#108: Comedy's Dynamic Duo, Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg

This episode features a dynamic duo. Seth Rogen (@SethRogen https://twitter.com/Sethrogen) is an actor, writer, producer, and director. Evan Goldberg (@EvanDGoldberg https://twitter.com/evandgoldberg) is a Canadian director, screenwriter, and producer. Together, they get into a lot of mischief and create amazing comedy. They've collaborated on films such as Superbad http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0829482/(which they first conceived as teenagers), Knocked Up http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0478311/?ref_=nv_sr_1, Pineapple Express http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0910936/?ref_=nv_sr_1, The Green Hornet http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0990407/?ref_=nv_sr_1, and Funny People http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1201167/?ref_=nv_sr_1. They have also written for "Da Ali G Show http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0367274/?ref_=nv_sr_1" and "The Simpsons https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Simpsons." In 2013, Evan and Seth released their directorial debut, This Is the End http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1245492/. In 2014, Seth starred in and produced (alongside Evan) Neighbors http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2004420/?ref_=nv_sr_1, which was a worldwide comedy hit and has taken in more than $268 million worldwide. In December 2014, Rogen and Goldberg's film, The Interview http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2788710/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1, became the most-talked-about news story around the world. Under extremely difficult circumstances, the film persevered to become Sony Pictures' #1 digital title of all time. Neighbors 2 http://www.imdb.com/title/tt4438848/?ref_=nv_sr_1 is shooting now and will be released next May. Seth and Evan are also in production on Sausage Party http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1700841/?ref_=nv_sr_1, a raunchy animated movie for adults about one sausage's quest to discover the truth about his existence. Seth and Evan are producing the film with Megan Ellison and Conrad Vernon. In our conversation, we discuss all manner of tactics and silliness, including: Kyokushin karate Writer's block and related debates Writing process Who are the most underrated comedians and comedy writers? How Superbad got made... after they first drafted it around age 13 The odd book Judd Apatow recommended to them (also Woody Allen's favorite) How The Kids in the Hall influenced them The movie they both wish they'd written Common pot mistakes Recommended newb pot for working versus relaxing Will there be a McLovin https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y5_hW5cQaGY spinoff? And much more... Show notes and links for this episode can be found at www.fourhourworkweek.com/podcast http://www.fourhourworkweek.com/podcast. This podcast is brought to you by Vimeo Pro https://vimeo.com/business, which is the ideal video hosting platform for entrepreneurs. In fact, a bunch of my start-ups are already using Vimeo Pro https://vimeo.com/business. WealthFront https://www.wealthfront.com/ uses it to explain how WealthFront works. TaskRabbit https://www.taskrabbit.com/ uses it to tell the company's story. There are many other names who you would recognize among their customers (AirBnB, Etsy, etc.) Why do they use it? Vimeo Pro https://vimeo.com/business provides enterprise level video hosting for a fraction of the usual cost. Features include: Gorgeous high-quality playback with no ads Up to 20 GB of video storage every week Unlimited plays and views A fully customizable video player, which can include your company logo, custom outro, and more You get all this for just $199 per year (that's only $17 per/mo.) https://vimeo.com/business. There are no complicated bandwidth calculations or hidden fees. Try it risk-free for 30 days. Just go to Vimeo.com/business https://vimeo.com/business to check it out. If you like it, you can use the promo code "Tim" to get 25% off https://vimeo.com/business. This is a special discount just for you guys. This podcast is also brought to you by Athletic Greens https://www.athleticgreens.com/tim. I get asked all the time, "If you could only use one supplement, what would it be?" My answer is, inevitably, Athletic Greens https://www.athleticgreens.com/tim. It is my all-in-one nutritional insurance. I recommended it in The 4-Hour Body and did not get paid to do so. Get 50% off your order at Athletic Greens.com/Tim https://www.athleticgreens.com/tim Enjoy!

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

• 0:01Speaker 00

  At this altitude, I can run flat out for a half mile before my hands start to shake.

• 0:06Speaker 01

  Can I ask you a personal question?

• 0:08Tim Ferriss?

  Now would be an appropriate time.

• 0:12Speaker 01

  I'm a cybernetic organism, living tissue over metal endoskeleton.

• 0:22Tim Ferriss?

  This episode is brought to you by Vimeo Pro, which is the ideal video hosting platform for entrepreneurs. And in fact, a bunch of my startups already use Vimeo Pro, including Wealthfront, who uses it to explain how Wealthfront works. TaskRabbit uses it to tell their company's story. And there are many other names you would recognize among their customers: Airbnb, Etsy, etc. Why do they use it? Well, Vimeo Pro provides enterprise-level video hosting for a fraction of the usual cost. Features include gorgeous, high-quality playback with no ads, up to 20 gigabytes of video storage every week, unlimited plays and views, and a fully customizable video player, which can include your logo, custom outro, etc. You also get VIP support. And you get all of this for just $1.99 per year. That's $17 a month,

• 1:06Tim Ferriss?

  with no complicated bandwidth calculations or hidden fees. And you can try it risk-free for 30 days. So check it out. Vimeo.com/business. That's V-I-M-E-O dot com forward slash business. And use promo code TIM to get 25% off. That's a special discount just for you guys. So check it out. Vimeo.com/business, promo code TIM.

• 1:30Tim Ferriss?

  This episode is brought to you by Athletic Greens. I get asked all the time, if you could only use one supplement, what would it be? And my answer is inevitably Athletic Greens. It is your all-in-one nutritional insurance. I recommended it in The Four Hour Body, did not get paid for that. And I travel with it to avoid getting sick. I take it in the mornings to ensure optimal performance. It just covers all my bases. If I can't get what I need through whole-food meals throughout the rest of the day. And you can get 50... oh my gosh, 50% off, yes. 50% off if you go to athleticgreens.com/tim. That's athleticgreens.com/tim. Check it out. It's tasty, but more important, it will help you not screw up when you're doing your nutritional planning.

• 2:14Tim Ferriss?

  So for me, it just covers the bases, takes a load off my mind, puts a lot in my body. And check it out. Athleticgreens.com/tim.

• 2:26Tim Ferriss?

  Hello ladies and germs, this is Tim Ferriss and welcome to another episode of The Tim Ferriss Show where each episode it is my job to deconstruct world-class performers, to tease out the habits, routines, morning rituals, favorite books, etc. that have made them spectacularly good at what they do. And there are patterns that you notice across disciplines. That is why I interview people from a very broad spectrum of areas like the military, entertainment, chess, sports, comedy, etc. So it ranges from Arnold Schwarzenegger to General Stanley McChrystal. And now, in this episode, we have a dynamic duo. We have Seth Rogen, @SethRogen, who is an actor, writer, producer, and director, and his partner

• 3:09Tim Ferriss?

  in crime, Evan Goldberg, @EvanDGoldberg on the Twitters, who is a Canadian director, screenwriter, and producer. Together, they get into a whole lot of mischief and create some amazing comedy. I had a chance to spend some time with both of these great gents, as well as their team, which is spectacular. And I won't mention the location in case they're keeping that quiet, but here's some background. They've collaborated on films such as Superbad, which they actually first conceived of as teenagers, Knocked Up, Pineapple Express, The Green Hornet, and Funny People. They've also written for The Ali G Show and The Simpsons. In 2013, Evan and Seth released their directorial debut, This Is The End, which was actually a combination of two different ideas, and we get into that in the conversation.

• 3:54Tim Ferriss?

  In 2014, Seth starred in and produced alongside Evan Neighbors, which was a worldwide comedy hit and has taken in more than 268 million worldwide. And then, appearing in the news yet again, in December 2014, Rogen and Goldberg's film, The Interview, became easily the most talked-about news story around the world. And that was not just in the entertainment mags, but in every different publication, because of many reasons. So, under extremely difficult circumstances, the film persevered to become Sony Pictures' number-one digital title of all time. Neighbors 2 is shooting right now and will be released next May. Seth and Evan are also in production on Sausage Party, which I saw a clip of, a prelim clip,

• 4:37Tim Ferriss?

  which is a raunchy animated movie for adults about one sausage's quest to discover the truth about his existence. And I really hope to God that some of the raunchier scenes make it in, because they will make your head explode. Seth and Evan are producing that film with Megan Ellison and Conrad Vernon. In our conversation, the one you're about to listen to, we discuss all manner of tactics and silliness, including Kyokushin Karate, Karate, empty hand, and how they participated in that, writer's block and related debates, does it exist, does it not exist, how do you contend with it, if it does, writing process. I ask questions like, who are the most underrated comedians and comedy writers? What is the odd book that Judd Apatow recommended

• 5:21Tim Ferriss?

  to them, which happens to also be Woody Allen's favorite? How Superbad got made after they first drafted around age 13? How Kids in the Hall influenced them? The movie they both wished they'd written? Common pot mistakes. So if you're just listening to this for a marijuana playbook, well, there might be something in here for you as well. So recommended noob pot for working versus relaxing, and much, much more. So I really hope you enjoy this. As always, if you're not getting my five bullet Friday newsletter, check it out. It is very, very popular. It's just a short email with a lot of tactical stuff. Gets sent out every Friday. You can check that out, fourhourworkweek.com/friday. That's

• 6:02Tim Ferriss?

  all spelled out, fourhourworkweek.com/friday. Or just go to fourhourworkweek.com and enter your email there. And for all the show notes, for this episode, all the links, etc., just go to fourhourworkweek.com and click on podcast. So, without further ado, please enjoy my conversation with Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg.

• 6:23Tim Ferriss?

  Evan, Seth, welcome to the show.

• 6:25Speaker 01

  Thank you.

• 6:26Speaker 00

  Thanks for having us.

• 6:26Tim Ferriss?

  I appreciate you guys taking the time, especially in this very busy, busy month that you gents have. And I thought we could start with a story that we discussed a little bit, Evan, in the car, which was Kyokushin. So tell me about your karate.

• 6:40Speaker 01

  Karate?

• 6:40Speaker 00

  He knows Kyokushin, guy.

• 6:42Speaker 01

  Really?

• 6:43Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. We were talking about when we were kids, how we behaved and how I was a softie, and so I did rugby and karate to try and toughen myself up. And I joined at the Jewish Community Center, which is one of the places we became really good friends.

• 6:55Tim Ferriss?

  Yes, true.

• 6:55Speaker 00

  Seth had been doing it a few years before me.

• 6:57Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 6:58Speaker 00

  We'd already met in bar mitzvah class. And our parents were like, ah, Jewish Community Center, that can't be much, you know? The simple karate and they let us beat the living shit out of each other.

• 7:08Speaker 01

  It was pretty, uh, I realized like we were the bad guys from Karate Kid.

• 7:12Speaker 00

  You're the Cobra Kai.

• 7:13Speaker 01

  We were Cobra Kai, yeah, like.

• 7:15Speaker 00

  We were banned from tournaments.

• 7:16Speaker 01

  Banned from tournaments and then we finally went to a tournament and I realized that like the way they taught us to fight like was not conducive to tournament fighting. And I punched a guy in the throat and got disqualified from the tournament, basically. And I didn't know that that wasn't like what you were supposed to do. Like I was just like, oh, we're supposed to beat the shit out of this person.

• 7:35Speaker 00

  You're conditioned to respond.

• 7:37Speaker 01

  Yeah, like, like I, I have a memory of one time where they made me fight that like thirty five year old woman when I was fourteen. And she like choked me out on the ground until I passed out.

• 7:46Speaker 00

  This was in class?

• 7:47Speaker 01

  Yeah, I remember fighting, uh, like full grown men too. I remember hitting that guy Rod so hard.

• 7:54Speaker 00

  Guy Rod was like a two hundred and eighty pound, six foot three guy and he was like fourteen.

• 7:58Speaker 01

  Fourteen and I hit him so hard in the face with like a spinning backhand that he, it like knocked him, it like almost knocked him out. It like dazed him completely. And then they let me, then they like, they let him fight me again and he like punched me in the mouth so hard. I like couldn't. Uh, I couldn't like, I think my mouth started bleeding and then I heard and then, but, uh, yeah, man, there's so many stories that are flooding. I haven't thought about it for so long.

• 8:23Speaker 00

  There's the day that ended it all where I got kicked in the hip by a forty year old black belt who fractured my hip.

• 8:28Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 8:29Speaker 00

  And then he backed up into a pillar and got a piece of wood lodged in his foot and thus ended our Q because she was my career.

• 8:35Speaker 01

  But I remember fighting the teacher on the ground one time, like the teacher Sean would like, I remember like grappling on the ground with him. And like to the point where he would just like do anything you can. And I was like trying to bite him. I was like spitting on him. And like, that was like what you were supposed to do in the class.

• 8:54Speaker 00

  One time when I was doing that.

• 8:55Speaker 01

  You didn't, you would get in trouble and he'd be like, you could do more like.

• 9:00Speaker 00

  Yeah, one time I spat in his face and then he took the spit and rubbed it in my face.

• 9:04Speaker 01

  Exact same thing to me.

• 9:05Speaker 00

  And then just started slapping me with my spit all over my face.

• 9:07Speaker 01

  Literally the exact same thing to me.

• 9:08Speaker 00

  And we thought it was like, this is what.

• 9:10Speaker 01

  I thought that was what Jewish community center karate is.

