Josh Brolin

Actor Josh Brolin feels so Don Cheadle about being Conan O’Brien’s friend. Josh sits down with Conan to discuss stories of his parents out of his new memoir From Under the Truck, bucking the notion of celebrity, the lasting impact of The Goonies, and receiving his first motorcycle at three years old. Later, the team asks: are Conan and the Chums the perfect Dick, Dork, & Dear? For Conan videos, tour dates and more visit TeamCoco.com. Got a question for Conan? Call our voicemail: (669) 587-2847.

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

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 0:26Speaker 01

  What do I gift my mom and nieces?

• 0:28Speaker 02

  Walmart has top brands you know, like Ninja, Disney, Lego.

• 0:34Speaker 01

  Oh, Dad loves music.

• 0:36Speaker 02

  Sonos can bring his songs to life with sound that hits just right.

• 0:42Speaker 01

  And my coffee-obsessed bestie?

• 0:44Speaker 02

  Delongi Brews Coffee, right for mornings extra bright.

• 0:47Speaker 01

  All those great brands at Walmart? Who knew?

• 0:50Speaker 02

  We knew, now you do too.

• 0:52Speaker 00

  Shop gifts no love at Walmart.

• 0:59Speaker 00

  Hi, my name is Josh Brolin and I feel

• 1:05Speaker 00

  so Don Cheadle about being on Conan O'Brien's friend.

• 1:11Speaker 00

  I don't even know what that means. What does it mean?

• 1:13Speaker 01

  Who knows?

• 1:14Speaker 00

  Badass, horny.

• 1:16Speaker 01

  You feel horny? Nice.

• 1:29Speaker 02

  Hey there. Welcome to Conan O'Brien Needs a Friend. And we have a wonderful podcast today. Joined, as always, by Sonam of Sessian and Matt Gourley, I believe.

• 1:40Conan O'Brien?

  I'm not even

• 1:51Speaker 04

  Share myself.

• 1:51Conan O'Brien?

  And Sona, this has gotta be a big day for you.

• 1:55Speaker 05

  It is.

• 1:56Conan O'Brien?

  Because, and we rarely do this, we rarely talk about the guest, but this guest is one of the stars of a movie which has become, over time, the Citizen Kane of your generation.

• 2:09Speaker 05

  It defined a generation.

• 2:11Conan O'Brien?

  Don't scream.

• 2:12Speaker 05

  I'm sorry.

• 2:12Conan O'Brien?

  We're all in the same room. Jesus Christ.

• 2:15Speaker 05

  Blaze, not here, I'm compensating.

• 2:17Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah.

• 2:18Speaker 05

  When you say like the Citizen Kane, I don't know.

• 2:21Conan O'Brien?

  You don't even know what I'm talking about. Citizen Kane was a movie with Orson Welles.

• 2:24Speaker 05

  I know what you're talking about.

• 2:26Conan O'Brien?

  Okay.

• 2:26Speaker 05

  That is very insulting.

• 2:29Conan O'Brien?

  I know. I don't think you know about things.

• 2:31Speaker 04

  I think he said it to insult you.

• 2:33Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah.

• 2:33Speaker 05

  Oh, okay, okay. Well, I know what Citizen Kane is.

• 2:36Conan O'Brien?

  Okay.

• 2:36Speaker 05

  Okay, yeah, but it's, you know what, it's just such a beloved movie.

• 2:41Conan O'Brien?

  It surprised me, I'm just gonna tell you, the movie, it skipped me because I was a little too old. And when I say a little too old, way too old.

• 2:49Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 2:49Conan O'Brien?

  The movie came out, I believe, in 1985 or 86. And I'm just.

• 2:54Speaker 04

  Eighty-five, I think.

• 2:54Conan O'Brien?

  Eighty-five. And I'm just getting my career started out in LA and with my writing partner Greg Daniels. And I remember the two of us, what's that?

• 3:03Speaker 05

  Name drop.

• 3:03Conan O'Brien?

  Yes, yes. Well, he's a big deal. I'm very happy for his success and someday I'll have some too. But the point is, Greg and I, I remember this movie came out, The Goonies, which was a big deal. So we went to Westwood and we watched it and it was like a movie for kids.

• 3:18Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 3:19Conan O'Brien?

  And Greg and I were sitting there and we were like, okay, well, I guess that's a fun movie for kids. I remember being very annoyed that all the kids talk over each other.

• 3:26Speaker 05

  Ugh, I know.

• 3:27Conan O'Brien?

  Also, and I'm sorry, they also, the kids call gold rich stuff. And kids know the word gold. They just do.

• 3:36Speaker 05

  Your criticisms of this movie are so tiny, teeny, tiny.

• 3:41Speaker 04

  I've never known a movie to have more of a dividing line on whether you love it or hate it. And it's all due to age.

• 3:45Conan O'Brien?

  Yes.

• 3:46Speaker 05

  It is, it's all age. You know, you just don't get it.

• 3:48Conan O'Brien?

  So I didn't get it. I didn't get it. I'll be honest with you, I didn't get it. So flash forward all these years and you start working with me and blah, blah, blah, blah. And then at one point, I remember we're working at Warner Brothers studio together. And someone mentioned, oh, Goonies was shot in this studio where we make our TBS show.

• 4:06Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 4:07Conan O'Brien?

  You were like a nun that had seen the Holy Tomb of Christ.

• 4:13Conan O'Brien?

  You exploded. I mean, uh, bats flew out of you. Uh, there was an explosion, light came down. Um, I heard, I heard Armenian songs that haven't been heard for thousands of years. And you went nuts and you were like, where's the spot? Where's the spot where they stood? Do you think that he stood here? Do you think, and I didn't understand. And so our guest today, Josh Brolin, of course, one of the stars of that film.

• 4:42Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 4:42Conan O'Brien?

  And it's, it's amazing. I mean, it's our-

• 4:45Speaker 05

  Not a goonie from the beginning.

• 4:47Conan O'Brien?

  No, he becomes, explain, cause I don't know the movie. I, I lost track. I know they-

• 4:52Speaker 05

  Yeah, he's Mikey's brother, who is the main kid in it. He's played by Sean Astin.

• 4:56Conan O'Brien?

  Sean Astin, yeah.

• 4:57Speaker 05

  And yeah, he's, he's his brother and then-

• 4:59Conan O'Brien?

  And he's kind of, he's a cool kid.

• 5:01Speaker 05

  Yeah, he's like the jock.

• 5:03Conan O'Brien?

  Are you nervous today?

• 5:04Speaker 05

  Um, I am kind of. I also just, cause he's also Thanos.

• 5:08Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah. What do you revere more? Do you revere him for his goonies role or for Thanos?

• 5:13Speaker 05

  Goonies.

• 5:14Conan O'Brien?

  Okay, oh, what's your problem?

• 5:15Speaker 04

  He's Thanos.

• 5:18Conan O'Brien?

  What's, what?

• 5:19Speaker 04

  Thanos, that's, that's who he's become. And Sicario and-

• 5:23Conan O'Brien?

  Oh, Sicario, Sicario's big, yeah. Okay.

• 5:25Speaker 05

  I don't know, don't you have a movie that you think about from your childhood that you watch it? And you're like, yes, this always makes me happy. That's the goonies for me. You have to have something that, like some emotion for something.

• 5:37Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah, Heidi.

• 5:41Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah, she has super strength and she, right?

• 5:43Speaker 04

  You're thinking of Pippi Longstocking.

• 5:44Conan O'Brien?

  Oh, Pippi Longstocking. Oh, fuck, let's do it again.

• 5:47Speaker 05

  Heidi!

• 5:47Speaker 04

  Oh, no!

• 5:48Conan O'Brien?

  Oh, it's too good. Fuck, I got the wrong one.

• 5:50Speaker 05

  Oh, man!

• 5:51Conan O'Brien?

  I was thinking Pippi Longstocking. I remembered seeing an ad, there was a terrible Pippi Longstocking movie that came out like in the mid 70s. I'm staying at my grandparents' house.

• 6:02Speaker 04

  Take it easy.

• 6:02Conan O'Brien?

  Okay, I'm staying at my, I mean, it was made in, where was it made?

• 6:05Speaker 04

  Sweden.

• 6:06Conan O'Brien?

  Okay, and-

• 6:07Speaker 04

  This is getting dicey.

• 6:08Conan O'Brien?

  And all I remember is my grandparents had this crappy little black and white TV that got no reception. And we're down in Miss Quamica at Rhode Island, staying at my grandparents' little cottage. And my brothers and I are crowded around and they kept playing over and over again this ad for- Come see the new movie, Pippi Longstocking. And it looked weird and you could tell the voices were dubbed badly, right?

• 6:29Speaker 04

  Yeah, they're very bad.

• 6:30Conan O'Brien?

  And there's a part where this awkward looking girl with pigtails who looked a lot like me at the time, like lifts a horse over her head.

• 6:37Speaker 04

  Old Man.

• 6:37Conan O'Brien?

  What's that?

• 6:38Speaker 04

  Old Man is the name of the horse.

• 6:39Conan O'Brien?

  Oh, fuck. What is your problem?

• 6:41Speaker 05

  Come on.

• 6:41Conan O'Brien?

  You're not helping the conversational flow.

• 6:43Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 6:43Conan O'Brien?

  Anyway.

• 6:44Speaker 05

  Or your coolness factor.

• 6:45Speaker 04

  I'm not after coolness, I'm after...

• 6:47Conan O'Brien?

  Veracity, yeah. So anyway.

• 6:49Speaker 04

  I'm after hard facts.

• 6:50Conan O'Brien?

  Pippi, Pippi, like any good journalist, Pippi lifts the horse over her head, okay? And the special effect is terrible.

• 6:59Speaker 04

  No, it's not. It's not. It's pretty good for the time.

• 7:01Conan O'Brien?

  And anyway, she lifts it over her head and then they cut, they cut to a Swedish boy who's got like red cheeks and like some chocolate on his mouth. And I'll never forget, it's so badly dubbed and he goes, "Pippi, are you crazy?"

• 7:14Speaker 04

  See? That's quality.

• 7:16Conan O'Brien?

  And that burned into my brain. "Pippi, are you crazy?" So that whole summer of 1974, on Crandall Avenue in Miss Quamacut, Rhode Island, I would walk around looking not unlike Pippi and going, "Pippi, are you crazy?" Until I was beaten by my brothers.

• 7:38Speaker 05

  Yes.

• 7:38Conan O'Brien?

  And rightfully so.

• 7:39Speaker 05

  I would have beaten you.

• 7:40Conan O'Brien?

  God, that, what a terrible looking movie. Anyway, we got off on, we got off track, but it was the Goonies of its day. That was the Goonies before the Goonies.

• 7:47Speaker 05

  You think so?

• 7:48Conan O'Brien?

  No, I don't. I'm just being a dick.

