Seth Rogen Opens Up About His Self-Doubt & Struggles That Nobody Sees!

Seth Rogen is a comedian, writer, director and producer whose films have together grossed $2.8 billion at the box office. In comedy since he was 12 years old, it’s all he’s ever known, and he’s one of the biggest comedy forces on the planet. Podcast description: Seth Rogen is a comedian, writer, director and producer whose films have together grossed $2.8 billion at the box office. In comedy since he was 12 years old, it’s all he’s ever known, and he’s one of the biggest comedy forces on the planet. Opening up for the first time on the dementia diagnosis that tore his family apart, as well as the toll that bad reviews can do to the people who make films, Seth is a good guy trying to make his way in an industry that famously rewards bad behaviour. He tells us what that’s really like. For many people, Seth provided the narration for their adolescence with iconic, classic movies like Superbad and Pineapple Express - hilariously mining his own fumbles on his journey into adulthood for comic effect. Now, through his weed company Houseplant, he takes people on a journey of a different source as the supplier of one of the most popular suppliers of legal weed in North America. Seth’s personal essay collection, Yearbook, is available March 7th: https://www.amazon.com/Yearbook-Seth-Rogen/ Seth: Instagram - https://bit.ly/3SNsLA9 Twitter - https://bit.ly/3Yov5yv Follow me: https://beacons.ai/diaryofaceo Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  Hey there, welcome. (laughing)

• 0:04Speaker 01

  Seth Rogen, writer, producer and actor you know from Pineapple Express, Knocked Up and Superbad. The glove is here!

• 0:12Speaker 00

  Hollywood, it's not a fair industry. It is not fair who makes it. Any given phone call is one that is like making your life, or one that is yet another door slamming in your face. We had finished Superbad, and then we wrote Pineapple Express. No one wanted to make it. But if you don't quit, you might make it.

• 0:31Steven Bartlett?

  People would obviously look at you and assume that you have zero self doubt because you've been so successful in what you've done. But what's your journey been with self doubt?

• 0:38Speaker 00

  I'm at the point, it's funny, in my career where like, not a lot of people are in a position to like yell at me. But I will have a cultural institution tell everyone that I suck. That will add self doubt.

• 0:50Steven Bartlett?

  Green Hornet, you received critical reviews for that. Like, what's that phase like?

• 0:54Speaker 00

  Any opening weekend, honestly, and any time I have a thing coming out, it sucks. I think if most critics knew how much it hurt the people that they are writing about, they would second guess the way they write these things. Like, it's devastating. And something that people carry with them literally their entire lives.

• 1:15Steven Bartlett?

  I read that you'd said you would find life really hard without marijuana.

• 1:19Speaker 00

  I smoked weed all day. And I've been very productive in that time.

• 1:23Steven Bartlett?

  Clearly that's what I've been missing.

• 1:35Steven Bartlett?

  Seth, you've had an incredible twisting, turning career. And I have to say, when I was reading about your earliest years, an unexpected one in many respects.

• 1:47Speaker 00

  To me, too.

• 1:49Steven Bartlett?

  What do I need to know about you, where you came from, how you were raised to understand the man that you are?

• 1:59Speaker 00

  I mean, I get that depends on your appetite, I guess.

• 2:05Speaker 00

  Uh, I don't think anyone needs to know anything, but if, uh, if you're curious, uh, I don't know. I mean, there's a lot. Uh, I, uh, I think a general, uh, when I look at my life, I guess I started young. I think that's something that I, uh, I, I kind of view as one of like the defining traits and characteristics uh, of my life. And I think, uh, I've always worked very hard, uh, and I've always had very supportive parents. And I think those things all, uh, are things that when, if you're looking at like, if you're, if you're curious about how I got to where I am from like a career standpoint, I think, and just like who I am as a person in a lot of ways, I think those, those things were instrumental. Yeah.

• 2:48Steven Bartlett?

  Your parents?

• 2:49Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 2:50Steven Bartlett?

  I was reading about them.

• 2:51Speaker 00

  Yeah, they're very strange people. Yeah.

• 2:56Steven Bartlett?

  How so?

• 2:57Speaker 00

  I mean, everyone's parents are strange to them, I would imagine. I would, uh, yeah, they're just, they're kind of, uh, you know, my dad's kind of eccentric. My mother's, uh, also kind of eccentric. Um, you know, they, uh, but again, they were very, they're both incredibly supportive. Uh, I think because they're eccentric, I think a lot of, you know, my writing partner, Evan, his parents were much less eccentric by kind of more traditional metrics and were much less supportive of, uh, of his career in a lot of ways. And so, uh, I probably benefited from their, you know, uh, eccentricities more than anything. Yeah.

• 3:32Steven Bartlett?

  Eccentric's a, a broad word. Which is, cause I could, I could describe my parents, specifically one of them as being eccentric.

• 3:40Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 3:40Steven Bartlett?

  When you say eccentric, what, what exactly do you mean?

• 3:43Speaker 00

  Um, I mean, my dad, well, my whole family, you know, I'm, uh,

• 3:49Speaker 00

  You know, like a lot, my grandmother was like an immigrant who fled World War I. A lot of Jewish families are defined by the fact that people have been trying to kill Jewish people for a very long time, and my family is no different. A lot of the reasons Jews live where they live and are where they are and not, you know, in, you know, Eastern Europe somewhere is because, you know, people were trying to kill them. And that also shapes, I think, Jewish sensibility to a large degree. I know it did mine because it's kind of informed by neurosis and trauma to a large degree.

• 4:28Speaker 00

  And so, yeah, my grandmother is an immigrant and she met my grandfather, who, his parents were immigrants to Winnipeg, which is a very cold, unforgiving part of Canada. They moved to Vancouver ultimately and had my mother, and my mother wanted to go to Israel to travel. My dad's from Newark, New Jersey, which is like, especially where he's from, like one of the worst parts of America, from like a kind of crime standpoint, especially at that time in the 70s and 80s. And he, my dad's like a socialist, had to move to a kibbutz in Israel where him and my parents, him and my mother met and then moved to Canada.

• 5:12Speaker 00

  So my dad has always been like incredibly left wing, especially both my parents, but my dad really like, he would have, he would have stayed like essentially living on like a commune his whole life if, you know, he never met my mother, basically. Yeah. And he has like incredible, kind of like, I guess it's OCD. I don't know if it's a disorder, I would say he has obsessive compulsive tendencies. And, yeah, and he has Tourette's Syndrome, so he's twitchy and, and I have it as well to some degree, but those are connected, kind of compulsive, you know, compulsion and Tourette's. So, yeah, I mean, yeah, no shortage of strangeness to draw from in my family.

• 5:56Speaker 00

  What was his relationship like with money?

• 6:00Speaker 00

  Um, I'd say not, not that's relevant. I mean, yeah, we, I was not, money was, I think, we did not, I did not grow up with a lot of money, you know? My parents, my mother, uh, went to school to be a social worker when I was very young and then became a social worker. But when I was like a kid, she was a cashier at a, uh, you know, a department store and my dad was, uh, worked at like, uh, vocational college as a known Budsman, which, uh, kind of, you know, is like a swing position to some degrees, helped facilitates life on the, on the campus, you know? A lot of time was spent working in the game room from my memory. Uh, so yeah, we grew up,

• 6:42Speaker 00

  you know, in a small apartment and then, um, so yeah, I think some people who don't grow up with a lot of money, I think are taught to really like revere money and kind of, uh, put a lot of emphasis on it. And I think other people who don't grow up with a lot of money, uh, kind of are taught that's not that important. And as long as you have enough to do certain things, then, then that's enough. And it's not something that you should like fetishize or, um, you know, make the be all end all by any means. And I was definitely more raised like that. Yeah.

• 7:12Steven Bartlett?

  Is there some, sometimes a bit of a paradox when your parents, um, don't value money and maybe they sometimes struggle with it, that you grow up trying to avoid that struggle?

• 7:22Speaker 00

  Definitely. I for sure had some things when I was young where I was afraid of being broke. And I'm sure that for sure informed elements of my ambition, you know? I'm very lucky in that it also coincided with a very strong, like creative drive, you know? Um, but I definitely, yeah, remember being very concerned that we didn't have enough money and my parents not being that concerned that we didn't have enough money, which probably made me more concerned that we didn't have enough money. Cause I was like, why are they worried? We don't have enough money. Uh, but so yeah, that was, that was something that was caught. But then that was when I was like very young and then as I got older, I saw that, uh, you know,

• 8:05Speaker 00

  uh, when I got into high school and stuff, I saw that it would, I would be fine, you know what I mean? On the, on the grand scale of things.

• 8:13Steven Bartlett?

  In that apartment, when you were, quote unquote, very young, if I'd asked you, if I'd said, Seth, what are you, what are you gonna be when you're older? What would you have responded to me?

• 8:21Speaker 00

  Um, I mean, I probably would have said, I want to write movies or something like that. I probably would have wanted to be a ninja up until a certain age, a ninja turtle specifically, probably. And then, and then, yeah, I remember when I was probably like six or seven years old is when I started to really wanna, like, the idea of making movies became very, like, fascinating to me. And I was one of those kids with a camera who was like, running around making movies. I'm obsessed with movies, quoting movies, wanted to watch. All I want to do is watch movies. I like, I love, I like, fell in love with movies at a very young age.

• 8:55Steven Bartlett?

  Was there an influence in your household that inspired that love for movies?

