And here we
go with Scott Ackerman on the Apartment. It's remarkably consistent. Um,
you know, Josh and I had the advantage of not
having a book guests, and uh, kind of just like
we're on autopilot at this point. We've got it so

(02:19):
down it's very very natural. But yeah, that is crazy.
So you started in April of April two thousand nine. Yeah,
I mean that was literally when we started. Yeah, crazy,
You know, the landscape back then was a lot different. Nothing.
We're very lucky. I feel very fortunate, Yeah, to get
in that or because it's so weird, I feel like numbers,

(02:43):
like how we get numbers, or due to just being
around so long for whatever reason. Anyway, you know, I
feel that way too, Like sometimes I wonder how many
of people of the actual numbers we get are listening,
but they I know they are because they we track
them and they press play. But it used to just
be subscriptions and that's how your numbers were. But I

(03:04):
don't know, it's so crazy. Yeah, I bet you guys
get a little bit of what we get to, which
is people like we'll get emails from people that say,
you know, I listened for six years and then just
went away for a couple of years and now I'm back,
and um, like, it's so cool that you're still doing
the same thing and I've caught up with all the
older episodes. I feel like, I'm like, comedy is very
important to people when they're young. I feel like, and

(03:27):
then people get families and they start having less time,
and comedy gets less important to them. So I I
think that my show is a little more like and
that's why I try to keep it current with like
current comedians rather than just going back to the same
well of people from ten years ago. But it's like,
I feel like it burns bright in people's loves for
for two or three years or something like that, and

(03:47):
then they go away, new people come in, you know,
But yeah, that's true. Uh, And I'm sure you also
get some of these emails that totally freak you out.
Like I started listening when I was ten, and you know,
I just got my master's and you guys were with
me the whole time, Like Jesus, Yeah, it's so weird,
such a weird thing that we fell into. I know, well,

(04:09):
but you, I mean I truly fell into it, and
that I had no previous experience in entertainment other than
you know, working as a p a film sets on
TV commercials out here, right, But you you were already
well established. Yeah, I mean I was doing I was
doing my show as a hobby while I was writing,
because I you know, I worked on I started as

(04:33):
a comedian um here in l A. And I was
performing a lot, um and I was performing, you know,
several times a week, and this like mid nineties. This
is mid nineties. I started July and so um until
I started working on MR Show, which was ninety seven
or maybe um eight, all right, but I was performing

(04:57):
a lot, you know, and then I got a MR Show,
and um, those guys very nicely because they knew I
was a performer, said hey, um, you know you're gonna
be writing for us You're not gonna be writing for yourself,
so don't right yourself into sketches, you know. I mean,
we we hired you because we like your voice, but

(05:18):
this is writing for us. I feel like I took that,
and being like always wanting to be the a student,
I was like, all right, I'm not performing anymore. And
but you were on the show. Some they were very
nicely like, let me be on the show a lot, um,
but I didn't expect it. I was like, Oh, these
guys don't like me as a performer or don't want
any me to performal. I'm just gonna be a writer. Um.

(05:40):
And then I had co written this Spec movie, this
movie on Spec that got very very popular and got
close to being made several times. And so I just
kind of segued into being just a writer and never
performs really all that much anymore. And and um, even

(06:01):
when I started doing my live show at first at
the Mbar and then the UCB Theater here in l
a comedy death Ray, I would just produce it and
I wouldn't even like perform on it all that much.
Maybe once a month maybe, you know. It wasn't like
Save the Meltdown show with Kamal and Jonah where they
were the hosts every week. It truly was. I wanted

(06:21):
to make it the best show every week that it
could be. And I was like, with me as a host,
it's not gonna be the best it can be. Like
I was tired of shows in l A where the
hosts would and you know, force themselves to be on
the show and be the dead spot that people were like, Okay,
this person again every week, we have to listen to

(06:41):
this guy. So I I had pretty much like not
really performed at all for a while. UM, but I
missed it, and so I was sort of doing stand
up every once in a while, and so I started
doing the podcast because I was kind of regularly doing
characters on UH, the morning show at this local radio station,

(07:06):
INDI one oh three one. I was calling in and
doing UH. My most popular character was the guy who
plays Spider Man out in front of the Man's Chinese theater.
I forget what my name was, but I would do
American Idol recaps every time. I would do Robin Williams
and all this kind of stuff, and they just like
gave me my own show and said, hey, you know
a lot of comedians and you're always calling in and

(07:26):
doing the characters. Why don't you do your own show?
So it became like a a hobby where I was like, oh,
I get to perform again, and I was doing it
for free. They weren't paying me. Um. And we turned
that into the podcast and um it just you know,
I started to see how popular podcasts were compared to

(07:49):
people listening to radio, you know, and so it really
was just something, you know, like my career is sort
of filled with all these things that I did just
for fun. That then turned into the main thing that
I do, which is like really kind of strange between
two ferns. Was that way um so great? Uh bang
bang the r E M Show, you know, like we

(08:10):
thought no one would listen to that, Yeah, the you
two show. So like all this stuff that I did,
it was just like, hey, here's a dumb idea that
no one will give a shit about, right, let's just
do it. And then that became like the main thing,
do you feel like? And I was talking just for
the listeners with Scott about I'm obsessed and I've talked
a lot on this show about the r M Show,
Thank you, just being obsessed with it, but you're telling

(08:31):
me before the show you don't recommend it to know, Well,
I reckon like r M was and YouTube were my
guys as well. Yeah, and especially with the same age
dish I march Okay, yeah, I'm nine, but um so,
I guess we're a little off. But and we had
similar upbringings too. With h that's a joke. I know

(08:54):
you gave me a look at confusion, which is not
how people usually react was. I didn't get it until
this later. Uh. I grew up Baptists in a in
the Southern Baptist House in Georgia. Um. Born in Georgia,
but moved to California. Yeah, Savannah. Yeah, so you have
obviously left very quickly, right, Yeah, like six weeks after
I was born. Have you ever been back? Uh, We've

(09:16):
filmed the Mr Show movie in Atlanta and um, and
then I've been to Atlanta a couple of times, gotcha,
but not Savannah. Not Savannah now maybe during the MR
Show movie. I can't remember, right, Yeah, yeah, I think
from listening to the r M Show, your parents were
a little more strict yeah than mine. Mine weren't necessarily permissive.

(09:37):
They were just obsessed with disliking each other. So I
was sort of as that took their focus. Basically, I
was the third child, so I was kind of under
the radar. But you know, Southern Baptist upbringing is um
that that I later sort of did a full one
eighty on. Yeah, so I know that you can identify
with that, Yeah, definitely. I mean it was something that

(09:58):
I think from age thirteen through twenty even I was
still sort of wrestling with it a little bit, you
know of um, you know, I remember going to camp
when I was thirteen or fourteen, and I had a
girlfriend and we were you know, sort of like you know,

(10:20):
exploring everything you know, and kind of like praying really hard,
like please, yeah you should shouldn't I be a better person?
Or and just all the way through like twenty when
I I lived at home until I was twenty, and
then I moved away to go to school. Um, and
so I had to go to church, uh once or

(10:41):
twice a week Sunday morning, Sunday night, Wednesday night. Wednesday
night would be the one until I was eighteen, but
once I was eighteen, it was only Sunday morning Sunday night.
So and then at a certain point just Sunday morning.
And then at a certain point I also was like
staying at a friend's house on Saturday night, I wouldn't
have to go to you know, Sunday morning. Were you
in the other of like uh f c A or
Young Life for any of those. It was called boys

(11:04):
Brigade that I was in. I heard that one maybe
similar to what you're talking about, just school affiliated, you know,
not school affiliated, but yeah, it was. And I was
singing in church on Sunday morning, yeah, until until I
moved out, And so it was kind of one of
those things that I was like, I think all these

(11:25):
ideas really interesting, and I would talk to the youth pastors.
We would go to lunch sometimes and I would talk
about stuff and they go, oh, wow, you have a
really interesting take on this, right, But at a certain
point I was just like, it doesn't make any sense
to me. Yeah, I think that kind of happened for me.
In college, I took a religion class where we studied
I think Judaism, Buddhism, and um maybe Islam. I can't

(11:48):
remember the third one, or maybe it was Christianity. And
that's when I was like, oh, wait a minute, these
are sort of all the same story. How could that be? Right? Right? Yeah,
it's I don't know the more are you poke holes
in it? I don't know. It just doesn't make a
lot of sense. But hey, I also am of the
opinion really with any thing in the world, like if

(12:11):
you if it makes you feel better, great, yeah, you know,
so I don't come down on people who I'm not
one of those atheists who's like, oh, you're so stupid
and god, you know I came here. That's just pointless,
even even some things that are probably harmful, like scientology
or whatever, or even Mormon is. Um. I'm just like,
you know what, Let people have whatever they can cling
to and make themselves feel better about life. Although if

(12:34):
it's crossing over not harming other people, I mean that's
how we sort of feel, like, like about a lot
of old people who get into Fox News or whatever.
It's like guys religion that yeah exactly. But uh, where
was I going though with the r M thing? Yeah?
I can't remember, Well we uh you were not recommending

(12:55):
it yet. Going to college when r E M was
you know, is when I and Athens I told you
I played on the softball team with Mike Mills Uh,
Stipe was around. How was he as a player? Uh?
He was okay? How are you as a player? I
was good enough, you know. I was like your team
with Dynamite. I mean it was one okay guy, it
was It was bar softball, Bar League softball, so it

(13:18):
was pretty low stakes. He was I remember, he was
very competitive and took it a little more seriously than
the rest of his stay. Interesting and I ended up
hanging out with him one night about five years ago. Um,
Eugene Merman came through town. He's a friend and he
uh invited everyone out. Mike Mills was one of him,
and I reminded him. I had a good time, and

(13:40):
I reminded him about the softball years. So he did
not remember me, not remember you? Interesting? Did he know
who you were from what you do? Or no? No? No, okay? Interesting?
He knew nothing of me, but he was a nice guy. Interesting. Yeah,
why would he not remember you if you were on
the same team. I don't know, man, it was two
full seasons, two seasons. Yeah, I it is tough when

(14:00):
you meet so many people, like when your life becomes
as mine and Mike Mills have just incredible. Now do
you Esppocally, if you're working on a lot of different things,
like I'm sure and going and traveling to a lot
of different cities, it just like it's sort of becomes
a blur where you see someone and go absolutely who
is that person? And then you look it up and go,

(14:20):
oh wow. For six months we were constant contact. Yeah
what's a week? Yeah, but yeah, those were my guys
in college, and um so when I started listening to show,
it's it was the perfect mix for me of like
legit r M stuff, which I love, and Adam Scott
is just super fan. Yeah, and the dynamic between you guys,
it's just so fun with with him taking it so seriously,

(14:42):
and I mean we set out to make a serious show.
That's what's so strange about really the very first episode
of You two. Because the r M Show originated as
a show about you too. We went into it expecting
to just literally super fan it and not do anything funny.
And then I got to go back and hear those