• 7:49Speaker 04

  I was a big Goonies fan as well and I'll give you one guess to which my favorite Goonie was.

• 7:54Conan O'Brien?

  Uh, the one that had all the secret inventions?

• 7:55Speaker 04

  Yes, yeah, exactly. So much so that when I was in junior high, I took a little like travel soap dish that could open and close and made a belt buckle out of it and put a little motor with a clock cog in it.

• 8:07Speaker 05

  Oh my god.

• 8:07Speaker 04

  That would pop out like a saw blade and so...

• 8:13Conan O'Brien?

  I have one question.

• 8:14Speaker 04

  And I just need, I just, no, I just need a...

• 8:16Conan O'Brien?

  No, I just need a number. No, mine is how many times were you stabbed? In school?

• 8:22Speaker 04

  Well, none, because I was defended by a-

• 8:25Conan O'Brien?

  So you were-

• 8:25Speaker 04

  A belt buckle?

• 8:26Conan O'Brien?

  You made a- You- So you- Data, he's the guy that has like these weird devices that come out of his raincoat.

• 8:32Speaker 04

  And plays the James Bond music when he enters the movie. I mean, come on.

• 8:35Speaker 05

  Oh, I didn't know-

• 8:36Speaker 04

  And he's played by Short Round from Temple of Moon, Pequon.

• 8:39Speaker 05

  I was gonna say, was this before or after?

• 8:40Speaker 04

  It's after.

• 8:41Speaker 05

  Is- so you already were like, yeah, Pookie and Janet Jones. And then you saw him in The Goonies, you're like, oh my god, Short Round.

• 8:47Speaker 04

  And then I went to junior high, popped open my plastic soap dish-

• 8:49Speaker 05

  Oh, boy.

• 8:51Conan O'Brien?

  Oh, my god.

• 8:51Speaker 04

  I tell you what, though, I'm not even joking, normally I would self-deprecate. I was cock of the walk that day, let me tell you something. Every kid was lining up to see that soap dish saw blade, and I walked out of there with my head held high.

• 9:05Conan O'Brien?

  I was cock of the walk. And I love that, that hasn't been said, I'm getting it, I'm getting it right now. Oh, here it is. Hasn't been said since 1934. Franklin Roosevelt, after a fireside shot, turned to Eleanor and said, "I'm cock of the walk now."

• 9:22Speaker 05

  People have said that before?

• 9:23Conan O'Brien?

  Oh, yeah, that cock of the walk is a- oh, that was a big thing.

• 9:26Speaker 05

  But like cock what? Cock like the rooster cock, or cock like dick cock?

• 9:29Conan O'Brien?

  No, no, no, not- Jesus, why do you always have to drag everything out of the gutter?

• 9:34Speaker 05

  It's my- me, I do- I don't always do that, I'm just saying, you say cock of the walk. When I hear cock, it's the first thing I he- think of is penis. I'm sorry, it's a penis.

• 9:43Conan O'Brien?

  When you hear lightbulb, the first thing you think of is cock.

• 9:46Speaker 04

  Oh, my god.

• 9:48Conan O'Brien?

  What is that, marzipan? What, did someone say cock?

• 9:53Speaker 05

  Yeah, rap, please.

• 9:54Conan O'Brien?

  Nope, I wanna do more of these.

• 9:56Speaker 05

  Cock it up!

• 9:57Conan O'Brien?

  I'm Tona's therapist, I'm gonna hold some images up to you, here's one, cock! Here's another one, dick! Here's one, scrote!

• 10:07Speaker 05

  Most of the people who heard him say cock of the walk thought what I thought, by the way.

• 10:12Conan O'Brien?

  No, I don't think so, I don't think so.

• 10:14Speaker 05

  No?

• 10:14Conan O'Brien?

  Nope, no one here.

• 10:15Speaker 05

  Fuck everybody. Okay.

• 10:18Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah, yeah, I just love-

• 10:19Speaker 04

  You got burned.

• 10:20Conan O'Brien?

  You got burned, you got burned.

• 10:22Speaker 05

  I thought Eduardo would be on my side, but I-

• 10:24Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah, like when I say I'm wearing a turtleneck dickey, do you think dick?

• 10:28Speaker 05

  What are you- what is a turtleneck dickey?

• 10:30Conan O'Brien?

  A turtleneck dickey is like a- a-

• 10:32Speaker 05

  I've never heard of that.

• 10:33Conan O'Brien?

  It looks like you're wearing a turtleneck, but you're not, and it only goes this far, and you put it under your- We'll cut this part, it's not as good as what we just had. Cockaroo!

• 10:40Speaker 05

  Okay.

• 10:40Conan O'Brien?

  Um, we always elevate, and then we get back into the mud, and then, I mean, actually, we never elevate.

• 10:46Speaker 04

  No.

• 10:46Speaker 05

  I know, what are you- what-

• 10:47Conan O'Brien?

  All right, let's get into it.

• 10:48Speaker 05

  Podcast you think you're on.

• 10:51Conan O'Brien?

  The rest is history.

• 10:52Speaker 05

  In the dirt.

• 10:53Conan O'Brien?

  My guest today is an actor who has starred in movies like, oh, I love it. In his credits, it doesn't say the one movie that Sona loves. My guest today is an actor who has starred in movies like No Country for Old Men and Avengers Endgame.

• 11:08Speaker 05

  And The Goonies.

• 11:09Conan O'Brien?

  Doesn't say that.

• 11:09Speaker 00

  Thrash him.

• 11:10Speaker 05

  Well, you don't have to read what it says. You could say The Goonies too.

• 11:13Conan O'Brien?

  Nope, doesn't say it here. He now has a new memoir titled, and guess what? I've read this book and it is beautiful and is very powerful. I can't say enough good about this book. I'm being very sincere. It's a lovely, it's a lovely testament. This gentleman has written about his very unusual life. It's very cool. It's titled From Under the Truck. I'm thrilled he's here today.

• 11:40Conan O'Brien?

  From The Goonies. Josh Brolin, welcome.

• 11:46Conan O'Brien?

  I think you're excited to see me.

• 11:48Speaker 00

  I am excited. I'm really excited. The first time I went on your show was for flirting with disaster.

• 11:55Conan O'Brien?

  Yep.

• 11:56Speaker 00

  And I think, you know, which I'm much less nervous and I still get nervous, but not really. I don't care as much now.

• 12:01Conan O'Brien?

  Yep.

• 12:01Speaker 00

  But back then I told a story about how my dad's so good looking that I told him I wanted to have sex with him or something like that. And nobody got it.

• 12:13Speaker 00

  I still think it's funny.

• 12:15Conan O'Brien?

  It is funny.

• 12:16Speaker 00

  It is funny because it's your dad and like, of course you don't want to have sex with your dad. And somebody that's that good looking, even the son would want to have sex with him. Every angle I look at it from, it's still funny. And literally you and I were like, you went, and I looked out and everybody was like, like nothing.

• 12:34Conan O'Brien?

  You know, it was a different time.

• 12:36Speaker 00

  It was a different time.

• 12:36Conan O'Brien?

  It was a different time and you were way ahead of the curve. That wasn't on you. That was on that audience that night. It was a bad audience. I remember them fuckers.

• 12:44Speaker 00

  Or they didn't give a fuck what I had to say.

• 12:47Conan O'Brien?

  I, I'm going to start because I have to say this right away. And I address my cohorts here. Mr. Brolin here, Josh Brolin, has written a book and I told him this backstage and I want to say it right here, right now. Many celebrities write a book or known people write a book and you look at it and you go, okay, they cranked this out. This is a beautiful book. This is a really beautiful book. What are you doing?

• 13:09Speaker 00

  I'm just video recording it.

• 13:12Conan O'Brien?

  We're recording this the whole time.

• 13:14Speaker 04

  He has a YouTube channel.

• 13:16Speaker 00

  No, I don't. I won't use this for anybody other than my own ego.

• 13:19Conan O'Brien?

  Okay, there you go. Um, this is a gorgeous book and it's really powerful and it is brilliantly written and I read this thing and I, I thought, there was so much in it that I did not know about you. It's fantastic. It's great. And it's called Josh Brolin, A Memoir From Under The Truck. I didn't know all this stuff about you. You jump around in time. You talk a lot about the different experiences you had on different projects and there's a lot to talk about here. But the thread that runs through this whole thing is your mom.

• 13:54Speaker 00

  Yep.

• 13:54Conan O'Brien?

  And it is very powerful stuff. Man, is she a character.

• 13:58Speaker 00

  She is a character. She was a character, is a character, continues to be a character.

• 14:02Conan O'Brien?

  It's so interesting because one of my favorite movies of all time, and I think I've probably told you this hundreds of times, odd, nauseating bit, No Country For Old Men is one of my all-time favorite movies and your performance in it and Javier's performance in it.

• 14:19Speaker 00

  Incredible.

• 14:19Conan O'Brien?

  But I watched that movie again and again and again and marvel at it. This, what I never realized is that your character, Llewellyn, is much closer to you and the way you grew up than I ever knew.

• 14:33Speaker 00

  Hmm.

• 14:34Conan O'Brien?

  Which is fascinating.

• 14:35Speaker 00

  In what way? In what way did you mean?

• 14:36Conan O'Brien?

  Well, you grow up, I mean...

• 14:38Speaker 00

  Oh, you mean ranch and all that kind of stuff?

• 14:40Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah. First of all, your life, and there are so many passages in this book where you're taking care of animals, you're living on a ranch, you're living in this incredibly rural environment. You've got this life that was much manlier than anything I've ever experienced. I had a butterfly neck.

• 15:04Conan O'Brien?

  Occasionally I'd go outside with my butterfly net. And then my mother would say, get back inside, the sun's out.

• 15:14Conan O'Brien?

  So, but, uh, your mom, let's talk about your mom because she's runs through this book and, uh, she died very tragically, I believe 1995 is when you lost your mom. But she jumps off the page and it's very unconventional. She's not a conventional mom in any way. Uh, you guys are drinking buddies, pretty much at an early age.

• 15:41Speaker 00

  I think I say it in one of the, if you, you know, chapters, if you will, which we decided at the, toward the tail end of this to put in chapters to make it followable or just, you know, stories that you could kind of note and go back to. But there's one that said, I was, I can't remember exactly what it says, but it says, it says something like, I was created in her kind of, uh, likeness to be a drinker. Do you know what I mean?

• 16:07Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 16:07Speaker 00

  So it was like, it was kind of like a surrogate husband, so to speak. My dad was, you know, extremely, they got married in 12 days after seven days. I think after five, no, it was seven days. They sat down, they had a scorpion drink, one of those massive cups between them. My dad was reeling from an, from a recent breakup and my mom with her voice, that Texan voice, they were, you know, drinking it up and she looked up and she goes, well? And my dad's like, yeah. And he, she goes, are we, we gonna do it or what? And he was like, do what? And she said, get married. Are we gonna just, are we gonna do it or what? And he got so kind of, you know, perplexed and confused and nervous that he just said, yeah, I guess. And she said, okay.