• 8:59Speaker 00

  My parents loved movies. They're like huge movie fans. They would go to movies. Again, it was one of those things, like, we did not have a lot of money. We would go to movies all the time. And in Vancouver, Tuesdays was like the cheap movie night, for whatever reason. It's a slow night, so maybe they incentivized customers. And almost every Tuesday, we, as a family, would go to whatever new movie had come out that week. So we saw, I saw everything in theaters, like, constantly. And I loved it. And my parents, you know, had a VCR and would tape movies off of television. And we had this, you know, I think a lot of, you know, people my age are kind of defined also by like those VHS tapes that you grew up with, because it was like a finite amount of movies. And then I went to high school, me and Evan, across the street

• 9:42Speaker 00

  from two video rental stores, a Blockbuster and a Rogers, which was like the Canadian competitor. But we would go there every day after school and just like walk the hour aisles and for hours and rent movies. We'd go there on the weekends and rent, walk the aisles and rent movies. Like, we were, and yeah, ever since I was young, and then I met my writing partner, who became my producing partner, directing partner, Evan, when I was 12, so I was very young. But ever since, ever since then, I can remember, I was like obsessed with movies, basically. Yeah.

• 10:12Steven Bartlett?

  And stand-up, that came in at 12 years old as well, roughly?

• 10:15Speaker 00

  Yeah, you know, for me, I loved comedy in general, and I love stand-up comedy. My parents were big stand-up comedy fans. But truthfully, it was kind of like a means to an end to me, because I, again, it's funny, because it's like, it was like weirdly well thought out for being 12 or 13 years old. But I was like, oh, if I do stand-up comedy, at that time, sitcoms were very popular, Seinfeld, things like that. So I was like, I was like, the most practical path for me to have some sort of success doing this is I'll start doing stand up comedy. Maybe I can get an agent and then maybe I can like get on a sitcom and be like, you know, Ray Romano or Jerry Seinfeld or something like that. And then maybe I can write movies and that can like turn into a movie career, basically.

• 10:59Speaker 00

  And that was like, if you were to ask me when I was like 12 years old, like, what is your life going to be like? That's what I would have hoped it would be like, you know?

• 11:08Steven Bartlett?

  Remarkable because most 12 year olds.

• 11:10Speaker 00

  I know.

• 11:13Steven Bartlett?

  I'm thinking like that. What was, what was, what was school? What was your relationship like with school? Was there any influence there on you as a man today, that early relationship with school and your peers?

• 11:21Speaker 00

  For sure. I mean, the first movie I wrote was super bad with Evan and it was very much informed by our high school experience. It's largely based on real things that happened. I would say the educational aspects of school were, was lost on me and, and I from a very young age knew that my ultimate life path did not, was not gonna, you know, follow, you know, an academic route, you know? And, and my parents never put that much emphasis on it, honestly. Like they weren't like, you have to, my dad dropped out of college, you know, that they weren't like, you have to do this, you know? I think more than anything, they actually saw that I was like, very inspired to do comedy and I loved movies and they saw I was willing

• 12:06Speaker 00

  to work very, willing to work very hard from a very young age. And so, um, honestly, from the time I entered high school, which when I was 13, they were like, they didn't care that much that I was not doing that well in high school because from, cause I was always working really hard on writing movies and doing stand up comedy, uh, like from around that time, uh, until I got a little older, but like they saw I wasn't like lazy. I was just motivated to do something other than school, but the culture of school I loved and the things that happened at school, I loved. And I thought the kids I went to school with were hilarious and, and we would go to parties every weekend and people's parents would be out of town and we were trying to hook up with girls and buy beer and our friends were getting licenses and fake IDs and all this shit.

• 12:49Speaker 00

  And and I thought it was awesome and hilarious and and I went to like a public high school in like a big city, you know, like, there was like 3,000 kids at my school. Vancouver is a real big metropolitan city with downtowns and so, you know, neighborhoods and the good area, the bad, like, you know, you could really get into trouble in Vancouver. So it it provided a lot of like adventures, you know, and and I loved it and and and I wasn't one of those people ever needed. It's not like we were popular or cool or anything, but we weren't like tortured by high school. We were like, this is a fun adventure and we can have fun here and and especially if we don't

• 13:31Speaker 00

  put too much stakes on the actual like doing well here, a part of it.

• 13:38Steven Bartlett?

  Adam, at 15 years old, you went to a Canadian comedy festival. Do you remember?

• 13:43Speaker 00

  I'm sure you remember. Yeah. Um, yeah, I entered like a competition, I think it was. Yeah. Um, and yeah, and I did pretty well. I I placed pretty well in the in the competition. I was okay. I was pretty good at stand up comedy. Like it it was, uh, yeah.

• 13:57Steven Bartlett?

  Do you remember the instance where Jerry Seinfeld showed up?

• 14:00Speaker 00

  Yes, I do. I I came. That was actually, I was auditioning to get into the Just for Laughs Festival in Los Angeles and I show up and it's during the day, which is not great. There's not that many people there. It's maybe like five o'clock. Not a good time to stand up comedy. I'm like 15 years old and I flew in for this, you know? There's comics going up and doing their thing. There's like the scout from the Just for Laughs Festival there and like I'm about to go up and I'm next and the emcee is about to introduce me and yeah, and someone comes over and they're like Jerry Seinfeld is about to show up and he's going to go up instead of you. And I was like, what? I'm like, I'm here to I'm here to audition for this thing. And

• 14:38Speaker 00

  they're like, yeah, well, he'll go up and then you'll go up after. And I'm like, I'm gonna go on after Jerry Seinfeld? Uh, they're like, yes. And so he goes up. He like, and I mean, he's his show is still all like, he's as famous as as you can as a comedy star as there is alive at that moment. And it's what you're hoping. It's like you go to a stand up comedy club at that time, hoping Jerry Seinfeld will come in and then it happened and these people like, it's like, they won the lottery and he comes and he just like annihilates and then he gets off stage and then they're like, and now like. From Vancouver, 15 year olds Seth Rogen. And yeah, I bombed horribly.

• 15:20Speaker 00

  And I did not get into the Just for Laughs Comedy Festival. And I told Jerry Seinfeld that story and he was completely uninterested. He could have cared less.

• 15:33Steven Bartlett?

  It seems like a tough thing for a 15 year old, a pretty horrific firing line for a 15 year old to put themselves in. Stand up comedy.

• 15:41Speaker 00

  Yeah, I think part of it honestly was informed by like my night, my overall like naivety to some degree. But I also, I, yeah, I was, I was good enough at it that it instantly wasn't like a viscerally painful experience. You know what I mean? And it's probably, you know, I played some sports in high school, but it was probably a similar. I imagine it's a similar mentality where you're like, yeah, there's stakes to this and there's ups and downs to this. But overall, I'm good at it and seem to be moving, progressing in the right direction. So it's worth the, the stress of it in order to, to pursue it, you know? And at times it's phenomenal and as, as fun as you would hope anything would be, you know?

• 16:26Speaker 00

  But also honestly, what was more fun was at that time, me and Evan started to write Superbad. And that was like what I really loved doing. And like, I liked doing stand up comedy and writing stand up jokes, but like, I loved sitting with Evan and writing a movie. And to me that was like, at the time, it's frustrating because you're like, will this ever get made? Is this pointless? Are we wasting our time? Is this just a silly pursuit? But it was still, it was, I just loved it, you know?

• 16:51Steven Bartlett?

  There's this through line in all your sort of creative work often, which is about like making people laugh.

• 16:57Speaker 00

  Yep.

• 16:58Steven Bartlett?

  Have you ever figured out like why, you know, because I've sat here with a lot of comedians and I've, and it, and it always seems to be something about comedians where, I don't know, some instance when they, you know, maybe they're younger or some kind of inspiration in their life, which made them somewhat compelled to, and, and, and almost energized by the pursuit of making other people laugh and happy. Have you ever, does that resonate with you? And have you ever identified where that comes from in you, that pursuit of making people laugh and happy?

• 17:24Speaker 00

  Um, I think for me.

• 17:29Speaker 00

  I don't, I don't like, I think some comedians have like a dark origin story, you know what I mean?

• 17:37Speaker 00

  I don't, you know, I think for me, it was like something I liked and something I was good at. And something that I was very like encouraged and fostered to do from a very young age. And I was lucky enough to find another guy my age who was as good at it as I was and as interested at, at doing it as I was, which is like miraculous, like I had a lot of like, you know, I read part of that Malcolm Gladwell book and I'm not, you know, about the,

• 18:16Speaker 00

  about, you know, the miraculous kind of set of circumstances that it takes to become like remotely successful in this terrible world of ours, you know what I mean? And like, I think it was things like my parents were big comedy fans, so I saw comedy from a very young age. I'm from Canada, which is like a place that acclaims comedy and respects comedy. So culturally, I'm like from a place where comedy is like, you know, a relevant part of the culture, you know, Canadians, some of their biggest like exports are comedians and comedy shows, Lorne Michaels is Canadian, you know, SCTV, you know, a lot of great, some of the greatest comedians of all time are Canadian, you know, and so it's something that was always

• 19:02Speaker 00

  kind of just always a part of like the DNA of being a Canadian person, I think to some degree as well. Also, I'm from Vancouver where they made movies, not to say it's like I grew up in Hollywood, but like they, you would see movie sets around, you would see, I went to a high school, they shot some movies at the high school because it was a very like cinematic looking high school. So you would see trucks and stuff like that. I didn't know anyone who worked in the entertainment industry, but like, You kind of would see it around, so it made it a little more obtainable. And if we lived like in the middle of fucking nowhere and it just seemed like completely abstract, you know what I mean? So I think that, I think that like my path is honestly one of like being supported and,

• 19:42Speaker 00

  and being, and working hard and being very diligent, but also like having an environment that kind of like bolstered my ambition, you know what I mean? Um, yeah.

• 19:53Steven Bartlett?

  16 years old, you, you get a part in Freaks and Geeks.

• 19:56Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 19:57Steven Bartlett?

  And that brings you to LA with your family.

• 19:59Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 20:01Steven Bartlett?

  What, your, your entire family came to LA?

• 20:04Speaker 00

  My parents, my sister was in college, yeah.

• 20:07Steven Bartlett?