(15:02):
I forget what happened. But somewhere within the first two
minutes of the first episode, Yeah, we started making jokes
and it just became what it what it is is
if you get us in a room together. We're just
gonna make that. I'm sure. Yeah, yeah, I mean it's
just great renaming everyone. And the way you guys get
in and out of the sub episodes of you know,

(15:23):
are we talking? Is this an episode of aclid Films
or whatever? And I think the way and that's part
of why it works is doing it the same every time,
Like how quickly you get in and out of those bits.
How one of you will say, oh, it sounds like
it might be and then right afterward, how you know,
good up, good up. Yeah, it's uh, it's it's like
this becomes this comforting thing somehow. Yeah, it's It's interesting

(15:45):
because when we came back with the R E M version,
I think, I mean, we all we both are constantly
trying to figure out new angles, you know what I mean.
But at the same time, some people were sort of like, oh,
they are the first episode of r M is a
little fan service, e of like doing the same thing
that we've done in the YouTube episode. And I kind
of I don't know where I land on that. It's like,

(16:07):
you can't just do totally new things. Essentially, although I
started out as a comedian, I am you know, growing
up in l A and listening to a lot of
l A radio, I became very fascinated with DJs and
like broadcasting, you know, and and Letterman started as a broadcaster,
and I was always he was a hero of mine,
and I always thought that was very interesting. So I

(16:28):
always paid a lot of attention to broadcasting and a
lot of what he would do and a lot of
what broadcasters do is you fit into a format and
sort of you hit the same things all the time,
and that becomes comforting, you know, and to to break
out of that as a comedian is also something that
you're striving to do as a comedian. So it's like,
I feel like the r M Show is is a

(16:50):
push and pull between us doing what we know works
and trying to get into weirder avenues as well that
are new. But yeah, yeah, and well you handle it
very much like a J with the intros. Yeah, I
mean it sounds very much like uh like a sort
of morning not not morning DJ necessarily, but for the
classic DJ sound. I think that it is. It is

(17:11):
interesting because well, first of all, my voice whenever I'm
on a podcast and I'm I'm doing a voice right now,
sort of But essentially I in a conversation with me,
I probably mumble more than than when I'm on a show.
And I think when I started doing a podcast comedy
Bang Bang, some some of my friends were a little like, oh,

(17:34):
is this your radio voice? And I'm like, no, I'm
just trying to enunciate that I can be understood. So, like,
as you can tell, I'm using my hands a lot,
which I don't do in conversation all that much, you know,
unless I get very animated about a topic, but um,
on the radio, just you need to make sure that
people are understanding you. So I think it's a little
bit of that. But yeah, I I you know, having

(17:57):
the podcast company Your Wolf, it was a little I
grew up being fascinated with broadcasting and so I sort
of know all of those signposts that you have to
hit of like introducing things right at the top and
hyping things that are coming up, and then how to
go to a break and come back to all that
kind of stuff that comedians in general don't really know

(18:17):
how to do. So that was a big challenge with
a lot of our early shows. You know, is is
training them of like how much information you have to
give so people are listening, going like what am I
even listening to? Yeah? Yeah, yeah, it's a real skill.
It's amazing how many people have had on this show
that are professionals, that have had to say, like, you know,
you've got to get on the mic a little more.

(18:39):
They'll just start talking like this. It happens all the
time on my show. People would be like back here,
kind yeah, I'll go you are you have headphones on?
No one can hear you? So weird. Yeah, it's very strange. Um.
I was on the flight from Sketch Fest on the
way down here today listening to the show and I'm
sure you don't because you guys recorded it a while ago.

(19:00):
I'm sure which one the r M style? Oh yeah,
yeah we did last year or something like yeah, I'm
sure you don't remember all the bits. But I rewound
and had people staring at me for ten minutes. It
was when you did the episode of mini episode on
kissing styles and you wintel idea. It was just the
best because Adams was just like and then you did

(19:22):
this like second horrible noise, horrible noises of I don't
even know what you were doing or how you're doing it,
but it was just sucking fantastic. You I I. I
don't know if you have the same experience, but I
don't recall a lot of of anything that I ever
talked about. I totally get it, and I didn't want
to be the guy. It's like, I remember that one

(19:42):
bit and you did Rochester and it was so funny.
Rochester is someone that I would like to bring back.
It's pretty great. There's a little forget there's a little
Tony Clifton in him. But yeah, all Rochester, where you're from? Rochester? Mine?
Rod Chester? Good do you guys? I mean, I'm sure
you just get in there and wing it or are

(20:03):
you actually we mainly wing it. The one thing that
I would say we do on an r EM show well, okay,
comedy bank Bang and R A M a very different
comedy bank Bang. I totally wing all. Really Yeah. All
I ask from the people is what's your name and
what's your occupation? UM, But for R E M. We
maybe we'll say, hey, the first segment is us just talking,

(20:27):
second segment let's talk about the record, and then the
third segment such and such. But that's it. Yeah, I
think just wing it. Okay, that's what it's great, Thank you.
It's really the best. I can't wait to get into
the you two side, and I would love to hear
A Smith's season three. I would love to do is
Smith's one of my favorite bands, But yeah, who knows.

(20:48):
I don't think Adams ever listened to him trying to
break through that. Adam's very narrow. That's interesting scope of
what he listens to is really the only hard part
of doing a sequel. Well. One of the things I
shade about you with music too is, um, I don't
think you're narrow, but you're very specific with what you
like and you don't like um, I guess are in

(21:09):
The perfect example is is basically getting to a point
where you stopped listening to the new stuff. I was
so into them and I love their early records so
much that I they changed their style so much, which
is fine. I used to have. I think I tweeted
this once about how bands that changed their style totally

(21:30):
should have to change their names, you know, so Weezer
should have to call themselves something else. Yeah, YouTube, especially YouTube,
But I've sort of It's interesting because I I heard
a song from Up the other day that's the episode
of on now, Okay, so I it was why not Smile.

(21:53):
I don't know where I landed on it on the
actual episode, but I remember thinking that up was just
an exhausting record to listen to. Um, but I heard
that song and I was like, Wow, this is really good.
And I don't remember if I liked it on that
episode or not, but um, I there was a certain
point with r M where they changed their style so
much that I just didn't think it was what I
liked out of R e M anymore. Um. It happens

(22:15):
with everything, with podcasts and everything. People will go like,
you're doing this new thing now, and it's not hitting
the same sort of like you know, uh thing in
my brain which is releasing the stimulus. You know, it's
just not doing it for me. And that's why I
like the show. I think it's perfectly valid on its own,

(22:36):
but I wasn't willing to go there with them. And
now I'm more appreciative of it. Yeah, And I mean
I think even uh and of course I'm just now
getting to the episode. You can even tell that Adam
is he's finding ways to like it rather than putting
on life's ritz pageant. And you don't have to do
anything but like turn your ears on. But I also

(22:57):
truly think that Adam, because he likes a more narrow
scope of music. I think he devoted the time to
these records, you know, so he knows them backwards and
forwards because he listened to them so many times. And
when I'm doing a U R e. M. Episode or
or a YouTube episode, I tend to do a lot
of homework. That's the worst part about it is Adam

(23:19):
knows all these things so much that he never has
to do homework. He just like rolls into the studio
and can talk at length about these records, and he
knows all the facts. I do a lot of homework,
and I usually would listen to the records at least
ten times in various that week, in various situations, blasting

(23:39):
on my loud speakers in a car. I would just
try to listen to it in various types of situations.
And but but I'm also just not appreciating it the
way that he does, you know. So I think I
think that he has a more nuanced understanding of the
records than I do. Yeah, what was your Because I

(24:02):
think we kind of also had a similar entree into
lack of a better word, alternative music, which was eighth
grade ish in excess, and The Cure and the Smiths,
and mine was probably I mind because I was really
into Huey Lewis and The News. Well, I was too, yeah,

(24:23):
through through even eight five through I mean, Back to
the Future is one of my favorite movies of all time,
but I would say that I was so fucking stoked
when Huey Lewis was doing the theme to that, the
fact that he's in the movie, it was amazing and
that was just hitting all my sweet spots. So through

(24:43):
through eight five I think I was. I was still
kind of into pop music, and I listened to Kiss
FM pretty much, which is a local radio station, which
is like Top forty basically. Then was really good. That's
the thing is like at at you know, real people
who really like alternative music. I when I started to

(25:05):
get into alternative music, I threw away all my supposed,
you know, pop records. I was like, these are these
are bad? I'm into alternative music. But it was all
like Huey Lewis and The News, the Cars, incredible, incredible
records that I'm saying, hall of notes and stuff. Get
these out of here it's all great. So I became

(25:26):
way less snobby about music. But my my entree was
I think Smith's had Full of Hollow Probably I think
maybe Pretty in Pink. Is that where I first heard
It must have been where I first heard Please Please Please,
or maybe I got half full of Hollow first, but
that came out in eighty five, right, So well, my
entry to the Smiths was The Queen is Dead. So

(25:49):
I was a little later, and it was a kid
at church gave me the cassette. He gave me that,
and he gave me Who's Screw Do Candy Apple Gray,
and I had to kind of go backwards for both
those bands. Yeah, I was. I had a I had
a best friend. Uh, that that was really what it was.
Was my sophomore year. I had a best friend who
we hung out together all the time, and he was

(26:11):
really into alternative music. So he had Smith's posters, the
Smith's the Alarm uh and um R e M. Those
were like the three that I can sort of tie
back to him, you know what I mean, or I
I don't think I would have listened to them without him,
so uh. And I also had a different best friend,

(26:31):
I guess I had two best friends, but um one
was drama and one was regular school, but he was
really into X and O, M D and all these things.
So it was pretty much those two guys I think
who really introduced me into things. But the Smith's really was,
like I I he was really cool and I saw
the Smith's poster on his record. It was from the

(26:52):
first record. So when I found Hat full of Hollow
at Tower Records in UM on Beach Boulevard, UM, it
was nine and it was a double record, and I
was like, this is a fucking steel and so I
got it and just wore that record out and and
around that time k Rock UM I started being able

(27:15):
to get the signal on on because I had like
a FM a M F M Hi Fi with a
record player and a tape cassette and I could finally
get the signal for like F stations, you know what
I mean. And funny to think about those days. And
so back in K Rock was playing like Prince next
to you know, all of these great alternative bands that

(27:36):
I grew up with. But that's that's really where my
alternative love sort of started, you know. And then I
just went in deep and pushed I was like all
in on it, and then around twenty I was like
rebuying all of my pop records. Well it's interesting though,
because I was for me, it was Casey Cason every
Sunday after church listening to the Americans Stop forty um.

(27:58):
And then MTV was uh hit me like a freight train.
Especially as a little Baptist kid. I was glued to it.
And when you look back at those early days of MTV,
I didn't know. You're wearing an MTV shirt right now.
I know, uh were this. The head of my heart
is Bob Pittman, who started MTV. So I brought it
out here to to suck up to him a little bit.