• 16:52Speaker 00

  And she started planning it at that moment.

• 16:54Conan O'Brien?

  Wow.

• 16:55Speaker 00

  And five days. Later, they were married.

• 16:57Conan O'Brien?

  Of course, your dad, very well known actor, James Brolin.

• 17:00Speaker 00

  Super handsome.

• 17:01Conan O'Brien?

  Super handsome. I mean, I'd fuck him.

• 17:07Speaker 00

  Yes, full circle, full circle.

• 17:10Conan O'Brien?

  I have. Drag it. You're not supposed to talk about it.

• 17:16Speaker 04

  He said it was okay.

• 17:17Conan O'Brien?

  But it's it's it's interesting because.

• 17:19Speaker 00

  It's a new era.

• 17:19Conan O'Brien?

  Because we live in this era where people talk about, you know, nepo and oh, you're the you're the child.

• 17:27Speaker 00

  That's like the new thing.

• 17:28Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah, that's the new thing. But I'm saying that, oh, you're the child of celebrity. You read this book, your dad.

• 17:35Speaker 00

  And you're like, where the fuck is the celebrity?

• 17:37Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah, yeah, your dad, your dad is not.

• 17:40Speaker 00

  It's kind of the point.

• 17:41Conan O'Brien?

  Your dad kind of is is not really in the picture that much. He's very peripheral. Your mom, you say, my childhood was on a leash of the whims of my mother. And and that you were sort of told to be you're you're going to be the man of the house, even though you're a little kid. And.

• 18:01Speaker 00

  Didn't matter to her.

• 18:02Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah. And then you live this life that is completely different. I mean, you are on a ranch. There's like 22s rifles. There's, I mean, the the life you're living is not that of a kid who's growing up in any kind of privilege.

• 18:19Speaker 00

  Yeah, but that's the whole thing. And that's the thing that, you know, either people are really interested in or they're not interested in. To me, I know that I've fought the idea of celebrity my whole life, even though I didn't grow up in LA. Everybody thinks I grew up in Malibu. I didn't grow up in Malibu. And then you you imagine what happens on a set and you think it's this perpetual red carpet and you're just waving, literally your entire life.

• 18:39Conan O'Brien?

  Yep.

• 18:39Speaker 00

  Do you know what I mean?

• 18:40Conan O'Brien?

  Yes.

• 18:40Speaker 00

  There is a perception of, I was just on the on the phone with my lit agent, Kimberly Witherspoon this morning and and and I was like, I'm I'm spinning, I'm spinning. Like you saw me, I felt it get uncomfortable when you said those nice things about the book. I got teary, you know, I got. This means the world to me because it's me being naked about the realities of the life that I've lived and the life of a lot of other celebrities that I know. You know, there's no. And it's not that it's looking for compassion, it's not. But there's no compassion in that. There's no just like, oh, you you guys have the same problems. No, you don't. You live in a bubble. You all live in under the same apartment complex. And you just go, what, what, what are you thinking?

• 19:24Conan O'Brien?

  Right, right.

• 19:25Speaker 00

  What are you thinking? What about the life of this kind of unconventional life? Of this guy who was germinated unbeknownst to anybody that it was going to be this into an artist who just found creativity as an outlet. Got attached to it. The self-destructive part of him grew and grew and grew with it. And then somehow through having kids and all that, found his way out of the self.

• 19:49Conan O'Brien?

  Well, I read this book and I thought it's kind of a miracle you're alive because there's so many parts of this book where your drinking is out of control and you're, uh, you almost, it feels like you have a death wish at times. Same thing with your mom. And, and, and you, you read this, these accounts, which again are so beautifully written and, and then you intersperse that by jumping around with, you show up on the set to shoot The Goonies. And so there's this crazy world that you're living in where you feel like, oh, he's a ranch hand. He's not even a ranch hand. He's someone who has to work his way up to being a ranch hand. That's how it feels sometimes. And then suddenly you time travel.

• 20:32Conan O'Brien?

  You're on the set of The Goonies and you feel like this is weird. I don't know what this is, this make believe world that, that I'm in. This seems kind of fun, but.

• 20:42Speaker 00

  But not, not even close to as surreal as my world.

• 20:45Conan O'Brien?

  Yes, yes. Your world is much more surreal.

• 20:47Speaker 00

  Totally.

• 20:48Conan O'Brien?

  Than showing up and making the, the Goonies with Steven Spielberg and Richard Donner like.

• 20:55Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 20:55Conan O'Brien?

  With, uh, and, and by the way, I have to step outside this conversation for one second and tell you that Sonoma, Sonoma Sessian Citizen Kane is The Goonies. And I'm and and so and I witnessed this firsthand because this is true for an entire generation. I shoot this travel show and I was not long ago in New Zealand and I'm in New Zealand and I see a kind of a familiar face way across the way in this strange hotel we're in and she starts coming closer to me and she goes, Conan, hi. And I go, hi, I can't see quite who it is. And she gets closer and I realize, oh, it's Martha Plimpton.

• 21:30Speaker 00

  Oh, what?

• 21:31Conan O'Brien?

  Martha Plimpton's in New Zealand. She's there to shoot something. She sits at our table. Holt's Court is lovely, fantastic, really funny. My crew is all women, three women, two cameras and sound. They are shaking, shaking and I'm.

• 21:46Speaker 00

  Because she's in the.

• 21:47Conan O'Brien?

  And and the thing is, I kept thinking, yeah, Martha Plimpton, she's great, but shaking?

• 21:52Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 21:53Conan O'Brien?

  You know, you never shook when you met me. Why are they shaking? Is is you guys have a is there a tremor going around? And at the end of the night, they went, can we just please, please, please, please, Martha, can we just please get a picture with you? And then after they get the picture, they're practically crying and hugging each other that they got to. And I said to them, what? And they said, the Goonies.

• 22:12Speaker 05

  Yep.

• 22:13Conan O'Brien?

  Right?

• 22:14Speaker 05

  Oh, yeah, Matt, too. It's not just me. It's true, formative. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 22:18Conan O'Brien?

  And you do whole.

• 22:19Speaker 05

  Movie of my life.

• 22:20Conan O'Brien?

  You do whole monologues to me about Troy's bucket.

• 22:23Speaker 05

  Yes, of course. It's the most inspirational monologue ever.

• 22:27Conan O'Brien?

  There have been times, because Sona's been with me for a long time, and there have been times where I've been and we've been all over the place. And and I'm not kidding, there were times where I was on tour and it was right after the Tonight Show fiasco and I'm down and out and I'm like, man, I gotta salvage my career.

• 22:41Speaker 05

  It's their time.

• 22:42Conan O'Brien?

  And you would say, Conan, it's their time up there, it's your time. And I went, what are you talking about? And she went.

• 22:47Speaker 00

  It's not your time, it's our time.

• 22:49Conan O'Brien?

  It's our time. And I'm like, Sona, what is this? And everyone around her was like, she's right, it's Troy's bucket. I'm like, what the fuck are you people talking about? I'm 87 years old.

• 23:01Speaker 00

  Dude, buddy, honestly, it's like if you did a Freud quote, if you did some other quote, you'd be like, wow.

• 23:11Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah.

• 23:12Speaker 00

  But because it's the Goonies, it has this reference of like, cute.

• 23:17Conan O'Brien?

  No, but for a whole generation, it is wow.

• 23:19Speaker 00

  No, no, no, no, dude. For like three generations. I don't know how many gen- how old are you, my age?

• 23:24Conan O'Brien?

  I am 98 years old.

• 23:25Speaker 00

  Yeah, I know. So you are. We're the same age.

• 23:27Conan O'Brien?

  I fought in World War II.

• 23:28Speaker 00

  Oh, did you?

• 23:29Conan O'Brien?

  I am 61.

• 23:30Speaker 00

  You're 61, 56.

• 23:32Conan O'Brien?

  Okay, well, let's rub it in.

• 23:34Speaker 00

  Yeah. 61, you look so good.

• 23:37Conan O'Brien?

  Thank you. I've had a ton of work done.

• 23:39Speaker 00

  Have you?

• 23:39Conan O'Brien?

  I'm constantly-

• 23:40Speaker 00

  Do you get filler, honestly?

• 23:41Conan O'Brien?

  I get no filler.

• 23:42Speaker 00

  I do.

• 23:42Conan O'Brien?

  And you know what? Really?

• 23:44Speaker 00

  Yeah, my lips.

• 23:45Conan O'Brien?

  No.

• 23:46Speaker 00

  No, I love how you just looked.

• 23:47Speaker 05

  No, you don't. We all looked at you.

• 23:49Conan O'Brien?

  Let's see those guys.

• 23:50Speaker 00

  Dude, can you imagine somebody like me getting filler?

• 23:53Speaker 05

  No. As he sits cross-legged on the chair, by the way. Look at this. This is great. We all just stared at your lips.

• 23:59Conan O'Brien?

  Josh, you know what's amazing? Uh, no one would ever believe that I would get filler in my lips because I have no lips.

• 24:05Speaker 05

  Yeah, it's tough.

• 24:06Conan O'Brien?

  My mouth is a slit. It's a gash in my face.

• 24:09Speaker 05

  You do have great cheekbones.

• 24:11Speaker 00

  You do have great cheekbones, and you would look amazing with bigger lips. I suggest that you do filler.

• 24:16Conan O'Brien?

  You know what I should do? I should get-

• 24:18Speaker 00

  I don't think it's a bad thing. I know there can be reactions, but even you, because you have no lips, if it reacted poorly, it would still look good.

• 24:25Conan O'Brien?

  So even if I got a bad swelling, it would give me something?

• 24:33Speaker 00

  So mean.

• 24:35Conan O'Brien?

  Josh, you could have said something like, "No, no, you look fine," but you went, "No, even you."

• 24:39Speaker 00

  No, because everybody says this. This is not a perpetual red carpet.

• 24:44Conan O'Brien?

  I won-

• 24:45Speaker 00

  You are not a fucking celebrity.

• 24:47Conan O'Brien?

  God damn it. I thought this was my time.

• 24:50Speaker 00

  But that was- there. You just brought it around.

• 24:53Conan O'Brien?

  Yes.

• 24:53Speaker 00

  This is not their time. This is our time.

• 24:56Speaker 05

  It's our time down here.

• 24:58Speaker 00

  I remember voice control. I remember Steve Anton said, what was it? What was Carrie's name? Andy?

• 25:04Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 25:05Speaker 00

  Andy. Like, it's the worst voice control of any actor until I did my next movie, which was Thrashin'. That when I was in the premiere and I saw that movie, a movie that I don't talk shit about anymore, but I did for years. When I saw it, and my name was Chrissy that I yelled out, and she walked out of my trailer, and I go, "Chrissy!" And I was like, "Oh my God, you suck so bad."