• 9:14Tim Ferriss?

  So you mentioned Kyokushin, you're like, I don't think, you know, people get the wrong image when I tell them karate and I, from having lived in Japan for a year as an exchange student is first time I got exposed to Kyokushin and those were like the bad boys of the karate world. It was very well known. Like you don't want to get, the leg kicks are very famous.

• 9:30Speaker 01

  Yeah. Oh, dude. One time I got, there was this guy, the dentist. There was like, we're probably grown men.

• 9:37Speaker 00

  This was child abuse.

• 9:39Speaker 01

  Oh, it really was. And like this guy had the longest legs in the entire world.

• 9:44Speaker 00

  Little brown slippers on.

• 9:45Speaker 01

  Yeah. And I, uh, and he just like kept kicking my legs out from under me relentlessly. And there was nothing I could do to stop it.

• 9:53Speaker 00

  All of us, they made all of us watch as he did it to him for like 10 minutes.

• 9:57Speaker 01

  And just like, I just like would get up and then like try to fight again. And he would just like smack my legs out from under me. And just like, I remember just like hitting the ground like a ton of bricks.

• 10:06Speaker 00

  There was this one guy, the guy who ended up fracturing my hip, which ruined my rugby and karate.

• 10:10Tim Ferriss?

  Fracturing your hip is not a small.

• 10:12Speaker 00

  Hairline fracture. It wasn't terrible, but it's enough that I couldn't run and stuff like that. Uh, Malcolm, and he would do this thing. To this day, I can't comprehend how he did it. In a movie, you wouldn't believe it. He literally like casually put both hands behind his back in a small room. It was like, try and hit me.

• 10:26Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 10:27Speaker 00

  And I couldn't, and I'm like 15, 16, real fit. I've been doing karate for like five years and I couldn't even touch him.

• 10:33Speaker 01

  Yeah. I remember Malcolm kicked me in the eye once so hard that my parents had to call their family friends who were eye doctors and take me to their house after the karate class. Cause I like couldn't see out of one of my eyes for like three hours. But I regret nothing. I regret nothing either. It's weird. It's weird now because I'm so, and I was always like not a violent person and I'm not competitive and I don't like care about any of that stuff that much.

• 10:58Tim Ferriss?

  So did it, did it turn you guys off of that type of thing? Sort of indefinitely past that point or was it?

• 11:05Speaker 00

  Certainly as somebody who has like TMJ and like has had some joint issues, I can identify that that is too brutal. Like their knuckles were all puffed up and because they, we would break boards and if you didn't break the board, you had to try again. Like I split a knuckle in two.

• 11:20Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah. Sounds like a liability nightmare.

• 11:22Speaker 01

  Really? It's weird because it was happening. At the Jewish Community Center. That's what's so strange about it. And it like, and I don't think any of our parents, my parents would come and watch sometime, but they thought, I get, I don't think anyone had a frame of reference, maybe. So they just thought like, oh, that's what karate class is.

• 11:37Speaker 00

  Cause. No, my parents would just pick me up and like not comment that I was bleeding from somewhere.

• 11:42Speaker 01

  No, my parents would come sometimes because I started when I was younger. So they like knew, uh, I did it for like over, I think I did it for 10 years or something like.

• 11:50Speaker 00

  Cause I did it for seven and you did it three more.

• 11:51Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think I started, yeah, I did.

• 11:53Speaker 00

  And we did it with our buddy, uh, Fogel and our buddy Corbin, our buddy Glansberg, and they would just make us as friends, beat the shit out of each other.

• 12:00Speaker 01

  Yeah, it was pretty, Glansberg was soft. He was never.

• 12:04Speaker 00

  He got to fight the younger guys, which made him probably feel pretty good.

• 12:07Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 12:08Tim Ferriss?

  And when did you guys first meet? I mean, first encounter each other?

• 12:13Speaker 00

  Uh, it was, I was going to, I went to like two hours of after school, Hebrew school, Tuesday, Thursday, and he went to like a half Hebrew school, half normal school.

• 12:22Speaker 01

  It was pretty much like, it was like a Hebrew school. No, it was like, they did half and half studies, but it was like a full on like Jewish elementary.

• 12:28Speaker 00

  And he would get out when I would go in and I would, I took the class at the synagogue, which was beside his school. So we would see each other for years. We didn't really know each other.

• 12:37Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 12:37Speaker 00

  But we would see each other and I was kind of like the loudest person from this side and he was.

• 12:41Speaker 01

  But you were friends with Fogel.

• 12:43Speaker 00

  I became, well, yeah, this guy Sammy Fogel, who's the McLovin of Superbad. He's not really that big a loser. We just messed with him. He and I became good friends and Seth's mother and his mother were good friends. And then it all kind of culminated to bar mitzvah class.

• 12:56Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 12:56Speaker 00

  We all took Sunday morning, uh, what was it called?

• 12:59Speaker 01

  Tullis and Tefillin.

• 13:00Speaker 00

  Tullis and Tefillin class, where they would give us chocolate milk and bagels to lure us in to, to learn how to do our bar mitzvah portion.

• 13:05Tim Ferriss?

  I'd go to bar mitzvah class if you give him.

• 13:07Speaker 01

  Yeah, I know. It's a weird mix, but it's delicious.

• 13:10Speaker 00

  Yeah. And, uh, and we just kind of met there and because of Fogel, we became friends.

• 13:14Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 13:14Tim Ferriss?

  And when did you guys start collaborating creatively?

• 13:19Speaker 00

  In hindsight, like eight months later.

• 13:20Speaker 01

  Yeah, pretty early.

• 13:22Tim Ferriss?

  How old were you guys?

• 13:23Speaker 01

  Around thirteen.

• 13:23Tim Ferriss?

  Twelve, thirteen?

• 13:24Speaker 00

  It was literally, and it's not like we pretend we don't remember, we don't remember, but we were watching some crappy movie. And we just looked at each other and we're like, we could write a better movie. And there's like a pause and it's like, we should write a better movie.

• 13:33Speaker 01

  And I think I was doing stand up already at that point. And so like, there was some context for like, we can write things and they'll become things. Like I was already like writing things and then performing them. So, um, it wasn't, it wasn't just like to, like, we actually like wanted to make a movie. Like it wasn't, and, and then I'd already seen like, oh, you can tangibly like do something.

• 13:55Speaker 00

  And a lot of people, uh, you know, like, oh, you came all the way from Canada and, and it's not like, like Vancouver's a movie town.

• 14:02Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 14:03Speaker 00

  They've filmed the movies at our high school, like.

• 14:05Speaker 01

  We're from a bigger city than almost anyone that we know in America is from.

• 14:09Speaker 00

  And they all think we're like bumpkins.

• 14:10Speaker 01

  Exactly. Like we're from a real city and where they made tons of movies. And so you would see movies that's everywhere growing up. At our high school, they shot a lot of movies.

• 14:19Speaker 00

  That Lou Diamond Phillips movie? Mastermind starring Patrick Stewart?

• 14:22Speaker 01

  Patrick Stewart and Vincent Carthizer. Uh, it's not a fantastic movie, but it was shot at our high school. And, um, and so you would see it around. And so it was like, it was kinda, no, we didn't know anyone in the business or anything like that. Or who was involved in movies, but, um, it was just like around. And so you kind of like.

• 14:42Speaker 00

  My first interaction was our friend Amelia Wasserman's mother, uh, produced like kid shows. And she like, let me try to write some kids episodes and gave me some pointers.

• 14:50Speaker 01

  And I think Julia Maria's dad like produced TV shows or something like that. I can't remember. Like we knew people whose parents like had like, kinda like, you know, uh, jobs and like, it was around. It was just kind of around.

• 15:02Speaker 00

  Yeah. And then, uh, uh, this girl I dated, Abby Salzberg, her mother was a writer for the newspaper and she kinda gave me some pointers and helped me out. So we had like some help, but we didn't really have a hard in.

• 15:12Speaker 01

  I think one of my distant, distant cousins was a producer on Passenger 57, the Wesley Snipes movie.

• 15:19Speaker 00

  Yeah, I remember that.

• 15:20Speaker 01

  And that I remember hearing as a child.

• 15:22Tim Ferriss?

  It's really fascinating that you're given the opportunity to kind of tinker in the writing perspective with these episodes. When I grew up next to the gent who created the Choose Your Own Adventure book series.

• 15:34Speaker 01

  What?

• 15:34Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 15:35Speaker 01

  That's awesome.

• 15:35Tim Ferriss?

  And so we had, my brother and I, chances to test drive his books.

• 15:39Speaker 01

  Oh, that's awesome.

• 15:40Tim Ferriss?

  And provide feedback.

• 15:41Speaker 01

  And you're just like, this is a bad choice.

• 15:42Tim Ferriss?

  Well, if we gave him feedback, he ended up using, he would put our names into the books.

• 15:46Speaker 01

  Whoa.

• 15:47Tim Ferriss?

  So if you go back, there are a handful of books.

• 15:49Speaker 01

  There's Tim's in the books.

• 15:50Tim Ferriss?

  Tim Ferriss is nonetheless.

• 15:52Speaker 01

  Tim Ferriss is in the book.

• 15:53Tim Ferriss?

  And yeah, they were a power couple.

• 15:54Speaker 01

  Tim Ferriss was walking through the woods one day.

• 15:56Tim Ferriss?

  That was happening.

• 15:57Speaker 01

  Didn't all it. Did he go left towards the dark path? Yeah. He was warned, the mountains are dangerous.

• 16:04Tim Ferriss?

  And you guys, is it true that you started working on Superbad around that time?

• 16:10Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's when we started writing.

• 16:12Speaker 00

  We sat down and started that. That was the first thing we ever tried to do.

• 16:16Speaker 01

  Was writing Superbad.

• 16:17Speaker 00

  And it was.

• 16:18Speaker 01

  It was terrible at first, but it was really bad at first, but that being said, we liked movies so much and we're so into movies that like, looking back, we kind of instinctually like understood the vague structure of movies in like a pretty instinctual way.

• 16:35Speaker 00

  And we loved bad movies, which I think actually was extremely beneficial because it showed us what not to do.

• 16:42Speaker 01

  We watched tons of B-movies.

• 16:43Speaker 00

  There was this place called Videomatica, was that what it was called? There were seven movies for $7 for seven days.

• 16:48Speaker 01

  Yeah, it was great.

• 16:49Speaker 00

  And we would go and do that and watch them all.

• 16:51Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 16:52Speaker 00

  And it was, you know, get like two good movies and five crappy movies.

• 16:54Speaker 01

  But then around this time was when movies like Pulp Fiction and Clerks and like that, like Rushmore and Bottle Rocket, like it was kind of like the dawn of like 90s independent cinema. And we were really, really into those movies too. And again, a lot of those movies, you know, at least in theory had, and in myth, had kind of like a do it yourself feel where like Kevin Smith just made Clerks.

• 17:21Speaker 00

  Clerks especially.

• 17:22Speaker 01

  Clerks.

• 17:22Speaker 00

  It's clearly like they just got a camera.

• 17:23Speaker 01

  They just made it.

• 17:24Speaker 00

  A bunch of friends were like, let's fucking do this.

• 17:26Speaker 01

  Yeah. And that was very like inspirational to us because it just seemed very achievable. You know, um, and so I think that's one of the reasons we again started doing it. It was just like we're like, it was about high school kids. We knew high school kids. I wanted to be an actor. We knew there was other kids in our school who were trying to be actors and stuff like that. And so it just kind of seemed like we like, if we write a high school movie, we could make a high school movie. Basically.

• 17:51Speaker 00

  Yeah, and he, he had his stand up start. And, uh, for me, it was like, when I was like five years old, if you asked me what I wanted to do was be a writer. I always wanted to be a writer. They actually tried to send me to a psychiatrist in elementary school because I would write like dark stuff. Cause my, at Hebrew school, I learnt about the Holocaust and I kept writing about the Holocaust and they thought there was something wrong with me.

• 18:09Speaker 01

  But I remember Evan, when I, when we met, he was like the first person I ever met who like wrote recreationally other than me. Like I wrote stand up and he wrote like stories and stuff like that. And I remember like, when you're like a 13 year old kid, it's like, you know, meet a lot of other 13 year old kids. Who's like, one of their hobbies is writing recreationally. It's not that common and so.

• 18:30Speaker 00

  And he kind of made me realize with the stand up, he was like, he just did it. And so we both were like, what if we just did this? Uh, no one at this age is trying to do it. So if we get a jump on it, maybe we'll do okay. And also it seemed like the easiest path to becoming a writer. Like I've tried to write a novel once and I failed. It is really hard.

• 18:49Tim Ferriss?

  Novels are hard.

• 18:50Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 18:50Tim Ferriss?

  And you just funny, you mentioned the, the school psychologist. So I was sent to the school psychologist also.

• 18:54Speaker 00

  Everyone in this room.

• 18:55Speaker 01

  I was for sure. There's several.

• 18:58Tim Ferriss?

  I was forced to do writing assignments I didn't want to do. And so thematically I would turn them into stories about serial killers and different types of murders.

• 19:04Speaker 01

  Kind of what I did. I think it's a common reaction.