  And I read that they'd lost their jobs around that time.

• 20:10Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 20:11Steven Bartlett?

  And that made you the sole breadwinner in the house.

• 20:13Speaker 00

  Basically, yes.

• 20:16Steven Bartlett?

  Well, did that feel like pressure?

• 20:19Steven Bartlett?

  Being 16 years old and being the breadwinner for your house because your parents have lost their jobs.

• 20:22Speaker 00

  In a way, it felt like an alleviation of pressure because after six, I remember my dad telling me like after, after like three months or six months of being on Freaks and Geeks, he's like, you've made more money in this time than I've made my entire life put together. So like, like i- if anything was like an amazing alleviation of, of a weight because there was money all of a sudden for the first time in our lives, things could be paid for e- easily, you know? And so I was more than happy to provide for everybody because I suddenly had access

• 21:04Speaker 00

  to an amount of money that was like absurd compared to the amount of money I grew up with access to, or anyone in my family grew up with, with access to, you know?

• 21:15Steven Bartlett?

  Your work ethic, which I've read about over and over again throughout your book and throughout various interviews you've done, seems to be pretty spectacular. And one of the quotes that I read is, if there were any kind of dark driving force behind your early ambitions, quote, "It would be some sense of financial insecurity."

• 21:33Speaker 00

  Yeah, probably. But that, that's gone, which is maybe why I don't make as many things as I used to.

• 21:44Steven Bartlett?

  That's um, that's a, that's an interesting journey to go on being driven by having that sort of financial insecurity, developing a real sort of really strong relationship with work and then that falling away.

• 21:56Speaker 00

  Yeah, and it fell away pretty fast, I think, honestly. Like, I think by the time I, you know, there was a point, so yeah, I was on Freaks and Geeks, and then undeclared, and then I didn't work for years. But by then, it felt like my parents were like incapable of making enough money to survive on their own also. So like, once I had some money, like, they, it was just bonus money, you know what I mean? Like, part of what had happened is they lost their jobs and we lived in a house. So we sold our house in Vancouver and, and that's why everyone moved to LA. So there was a little more money available because we had sold our house. So like, it's not like my parents were, like, just like a, you know, a leech on, you know, they, they, they were able to like make a baseline level of like survivable income. So when I had more

• 22:39Speaker 00

  money, it, it just, um, yeah, it kind of just added a cushion of comfort. And then there were times, then they moved back to Canada, um, when I was like 18, and I was in LA, and that's around when I became unemployed for years and years. So I did then start to have financial burden, but it was like a sole file, you know, it was my own financial burden. And, and it was not, I did not feel like I was letting my whole family down or not, you know, providing for my whole family. It was more, I just myself was like, oh, I might have to move, I might have to move back in with my family because I might not be able to afford to live in Los Angeles, uh, for longer because I was unemployed for years, basically. Yeah.

• 23:21Steven Bartlett?

  You were unemployed for years and years?

• 23:22Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 23:22Steven Bartlett?

  Um, after that, that first role on Freaks and Geeks?

• 23:26Speaker 00

  Yeah, we did Freaks and Geeks, and we did a show called Undeclared that was on Fox in 2000, 2001. And then, then I basically didn't work for like three years, essentially. Yeah.

• 23:34Steven Bartlett?

  What's going through your, you know, you're presumably doing auditions and stuff like that?

• 23:38Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 23:38Steven Bartlett?

  Does it ever, like, what's that phase like of unemployment? Most people quit at that point. That's the point where you say, fuck this.

• 23:44Speaker 00

  That didn't even occur to me. I, I, I did not, um, I was pretty getting, I was pretty kind of had like a chip on my shoulder, uh, to some degree. I was writing a lot still, you know, um, we were still, that's probably when we wrote Pineapple Express, you know, so we had finished Superbad. No one wanted to make it.

• 24:09Speaker 00

  But we thought it was good. So we kind of put it on the shelf. We're like, let's write another movie. And then we wrote Pineapple Express. So we were busy and we thought it was awesome. And we thought both the movies were awesome. And in general, we were also getting like very positive feedback. As writers, we just weren't getting like hired to do anything and no one would make our movie. So it was it was this weird mixture of things kind of being like encouraging and and very frustrating at the same time. And and and that's almost like the worst part about kind of being in that part of your career, which is the part of the career. Most people who live in Hollywood are in, which is one where it's like, any given phone call is one that is like making your fucking life

• 24:51Speaker 00

  or one that is yet another door slamming in your face that you have to like just suck up and keep moving forward. You know what I mean? And, and so that that's happening a lot at that time. Yeah. And seeing your friends also start to do very well and start to make things, you know, that is, it's very encouraging in some ways, but you inherently get very jealous and you start to doubt yourself and you start to doubt if you are good enough to do it, or if anyone will ever like see in your seeing you what you see in yourself, you know. But yeah, it's, you know, though it's pretty warm in LA usually. So it's easy to just hang out and keep plugging along.

• 25:36Steven Bartlett?

  What's your use the word doubt yourself. Now, what's your journey been with been with self doubt? People would obviously look at you and assume that you have zero self doubt because you've been so successful and done.

• 25:47Speaker 00

  Um, I think, I think all creative people and people who have creative pursuits in their life have self doubt. Like it's impossible to put yourself out there. I think from my experience and from meeting all the creative people I've met in my life, from people who, you know, it's their first day on set. You know, and, and they have one line to Steven Spielberg. They all have self doubt. They're all worried people won't like what they're doing, that people are going to think it's stupid, that they're going to think they're stupid for wanting to do it, that they're gonna just reject it and, and, and by proxy reject them.

• 26:28Speaker 00

  You know, um, that is like, that is from my experience, pretty constant across the board for all creative types who genuinely like care about what they do. I'm sure there are some people who technically like are maybe actors or something and, and do not have any of that, but they're probably not very good and don't care that much about what they do. You know what I mean? But in general, from my experience, I would say that applies to, to creative people of self doubt. And, and for me, it's, it comes in waves, you know, you have, you make a thing everyone likes, gets a little better. You make a thing everyone fucking hates, it gets a little worse.

• 27:10Speaker 00

  You know, it, you know, and, and, uh, and that's a part of also doing what, you know, I do is like, you get, you know, like they're, you know, it's, it's like, you know, I, it's funny. I was saying to someone I work with the other day, like, I'm not, I'm at the point, it's funny, in my career, we're like, not a lot of people are in a position to like yell at me in my job. But like the New York Times will like publish an entire article like saying I, I suck at my job. And so like, that's the trade off is like, I've worked my way up to not having to deal with that much like personal conflict and face to face conflict, but I will have like, uh, just like a cultural institution,

• 27:50Speaker 00

  tell everyone that I suck, you know? And so that, that's kind of like, that, that will add self doubt, uh, things like that, you know? Um, and, uh, yeah. And so it, it's for me.

• 28:03Speaker 00

  It's for me, something that's present, but I try not to let it stop me from doing the things that I think are interesting and the things that I think I would enjoy watching, you know?

• 28:15Steven Bartlett?

  Has it ever hurt you?

• 28:17Speaker 00

  Oh, yeah. I mean, what, like, what, self doubt? I'd say a lack of self doubt has maybe hurt me at times.

• 28:26Steven Bartlett?

  The criticism, like, someone-

• 28:27Speaker 00

  Oh, yeah. Of course, it hurts everyone. Yes, very much so.

• 28:34Speaker 00

  I think if most critics knew how much it hurt the people that made the things that they are writing about, they would second guess the way they write these things. Like, it's devastating. It takes years. I know people who never recover from it, honestly. Years, years, decades of being hurt by, because it's very personal, you know? It's not like, it's not, it is personal, you know? And so it is devastating when you are being, like, institutionally told that your personal expression was bad. Like, that is, like, devastating, you know? And something that people carry with them, literally their entire lives. And I get why.

• 29:19Speaker 00

  It fucking sucks.

• 29:21Steven Bartlett?

  You know, I read it, I was reading through various moments in your life where, I mean, you've had back to back to back successes, so it's hard to find-

• 29:30Speaker 00

  That's definitely not true.

• 29:32Steven Bartlett?

  No, you have, you seem to, I mean, from the bird's eye view, you look at your work, your portfolio, you go, this is a-

• 29:36Speaker 00

  I've been trending well, but-

• 29:38Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah, you've been trending well. The thing you talk about, and you've spoken about in interviews, is Green Hornet, where you received some critical reviews for that. Can you zoom me, if I was a fly on the wall in one of those moments where you've received, that feedback is coming in and it's coming in, you know, critically, what would I see if I was a fly on the wall in your home? Like, what, does it, do you stay in your bed? Do you, you're like, what's the human impact it has on you?

• 30:02Speaker 00

  It's different things, and I think there's different-

• 30:07Speaker 00

  You know, and that's another funny thing about making movies is like and having like and just being like a person who works a lot is like life goes on like you could be making another movie as your movie is bombing which is a funny thing because it's bittersweet because like you you know that things will be okay you're already you're already working you know what I mean if the fear is the movie bombs and you won't get hired again well you don't have to worry about that you're already you've been hired it's too late you know um but it's an emotional way conundrum at times just just dealing with that and navigating that you know um for Green Horn it's quite literally yeah like the critics were the reviews

• 30:49Speaker 00

  were coming out and it was pretty bad and people just kind of like hated it like it seemed like a thing people just were taking like joy and disliking a lot you know what I mean um but it was it opened to like thirty five million dollars which was like I think at the time the biggest opening weekend I'd ever been associated with in any capacity and so it was also like it did pretty well and that's and it was a funny thing where it really didn't that one and that's what's nice sometimes is like you you do get you know you can grasp for some sense of success at times you know and and and but I honestly think things like the interview were more like painful as far as like people really

• 31:32Speaker 00

  taking joy and talking shit about it and and really kind of questioning you know the types of people that would want to make a movie like that in general like I think yeah that felt far more personal I think Green Horn it felt like I just had fallen victim to like and which was true like like you know I a big fancy thing which was like I was super and we were just kind of like also like ahead of the curve a little bit too much I think as well to something like we were early on that on that wave you know and so I think that was easier to deal with in a lot of ways because it was like not so much like a creative failure on our parts but more like a conceptual failure I think

• 32:15Speaker 00

  uh like the interview people more treated us like we had creatively failed which sucked much worse and that's happened a few times yeah where people really act like we've just And again, it's not, I'm not gonna act like this is that bad. Like this is not on the grand scale of things in life. It's not that bad. Like, and I've gotten much better at dealing with it as well. And I think when I was younger, I really like, did not have as much perspective as I do. And now I am not. I do not carry it with me nearly as much as I used to, you know? Yeah.