• 25:31Speaker 00

  You're actually hurting people.

• 25:35Speaker 00

  Acting is supposed to bring joy, and you're bringing shit.

• 25:44Speaker 00

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• 26:10Speaker 01

  What do I gift my mom and nieces?

• 26:12Speaker 02

  Walmart has top brands you know, like Ninja, Disney, Lego.

• 26:18Speaker 01

  Oh, Dad loves music.

• 26:20Speaker 02

  Sonos can bring his songs to life with sound that hits just right.

• 26:26Speaker 01

  And my coffee-obsessed bestie?

• 26:28Speaker 02

  They love he brews coffee right for mornings extra bright.

• 26:31Speaker 01

  All those great brands at Walmart? Who knew?

• 26:34Speaker 02

  We knew, now you do too.

• 26:36Speaker 00

  Shop gifts, no love at Walmart.

• 26:40Speaker 00

  Your sausage McMuffin with egg didn't change. Your receipt did. The sausage McMuffin with egg extra value meal includes a hash brown and a small coffee for just $5.

• 26:50Conan O'Brien?

  Only at McDonald's for a limited time. Price and participation may vary. Promotion pricing may be lower than meal pricing.

• 27:01Conan O'Brien?

  I always go back to the one in Wall Street.

• 27:03Speaker 00

  What?

• 27:03Conan O'Brien?

  Charlie Sheen is on an elevator with his father. And Martin Sheen, they're having this big argument. And Martin Sheen's line is, "I don't measure a man's worth by the size of his wallet," is what he's supposed to yell at him. I adore Martin Sheen. He is one of my all-time favorites and a lovely man. But his line reading was, "At least I don't measure a man's worth by the size of his..." WHAT?

• 27:30Speaker 00

  It was a patina moment.

• 27:31Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah, yeah. It's the give me all you got. Yeah, and it...

• 27:34Speaker 00

  That's what it is.

• 27:35Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 27:35Speaker 00

  That's what it is.

• 27:36Conan O'Brien?

  But anyway, every actor has those.

• 27:39Speaker 00

  By the way, have you heard that story, Give Me All You Got? And he was like, you know, we had planned that he was on cocaine.

• 27:45Conan O'Brien?

  Yes.

• 27:46Speaker 00

  And you go, thank God that wasn't just you.

• 27:48Speaker 04

  Oh, I think that was retroactively put in to make sense of what.

• 27:51Conan O'Brien?

  And explain this, and explain for people who don't know.

• 27:54Speaker 04

  Yeah, there's a scene in Heat where he's interrogating a source. But the best part is, he's clearly improvising because when he says, "Give me all you got!" The other guy, the look on his face is so real, like he's looking to Michael Mann going, "Are we gonna use this?"

• 28:06Speaker 00

  Yeah, right.

• 28:06Speaker 04

  And it works because he's like Vincent Hanna's too scary.

• 28:09Speaker 00

  When you get to that point, I've been to that place, I've been in that place, and you do it twice.

• 28:13Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah.

• 28:14Speaker 00

  "Give me all you got!" "Give me all you got!"

• 28:18Speaker 00

  It's like, please cut. That's what he's saying. Please cut the film. Don't let this happen. I'm an actor, I can't stop. And he's one of my all-time.

• 28:28Conan O'Brien?

  I think in the same one, he says, "She's got a great ass!"

• 28:32Speaker 00

  That's what I mean.

• 28:33Conan O'Brien?

  And then he slaps the table. And he slaps the table, and the thing is, the thing about Pacino, who sat in that chair, uh, not.

• 28:39Speaker 04

  Had a great ass.

• 28:40Conan O'Brien?

  And had a great ass. He sat.

• 28:44Conan O'Brien?

  Yes!

• 28:46Speaker 00

  One of the greats.

• 28:47Conan O'Brien?

  He is, I mean, God, but he can get away with anything.

• 28:52Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 28:52Conan O'Brien?

  Anything, because he's Al Pacino. Yeah, accept that. That was wrong.

• 28:55Speaker 00

  That was wrong. That was a perfect movie.

• 28:57Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah.

• 28:57Speaker 00

  And he fucked it up. But, or, or Michael Mann fucked it up. And I'm saying that from a, from a fellow actor. I've spoken with him. Not that I told him, "Hey, why'd you fuck up me?"

• 29:08Speaker 00

  He's one of the great, I mean, Dogged Afternoon to me is like one of the greatest films of all time that I've probably seen 30 times. And it's just, I mean, truly one of the greats. When I heard him back, I was on a plane and I heard him back there, "Eh, yeah, yeah, yeah." Whatever, it was like Tom Waits' version of this. And I couldn't, I, he's one of the few people I couldn't come up to. I was so in awe.

• 29:30Conan O'Brien?

  Me too.

• 29:30Speaker 00

  And he came up to me and he said, "I'm a big fan," and I was like, "Wow."

• 29:33Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah.

• 29:34Speaker 00

  "That's a moment I'll never forget."

• 29:35Conan O'Brien?

  And he's, he's the godfather.

• 29:37Speaker 00

  Yeah. Did he say he was a fan of yours?

• 29:38Conan O'Brien?

  No, not at all. He went out of.

• 29:40Speaker 04

  He kinda did.

• 29:41Conan O'Brien?

  No, no, no.

• 29:42Speaker 04

  He likes you.

• 29:42Conan O'Brien?

  He went way out of his way to say. Not a fan. No, no, he was very sweet to me and I've run into him a couple of times and he has been enormously kind and sweet to me, but.

• 29:53Speaker 00

  Can we just revisit this really quick before you move on? And I know I say this every time I see you, but I used to see you on the street in New York.

• 29:59Conan O'Brien?

  You know this. Upper West Side.

• 30:00Speaker 00

  Upper West Side, but not in the park. No, Upper West Side, I would see you in the street and you would always avoid me and that's the truth.

• 30:06Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah.

• 30:06Speaker 00

  You would always avoid me. You'd always look at me, you'd have your dogs.

• 30:09Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah.

• 30:10Speaker 00

  I was totally.

• 30:11Conan O'Brien?

  One dog.

• 30:11Speaker 00

  One dog?

• 30:12Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah.

• 30:12Speaker 00

  Oh, I imagined.

• 30:14Conan O'Brien?

  Well, I had a paper mache dog. I wanted people to think I had two dogs.

• 30:17Speaker 04

  Really?

• 30:18Conan O'Brien?

  So I had a real dog and then I had a paper mache dog.

• 30:20Speaker 00

  But I do, I always remember seeing you, recognizing you and then you would look up and then basically it was your version of stay away from me.

• 30:27Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah.

• 30:28Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 30:28Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah, I was very anti Goonie back then.

• 30:30Speaker 00

  No, you didn't know I was from the Goonies. You just thought I was some weird street urchin that needed cocaine and you looked like a dealer.

• 30:37Conan O'Brien?

  You were swinging a hatchet, I will say that.

• 30:40Speaker 05

  He looked like a dealer?

• 30:41Speaker 00

  Yeah, no. I'm just saying, that's probably what I thought then.

• 30:44Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah.

• 30:45Speaker 00

  Hey man, you holding? You holding? Aren't you Conan O'Brien? Man, no, okay.

• 30:50Conan O'Brien?

  As everyone will tell you, I'm notoriously unfriendly when you meet me on the street. Notoriously. But, uh, yeah, I dipped out for that Goonies moment. We have another connection, which is because you mentioned this a lot in your book and you tell this great story. But the set where we shot our show, our TBS show for 10 years was the set with the, uh, where they shot the Goonies on Warner Brothers.

• 31:16Speaker 00

  Oh, really?

• 31:16Conan O'Brien?

  Yes.

• 31:17Speaker 00

  Oh, I know where that.

• 31:17Conan O'Brien?

  And so, and so I know you tell this great story where, uh, the director, Donner and, and I think Spielberg, they wanted it to be a surprise when you guys come out of the water and see the ship for the first time. So they had you all go underwater with your eyes closed backwards and then turn underwater.

• 31:35Speaker 00

  With an underwater speaker that was saying, we'll tell you when to come up.

• 31:38Conan O'Brien?

  When to come up.

• 31:39Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 31:39Conan O'Brien?

  And, and they wanted your honest reactions to seeing this massive galleon that they had built for the first time.

• 31:45Speaker 00

  Which was real.

• 31:46Conan O'Brien?

  And speak about screwing things up. What did you do?

• 31:50Speaker 00

  I came up, they said, go, and I, I heard everybody else coming up, so I was late. So I wasn't thinking. I came up, I looked at it, I turned around, I looked at it and I went, fuck.

• 32:03Speaker 00

  And Donner goes, "What?" I go, "Sorry, sorry." He goes, "Go back under, go back under."

• 32:11Conan O'Brien?

  This is a G movie.

• 32:14Conan O'Brien?

  You know, and also you can't do that again. You can't see it for the first time again.

• 32:19Speaker 00

  No, that's what I'm saying. Go back under. I ruined the whole thing. And again, like when we go back and talking about this book is that, you know, you go, oh, we're hiring Jim Brolin's son or whatever.

• 32:30Conan O'Brien?

  Right.

• 32:30Speaker 00

  He auditioned six times and I was, I was right for that part. I look at it objectively and I go, I was right. I looked like a jock. I looked like the Sean Astin. But the truth of the matter is, is they were hiring a Cito Rat. They were hiring a guy who was already doing, had done a lot. I'd already been to jail two times.

• 32:48Conan O'Brien?

  Right.

• 32:48Speaker 00

  So, you know, when I go up and say, "Fuck," it's organic.

• 32:54Speaker 00

  It's not like, "Oh my God, fuck, that's so big."

• 33:01Speaker 00

  It's so hard being an actor's son.

• 33:07Speaker 00

  Anyway, I was gonna show you. I keep reaching for this and I'm gonna show you. Keep talking and I'll show you.

• 33:11Conan O'Brien?

  All right. Well, anyway, this is a podcast, see? And I'll just keep talking while the guy I'm interviewing isn't paying attention.

• 33:18Speaker 00

  No, no, no, no.

• 33:18Conan O'Brien?

  That's not how this works. What am I supposed to do?

• 33:21Speaker 00

  This is, I don't know. This is a picture of me. It's my mother. JB is a kid. It's me in my crib with a mountain lion.

• 33:32Conan O'Brien?

  Holy shit.

• 33:33Speaker 00

  There you go.

• 33:34Conan O'Brien?

  Let me see. Oh my God, that is...

• 33:37Speaker 00

  And it's not a cub. It is an adolescent mountain lion. And that's...

• 33:41Conan O'Brien?

  Is that your mom putting it in?