• 19:07Speaker 00

  I wrote, I wrote a dystopian future story about a bunch of kids trying to get out of a Nazi controlled future. And it ended with all of them dying.

• 19:15Speaker 01

  You invented the young adult novel. Yeah. You invented divergent and, uh,

• 19:22Speaker 01

  and the hunger games.

• 19:23Speaker 00

  And I remember the reason they tried to send me to shrink is because I drew the picture of all their corpses.

• 19:28Tim Ferriss?

  Oh, nice. That's a, that's a nice touch. Yeah, for those people who wouldn't take the time to read it.

• 19:33Speaker 01

  You've got to really spell it out.

• 19:34Tim Ferriss?

  What is, what was the difference for you Seth then in the early days, uh, between, what were the biggest differences between writing for stand up? And this could be contemporary, like in general and writing for film, for instance.

• 19:46Speaker 01

  Um, it, I've thought about it a lot. And when we started writing movies, I honestly like, and when we started doing it more, I kind of became less interested in writing stand up in some ways. Because like.

• 20:00Speaker 01

  And I honestly think that good stand up, I, I wasn't the best stand up comedian is one thing. Like I would, I was pretty good. I was like a B plus stand up comedian, A minus. I wasn't like an A plus stand up comedian. And I'm not saying that we're like the best script writers in the world, but we've achieved A plus moments, I think here and there. And so that, that was one of the things I was just like aware of. I would just like watch other people do it and be like, wow, this guy's like doing something like that I, like he's, they're just better at it than I am, you know? And when we started writing movies, I started to feel like, oh, like we act like this, I feel like we could maybe, again, like really carve out our own niche doing, which I didn't feel like I was particularly

• 20:42Speaker 01

  doing, doing stand up. I was young and that was at first a niche is like, I would write about my young person's experience. But then as I got older, I found like, I don't know, as a stand up, I was struggling a little bit to find a unique perspective.

• 20:56Speaker 00

  I have, I have a theory. You ceased to be tortured.

• 20:59Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly. That was part of it. I was like really tortured when I was, I mean, I, I mean, I wasn't that.

• 21:03Speaker 00

  Not really tortured, but like, like, like, you know, young neuroses and anxiety. Stand up comics function largely, not all of them, but a lot of them on anxiety and like self obsession.

• 21:14Speaker 01

  I don't have that much. Yeah. I don't find myself that interesting. Honestly, one of the other things is like, I, and I think writing, and that's one of the reasons I think writing movies was, was better is because I was writing other people. And I also struggled with stand up is that you can only really, and again, good stand ups do this, but I couldn't find a way to do it is like, I can only talk from one perspective in stand up. But in a movie, you can write two or three or four or five or six perspectives, all in one scene. You could have five guys arguing or about how to, you know, turn, you know, how to do anything. What's the best way to get out of this room? You know, and to, and, and as we started writing, like, you know, some of the best scenes that we've ever achieved

• 21:58Speaker 01

  are literally just people screaming at each other. And so like, I think that was something that I thought was very funny that we were good at was like conflict. And it's hard to have like conflict. In stand up comedy, for for me, I couldn't find a way to do it. Other people do it and they tell stories that involve conflict and the whole thing is about, you know, the struggle and I look at it now and sometimes I think like, man, if I kept doing it, I maybe would have broken through a wall, but um, I just, I don't know. And and I loved movies. That was the other thing is just like.

• 22:31Speaker 00

  And I I I loved movies also, but I was a bit more of a comic nerd. He was a comic nerd too, but I was like extreme.

• 22:36Tim Ferriss?

  Comic meaning comic book.

• 22:37Speaker 00

  Yeah, my brother is a like natural speed reader. He reads at a remarkable pace. He can read a book in a day, like a four hundred page book, just burn through it. So he would read comics and mountains of them would form and then he would draw them. So I would mimic him because he was two years older and I would read all the comics he read and then try to draw like him. He's actually an expert. Uh, he's a very good artist. He drew all the penises for Superbad.

• 22:59Speaker 01

  Which were good.

• 23:01Tim Ferriss?

  Did he make a cameo in The Big Lebowski on the note?

• 23:06Speaker 00

  He's a lawyer now, but I tried to like mimic him with that stuff and and comics are just movie storyboards, really.

• 23:12Speaker 01

  They're very cinematic. Yeah, and I read all comic books too. I think that's it. I mean, it's like.

• 23:16Speaker 00

  We connected heavily over Calvin and Hobbes.

• 23:18Speaker 01

  Yeah, we love that.

• 23:19Tim Ferriss?

  One of the best of all time.

• 23:20Speaker 00

  Yeah, the sarcasm of it like forged our.

• 23:23Tim Ferriss?

  Genius.

• 23:24Speaker 01

  But I think we just liked like the cinematic, like again, comics and like it just seemed appealing. Um, and again, and I think, yeah.

• 23:32Speaker 00

  And it's funny that at the time, like, like, if you look at what we've done recently, like, we like grandiose things. We like big things to happen, end of the world scenarios and all that. But at the time, all we knew was that we really wanted to get laid. We weren't getting laid.

• 23:46Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 23:46Speaker 00

  And we weren't super cool.

• 23:47Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 23:48Speaker 00

  And I think the reason Superbad worked out is it's rare that you are the thing you're writing on at the moment you're doing it.

• 23:54Tim Ferriss?

  Right.

• 23:54Speaker 00

  And you're self aware of it.

• 23:55Speaker 01

  Yeah. And we're still, I mean, and we, that's something that we've continued to try to do, honestly. I mean, Neighbors, you know, is a very good example.

• 24:03Speaker 00

  All our friends are having kids.

• 24:04Speaker 01

  Our friends are having kids or trying to have kids and are married and are getting older and are moving into different places.

• 24:09Speaker 00

  Yeah, like I don't have a kid and I I want to go out and I call all my friends and none of them can come.

• 24:13Speaker 01

  Exactly. And so the I think from the get go, um, and that's something that came from. Stand up comedy, like there's a comic named Darryl Lennox who still performs, um, who is great. And he, the comics were very nice to me, which is in retrospect insane. Cause I would not be nice to like a 13 year old kid who was doing stand up comedy. I don't think, maybe I would, but I don't assume I would. But I remember he saw me perform and I used to have like jokes. I would try to like mimic other comedians like Steven Wright or Seinfeld. Like what's the deal with crazy glue? And he was like, he was like, dude, you're like the only 14 year old. He's like, you're the only person here who could like talk about, try to get like a handjob for the first time. Like, talk about that.

• 24:56Speaker 01

  Like that is like so much more interesting than anything you're talking about. Like, why aren't you just talking about that? And I was like, oh, you're right. That's actually a very good way of doing it. And then that kind of carried through everything.

• 25:08Tim Ferriss?

  Writing what you know.

• 25:09Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 25:10Tim Ferriss?

  And it's, it's, um, I've been really fascinated just sort of observing you guys work. And, uh, you know, realizing at least for me, when you get started super bad at a time when those, uh, all of those feelings were, were very kind of ever present in your lives. And when I look back and say past books, people have asked me like, what would you edit? What would you change? And I don't want to touch it because I feel like it was written at a very precise point in time related to very specific pains.

• 25:35Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 25:35Tim Ferriss?

  That I might not be experiencing now because it's, uh, you know, that chapter is passed on. What, uh, what does your writing process look like now? A lot of people have asked me to ask you both this, uh, but what is just from the, the very first sort of concept stages?

• 25:49Speaker 00

  Well, uh, as I was telling you earlier, it's changed a little. Uh, we just did this project preacher with a guy named Sam Catlin.

• 25:56Tim Ferriss?

  Right.

• 25:56Speaker 00

  On Breaking Bad.

• 25:57Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 25:57Speaker 00

  And, and we used to immediately start like, kind of, we, we would always write down ideas. And he taught us this new trick of not writing down ideas for a good month and just

• 26:07Speaker 01

  Talking.

• 26:08Speaker 00

  Shooting it around and talking and talking and talking. And I, I kept saying like, now we're going to write, right? And he was like, no, no, no, we just keep talking. And that's a new trick that I think was great. Just spend way more time talking about it.

• 26:19Speaker 01

  That's what he said in Breaking Bad, they would do is just like before they did anything, they would just talk and talk and talk. And it's something actually like we did in Undeclared when I look back at it. It's like, we're just anxious to get going, I think. Sometimes, but but I feel like now, I mean, and it's kind of always been this way in that like, we'll come up with ideas and it's like sometimes it it's like it's there's almost like a Darwinistic process where it's like if they're around a year later or so, like if it's something we're still talking about, sometimes years later, there's some, I mean, like, there's this movie that we're talking about writing, I was going through old files, like the first one's from like 2011 or something like that.

• 26:56Speaker 00

  I mean, I mean, a tangible example is this is the end. We had two separate ideas. One was a movie about the apocalypse and another one was celebrities playing themselves in a disaster type scenario. Both of those ideas survived for four, five years and they slowly, we realized if we merge these things, it's going to be a good synthesis. And and that was, that's the perfect example. Like we, I bet we, you know, we'd just be sitting around working on whatever and then be like, what about that apocalypse?

• 27:23Speaker 01

  Yeah, or it's just what we talk about. Like, I mean, it's, it's like, you know, we like what we do and it's fun for us to think about it so organically, we'd just be sitting there doing something else. And that's the thing we would just start joking around about, you know, and then if it sticks around, then it at least means that we like it.

• 27:43Speaker 00

  Like lately, I've been obsessed with artificial intelligence and we're not writing anything about that. But in a year from now, if I'm still talking about it, maybe that'll happen.

• 27:52Tim Ferriss?

  So when you have something that's really persistent like that, and you have, say, the celebrities playing, playing themselves in the end of the world, and you're like, you know, this could be really interesting if we combine these two things at the time, not necessarily now that you have the input from the Breaking Bad writer on that approach. But what were the next steps that you guys took? Once you were like, you know what, let's, let's try to pull the trigger on this?

• 28:12Speaker 01

  Well, we, it took us a really long time to figure out how to do it, honestly. Like, that was one of those movies where bizarrely, it just took us, like, we could think of the first three, two acts of the movie, and then we couldn't figure out how to end the movie. And it literally took us like a year and a half, I think, until we thought of the idea that they realized they can still redeem themselves, basically, which is what allows the third act to happen, which is their Start trying to redeem themselves and and we just didn't think of that and it was literally just like we couldn't do it. Meanwhile, we're working on other stuff and doing it's not like we're just sitting in a room for a year and a half like banging our heads against the walls like we're still doing things.

• 28:51Speaker 01

  But that if like, I mean, in that example, it literally just took us a really long time to come up with the idea that allowed the movie to to function. And then, once we thought of that idea, I remember we wrote the first draft of this at the end in like nine days or something like that.

• 29:06Tim Ferriss?

  Now, was that that was all three acts or just?

• 29:09Speaker 01

  Yeah, the whole, we wrote the whole movie, like the whole first, the hundred and twenty pages, we wrote the whole script, we sat.

• 29:15Speaker 00

  But it should be said, we had an extensive outline.

• 29:17Speaker 01

  Yeah, because we've been kicking it around for years and like one thing we do, a lot of our movies are kind of genre based, especially lately. You know, Pineapple Express and This is the End and The Interview to some degree. And so something we do is just watch tons of movies in that genre. And so like with this, the end, we just watched tons of these like horror movies and apocalypse movies and movies about isolation and kind of little groups of people that are stuck together. And as we do that, we just start joking around and coming up with ideas, oh, it would be funny if we if we send a guy out on a rope. It's like, oh, they need water and you just kind of pick up these themes in the movies.

• 29:54Speaker 00

  Yeah, like like when Craig Robinson went out of the house with a rope, that was based off of the mist.

• 29:58Speaker 01

  Exactly, right. And part of it, I mean, and and we talk a lot about of it is like really trying to like have our cake and eat it too in these movies like it it's like we we are kind of like mocking the genres as we're trying to participate in them full heart fully, you know? And in doing that, we like to, it's almost like the characters in the movie are aware of the same cultural references that we are. And so it would stand to believe that all that stuff would be on the table, basically. And so so that's a big part of the process is just lists of ideas, tons of ideas. Jonah gets possessed, someone gets puked on, they need water, someone steals the water, someone doesn't like the rules, they try to make rules, how do they split up the food?

• 30:38Tim Ferriss?

  And some of these, do you just put this into like a notebook or do you put it into a Word?

• 30:42Speaker 00

  Word document and we'll we'll sometimes.

• 30:44Tim Ferriss?

  And it's just a, it's just a running list.

• 30:45Speaker 01

  Yelling list.

• 30:46Speaker 00

  I think right now with the latest idea we're messing about with. We have like a ten page list and I think there's another ten page list we don't even remember.

• 30:53Speaker 01

  And it's like, it's like a relationship type movie. So there's like, it's just like, things happen to us and it's just like, oh, a fight about this.

• 31:00Speaker 00

  Yeah, it's a symbol, it's a symbol as like husband who holds back wife, uh, wife who enhances husbands positive qualities.

• 31:07Speaker 01

  And then it's just like, it's also just like housewarming party. Like it's things like that and like, or we'll go to a party and something funny will happen and you put that in the document.

• 31:14Speaker 00

  So it's just a stream of consciousness collection of these ideas.