(28:18):
But I had the chance to tell him when I
met him in person, I was like, Mr Pittman. I
was like, I was, I was your kid. I was
that kind of thing to do with it back in
the early days. No, he founded and he founded it.
I read the book, but I don't recall all the details. Yeah,
so I didn't know it at the time. But you know,
if you're watching MTV in those days, you're watching like
the Talking Heads and you're watching Billie Idol Duran Duran, Yeah,

(28:38):
all this stuff that ended up being kind of the
entree into alternative you just didn't really know it at
the time. I will say that in eighty three I
had a girlfriend that um, the one I was praying
about UM when I was thirteen, who was really in
due all. She was really into X and I would
sit there, I would I would watch like Video one

(28:59):
over at her how which was the Richard Blade hosted
like local video on TV show. Because we didn't we
didn't have cable. I didn't have cables like Swell Birth thirteen, Okay,
I didn't have until I was fifteen, and so in
order to see MTV, I had to go over to
a friend's house. So Video One or Friday Night Videos
on NBC, those were the ones that you could see

(29:20):
all these videos for. But Friday Night Videos was a
little more commercial, so it was like Phil Collins and
stuff like that, whereas Video One was alternative, so it
was like, you know, hazy, fantasy talking heads, all that
kind of stuff. So that was really I think Oino Bowing,
Oino Bow and Go. That was those were the first bands,
alternative bands where I was like, oh, this is really
interesting and weird. And she and my girlfriend really likes him.

(29:41):
She was also into Springsteen, which I at the time
could never really figure out because um, she was basically
I think she was into whatever Robert Hilburn at the
l A Times About You, which is another like Adam
Scott mainstay. He was reading Robert Hilburn reviews. It was
like whatever he talked about she was into. Um, But yeah,
I think I think so. I think eight. Between eighty

(30:03):
three and eighty five, I was sort of figuring it out,
and then eight from eighty five on I was like
totally into it, where I was like anything commercial sucks. Yeah,
it's cool to go through because I started out on
like Billy Joel and was just a fanatic as a kid.
And that's the first time I ever drove a car
was to a Billy Joel concert when I was sixteen.
And there were many years where like you had to

(30:27):
keep that quiet, but then you age back into like
especially years sixteen and eighties six or yeah, yeah, I
mean eight seven, I mean that was when he was
it's like storm front and really bad. Yeah. Yeah, one
to three. It's like the least cool count count in
Janny song in history probably. Yeah, those were bad Billy

(30:49):
Jewel years. Yeah, a lot of reverb. Yeah. And also
we got into the stained Glass two episode. By the way,
Uh no, I would say, don't listen to that, but
go backwards and listen to stain Glass one. Oh really yeah? Yeah, okay, yeah,
because sting Glass one is in the you two section.
All right, those really need to be listened to. Billy

(31:12):
Joel thread in there, yes, okay, yeah, all right, I
will spoil no more of it for you. But when
you get to that episode, just they're they're not connected
to R. E. M or or YouTube tangentially they are,
but go backwards listen to stain Glass one first and
sting Glass two. Well, but you could have such a
disparate taste back then, Like my first concert ever was
Cheap Trick Worship those guys. But I was also listening

(31:34):
to Billy Joel, And because I was from the South,
I had this um looking back these rednecks in the
youth group that you know, I was listening to fucking
Alabama right and stuff like that, and Hank Williams Jr.
And Under skinnerd or Debt. Well, I have a brother
in law who dated my sister at the time from
high school on and he was given me a brother

(31:56):
in law. Oh so he he started amber in high school? Yeah, okay, Um,
so he was feeding me. Dave was day of my
sister at the time you become a brother. Um, but
he was feeding me a steady diet of Leonard skinnerd
and Allman Brothers and Blackfoot in Atlanta, Rhythm Section and
all this stuff that I still love all that stuff.

(32:17):
The thing I truly left in the rear view mirror
was like Alabama, And I guess I haven't really I
went back and did a real southern rock deep dive
a few years back and started to get really into it,
but Alabama is something that I haven't really crossed. I mean,
you're a California kids. But I will say that my

(32:37):
brother and I just argued about music all the time,
and he was into heavy metal and Rush and Prague
and stuff like that, right, I think, And it's stuff
that I like now. I think I wish I had
been a little more open to it back then where
I was, where I could be a little more like,
oh that's cool. And I remember him like showing me
Rush albums and showing me all the intricacies of it

(32:58):
and just going like this is stupid, and now I
think it's cool. Yeah, So I don't know, I think
I think now I'm sort of a person who's just
like I can find good and kind of almost any
style of music. And I when I throw on iTunes,
basically I have like two d and fifty thousand songs
in my iTunes or something. I just put it on

(33:20):
shuffle and you know, probably crazy, yeah, just you know,
lounge stuff coming up next to you know, Subhumans and
the Elliott Smith and Motley maybe MTh. I saw in
a little tiny, uh like a bookstore here in l
A before anyone knew who he was, because I was
dating a girl who was like, oh, I think you'd

(33:40):
like this guy, Elliot Smith, and went and saw like
with thirty people him just with an acoustic guitar, and
I was like, then he became my favorite. I was
like telling you Smith Elliott's and he was the best.
I was um when I lived out here. It was
when he put out UM figure eight and I lived
right around the corner from the you know, the building
of the album cut Her and I was like, oh

(34:00):
my god. And I saw him a few times with
the band, but I got to see one acoustic show
at Spaceland where I got to see that like quintessential
Elliott Smith on a stool. It was just fantastic. Unfortunately,
I also saw the other quintessential Elliott Smith on a
stool where he was too high to do. Yeah, those
were those were so depressing. I've think a couple of

(34:22):
people too high to do a show, and it's just
who else. I know, We're not supposed to talk about
him anywhere. Ryan Adams just one of the Wiltern shows
I've ever seen where he just was on he kept
talking about like what a great night it was going
to be. He's like, hasn't has a whole album he's recording,

(34:43):
He's going to play every song from it. And all
he would do is he would talk for ten minutes
in between every show about what he was going to
do that night, and he hardly played any songs. And
it was just like I was really into him and um,
and I mean some of this sort of makes sense
now because I saw him a couple of time hims.
Back then he just seemed kind of like an asshole. Yeah,
and then when all this other who knows, Um, I

(35:10):
don't want to keep you too late so maybe we
should be here as long as you want. Well, I
do want to talk a little bit about Mr. Show
before we get into the apartment, because it was I
pitched an apartment um sketch on Mr. Show. Really, yeah,
we didn't. We never ended. I don't think I ever
wrote it even would it have been like one of
the black and white type of things or we would

(35:31):
have shot it in black and white. If ever, if
I had ever written it, I don't think I wrote it.
It was we I remember at the time. I forget
why it was in the news, but the Pope's apartment
was in the news that he had an apartment. I
see where this said it, and so I was like, hey,
what if we did a sketch about the Pope's apartment

(35:52):
where all the bishops are like bringing in the little
boys and Bob and were like write it up? And
who know? I mean it was one of those pitches
where maybe it didn't have legs or whatever. I couldn't,
you know. I did that show when I was very
young and not that smart. Yeah, how old were you? Then?
That's crazy And you came in not at the very beginning, right,

(36:16):
well not really, I mean I was there I was
around from the very beginning. Actually, I the first time
I ever did did comedy was the summer July of
and it was because Um, I was. I was, I
had written, I was in theater and I had written
a lot of plays. And I moved back here to
l A and I was my friend and I had

(36:39):
written this pilot, which is like an sort of trying
to be a better nine O two who essentially with
like interesting scenes and funny scenes. It was basically when
the O C you got on the air. I was like, oh,
that's sort of what I was going for. Um. But
you know, it was okay, and I you know, we
showed it to some people and some people liked it,

(37:03):
but you know, I didn't know how to break into
the business or whatever. But I remember I had a
friend who moved down here that I was in a
show with up in Sacramento, who I showed it to,
and she was just like she called And I remember
being in my apartment in AZUSA and her calling me
and going like, Okay, I read your script. It's just

(37:23):
so it's bad, it's just so it's not I hate it.
And I was like, okay, she goes, but you're so funny, Like,
you're such a funny guy around you know when I
hang out with you. Have you ever tried doing comedy? Um?
She goes, I have a roommate who's in who is
in comedy, and you know, like and I had known

(37:44):
that because I a couple of times she had invited
me to some things. And I remember I had gone
to a party and I talked to this guy for
a while and he was like, Oh, you're a writer.
Oh cool, what have you written? And it was Bob.
Talked to him for a while, and he gave me
his card and a flyer, a flyer for like a
show that was coming out. Um. So she's like, why

(38:07):
don't you do this show? My friends have this show,
um at the comedy store. Why don't you do this show?
And just you know, I think you could be really
funny if you tried comedy. Um. So her roommate whom
I picked up at the airport, um, when she moved
here to l A and drove to my friend's house,
was Karen kil Garreff. So that's how she They were
like friends from Sacramento. And so that's how my friend

(38:30):
knew all these comedians. Right. So the person with the
show was Marylynn, Rice cub and CJ. Arabia. They both
did this show at the Comedy Store on Sunday nights
called Windows. So I just tried it out. But weirdly enough,
back to your original thing was um, she asked me
to do it and then so I was like, okay,
And then that week I went to go see Bob

(38:54):
and David's live show because of that flyer Bobby had
given me. Was this when they were like a restaurant.
They were at a place called the Upfront in Santa Monica,
which was like a real theater um that you could
rent out. I did some shows there too, but um,
the restaurant was a different place, which I ended up
performing with them a lot actually at that place. Yeah.