• 33:43Speaker 00

  That's my mom taking the picture. Look at the camera. I'm like, I'm not, I'm not taking my eyes off the mountain lion. I'm not looking at the camera.

• 33:50Speaker 04

  This is like you and Melanie Griffith. Didn't her tip be heteron?

• 33:53Speaker 00

  They knew each other. They did know each other.

• 33:55Speaker 04

  They grew up on a, on a like farm with all these lions and everything.

• 33:58Speaker 00

  There's a, and if you look at the face, it will tell you everything. Not that I was beaten. That's what it is growing up with wild animals.

• 34:04Speaker 04

  Because you're constantly...

• 34:05Conan O'Brien?

  Getting

• 34:06Speaker 00

  That's it.

• 34:06Conan O'Brien?

  Claude in the face. But also

• 34:09Speaker 00

  Love bites, my mom called them.

• 34:10Conan O'Brien?

  What's interesting about this.

• 34:11Speaker 00

  Anyway.

• 34:12Conan O'Brien?

  Josh, in the book, you jump between the sort of iconic Hollywood experiences where it's you and Sean Penn and you're meeting Robert De Niro for the first time. And you had this great thing, you're such a wise, you've never met De Niro before. He sits down at the table and you say.

• 34:30Speaker 00

  I don't mean to be, it's like even joking around with you, like I'm in this thing right now. It's like, I don't mean to be mean. There's like people that I like, Colbert, you. You know, where I get along with really well. And then I, I know I do that thing. And I don't mean to.

• 34:43Conan O'Brien?

  No, but I'm.

• 34:43Speaker 00

  It's just what I grew up with. We all kind of poke each other.

• 34:46Conan O'Brien?

  Trust me, I.

• 34:47Speaker 00

  You know what I mean?

• 34:47Speaker 05

  Oh, yeah.

• 34:47Conan O'Brien?

  I drink from that well exclusively. I, it's called growing up with brothers and sisters and we're always constantly cuffing each other. And all we do is talk shit at each other around here.

• 34:58Speaker 00

  That's family. To me, that's family. Not everybody gets that. That's why when I go to Italy, everybody's like that. And I was like, oh, wow. I was just born in the wrong country.

• 35:07Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah.

• 35:07Speaker 00

  Like everybody, even the grandmother is like, what the fuck are you looking at? And I'm like, what?

• 35:11Conan O'Brien?

  What's funny is you have these, you have these.

• 35:16Speaker 00

  Actively trying to ruin my career.

• 35:18Conan O'Brien?

  You jump, you jump from these moments where you're telling really funny stories about these, you know, uh, like hanging out with Brando and Travolta and like these great stories. But then the next chapter, you'll jump back in time and it's you. It's four in the morning and it's your job to feed like 75 horses.

• 35:39Speaker 00

  Cause there's a, there's connective tissue there somewhere and it's not linear because what is linear? It's, you know, I was saying, I'm saying this this morning. I was saying the whole point of the book is that it's, it's this kind of, it's a collective. Like I love the idea of groups of people being able to lean on each other. And, and, and if it's, if, you know, you don't have the same beliefs. It's a messy fucking life, man. It's all over the place. It's all made up of moments. This whole idea of trajectory and like I did the Goonies and then I did Thrash and, and then I worked with, you know, then I did Highway to Heaven with, you know, it's like, I, yeah, okay. But what were you thinking? What were you this? What was the messiness? How did you become who you are at this point? And then, you know what I mean?

• 36:21Speaker 00

  It's way more interesting to me to get into the nonlinear kind of reactions off. You have De Niro in front of you and you look at him like, I don't, I'm sure it was the wine. But I was like, look at your face, man. And he goes, what? And I was like, you just got a fucking face. Look at your face. Has anybody ever told you? Like, have you ever thought about? I know you run a motel or a hotel or whatever it is, but you thought about acting?

• 36:48Conan O'Brien?

  Now, did he laugh?

• 36:49Speaker 00

  No, and then I hear Sean go, dude, shut the fuck up.

• 36:54Speaker 00

  No, he didn't laugh, but he was like.

• 36:55Speaker 04

  What? You talking to me?

• 36:57Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 36:58Speaker 04

  What?

• 37:00Speaker 00

  And I was like, your face, the way you're sitting in that chair is just so kind of celebrity.

• 37:06Conan O'Brien?

  But why not?

• 37:07Speaker 00

  No, but you said it before and it's like, and I don't mean to make it morbid or anything, but you said death wish. It was never a death wish. I never had a death wish. It was a vivid wish.

• 37:16Conan O'Brien?

  Right.

• 37:17Speaker 00

  I just wanted things, maybe it was the LSD I took at 13. I don't know. But it was like, I just wanted, I, my mom was that. She just wanted it heightened.

• 37:27Conan O'Brien?

  You talk about these experiences where you would go with your mom. You're a kid. She would go to a restaurant and it's just the two of you. And then she would start making her move to connect with a guy there. And you knew what was happening and you'd go out in the parking lot and go look for rattlesnakes by yourself. While your mom cozy'd up with someone.

• 37:49Speaker 00

  Yeah, but it was, she wasn't, you know, she wasn't, and I would say this if she was, she wasn't particularly sexual.

• 37:54Conan O'Brien?

  Mm hmm.

• 37:55Speaker 00

  Again, it was more about whatever the event was. Like, if she went into a restaurant, it was very rare my mom didn't end up in the kitchen.

• 38:02Conan O'Brien?

  Yes.

• 38:03Speaker 00

  You know, and my mom cooked every day, whether there was somebody on the ranch or not, she cooked every day. And then she'd put it on somebody's fence post. So she cooked all the time and I have all those recipes. I have a whole wall full of recipes that she, that are all handwritten and all that. So it's very cool. But the truth of the matter is, is that she was a big drinker. She would go out, she was loud, she was masculine. You know, if she wanted to kiss you, there's nothing that would stop her from doing that. She would grab you, she would pull her, you across the table and then she'd give you a kiss.

• 38:34Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah.

• 38:35Speaker 00

  And then something else would come up, you know?

• 38:37Conan O'Brien?

  Right.

• 38:37Speaker 00

  Somebody would bark and then she'd look over and, you know what I mean? It was like a high pitched whistle dog thing. She just wanted to be. In the nucleus of everything of what was most heightened and most interesting. Without knowing why. And she was always, she was always like that. She was telling me that her parents were super sweet parents. Teachers, really smart, Corpus Christi, Texas. And then she was always sneaking out of the house. She was always causing trouble. She always had animals in her garage that she was hiding. She was just that in, in, in an organic way. And she, and I don't have it in the book, you know, she ended up. She ran away from home when she was nineteen. The first people she met were Clint and Maggie Eastwood. Right? So that's who, before Clint did Rawhide or any of that.

• 39:22Speaker 00

  They kind of took her under their wing. She hung out in Hollywood. She grew up Baptist, very strict. Started sleeping with all these guys, married men and all that. She kind of went crazy, took a bunch of pills, got in a car, started hitting a bunch of parked cars. Ended up in Camarillo State Hospital. Three and a half week, they assessed her. Three and a half weeks later, they said, look, she's not crazy. She just had a moment. They go to Camarillo State Hospital to pick her up and she doesn't want to leave. She goes, I like it here. It's fun. And she had become friends with a lady, I mean, again, this is super morbid, but the lady who had hacked up her whole family. And hadn't talked for 12 years.

• 40:01Speaker 00

  And I'm, I can see it right now, probably sat next to her and said, I don't understand why you're not talking. Do you not talk at all? Do you have a voice or do you have this? And the girl finally said candy. And it was like a whole breakthrough.

• 40:14Conan O'Brien?

  Your mom broke through to this woman who isn't talking to anybody.

• 40:16Speaker 00

  Out of total annoyance, I'm sure.

• 40:18Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah, yeah. Would you please shut up and I'll tell you exactly who I hacked up and why?

• 40:23Speaker 00

  But you know, I don't tell that story because there's no need to tell that story because it has that in the fabric of each story. And you can see that for me in my life, it's hard to tell those stories when you're promoting a book because who the fuck wants to read about that? But at the same time, you go, that's normal, man. That's normal for us.

• 40:41Conan O'Brien?

  What you clearly inherited from your mom, as you said, is this need that you wanted, and it's in all these stories you tell. Throughout your childhood and through a chunk of your adulthood, you need the dials turned up all the way. You need that. That's just something that you insist upon. And so if that means, whatever that means.

• 41:01Speaker 00

  Whatever that means. And then you go, why would I be an actor? I had no interest in being an actor. Like my dad, my dad's profession. Didn't interest me in the least. There was nothing that kind of drew me toward like, what do you do? And wow, you do the thing and. It was nothing and I did a, I took a theater class because it was like underwater basket weaving and theater and I was like, well, I'll do the theater. And this woman had me get up on stage. It was the first one she chose. Get up on stage, create a character, any character you want. How does he look? How does he feel? Where is he from? How does he this? Now, as the house, we're gonna ask you questions and you answer as the character. And as I was, I was like a balding, middle-aged guy from Brooklyn or something. I don't know, whatever I came up with in my head.

• 41:44Speaker 00

  And as I was answering in humor, once people started laughing at my answers, it just clicked.

• 41:50Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah.

• 41:50Speaker 00

  I was like, this is it. This is heightened. This is me able to resort to my imagination, which is far more interesting than my reality.

• 41:58Conan O'Brien?

  Mm-hmm. I, I, yeah, I completely relate to being a kid, making people laugh. And when people describe, oh, the first time I tried a drug.

• 42:08Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 42:09Conan O'Brien?

  And I realized that's who I want to be, that person. That's how I felt.

• 42:12Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 42:12Conan O'Brien?

  When, oh, these kids at the Baldwin School, K through three school are laughing at some nonsense I'm doing. And I'm like, what is this?

• 42:20Speaker 00

  What is this?

• 42:21Conan O'Brien?

  I gotta have more of this.

• 42:22Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 42:23Conan O'Brien?

  And I don't care who I hurt.

• 42:27Conan O'Brien?

  Um, there's a lot of beauty in the book. There's a lot of darkness in the book. You grew up with this group, this pack of kids.

• 42:35Speaker 00

  Hmm.

• 42:36Conan O'Brien?

  And you, and there's one quote that I circled. The group of guys they grew up with, thirty-seven of them are dead.

• 42:42Speaker 00

  Thirty-six.

• 42:44Conan O'Brien?

  I got some bad news for you.

• 42:47Conan O'Brien?

  I just got a word.

• 42:48Speaker 00

  You actually just did that.

• 42:49Conan O'Brien?

  I just got word five minutes ago.

• 42:51Speaker 04

  And it's you.

• 42:52Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah. No, it's not you. But it's your friend Spencer. And it was totally his.

• 42:59Speaker 00

  See? Now you're family. Now you're family.

• 43:01Conan O'Brien?

  It was a ballooning accident.

