"RE-RELEASE: Tom Hanks"

We are very T. Hankful this week, with surprise guest Tom Hanks. Tom renames the show “HelpLess,” Sean practices his critically-recognized hosting prowess, and we begin the development process on Tom’s next two blockbuster TikTok films. There’s no crying in podcasts! This episode was originally released on 11/1/2021.

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

• 0:00Sean Hayes?

  This episode of Smartless is sponsored by Google Book. So this may not surprise you, I have a lot of thoughts in my head. And my dream is to just blurt them out and somehow get them down on paper, because my brain works way faster than my hands. That's where Google Book comes in. It's a whole new kind of laptop. No more typing, you just talk, and the Rambler feature cleans up your ums and uhs and all the times you change your mind. Basically, it turns messy thoughts into tidy text. Visit googlebook.com for details. Available in select countries and languages to 18-plus users. Check the responses for accuracy.

• 0:43Jason Bateman?

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• 1:23Sean Hayes?

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• 1:59Sean Hayes?

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• 2:40Sean Hayes?

  I'm gonna do this.

• 2:41Jason Bateman?

  So today is...

• 2:42Will Arnett?

  Oh, sorry. Today? Yeah, go ahead.

• 2:44Jason Bateman?

  Today, we're going to have a nice...

• 2:46Will Arnett?

  Sean, no, sorry.

• 2:48Sean Hayes?

  It's just the last time you started, the last one, I was gonna start this one.

• 2:51Will Arnett?

  Okay.

• 2:51Jason Bateman?

  We're just doing an intro. It really doesn't matter who starts.

• 2:53Sean Hayes?

  So I'll just go, "Hey."

• 2:54Will Arnett?

  So today...

• 2:55Sean Hayes?

  What?

• 2:56Will Arnett?

  Oh, I thought, oh, you wanted this one.

• 2:57Jason Bateman?

  Let me just do it. Listener, here is Smart.

• 3:01Will Arnett?

  Smartless.

• 3:03Jason Bateman?

  Okay.

• 3:21Jason Bateman?

  Listen, I think it's been three weeks since we've done this, since I've seen you, since I've talked to you. And I have to say, I've had some long drives in the last three weeks, so I've gone ahead and done some quality control, listening to our podcast. I'm not great at it, because I'm listening to them after they've already reached the public, so...

• 3:41Will Arnett?

  Are you picking up some long hauler miles? Some deliveries? What's going on?

• 3:45Jason Bateman?

  I am. I've got some five-hour energy cases I'm trying to get through.

• 3:49Will Arnett?

  Okay, sure.

• 3:50Jason Bateman?

  So it's really been nice listening to you, fellas. You're both very talented and very funny on the podcast. I'd really like to be more of a part of it. But, so I was very excited to...

• 4:01Sean Hayes?

  A part of it.

• 4:02Jason Bateman?

  I was very excited to see you guys today. But then this morning.

• 4:06Will Arnett?

  This morning.

• 4:07Jason Bateman?

  This morning, a real dark cloud floated over our family here at Smartless.

• 4:12Will Arnett?

  Jason, can I just interrupt? Is it possible to say, like, is it possible for a dark cloud to then give you a gut punch? Is that possible?

• 4:19Jason Bateman?

  Sure.

• 4:20Sean Hayes?

  What happened?

• 4:21Jason Bateman?

  Yeah. Will, why don't you take it from here?

• 4:23Will Arnett?

  Well, Jason read something that I read. We all read it.

• 4:25Sean Hayes?

  Oh, God.

• 4:26Jason Bateman?

  Well, I read it. I read it after you sent it to me.

• 4:28Sean Hayes?

  Here we go.

• 4:29Jason Bateman?

  Actually, you know what? Sean sent it. That's, yes, exactly.

• 4:31Sean Hayes?

  I sent it before I read it.

• 4:33Jason Bateman?

  Uh huh. I don't think so.

• 4:34Will Arnett?

  Sean sent an article to Jason and me in the thread that we're in.

• 4:39Jason Bateman?

  With some feigned exclamation points, like, hey, yee-haw!

• 4:43Will Arnett?

  This is great for us. And by the way, I'm gonna put it out there. If anybody thinks they're worthy of being in the text thread, let us know.

• 4:48Sean Hayes?

  We'll add you.

• 4:49Will Arnett?

  And maybe we'll put you on the, yeah, we'll add you to the thread. And Sean says, "Congrats for us. Yay for us." And it's a click to Hollywood Reporter, "Smartless nominated." Great. Nominated for a bunch of podcast awards or whatever.

• 5:01Jason Bateman?

  Which is kinda neat, cuz this is, you know, this is an embarrassment.

• 5:03Will Arnett?

  It's a mom and pop operation, yeah.

• 5:05Jason Bateman?

  We apologize.

• 5:07Sean Hayes?

  Yeah.

• 5:08Jason Bateman?

  The fact that we're getting any traction whatsoever, let alone nominations, just thank you to all you folks out there.

• 5:13Sean Hayes?

  It's pretty great.

• 5:14Will Arnett?

  Thank you. And also, it's embarrassing. Jason's right. It is kind of embarrassing. So, so then, if you read further down in the story, they're nominated best podcast, blah, blah, blah, and Sean Hayes nominated for best host.