(39:14):
And I saw Pulp perform at that place too. Yeah.
So uh, but I went to go see their show, um,
which I think was called the cross Odin Kirk Problem
at the time. Um. But um, also all of HBO
was in the audience, and Bernie Brillstein was there, and like,
and I knew who Bernie Brillstein was because I grew
up fascinated with comedy and s n L and all

(39:35):
and wanting to be on it and all that, but
I just never knew how to do it. Um, did
you think that was something available to you? Though? No,
I couldn't figure out how to do it, I remember. So.
So I loved Letterman and that was my main love,
and I wanted to do something like Letterman. Um. But
then I also things there wasn't a lot of you know,

(39:56):
this is pre internet, so there wasn't a lot of
like material you could read about stuff. So I remember
reading a book about stand up comedy, you know, and
it had like interviews with Jerry Seinfeld and Richard Lewis
and people like that, and I was like, oh, okay,
maybe I should do stand up comedy. So I tried
it when I was eighteen, and I was doing essentially

(40:16):
like Jerry Seinfeld style bits like observational bits, you know
about thinking have you ever seen this yet? That kind
of stuff. But then I never did it again. Um.
So I just kind of was like, I don't think
I can do comedy. If I could ever audition for
sn L, maybe i'd be good at it, but how
do you even do that? I And and there was

(40:38):
no UCB Theater or anything like that in l A.
So um, the Groundlings were there, but I went to
go see their shows and I didn't like them all
that much, and I was like, I just don't even
know how to do it. And then I saw Bob
and David do that show and I was like, oh, okay,
oh yeah, I know how to do it now. I
was like, oh, yeah, that's stuff that I do around
the house. Um, I never knew you could do that

(41:00):
as comedy. So are you doing character stuff just for fun?
And it wasn't even character stuff. It was like just
sort of like type a type of humor that I
did not think could be popular where that went further
than other types of humor in a way. You know,
the fact that they were cursing a lot during their
their sketches was like sort of mind blowing, but just

(41:22):
their subject matter and the way they approached the topics,
I was like, I felt a real kinship too, because
it was it was stuff that that me and my
friend would do to make each other laugh and our
friends laugh, you know, around the house or around the
restaurant we worked at. So I was like, oh, well,
that's the type of stuff I'm interested in doing. So

(41:42):
that combined was seeing in Andy Kaufman special that week,
like a documentary about him. I was like, Oh, let's
do like an Andy Kaufman meets Bob and David type thing,
which I did at the Comedy Store. And you know,
the people who were at this show were like Bob
and David, Jenny Garrafflo, Sarah Silverman, like all those types
of people were there at paul if Thompkins. They were

(42:04):
there every week, and I just felt, you know, the
first time went so well that that Mary Lynn and
c J were like, Oh, come back in two weeks
and do another thing, and just like never stopped. You know. Yeah,
it was very And Bob was there the second time
that that my friend and I performed at it, and
he was like, hey, um, I have the show. Maybe

(42:25):
you could write for it. It's spot on man, that's
so good. God damn it. Yeah that's or the other Bob. Yeah.
So it was just like one of these weird things
I was. I was very fortunate in the sense of,
first of all, I just think kind of you know

(42:47):
Mr Show when it was a boys club, I mean
there was a there was a sketch about it being
a boys club. It really was in a way. Um,
but Karen was writing for them. Rite or Nar never wrote,
but uh no, we never had a female writers. Say,
Sarah was the one who Um was offered, but she
I feel she did that Dave Chappelle pop movie instead, Right,

(43:10):
I forgot about that, but yeah, just it. So I
was sort of fortunate in the sense of, like, you know,
I was a white dude in l A. And I
was also fortunate in the sense of, like it just
didn't feel like there was as much competition back then
as there is now. There's so many funny people in
l A. And they have a place to go to,
you know, with the UCB Theater, and now it's like

(43:32):
there's just too many funny people. You don't know how
to feel like that's kind of the case. It's hard
to given parts it out now. Yeah, but back then
I was twenty five and Bob was like, oh wow, yeah,
I see a kinship between our senses of humor, and
so he just really like adopted me and my friend
in a way and was in our sketch shows. If

(43:55):
I ever had a sketch, I wanted him to do
anything like yeah, okay um and come up and introduced
them if he felt like the crowd needed pumping up.
He was like Bob Odenkirk and this is pre you know,
Breaking Bad, before he became Bob Odenkirk. At the time
around l A was like he was quality, you know,
and so for him to come up and introduce a

(44:16):
show and say that he endorsed it was, you know,
a big deal and and so that's you know, that's
really you know, how I got started. It was such
a special time. Um, just the collection of talent and everyone,
it seems like went on to do great things. And

(44:39):
then the way he and David were together and just
from the from Bob in the suit to Dave and
the cargo shorts in the baseball cap, like the way
they played off each other was just like I can't imagine,
Like it's one of the great times in comedy. I think. Yeah,
it was really crazy, and we all hung out together
every night. Um, and you know, pre cell phone you

(45:03):
had to It was basically like you had to figure
out where everyone was going that evening by a big
phone chain, you know, like who you know his house,
We're going to be well it wasn't even a house.
It was like what bar are you going to be out?
So and that was always based around either a show
that was happening, like okay, there's an alternative show that

(45:25):
just started in Santa Monica at this place, so we're
all going to watch the show and then hang out
with the bar afterwards, or if there was no show,
it was just like what bar are we going to
be out tonight? And so around two in the afternoon
or so, everyone would start sort of that phone chain
and start calling up and going where have what have
you heard? What have you heard? Are we going to
hang out? And I mean that was back when you

(45:46):
could talk to your friend on the phone for an hour,
you know, um, And so yeah, it was really cool.
And then we were just constantly in each other's shows,
and it was like if anyone said, hey, there's this
fun thing, you go, yeah, okay, let's let's do it.
If any of us had an idea and go okay,
let's do it, and that is that's sort of translated

(46:06):
to now where I feel like all the people from
that era, I feel like I can kind of ask
to do anything and they'll say yes, and I would
say yes to them, you know. So I know that
if I call up Paton Oswald and say Hey, can
you do a part in this thing? Or can you
can you write me a blurb for this or can

(46:27):
you be at this fundraiser or whatever? He'll say yes,
or Bob or any of those people. You know, it's
just it really seems like something where we would do
anything for each other, because that's what it was like
back then. You would do any of each other's shows.
And everyone's just still in touch and tight enough. I mean,
there's always it is interesting to me the people who

(46:50):
sort of fall away from it, you know. Um, but
but yeah, I mean, you know, I wouldn't say that
every single person who was ever involved, but the whole Mr.
Show Bond is such that, you know, Tom Kenny, for instance,
who I maybe we'll see once every two years. Anytime
I see him, we gotta stop in, like, you know,

(47:11):
have a true conversation for for a half hour about
what's going on because we have that that Mr Show Bond. Yeah,
that's so cool. Yeah. Uh, I didn't know. I mean
I was a kid in Georgia, so I didn't know.
And I've talked about this on the show. I had
no idea that that world was available to people. Um,
I didn't know that that could be a job. I
didn't know that. I could have moved to l A

(47:33):
after college and tried to do stuff surprisingly easy. If
you look at my life story, you show up to
a bar and offers you a job, that's great. Um,
so yeah, I had I had had no idea. I
mean everything worked out in the end, uh, with my
weird throughout my life took But I always get jealous
when I hear of people that had that experience of
being here in their early twenties and sort of those

(47:56):
salad days before it got too crowded. It is. I mean, yeah,
but you hear I I read sometimes about people who
view like the Earwolf, the network that I started, the
podcast network I started, the comedy Bang Bang Is on.
People view that in the same way. In a way
they go like, oh, I just have you know, it

(48:18):
just seems like a magical place where everyone's hanging out
together all the time. Um. I would say the people
younger than I probably are hanging out together all the time,
you know. But the romanticism that people have when they
think about those types of things as an outsider, as
an outsider, some of it's true, some of it isn't.
But um, for for me starting out, it really was

(48:41):
very romantic until kind of everyone started to fracture right
in the late nineties. Yeah, it was just a special
time that between that and like the State, Yeah, it
was just sort of the birth of a new movement
like this is not your this is not your parents comedy, yeah,
or not even your big brothers and your big sister's comedy,

(49:04):
you know. And and I think everyone was sort of
building on what had come before us, like Monty Python
or the Kids in the Hall and stuff like that.
I mean that, you know, comedy Bank Bang the TV
show was really my love letter to comedy in a way,
like every every one of the episodes we did, you

(49:24):
can I hope that people can tell like this is
me saying comedy, I love you from the people that
I put in it. Uh, you know, I would. I
would sit there and have kind of a checklist of like, okay,
we've had three of the kids in the Hall on
can we get the other two? You know, we've had
the um se TV is the only we only had

(49:47):
one person from SETV. I was so bummed because everyone
else turned us down. But Dave Thomas played my dad
on it and was so great but every other SETV
person was said no, but was like that. For me,
it was just like, you know, I want, I want
to share my love of this art form that I've

(50:07):
I've loved ever since I was a kid and sneaking,
you know, sneaking looks at SNL late at night. I
had it. It was not allowed through Monty Python when
I was thirteen, and um, you know the kids in
the hall and everything. Um, I really that's that's what
Comedy Bang Bang, the TV show it was for me was.

(50:29):
You know, if you see Michael McKinnon in it, it's
because Mr Mom No, no, not Michael. Michael Kinton would
have been great on it. I think he turned it down.
But if you see Michael McKennon, it's it's not because
I'm like, who's a good actor, Michael McKeon, it's because
I fucking love spinal tap and um, and he's only

(50:52):
on it, I think because of his comedy background and
he such a pleasure to work with, Like I've worked
with him on Mr. Show. But Michael McKean doesn't need
to do a comedy Bang Bang, but he's doing it
because of that bond that I think and the chain
of of respect that I think comedians have for what

(51:12):
came before and what came what comes after, you know
what I mean. So that's why when I'm asked to
do comedy things like someone's podcast or whatever, I usually
try to do it because, um, it's just that that
chain is very important to me. Have you seen a
Little Women? By the way I was, Oden Kirk is

(51:33):
just one of those guys for me that it's really
hard for me to I can on Better Call Saul, like,
he's such a good actor that on Better Call Saul
and never think about, oh, that's my friend that I've
really that I've worked with for years and years, He's
never think about it. But on Little Women, it was
the minute he walked in my wife and I like

(51:54):
burst out laughing. Yeah, I didn't know he was in it,
and so the same thing I've forgotten and then suddenly
he was like, oh it turned into a bit all
of the sudden, Hello daughters. Yeah, I was just like
I just started laughing. But no, he and and he
did such a good job that I was able to
forget that pretty quickly because he just sort of became

(52:14):
this like kind of lovable dad. But yeah, as soon
as he walked in the screen, I was like, oh
my god, I feel like I'm watching a sketch all
of a sud I think because it's period, because had
this big Mutton child. Yeah, Nebraska, I'm able to lose
myself in. Yeah. Yeah. Johnny Anna is another guy who's
a friend of mine who's like, I can lose myself
in anything he's doing, and I'm not. I'm thinking of
the character, not him. But that one was a tough

(52:36):
one because it seemed like a show sketch. It totally did.
It was great though. Yeah, I love it. And it
was a fairly crowded theater and uh, I think it
heard like seven or eight people kind of chuckle under
their breath. Yeah, all right, I get it. Um Well,
thanks for indulging that. Man, I appreciate it. Uh. Maybe
there'll be a Mr. Show movie one day, like the

(52:57):
National Lampoon Movie or something like that. I mean, we
really wanted to do. When I first started working on Mr. Show,
they had a script called was it called Hooray for America?
I think it might have been um which and I
remember we we do read throughs of it, and I
was always like, man, it's brilliant this it's so good.

(53:20):
But then they were like, oh, no one will make
this movie. It was all about global cam taking over
the world or something. And so then when we set
out to make the Mr. Show movie. UM, I remember
the first three days, Bob was gone because he had
some other job, and so it was me, Brian and David.

(53:40):
We're the only people there. And we wrote so many
scenes for it, and they were all really really funny.
And then Bob came back and was like, UM, I
don't I don't think these are too weird for I
don't think um, we can get this movie made. I
think because of his experience with Hooray for America it

(54:01):
was too weird. So instead we went down this route
of like trying to do a He kept bringing up
Adam Sandler, um happy Madison or happy Gilmore, like with
the audience needs to really relate to the character, um,
which then what was supposed to be a fun six
weeks of writing a movie turned into two years of hell.