• 43:05Speaker 00

  I appreciate you.

• 43:06Conan O'Brien?

  No, okay. Well, it said, I thought it said thirty-seven, but okay, thirty-six.

• 43:09Speaker 00

  Thirty-six, thirty-six out of fifty. And there's, by the way, still people that when I talk about it, they go, hey, tell Brolin I'm not fucking dead, man. You know what I mean? But yes.

• 43:18Conan O'Brien?

  I'm just laying low.

• 43:19Speaker 00

  It was, it was, yeah. It was the punk rock. It was punk rock. It was the heroin epidemic. It was all that. A lot of people died.

• 43:27Conan O'Brien?

  You, you, uh, this stuck out to me.

• 43:31Speaker 00

  Hmm.

• 43:31Conan O'Brien?

  You were given your first motorcycle when you were four years old.

• 43:35Speaker 00

  Three and a half.

• 43:37Conan O'Brien?

  I got bad news for you.

• 43:38Speaker 00

  No kidding.

• 43:41Conan O'Brien?

  Your birth certificate is wrong. You were four.

• 43:46Conan O'Brien?

  I want this to be a recurring-

• 43:47Speaker 00

  I love how you're rewriting my book.

• 43:49Conan O'Brien?

  I want this to be a recurring thing where every time Josh corrects me, I got bad news for you.

• 43:55Speaker 00

  And by the way, you get mad and you shoot back.

• 43:57Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah.

• 43:59Conan O'Brien?

  Okay, three and a half and you get a motorcycle?

• 44:02Speaker 00

  Three and a half, an Indian-

• 44:02Conan O'Brien?

  Why are you still here?

• 44:04Speaker 00

  Indian twenty, an Indian twelve, you know, Indian twenty I got. I was three and a half and then two weeks later I had him take off the training wheels. As you see in my face and all those pictures-

• 44:13Conan O'Brien?

  Who sanctioned this?

• 44:14Speaker 00

  My dad, my dad. My dad who doesn't ride motorcycles anymore and was never very good. I, he, he, he fell at one point and really fucked up his ankle and, and, uh, yeah. But I, I, I rode my whole life. I raced dirt bikes. I got my eighties and I got, and that, that's where I was spoiled. My dad always got me a motorcycle. So I had probably five different motorcycles growing up.

• 44:37Conan O'Brien?

  And you've done some crazy rides like through New Zealand?

• 44:40Speaker 00

  Well, then when I was nineteen, then I got into the kind of Harley thing. And then, and then from nineteen on, so however many that years that is, nineteen to fifty-six. And I ride with a group of guys now and we go twelve hundred mile poles and we go to chopper shows and stuff like that. I have a nineteen thirty-seven knucklehead, nineteen sixty-eight shovelhead, nineteen fifty-six panhead, nineteen forty-seven knucklehead.

• 45:03Conan O'Brien?

  Can I just get a very nerdy, which is, what about maintenance on those?

• 45:07Speaker 00

  We're breaking down because we're vintage motorcycles.

• 45:09Conan O'Brien?

  Yes.

• 45:10Speaker 00

  So you have to ride with people who can fix them. I'm, I'm not good, like admittedly not good. I wish I was better, but I ride Steven, you know, there's several people that we ride with that, you know, you'll see a transmission on a sidewalk.

• 45:23Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah.

• 45:23Speaker 00

  Like a full transmission.

• 45:25Conan O'Brien?

  I-

• 45:25Speaker 00

  And we'll fix it.

• 45:26Conan O'Brien?

  Whenever I get a chance, I try to ride a, a vintage motorcycle and we were shooting something in, uh, Thailand and they found this absolutely gorgeous vintage, I think it was a BMW, uh, I could be incorrect about that, but it was, and it was like from the early fifties and it was just this bike that you could drool over. I couldn't wait to get on it. I get on it and my first feeling as I'm riding is this is fucking terrible.

• 45:55Speaker 00

  Meaning.

• 45:56Conan O'Brien?

  Meaning the ride.

• 45:57Speaker 00

  No, I know what you mean.

• 45:58Conan O'Brien?

  And also, if you don't keep the throttle just right, it's gonna, it's gonna conk out.

• 46:02Speaker 00

  Oh, yeah.

• 46:03Conan O'Brien?

  A guy kept having to come out and kick it and, and take it apart and put it back together again. And I.

• 46:08Speaker 00

  And over for you just to ride 50 feet for the shot.

• 46:11Conan O'Brien?

  For 50 feet for the shot. And we ended up getting the shot and it looks amazing.

• 46:15Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 46:16Conan O'Brien?

  But I kept thinking, this is why I've.

• 46:20Speaker 00

  No, I mean, there's.

• 46:21Conan O'Brien?

  I like it. I like an automatic transmission, not an automatic.

• 46:24Speaker 00

  Like when you, when you see Hells Angels or Mongols now, and they're all on nice bikes. They're all on new bikes. I mean, there's guys, real true motorcyclists that I know that have super nice bikes that look at us and say, I could never do what you do. Cause it's too exposing, it's too, it's just, yeah. I mean, you break down, there's no front brake. There's sometimes not a back brake, you know, if you're going downhill.

• 46:46Conan O'Brien?

  You have to throw an anchor.

• 46:49Conan O'Brien?

  Well, in a hundred yards, I'm coming for a stop.

• 46:52Speaker 00

  Grab me, grab me, grab me. But that's why I think even now, and my older kids can attest to this. I have a 36 year old, a 31 year old, a six year old and a three year old. And my older kids, my son's a great artist and there's a lot of like electrical towers. And you go, oh, I know that's because he was in the back of the car looking out the window. Like we stayed in motels, we stayed in that. And I do the same thing now. We make, I make it as uncomfortable as I can. We don't, this, I have an absolute like fear of living in nothing but comfort. Sorry for them, but it's just how it is.

• 47:30Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah.

• 47:30Speaker 00

  There's something, like I said, there's something substantial about the vintage Harley Davidsons, where it's, I, I wrote about it in the book. They said, write about motorcycles. It's so impossible to write about motorcycles. And I wrote and I wrote and I wrote and I kept crossing shit out. And finally I said, I can't do it. And the minute I said, I can't do it, I started riding. And then there was some connection with my mother and being in the back of the car with my mother and then riding motorcycles now and those connections and riding through a swarm of bees and all that. You go, that's the deal. The discomfort is the deal.

• 48:01Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah.

• 48:01Speaker 00

  If you can, if you have some resilience, I have a. Massive worry about a lack of resilience, even with my kids. But I look at my three year old, my three year old's literally the toughest person I know, my girl. She's just, you can see it in her face. You're like, oh, you're a hundred percent rolling. You're gonna be okay. We just gotta keep you from going crazy. But there's this, again, it's character. It's all the stuff that's colorful and lively that I embrace.

• 48:27Conan O'Brien?

  The other thing that I used to say to my wife when our kids were little is, let's remember that it's important they be bored.

• 48:34Speaker 00

  Yes, yes.

• 48:35Conan O'Brien?

  Because the culture now and the technology is such that there's never a moment where you are bored. And I remember being bored as a kid because.

• 48:45Speaker 00

  And having to resort to your imagination.

• 48:47Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah.

• 48:48Speaker 00

  Who you are.

• 48:49Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah, and, and so I, I, I think, do you have that with your kids, Sona?

• 48:52Speaker 05

  Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. And it is, it takes a lot of work to just remind yourself that it's okay if they're doing nothing. And then you see them start to resort to their imagination and you realize that's what they should be doing.

• 49:04Conan O'Brien?

  Do you, I mean, because I sometimes see people that just give, they give their kid the screen.

• 49:08Speaker 05

  No, no, no.

• 49:08Conan O'Brien?

  And they say, you're fine with the screen. I'm gonna go off. I'll be back in six weeks.

• 49:13Speaker 05

  No, no, we, we, we.

• 49:16Conan O'Brien?

  I'm talking about Matt Gourley.

• 49:17Speaker 05

  Yeah, Matt, Matt does that, but not me.

• 49:19Conan O'Brien?

  He also gives him a little rum.

• 49:20Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 49:21Speaker 04

  Well, that part is true.

• 49:22Speaker 05

  Yeah. Well, I mean, Matt and I both also have three year olds too. I mean, it's, it's.

• 49:26Speaker 00

  Twins?

• 49:27Speaker 05

  I have twins. He has one, yeah.

• 49:29Speaker 00

  Right, you have, right, okay.

• 49:30Speaker 05

  Oh, we're not together.

• 49:33Conan O'Brien?

  They're not together. They're not together. I keep trying to get them together, which is creepy because they each.

• 49:37Speaker 04

  We are together. I just won't acknowledge one of the children.

• 49:40Speaker 00

  No, I just saw you playing footsies underneath the table and I thought there's something going on.

• 49:43Conan O'Brien?

  They often just trade shoes underneath the table.

• 49:45Speaker 00

  So you each have three year olds?

• 49:47Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 49:47Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 49:48Speaker 00

  Right.

• 49:48Speaker 04

  And we have a real pistol too, and I know you do as well. Yeah, it's a girl.

• 49:52Speaker 00

  It's a girl and yours?

• 49:54Speaker 05

  Mine are two boys. They're twins.

• 49:55Speaker 00

  Two, two boys, wow.

• 49:56Speaker 05

  They're crazy.

• 49:57Speaker 00

  It's great, though.

• 49:59Speaker 05

  It is.

• 49:59Speaker 00

  Even the irritation is great. I mean, there's time, there's, there's, there's a thing right now where they're both going through like a, like when you get mad, it would be great if you lived in a different house. And I'm not even getting mad. I'm just like, please don't do that. You know, and they're like, can you live in a different house? And I'm like, fuck you, man.

• 50:17Speaker 00

  Like, they're so, I go, I look, I looked at my three year old at one point and I said, is there nothing about me that intimidates you?

• 50:26Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 50:26Speaker 00

  And they just stare. You know what I mean?

• 50:29Speaker 04

  I would love to have that. My daughter's so passive aggressive. You speak to her, "Hey Glenn, we're getting..." And she'll go, "We're listening."

• 50:35Speaker 00

  Oh, God. That's the worst. It makes you crazy.

• 50:38Speaker 04

  It does, and I'm going crazy.

• 50:39Conan O'Brien?

  I love that you have a little kid who stares at you with a brolly face. And is like, "Hey, old man, keep walking."

• 50:47Speaker 00

  Oh, yeah.

• 50:48Conan O'Brien?

  "Keep walking, old man."

• 50:49Speaker 00

  You don't even know the depth.

• 50:52Conan O'Brien?

  I kinda do.

• 50:54Speaker 00

  No, but I'm saying she's saying that in her mind when she looks at me.

• 50:58Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 50:59Speaker 00

  Yeah, "You're old now. We're the next generation, motherfucker."

• 51:03Conan O'Brien?