• 5:26Sean Hayes?

  Which is the worst, which is the kiss of death, cuz now everybody's like, well, he's not really that great.

• 5:30Will Arnett?

  Well, no, you're, so for me...

• 5:32Jason Bateman?

  I don't think they're saying it out of the side of their mouth either. I think it comes straight out the center.

• 5:36Will Arnett?

  And here's my thing. Today, I can't wait to see you host.

• 5:40Sean Hayes?

  Yeah.

• 5:40Jason Bateman?

  Let's see what you got, Sean.

• 5:42Sean Hayes?

  This is gonna be the worst experience for me.

• 5:45Jason Bateman?

  Well, the voters are now listening, right? Because the nominations are out. Now they really have to decide.

• 5:50Will Arnett?

  Pay attention to his hosting.

• 5:51Sean Hayes?

  My questions are still gonna be like, "Hey, where are you from?"

• 5:54Jason Bateman?

  Yeah. No, don't worry. We know that.

• 5:56Will Arnett?

  That obviously resonates with the jury over there.

• 5:59Jason Bateman?

  The iHeart Media people have made a bunch of mistakes here.

• 6:02Will Arnett?

  When Sean said, "What's your favorite color?" I mean, how do you stop with this?

• 6:06Jason Bateman?

  Let's nominate that jackass.

• 6:09Sean Hayes?

  Yeah, here we go. Geez, I'm not gonna be able to come up for air for a while on this.

• 6:12Jason Bateman?

  We're thrilled for you, Sean.

• 6:14Will Arnett?

  Yeah, we really are.

• 6:15Sean Hayes?

  I'm thrilled for everybody. And look.

• 6:16Will Arnett?

  I said to Sean, by the way, I did say, "Congrats, man," and he was like, "Oh, thank you." And I responded, "I didn't mean it."

• 6:24Will Arnett?

  What are you doing?

• 6:25Sean Hayes?

  How dare you say thank you. I responded with, I didn't, I didn't read, I truly didn't know, I didn't read the article, I just read the headline, like most people.

• 6:31Will Arnett?

  Sure.

• 6:32Jason Bateman?

  It is true. I think Sean might be the kindest man I've ever met.

• 6:35Sean Hayes?

  No, not possible.

• 6:37Jason Bateman?

  No one deserves it more.

• 6:38Sean Hayes?

  Not around you two.

• 6:39Jason Bateman?

  All right, zip it up. We've got, we've got, we've got, we've got an interesting guest today. He's, he's known primarily in New Zealand and, and South Africa due to his success in rugby. Florida then came to love him when he pivoted his talents towards highlight and dog racing. And then when he was in California, he was attempting to be the first to successfully mend the San Andreas Fault. He tried his hand at acting. And, and while fame and fortune there has been scarce at best, some call it a wipeout.

• 7:14Will Arnett?

  Sure.

• 7:14Jason Bateman?

  The critics have given him a few hugs. So, he has received a couple of Academy Awards and seven Emmy Awards. What? He's gotten himself a Tony nomination, even an AFI life. A highlight player who has Academy Awards? Yeah, he's turned it around. He got a lifetime achievement award from AFI. BAFTA gave him something.

• 7:34Sean Hayes?

  Who's this guy?

• 7:34Jason Bateman?

  The Golden Globes gave him the Cecil B. Demille Award. The Kennedy Center honored this, this highlight player. And Barack Obama gave him the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

• 7:47Will Arnett?

  Wait a second.

• 7:47Jason Bateman?

  So I say chin up. I say chin up to this fella.

• 7:50Sean Hayes?

  I have no idea.

• 7:51Will Arnett?

  This is the most, the most highly decorated guest we've ever had.

• 7:54Jason Bateman?

  I would say so. Yet he's famous and fortunate in our book, okay? Please welcome the forever struggling but always diligent, America's own and Hollywood's best, Mr. Tom Lamar Hanks.

• 8:06Will Arnett?

  No!

• 8:07Speaker 03

  Had I known that Sean was the host of this podcast.

• 8:13Speaker 03

  I would have bailed. I said, guys, I'd like to, but you know, I don't like to work from home.

• 8:19Will Arnett?

  Apparently you're working with one of the brightest hosts in the business.

• 8:21Speaker 03

  Is there a name for this award? Is it, does it named after somebody?

• 8:25Jason Bateman?

  It's called the Aorta, because it's from iHeartMedia.

• 8:28Speaker 03

  Oh, I, oh, okay.

• 8:31Jason Bateman?

  That's not true, but that's my pitch.

• 8:33Sean Hayes?

  One of my hard hitting nominee questions is, where are you right now? I don't recognize that room.

• 8:38Speaker 03

  I'm in a tiny little cubby hole that is here in my vast compound. Somewhere in the tri-state area.

• 8:46Jason Bateman?

  I'm telling you, dog racing really pays, guys. You gotta look into it.

• 8:50Speaker 03

  It's within a single day's drive from Lakewood, Ohio, home of the Great Lakes Shakespeare Festival.

• 8:56Sean Hayes?

  Wait, you didn't-

• 8:57Jason Bateman?

  Is it true?

• 8:57Speaker 03

  No, no.

• 8:58Will Arnett?

  Are we already getting a, are we already plugging a festival?