(54:22):
First of all. UM. But at the same time, I
don't think he was necessarily wrong about that. I think
looking back, they never made Hooray for America. UM. I
don't think the world was ready for a true Mr.
Show movie at the time, and I think now a
place like Netflix would make something that was a little
more like it. That said, if you go back and

(54:43):
read the script to Hooray for America, because I think
they published it, it's not that good. But did you
work on Run Running Run? Yeah? So that was that
was coming off of my season and Mr Show that
I wrote on UM. Bob and David said, Hey, anyone
who's a writer right now, do you want to write
this movie? Be with us. It'll just be a fun
six week thing and then and then we're done. And

(55:05):
only five of us said yes, Bob, David, Brian, Uh,
myself and b J. Porter. We were the only five
who said yeah, we want to do what. Everyone else
was sick of it so they left UM and it
just was the worst experience. It's okay, it just is
like watered down. Yeah, I mean, I don't know. I

(55:27):
was such a fan of all of that. I was
just sort of in, Yeah, all I can see are
the bad parts of it there. There's interestingly enough, uh
Billy Wilder, whom will be talking about for the Apartment,
I was I reread conversations with Wilder last Night The

(55:47):
Cameron Crow Book where he interviews Billy Wilder, and Billy
Wilder has the same kind of point of view of
any film of his that is not well regarded, where
it just doesn't even want to talk about it. He's
just like, oh, yeah, that didn't work and interesting. I
mean I could go on and on about it for hours,
but it was just it's such a bummer in every
frame of it. I look at it as missed opportunity. Yeah,

(56:09):
all right, well we'll segway into the Apartment. Uh nineteen
sixty of course, Billy Water, like you said, Jack Lyman,
Fred McMurray, um and mc adorable, Shirley McClain just just
so spunky and cute and competent and smart. Is cublic. Yeah.
I had never I only I knew her as an

(56:31):
older woman basically in terms of endearment or whatever. I
didn't really know anything about her. So The Apartment was
the first time I'd ever seen her as in her
prime in a way, I was just like, oh my gosh,
she's amazing. Yeah, yeah, she was great. How did this movie? Um,
how did it come to you? Like, when did you
first discover it? So I think in nineteen eighty eight

(56:54):
or eighty nine, either my first year or second year
of college, I was in an acting class. Basically my
college experience was this, UM I had I think I
had some morning classes that I had signed up for,
like eight am through noon, UM, and then I had
an acting class at two, and then I had my

(57:17):
theater shows at night. But pretty quickly in my schedule
became uh doing theater at night and drinking beer with
my friends in their van until five am, sleeping until noon,
and then getting up to do my acting class. And

(57:37):
I basically flunked out of the other classes or canceled
um or whatever. So but I was in this acting
class UM with a I think his name was Mark
was the teacher, and he reminds me of Mark Marin,
so imagine Mark Marin. He was kind of a Mark
Marin type. And UM, he wanted me to do a

(57:59):
monologue where I had to do a lot of action,
where I had to do a lot of prop business
because that was whatever was happening that week. Um. And
because I think, I think when you're an actor, like
a young actor, you get used to doing stuff like
speech competitions or whatever where you're or monologue is where

(58:19):
you're like talking to the audience and and he was like, well,
that's not reacting. Like when you're on film, you're gonna
have to be doing a bunch of stuff, you know,
like prop business. So so he said, have you ever
seen the Apartment? I had no idea what it was.
He's like, I'm gonna give you a monologue from the Apartment.
I want you to be like cooking spaghetti while you're
with a tennis racket while you do so. Um, I

(58:42):
don't know that. I saw the movie before I did
the monologue. I basically like I got the action I
was supposed to do and did the monologue and I'm
sure I sucked. I was terrible. Um but um but
I but that was around when I saw it for
the first time. Yeah. So so it came to me
through there and Jack Lemon, another guy who I only

(59:03):
knew was an old older actor. Um. Immediately was like,
oh man, he's amazing, acclan amazing. Uh. Fred McMurray. I
had only known him through Flubber, um My Three Sons
for Me and Flaboria. So um yeah, just and I
had never seen a movie like it either. That that

(59:25):
balanced the tones that it does in the way that
it does, I've never really seen so it just it
just became. And I didn't really know Billy Wilder or
anything like that. I just liked the apartment, you know that.
That was all I really knew. Yeah, I think my
um entry point for Billy Wilder in this movie was
was Cameron Crow that was such a fan of his

(59:47):
earlier work and which one is the first? Love Say Anything?
Loved Singles? Um, I mean singles was the confluence of
of the music. And I still have never seen it.
Oh really yeah, and I and I love Saying Anything,
and I love Jerry McGuire, but I've never seen that.
Seems little parts of it on cable every once in
a while. Yeah, I'm not sure how it would age

(01:00:09):
because I haven't seen it in a long time. But uh, yeah,
singles Say Anything. I love Jerry McGuire. Um. I loved
Almost Famous. I don't really like it for whatever reason.
I really reading the book last night. He's he's writing
Almost Famous while he's writing that book, because he keeps
talking about his project that he's putting off writing. Yeah,

(01:00:29):
what so he can write this book about Billy Wilder.
And I kept going like, Oh, I wonder which movie
wasn't For some reason, I thought was Vanilla Skuy or something.
But then he talks about how it's autobiographical. I was like, oh,
this is almost famous. Well, and so maybe you want
to rewatch it. It's funny because the beginning of Jerry
McGuire obviously is a complete rip off of the beginning
of The Apartment with quoting the statistics about the size

(01:00:52):
of the earth or the city or whatever. And I
always knew that, but I didn't It didn't really hit
me until I watched this last night again. Um that
the attempted suicide, the overdose scene is a straight up
almost famous because the exact same thing happened. Kate Hudson
took the overdose. They rushed in there, they put the
tube down her throat, and then and then he, uh

(01:01:14):
Patrick Fugit has left to Um sort of care for her,
not for two days, but he has then in the
position that Um that Baxter was in of having this
sort of caretaker relationship for I saw it when it
first came out. I've never seen it again, so I
don't really remember. That's really interesting, Yeah, and you know,
it's not like Cameron Crowe. He's very much has said,

(01:01:35):
you know, I've taken from barred from Billy Wilder, So
I don't think I like discovered something, right, I'm not
out at him. But it was when I was living
here that almost famous came out. Saught it. The Vista
read about Cameron Crow telling the story of trying to
get Billy Wilder to be in Jerry McGuire. He wanted

(01:01:56):
him to be the sports agent, Yeah, the elder statesman. Yeah,
mentor figure who kind of comes in every once in
a while. And he's talking to camera about which would
have been fantastic. Yeah. Um. But and he tells the
story about bringing Tom Cruise in as the heavy hitter, right,
and I remember distinctly said no, And he said I
could tell about the on Tom's face that that is
not a word that he hears very much. Yeah. Yeah,

(01:02:18):
he tried twice. He did it by himself and then
he brought Tom in the second time. Is like, I
gotta land this Tom Cruise just gave him the whole
Tom Cruise pitch, and um, he was not interested. Didn't
know who Cameron Crow is, and he loved that. He said, no,
you know, he's like I'm not an actor. Get out
of here. But then, to his credit, watched it and

(01:02:40):
was like, oh, is that the part that I was
supposed to do and loved it and then reached out
to Cameron Crow was like, hey, I liked your movie.
Well that's cool. And that's how the book came about
is Cameron Crow wrote an essay about that, about the
fact that he was trying to get Billy Wilder to
do that part for Rolling Stone. I believe. Yeah, that's
where which Billy Wilder's um people sort of saw and said, hey,

(01:03:02):
maybe you should do And so that whole book conversations
with Wilder is um. Billy Wilder thought it was going
to be for Rolling Stone. He was going to be
an article. He's like, where's your column? We'll just do
this for your column, and Camera Crow kept kind of going,
I think this could be bigger. I think it could
be a book. He's like, no one wants to read this. Um.

(01:03:22):
But then after like the fourth interview kind of settles
into it and likes Cameron Crow so much that it
then becomes like a year long thing where their buddies
and they go, you have dinner a lot like like
Billy Wilder and his wife and Crow and his wife,
and and it becomes like a real friendship. You know,
it's really amazing. That's so cool. Uh, I can't imagine,

(01:03:45):
Like I remember reading that he was in his nineties
and he would still go to his office every day
and I'm not sure what he was doing, but he, well,
Camra Crow like puts in anything you would do. That's
it's cool about the book. He's like in the middle
of the interview, he goes and then he gets a
call and then describes what the call is about. And
he's just like taking calls where he's like, why no,

(01:04:07):
I don't have the rights to it. Well, I don't
know called paramount and he slams it down. He's like, oh,
someone wants Someone is asking me if Sunset Boulevard would
be good set in the nineties, and I don't care,
like call the paramount. I don't have the rights to this.
And then he complains about like the adapt to the
Andrew Lloyd Webber adaptation. He's like, this sound was too

(01:04:27):
bit like it's totally just kind of Crow puts in
everything that happened, which is really interesting. That's amazing. Well,
and I guess um, because he had had the experience
of being a kid ingratiating himself to these bands. He
must have a real skill for doing that. Probably if
he broke through Billy Walders. I wonder what that is
about about him, Like is he just I don't know,
inquisitive and and comfortable in those situations, or maybe I mean,

(01:04:53):
is it genuine? Is it something where he's like, you know,
is it something that he feels like, Oh, this is
the thing I can do. Or it's probably a great listener,
would be my guess, because when you get in the
rooms with the bands and the Billy Wilders, they probably
are it's probably pretty lopsided conversation. Probably, yeah, and you
have to be good at just shutting the funk up. Yeah, probably.

(01:05:14):
I mean I do. I read the book last night,
and yeah, I don't know the camera Crows ever like
interjecting all that much and like offering his he eventually
gets there. I will say the book, most of the
Billy Wilder stuff that you're interested in is the first
couple of interviews. It's almost like Cameron Crows trying to
get every question he's wanted to ask. And then the

(01:05:35):
rest of the book is more like, Okay, let's do
a deeper dive on this, you know what I mean.
It's a fascinating book, though it's Yeah, check that out. Yeah,
a friend of mine worked on Elizabethtown and said, like,
he's also a genuinely good guy and was great on
set and very crew friendly and just a guy. Yeah,
which you never saw elizabeth Town. Uh, not great. But

(01:05:56):
my friend was a wardrobe supervisor who was from Elizabethtown
and got to work in Elizabethtown on the Town movie
and got the key to the city. So it was
kind of a cool, big deal for her. And in fact,
she did you say you worked on the Onion movie
or no a little bit. I think she worked on that.
I was never on set or anything like that. So, um,
the the origin and you probably know it, by the way,

(01:06:17):
if anyone's listening. We talked about the Onion movie before,
and I don't watch any of the Onion movie and
think any of it was attributed to me. I worked
on after the fact when they were then when they
wanted to film a brand new movie right that maybe
used some of the footage from that instead of releasing
what they had. They were they were like, so I

(01:06:37):
I started writing a whole new movie right, and then
it all got shut down. So please don't watch that
movie and think I had anything to do with it.
My instinct now, because I'm so binging on your shows
to say, well, wait a minute, this an episode of
setting the record straight, thank you, I think it is. Um. So,
I'm sure you know. The origin of the film, though,
has a few different stories, but I think Billy Wilder
said it was a movie from director David Lee Brief Encounter,

(01:07:01):
a Brief Encounter that had just a similar sort of
so he talks about it in the book where he's
basically because Cameron Crowe is trying to set the record straight,
and he's like, was it based on this person in Hollywood?
Which is which is a rumor about a guy who
whose mistress killed himself in an apartment or something like that.