  I'll bury you.

• 51:05Speaker 00

  Like, literally.

• 51:05Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah. I'll pour the dirt on your face.

• 51:09Speaker 00

  I'm not afraid of many people in this lifetime, but my kids, definitely. My 31-year-old daughter, who's on tour, she just got off tour, Music. She was headlining all over the country. And she's one girl who I'm absolutely, utterly in love with. But who scares the shit out of me. She's the, yeah, she's the first person in this life that actually scared me.

• 51:30Conan O'Brien?

  Do you see, it's a very personal question, but do you see your mom coming through when somebody's...

• 51:35Speaker 00

  For sure.

• 51:36Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 51:37Speaker 00

  For sure. In the best way, though. You know, my mom was spinning, man. And my mom, and what I don't write about in the book, too, they go, "God, your mom sounds horrible."

• 51:46Conan O'Brien?

  No, no, no. That is not what comes across in the book. Not at all. Your mother has her, your mother is an absolutely fascinating character. She is the thread, she's the propulsion behind a lot of the book. She's clearly a huge propulsion for you through your life. And what you do very beautifully is you, you talk about her troubles, her struggles, decisions that today some people would question. But you also include a beautiful letter she writes to you about how proud, you can, there's no doubt she loves you, there's no doubt she's proud of you, there's no doubt that she's, like Zorba the Greek, she is living every single second. That all comes through.

• 52:28Speaker 00

  There was a moment toward the end of her life and I found like it was in an Al-Anon book and I still have it. And it had her name in the in the front that she wrote, hand wrote. And I know that there was a thing at the end, she had thought of, what's that show on right now? Chimps or something like that?

• 52:46Conan O'Brien?

  Oh, Chimp Crazy.

• 52:47Speaker 00

  Chimp Crazy. And she had thought of a show thirty years ago about like a sitcom of chimps and people and doing it like animatronically or something like that because she was into the wildlife thing. And somebody took her seriously and said, I want you to develop that show. And she wasn't in the business or anything. It was just somebody that she knew and said, I want you to develop that show in a serious way. And I remember my mother crying and she said, I said, what's the matter? And she said, I've never been taken seriously in my life. So she was a freak show.

• 53:15Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah.

• 53:16Speaker 00

  And she, and then you start living up to that freak show. And then interestingly, there's a guy, I remember who it was. There was a guy who said, hey, my friend's coming. He was, he was Canadian. And he said, my friend's coming into town. Do you want to go out? And I said, sure. And I went out and I had done something a couple of days before, so I like stopped drinking for a few days. And we went out and he said, what can I get you? And I said, water's fine. And he goes, what do you mean? And I go, I just take a water. I'm not drinking tonight. And he goes, I brought my friend down from Canada, you know, I told her about you. And I go, what do you, what do you mean? And he said, you know, it's like, you're gonna have a night. I told her that you're crazy. And I was like, oh, I'm like your fucking clown, man.

• 53:57Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah.

• 53:58Speaker 00

  I'm like your thing. I'm like you, you pay the two dollars, I have the two heads or I have the thing. And you're gonna experience a Brolin moment, a Brolin night.

• 54:07Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah.

• 54:07Speaker 00

  He's gonna go to jail and you're gonna go home and go, how crazy is that guy, right? And then you're gonna go on with your life. That was when I started to go, uh-oh.

• 54:15Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah.

• 54:16Speaker 00

  You know, because my mom lived a life of that and I saw right at the end when she was taken seriously at fifty-five. And I'm fifty-six. And strangely enough, this book was never intended to be this book. This book happened organically. I just started writing. I'd look at my journals and I'd go, oh, that's, I remember that moment. And I start writing about it and poorly and then this thing formulated into this, all these stories about my mom. And you go, maybe that's, and it happened at fifty-five. What a strange thing.

• 54:44Conan O'Brien?

  Well, you, uh, it is, I can't recommend the book enough. And again, When I picked it up, I didn't know what I'd be discovering. And my big takeaway is you have lived for a still, or a young man, you have lived an incredible life and you, your pro style is really striking and great and admirable. And that's, that's something that, that hit me across the face is you are a very talented writer and you should write more.

• 55:21Speaker 00

  As a writer, you as a writer, I appreciate that very much, seriously.

• 55:24Conan O'Brien?

  Well, I, you know, I'm a very great writer.

• 55:28Speaker 05

  Okay, alright.

• 55:29Conan O'Brien?

  Wait, did I go, did I go the wrong way with that?

• 55:31Speaker 05

  Why can't you just make a moment normal? Just let it happen. Let him compliment you and then just say, "Thank you" and stop talking.

• 55:38Speaker 00

  You said, "I'm a great, very great writer," which grammatically is so fucked up.

• 55:42Conan O'Brien?

  It's the worst writing possible. Me, me be, I'm not done, very great writer.

• 55:50Speaker 05

  Just say, "Thank you."

• 55:52Conan O'Brien?

  Josh, every time I've encountered you in, in my life, other than when I used to run away from you on the street.

• 55:58Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 55:59Conan O'Brien?

  Cause I swear to God, you had a weapon. You were going through some bad shit at the time. But every time I've talked to you on, on one of my shows and, and today, you are a very honest person who has paid attention in life and you're sharing what you've seen with people and you're very wise and you're hilariously funny and it's, it's a joy. So, thank you so much for being here.

• 56:26Speaker 00

  Thanks, man.

• 56:27Conan O'Brien?

  Really, yeah. Yeah, and I'm gonna come hang with you now for a couple of days, if that's cool.

• 56:30Speaker 00

  That's fine.

• 56:31Conan O'Brien?

  I don't think it is.

• 56:32Speaker 00

  Crawl into bed, brother. Crawl into bed, snuggle up. Snuggle up.

• 57:21Speaker 01

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• 57:34Speaker 00

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• 57:38Speaker 06

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• 58:13Speaker 04

  Adam Sacks, our wonderful overlord here at the podcast.

• 58:17Conan O'Brien?

  He's a podcast genius. He's the boy wonder. We owe him our thanks. Great debt of gratitude.

• 58:23Speaker 04

  That's right. He alerted me of something on Reddit and the title is, "Is Conan's podcast using the dick, dork, and deer formula?" I started wondering if Conan is using a classic radio TV construct known as the dick, dork, and deer formula. For those unfamiliar, this is a common structure in big morning radio shows where the dick plays the antagonist, saying the bold or jerky things.

• 58:44Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 58:44Speaker 04

  The dork is quirky or socially awkward, creating funny friction.

• 58:48Speaker 05

  Gory.

• 58:48Speaker 04

  The deer is the heart of the show, keeping things grounded and often echoing what the audience is thinking.

• 58:53Conan O'Brien?

  I have a theory.

• 58:54Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 58:54Conan O'Brien?

  We're using the dick, dick, and dick formula.

• 59:00Speaker 04

  Three dicks.

• 59:01Conan O'Brien?

  Because I think it switches on and off all the time.

• 59:03Speaker 04

  I know, it's true.

• 59:04Conan O'Brien?

  I don't think there is a deer here. You know what's amazing is that when you hear that, if I was, if I didn't know any better, I'd say, oh, that makes sense. I'm sure there is a format for these things. People would be stunned by how little thought went into Conan O'Brien Needs Friends.

• 59:20Speaker 05

  That's true.

• 59:20Conan O'Brien?

  It was Adam saying, Conan, you should do a podcast. And I said, huh. Well, if I do it, I better have Sona there because that's just, she's in my life. She's my assistant. And we seem to be really funny together. And it's a real connection. And then they said, we need a dick. And they brought Matt Gourley in.

• 59:41Speaker 04

  Professional dick.

• 59:42Conan O'Brien?

  A professional dick.

• 59:43Speaker 05

  You guys are both dorks and dicks.

• 59:45Conan O'Brien?

  Yes.

• 59:46Speaker 05

  You're both dork dicks.

• 59:47Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah.

• 59:47Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 59:48Conan O'Brien?

  Or dick dorks.

• 59:49Speaker 05

  Dick, I like dork dick.

• 59:50Conan O'Brien?

  Dick dorks.

• 59:54Speaker 04

  We're corked dicks.

• 59:55Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah.

• 59:55Speaker 04

  Ready to blow.

• 59:56Speaker 05

  You are though, I mean, I think we are all definitely dicks.

• 59:59Conan O'Brien?

  Yes.

• 1:00:00Speaker 05

  I think it's.

• 1:00:00Conan O'Brien?

  I think it's a different formula, but I think that is very interesting that that is a formula when I think about it now. And whatever we've come up with is random. This is a Jackson Pollock painting, except it wasn't even painted by Jackson Pollock. There was a can of paint on the side of the road.

• 1:00:18Speaker 04

  It was painted by a dick.

• 1:00:19Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah, a car ran over it and splurched a bunch of paint onto a canvas. And that's what this is for better and clearly worse.

• 1:00:27Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:00:28Conan O'Brien?

  Right? Is that, now, you weren't thinking anything like that, were you? Adam, you're, Adam, you're allowed to jump in. And here he comes. He's just, he's unfamiliar with the format, so he's sitting 50 feet away.

• 1:00:38Speaker 02

  I, is this mic on? For the headphones.

• 1:00:41Conan O'Brien?

  Okay, wow. So you're the podcast genius.

• 1:00:45Conan O'Brien?

  Do I speak into this tube?

• 1:00:48Speaker 02

  No, the answer is no, I definitely was not thinking that we would, I'd never heard of that dick dork deer thing either. It, I can see how it makes sense, but no, that wasn't the thought. The thought was, start with you. You actually said, like, you want some people around you. You need the people to bounce off of, you can't just do this by yourself.

• 1:01:06Conan O'Brien?

  Well, I mean, it could, it'd probably be better.

• 1:01:08Speaker 05

  Oh.

• 1:01:08Speaker 02

  Well, you said that you didn't want to do it by yourself.

• 1:01:10Conan O'Brien?

  No, what I said was, I don't want it to be too good. So let's make sure that Sona's here and Gourley, remember? You know, like, sort of, if something gets too, if a nuclear reactor gets too hot, they put in these rods to cool it.

• 1:01:21Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:01:22Conan O'Brien?

  Of just sort of mediocre stuff.

• 1:01:24Speaker 05

  Dick dork.

• 1:01:25Speaker 04

  Yeah, real dick dork.

• 1:01:26Speaker 05

  You're dick dorking it big time right now. You're doing a dick dork.

• 1:01:29Conan O'Brien?

  Yes, and explaining how.

• 1:01:30Speaker 05

  No one dick dork's better than you do.

• 1:01:31Conan O'Brien?

  I'm being a dick, and I'm also explaining how a nuclear reactor works.

• 1:01:34Speaker 02

  Well, we should, we should give some credit to Jeff Ross, who.

• 1:01:37Conan O'Brien?