• 32:49Steven Bartlett?

  It's like, it is the center of your world, though, these things, because you've poured your creative heart into, into something. So it is you.

• 32:56Speaker 00

  Oh, yes. It feels like a personal rejection.

• 32:58Steven Bartlett?

  It's like.

• 32:58Speaker 00

  Very much.

• 32:59Steven Bartlett?

  Attached to yourself.

• 33:00Speaker 00

  Oh, yeah. It feels like a very personal rejection. And it doesn't, and it doesn't feel like constructive. It feels.

• 33:07Steven Bartlett?

  Human impact there. What's like the human?

• 33:09Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah. I don't know. Sometimes you try, you try different things. Sometimes you go out to dinner where you're just trying to forget about it. Sometimes you sit there and watch movies. Sometimes you're literally just like sitting on the couch, fucking pissed and devastated. I've had different approaches. I used, sometimes I would go to the beach. I used to have a house on the beach and I would go to the beach the weekends my movies came out.

• 33:30Speaker 00

  Yeah. And, and any opening weekend, honestly, and anytime I have a thing coming out, it sucks. Cause it just is stressful. It's like birth, like it, which is just an inherently painful process, even though it is maybe bringing something beautiful into the world. It is a painful act. And I think that is like what releasing a movie is for the people who made it is like, in some ways, it's inherently painful. And, and in some ways, it's inherently beautiful and joyous, but in some ways, it's also just very painful.

• 34:04Steven Bartlett?

  This is the story of creativity.

• 34:05Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 34:07Steven Bartlett?

  Making anything that you care about that is slightly challenging or original or new risks both exceptional success, but also potential fail, like.

• 34:16Speaker 00

  Yeah. And the more personal it is, it's like, the more, the, the higher the highs can be if it works and the lower the lows are if, if it doesn't. So you know, the more, the more personal the rejection feels. Yeah.

• 34:29Steven Bartlett?

  A lot of people can relate to that. I know for sure. That, that period, say after you receive feedback on the interview, how long is that process of trying to like, get back on your feet and get it out your head and stop it occupying your mind?

• 34:41Speaker 00

  I mean.

• 34:44Speaker 00

  It's interesting. Like, I think it's different and it rears its head in different ways. And I think like imposter syndrome or self doubt, or you know, this phenomenon where like the more you know about a thing, the less you feel you know about it in some ways and vice versa. You know, I think that is something, again, that is like a common theme in creative people's lives. The fact that you read about it all the time is comforting, honestly, because you're like, oh, it's a thing. It's out there, you know. But to me, it's never been that hard to to do the creatively risky thing. And it's never been that hard for me to convince myself

• 35:26Speaker 00

  to like, take the leap and do the thing that is maybe crazy and do the thing that is a big swing and to put myself out there. And I think that's also what's good, I guess, about being rejected enough times is you kind of like, you see like, it sucks, but you can survive it. And so it's ultimately worth trying to do it again, you know, and, and, and even the worst case scenario is survivable if you just keep going from a creative standpoint. You know what I mean? So I think that's also like, yeah, we're, yeah, we haven't stopped. It'll nag at you at times, but if anything, my biggest fear is to make a thing that's

• 36:08Speaker 00

  like fucking boring or not taking a big swing or doesn't seem like it's trying to push things forward or like, it's just like, happy to relax. And you know, like, I, I, I think like, the fact that we get to make anything, movies, TV shows, it's like, there are so many people who are trying to do it and we get to do it. So like, we, we should fucking go for it. And we're spending the money of these giant fucking conglomerate corporations. Like, they're letting us spend millions of dollars to make our crazy things. Like, we should go for it. Like, we should really look back and be like, wow, like, can you fucking

• 36:48Speaker 00

  believe we did that? We, that we spent hundreds of millions of Amazon's dollars doing that, you know? Like, like, that, that's what's exciting. So, um, yeah, it's not like nags at you, but I think luckily for me, and I, and it's who I'm surrounded by, you know, to some degree as well, but like, we've always, you know, there's moments where you doubt yourself and you kind of. Bobble, but I've had always someone being like, fuck it, let's do it, you know?

• 37:17Steven Bartlett?

  I get the sense, funnily enough, from just the couple of minutes we spent together, that you, you have no, like, you almost don't, you're such a lover of what you do at heart, that you almost couldn't not do it. Like, yeah. So here's a question then. If I told you today that you could no longer make movies or do anything in the entertainment or creative space?

• 37:38Speaker 00

  That would be hard. I'd become a ceramicist.

• 37:44Speaker 00

  Which I do spend a lot of time doing.

• 37:45Steven Bartlett?

  I know.

• 37:48Speaker 00

  It would be a real bummer, though.

• 37:51Steven Bartlett?

  What would, what would actually your life be?

• 37:55Speaker 00

  I mean, I wouldn't, it would, I could, I, it's tough to think of because it is very like ingrained with who I am and what I do and like, and it is like, I could stop working. I have enough money to, if I didn't want to keep working, I could, I could never work again and live the exact life I live now until I die, you know? It, I have no kids. I have not trying to leave generational wealth to anybody. Like, I'm gonna, I'm gonna, you know, like, we could just keep going. It, it, it's genuinely because like, I enjoy it and it's, and it's a part of who I am and how I spend my day and, and what I love doing and, and people

• 38:35Speaker 00

  generally seem to enjoy the output, which I enjoy and, and it seems to be additive to the creative landscape of film and television, the things that I get to be a part of, you know? And so, um, yeah, it's, but I, it mostly comes down to, I just like doing it. And so it would be hard to think of what else I would do because like, on it, like, I, I just write, I love, I enjoy writing and I've been doing it since I've been writing like, you know, screenplays since I was 12 years old, you know, I'm 40. So it's like, it's so much a part of who I am that like, I do it all the time. If I have, I'm generally working on a few things. If I'm making up a coffee and have five minutes, like, I'll,

• 39:20Speaker 00

  I'll write for a few minutes. Like, uh, you know, I, I, I genuinely enjoy it. So it would be hard to imagine. I wouldn't, I don't know what I would do.

• 39:32Steven Bartlett?

  You're in, you have ADHD?

• 39:35Speaker 00

  I don't know, maybe.

• 39:39Speaker 00

  I mean, I'm pretty good at focusing, honestly.

• 39:41Steven Bartlett?

  I read that, I read that you had Tourette's and ADHD.

• 39:43Speaker 00

  I do, oh yeah, I guess Tourette's, I mean, maybe I'm more, yeah, I mean, I, I, I had some Tourette's, like, yeah, some Tourette's, which is connected to ADHD.

• 39:50Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah. What, has that ever had a role in your life? Has it been caused at all?

• 39:57Speaker 00

  Um.

• 39:58Steven Bartlett?

  I don't fully understand Tourette's, if I'm being completely honest, I don't.

• 40:01Speaker 00

  Well, it's kind of connected to like a compulsion disorder where you, it's like, it, it manifests in like physical tics and twitches. The most extreme versions are like people, you know, screaming like, you know, swear words and shit like that. But it all roots from like a compulsion to do it.

• 40:24Speaker 00

  And like, it's like scratching an itch, is the best way I can describe it. I'm sure you've been sitting across from people who twitch or have a weird eyebrow thing they're doing, or a weird thing they're doing, you know what I mean? And I see it so often, and that is, that is a mild case of Tourette's Syndrome. And I think so many people have it who are undiagnosed. And I know the exact feeling those people have when they are doing that. And it literally feels like you have an itch on your hand and you're scratching it. And it's the same thing from like a musculature, like movement standpoint. You feel like if you don't cock up your eyebrow, you're not scratching that itch. And when you do, you're like, ah, I did it.

• 41:05Steven Bartlett?

  And you have that?

• 41:06Speaker 00

  Uh, yeah, at times. I, for me, it was always pretty mild physically, but I still, it does, I, I feel the urge at times, but I'm very good at not doing it.

• 41:19Steven Bartlett?

  I'm not quite cut out for this world, but weed makes it okay. And in a different interview, I read that you'd said you would find life really hard without marijuana.

• 41:27Speaker 00

  Yeah, for sure.

• 41:30Speaker 00

  I smoke weed all day, so I would, yeah, I would imagine it would be worse if I didn't.

• 41:35Steven Bartlett?

  All day, every day?

• 41:36Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 41:37Steven Bartlett?

  Today?

• 41:37Speaker 00

  Oh, yeah.

• 41:38Steven Bartlett?

  After this?

• 41:39Speaker 00

  Yes, I smoke weed all day, every single day since I was 20 years old, maybe, something like that.

• 41:47Steven Bartlett?

  20?

• 41:48Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 41:50Speaker 00

  And I've been very productive in that time.

• 41:52Steven Bartlett?

  Clearly, clearly, that's what I've been missing.

• 41:57Steven Bartlett?

  When you say that you wouldn't be cut out for this world, but weed makes it okay, what do you mean?