(01:07:23):
Is it about this story? And he's like, no, I
was just watching Brief Encounter one day and there's a
scene where these two I think married lovers are meeting
in France and one of the guys, the guy who's
meeting this woman, says, oh, this is like a buddy
of mine's apartment, and um, Billy Wilder went jeez. I

(01:07:47):
feel bad for the guy who's apartment. It is like
essentially they're having sex in his apartment story and he's
got to come back and these people have just you know,
has sex in his bed and he he just he
wrote that down in his book and it was something
that he thought of for for many years. Um and

(01:08:08):
and the code, the sort of what what was permissible
in movies. He could never do that idea until until
nine when everything sort of relaxed and they he was
finally able to do a movie about this sort of
mature subject matter, which is is all about you know, adultery,

(01:08:28):
and it's it's kind of like a sixties sex romp
in a way, but serious. Yeah. I mean it's very
racy for the time. And I know there were stories
of Fred McMurray um being accosted in the street and
like literally getting hit with the purse and people saying like,
how dare you? I watch you in these Disney movies
and how could you do that? Fred McMurray was another

(01:08:50):
guy who was like, I can't do this movie, Billy.
The whole book is filled with like people having heart
attacks right before they film. That happened a lot on
those movies like The Fortune Cookie and Peter Sellers had
a heart attack in the middle of one of the
films and had to drop out after a film for
a week. Um. Charles Lawton, I think also had like
a heart attack right before. It was like because everyone

(01:09:11):
was drinking and smoking. That's why I started saying. I
was like, everyone's fucking I have an heart attack. But
Fred mcburry was a guy I was like, I'm not
going to do this movie, and I think whoever was
doing it dropped out and like Fred come to and
Fred mcbury, by the way, Double Indemnity, he's so another
Billy Wilder movie. He's so great in that and a

(01:09:31):
very quotable movie that my friend and I were constantly.
I still say things from it all the time, like
that tears it but um but uh. One of the
funniest stories that Billy Wilder tells about Fred mcburray from
the Apartment is there's that scene where he's getting his
shoes shined and he's flipping a quarter uh, absent mindedly

(01:09:56):
in front of the guy shining the shoes with his thumb,
flipping it in the air, almost taunting him with it,
like you may or may not get this. And then
the guy finishes shining his shoes and Jack Lemmon comes
into the frame and and Fred McMurray flips him the
quarter and goes, thanks a lot, and the shoeshine guys like,
oh wow, thank you so much. And he leaves and

(01:10:18):
for some reason, the quarter wasn't flipping right, and Billy
Waters saying, like, Fred McMurray is a very cheap guy. Okay,
that's one thing you got to know about him in
real life. So he's like flipping this quarter and it
won't flip right. And I come over to him and
I say, all right, it's okay, Fred, We'll just swap
in a fifty cent piece and Fred goes, I would

(01:10:39):
never tip him Fred, fifty cents. I can't act in
this scene. Wow, that's fantastic, that's hysterical. Yeah, he's so
good in this movie too. Um, he's so funny in it. Yeah,
and just a total slime ball. Yeah, yeah, playing a
part because you know the whole setup it was, there's

(01:10:59):
so many kind of cool little twist and turns for
a for a romantic comedy. Um, and he you know,
the whole setup is that he has you think that
he is gonna be the stand up guy, when in
fact he's just after that key and and there's that
great scene with Lemon where he's like, you know, trying
to get the key from him and trying to get him,

(01:11:19):
trying to get him to make the leap of Hey,
I want the key to your apartments so I can
shoot on my wife without having to say it, which
would which for a boss would be it would implicate him.
It would well it also would like lower his status
if he had to, you know. So he's he's playing
very high status in it, where he's just like, so,
you see, I want to give you these music Man tickets,

(01:11:43):
but I want to trade them, but I want to swap.
I want to make a swap. And then Jacquelin's like,
why there's nothing I can swap before? I mean, I
just want to go home and go to bed tonight,
So you just give the tickets to someone else. And
Fred McMurray's like, it also says on your reports from
your co workers that you're bright and that you you know,
like can make you know, make the leap to a

(01:12:06):
certain thing, you know. But yeah, it's it's it's really
interesting about this movie because it does start as like
a kind of very comedy sex romp um and broad,
kind of broad and and you know, the idea for
it is is a great idea, which is basically, what

(01:12:27):
if that What if this guy who has this apartment
all of his bosses wanted to come in and cheat
on their wives in his apartment, and so he climbs
up the corporate ladder by giving them the key and
juggling them all in a very complicated schedule where he
has to leave his apartment for hours in the rain
and stuff. It's a great setup and it could have

(01:12:49):
just been that. So it could have been like a
Rock Hudson Doorstay style sixties sex rompt with Tony what's
his name? Not Tony Curtis, Who am I thinking of?
He would come in and sing on Letterman all that know.
You would come in with Mandy Patinkon. Okay, it'll come
to me. Um. So it could have just been that.
But then the part where it switches into drama is

(01:13:12):
really interesting, which is basically, um, Jack Lemon gets everything
that he wants with Fred McMurray the slimeball saying like, hey,
I'm going to give you a promotion if you give
me your apartment, and he goes, great, and I have
these music Man tickets that he swapped me for. I'm
going to ask out the girl that I've always liked,
the elevator operator operator. And she goes, oh, yeah, well

(01:13:35):
I have an appointment, but i'll meet you. I'll meet
you there. Yeah, she agrees to the date. Yeah, I'll
have to I'll have to do this. I have to
do this thing first, but i'll meet you there to day.
I'll be there by a thirty. And we're just thinking,
oh great, who you know. And that's one thing that
Billy Wilder says, by the way, is it is like
if you can disguise your plot points in the movie,
that's that's the sign of how well, how good of

(01:13:57):
a writer you are, is how how well you're able
to disguise your important plot points. So she kind of
off handedly says something like, oh, I have to meet someone,
but i'll meet I'll meet you there at a thirty.
So when it then becomes not Jack Lemon's p o V,
and it becomes her p o V where you follow
her to where she's meeting, and she's meeting Fred McMurray

(01:14:20):
and she's basically going to have sex in Jack Lemon's apartment.
That's where it become that because it could have the
premise could have sustained itself where it was just how
to succeed in business type type movie, and that's where
it deepens and becomes it's such a great twist and
such a but a twist that then means this movie

(01:14:41):
is going to have to be serious at because that's
a it's not treated in this light way of like,
oh my gosh, you know, there's gonna be slamming doors
and three companies types of stuff. It's treated as like
she's just her attitude at the beginning, that she's upset
that he's been fun king around and stringing her along

(01:15:02):
because she's really in love with them, which I think
is key to making this work. Exactly. She's in love
with Fred McMurray and Fred McMurray is stringing her along
and basically, you know, wants to be married and just
wants to have sex with someone. And it's it just
automatically deepens this movie and turns it now from a
lighthearted thing into a really deep, moving, affecting movie. Yeah,

(01:15:24):
and it's it's one of my favorite things in movies
where um and as a writer, it's so it's such
a tricky thing on when to parse out information to
the audience and when to part it out to the
actual characters. Uh. And it's one of my favorite things
when the audience is in on something that that your
protagonist doesn't quite know yet, and it's about how he
learns that stuff. Because when you're watching the Apartment, you

(01:15:47):
know ship like cublick Is is dating or seeing uh
Shell Drake, but the Porsche love the poor schnook Baxter
doesn't know this yet. So when we're gonna find this out,
when's the shoe gonna drop? Yeah? And when is she
going to find out that the apartment that she's boning
in his? And when she's going to find out that

(01:16:09):
she has just one in a long line which she
finds out that the Christmas the greatest office Christmas Party,
all that it really makes you want to move to
New York and work in office. In the scenes that
Billy Wilder stages with a lot of people in them,
I love those scenes. That was great. A lot of
the movie is just two people talking, but all those

(01:16:32):
scenes in the bars on New Year's they just make
New York seems so alive and so much fun to
be in. Well, in the huge office with uh and
I think he's forced perspective. Yeah, with kids in the back,
just crazy. And then, like you said, all the bar
scenes in the in the party scene, there was something
about putting a hundred people in a shot that you

(01:16:55):
just kind of don't see as much of it anymore. Yeah, exactly. Well,
extras are back out artists. There's they're so expensive, and
it's it really is a choice that you have to make,
and and it's it's a great choice. Yeah, I mean,
it really makes it feel like a very lived in
Everything about the movie makes I mean, they say his
address in the movie, so I like, I went on

(01:17:18):
Google Maps and it's like, uh, it's uh something. I
can't remember the exact address, but it's fifty seven. It's
the Upper West Side, right, So it's and he says,
I'm a block away from Central Park, and so I
knew sort of where it was appening. In the middle
of the movie. They say they actually because Fred mcbury
says it's to the taxi driver like seven or whatever.

(01:17:39):
So I looked it up and the that apartment is
not there. But it's like it just really gives you
a great sense of place. Yeah. Well, and the name
of the movie is The Apartment. It was, Um, it's
not The Two Lovers. Yeah, there's something to that. The
apartment is like a little character. And I know they
took great pains to make it a little more um,

(01:18:00):
sort of shabby and lived in than movies did at
the time. Yeah, movies at the time they were Billy
Wilder was saying, like, you know, everyone's He wasn't saying
it like this, but in my opinion, everyone's houses and
movies were sort of aspirational. People would go to see
movies because they wanted to see someone living a better
life than they had, especially in the in the thirties.