• 31:17Speaker 01

  And, and again, and like, and like the ideas themselves, as you go through these lists over and over throughout the years, some ideas you kind of stick in your head and you remember and some start to seem stupid. And you start to create characters kind of based on the ideas, or sometimes you come up with the characters first and sometimes you'll just meet someone, you'll be like, someone like that. Like someone who is going through this in life, or you know what I mean? Um, and it can come from anywhere. And then for a while we got really, uh, uh, and then process wise, I think we kind of strayed a little bit in that we got so busy. We started kind of like farming it out a little bit to other people, which is something that we're kind of trying to not do as much anymore.

• 32:00Speaker 00

  We wanted to do a lot of stuff and so we had other people writing stuff for us and it all worked out very well, but we got a hankering to just sit down with two of us.

• 32:08Speaker 01

  I think I've literally at the end of the day, if like the thing we are best at is actually writing. And, and I think we kind of stopped doing that honestly for a while in lieu of.

• 32:21Speaker 00

  I mean, we, we got to, we got the opportunity to become directors and that was so exciting that we just wanted to direct another one.

• 32:26Speaker 01

  And then we became, and we were becoming producers as well, which, and like, I mean, and it was all kind of, it wasn't like a plan. It was a very organic thing that was happening as our careers were building and expanding in a different directions. But as that was happening, looking back, uh, our writing, which is probably the thing we're best at, got kind of pushed to the side a little bit. But now that we've done, I think, a, a, a pretty okay job setting up these other things, our producing is going very well, our directing, you know, is established. And so I think we can. Refocus on writing things and kind of settle back into what we were doing.

• 33:04Speaker 00

  And it's really exciting too, because the producing and the directing caused this cycle where it was like, we gotta get another one out because we need to, you know, you direct one movie, you're not really a director until you direct like two or three things. And then they're like, oh, this guy's not going anywhere. But now that we've gotten past that hurdle, we can go back to what we really like, which is writing things and not rushing.

• 33:23Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly.

• 33:24Tim Ferriss?

  How did the first script you guys collaborated on that got sold or got made cross that chasm?

• 33:32Speaker 01

  Superbad?

• 33:33Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 33:34Speaker 01

  It took.

• 33:34Speaker 00

  It took ten years.

• 33:36Speaker 01

  Years and years and years. Basically, I moved to LA to do Freaks and Geeks when I was seventeen.

• 33:42Tim Ferriss?

  Just a quick interjection then, why did they do a casting call at your, it was at your high school?

• 33:45Speaker 01

  No, it was, they went to Vancouver. Sometimes on.

• 33:51Tim Ferriss?

  Because it's based in LA.

• 33:52Speaker 01

  It was, it was, it was based, it was set in Michigan. It was shot in LA. But sometimes Judd and Paul, Judd Apatow and Paul Feig, the creator, Paul, the creator and Judd, the executive producer of Freaks and Geeks, had a very, they wanted very real kits and they had an idea from the beginning that they wouldn't find them in LA. That if you're in LA, you're like an actor kid and that there's a good chance that you are not what they're looking for. That being said, I think they cast, I think everyone but me and one other guy out of LA. But, so they were kind of wrong, but thank God they looked at least because, so what they did is they did casting calls in Vancouver and Boston and New York and Chicago and Toronto and all these cities.

• 34:35Speaker 01

  And I got to audition in Vancouver and they were there, like Paul and Judd, like were in Vancouver.

• 34:43Speaker 00

  I didn't know they were actually there.

• 34:44Speaker 01

  Yeah, they were like in the room and I recognized Paul Feig because he's in this movie, Ski Patrol, which I had seen. Yeah, he's in Ski Patrol. And so.

• 34:52Speaker 00

  Is he the topless woman?

• 34:53Speaker 01

  No, you're thinking of ski school. Ski Patrol is a less pervy version of ski school.

• 34:58Speaker 00

  I am not interested.

• 35:00Speaker 01

  Yes. Ski Patrol is not that pervy. There's maybe one or two.

• 35:04Speaker 00

  And that's why I don't know.

• 35:05Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's not, it's not ski school. But that threw me. Anyway.

• 35:11Speaker 01

  And so, yeah, and so they cast me from Vancouver and I moved to L. I went there and shot the pilot and then I came back and then it got picked up and then. I'm, and, and so I was very lucky because I like moved to LA like with a job. Like I wasn't like one of, I didn't have to like go to LA and like. Try to find work for myself. Like I went there employed, which was like, I, I, at the time, I didn't realize like how many massive hurdles I was overcoming just by doing that. You know what I mean? Um, and then, so I was there and then meanwhile, we're writing Superbad and I give it to Judd. And Judd, um, Judd was very busy at the time running the show, which was like going down in flames, basically, even though it was very good.

• 35:55Speaker 01

  And so he kind of didn't pay too much attention to it at first, but Jake Kasdan, who was one of the directors of the show. Um, who has gone on to direct, uh, tons of movies and stuff like that. He directed the pilot of Freaks and Geeks. He, um, he really, he, he's just like a very nice guy. He was around, he's, he was in his twenties, very young. And so he just like really took a lot of time to like sit with me and talk to me about it. He would give us notes on it and like, it was just very encouraging because he was like, this is good and you can keep working on this.

• 36:27Speaker 00

  Yeah. And I was just at university at McGill in Montreal the whole time because I couldn't come to America, even if I wanted to, because I didn't have a visa. His dad's American.

• 36:35Speaker 01

  My dad's American.

• 36:35Speaker 00

  So I just, uh, but I wanted to be a writer and it seemed like via him on Freaks and Geeks, we had an inlet. So I studied US history. So I knew who I was writing for better.

• 36:45Speaker 01

  It was a good idea.

• 36:46Speaker 00

  I loved history and I thought if I understood Americans better, I could write better for Americans because I knew that I knew Canadians and, uh, and America's quite different.

• 36:55Speaker 01

  Yeah. But then after.

• 36:58Speaker 01

  At some point, Judd did read it and it was during the show we did undeclared. So Freezing East got canceled and then because Judd read Superbad, he got another show going the next year called undeclared, which was about college freshmen. I was literally the exact age of a college freshman and so, and he liked how Superbad was written, so he hired me as a writer on the show. And so, and then during undeclared, he really like took like a producerial role on Superbad and would give us tons of notes and try to, and that's when we first started going around trying to sell it. That was in like 2000, 2001.

• 37:42Speaker 00

  And then 2002, he said, bring your friend on down. I'll, I'll throw him a tiny bit of cash so he can live and you guys should try to write something else. So I came down and we spent two months writing Pineapple Express, which he told us to come up with 100 ideas for movies, which is insane. We got to 50, which is great. We never made any of them. And then, and then he was like, these are awesome, but you should instead write a movie about a pothead who's a process server who gets hunted by his own dealer. And we said, that's stupid and that will end your career before it ever happens to do like a modern Cheech and Chong. And he just said, but what if it was good?

• 38:18Speaker 01

  Yeah, we were like, oh, what if it was good? And we love action movies and, you know, Die Hard and Leave the Weapon. And we were like, oh, what if we kind of make it like a nineties, like these nineties action movies that we love so much? And so we wrote Pineapple Express pretty fast. Like we just loved it.

• 38:36Speaker 00

  Just in a few weeks or a few months?

• 38:37Speaker 01

  And we really just like locked ourselves in a room. Maybe like six weeks or something like that?

• 38:42Speaker 00

  It was like one of those things where like wake up at 3pm right until 6am.

• 38:46Speaker 01

  We were very unhealthy at this time in our lives.

• 38:49Speaker 00

  Was that the time when we got a Costco card and gained like 20 pounds? We would get pasta and cheese because it was cheap. And just eat pasta and cheese all day long.

• 38:58Speaker 01

  It was gross. So, so by the end of, I think like 2002, both Pineapple Express and Superbad were written and just no one wanted to make them. It would, it would come close to be someone, oh, we might make it and then it wouldn't happen and we might make it.

• 39:12Speaker 00

  And every now and then, and like, I didn't have the money to do it. I would fly down, we would go and pitch it, or my dad would drive with me from Vancouver. And we'd go and pitch it. And every time we pitched it, probably 10 times, Judd and Seth and me would go and my dad would drop me off and we'd go in and they'd be like, we love this, this is great. And we're like, okay, so you're gonna make it? And they're like, oh, no, we can't.

• 39:30Speaker 01

  Yeah. And I was supposed to play the Seth role and slowly throughout this process, like, I just, I still remember the meeting where like always, I was like, and I'm gonna play Seth. And then I remember like, it took so many years. There was like one meeting where I was like, I think this is the meeting where I no longer should say that I'm gonna play Seth. Cause I'm 23 years old. So we.

• 39:52Speaker 00

  And these were studio heads or studio execs?

• 39:55Speaker 01

  It was all, it was every, it was, it was some new companies with like weird money that comes from who knows where. It was some studios. It was like every type of thing you could imagine, basically.

• 40:06Speaker 00

  When did the, the sort of the, the other shoe drop in the positive sense?

• 40:10Speaker 01

  So meanwhile, like we start getting, we get hired on the Ali G show, which is great. Um, and it's just, i- it starts to make things like, pick up a little for us. I was in the 40 year old virgin, like, things like that started to happen.

• 40:23Speaker 00

  I, and while he was doing 40 year old virgin, Judd invited me to participate in some capacity, but I knew I had to finish my degree so I could actually stay legally. So I finished my degree and missed out on that. And by the time I came down, the premiere had happened and the movie had hit.

• 40:38Speaker 01

  Yeah. And so Judd started to become a successful movie person. Um, like, uh, he was now a director and a writer and a producer and incredibly successful one. So, uh, an anchorman had come out and done well, which he was a producer on. And then Talladega Nights came out and did really well. And I think it was.

• 40:57Speaker 00

  Wait, Talladega Nights didn't come out before we made Knocked Up. We made Knocked Up first, didn't we? We did.

• 41:02Speaker 01

  I don't think so. No, I don't think so. I remember going with Judd to the Deauville Film Festival, I think, for 40 year old virgin. While he was here in Atlanta, I think, shooting Talladega Nights. I'm bad with years and time, but this is approximate. What happened and then around now it's like, you know, when you get successful like Judd was people just start wanting whatever you have. And so it was Sony was just like, we'll make stuff and so they made Superbad and and then.

• 41:34Speaker 00

  But at the time to make an, uh, however much it was like 22 million, like it was, it was, it was a bizarre model that had never been done. No famous people, low budget. It was kind of an experiment the studio was doing to see if they could make big movies at a smaller budget without famous.

• 41:50Speaker 01

  And they also, what's crazy is Knocked Up, Pineapple Express and Superbad were all made in like one year, I think, basically. Like we made them like back to back to back because that it was essentially like, once the floodgates opened, we just like shoved everything in there that we.

• 42:10Speaker 00

  If you just look at like statistically, we're going to be done in two years.

• 42:13Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, exactly. See, to take advantage of the.

• 42:15Speaker 01

  Yeah, we just took everything and and then and then Knocked Up, Knocked Up and Superbad came out the same summer and both did really, really well.

• 42:22Speaker 00

  And and so he was a co-producer on Forty Old Virgin and they made him an EP on Knocked Up and Judd just made me an EP too, which was bonkers. And I remember on the third day.

• 42:31Speaker 01

  Evan's first day on set, he was an executive producer. A thirty million dollar Universal Studios comedy.

• 42:39Speaker 00

  And I remember Judd laughed really hard because I was like, can I just take however much water I want? And he was like, yeah, man, you can have all the water you want. And I was like, what about the coffee? And he was like, yeah, so I would have like 14 cups of coffee a day. And I remember I I saw Katherine Heigl and I was like, hey, what's up? We've been working together for like a week and then she went up to Seth and was like, wow, that guy's got a lot of energy. He's got great enthusiasm. And he was like, oh, this is his first week on a movie set.

• 43:06Tim Ferriss?

  What was your reaction, Evan, when you first found out that Superbad was going to get made? I mean, was that?

• 43:11Speaker 00

  I don't, I mean, I assume I freaked out and lost my mind.

• 43:16Speaker 00

  I don't remember.

• 43:16Tim Ferriss?

  Or did, or was it not?

• 43:18Speaker 00

  It's such a blur because as he said, it all went down in one year. It was just the most exciting year ever. But also for me, like, he'd been working.

• 43:25Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 43:26Speaker 00

  I'd been going to school.

• 43:27Tim Ferriss?

  Right, right.

• 43:27Speaker 00

  Which meant not going to school and getting drunk and hanging out with friends. Like, I barely went to class. So I had this shocking shift from like slacker student to working 14 hours a day. And I remember I would have to sneak away and just like go into a bathroom and sleep for like 20 minutes. Cause I wasn't used to it. I couldn't handle it. That's why I was drinking so much coffee. It was a really hard transition for me, but Knocked Up was kinda like boot camp.

• 43:51Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 43:51Speaker 00

  Cause Judd, you know, it was his big shot to make something really huge.

• 43:55Tim Ferriss?

  For sure.

• 43:55Speaker 00

  So we would go 16 hours, 17 hours, 14 hours.

• 43:58Speaker 01

  Long days, yeah.