  Never. And not Jeff Ross. The roast master general comic Jeff Ross.

• 1:01:43Speaker 02

  Our own Jeff Ross.

• 1:01:44Conan O'Brien?

  My producer of 31 years.

• 1:01:46Speaker 02

  Yes, who?

• 1:01:47Conan O'Brien?

  25 of them, very capably.

• 1:01:49Speaker 02

  He also identified the fact that you and Sona have a great thing and it's really funny. So we should have Sona there and I had known Matt for many years at that point. Worked with him for many years. And so I, when we said we wanted, you know, the best producer in my mind, Matt's the best.

• 1:02:05Conan O'Brien?

  I'm gonna confess something. You had me come into a meeting and Matt was there and we met.

• 1:02:10Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:02:10Conan O'Brien?

  We got along great and you said, well, Matt will be the producer. At the time, I thought that meant he was, I'm not, this isn't a bit or anything. I thought he was behind a glass case.

• 1:02:20Speaker 04

  Me too.

• 1:02:20Conan O'Brien?

  Producing it, I had no idea that he'd be in the room with us. And when you were in the room with us and talking, I was, I was like, oh, I was surprised. For years hated it.

• 1:02:36Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:02:37Conan O'Brien?

  I mean.

• 1:02:38Speaker 04

  I got that sense.

• 1:02:38Conan O'Brien?

  Just years, no, no, I'm kidding. No, a surprise and then immediately saw, oh, this is, no, this is great. This is a triangle. This is triangulation because you, I'm gonna take a second and be legitimately nice to you. You bring so much great stuff to the podcast and you think differently than I do. Not as quickly, not as.

• 1:02:58Speaker 05

  You were so close.

• 1:03:00Conan O'Brien?

  Not as, you know.

• 1:03:01Speaker 04

  You were just all dear.

• 1:03:02Conan O'Brien?

  Not as.

• 1:03:02Speaker 04

  Just a little dork.

• 1:03:03Speaker 05

  A little so dear.

• 1:03:04Conan O'Brien?

  Not as touched by the gods, not kissed by the gods. But you do such an amazing job and so that was, but that was a complete surprise to me.

• 1:03:11Speaker 04

  Same with me because I had no understanding that I was gonna be on mic. I was just supposed to come on and help develop the pilot. But I do remember one of the first times you engaged with me on mic and in true service to this thing. It was a question about Star Wars.

• 1:03:26Conan O'Brien?

  So.

• 1:03:28Speaker 04

  And you, I think turned to me as like, what do you think of this? And I had this answer about the prequels or something.

• 1:03:34Conan O'Brien?

  Because I didn't even know, you just looked like someone, I think it was because you were dressed as a Jedi. And I mean, in a child's Jedi costume. The kind that ties around like an apron and just says Jedi on it. Not a good Jedi, not a cosplay Jedi. But an 11-year-old going out on Chris, on a Halloween Jedi.

• 1:03:52Speaker 02

  Well, I did in the back of my mind think there was a world where Matt, like, Matt would speak more, but the premise was that, yeah, you weren't gonna talk, you were just gonna be the producer.

• 1:04:01Speaker 04

  I think you, like, got there to be a microphone out there where I was kinda like, why is there a microphone there?

• 1:04:05Speaker 02

  Yeah, and I wanted there to be a microphone in front of you just in case, and...

• 1:04:08Conan O'Brien?

  And for a while, I kept, I don't know if you remember this, easily the first 20 episodes, I was hiding your microphone.

• 1:04:13Speaker 04

  You were.

• 1:04:14Conan O'Brien?

  I'd come in early, I would, using a saw, I would saw it off.

• 1:04:18Speaker 05

  I know, you didn't know, they'd just come off.

• 1:04:19Conan O'Brien?

  I didn't know.

• 1:04:20Speaker 04

  Well, sometimes you'd just duct tape my mouth, too.

• 1:04:23Conan O'Brien?

  That was harder, cuz you, you're quick, you're very quick. But then, uh, Blay comes, stumbles in. Blay is like, if you're at a campsite and you don't put your food away, Blay will show up. So Blay stumbled in and, um, you know, he was like...

• 1:04:39Conan O'Brien?

  Like, outside the tent. And then he started saying things we thought, okay, well, Blay's here. And then Eduardo. Now Eduardo designed the studio.

• 1:04:48Speaker 04

  Right.

• 1:04:48Conan O'Brien?

  Eduardo's the one here who actually knows things. He actually has skill, he's trained, he's talented. And, and you, actually, uh, Matt, you have some actual real-world abilities in editing. I don't do anything. Sona, Jesus. I'm sorry. But, you know the way light can't escape a black hole? I mean, just, you, you don't do anything! And it's amazing. It's absolutely amazing.

• 1:05:21Speaker 05

  Does it infuriate you a little bit?

• 1:05:23Conan O'Brien?

  No, I, I love it.

• 1:05:24Speaker 05

  Okay, I'm glad.

• 1:05:25Conan O'Brien?

  I love it, I love it.

• 1:05:26Speaker 05

  You're, you're right.

• 1:05:27Speaker 04

  You are the best at doing nothing. Like, you've turned it into an, a, like, not only an art, but like...

• 1:05:32Conan O'Brien?

  No, I'm saying, you have just always been Sona, and it's amazing, don't change a thing.

• 1:05:38Speaker 05

  Okay.

• 1:05:38Conan O'Brien?

  But that's also an insult. And, um, but no, I mean Eduardo is the one who designed the studio, just makes this whole thing hum. You're the maestro. You deserve so much better from me, except you have to take the occasional shot, because you're a human being in the room with me.

• 1:05:58Speaker 04

  That's fair.

• 1:05:58Conan O'Brien?

  And you have to absorb some of the hate that was crystallized in Brookline, Massachusetts in the 60s.

• 1:06:03Speaker 04

  This is gonna sound, Courtney, I can't take credit for hardly any of it. I just do what you guys allow me to do, so.

• 1:06:10Conan O'Brien?

  Oh, I hated that.

• 1:06:12Speaker 05

  He's a deer.

• 1:06:14Conan O'Brien?

  That's the deer right there.

• 1:06:16Speaker 04

  There's three deers over there. I knew you were gonna give me shit for it, but I have to say.

• 1:06:19Speaker 05

  Should we be more like those like?

• 1:06:21Conan O'Brien?

  Fuck you.

• 1:06:21Speaker 05

  Okay. Oh, you're gonna do the dick part?

• 1:06:24Conan O'Brien?

  Also, we don't have sound effects, and I think all those shows have like a wah-ah, wah-ah, wah-ah. Perfect, perfect. And then fake fart noises and stuff. Yeah, we use real farts here. We don't use fake fart noises. We can't afford, we couldn't figure that out.

• 1:06:36Speaker 05

  We have a fart mic.

• 1:06:42Speaker 05

  Fart mic.

• 1:06:43Conan O'Brien?

  Sona's always carb loading before every episode.

• 1:06:48Speaker 05

  Get ready.

• 1:06:49Conan O'Brien?

  900 pounds cans of beans.

• 1:06:51Speaker 05

  Give me some beans.

• 1:06:52Speaker 04

  Give me some beans.

• 1:06:53Speaker 05

  I've got work to do.

• 1:06:54Conan O'Brien?

  I've got work to do. And then Eduardo's always like, you know, there is a fart sound effect. It's literally on this board. Sooner's like, that sucks.

• 1:07:03Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:07:06Speaker 05

  Give me the fart mic.

• 1:07:09Speaker 04

  There's just one we have to pass around, or we individually mic?

• 1:07:12Conan O'Brien?

  Okay, I'm calling it.

• 1:07:14Speaker 05

  No, there's one fart mic.

• 1:07:15Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 1:07:15Speaker 05

  And then when you feel it, you give a look, and then someone's like, it's fart time. Maybe we say, it's fart time.

• 1:07:22Conan O'Brien?

  Sona, to your credit, you're always ready to go. When you feel it. Sona's always ready to go.

• 1:07:29Speaker 05

  I prepare, sir.

• 1:07:30Conan O'Brien?

  You are money in the bank.

• 1:07:31Speaker 05

  Yes, I do. Yes, I am.

• 1:07:33Conan O'Brien?

  I wanna wrap this up, but that's the origin story of how.

• 1:07:37Speaker 05

  Oh, God.

• 1:07:38Conan O'Brien?

  Wait a minute.

• 1:07:39Speaker 05

  That was so juicy.

• 1:07:40Conan O'Brien?

  That sounded like wet corduroy ripping. I know. That did not sound... What is... was... That was like a lung being pulled out of someone's chest, Eduardo. Different type of fart.

• 1:07:51Speaker 05

  What was that fart?

• 1:07:52Conan O'Brien?

  That's not like anything I've ever heard before.

• 1:07:55Speaker 05

  Play a better fart.

• 1:07:56Conan O'Brien?

  Someone falling into a trash compactor. That was Aquaman fart.

• 1:07:58Speaker 05

  That was a fart. Ew!

• 1:08:00Conan O'Brien?

  All right, all right.

• 1:08:01Speaker 05

  No, there's funny farts and the wet farts are not that funny. The first...

• 1:08:05Conan O'Brien?

  Guess what?

• 1:08:06Speaker 05

  That one was funny.

• 1:08:08Conan O'Brien?

  This is...

• 1:08:08Speaker 05

  I know comedy.

• 1:08:09Conan O'Brien?

  Boy, we really have turned into a radio drive-thru show. This is insane. All right, well, avoid the 405. Avoid the 405 and we'll be back with the whack pack. Right here on Z5535. Buh-buh-buh-boo! Hit the fart. Jesus. That's so pathetic. That's just a dead person. That person's been dead for six weeks.

• 1:08:38Speaker 05

  But we're all laughing at the fart. Farts are always funny.

• 1:08:42Conan O'Brien?

  No, never funny. Oh, God.

• 1:08:46Speaker 04

  Conan O'Brien Needs a Friend with Conan O'Brien, Sonam of Sessian, and Matt Gourley. Produced by me, Matt Gourley. Executive produced by Adam Sacks, Jeff Ross, and Nick Liao. Theme song by The White Stripes. Incidental music by Jimmy Vivino. Take it away, Jimmy.

• 1:09:06Speaker 04

  Our supervising producer is Aaron Blair and our associate talent producer is Jennifer Samples. Engineering and mixing by Eduardo Perez and Brendan Burns. Additional production support by Mars Melnick. Talent booking by Paula Davis, Gina Batista, and Britt Kahn. You can rate and review this show on Apple Podcasts and you might find your review read on a future episode. Got a question for Conan? Call the Team Coco hotline at 669-587-2847 and leave a message. It too could be featured on a future episode. You can also get three free months of SiriusXM when you sign up at siriusxm.com/conan. And if you haven't already, please subscribe to Conan O'Brien Needs a Friend wherever fine podcasts are downloaded.

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