(01:18:22):
And um, you know, which is why these everyone's house
were these grand sets, you know what I mean, And
a movie like Philadelphia Story and stuff like that they
had everyone's houses were big and they had staff and
all this kind of stuff, and and um, Billy Wilder
wanted this to be like a bachelor pad and for
it to be realistic, and so it was kind of shabby,

(01:18:43):
it was small. I mean, it's amazing for dudes like us.
Oh yeah, this apartment with the fireplace, like a block
from Central Park at the Upper West Side. I mean
it was like, you know, it's pretty, but for whatever
reason in the sixties it was considered a little shabby.
But there is even a poster on the wall that
camera Crow. And he talked about where where camera Crow is, Like,

(01:19:05):
what is that poster? That's like it's over by his fireplace,
I think, and Billy Welder goes, oh, it's a print
from the museum. He goes, Basically, in my mind, Jack
Lemon would leave his apartment and have to walk around
the city all the time, so he would spend a
lot of times in museums. So he bought a print
from the museum. But because he's a bachelor, he doesn't

(01:19:26):
have anyone to say like, hey, that would look better
in a frame, you know. So it's just like tacked
onto the wall. You know, it's like a touch of
glass essentially. That's pretty cool. Um, But the tone of it,
like you were talking about, it's such a magic trick
because it's it borders on that zany kind of thing
at the time, especially early on with the recurring thing
of the doctor and the wife is the neighbor. Yeah,

(01:19:49):
every time you see the doctor sees another girl go
into his apartment, he's like, honey, you know, it's like
it's like kind of sticky in a way, and it
and it would have been great as just that, but
but man, the moment that turn happens, then you know,
we're then suddenly we're in a movie about suicide that

(01:20:10):
has a very lengthy uh scene and where a doctor
is basically trying to get Truley McClain to regurgitate the
pills that she's taken and slapping her in the face.
And it's it's like in real time essentially just trying
to get you know, they don't he doesn't slap her
once and then it cuts, it fades. No, It's it's

(01:20:34):
like is in real time of basically like she could
go um and And I just had never seen a
movie with straddling those tones really other than maybe a
movie that I talked about on a different movie podcast,
um something Wild. Uh that was great. Yeah, you know
that's kind of straddle the drama and comedy tones. Uh

(01:20:54):
Jonathan Demi Demi. Yeah, So I talked about it on
blank Check, which is um dealing with Jonathan Jami's uh filmography.
Um one of and that I saw in eight six,
and that was one of my favorite movies at the
time because of that tone. And so when I saw
The Apartment, I was like, oh, wow, this is doing
the same kind of thing. Um and and not a

(01:21:17):
lot of movies do that well, and especially in nineteen
sixty totally. I'm sure it was really divisive back then.
Well yeah, Billy Wilder was saying that that. He got
a lot of pushback and a lot of the critics.
One of them, I think, famously called it a dirty movie.
And but um yeah, I mean it's it just was

(01:21:39):
dealing with more adult subject matter, adultery and and um.
But but aside from that, is also just a movie
about you know, how far you want to go and
trying to succeed in life, climb up the corporate ladder
and um, which he was. He didn't really get the sense.
He didn't. I think he does tell the story of
how it started, and he wasn't seeking that out. He

(01:22:02):
didn't offer up his apartment initially, right, was the first one,
you know, the first one was one of his boss's,
Uh needed to borrow his apartment for some innocuous that's right. Um,
which I think the boss was lying to him about
why he needed it or whatever, and then all of
it and then he couldn't say no after that, because
if you say yes to one guy, your other boss says, hey,

(01:22:23):
I need it, and it just became a thing for him.
Well yeah, and then it's it's the outskirts of this
movie that play sort of the zan nous of the time.
It's always rooted in these in these great scenes that
are pretty realistic and believable between two people like you
were saying, but then on the outside, like when the

(01:22:44):
when the bosses would bring in the ladies that it
was always kind of zany and wacky, and it's very
sixties in a way, like all these like swinging dames
and Fred McMurray has all this bebop lingo that he's
constantly saying it like a dig And at one point
he goes, ain't that a kick in the head? And
I was like, is did the song come first or
did so? I looked it up and they came out

(01:23:06):
at the same time. The Dean Martin song Ain't Had
a Kick in the Head and the Apartment they both
came out in sixty like within months. Of each other.
But ain't that a kick in the head was was
written for the movie Oceans eleven, which Billy Wilder did
work on the script for. Interesting, which Oceans eleven is
a terrible movie, but he talks about it in the

(01:23:27):
book about how Frank Sinatra gave him a present and
he's like, I never liked Frank Sinatra, and Cameron Crow goes, well,
why did he give you a present? He's like, I
just did some punch up work on Oceans eleven. So
I wonder if, like Billy Wilder was like, included ain't
that a kick in the head? That was something that
he said or something which Dean Martin and turned didn't

(01:23:49):
do a song. Interesting, Billy Wilder also loved Dean Martin
and thought he was the funniest guy in the world. Well,
because Dean Martin could have very well been the Shell
Drake character. And he's in Billy Wilder's next movie One three.
I haven't seen that, Yeah, I haven't seen Yeah, I
have it at home, but I watched it yet. Well,
and they brought back the kick in the headline again
later in the movie. I think Lemon references that somehow

(01:24:11):
maybe it was Shirley McLain something about having been kicked
in the head. Oh yeah, and they do that a
few times. Well, it's really interesting because, um, just reading
Billy Welder talk about script writing. UM, it's very as
someone who's like just about to start to write another script,
it's very inspiring. And it's also I watched this movie
last night and I rewatched it and I was like,

(01:24:33):
it's also very intimidating because he just is such an
expert at it. Um. And the two things he he
talked about are if you if the stuff you do
in the first act isn't paid off in your third act,
then you're not succeeding, right, And he's he is paying

(01:24:54):
off so many things. He's not only paying off lines,
he's paying off emotional theme, He's paying off scenes. He
like basically the whole third act, like the last twenty
lines of the movie are payoffs for something he's set
up so expertly from the and and stuff that's so
unexpected from like um, well, him donating his body to

(01:25:17):
science as a great lover. He brings that back when
he takes the bar lady back, right, because he starts
touting himself. You know, they say that should donate my
body science and the last few lines are like, um,
Shirley McClain innocuously, he's just talking about her life in
the middle of the movie and how she got to
where she's got is saying like, well, I wanted to

(01:25:37):
be a I think a stenographer, but I couldn't spell,
you know. And one of her last lines to Fred
McMurray is him going like, what's wrong with you? And
her are going, well, I'd spell it out for you,
but I can't spell, you know. And and Jack Lemon,
when he's talking to Shirley McLean about her suicide attempt
talks about his own suicide attempts and and how he

(01:25:58):
accidentally shot himself in the knee instead of shooting himself
in the head. And but he talks about like the
knee took me six months to get over, but the
girl I was over in three weeks, and he goes,
you know, and he and he starts, it's such an
interesting comment on how someone you feel so close to
for a while and you can be in love with

(01:26:19):
a year later you cannot even ever think of them anymore.
And he says, he says, like I still hear from
her every Christmas she sends me a fruitcake and then
they go, hey, let's have the fruitcake tonight. And you
think it's just like, oh wow, that's an interesting comment
in life. And Shirley McClaine. One of her last lines,
he says, well, what about Fred McMurray, And she goes,

(01:26:40):
I'll send him a fruitcake every year. It's just like
he's constantly paying off everything that he set up. He
the gun that that he talks about, he pays it
off in the last scene, Um with the champagne bottle.
That clearly sounded gun right. Um. But it's just like
such an such an expert's greenwriter moved to be like

(01:27:04):
and and and I know that sometimes when you see
a movie, Um, you can roll your eyes at those
kind of payoffs of like callbacks that you know, where
like someone's calling back someone but that but Billy Wilder
and what he said about is if you can disguise it,
then they're not callbacks, you know, if you if the
thing that that irritates people about those types of callbacks

(01:27:25):
is when they're so important in the first act and
then obviously they're going to be called back in the
third act. You know, what I mean, But you can
disguise it where it's just like character and you're you're
not even thinking that that's important, and then suddenly it
gets called back. It's really really powerful. Yeah, you can't
call too much attention to it. Um I think like
writer types will notice that stuff, but an audience at

(01:27:48):
large just knows that it feels good and feels right.
And I'm a writer type. And the fruitcake one, I
didn't even remember it from all my previous rewatching, and
it's just like, fuck Wilder and I I a l
diamond that's still writer. These two are fucking so good
at it, it's crazy. And then another thing on the callbacks,

(01:28:12):
because at the very end of the book there's like
sort of a bunch of random things that Cameron Crowe includes,
like Billy Wilder's top ten tips for screenwriters and stuff.
But he also includes this speech that he wrote for
Gary Cooper, um for like at a live event to

(01:28:32):
to accept an award. Right, and Gary Cooper, I guess
like did a lot of Westerns, I think, or um
so so, but it wasn't used to talking all that much.
So Billy Wilder writes him this acceptance speech and he
gets up In the first the first line is a
joke and he goes, well, I bet you all thought
that I was gonna get up here and have nothing

(01:28:54):
to say except up, and everyone laughs, and then he
goes through and thanks a bunch of people and all
this kind of stuff, and has several other funny lines,
and then the last line is he goes and if
you asked me if I've had a wonderful life where
I've just worked with the most amazing people, I guess
all I would have to say is yup. You know,
it's just like fine, and I wasn't expecting it, and

(01:29:15):
just like, God damn it. He's like he's he's good
at disguising something as innocuous when you first hear it,
and then just you know, it makes the payoff just
really powerful. And and there's so many great little lines.

(01:29:36):
Um a lot of murder Shirley McLean's, but they it
doesn't feel like super script E of the Day stuff.
UM Like she has the one uh scene where where
I think she first meets um Fred McMurray at the
Chinese restaurant and he goes to see you cut your hair.
You know, I like it better long because I know

(01:29:57):
you want me to do you want me to leave
you a lock to carry in your while it and
and that line and the one about at the end
she says, then you end up with egg fu young
on your face. Like those are great fucking lines. I
mean they don't feel like like I really sort of
clever lines. Yeah, it's He talks about how every scene,

(01:30:17):
in every line almost should be something you haven't seen before,
which the whole movie just feels like, how how do
we execute this in a way that we have we've
never seen it on screen before, not only this scene,
this joke, this line of dialogue, you know, like we
shouldn't be going to movies and watching stuff that was

(01:30:39):
in some other movie. And and it's hard because when
you're a writer, you're like you're you're out there supposedly
documenting life, but but as a writer, you're also this
kind of an introspective kind of person who's not experiencing
a lot, you know, and a lot of comedy. This
is a problem in comedy scripts that you read is

(01:31:02):
I read a lot of comedy scripts and there, and
you can tell they're all written by like twenty six
year old who have never done anything or never never
experienced any any emotional residence in life. They're all people
who have like watched a lot of The Simpsons, you know,
and so, um, I don't know. Yeah, it's just it's
it's he they really had to end. You know. We're

(01:31:22):
not talking about I A L Diamond a lot. But um,
you know, obviously Billy Wilder's best movies, I think we're
written with him so or most of his best so.
But yeah, I mean, it's it's just the I will say, like,
the craft involved in this movie is a lot of
what I respond to, uh, the emotional themes and stuff

(01:31:46):
that's very important for Billy Wilder. Um, he talks about
how you can't even start writing until you know what
your theme of the movie is, you know, which is
something that that stuff that we produce we talk a
lot about, which a lot of comedians don't think about.
But but for this movie, I think I I respond

(01:32:06):
to it and tonally and I respond to it in
terms of craft and just how incredibly well crafted it is.
Maybe a little more than the emotional resonance ofthing, you know,
Like I I I love the end and it's not
too sweet. It's it's the combination as they talk about
in the movie The Sweet and Sour, which they talk
about in the in the Chinese Restaurant, you know, which