• 43:59Speaker 00

  And I almost lost my mind, but by the end of it, I think I was like kinda battle hardened.

• 44:03Tim Ferriss?

  Right, yeah, conditioned for it all. And what, what were some of the, the lessons that you guys learned, have learned from Judd? I mean, what are like some of the takeaways for whether it's the creative process or?

• 44:13Speaker 00

  So, that's a, that's a whole other.

• 44:15Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's, uh, we could fill.

• 44:17Speaker 00

  I mean, I would say the biggest thing we learned from him, in my opinion, is like, and, and we talked about this earlier, is don't keep stuff to yourself. Like, you're surrounded by smart people. Bring them in. Get other people's opinions. Share it with them.

• 44:28Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 44:29Speaker 00

  Um, and most importantly, emotion is what matters. It's an emotional journey. It doesn't matter if the aircraft carrier hits the skyscraper and it collapses onto the hero. It's what is he feeling when that happens? And why does it matter that he has to get out of the rubble?

• 44:41Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 44:41Speaker 00

  He just taught us like emotion is the key. Like, The Four Year Old Version is a crazy weird movie. It's insane, but it's about a guy who's got like a wound.

• 44:48Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 44:49Speaker 00

  That he wants to heal and through this journey he does. And it's, it's all about that.

• 44:53Tim Ferriss?

  We mentioned that to me in every, every character has to have a wound.

• 44:56Speaker 00

  Yeah, that's a big Judd, Juddism.

• 44:58Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think, I mean, about the process, I mean, he basically like, yeah, like taught us the process that we use a lot. I mean, especially in regards to collaboration and.

• 45:09Speaker 00

  And improv, he, he was somewhat revolutionary in, in, in how he did it. Like, people had done it before, like, uh, Christopher Guest and other people. But Judd figured out a way to make improv and mainstream movies collide in a way that I don't think anyone had at the time.

• 45:23Speaker 01

  No one was really doing it like that. And. Yeah, I mean, the filming process itself and how how to work on set is something he's taught us a lot about. I mean, again, and it's all it was stuff that was partially figured out together, but he worked for years and years and years before us. And, I mean, it's so funny, it often, I remember one time we were filming a scene in Knocked Up, I think, and improvising and he's or maybe it was even Forty Old Virgin, the direction he screamed at us. Cause he screams direction from another Ruba lot, which is hilarious, but what he screamed at us was less semen, more emotion. And I think like, that is actually like across the board, good note to apply.

• 46:04Speaker 00

  And yet still, we managed to get quite a bit of semen in there.

• 46:07Speaker 01

  Yeah, but I think it was just the area we were riffing on. But I think, yeah, I mean, whatever I'm saying is exactly right, like the emotional core, like what? What is it really about like, and and and that the movies? And then and that movies can be very sweet and still like, and especially if you're gonna make a movie that is so like, you know, dirty or aggressively, you know, you know, filled with profanity and that thing that like, it helps if they're sweet and if you really like, if they're not mean spirited and if you and and and write what you know is was a big thing and try to inject your own like honesty and experiences into your work,

• 46:51Speaker 01

  even if it's a weird spy movie or end of the world movie.

• 46:55Speaker 00

  Like this is the end is just about Jay and Seth and Jay is upset that Seth has found new friends. And Seth is upset that Jay seems to be holding on to the past. That's what the movie's about. It has nothing to do with the apocalypse, really. That's just the the the area it all went down in.

• 47:10Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 47:11Tim Ferriss?

  When looking at filmmaking or comedy movies specifically, if you guys could have written something that someone else wrote, and besides your own stuff where you're like, oh, I wish.

• 47:22Speaker 01

  Adaptation.

• 47:23Speaker 00

  Adaptation. It's the best. It's the best movie ever. It's a masterpiece and the script is even better than the movie.

• 47:30Tim Ferriss?

  It's great.

• 47:31Speaker 00

  The movie, I I I think they made the right choice with the changes they made, but the script. Is just unreal.

• 47:37Tim Ferriss?

  Fantastic.

• 47:38Speaker 01

  That's like one of those, not a lot of movies make me like mind blowing me jealous, but I saw that I was just like.

• 47:43Speaker 00

  That ended like five of my best ideas. Like I was like, oh, there should be a movie with someone who has anxiety represented by a character. And I was like, oh, he did this. Ten times better than I ever could. Plus 10 other things that I had.

• 47:55Speaker 01

  And this is the whole, every movie is like funny and awesome and like, it's just.

• 47:58Tim Ferriss?

  And just the story of how that came together also in terms of.

• 48:00Speaker 01

  Yeah, that he was hired to write the bad after he did it and then he freaked out and couldn't do it. I mean, it's like, it's like, the meta backstory is, is so funny.

• 48:10Speaker 00

  And then I would say on a flip side, uh, to me, the most magical, uh, emotional, beautiful movie is The Princess Bride.

• 48:17Tim Ferriss?

  My favorite. Yeah.

• 48:17Speaker 00

  It's, it's just, I can't watch it too much.

• 48:21Tim Ferriss?

  That was, uh, you know, I've had this fascination with screenwriting, even though I haven't pulled the trigger on anything, but the, the screenplay that did it was The Princess Bride. Reading, uh, was it, um, William Goldman?

• 48:32Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. The book on it is good.

• 48:34Tim Ferriss?

  So good.

• 48:35Speaker 01

  It's great.

• 48:35Tim Ferriss?

  All the backstories. So the, so one of the scenes in adaptation, because you mentioned it, one of my favorite scenes is when he's sitting in, in the movie, Nicolas Cage, sitting in his apartment. At this typewriter and he's like, and you hear his internal dialogue.

• 48:48Speaker 01

  Yeah, he's like, I should really have a muffin. God, I'm so hungry. Like, I really need some coffee. Nothing better than having a muffin.

• 48:54Tim Ferriss?

  What are, what are your opinions of writer's block?

• 48:57Speaker 00

  Oh, uh, we touched on this earlier. Uh, I think writer's block is complete bullshit.

• 49:03Speaker 01

  Really?

• 49:03Speaker 00

  And is it? Yeah. I think it's a term people.

• 49:05Speaker 01

  I want to hear the debate. I have it right now.

• 49:08Speaker 00

  I think it is a term, like, it's a term people give to a bad week. Like, I have bad weeks. I don't have writer's block. Writer's block implies that like, you can't. Do it. Some things are just harder than other things.

• 49:20Speaker 01

  But I, I.

• 49:20Speaker 00

  Like, like, like you could have said that we had writer's block on This Is The End when we couldn't figure out the third act. I don't call that writer's block. I say that was the biggest struggle of This Is The End.

• 49:29Speaker 01

  I think that we just have never experienced it, uh, which is why you don't think it exists. But I think that like.

• 49:35Speaker 00

  You think that we've never, no way.

• 49:37Speaker 01

  I, I imagine, I think what, I think what happens to people actually, and we're just lucky that we haven't experienced it, is they become uninspired. Like that, I think is what writer's block is. We're just lucky because that has never happened to us.

• 49:48Speaker 00

  I take issue with the term, especially block. Writers difficulties, writers.

• 49:56Speaker 00

  Writers block implies like, it's just not gonna happen.

• 49:58Speaker 01

  But I think if you truly lose your inspiration or your, who you are as a creative person, I think people experience those moments and, and that's writer. I think that's what writers.

• 50:09Tim Ferriss?

  Do you think that, what would you attribute that to? Do you think that's because you guys are writing what you know? Or what is?

• 50:18Speaker 00

  A really big thing is when one of us is not doing great, the other one can pick up the weight. And when one of us is uninspired, the other one can be inspired.

• 50:27Speaker 01

  Moments where I'm just like, I don't even know what the fuck we're doing anymore. Why are we doing this? And then he'll just have an idea and I have to just keep going. And then you plow through. There's probably moments where he's thinking the similar thing and I'm, and in that moment, I'm not thinking that. And so it, it, it allows us to keep going.

• 50:39Speaker 00

  Yeah. And, and there's, there's, there's a beauty to writing stuff on your own, but specifically for movies, I think writing as a team is extremely beneficial. And even if you do write alone, you should be sharing what you're writing with everyone all the time, all the time. Because writer's block, as some call it, and I would rather not, could easily be solved by just getting someone to help you.

• 50:59Tim Ferriss?

  Right.

• 50:59Speaker 00

  And I think a lot of writers, uh, the biggest problem I think writers have is they're like, I can't show people until it's ready. And that's, that's popping.

• 51:07Speaker 01

  I think you need to talk about your ideas early. And I think that's how, if you have writer's block, that like, there's probably a reason you have it. There's probably a reason you're uninspired and that is the thing you should be writing about. Like, I think, and I, and I think in order to arrive at that, you need to talk to someone sometimes. Like, and I think that's why it's helpful to have another person is like, we're very open with each other. We talk about pretty much everything that's happening in our lives with one another. And so it's not like, I'd just be sitting there grumpy and he's like, gotten ideas, like, no, not, not feeling it today. Like, like we would, I would explain why and that would probably lead to an idea. Because we like to write in that.

• 51:48Speaker 00

  And I guess that's why to both of us, adaptation's the most genius thing ever. Cause a guy.

• 51:52Speaker 01

  It's a movie about writers.

• 51:53Speaker 00

  A guy, a guy took writer's block and made it something. And I guess that's my beef with writer's block is like, that's, it's just something stopping you, but it'll put you in another direction. So it's, it's still the path you're taking.

• 52:04Tim Ferriss?

  Who, who in your mind, uh, whether right now, you know, alive or dead, are the most, uh, some of the more underrated comedy writers?

• 52:13Speaker 00

  Well, Hannibal Buress is is a stand up comic. He's not a full Yeah, that's fine. Writer, but that man is a unspeakable genius. Hannibal Buress? Buress. Buress. He he uh he started this whole Bill Cosby thing.

• 52:24Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 52:25Speaker 00

  Well, he did.

• 52:25Speaker 01

  Well, Bill Cosby started it.

• 52:26Speaker 00

  Well, Bill Cosby started it.

• 52:28Speaker 01

  Tribute act to Hannibal.

• 52:30Speaker 00

  We have a guy we're working with named Joe Mandy. He's bizarrely genius.

• 52:35Speaker 01

  I think Sasha's one of the funniest guys.

• 52:36Speaker 00

  Yeah, Sasha Baron Cohen.

• 52:38Speaker 01

  I mean, Gary Shandling is brilliant to me, like the Larry Sanders Show, I think, in a lot of ways, does a lot of the stuff that a lot of people try to do today.

• 52:48Speaker 00

  There's there's an animator who I think and writer who I think is one of the greatest geniuses to ever live named Don Hertzfeld.

• 52:54Speaker 01

  Yeah, and now people know who he is.

• 52:55Speaker 00

  Funniest.

• 52:56Speaker 01

  He's amazing.

• 52:57Speaker 00

  He made this thing called Rejected. That is the funniest thing I think I may have ever seen in my entire life.

• 53:02Speaker 01

  It's crazy.

• 53:02Speaker 00

  He he he animates by hand, usually with a 16 millimeter camera. He just started using computers a little, but uh

• 53:08Speaker 01

  It's it's he's really funny.

• 53:09Speaker 00

  It's like stick figures, literally, and it's it's the most genius thing I've ever seen.

• 53:13Speaker 01

  Yeah, he's incredible. Um, and uh, yeah, he's probably not as lauded as one could be. I think he gets nominated.

• 53:20Speaker 00

  Uh, I think he won an Oscar, actually.

• 53:22Speaker 01

  So never mind, fuck. He's also really good looking.

• 53:27Speaker 01

  But uh, yeah, I mean, I I think like uh, Matt uh, and Trey of South Park and Book of Mormon to me are like two of the funniest humans ever created. Um, again, Judd and um, I mean, who who's like, like, growing up, I was really into

• 53:44Speaker 00

  I mean, yeah.

• 53:44Speaker 01

  SCTV, like Martin Short and

• 53:46Speaker 00

  Yeah, as and especially as Canadians. Kids in the Hall on SCTV played on a loop.

• 53:50Speaker 01

  Yeah, Kids in the Hall.

• 53:51Speaker 00

  Kids in the Hall is like

• 53:52Speaker 01

  Kids in the Hall is like very was very influential on us and we watched it a ton growing up. I've seen every single episode, like I never will turn on an episode and it's one I haven't seen.

• 54:01Speaker 00

  Do you want to see one? One that kind of changed our lives?

• 54:04Speaker 01

  The Shirley.

• 54:04Speaker 00

  The Shirley.

• 54:04Speaker 01

  Which is one of the

• 54:05Speaker 00

  Shirley.

• 54:06Speaker 01

  It's one of the weirdest things of all time.

• 54:07Speaker 00

  Strangest, and they did this short, I believe, called Sausages.

• 54:11Speaker 01

  Sausages?

• 54:12Speaker 00

  Sausages.

• 54:13Speaker 01

  S H I R L I N G.

• 54:16Speaker 00

  Oh, yeah, I got it.

• 54:16Speaker 01

  It's a made up word. And so but what was great about Kids in the Hall is how insane it was and like and it was And and and and at the time it didn't seem insane because we watched it so much and it was on so much.

• 54:27Speaker 00

  But like as we got older and started to make stuff, we realized like, I don't think I could get that show on air right now.