• 42:02Speaker 00

  I mean, in the book and in life, I would, I equate it to shoes or glasses. Like it is, you know, our shoes like a crutch we use, or are they a thing that we have culturally decided make our lives easier and better? You know, that is exactly how weed is to me. Could I not wear shoes? Probably. Could I not smoke weed? Probably. Would I just much rather smoke weed all day? Yes. You know? And it's the same, that is how I view it. It, it only makes my journey through this life more comfortable,

• 42:41Speaker 00

  more palatable, easier to, to process, easier to manifest the things that I want to do. Exactly how I would be trying to do the same things I do in my life without shoes on or without my glasses on or without a jacket on. That is what it would be like for me to do it without smoking weed all day. It just, I could probably do it. It would just be a bit more of a fucking pain in the ass.

• 43:07Steven Bartlett?

  Seth Rogen, that didn't smoke weed all day, every day. What would, what do you believe his life would be? How his life would be different?

• 43:14Speaker 00

  It, I mean, I would not probably have a weed company. I probably wouldn't have made the movie Pineapple Express. I maybe wouldn't, I mean, who the fuck knows? I maybe wouldn't have conceived of a lot of the things I've conceived of over the years. Weed has been always like a very powerful social

• 43:30Speaker 00

  element for me and my friends. We've hung out. A lot of the ideas we've come up with, we've come up with hanging out and smoking weed, you know? You don't come over to the movie Sausage Party, like Sausage Party, you know, not hanging out and smoking weed. So I, I think like the environment it has created amongst me and my collaborators has been very additive to, for sure, to my creative output. So,

• 43:57Speaker 00

  yeah, I mean, in, in abstract ways and in very specific ways, you know, like, like Pineapple Express being, you know, the most specific, probably.

• 44:06Steven Bartlett?

  I was looking at the wording. So the phrase, I would, I'm not quite cut out for this world. I found really curious.

• 44:12Speaker 00

  I don't think any human is. That's more, I think no human is quite cut out for the world, as is exemplified by the fact that we wear underwear, that we need toilet paper, that we have shoes. We're not like these pure beings that just like go out into the world and can exist flawlessly. We do dozens of things that are external to make our lives livable. Weed's actually natural, unlike underwear, you know, and shoes, like and glasses, you know, it exists in the real world. But that is part of my premise is no human is quite cut out for this world. We, everyone has things they use to make their lives livable, you know?

• 44:53Speaker 00

  And for me, weed is one of those things, just like a roof is, is one of those things, you know?

• 45:00Steven Bartlett?

  I can tell you the, um, the cost of the roof here because it's causing this sound.

• 45:04Speaker 00

  Yeah, exactly.

• 45:05Steven Bartlett?

  Which is making it not great for our podcasting, which I think is an absolute thing. Can you tell me, is there a cost to weed in terms of, has there been a cost in your life to weed? The upsides are clear because I can see your.

• 45:15Speaker 00

  No, there's literally from my, you know?

• 45:22Speaker 00

  No, I mean, I've gotten to when I was younger, because weed is illegal stupidly, there has been situations I have found myself in that are not great in the pursuit of getting weed. But I don't blame weed for that. I blame the government for making weed illegal and making me jump through all these hoops to get it, you know? But in general, in my life, no, there has been no downside to weed or my use of weed or my love of weed. Maybe it's cost me jobs throughout my life. I'm in the Mario Brothers movie coming out soon. I'm in the Ninja Turtles movie that I wrote and produced coming out soon.

• 46:04Speaker 00

  Like I'm producing things for giant, you know, companies that do not seem to mind. So I, I, I, I have not, you know, Steven Spielberg put me in this movie. I have not seen a definitive impact on my career because I'm known. Very much for being someone who smokes weed all the time, you know what I mean?

• 46:23Steven Bartlett?

  Well, you know, all that success, you've had all those movies you named recently that you, you know, some of them of which are coming out soon, you know, having spoken to you today, I get work ethic. I get your innate passion, which seems to have been there since you were a child. But I, but there's people that have both of those things and they're not Seth Rogen. You know what I mean? So is there anything else when you look back on your life? You talked about the circumstance, your mothers, you know, being around that culture. Is there anything about you in particular, a talent? And people find this hard to answer because it requires you to say something nice about yourself. But when so celebrities often say, you know, but is there, what is it that makes you good at what you do?

• 47:02Speaker 00

  I think I, I think, I think, man, I honestly think because I grew up watching so many movies

• 47:11Speaker 00

  and having parents that appreciated them.

• 47:15Speaker 00

  I, from a very young age, had an inherent understanding of cinematic storytelling of what, and that specifically from a writing standpoint, from how the movies were written. That is for whatever reason, how my brain processed it. How the characters were introduced, how the conflicts between them were set up, how they played out throughout the movie, how they resolved themselves or didn't resolve themselves throughout the movie, how they manifested in set pieces and sequences that exemplified the conflicts and the themes and the, and the tensions between the characters. For whatever reason, from a very young age, I was able to understand and write those things.

• 48:00Speaker 00

  And I, you know, I look back now as like a 40 year old person who has produced and helped countless people with their screenplays and written countless screenplays. Like there are things about like what we put into Superbad as like 14 year olds that are like fundamentally functional and good in a way that is like beyond like the average 14 year old's ability, the average, the average writer's ability in a lot of ways, you know? Um, like, and, and that is something that me and Evan really just, we were lucky. Like we, we got it and, and I think honestly, as an actor.

• 48:42Speaker 00

  I mostly credit my ability to act as my, from like a right, through a writing lens. And I think as an actor, I understand what the story needs. I understand, I understand how that character needs to affect things, what that character needs to do in order for this story to be told effectively. I don't view my acting as internally as the other actors I work with. I know it, I see it, I talk to them about it all the time. I view it much more from like a big picture, like, okay, here's the role this character plays in the story. How do I make that work as well as it possibly could, you know? And I can do it.

• 49:23Speaker 00

  So I have some performance ability, which not everyone does, but I think, I think I am, I think my understanding of how story works kind of helps compensate for my, the fact that I'm not the greatest actor and that I am able to work with actors who are much better than I am, honestly. But I think if I had to answer that question, which I'm uncomfortable doing, that is how I would answer it is, for whatever reason, me and I found a guy with the same skill, which is like miraculous, but like from a young age, me and another guy had a very inherent sense of like, how to write a movie, basically.

• 50:02Steven Bartlett?

  There's a young creative listening to this now sat in their bedroom or driving in their car, pushing their pram, walking their dog, whatever. And they, they're a creative in whatever industry, it could be DJing or, you know, author, it could be an actor.

• 50:13Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 50:14Steven Bartlett?

  What is the actionable advice that you could give to them to, to, you know, give them a shot of, because there's a lot of creatives out there that are struggling.

• 50:21Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 50:21Steven Bartlett?

  And you, you would have had this bird's eye view on creators that end up being successful, you know, in their careers and those that maybe have the talent, but don't end up getting there. Is there anything actionable that you can say to them that would help them end up in the talented, successful group?

• 50:36Speaker 00

  Unfortunately, the only way to mitigate not being successful is to not quit.

• 50:45Speaker 00

  That's it. If you don't quit, you might make it. And if you quit, you definitely won't.

• 50:54Speaker 00

  And, and honestly, I think after all the years I've seen people make it and not make it, the only common denominator is, is that like I've seen actors write themselves off, be like, I'm never gonna fucking do this. Try to get other jobs. One of my dear friends, who's an actor, he's been an actor, he's a great actor, a brilliant actor, and his career ebbs and flows, comes and goes. He'll star in a TV show for a few years, he won't work for two years. He went and tried to get a job at like a car dealership one day. And I was like, what are you doing, man? Like, and he's like, I can't, I quit acting. No one's gonna fucking hire me

• 51:35Speaker 00

  again. I'm un-hireable. Now he's like, like the star of the most successful play on Broadway right now. And like, because he just got this role a couple of years after that. And he's in one of the biggest movies that's coming out next year, he's in it. Like, and, and, and it's because he didn't actually quit. He, he kept going, you know, and it's not, you know, especially Hollywood, it's not a fair industry. It is not fair who makes it. The best people don't make it, you know, it's very luck oriented, it's very connections oriented. I'm lucky, like, and I also worked hard and thank God, I, you know, have, I'm a good enough writer that I've

• 52:20Speaker 00

  been able to have enough longevity in my career. Once I got lucky, but like, a lot of luck played into my success, you know. But that being said, I've seen people get lucky very random times through random ways. I always think about like Ian McKellen, like, did you, have you heard of him before he was 65 years old? Like, that guy, I didn't like, as I had never fucking heard the word Ian McKellen until he was Magneto in X-Men. Then all of a sudden, he's like in Lord of the Rings. He's one of the most famous people on earth. He got famous when he's like 60. Like, like, that's what happens to people sometimes. You know what I mean? It's like, you never know,

• 52:59Speaker 00

  you know? And so I think that is, is what's interesting is, and if you like it, then just don't quit. And as long as you have enough to survive, then just keep trying to do it, you know? But there's got to be something that I can do to increase my luck. Be really good at it.

• 53:19Speaker 00

  I think making, being nice, honestly, being nice, being the type of person people want to be around, that people like, that people, it comes down to it, want to help instead of not help. That is very good. Like, I've seen that just if people don't like being around you, then, then, then you will fail because you need other people to help you succeed, you know? Um, working hard is like something you can control in a very uncontrollable world, I find. And like, um, you know, it's funny, I was meeting with someone recently who like ascended very high in Hollywood.

• 54:01Speaker 00

  And she was like, I always fetishized hard work. Like, to me, that was like it. Like, i- i- like, if you weren't working hard, I like had no regard for you, basically. And like, and to me, that was like, and, and that's a good reminder of like, those are the people you're up against. And that was something that I always knew from a young age was like, I, I don't consider myself a competitive person, but I knew succeeding in Hollywood was inherently a competitive pursuit. There's only so many jobs and there's way more motherfuckers trying to get their job, those jobs than there are jobs available. So by the nature of that, I was competing with people for these jobs.