• 9:01Speaker 03

  Well, it was a long time ago.

• 9:05Sean Hayes?

  Wait, did you really do dog racing?

• 9:08Jason Bateman?

  No, you dumbass. This is why you're not gonna win.

• 9:11Sean Hayes?

  You're the worst host.

• 9:12Speaker 03

  Jason was demonstrating his quote comedy chops.

• 9:16Jason Bateman?

  Guys, can I write, or what?

• 9:19Will Arnett?

  Wait, hang on, I think Tom's on to something. Let's get into Jason's comedy chops.

• 9:24Speaker 03

  You know, I told, I told some friends last night that I was doing this podcast, and first of all, I had to re-explain your names.

• 9:33Jason Bateman?

  Who we were, yeah.

• 9:34Speaker 03

  They said, Sean who? Jason what? Will? Huh? What is the name of it? I kept calling it helpless, based on the Neil Young song, so, but now I realize, no, no, no, it's, it's smartless, smartless.

• 9:47Sean Hayes?

  We really are helpless.

• 9:48Speaker 03

  And the question came up about you, Will. Which is, which was this question, is, has he started using a different voice professionally? That in your early days, you were kind of like squeaky, you sort of sounded like Jay North in those old Dennis the Menace reruns, and you were hilarious. But then you went off and voiced Batman, and it's though you're walking around with your own self-imposed EQ on your voice now. True or false, Will?

• 10:14Sean Hayes?

  Here, I, listen, like any good politician, I can't just give you a straight true or false. I will say that I constantly have a monitor in my ear and I'm, and I'm adjusting my levels.

• 10:22Will Arnett?

  Input levels.

• 10:23Speaker 03

  Right.

• 10:23Will Arnett?

  Uh, and so then I can, I can mod it. No, you know what? It's funny. I recently, you know, I often watch a lot of my old stuff, uh, cause I like to be entertained.

• 10:32Jason Bateman?

  And he has trouble sleeping.

• 10:34Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 10:34Will Arnett?

  No, but I, my voice has gotten, it has. But if you listen to Howard Stern.

• 10:38Speaker 03

  Is this because of abuse? Uh, I guess. Are you, do you still smoke?

• 10:41Will Arnett?

  Well, who's listening? Um, I'm, I'm just learning. I'm just learning.

• 10:47Jason Bateman?

  We had Sean Penn on the podcast. He's, he's, he went through a, a, a full pack of darts, didn't he?

• 10:52Will Arnett?

  He did go through a pack of darts.

• 10:53Speaker 03

  Darts? That's colloquial for cigarette.

• 10:55Will Arnett?

  Yeah, it's Canadian.

• 10:56Speaker 03

  As opposed to say coffin nail or, um.

• 10:59Will Arnett?

  Or a nail, a nail.

• 11:01Speaker 03

  Or bullet.

• 11:01Will Arnett?

  Actually, Tom, this brings me to an actual question, uh, about the nail. I noticed recently I was reading the 10th book in the, uh, in the, uh, Gunther, uh, what's his name? Series by Philip Kerr. And I noticed your name on the back of it.

• 11:14Speaker 03

  Oh, the, uh.

• 11:15Will Arnett?

  And I, you, you gave a little, uh, blurb for the back of, uh, for the jacket of Prussian, Prussian Blue, which I'm almost finished with.

• 11:21Speaker 03

  Oh, that's a great one.

• 11:22Will Arnett?

  It's a great one, right?

• 11:23Speaker 03

  Gunther, help me.

• 11:25Will Arnett?

  Bernard Gunther, Bernard.

• 11:26Speaker 03

  Bernard, Bernie Gunther series. He plays a non, okay.

• 11:32Will Arnett?

  Yeah, you explain it.

• 11:33Speaker 03

  Go, go, be merciful on me on this, okay? He plays a non-Nazi private investigator from 1928 Berlin through well after the war.

• 11:46Will Arnett?

  Yes, right.

• 11:46Speaker 03

  It's a fabulous series by Philip Kerr.

• 11:50Will Arnett?

  Philip Kerr.

• 11:50Speaker 03

  The late Philip Kerr. He passed away.

• 11:52Will Arnett?

  Too early, yeah.

• 11:53Speaker 03

  And I read them all and just, well, I'm, I'm not a big, I'm not a big like detective genre fiction writer.

• 12:01Will Arnett?

  Me neither.

• 12:01Speaker 03

  But this had that added bonus of very accurate sort of historical detail to it that, uh, that I really loved.

• 12:08Will Arnett?

  It's, it's a tremendous historical fiction and you're, you're absolutely right. And I'm with you, Tom. And, and I read, I read mostly nonfiction and somebody recommended, they said, you love all this European history. I think you'd like this. I'm fully, like I said, I just started at the beginning of the summer and I'm on book 10, uh, Prussian Blue. And, but he always refers to cigarettes as nails. And he gets beaten up by these Nazis and then they look down and he's spitting up blood and they say, what do you want? He looks up and he says, can I get a nail?

• 12:32Speaker 03

  Yeah. And you know what, when he smokes one, he looks really cool.

• 12:35Will Arnett?

  He looks really, really cool.

• 12:38Speaker 03

  What I like about those books is it fills in the blanks of his war years. Cause some of them take place well before World War II, some of them take place after World War II. And in the course of it, you see what he went through.