• 54:32Speaker 01

  No, it's so crazy.

• 54:34Speaker 00

  It's so bonkers. And the fact that they got to do whatever they wanted, even though like two out of the five times it was a big miss.

• 54:39Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 54:40Speaker 00

  The other times, it's just like they nailed it because they got to do what they really wanted to in their hearts.

• 54:44Speaker 01

  And like, we've got to work with Lorne Michaels and I've uh got to be around him a bunch and like, that's one of the things we talk to him about the most every time we're around him and he and he's very proud of the show, but he says, I mean, he's like, the key to that show was letting those guys do whatever they wanted. And that was it. He's like, that was that show was like, they had to do all of it because that's how crazy it was.

• 55:07Speaker 00

  We also, we also had a, well, also quickly, Mel Brooks was like a huge thing.

• 55:11Speaker 01

  Lauren is amazing. I mean, he's not like known as being a writer or by trade or anything, but he's a very funny guy and like.

• 55:17Tim Ferriss?

  He's like, he's like the Steve Jobs of comedy.

• 55:19Speaker 01

  I mean, he's, I mean, and it's unbelievable what he's done. And like, he's someone that every time I I'm around him, it's like, uh, it's it's it's truly like an awe inspiring.

• 55:28Speaker 00

  And we also, just from being in Canada, we had a lot of British television. So we got a lot of those British comedy shows.

• 55:33Speaker 01

  And Monty Python.

• 55:34Speaker 00

  And I think that gave us like a uh, an attitude towards comedy.

• 55:38Speaker 01

  Ab Fab? Did you watch that growing up?

• 55:40Speaker 00

  No, I don't know that.

• 55:41Speaker 01

  Absolutely fabulous. Yeah.

• 55:45Speaker 01

  Yeah, my parents are really into comedy and watched a lot of Woody Allen movies when I was growing up and like, uh.

• 55:50Tim Ferriss?

  Are there any late bloomers in comedy writing who have not say known since they were kids that they wanted to be in comedy or in writing who have kind of come onto the scene and done well? That come to mind?

• 56:03Speaker 01

  I mean.

• 56:03Speaker 00

  That come to mind? There must be.

• 56:06Tim Ferriss?

  There must be. I mean, it's a tough question, but I figured.

• 56:08Speaker 01

  No, it's a good, it's a good one. I I can't think of anyone.

• 56:12Tim Ferriss?

  Or comedy directing, acting.

• 56:14Speaker 00

  Tim Ferriss?

• 56:15Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly.

• 56:18Tim Ferriss?

  When I'm funny, it's usually accidental.

• 56:21Speaker 00

  I'm gonna go with Elon Musk on that.

• 56:23Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly. No, I I can't, I can't think of anyone. It's one of those things though, where it's like, and and I think it's what brings comedians together. It's so funny, cause like whenever you go, I don't, which I don't often, but at the times I do go to like a Hollywood type party. All the comedians are often like lumped together in one little section, cause they often all know each other. And, and they're, and they're, and often they're the type, they're similar types of people. They've for whatever bizarre reason known since they were little kids that they wanna be comedians.

• 56:52Speaker 00

  I think you can boil it down, and this is maybe overgeneralizing, but they, comedians know that life is ridiculous.

• 56:58Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 56:59Speaker 00

  And I think that's like a common bond that holds them all together.

• 57:01Speaker 01

  Well, they're all the kids.

• 57:02Speaker 00

  And like, we're never gonna figure this out. This is all absurd and let's kinda analyze how ridiculous it is.

• 57:07Speaker 01

  And at the party, they're all the people who wanna stand in the corner and make fun of the party they're at. And that, and so they all, and so they all go to, and then sometimes the whole party is that.

• 57:16Tim Ferriss?

  I had, um, Brian Callen, who's been on the podcast and a buddy is a standup comic.

• 57:20Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 57:21Tim Ferriss?

  He's done a lot of acting and he gave me my first tour of the Comedy Store.

• 57:24Speaker 01

  He's in the Forty Year Old Virgin movie, Knock Off. The, uh, the, the, right?

• 57:28Tim Ferriss?

  Oh, which one?

• 57:29Speaker 01

  The Forty Year Old Virgin who knocked up Sarah Marshall Superbad thing, I think he is. I could be wrong, but I'm pretty sure.

• 57:37Tim Ferriss?

  He gave, he gave me my first tour at the Comedy Store and the, the, a bunch of the, the comics just ended up standing outside, basically making fun of the party and

• 57:43Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 57:44Tim Ferriss?

  and shooting the shit, but.

• 57:45Speaker 01

  That's where the real comedy is, is right outside the comedy club, I think.

• 57:49Tim Ferriss?

  When, when you guys think of, it could be more broadly, uh, outside of comedy, like Evan, I'll ask you first, when you think of the word successful, who's the first person who comes to mind for you?

• 57:59Speaker 00

  Uh, uh, honestly, my cousin David.

• 58:06Tim Ferriss?

  Why's that?

• 58:06Speaker 00

  I got, I got two cousins, David and Charlie, who live in Orange County and they just have a really nice, uh, life and three, they're two great kids. And every time I go to their house, I think this is the most successful group of people I know, just cause they're, they're really happy. And they all really like each other. And it's rare to have a family that everyone likes everyone and they're all proud of each other. So, corny answer, but my cousins David and Charlie.

• 58:28Tim Ferriss?

  Why do you think more people aren't like that or don't have that?

• 58:32Speaker 00

  Um, I think they just made up their minds. And I think other people deliberate too much. Like they were just like, he was like, I'm a doctor. She was like, I'm gonna be a teacher. We want two kids. We're gonna live there. And we're gonna make the best of our lives and, uh, go to the beach whenever we can. They just like, I, they, they seem to have cut through a lot of the bullshit and made their lives very simple in a beautiful way. And, and it's all about their kids. And I don't know, I just feel like they are the most level-headed people I know who have stuff like really figured out.

• 59:00Tim Ferriss?

  Seth, what about yourself?

• 59:01Speaker 00

  You gotta say something emotional, you're gonna be a jerk.

• 59:04Speaker 01

  Michael Jordan.

• 59:14Speaker 01

  I don't know. My parents, I feel like seem pretty happy and uh um yeah, I definitely don't ascribe like a financial um meaning to it off the top of my head. Uh yeah, my parents are on a cruise in Alaska right now eating uh they just sent me a picture of a meal that entirely comprised of tater tots and beer. So I'd say they're doing pretty well right now.

• 59:39Speaker 00

  His dad has somehow made vegetarianism unhealthy to a degree.

• 59:43Speaker 01

  Most unhealthy vegetarian on the entire planet. But uh yeah, my parents are very, very happy, honestly, and um and I and have always uh have always seemed they're very like they're pretty like Zen, I gotta say, which to me is like a good a good place to be. And what I strive to be is is just a peace, a peace with myself.

• 1:00:05Tim Ferriss?

  Do you uh Seth give uh books as gifts ever? If so, I mean, do you have a most gifted book that you've given to people?

• 1:00:13Speaker 01

  Um, I don't give books as I give I give sometimes like uh like coffee table type books as gifts. Um but like if someone's in a move like uh I like coffee table books. I'm not I I read and I give comic books sometimes to people. I don't often give books to people as gifts because I'm not myself like a huge reader. I'm not like.

• 1:00:35Tim Ferriss?

  Which comic?

• 1:00:37Speaker 01

  Have I given to people? I've given Preacher to people. I've given Watchmen to people. I've used to I've given Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy to people because I love that book. And if they tell me they haven't read it, I give that to them. I've given this book, The Art of Dramatic Writing to people because it's.

• 1:00:50Speaker 00

  By La Jolla.

• 1:00:52Speaker 01

  By La Jolla.

• 1:00:52Speaker 00

  That's that's something Judd told us to read.

• 1:00:54Speaker 01

  That's a book Judd gave us.

• 1:00:55Tim Ferriss?

  The Art of Dramatic.

• 1:00:56Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:00:57Speaker 00

  Yeah, if you're if you're a writer, sixty percent of it's useless and forty percent of it is gold.

• 1:01:01Speaker 01

  It references a lot of plays that if you haven't read and you haven't because no who has uh it it just doesn't a lot of it is very.

• 1:01:10Speaker 00

  The best part of it is explains the importance of premise and how you must have a rock solid one sentence premise.

• 1:01:16Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:01:16Speaker 00

  Before you die.

• 1:01:17Speaker 01

  And like a thesis for the movie itself. Um, I remember when Joe gave it to us, he said it was Woody Allen's favorite writing book, which was meaningful, uh, at the time. And so, uh, I've given that book to people. Um, the, the, that, uh, conquest of happiness I've given to people. Cause that's a great book.

• 1:01:34Speaker 00

  That's by Bertrand Russell.

• 1:01:35Speaker 01

  By Bertrand Russell.

• 1:01:36Speaker 00

  It's like the original self help book.

• 1:01:38Speaker 01

  If you ignore like the racial epitaphs.

• 1:01:39Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:01:40Speaker 01

  At the time, at the time were more acceptable than they are. It was written in like 1920 or something like that, I think, right? But, um, it's a, it's a great, it's like one of the OG self-help books, basically, right? Um, I think like the gist of the book is like, some say life is pleasurable, some say it isn't, so why think about it? And so, uh, I've given those books to people, yeah, but not, uh, I don't give a ton of books to, to people.

• 1:02:08Tim Ferriss?

  And, uh, I know we only have a little bit of time left, but Evan, what, uh, what about yourself? Do you have a most gifted book?

• 1:02:14Speaker 00

  Um, uh, every, uh, newfound, uh, every person who becomes a mother, uh, who's a friend of mine, I send this Canadian child's book, Love You Forever to, which I think is just.

• 1:02:24Tim Ferriss?

  Love You Forever, the number two or?

• 1:02:26Speaker 00

  Love You Forever. It's, uh, it's got a thing, Love You Forever, Love You For Always, As Long As You're Living, My Baby Will Be. It's, it's like a thing between a mother and son. And I think that's a beautiful book that I give to anybody who's had a kid. It's, but it's beautiful.

• 1:02:37Speaker 01

  It's unbelievably depressing.

• 1:02:41Speaker 00

  No one's been upset I gave it to them.

• 1:02:44Speaker 01

  Really? Not to you?

• 1:02:45Speaker 00

  And, uh, The Little Prince is phenomenal, Hitchhiker's Guide. And then I, I often give, uh, Preacher, V for Vendetta and The Watchman to people. But my main thing is Love You Forever. I think that like anyone who has a kid should have that book.

• 1:02:59Tim Ferriss?

  Now, we, we were talking about this briefly yesterday, but could you describe the habit that you picked up from Snoop Dogg?

• 1:03:05Speaker 00

  Um, okay.

• 1:03:07Tim Ferriss?

  In the context?

• 1:03:08Speaker 00

  We were smoking pot with Snoop Dogg.

• 1:03:10Speaker 01

  What habit did you pick up?

• 1:03:11Speaker 00

  Uh, and, and we were, this is when we were recording that song.

• 1:03:15Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:03:15Speaker 00

  And we were hanging out with him and we were smoking pot.

• 1:03:17Speaker 01

  You have hoes come in when you write now?

• 1:03:22Speaker 01

  I can only write with hoes around.

• 1:03:25Speaker 00

  And I don't know how we got to this, but he was like, you like to go for walks? I was like, not really. I don't really. He's like, what do you mean? I was like, I'll go for like exercise or whatever, but I don't just go for walks. And he looked at me really disappointed and was like, you should, you should go for walks, man. That's a bad move. You're making a bad mistake. And it like haunted me that like Snoop Dogg was disappointed that I didn't take walks. So I started taking a walk in the morning and a walk after dinner. And it has like massively changed my life. I sleep better, I have a better day because, and I just walked for like 10 minutes. But he just kind of went on like a little mini rant, saying like, walking's great, man. It's, it's important. I walk with my kids.

• 1:04:04Speaker 01

  It's one of the reasons people like having dogs.

• 1:04:06Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:04:06Speaker 01

  You walk them.

• 1:04:07Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:04:08Speaker 01

  Steve Jobs was a famous walker.

• 1:04:11Speaker 01

  I'm not joking. He was known for like doing meetings on walks, like instead of like sitting in a office, doing a meeting. He would, they would walk around.

• 1:04:19Speaker 00

  Well, yeah, now, now I've started to, I've become obsessed with like, I, I, I will stretch during meetings and I don't care who it's with. I will, as, as with you, I will stand for full meetings because I don't like sitting. And, uh, we're trying to get a new office and when we do, I'm putting a treadmill in there.

• 1:04:33Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:04:34Speaker 00

  A bunch of other stuff. Cause when we're writing, I'm often just like walking around the room, like spinning a pencil in my head.

• 1:04:39Tim Ferriss?

  You should try a treadmill desk.

• 1:04:40Speaker 00

  Uh, my friend has it.

• 1:04:42Tim Ferriss?

  It takes a little while to get used to.

• 1:04:43Speaker 01

  I don't think I could do that.

• 1:04:44Speaker 00

  I've heard it's, I've heard it's good. I saw someone running on a treadmill, reading a book at the gym this morning.

• 1:04:49Tim Ferriss?