(01:32:29):
is a meditextual commentary on the movie itself, basically like
The Sweeteness Hour because it doesn't end with them kissing
its Billy Wilder said he didn't think that Jack Lemon
could even pull that off, like as a romantic lead,
you know, like suddenly taking her in his arms and
kissing her. So it ends with her basically saying shut

(01:32:49):
up and deal. Just one of the great moments, and
you know, it's great, And Billy Wilder goes, would they
still be together, you know, like six months later? I
don't know. I don't even know. But it's it's more
of a personal achievement for them both more than two
people found each other. Like these are two people who
have not had any romantic connection the entire movie. Have

(01:33:12):
them suddenly kiss would feel weird. Yeah, I think it
would have been the wrong move because she has to
go from being legit in love with with Chill Drake, Uh,
being a fractured person. They've spen you know, the right
amount of time on that backstory, uh to falling in
or I don't even think falling in love with with
back stir at the end. But the hope half of

(01:33:34):
all in love would just seem weird because it would
seem like, well, wait A meant you were just in
love with with Sheldrake. You can't suddenly do a switch.
But what's great about it is that she suddenly sees,
she sees a person, a like minded soul that has
turned his back on uh and and found the strength

(01:33:56):
to be his own person. And that's what she does
as well. And so do they are they together? Do
they end up you know, kissing? Ever? Who knows? Right,
it's not about that. No, I don't think it matters.
Um he gets to profess his love, which felt real
because he was Yeah, it felt like the right move.
But she just if she was to say, yeah, I'm

(01:34:18):
in love with you two stupid or whatever, it just
wouldn't feel right. Yeah. Yeah. And and the way they
play out that whole ind sequence with her learning about
um when Fred when Sheldrake's telling her, you know, and
he said, you know, especially with Kublick, you can't use
that apartment, and then she runs down the street and
all things Zion is playing and it's the It's basically
what Rob Ryaner ripped off for Inhering Men. Yeah. I

(01:34:42):
mean everyone ripped it off because it's the best, but
it's very uh. I mean now it feels like a
trope all this stuff. Um, but I don't know had
had that been done before in nineteen sixty I don't know.
I you know, I think Billy Wilder talked about the
champagne cork and how that was ripped off from a

(01:35:04):
previous movie of his as a gun as a gun thing. Uh.
And so he sort of I think camer Crow brings
it up and he's sort of like, you know right,
He's very just like, yeah, yeah, we shot her. There's
no he said, there's no special lighting or whatever. Cameron
crows like, how did you get her to look so
like magical? And he goes, I don't know, we just
shot it, right, she just looked that way. Yeah, exactly.

(01:35:26):
It's such a great ending. It's so perfect because it
manages to balance, like the whole rest of the movie, um,
with the sweeten this hour. It's it's not overly sweet
or sentimental, but just enough to like leave you feeling
hopeful and smiling. Whereas I was watching like The Fortune Cookie,
which I've never seen, so I put that on today,

(01:35:48):
which is Jack Lemon and Walter Matho and Sight and
that so far, Like I'm forty five minutes into it.
It's just the sour you know. I don't know, so
I wasn't all that into it, but I haven't seen
that one. It is an interesting balance, you know. Not
all the Wilder's films are great. And I think he
talks about IRMAA Deuce, which was the reunited, reunited Lemon

(01:36:14):
and McClane Wilder team, and he's just like it didn't work. Still,
Jack Lemon was so good though, Yeah, uh days of
Wine and Roses and like he had such a range.
He was just one of the great some great physical
comedy in it. Yeah, he goes little broad um like
this stuff with the bowler had is just so cute
and funny. Yeah, the the nasal spray squired is so funny.

(01:36:37):
And that was that was improv I guess from Jack Lemon. Yeah,
and that was one of the few times Wilder let
him improv, I think, and one of the few kind
of sort of broad slapsticky things like that overt. But
for some reason it really works it's really really good.
I feel like I've tried to rip it off a
few times. And then he squirts the flower to at
a certain point, yeah, which is kind of fun. Wilder

(01:36:58):
also said that Lemon would come to at having like
read through the pages with his wife the previous night
and go like, I was uh talking to my wife
and uh, we had this idea and we just thought
it would be it would be like better if we
did this, this this, And while there we go like,
nah and let me go. That's what I was saying.
It's a terrible idea, and even never bring it up again.

(01:37:20):
And while there was like that was what was so
great about him is he never He wasn't like an
actor who felt like he needed to defend his ideas
and make sure they got in the script or whatever.
If if I didn't like it, he would just stroll
with it. Yeah, yeah, which is so funny. But speaking
of ripping things off, there there's one scene that I
have ripped off several times and in scripts and I

(01:37:44):
it ended up being in the Ferns movie that I
just directed. So I just saw a few weeks ago. Okay,
So the end with Fred McMurray, the final Jack Lemon
Fred McMurray scene, um where um Fred mc murray says like, Hey,
I'm taking Shirley McClain to your apartment tonight to have

(01:38:05):
sex and if you don't like it, then you know
you're out of a job. Essentially, um so wilder uh
and I l Diamond. Very early in the movie set
this up with Ray Walston, who was great at this.
It was really great, super broad yea. Um. But very

(01:38:28):
early in the movie, when it still is like a
light comedy, um, Ray Walston says, hey, uh, Jack Jack
Lemon calls up. Ray Walston says, hey, you're supposed to
leave the key under the mat to my apartment, and
Ray Wilson goes, didn't I He goes, no, the key.
You left a key, but it's not the key that
works the executive washing I should have let oh I
must have left the executive washroom key. Huh. And that's

(01:38:51):
just like you view it as a viewer as, um oh,
that's a funny complication, but it's not important. Right. So
then in the final Fred McMurray seen, Fred McMurray says
to him, Hey, you need to give me that key
or else you're out of a job, and he has
mentioned like, hey, what do you what do you think

(01:39:11):
of the executive washroom in your office, and just casually
mentions it is and you think it's As a viewer again,
you're just like, oh, yeah, these are all the perks
that he gets. And Jack Lemon wrestles with with this
decision because he's in love with Shirley McClain, and then
you know, pushes the key across to Fred McMurray and
gives up, we think, and then goes into his office

(01:39:33):
and Fred McMurray has one, and we think, man, that
sucks that Jack Lemon didn't stand up for himself, but
I understand he'd lose his job. He Jack Lenon goes
into his office, he's tidying up. Fred McMurray comes in
and says, hey, this is the key to the executive washroom,
and Jack Lemon goes, yeah, I'm not going to be
needing it anymore because you can take this job and

(01:39:54):
shove it. You know. It's such an amazing uh, not
only finally calling back this stuff that was planted in
the first act, but it is one of the great
like fake outs to me in movies of a character
you think is doing the wrong thing, and he's actually
doing the right thing. So I've I try to put it.

(01:40:18):
I try to rip it off in almost every script,
all right. And and so when we were making the
Ferns movie, UM, we ended up having one last final
day right before it came out to shoot a totally
new ending, um along with a bunch of other scenes
so um that we just need to get so um.

(01:40:39):
I like two days before shooting, I was basically had
worked out with the studio what seene they would agree
to in broad strokes of like, Okay, so Zach, if
you haven't seen the Ferns movie, who cares? Uh, this
probably won't spoil it for you, but who cares about
the plot? But it's Zack basically has sold out in

(01:41:01):
Hollywood and um has is now doing cheesy talk show
interviews like you see Fallon do or whatever behind and
his team says, hey, this isn't you come on back
to North Carolina and go back to doing the show
the way it should be done, And he goes, you
really want me to give up on all my dreams?

(01:41:23):
And meanwhile, the network executive is over here saying, Zach,
we need to do promos, and they say, come on,
come on back with us, and he and he just
looks at them, shakes his head and walks and follows
the lady into the studio. And then it cuts to
his crew lonely going back to North Carolina, and he
suddenly appears and he's like, where are you going? I

(01:41:44):
just went back to get my ferns. He's like, you
think just because I didn't answer you and I silently
walked into the studio and I'm telling you what I
was doing. I wasn't coming with you guys. Of course
I'm coming with you guys. And that is a direct
rip off of that scene in the apartment. So great?
Are you going to keep trying to do that? Yeah?
If I can't, well, it's it's such a good it's

(01:42:07):
such a good move. It's such a good screenwriting move.
If I can do it, then I can. That's fantastic,
all right, man, you've got anything else? Uh? I don't
think so. I mean, it's just it's it's great. Watch it,
enjoy it. It's kind of a perfect movie. Yeah. Um,
I guess the one thing I did want to mention
was the other thing that they just as writer wise, Um, well,

(01:42:29):
writer wise, that thing that he kept doing with oh yes,
using wise on the end of something else. So this
is something interesting that you might not know. But so
a lot of the the sophisticated characters who are Jack
Lemon's bosses keep saying, um, something wise thy k adding
wise to to each of their things, so like, so

(01:42:50):
apartment wise, how are we, you know? And it's it's
meant to like sort of imply a sophistication or a
fast talking type of guy Jack Leman wants to emulate,
and he starts started talking that way, which then of
course they pay off at the very end with Shirley
McClain saying, I guess that's how it crumbles cookie wise,

(01:43:10):
you know, which is her finally like telling Fred McMurray,
I'm not with you anymore. I'm now thinking of of
cc Baxter Jo. It's so great. It pends off the
very last Uh. If you read the script, the very
last line is not shut up and deal. Um, there's

(01:43:33):
a same description line that says and that's all there
is story wise. Fuck, that's great. It's incredible. Yeah, And
so that's just for the actors, and that's just for
anyone reading the script. That's how good they were. They
were putting jokes in there their descriptions. That is so cool. Yeah,
I gotta read that book. Yeah, it's great. All right,

(01:43:55):
thanks man, This is a big treat for me, and
you taking appreciate you have me on love talking about movies. Awesome.
Thanks all right, everyone, I hope you enjoyed that. That
was so much fun. I had to kick the dust
off a little bit. It's been a while since I've

(01:44:16):
done one of these. Uh. It was great. He was
a good dude and uh so generous with his time. Um,
it was so fun to talk to someone that kind
of came into the podcast scene along the same time
that we did with stuff you should know. Um, even
though his backstory pre podcasting is far far different from mine. Uh.
He was a kindred spirit and a great guy, and

(01:44:37):
I appreciate him making all this time for me. Um.
Really cool to hear him talk about the Apartment and
the fact that he he watched it the night before
and read up on the Billy Wilder stuff. It's always
appreciated when a guest really takes their time to to
come in well armed, and he certainly was so. Thanks
to Scott. Thanks to you guys for listening and we'll
see you next time. Go out and see the apartment
if you have it. Yeah. Loomy Crush has produced, edited,

(01:45:09):
and engineered by Ramsay Hunt. You're in our home studio
at Pont City Market, Atlanta, Georgia. For I Heart Radio.
For more podcasts For my Heart Radio, visit the i
Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to
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