• 12:51Jason Bateman?

  Thanks guys for firing us out of the gate here at the start of the interview. You know, our listeners love literature. Uh, go Sean, you're the host, let's do it.

• 12:58Speaker 03

  Yeah, host, come on. By the way, Sean, I have my hand on my buzzer. Hand is right on my buzzer. I'm ready to buzz in with the correct answer.

• 13:06Sean Hayes?

  Good. I wanna know what your fascination with war is. Because your name is so synonymous, I've never asked you this in my entire life. Why are you so passionate?

• 13:16Will Arnett?

  Yeah, you're the war guy.

• 13:17Sean Hayes?

  The history of war.

• 13:19Jason Bateman?

  It started the highlight, I think, right?

• 13:21Speaker 03

  That dog racing, you know, uh, first of all, we do a lot of them because none of the projects have to have cell phones or laptops. So that alone makes the writing of them so much easier. And there's much less special effects of having to put in those screens. But I have, I get this question asked of me quite often. And the answer always comes down to when, in those formative years of say, seven through, you know, when you're a little kid.

• 13:53Will Arnett?

  Yep.

• 13:53Speaker 03

  Every single caregiver, every single adult in my life would make references to the six, two words, three letters each, "the war." And they talked about it as this great dividing line in their lives. There was before the war, there was during the war, and there was just after the war. And they talked about it as though it's almost like, well, that was when the black plague was walking among us, you know? For, for a big chunk of their lives, they had no idea where they were going to be in another six months. They had no idea how long the war was going to last. That's, that's one big aspect of it. The other part of the two is. Is that the bad guys lost.

• 14:38Will Arnett?

  Yeah.

• 14:38Speaker 03

  At the end of the day.

• 14:39Will Arnett?

  Yeah.

• 14:40Speaker 03

  We were just, we were able to somehow unfortunately necessarily kick the stuffing out of them. And when bad guys lose something, it's that, what is that power of myth of, is it Bill Moyers? You know, you wrote, "The world was on a quest to defeat people that were undeniably evil." The governments of those places and many of the, many of the populace. So I, I keep getting drawn back to that. And again, I will say that from a storytelling perspective, our present day is just so, um, there is no shame left anymore. Truth seems to be a, a malleable, viscous kind of like.

• 15:22Will Arnett?

  It's a distant memory truth, it seems like. And actually, you know what, Tom, Sean, actually, within the last six months, I don't know if you remember, we were talking about all the movies you've done, the war movies. And Tom said, "Do you think he'll ever make a movie about TikTok?" And, you know, because something that he thinks is important. For Sean and Scotty, there's before TikTok and then after TikTok.

• 15:42Speaker 03

  Well, you know, if I did, it would only be about 45 seconds long. How long, how long is your average TikTok?

• 15:48Sean Hayes?

  And then I won't be, and then I won't be able to wait for the sequel.

• 15:51Jason Bateman?

  Tom, I, I know that, I know that you would, you'd, you'd never compare your experience shooting Save a Private Ryan to those who actually fought, uh, you know, in all of that and during all that. But was there ever a moment, I'm sure, I, I bet there was a few moments while you were shooting that where you got close to the feeling maybe of what it might have been like? I mean, certainly the product, the result of that film took me there or as, as close as I, I, I think I could get. But I would imagine there were a few moments there where it, it just, based on the quality of the production, they managed to create some environments for you there and, and your own process of trying to get into

• 16:30Jason Bateman?

  the character and the realism of it where you, you were kind of struck a bit by what these guys must have gone through?

• 16:38Speaker 03

  Well, yeah, but at the same, it was all fake, you know?

• 16:42Jason Bateman?

  Sure, but I mean.

• 16:43Speaker 03

  You gotta take that into account. But when we were on the beach there in County Wexford in Ireland, which is where we shot the Omaha Beach sequences.

• 16:51Jason Bateman?

  Oh, so it wasn't, wasn't right there?

• 16:53Speaker 03

  Uh, well, it was actually, it was one of the places where they rehearsed some of it. So that's, that's one aspect.

• 16:58Will Arnett?

  How far was base camp from the beach?

• 17:00Speaker 03

  Oh, it was way, well, I was gonna, I was gonna incorporate that into the, into this anecdote.

• 17:06Will Arnett?

  Sorry, sorry.

• 17:07Speaker 03

  So shut, just light up another nail, Will, and take that pause. We're there with 500 members of the Irish, actual members of the Irish Army. There is landing craft everywhere and we're all storming, storming the beaches. And the special effects crew had laid out these tiny little flags on the beach, where they had set up air mortars and squibs, little explosive devices.

• 17:35Sean Hayes?

  Things to avoid.

• 17:36Speaker 03

  Yeah, and they actually said, you know, "I be carefully, Ron, because, you know, this is gonna become, this is like a projectile. It'll come out of the ground very fast. So if you can, try to avoid where the flags are." I said, "You know, I think I got that." Then they removed all the flags and we couldn't see anything.

• 17:58Sean Hayes?

  Oh my god.

• 17:58Speaker 03

  Of where, so we were just stumbling all wandering away. So there's all of that and it's dressed the way it is. And when you, there were always four or five cameras going. And once the shot began, and you're wet and you're cold and you're coming up. And at a corner of one eye, you see a guy catch on fire.