• 54:44Speaker 00

  And I knew I had to be able to look at myself and be like, am I at least working harder than everyone else who is competing for this job? I might not be better than them or smarter than them or have as many connections as them or be as good looking as them or any of these things, but I can at least work harder than them, you know? Um, and that to me was something that was like controllable. And I've never seen someone regret the amount of hard work they put into their pursuit. And so, you know, that, that is something that will help you succeed, I think. Has, you, you referenced earlier, you don't have any kids. I do not. That has helped me succeed as well.

• 55:28Speaker 00

  Definitely.

• 55:29Steven Bartlett?

  Really?

• 55:29Speaker 00

  Oh, yeah. There's a whole huge thing I'm not doing, which is raising children.

• 55:38Steven Bartlett?

  Would it, people, obviously, someone would be listening, but yeah, but it would make you happier. You know, someone might say that. I'm trying to rebuttal.

• 55:45Speaker 00

  I don't think it would. I've been around, obviously, a lot of children. I'm not, I'm not ignorant to what it's like to, I've, I've seen everyone I know has kids. I, I see, I'm a, you know, I'm 40 again, you know, like, it's not, I, I know, you know, I've, I've, some of my friends have had kids for decades, you know? Some people want kids, some people don't want kids. I think a lot of people have kids before they even think about it. From what I've seen, honestly, you just are told, you go through life, you get married, you have kids. It's what happens. Um, and, and me and my wife were just, neither of us were like that, you know? And, um, honestly, the older we get, the more happy and reaffirmed we are with our choice to not have kids.

• 56:28Speaker 00

  Like, it was something we kind of talked about more and we're like, have we made the right choice? Are we sure? Now, if more than anything, the conversation is like, honestly, thank God, we don't have children. We get to do whatever we want. We are in our, we are, we are in the, the prime of our lives. We are smarter than we've ever been. We understand ourselves more than we ever have. We have the capacity to achieve a level of work and a level of communication and care for one another and a lifestyle we can live with one another that we've never been able to live before. And we can just do that and we don't have to raise a child, which the, the world does not need right now.

• 57:11Speaker 00

  And so that was, and so, yeah, it's, uh, we're, we're very happy with our choice to not have kids. And I just, I work, I, I, I work with a lot of people with kids and I see definitively that I, uh, have more time to both do the things I need to do and the things I enjoy doing than they do. And not to say their kids don't bring them joy, but I, I say this truthfully. I, I, I, I, me and my wife seem to get a lot more active enjoyment out of not having kids than anyone I know seems to get out of having kids.

• 57:49Steven Bartlett?

  Speaking of your wonderful wife.

• 57:50Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 57:51Steven Bartlett?

  In my very extensive research, I found a series of photos. I found this one.

• 57:55Speaker 00

  Yes, that's my wife, Lauren.

• 57:57Steven Bartlett?

  Exceptionally beautiful.

• 57:58Speaker 00

  She's lovely.

• 57:59Steven Bartlett?

  And I found this one.

• 58:02Speaker 00

  Yes, that's Lauren and her mother. That's a great photo. Wow, it's like a real photo.

• 58:07Steven Bartlett?

  It's a real photo.

• 58:08Speaker 00

  Where'd you get this?

• 58:10Steven Bartlett?

  Internet.

• 58:11Speaker 00

  That's amazing. Yes, this is Lauren and her mother, Adele.

• 58:14Steven Bartlett?

  Adele.

• 58:14Speaker 00

  Who passed away a few years ago. Yeah.

• 58:16Steven Bartlett?

  You've campaigned exceptionally hard for Alzheimer's following Adele's diagnosis.

• 58:21Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 58:22Steven Bartlett?

  Can you tell me about that journey?

• 58:23Speaker 00

  Yeah, definitely. You know, it's funny. It's like as a celebrity, I guess, like, you know, I, you're kind of asked to do a lot of charity things and find like a cause, I think, you know? And there's, I think there's pressure to find a cause. And I think a lot of people adopt causes that are not organic to them and who they are. And, and they kind of find themselves, you know, in the midst of a cause. And, and, and that had happened to me in the past. I would go to some charity events and I always felt very out of touch with it and, and didn't really understand it. And then I met my wife and, and this is in regards to the charity, but also in regards to just our relationship. I'd never been in a serious relationship ever in my life, really. Like a few months here and there I'd dated, but never. And in like

• 59:07Speaker 00

  2005, I started dating my wife Lauren and she was the first serious relationship I ever had. And very soon after we started dating is when she realized her mother seemed to be showing the first signs of Alzheimer's. And I knew nothing about that. It really, it was, it's not in my family. And, and what I didn't understand is like, oh, it was a disease that had like no treatment, no cure. It was only going to steadily get worse until she died from it, which was truly devastating and put me and my wife on like a pretty intense journey for the next.

• 59:48Speaker 00

  You know, 15 years or so, basically. And it really, it really took a lot out of us and my wife especially, you know. Lauren felt very out of control and very devastated and really scrambling for like outlet or no way to gain some kind of agency over the situation.

• 1:00:12Speaker 00

  Yeah, and our friend suggested we do a comedy show and maybe give the money to like an Alzheimer's charity and we did and it went very well and my wife started telling her story as a young woman whose mother was in her 50s and diagnosed with Alzheimer's. And it was really not a thing like anyone was talking about at all and she found there was like an enormous need for people to connect with someone who was going through this because a lot of people were going through it and really no one was talking about it. And we very, we kind of found like a need for this organization that we made, HFC, which became like, you know, an Alzheimer's charity that really was like focused on talking

• 1:00:56Speaker 00

  to young people, many of whom were caretakers for their parents with Alzheimer's, you know. And, and again, it was just a thing. It's a very stigmatized disease and not a disease very many people are comfortable talking about at all. And, uh, yeah, and Lauren, as her mother progressed more and more, just talked about it more and more and, uh, and it really, um, yeah, kind of made our charity more and more prominent in the space and, um, yeah, has allowed us to do kind of more and more things to help people.

• 1:01:24Steven Bartlett?

  You say people don't talk about it enough and part of that is results in people thinking about Alzheimer's as just losing your keys or forgetting a sentence or something.

• 1:01:32Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:01:33Steven Bartlett?

  What is the reality of Alzheimer's as you've observed it?

• 1:01:36Speaker 00

  Well, it's different for everyone, but it's inherently for my mother-in-law, like she forgot how to speak, how to go to the bathroom, how to talk, I mean, how to eat, how to walk, um, and was essentially like, you know, uh, someone you would move from the bed to the wheelchair, force feed essentially, you move back to the bed. She was like that for like seven years or something like that. I think she didn't, uh, and again, I'm bad with years. She didn't speak for several years. Um, and.

• 1:02:12Speaker 00

  And it was, yeah, if you saw her, you wouldn't assume it was dementia or Alzheimer's. You would assume she had some horrific stroke or something like that. It was not, it was not what I understood like cognitive decline could, could cause, you know? Um, it was far more devastating and, and yeah, and I think, uh, people don't understand how kind of dire it is, or they do understand and they just, again, don't like talking about it because it's really scary. People are weird about their brains, mental health, obviously in America, especially people are very weird about. Not a thing they like talking about. Um, and so, yeah, it kind of taps into a lot of things people are just scared of in general.

• 1:02:51Steven Bartlett?

  What toll does that have on the people around her, like yourself and your, your wife?

• 1:02:56Speaker 00

  Um, I mean, it was just devastating for my wife, especially like it was truly one of the, the most upsetting thing you could imagine is like very slowly seeing your mother die over the course of years and years and years and years and years and years and years and years and years, you know? Um, it's, uh, yeah, I mean, it caused, uh, uh, yeah, it was, it was very grim, you know? Um, but through the charity, you know, there was a lot of like, kind of hope that came up at times and a lot of like, uh, you know, kind of like wonderful things that it felt like we were able to do as a result of it. So there was kind of bittersweet moments, but in general it was terrible.

• 1:03:40Steven Bartlett?

  Was that, is that, has that been one of the hardest times of your, um, last couple of decades for you, that, that process?

• 1:03:47Speaker 00

  Oh yeah, for sure. I mean, yeah, especially, you know, being married to someone who is going through something incredibly traumatic. Um, is, yeah, is, is, is, you know, it's hard for them and it's hard for you to know how to support them properly. And, and how to, you know, navigate their feelings in a, you know, uh, productive and loving way, you know? Um, and it's obviously much harder for them. Um, and, uh, you know, it, it is, uh, but yeah, it's a, it's a, it can be hard for everybody.

• 1:04:26Steven Bartlett?

  Adele passed away 2020.

• 1:04:28Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:04:30Steven Bartlett?

  What impact does that have on the family?

• 1:04:35Speaker 00

  Um, I mean, in some ways it is a relief of burden, you know, especially with someone who was so sick for so long with no hope in sight for any, for any way to get better, you know?

• 1:04:55Speaker 00

  And, and also like devastating, you know? And, and it's something that I'm always having to, not having to remind myself, but something I'm always reminding myself of is like, you know, your wife, her mother died recently, like there's, there's a lot going along with that. And, and although there's like this constant thing that we are not dealing with, there is, there is another thing, you know? And, and again, in many ways, like the active agony of her mother kind of slowly dying was, was probably worse, but this is also bad in its own way, you know?

• 1:05:31Steven Bartlett?

  You mentioned Americans don't like talking about their mental health.

• 1:05:34Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:05:34Steven Bartlett?

  Or really anything cognitive, related to their cognitive functions.

• 1:05:37Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:05:38Steven Bartlett?

  I've never heard you speak about your mental health.

• 1:05:40Speaker 00

  I don't, I don't think it's that interesting.