  It sounds like a great.

• 1:04:49Speaker 01

  No one's written a hilarious joke on a treadmill. That's never happened in the history of comedy.

• 1:04:54Speaker 00

  I'm gonna, I, I have a, I have an elevating desk that goes up and down, but I will try the treadmill desk.

• 1:04:59Tim Ferriss?

  What, uh, yeah, the key is not running.

• 1:05:02Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:05:04Tim Ferriss?

  And having a safety, and having a safety clip on. Uh, if, uh, if you could have given yours, it's, let's just say 25 year old self, some advice, what would you have, what would you have, uh, said?

• 1:05:17Speaker 00

  I would have told myself to lose weight.

• 1:05:19Speaker 01

  Earlier.

• 1:05:20Speaker 00

  Yeah. I just lost like 25 pounds and I feel so much better and my brain is so much sharper. And I was just, I wasn't like massively overweight, but I was overweight for those from 25 to 31. And that was a very, very big mistake. That was very fixable and I wish that I could go back in time and be like, just start walking, yo.

• 1:05:39Tim Ferriss?

  Start walking.

• 1:05:39Speaker 00

  Some nice walks will fix this all. And, and, uh, and I found out I was allergic to wheat. So I wish I could go back in time and tell myself that.

• 1:05:50Speaker 00

  Cause I found that out three years ago and if I found that out six years ago, I would have had a lot better of a decade.

• 1:05:55Tim Ferriss?

  What about yourself Seth?

• 1:05:55Speaker 01

  I don't know. I was, I was probably a lot healthier when I was, I was probably doing better by all means when I was 25 than I have right now. Um, I probably would have told myself to propose to my wife sooner.

• 1:06:07Speaker 00

  Oh yeah, me too. Me too.

• 1:06:09Speaker 01

  That would have saved me.

• 1:06:10Tim Ferriss?

  Why is that?

• 1:06:11Speaker 01

  Just cause I waited. I, I mean, I waited like, uh, seven, six, six and a half.

• 1:06:15Speaker 00

  Is it, is it a coincidence we both made that mistake?

• 1:06:18Speaker 01

  I don't know. Probably not. But, uh, it was probably like, uh, what do they call that enabling? I think we probably enabled each other.

• 1:06:24Speaker 00

  I was like Seth's not doing it.

• 1:06:27Speaker 01

  But I don't know. I mean, I don't have any like major regrets that have occurred between now and then, or any like, I think there's lessons I've learned, but they've been valuable and, uh, organic to my living process. Uh, but the proposal, I, I, I should have proposed sooner. That, that I would have done differently.

• 1:06:44Tim Ferriss?

  Uh, I suppose this could be a, maybe a similar type of question, but for you Evan, if you could have one billboard anywhere that said anything, what would it, what would be on it?

• 1:06:54Speaker 00

  Whoo. Um.

• 1:06:57Speaker 01

  I've had a lot of billboards, so that's a tough one.

• 1:07:01Speaker 00

  Yeah. He would say, would, would you have a child?

• 1:07:04Speaker 01

  Exactly. I would say the night before, coming out November 24th.

• 1:07:09Speaker 00

  I guess my biggest beef with the world that I would throw up on a billboard is, uh, this, this is going to get deep guys.

• 1:07:15Speaker 01

  No.

• 1:07:16Speaker 00

  Accept each other.

• 1:07:17Speaker 01

  Whoa Evan.

• 1:07:18Speaker 00

  Boom.

• 1:07:19Speaker 01

  I don't accept that.

• 1:07:20Speaker 00

  I don't like when people don't accept one another. I think they should. And I would put it on top of the Empire State Building.

• 1:07:25Speaker 01

  Really? People wouldn't see it very well.

• 1:07:27Speaker 00

  Okay, fine. I put it at the bottom of the Empire State Building.

• 1:07:30Speaker 01

  On the entryway to the Empire State Building. Uh, accept each other is good. I like that. Accept each other.

• 1:07:37Speaker 00

  Or just accept me with a picture of me.

• 1:07:41Speaker 01

  Except Seth Rogen.

• 1:07:45Tim Ferriss?

  Well, I know we're wrapping up here. You guys have a lot to do today.

• 1:07:48Speaker 01

  We have a little bit of time. You've got like 11 more minutes. Yeah, we can go, yeah.

• 1:07:52Tim Ferriss?

  Okay, all right. In that case, I would like to-

• 1:07:54Speaker 01

  When we leave, we have to go back to our jobs. Yeah, exactly. I'm not eager to go to my job.

• 1:07:58Tim Ferriss?

  I'll help postpone that a little bit. So I'd like to ask a couple of fan questions. This one is from Kyle Bailey. He wants to know about the future of comedy, and this is what he says.

• 1:08:06Speaker 01

  Robots. Singularity. Yeah, singularity, string theory. What is funny on one side of the universe creates a funny reaction on the other side. No one knows why.

• 1:08:18Tim Ferriss?

  He says, "It seems to me that late 70s and then 80s satire, Saturday Night Live, Seinfeld has led to all things funny, that has led to all things funny being absurd, hence Old Spice commercials having Minotaur and so on. Seems like the more absurd, the funnier, at least in the mainstream, when will this snap back? Or when will we experience the next direction of comedy? Or is absurdity the final act of comedy?" And then somebody added to that specifically online where you're trying to grab attention in a distraction.

• 1:08:45Speaker 01

  I heard actually with marketing specifically recently, someone told me that now commercials like actually do better if they make no sense. Like that literally just like- Like that Mountain Dew commercial. Have you guys seen that Mountain Dew commercial? Or the one with like the horse in the one where it's like, "This horse, I'll tell you like, there's literally like, I, I, someone was explaining to me the theory where it's like, the fact that they make no sense actually makes you pay more attention to them than a, than a traditional commercial narrative." I actually don't necessarily agree with that. Yeah, I got a disagree. It depends a lot on- Like Superman's not absurd. Transparent's not absurd. Or like Trainwreck is one of the biggest comedies of the year, and it's like completely, you know, a, you know, a very grounded movie.

• 1:09:27Speaker 01

  Yeah, like we love ourselves some absurd comedy, but there's room for both and always happens. And Neighbors is our most successful movie, and in a lot of ways, like it goes, it's, it's, it's quite broad at times, but in premise, it's, it's about people who have a bunch of kids moving next door to them. Like, it's not that bizarre, you know? So I actually think, I think the biggest comedies are not absurd. They're, they're somewhat grounded in, in reality and, and the less-

• 1:09:54Speaker 01

  Somewhat popular, but maybe less popular comedies like this is the end, which did very well, but isn't in the same universe as like neighbors or train wreck is doing much better than like. I think those truly absurd ones actually don't do as well as the more grounded ones.

• 1:10:07Tim Ferriss?

  Well, it's like, you know, memento. I mean, I not absurd, but so it's confusing to so many people. I mean, I love memento, but uh. Been it's been sort of kind of disheartening to to find that a lot of my favorite movies did very, very, very poorly.

• 1:10:18Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah.

• 1:10:19Tim Ferriss?

  And a lot of movies.

• 1:10:20Speaker 00

  We we always say this, like, like, we'll never be number one. And if we are, we won't be that cool anymore.

• 1:10:26Speaker 01

  Yeah, like, it's true. Like, we always will have the sensibility where it's like things everyone loves, I hate and things everyone hates, I love. And I'm just, I and I don't mean that in like, I'm not trying to be like a hipster and I do, I also love a lot of mainstream stuff. And and like, I'm the first guy in line to see a Michael Bay movie when it comes out, but.

• 1:10:44Speaker 00

  Fast, Fast and Furious is the greatest time you could have in a movie theater.

• 1:10:48Speaker 01

  But that being said, like, there's some shows that are really popular. I'm just like, I don't understand why people like this. And there's some shows that no one likes. And I'm like, I don't get why people don't love this, you know? And and as long as you have that sensibility, I think there's a good chance you will not be the most successful person.

• 1:11:03Tim Ferriss?

  Well, so I mean, along those lines of Freaks and Geeks, uh, looking back at that, I mean, it what? And this is a question from Nick, Nick Abregoo, uh, what was it about Freaks and Geeks that made everyone so successful in their later careers? Is it, would you attribute to advice they received or more of a networking effect or otherwise? I'm paraphrasing, but.

• 1:11:23Speaker 01

  I think honestly, I I mean, my hope is that that Judd just and Paul found people who happened to be very talented. And and had the talent to sustain themselves.

• 1:11:34Tim Ferriss?

  So they they cast very well.

• 1:11:36Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think they cast very well.

• 1:11:37Speaker 00

  And like, having cast movies with Judd, like, he's just got the eye, man.

• 1:11:40Speaker 01

  Yeah, he's very good at seeing.

• 1:11:43Tim Ferriss?

  Is it just an instinctual thing or is there, do you, is there some?

• 1:11:46Speaker 01

  You get better at it. It's literally just, there's not that many really funny people. And like, when you see someone who's actually very funny, like, and if you're, it's again, we, you know, you talk about it with investments. It's the exact like, you start to hone in on just like things that for whatever reason, you start to. Think like this is good like and I think you you can train yourself to become more and more in tune with it. And I think that's one of the things Judd taught us is like, keep your eyes out for that person. If you're watching a movie and someone is in one scene and has one line and is funny. That person could star in a whole movie one day, maybe.

• 1:12:24Speaker 00

  Yeah, like, like in, um, in the first neighbors, there's this stand up Gerard Carmichael who's in it. And he now has his own show and we're trying to write a movie with our guys, Kyle and Ariel for him to star in. And it all just came from our coworker Alex saying, I saw this guy and he's he's got it.

• 1:12:40Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah. Lick yourself like a cat.

• 1:12:43Speaker 01

  And and I think that I think more than anything, that's what it is, is that they he has a very good. You know, Paul and Judd both have very good eyes for spotting people that will that will keep working.

• 1:12:55Speaker 00

  And another thing is, um, they look long and hard. Like when we were looking for who was going to be the McLovin focal character in Superbad. It literally came down to putting up signs in high schools. Allison Jones, the casting director did an epic search, literally just putting up signs. Does anyone know anyone who fits this bill? And his buddies were like, you should go.

• 1:13:15Tim Ferriss?

  That's cool.

• 1:13:15Speaker 00

  And do this.

• 1:13:16Tim Ferriss?

  That's a very smart approach.

• 1:13:17Speaker 00

  Saw like, I don't know, a hundred kids. And then that's just what we saw, uh, you know, uh, filtered, uh, from the casting director on to us. And and and and it's like a Hollywood cliche almost, but when you see that person, you go, it's him.

• 1:13:28Tim Ferriss?

  That's the one.

• 1:13:29Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:13:29Tim Ferriss?

  So so just on McLovin, because this this came up surprisingly often. Uh, so Justin, uh, Nine of Basti, I think, and then Dan GMO Designs, I'm not sure. Uh, ask them if they if they would ever be willing to make a spin off movie about McLovin.

• 1:13:45Speaker 00

  We are not, but we have discussed, which will never do what I'm about to say, but we always thought it would be funny. To kind of do something where you take Saul from Pineapple Express, the James Franco character and McLovin from Superbad. And put them in a movie together, but it's never happened.

• 1:13:59Tim Ferriss?

  Now, why would you never do it?

• 1:14:00Speaker 00

  In the same way that Donald Trump thinks if he changes his hair, he'll ruin his career.

• 1:14:04Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:14:04Speaker 00

  To us, like, Superbad worked. It was everything we ever hoped it would be and more, and I'm not touching it. I'm not.

• 1:14:11Tim Ferriss?

  It's like if you throw two balls at us, you're like, no, I'm done with that.

• 1:14:13Speaker 01

  Yeah, just back away.

• 1:14:13Speaker 00

  If I made a sequel to Superbad and it was bad, it would crush me.

• 1:14:18Speaker 01

  Exactly, yeah.

• 1:14:19Speaker 00

  I just, I don't want to mess with it.

• 1:14:20Speaker 01

  I couldn't deal with that.

• 1:14:22Tim Ferriss?

  Does, uh, so of course weed comes up a lot, uh, eat.

• 1:14:25Speaker 00

  What's that?

• 1:14:27Tim Ferriss?

  The marriage you wanna, uh, do you find it helps creativity, productivity, neither, both? I mean, because there are questions about like, how do you be so productive? But for you, for you two guys, what impact does it have on your work?

• 1:14:40Speaker 00

  That it makes you a little dumber while you're on it. But for us, uh, you know, no matter what job you have, no matter how amazing it is, it's work. And work in some ways sucks. And what we've tried to do at our office, like we have a big buck hunter in our office. And just taking five minutes and playing around a big buck hunter, it like lets you chill out. Going for a little walk to get a cup of coffee. Well, and for us, and for some people, it's a very, very bad idea. I would say like most people, it makes them work so much worse that they shouldn't. But some people, it relaxes them.

• 1:15:13Speaker 01

  I think what's important, I think why it's helpful to us is because it's what we do socially. And, and so it makes work not feel like work. And I was, I was actually just like yesterday, reading this thing that Isaac, like it was an old article that Isaac Asimov wrote about the creative process that was just republished. And one of the things he talks a lot about is, is in his process, how it's very important to create like a casual environment. And he says like, you shouldn't work in an office, you should work in someone's living room or in a restaurant and you should, and you need people who are jovial, who so you can, who create a fun environment because a lot of writing is failure. And if you're self-conscious that you're going to be rejected, then you won't say your best ideas.