• 18:21Speaker 03

  And out of the corner of the other eye, you see a guy blown 40 feet into the air. And he loses a leg in the process. Literally, we had, you know, amputee stunt people.

• 18:33Sean Hayes?

  Oh my god.

• 18:33Speaker 03

  Then you continually-

• 18:34Sean Hayes?

  They were amputated before you shot.

• 18:36Speaker 03

  They were amputated before.

• 18:37Sean Hayes?

  Thank god, just to clarify.

• 18:38Speaker 03

  And even though there's harnesses and there's wires and whatnot, machine guns are going off all around you and explosions are happening like crazy. And it goes on for the better part of, you know, two or three or four minutes. And there was a, there was a degree of sort of like odd, fake, and yet at the same time, terror that was going on.

• 18:59Will Arnett?

  Yeah.

• 18:59Speaker 03

  So we, we were shooting down there all morning long. I'm gonna say about on the, maybe the second day of shooting, cause the first day of shooting was spent in the boats themselves.

• 19:08Will Arnett?

  Wow.

• 19:08Speaker 03

  And I climbed up the steps to the bluff. They had put in these wooden steps so we could get up to the base camp.

• 19:15Will Arnett?

  Sure.

• 19:16Sean Hayes?

  That's for catering and craft services.

• 19:18Speaker 03

  Well, not far as the crow flies, but it was awfully high. It was probably about six, seven hundred feet up the bluffs. And I went back and I found the other guys in the unit, who I would be meeting when we got up to the shale, which was a, you know, the, the defilade that was at the top of the beach. That's where I would come across Barry Pepper and Eddie Burns and Vin Diesel and the other guys. And they were still hanging around, you know, outside the trailers, the way actors do.

• 19:46Will Arnett?

  Sure.

• 19:46Speaker 03

  And I was wet and I was sandy and I was near death from the amount of noise that had gone on. And I, I, I told the guys, I said, "You guys better hold on to your hats, cause it's really wild down there. You are not going..." I mean, when you see a guy catch on fire out of the corner of your eyes, you're kind of... And no one said, you know, Tom...

• 20:08Will Arnett?

  Right, and no one's prepped you.

• 20:09Speaker 03

  No one has said, "There's gonna be a guy caught on fire on this side." And it's an all, all you were, it was, it was an interesting kind of, kind of panic.

• 20:17Will Arnett?

  You know what's interesting, and this is kind of folding back to what you were saying earlier, one of the reasons that, what I love about that movie, and I love that movie, Tom, and I'm not embarrassed to say, I love it so much, and I've seen it a lot of times. And one of the things I really love about it, and you kind of touched on this whole idea of...

• 20:33Sean Hayes?

  Can't wait for the musical version, or?

• 20:35Will Arnett?

  No.

• 20:35Speaker 03

  Ninety-seven, by the way. Nineteen ninety-seven.

• 20:38Will Arnett?

  Which is insane.

• 20:39Sean Hayes?

  That's when it came out. Wow, it seems like two years ago.

• 20:42Will Arnett?

  But you had that moment where your character is a schoolteacher, I think, is that right?

• 20:47Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah.

• 20:48Will Arnett?

  Yeah, he's a schoolteacher. But the idea that it doesn't matter what he is, he's just a regular. This is what the thing of this, particularly this war. There was the Great War, which they referred to World War I as, but then there was the war, this war, World War II. And he was a guy who was called to do something extraordinary. He wasn't a guy who was born to be a military officer. He wasn't a guy who was born to be a killer. He was a guy who had to go because that's what he had to do. And people came in in this moment when the entire world was at war and did extraordinary things. And I always loved that about it. And I think that, for me, it really captured what it is that that sort of makes me have such a... It's weird to have, say, have reverence for the war, but you have reverence for the bravery and what people did that were extraordinary things.

• 21:33Speaker 03

  Yeah, you actually want to make an anti-war movie at the same time.

• 21:37Will Arnett?

  Right.

• 21:37Speaker 03

  That you're making a war movie.

• 21:39Will Arnett?

  Right.

• 21:39Speaker 03

  Let me tell you a story. I was nineteen, eighteen years old, I think, and I was a bellman at the Royal Hotel in Oakland, California. And we had a guy who ran his own dry cleaning service would come and collect the clothes and take them away and then deliver the clean clothes. And he was always coming with, you know, dozens and dozens of shirts and pants that had been dry cleaned. And I was working there one summer and he was gone for two weeks. I'm gonna say his name was Mike, I can't remember what his name was. But Mike was gone for two weeks and somebody else came in every day. And then after two weeks, it was in June, after two weeks he came back from his vacation. I said, "Oh, hey, Mike, where were you these last two..." "Oh, no, I take a vacation every, every, every June."

• 22:24Speaker 03

  I said, "Oh, oh, do you go camping?" He said, "No, no, no, I get together with some of my old buddies." I said, "Oh, oh, where did you, where did you go?" "Well, this, this year, we, we went back to this place that we had visited back when we were kids." I said, "Oh, oh, where was that?" He said, "It's in the, it's in the north of France." He was a paratrooper. He was in the eighty second airborne.

• 22:49Will Arnett?

  Wow.