• 1:05:45Speaker 00

  That might be why.

• 1:05:47Steven Bartlett?

  Anxiety?

• 1:05:49Speaker 00

  Uh, not really, not more than the average, you know?

• 1:05:52Steven Bartlett?

  I often think of, I often think that creatives over index with anxiety for kind of some of the reasons we talked about earlier.

• 1:05:57Speaker 00

  Yeah, I don't, I think I have anxiety, but it, I also am constantly reminding, I'm good, I think, at analyzing my own feelings and behavior to some degree. I do have anxiety sometimes, but I'm also having to remind myself that I am like, going through things that are objectively anxiety inducing to almost anyone. And I would probably be weird if I wasn't feeling some sort of anxiety with the amount of public facing pressure and exposure I have at times. So you just tell yourself like, yeah, you, you, this is, you are feeling anxious right now because you are dealing with this thing that has a lot of. Public pressure on it, you know?

• 1:06:38Speaker 00

  So I think in general, no, in general, I have pretty good mental health, I think. Ask the people who work with me.

• 1:06:50Steven Bartlett?

  It seems like an unhuman way to live, right? Being in the spotlight and being, being receptive to so much public feedback. Like you talked about how shoes are kind of unnatural and roofs are unnatural. There's the way that we all live these days seem to be so far from what is, what it is to be a human.

• 1:07:06Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:07:08Steven Bartlett?

  What can we like? What do we need to do, do you think, to get back to being a little bit more human?

• 1:07:15Speaker 00

  Um, I don't know. I don't know if I'm the best person to ask that to, but I, uh, I personally have tried to spend less time on social media. I think that is a good thing. I don't think that contributes to one's humanity necessarily. Uh, but I, uh,

• 1:07:34Steven Bartlett?

  What are the things that make you feel most human then and most connected?

• 1:07:38Speaker 00

  Um, I think spending time with my loved ones, my, my wife, my, you know, my, my, my dog, my, my, my sister, my family, my, my parents, you know, my friends, going to dinner with my friends, going to their houses, hanging out with my friends. I, even though I don't have kids, I enjoy going to my friend's house and hanging out with them and their kids, you know? You know, writing with, being creative with my friends, doing things with my friends, making things with people that I respect. And the, the feeling that I'm a part of making something that I am excited about and that I think is really good. That is, I, I, again, for me, that's like, those are the moments where I feel like I am personally like living up to my potential, you know?

• 1:08:22Speaker 00

  And, and feeling like, and, and, and it is about the other people, even at times when it is work related, you know? And I, and I do think, you know, uh, the connections that you make with people. Even when they are creative are relevant and important, you know, and, um, and so, yeah, I think those are the things that I like, I value is like personal relationships and, and creative ones, which I also view as personal.

• 1:08:50Steven Bartlett?

  You've done, you've done so much in the, in the space of writing and, um, and entertainment. You've then embarked in other pursuits, businesses, you know, Point Gray, huge success, Houseplant, massive success. That's in a different industry. That's in, you know, the more entrepreneurial side of your, your passions. What is it, what is it now for you? Like, what is the, the thing? What makes you, having achieved all of this, fired up and excited about a challenge?

• 1:09:16Speaker 00

  Um, I get excited when I, and it's, it's a simple metric, I think, which is anytime we're making a thing that I know I would be psyched if I saw it or got it or saw it was out in the world, I get excited. Like, and, and that's kind of it. Like, if I'm making a movie and I'm like, I would love this movie. I would see this movie and be like, this is fucking great. Whoever made this movie, like, fuck, they went for it. They did it. I'd be jealous I didn't make this movie. That's when I know I'm doing something good. And it's the same thing with Houseplant. If we make a thing and I'm just like, this is awesome. If I saw this, I would want this. If I saw someone else made this, I'd be like, fuck, why didn't we think of that? Why didn't we make this? What were we, why were we not thinking

• 1:09:59Speaker 00

  of this? You know? Um, that to me, and, and then when we do it and we're like, we did it and we, and it worked as well as you wanted to, and it feels how you wanted it to, to me, that's like, it's exciting. And, cause it is a creative, uh, expression. And, and, and I think that's what's exciting to any, again, I think, person with like a creative pursuit, which I view Houseplant as, and I kind of view everything as to some degree, which is like, it's all output that is meant to reflect my taste and my sensibilities and, and those, and that of those who are working on it with me, you know? Um, and, and that could be a movie, it could be a TV show, it could be an ashtray, it could be, it could be any number of things. But, but to me, when I'm excited about it and,

• 1:10:45Speaker 00

  It works is when I really think it is the thing that I wanted it to be, which is a thing that I'm excited about and a thing that if I saw it and someone else made it, I'd be like, yes, that's awesome. You know, um, and that's the same thing since we've been writing super bad. Like that's why we wrote super bad. We were like, let's write our favorite movie. Let's write the movie that we want to see and no one else is making. And it was the same thing with Pineapple Express. This is the end and the boys was a comic book. We loved. We're like, let's make this. No one else is going to fucking, let's make this into something, you know, um, it's the same thing with everything that we've done for the most part, which is like, let's make the thing we want more than anything.

• 1:11:23Steven Bartlett?

  Why not make the thing that you think other people will want?

• 1:11:26Speaker 00

  Cause who the fuck knows what other people want?

• 1:11:31Speaker 00

  And I think luckily that's a thing we've been lucky with is like, either our taste and the public's taste has coincided or, or the public has been willing to take cues from our taste. And, and, and, and, and bite to, to what we're putting out there. You know what I mean? Um, which is, which is just a, a, an almost intangible skill. I think to some degree, which is just making things that connect with people in a big way. And that's not even what every creative person is trying to do. You know what I mean? I know plenty of filmmakers. I, some of my favorite movies are movies that are not trying to connect with giant audiences.

• 1:12:13Speaker 00

  You know what I mean? But those are the movies we grew up loving. And to us, that's a fun challenge is like, how do we put everything that we think is like risky? And subversive and difficult about this idea into something and then have it connect and then have everyone go crazy for it. And have everyone be like, yes, like I can't wait to see that, you know? Um, and that. That's just our taste, you know what I mean? Is we like to, we're thinking of like a packed theater Friday night and just wanting people to like, go bonkers, you know? And like, that's not everyone's goal, you know?

• 1:12:53Speaker 00

  And so that, that, that's a big part of it too, is like, what kind of audience are you, are you hoping to have? You know?

• 1:13:01Steven Bartlett?

  When people, you know, study people like you, they're always looking for like the, the themes, like what's the three things he does that like, they're trying to find the like, the secrets and whatever else. They do that, what's his morning routine, whatever else. Your creative process, what is from your own observation, the most unusual part of it? The part that you go, no one else seems to do it this way, but fuck it.

• 1:13:22Speaker 00

  I, I tend to be able to work on, not, not everyone, and I work with a lot. I'm lucky also because I get to work with a lot of like, literally like the most brilliant people in the world who do what I do. So I have a very front row seat to like an incredibly high level of performance, you know? On a writing standpoint, acting standpoint, directing standpoint, all these things I'm getting to see like, truly the best versions of it, you know? But I think, you know, for me, I, I am, I'm good at switching gears and compartmentalizing.

• 1:14:02Speaker 00

  I find some writers maybe would think that is strange and, and the idea of like writing two things, two different things in one day would be strange to some writers. The idea of like, okay, I'm going to write one TV show in the morning and then a movie in the afternoon. I think that, but again, to me, it's very intuitive. Some writers find switching gears creatively, especially midday, difficult. I, I can work on five different things throughout the day. And whenever I'm working on whatever thing it is, I'm pretty able to like fully engage on that thing.

• 1:14:38Speaker 00

  I I physically write more than I think most people do. No, with on a keyboard, but like I find a lot of writers want to talk about like to me, I'm like, just write it. Let's just write it. Let's just see how it looks. Let's just try it. Just write it down. Like, and I think a lot of people are precious with writing and a lot of people. You know, it's like a big, they kind of like, they try to like, it's very like sanctimonious or something like that, you know? But I I try to like, really just write different versions of things, share. I share a lot of early versions of things with like a group of people that I trust. I'm sending rough versions of things to people. I'll rewrite it instantly. I'll do a hundred drafts of something, you know?

• 1:15:23Speaker 00

  Um, I'm really not precious with that, you know? But but I don't know. I mean, I don't know if like. Yeah, I don't know what other, I don't know what people expect. I I'm I'm more curious than other people's creative processes, honestly. Like, it's so ingrained in who I am. Yeah, I've been doing it since I was so young. Like, it's it's truly like a part of like my brain chemistry is. And my development was is built around, you know, writing and and writing movies specifically. So like my my personality, I think in some ways is is is engineered around writing and and and making movies in some ways. Because I've been doing it since I was so young. So I really think it's like it's become a very fluid part of who I am.

• 1:16:08Speaker 00

  And it doesn't feel like often I'm like sitting down to work. It's like, it's just kind of a fluid part of my day. I do also have like, I'm very, I get a schedule sent to me by my assistant at the end of every night. It tells me what I'm doing the next day. I pretty much just do what's on the schedule. She sends you an email, right? Yeah. And it will say 10 P M. Do this, Seth. Yeah, it'll be like 10 A M. to 2 A M. But and there'll be like giant free blocks of time in there where I will write usually. Or me and my partner will organize our own, will will organize our own writing time amidst that. But I, yeah, I mean, I'm pretty regimented from a schedule standpoint, which does surprise people. Because people will encounter me and be like, let's get together like sometime this week.

• 1:16:49Speaker 00

  And I'm always like, like, I'm like scheduled like, like a month out pretty rigorously throughout the days. But if I asked you what your schedule was next week? I have no fucking clue. I don't know my schedule is Monday.