• 1:15:57Speaker 01

  And, and I think again, if it's, I think our thing happens to be smoking weed with some people. It's, it's, it's other things, but I think because it makes how we're working feel like a not working environment, it makes our brains function in a slightly more free way. And it makes us pitch ideas that maybe we would feel we're too stupid to pitch if we were in a more rigid environment and it would make ideas like this is the end not exist. Not because we're stoned, but because we are, we're working in an environment that feels very safe and that feels very. Social and casual and that um and and that lets us pitch out the ideas that might seem like the craziest ideas you could ever pitch out, but because we don't feel like we're in a

• 1:16:42Speaker 01

  work environment where everyone's judging us and that we're um wasting time or not, you know, hitting the numbers or quotas that we have to be hitting. It it allows us, I think, to be more free creative.

• 1:16:54Speaker 00

  Yeah, like in in our office right now. Seth has a bunch of paintings that he's bought over the years from home and he put them around and it feels like home. That's yeah, I like it. I have my yoga blocks and my yoga straps and doing the stretches to me is is akin to the smoking pot.

• 1:17:07Tim Ferriss?

  You have one of the best uh Caucasian squats I've ever seen.

• 1:17:13Speaker 00

  Thank you, sir.

• 1:17:14Tim Ferriss?

  He doesn't have the sitting position usually. He goes from straight standing to perfect as in Japan, they would call it unkozawari. Unkozawari is uh the shit squat.

• 1:17:24Speaker 00

  Tell them what you bought me.

• 1:17:25Speaker 01

  I bought Evan like a platform that goes around his toilet so he can squat and shit into his toilet.

• 1:17:31Speaker 00

  There's one thing people listening to this should take from this podcast. It's you should be squatting when you shit. It's natural, it's better for you, it's bad for your back, it's bad for your bowels to sit on a toilet, pop a squat.

• 1:17:43Tim Ferriss?

  What do you guys use? Now, I feel like since you guys grew up in uh in B C. That it's uh for that is to pot as like growing up in France would be to wine. Is there a particular type of pot? Because I've had friends be like, no, man, you get anxious because of this. You're using the wrong thing.

• 1:18:00Speaker 00

  I will say that those friends are possibly correct. Um I had somebody who was telling me, oh, pot's too strong. I don't like it. It makes me anxious. So I went to one of the stores in California and said, can you give me some pot from nineteen ninety five? And they did, and I gave it to the person and they were like, there you go.

• 1:18:17Speaker 01

  As strong and basically like.

• 1:18:19Tim Ferriss?

  Oh, that's right, because I've heard.

• 1:18:21Speaker 01

  Basically, like the weakest, like what is the absolute worst weed you could buy now is what the best weed was when we were in high school, probably.

• 1:18:29Speaker 00

  Yeah, we we have a problem where people will smoke pot with us and we'll be like, take it easy. We don't smoke weak stuff.

• 1:18:36Speaker 01

  Yeah, we continued smoking good weed.

• 1:18:38Speaker 00

  But uh, but to get name specific, uh, uh, Jack Herr.

• 1:18:43Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:18:43Speaker 00

  Is, is a good working one. There's also good ones for work and ones that ruin work.

• 1:18:47Speaker 01

  Very simple. There's sativas and indicus and sativas are generally kinda uppers and indicus are generally kinda downers. And when you're working, a sativa's generally better because it's not bogging you down.

• 1:18:57Tim Ferriss?

  Jack Herr, like a name.

• 1:18:58Speaker 01

  H E R R E. H E R R E R.

• 1:19:01Speaker 00

  H E R R E.

• 1:19:02Tim Ferriss?

  Ah.

• 1:19:02Speaker 00

  I think there's one R in the middle, but.

• 1:19:04Speaker 01

  Uh.

• 1:19:06Tim Ferriss?

  Is there, do you guys have any, uh, just in closing, ask or recommendation of the people listening?

• 1:19:14Speaker 00

  Um, I would say the, the, the reason that this podcast is happening right now is cause, uh, with that guy, Don Herzfeld I mentioned, there was one day where I was sitting there, I was like, God, what I would do to talk to him. And then I just picked up the phone and called my agent and was like, can you get me Don Herzfeld's number? And I talked to him and it blew my mind. And then I had the same thing with, uh, this guy, Sam Harris, who I look up to very much. And I like the work of, and I just called him and so I reached out to you in the same way. And you write about this in your book as well. And I just think if you idolize someone or you look up to someone or you respect someone's work, try to get in touch with them. It's, there's no harm. And so far I'm three for three and I have an advantageous position with an agent and all that.

• 1:19:55Speaker 01

  Incredibly successful producer, writer, director.

• 1:19:59Speaker 00

  But still, still, there's, there's, there's like, uh, there's some guy, uh, named Jordan, who I ran into on the street, who I email with. And he now works at Funny or Die and I keep him in mind. And I, I don't know this guy from anything. He just came up to me one day on the street and it's worth a shot. You never know.

• 1:20:14Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah. What's the worst that could happen?

• 1:20:16Speaker 00

  Well, this Jordan guy could kill me one day.

• 1:20:18Speaker 01

  He could be a serial killer.

• 1:20:20Tim Ferriss?

  You're like totally the wrong people to ask that.

• 1:20:22Speaker 01

  Evan eaten by Jordan.

• 1:20:24Tim Ferriss?

  But, uh, no, it's so true. I mean, uh, some fans of mine have, uh, you know, reached out to Warren Buffett and gotten handwritten letters back from him. You just never know.

• 1:20:31Speaker 00

  Yeah. Well, well, it's the same thing. Like sometimes, like Seth and I always talk about this, we'll find ourselves doing like an interview or something. And we look at each other and we're like, why are we, when did we agree to this? Why would we do this?

• 1:20:40Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:20:41Speaker 00

  Sometimes people just drop their guards and agree to shit they shouldn't.

• 1:20:44Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 1:20:45Tim Ferriss?

  I'm not sure if that's a, if that's like a wink, wink at me at the moment.

• 1:20:49Speaker 01

  I've been in whole movies, I don't understand why.

• 1:20:52Speaker 00

  Yeah, and like, you called the person on the one day where their will is exhausted from whatever else. And they're just like, yeah, man, I'll be with you as long as I can get off this phone call right now.

• 1:21:01Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's what I think too, is just, just do it. I mean, like.

• 1:21:04Speaker 00

  Nike.

• 1:21:05Speaker 01

  You meet so many people, Nike, I mean Nike has the best tagline of all time, but um, it's like we, so many people talk about writing movies and we did write a movie and like, you know, my wife wanted to make a movie and so she raised a billion dollars and made a movie like, it's not something that is completely unachievable. It's something that if you are somewhat talented and have a lot of determination and are willing to put yourself out there and are willing to fail, then you can probably do something more than nothing.

• 1:21:39Speaker 00

  Yeah, and like, in the end, Superbad was a success, but like, make no mistake, for ten years, it was a failure.

• 1:21:45Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:21:45Speaker 00

  And the first five drafts, like, if you read them, you'd be like, this is the worst thing I've ever read in my life.

• 1:21:50Speaker 01

  People told us over and over and over again, like, I don't think anyone's gonna make this movie, I don't think anyone's gonna make this movie, and like, it literally didn't even occur to us to, to listen to them. Like, it wasn't even a conversation of like, should we stop? Like, I literally, we didn't even have that conversation. It was just like, fuck those people, let's go to the next one, you know?

• 1:22:06Speaker 00

  Like, to picture like Stephen King writing his first book and then being like, man, I'm stumped.

• 1:22:11Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:22:12Speaker 00

  I'm gonna go, I'm gonna go be a something else, like, you just, you just, you just keep going.

• 1:22:17Speaker 01

  Blind belief in yourself.

• 1:22:20Tim Ferriss?

  The Four Hour Workweek was turned down twenty-six or twenty-seven times also. I mean viciously, like violently. I have these like angry, sort of infuriated, insulted letters from acquiring editors turned it down. Alright guys, well, uh, let's, uh, I really appreciate all the time. Let's wrap up and, uh, we can do that with, uh, telling people where they can find more about you guys, find you on the social webs, and so on, if they want to say hi.

• 1:22:43Speaker 00

  We, uh, due to a film called The Interview, we're not as active on the internet as we used to be.

• 1:22:48Speaker 01

  Pretty active.

• 1:22:49Speaker 00

  Uh, I, I muck about on Twitter a little, a little and.

• 1:22:52Speaker 01

  You're Evan Goldberg on Twitter.

• 1:22:53Speaker 00

  I'm Evan Goldberg on Twitter.

• 1:22:55Tim Ferriss?

  Is it Evan or Evan D. Goldberg? Or Evan?

• 1:22:58Speaker 01

  I think it's just Evan Goldberg.

• 1:22:59Tim Ferriss?

  It's been a while. I will, I will put it in the show notes for everybody also.

• 1:23:04Speaker 01

  I'm Seth Rogen on Twitter.

• 1:23:06Tim Ferriss?

  And that's Rogan with an E or an A?

• 1:23:08Speaker 01

  With an E.

• 1:23:10Speaker 01

  Not to be confused.

• 1:23:11Speaker 00

  If you, if you write a letter and put it under the second O in the Hollywood sign, or the second L in the Hollywood sign.

• 1:23:16Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:23:16Speaker 00

  We go up there and we'll read it.

• 1:23:19Tim Ferriss?

  All right, guys. Well, thanks so much for taking the time. I really appreciate it. Everybody listening, of course, thank you for listening as always. And for all the show notes and everything else, you can go to fourhourworkweek.com, spelled out, just click on Podcast. And until next time, thanks for listening. Thanks, guys.

• 1:23:33Speaker 01

  Thank you.

• 1:23:37Tim Ferriss?

  Hey, guys. This is Tim again. Just a few more things before you take off. Number one, this is Five Bullet Friday. Do you want to get a short email from me? Would you enjoy getting a short email from me every Friday that provides a little morsel of fun before the weekend? And Five Bullet Friday is a very short email where I share the coolest things I've found or that I've been pondering over the week. That could include favorite new albums that I've discovered. It could include gizmos and gadgets and all sorts of weird shit that I've somehow dug up in the, the world of the esoteric, as I do. It could include favorite articles that I've read and that I've shared with my close friends, for instance. And it's very short. It's just a little tiny bite of goodness

• 1:24:22Tim Ferriss?

  before you head off for the weekend. So if you want to receive that, check it out. Just go to fourhourworkweek.com. That's fourhourworkweek.com, all spelled out, and just drop in your email and you will get the very next one. And if you sign up, I hope you enjoy it. This episode is brought to you by Athletic Greens. I get asked all the time, if you could only use one supplement, what would it be? And my answer is inevitably Athletic Greens. It is your all-in-one nutritional insurance. I recommended it in The Four Hour Body, did not get paid for that. And I travel with it to avoid getting sick. I take it in the mornings to ensure optimal performance. It just covers all my bases. If I can't get what I need through whole food meals throughout the rest of the day. And you can get 50, oh

• 1:25:05Tim Ferriss?

  my God, 50% off, yes. 50% off if you You go to athleticgreens.com/tim. That's athleticgreens.com/tim. Check it out. It's tasty, but more important, it will help you not screw up when you're doing your nutritional planning. So for me, it just covers the bases, takes a load off my mind, puts a lot in my body. And check it out, athleticgreens.com/tim. This episode is brought to you by Vimeo Pro, which is the ideal video hosting platform for entrepreneurs. And in fact, a bunch of my startups already use Vimeo Pro, including Wealthfront, who uses it to explain how Wealthfront works. TaskRabbit uses it to tell their company's story. And there are many other names you would recognize among their customers, Airbnb, Etsy, et cetera.

• 1:25:50Tim Ferriss?

  Why do they use it? Well, Vimeo Pro provides enterprise-level video hosting for a fraction of the usual cost. Features include gorgeous, high-quality playback with no ads, up to 20 gigabytes of video storage every week, unlimited plays and views, and a fully customizable video player, which can include your logo, custom outro, et cetera. You also get VIP support. And you get all of this for just $1.99 per year. That's $17 a month with no complicated bandwidth calculations or hidden fees. And you can try it risk-free for 30 days. So check it out, vimeo.com/business. That's V-I-M-E-O.com/business. And use promo code TIM to get 25% off. That's a special discount just for you guys.

• 1:26:33Tim Ferriss?

  So check it out, vimeo.com/business, promo code TIM.

• 1:26:40Speaker 03

  If you want more of The Tim Ferriss Show, you can subscribe to the podcast on iTunes or go to fourhourblog.com, F-O-U-R-H-O-U-R-B-L-O-G.com, where you'll find an award-winning blog, tons of audio and video interview stories with people like Warren Buffett and Mike Shinoda from Linkin Park, the books, plus much, much more. Follow Tim on Twitter, that's twitter.com/TFerriss. That's T-F-E-R-R-I-S-S. Or on Facebook at facebook.com/TimFerriss. Until next time, thanks for listening.