• 22:50Speaker 03

  This guy is now, um, this nineteen seventy four. So go back forty years. So he's, he's in his fifties and what he's telling me is that when he was in his twenties, he jumped into, he jumped into Normandy on D day and he was a paratrooper. And now he's a guy delivering his.

• 23:08Will Arnett?

  Dry cleaning.

• 23:08Speaker 03

  The dry cleaning for the hotel.

• 23:10Will Arnett?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 23:10Speaker 03

  I felt, uh, I felt stupid and small, um, but also that was a, he was an example of that adult, that caregiver, that was part of daily life that, you know, that, he didn't know if he was gonna make it back and he went, oh, he said, and we go back, he said this, he said, we go back to, uh, to visit the buddies that didn't make it home.

• 23:33Will Arnett?

  Mm hmm.

• 23:34Speaker 03

  So they're visiting the, they're visiting the, the cemeteries that are in, so look, that's a generation. Uh, it was a, it was a time that was loaded with all sorts of problems that of course we're still dealing with right now. But you can't take away the fact that these were young guys who were asked to go off and liberate the world from really, really bad people and they did it. So.

• 23:56Will Arnett?

  Yeah. My grandfather, I just, I'll leave it at this. Uh, my, my grandfather who passed, uh, almost, almost twelve years ago, uh, who I was really close with and, uh, loved dearly. He, I remember him telling me, uh, he worked with, uh, he was in the Canadian army, but he was a, a, attached to the Royal Air Force and he planned bombing sorties. And they were, uh, stationed at various air, airfields as they would move across, as they, you know, after, uh, June forty four.

• 24:23Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 24:24Will Arnett?

  And he said, one morning we wake up and there was constantly planes taking off and landing and stuff and they were right. And he said, one morning, uh, his tent, the guy we shared a tent with, woke up, came out of the tent and walked into a propeller of a plane in the dark.

• 24:36Speaker 03

  Jeez.

• 24:37Will Arnett?

  And I said, and he told me, he didn't tell me this until I was about eighteen, of course. And I said, well, what did you do? And he said, uh, and he wasn't joking. He said, well, I got a new tent mate. And I was like, wow. And he was just like, that's the way it went. We had to keep going. There was, what can you do?

• 24:55Speaker 03

  I don't want to go into a place I was, that's too much of a bummer of a story. Sad story, true story.

• 25:01Will Arnett?

  It's very sad. Anyway.

• 25:01Jason Bateman?

  I think a perfect segue would be Happy Days, right?

• 25:05Will Arnett?

  Sure, let's go.

• 25:06Jason Bateman?

  Let's talk about, you know.

• 25:07Will Arnett?

  Let's go to Happy Days.

• 25:08Jason Bateman?

  In order to make Saving Private Ryan happen, or any of the other incredible movies that you have been in.

• 25:15Speaker 03

  You IMDb reading sons of bitches.

• 25:17Jason Bateman?

  No, no, no, no, no. How dare you. This is pure Wikipedia.

• 25:20Speaker 03

  How dare you come at me with this.

• 25:22Jason Bateman?

  It's just Wikipedia. So, um, so had you not booked that episode on Happy Days?

• 25:27Speaker 03

  Hey.

• 25:28Jason Bateman?

  Would you have not met Ron Howard and things we would not have been gifted? The High Life player.

• 25:34Speaker 03

  I did not meet Ron Howard on Happy Days. Ron had left the series by then. What I, the guys I met were Lowell Gans and Babalu Mandel, who were the staff writers on Happy Days, who wrote the, um, the part, uh, who wrote Splash, the screenplay of Splash. And Ron was directing and they said, hey, you may want to, hey, take a look at that guy who got fired from Bosom Buddies, you know, Bosom Buddies was canceled. Something that Sean is going to experience one of these days.

• 26:02Will Arnett?

  Yeah. Don't worry, Sean's canceled two programs I've been on, so keep going.

• 26:07Jason Bateman?

  And we will be right back. Did you ever notice the best deals are just obvious? Like hotels.com. What do they do, you may ask? Hotels on the internet. And a lot of them, like hundreds of thousands. I don't know why I just turned into Sean Hayes. Plus, if you join for free, you can save up to 20% instantly with member prices and you earn rewards every time you book. So, your next trip basically starts paying for itself. It's simple and you get more out of every stay. Sign up for free and book today. Hotels.com. It's all in the name. Every family has one.

• 26:51Jason Bateman?

  The person who says, oh, I don't want anything this year. Cool.

• 26:56Speaker 03

  Super helpful. Here's the fix. Coop Sleep Goods. It's the rare gift that gets used every single night instead of shoved in a closet by January. Coop's Holiday Gift Guide is now 25% off, packed with best-selling adjustable pillows, cooling sheets, and toppers. And while you're there, grab one for yourself. I mean, you've been powering through this whole year on fumes. You've earned it. Every order comes with a 100-night trial, so there's no guesswork. Give yourself a damn break. Get 25% off the Holiday Gift Guide for a limited time at coopssleepgoods.com/comedy. That's C-O-O-P, sleepgoods.com/comedy.

• 27:35Will Arnett?

  And now, back to the show.

• 27:37Jason Bateman?

  Tom, would you agree that the routine of a sitcom actor is the best job in show business? Do you miss it still to this day?