• 1:17:03Speaker 00

  I'm also, yeah, like, I'm not, I'm good at, I, I like dealing with what's right in front of me, honestly, as well. Like, I, I, I can't begin to process what's happening next week. Like, I, I truly, that's too much for me. Like, I, I know, like, the big things, like, the benchmarks, you know what I mean?

• 1:17:18Steven Bartlett?

  If you're leaving the country.

• 1:17:19Speaker 00

  Yeah, if there's some big thing I have to do, but like, in general, I have no idea what's happening the week before.

• 1:17:26Steven Bartlett?

  Have you, bit of a left field one, but have you observed a, a point in your, your trajectory where you become somewhat so successful or somewhat, you know, so famous that happiness begins to decline?

• 1:17:39Speaker 00

  No.

• 1:17:43Speaker 00

  Um, it was never like, being famous was never like a goal for me, you know what I mean? And so I don't have like this, this complicated thing where I was like, I was trying to become famous. And then I got famous and I realized being famous sucks. I always thought being famous kind of would suck a little bit. And so the idea that it is, you know, it's great in a lot of ways and it, and it does suck in, in some ways. But that's not honestly a thing that I have a very conflicted relationship with. I've also been pretty famous since I was like 23 years old and get like, like, it's been, you know, it's been a very long time since I got pretty famous.

• 1:18:21Speaker 00

  So I've had a lot of different relationships with it throughout that time, uh, you know, almost 20 years, I guess. And where I've been at for quite some time has been a pretty good place. And I have a lot of famous friends. I see them have much rockier roads dealing with it than I do, you know? Um, yeah. And as far as success goes, like, no, like, if anything, it's like, great. Like, we, I get to work with the best, you know, the filmmakers that inspired me to make movies in the first place. I get to, you know, make, you know, I, they, they bring us Ninja Turtles. I get to make a movie out of a thing I've loved since I was a kid.

• 1:19:02Speaker 00

  It'd be just sold a show to Apple that I'm writing and directing and starring in with, with my partner. So we can come up with original ideas and do whatever the fuck we want, you know? And so, uh,

• 1:19:13Steven Bartlett?

  What's the cost?

• 1:19:15Speaker 00

  There's no cost. I don't have kids.

• 1:19:19Speaker 00

  If I felt guilty that I was not being a good father, that would suck. I do not have that feeling at all.

• 1:19:27Steven Bartlett?

  We have a, we have a closing tradition on this podcast where the last guest leaves a question for the next guest.

• 1:19:32Speaker 00

  Okay, great.

• 1:19:33Steven Bartlett?

  Not knowing who they're leaving it for. We have a new tradition on this podcast, which I'll talk to you about.

• 1:19:36Speaker 00

  Great.

• 1:19:37Steven Bartlett?

  The question left for you.

• 1:19:38Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:19:39Steven Bartlett?

  Okay, the handwriting is not the best.

• 1:19:41Speaker 00

  Who left it?

• 1:19:42Steven Bartlett?

  I can't tell you. That's a secret. Looking back on your love life.

• 1:19:46Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 1:19:47Steven Bartlett?

  Can you see patterns in it, good or bad? And what was the greatest love of your life? What did it feel like? And how has it affected you up until this present moment? And I guess this is a good time to slide that to you.

• 1:20:00Speaker 00

  There you go, Lauren. Yeah, I mean, I, I made a whole movie about how I was not well liked in high school by women. And yeah, I was never, uh, no, Lauren, my wife was the first serious relationship I ever had. I fell deeply in love with her very fast. We essentially moved in together after like a week and almost have not spent any like significant time apart since then, you know? We've never broken up. We've never had any serious issue throughout the entire time we've been together, which has been like 17 years or something like that. And if anything, she is like really helped me do better work.

• 1:20:43Speaker 00

  She's been a real supporter and also she herself is a brilliant writer and director and filmmaker. And she's been, you know, a very at times kind of direct voice in improving our work. I think the most tangible thing is the movie Neighbors, which we've talked about in the past, which is our most successful movie we've made. And, and one of the things people really liked about it specifically was the relationship between me and Rose Byrne's character and how we are a couple, you know, traditionally in comedy for years and my entire childhood, pretty much, it's like. The comedic dynamic of a married couple was they hated each other. That was the joke. They fucking hated each other. They they got on each other's nerves.

• 1:21:27Speaker 00

  They didn't like spending time together. The woman was usually annoying. The guy was usually cool and laid back. That was it. That was the comedic dynamic that essentially was like frozen into movie. You know, forever and and Lauren was the one who was like, what if it's like us? And they fucking like each other and they both like to smoke weed and they both do stupid things. And they both go out and party and I'm not telling you ever to not do something fucking stupid. If anything, I'm doing stupid things too. And we put that in the movie and it completely changed the dynamic. And I honestly think it's like one of the reasons the movie became so like liked and and successful. And and so that's like a specific example and there's there's many like.

• 1:22:12Steven Bartlett?

  What's life like without her, though?

• 1:22:15Speaker 00

  Um, that that thank God, there's not a whole lot of life without her. We hang out a lot. Uh, and I I don't really leave LA to make movies anymore. Honestly, part of the reason is I just like spending time with her and and I don't like leaving Los Angeles as a result of it. I used to travel much more to make movies and shoot movies in other cities and it sucked. And I would go weeks, we'd go weeks without seeing each other. And and ultimately, you're just like, this isn't worth it. Like, this is my life. Like, this is like, like, I'm not like saving up to cash in on something later. Like, I'm I'm living my life, not being surrounded by the people I want to be surrounded by. So I can go make a movie and like that, that, that at times might be worth it.

• 1:22:59Speaker 00

  But I've done everything I can to not have that happen. And if you're willing to make a little less money, you can more often than not shoot a movie in Los Angeles.

• 1:23:11Steven Bartlett?

  It's funny, when I asked you what makes life great and what makes life more human, everything, every answer you gave came with the second part of the sentence, which was with friends, with the person I love, with, every, every answer was with people. And so it's, it's quite, I think, inspiring and important to hear that you're orientating your life now that you can, so that it's surrounded by people.

• 1:23:32Speaker 00

  Yeah, and I think it's always how I came up, thank God, and like, I, you know, my parents had a lot of friends, they always had people living with us in our house that were divorced or town, but like, it was, I was, was in like, I felt like I was in like a community. And then I moved to LA and I like fell in with the community. And I had my friend Evan and he moved in and we kind of made a little community. And like comedy especially, is like, is more of a team sport than other, I think, creative pursuits. And it's, it's funny, like, I remember years ago being at like that Vanity Fair Oscar party. And it's like, you know, big crazy party, everyone in Hollywood's there. And

• 1:24:14Speaker 00

  there's like one corner of the party where every comedian is. And they're like all together in one little lump. And like, and, and, and it was like, and it was so funny. And I was just like, no other genres like that. Like, they're not, it's like, all the serious actors are together. They're, they're all spread out, they're all talking to people. But if you were a comedian, you were in this one little, like, circle where you kind of felt safe, you kind of felt insulated, you kind of felt like you were with your people. And that, that community, as far as work goes, and I'm friends with like everyone I work with, which is like, great. Like, the guys I do Sauce Party with, I grew up with them. The guy, you know, like, the, the, the, it, it like goes on and on and on and on. Like,

• 1:24:55Speaker 00

  I, I, I tend to work with people that I've known a really long time. And so when I'm working, I'm getting to be with people that I, that I genuinely care about and am friends with.

• 1:25:05Steven Bartlett?

  What a privilege.

• 1:25:06Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:25:06Steven Bartlett?

  You're the first person to open this box.

• 1:25:08Speaker 00

  Great.

• 1:25:08Steven Bartlett?

  The first person to ever open this box. This is a new tradition we're starting from here on out.

• 1:25:12Speaker 00

  Exciting.

• 1:25:13Steven Bartlett?

  All the guests that have been on this podcast, all the questions they've written in this book.

• 1:25:17Speaker 00

  Oh, wow. They're, they're on cards now.

• 1:25:18Steven Bartlett?

  They're on cards now.

• 1:25:19Speaker 00

  Fantastic.

• 1:25:22Speaker 00

  You got swag.

• 1:25:25Steven Bartlett?

  Called the Diary of a CEO Conversation Cards. You're gonna be, you're gonna be, I've put 20 of them, there's 60 of them in total, 60 or 100 of them in total. I've put 20 of them in here. All I'm gonna ask you to do is to pick one at random.

• 1:25:35Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:25:35Steven Bartlett?

  And then answer the question.

• 1:25:37Speaker 00

  Okay, I'm gonna do it.

• 1:25:42Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 1:25:44Steven Bartlett?

  It's got a QR code.

• 1:25:49Steven Bartlett?

  Hey, it's got their handwriting.

• 1:25:52Speaker 00

  What is the greatest gift another human has given you?

• 1:25:57Steven Bartlett?

  Love.

• 1:26:02Speaker 00

  Also, I got paid a lot of money to make Green Hornet, so that was.

• 1:26:07Speaker 00

  No, it was love, though. It's for sure love.

• 1:26:11Steven Bartlett?

  Thank you, Seth. The hardback version of your, the paperback version of your book is now out.

• 1:26:15Speaker 00

  It's out.

• 1:26:16Steven Bartlett?

  And it's phenomenal.

• 1:26:17Speaker 00

  Thank you.

• 1:26:18Steven Bartlett?

  Hilarious, it's phenomenal.

• 1:26:19Speaker 00

  It was fun to write. I mostly didn't want to humiliate myself. That was my goal. I was talking to another friend of mine who's writing a book the other day. And I was just like, my whole goal was to, for the book to come out and there, and to, the general consensus to be that I'm not a fucking idiot.

• 1:26:36Speaker 00

  Which I did. I feel, I feel very secure with that.

• 1:26:38Steven Bartlett?

  Thank you, Seth.

• 1:26:38Speaker 00

  Thank you.