• 27:46Speaker 03

  Well, it is kind of a skate. It's a great hang, I'll tell you that. Because, look, you either shoot, you rehearse Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, camera block, Thursday, shoot Friday.

• 27:57Jason Bateman?

  Right.

• 27:57Speaker 03

  Or you rehearse Thursday, Friday, Monday, camera block, Tuesday, shoot Wednesday. Isn't that kind of like the...

• 28:05Jason Bateman?

  Yeah, that second one shoots Tuesday, yes. You start on Wednesday.

• 28:09Sean Hayes?

  What you're saying is five days of the week. Yeah.

• 28:11Jason Bateman?

  Yeah, unless you're working with Jimmy Burrows, and then you can take the first day off of rehearsal and really becomes a four-day workweek, and it's only three weeks a month, so it's 12 working days a month.

• 28:20Speaker 03

  These are really top-secret things, man. You should never let the civilians hear.

• 28:23Will Arnett?

  What are you doing? Why are you blowing up?

• 28:25Jason Bateman?

  And it's six hours a day.

• 28:26Will Arnett?

  Now, everybody's gonna want to be in showbiz.

• 28:28Speaker 03

  There's food, there's craft service.

• 28:31Jason Bateman?

  Climate control.

• 28:32Speaker 03

  You get a lot of breaks, you know. It is an awfully, awfully fun day. When we did Bosom Buddies, Peter Scolari and I, my dear old pal.

• 28:41Jason Bateman?

  One of the great shows.

• 28:42Speaker 03

  We actually shot that show on video, not on the film cameras. Film cameras in those days, that was pretty much a bunt. Camera blocking day was just kind of like your stand and did it. But we had four video cameras, and we had to do the entire camera blocking day ourselves on camera, because they did a line cut, you know? Camera three, and tighten up on four, and four. Let's come back, let's come back to two, and two. You had to be there. For that, so you did, you worked a long day and you did every line of the that week script over and over again. And he and I just started goofing around so much that that's, that's where we first got, we got yelled at a couple of times. You know, the, the, uh, the director up in the booth. You know, he'd come in over that top.

• 29:27Jason Bateman?

  Voice of God.

• 29:27Speaker 03

  Hey guys, listen, we're, we're working really hard up here. Can you guys just kind of skip to the lines? Otherwise, we can't get the line cut in. We're trying, check the tally lights on camera three, Tom. When that comes on, that, you know. You speak. And we didn't care. We were just goofing around so much.

• 29:44Will Arnett?

  How excited were you when you got, when you got that show? What was that moment? So young Tom Hanks and you get Bosom Buddies. You booked it. It's your job. What was that?

• 29:52Speaker 03

  Well, I couldn't believe it. Yeah. I was gonna be on TV, you know.

• 29:56Sean Hayes?

  Right.

• 29:57Speaker 03

  And I was gonna be, up to that point, as a Shakespearean actor, I'd made, uh, I made less than ten, $10,000 in a year, for an entire year. And I was married and I had a kid. And, uh, geez, I, I made almost, I made that in two weeks on, uh, on Bosom Buddies. So the financial reprieve was huge.

• 30:18Jason Bateman?

  When was the last time you did Shakespeare?

• 30:20Speaker 03

  I did Shakespeare, uh, two years ago here in Los Angeles. I played Falstaff.

• 30:25Sean Hayes?

  Yes.

• 30:26Speaker 03

  With the Shakespeare Center, Los Angeles.

• 30:28Sean Hayes?

  Tom, tell that story. It was, it was a video that I saw of you doing it. I can't remember. It was so funny. You pulled some guy out of the audience or something?

• 30:35Speaker 03

  No, what happened was, we had, we had a medical emergency. A guy, um, a gentleman had a, a heart thing happen to him. And all of a sudden, um, the paramedics had to be called. We were doing it at the VA Center in a, the Japanese garden amongst the eucalyptus trees here in

• 30:51Sean Hayes?

  Right.

• 30:52Speaker 03

  West Los Angeles. And, you know, a guy had some sort of seizure and we had to call the EMTs. And then we had to take a break and the house, not the house lights, the lights all came up. And, uh, it was going into, it ended up being about a 30-minute hold while they took care of the, this gentleman. And, uh, we were all backstage saying, uh, should we do something? And then when I saw that people were leaving. It's like, oh, no, no, no, no, no, no. I mean, it was gonna, it was a long, it was about close to three hour show anyway. But when I saw people, I saw a lady pick up her purse and move toward the exit.

• 31:31Speaker 03

  And I came running out, trying to scream and get back here, take thee thy seat or something.

• 31:38Sean Hayes?

  Yeah, it was so funny. But what was amazing was you were improvising in Shakespearean talk. That was, that's what blew my mind and it was super funny. God, it was so great.

• 31:47Speaker 03

  It ended up, it ended up being worthwhile and got enough people to stay. And I think I ridiculed enough people that made some lady cry, you know, but out of laughter, tears of joy.

• 31:59Sean Hayes?

  What was the, you know, a splash? By the way, for your birthday, years and years ago, I sent you a poster and I superimposed my face over Daryl Hannah's and I said, the note said, you and I would have made a bigger splash. But.

• 32:13Will Arnett?

  Tom doesn't remember that.

• 32:14Speaker 03

  You had, we only been the Trail Blazers.

• 32:17Sean Hayes?

  But, but you know, what was that like? What was that feeling? Because as a kid, I was like, oh my God, every actor wanted to be Tom Hanks. Everybody, every actor wanted to be you.

• 32:27Will Arnett?

  Really?

• 32:27Sean Hayes?

  Because you were in all of the string of these massive comedy hits, right? And Big and Splash and just.

• 32:34Speaker 03

  I didn't know what I was doing. They asked me to, they asked me to be in a movie, so I said, yeah.

• 32:38Will Arnett?

  But did you, but did you know when you started doing all those other movies? You started, you did Big and you did all these things and they were just getting, did you know where you were going or?

• 32:47Speaker 03

  No, no, you have no idea. They just said.

• 32:50Sean Hayes?

  But you were playing the lead and you were incredibly charismatic and you were, you were compelling on screen, like you were carrying things right out of the gate. Had you always had the confidence and the sort of, the, the leadership qualities?

• 33:05Speaker 03

  No, no. I was just trying to remember the words. I was trying to speak loud enough to be heard.

• 33:12Sean Hayes?

  But Tom, you are, you are, you are such.

• 33:14Will Arnett?

  What a relief.

• 33:15Speaker 03

  Listen, I'll tell you, I'll tell you the biggest, the biggest lesson that I learned. This was when I was at the Great Lakes Shakespeare Festival, just a day's drive from where I am right now in Lakewood, Ohio.

• 33:28Speaker 03

  In which Dan Sullivan, who directed the Henry the Fifth, excuse me, Henry the Fourth that I did as Falstaff, he directed that. In 1977, we were in rotating rep and I was carrying a spear and I was doing everything that I was told to do. And we had done, we had just opened a production of Hamlet the night before. It was in rotating rep, so you open the shows about every two weeks and then you ran a different show every night. That's what repertory means.

• 34:02Will Arnett?

  Sean.

• 34:03Speaker 03

  And so we had opened up Hamlet and we all had a rehearsal the next day for Taming of the Shrew, which I played, I played Grumio in Taming of the Shrew. And all of the Equity Company, the professionals, were hungover, exhausted, because they had all been out partying the night before, because they had just opened Hamlet. So everybody was like, synambulistic and showing up at 10 o'clock. And no one really knew their lines yet and everybody was kind of like shuffling around. And Dan Sullivan yelled at everybody. He yelled at everybody, said, "Hey, hey, hey, hey, hey! We've got three weeks to get this show up on its feet. And you people are not even trying, for crying out loud.

• 34:47Speaker 03

  I can't do my job if you guys don't do your jobs. You guys have got to show up on time, you got to know your lines, and you've got to have an idea. I can't provide everything here. So, let's take a break, mainline some coffee, chew it if you have to, right out of the jar, but come back here with some friggin' energy."

• 35:08Will Arnett?

  Fuck, I would cast you in the Dan Sullivan movie right now, by the way. Sorry, just for what it's worth. That was a good one.

• 35:14Speaker 03

  I remember, okay, so you, look, we're all like 19, 18, 20, I was 20 years old then. And that lesson really super stuck to me. If professional actors who have 20 years in the biz, as they often said, 20 years in the biz, I've never been yelled at like that. That was, that was an important lesson. So all through all of these gigs that I had... The hits, thank you. The misses, let's forget those. Uh, I always, I, that was always the thing that I thought the most important thing to do was, show up on time, know your lines, and have an idea in your pocket.

• 35:49Sean Hayes?

  Yes, for sure, for sure.

• 35:51Speaker 03

  Try to bring it. That's, that's all I did through all of those. I didn't know anything.

• 35:54Sean Hayes?

  So, Tom, when you went, when you were doing all those strings, the string of comedies, uh, back then, and you, do you remember what it felt like, or do you remember that pivot moment when all of a sudden maybe you got offered a script, or you had a kind of dialogue with your agent, or what happened where you switched over to more, uh, let's say, important films, or more dramatic films?

• 36:14Speaker 03

  What a way to, what a question. It's so great.

• 36:16Sean Hayes?

  Thank you.

• 36:17Speaker 03

  Oh, I, I, that was the era of, uh, you could make a movie for about fifteen million dollars. And if you just said it was a comedy, it seemed to do some brand of business. Whether it was actually funny or not, it didn't matter.

• 36:32Sean Hayes?

  Yeah, that was the time.

• 36:33Speaker 03

  It was all, you know, anybody who had said action and cut was trusted to direct a comedy movie, whether they were funny or not. And I'm, I made a, I made a ton of those, um, in which everybody came back, "Oh, the dailies were fantastic." "I think the audience is gonna be standing on their feet at the end of this."

• 36:52Sean Hayes?

  So, Tracy, dailies are, are the thing you watch, um, as you're filming the movie? They get little clips?

• 36:57Speaker 03

  Yes, the rushes, the, the day before stuff. And it doesn't matter if the movie was called, "Monkeys Make the Sun Go Down," um, everybody would say, "This is, this is the funniest of all the movies." "The Cows of Tumbletown, this is going to be a magnificent comedy." Because the good comedies that were made, you know, at the time, they all had, they were all with former Second City people, you know, and Saturday Night Live people, and, but there was this, this, you could take a setting. "This movie takes place on a ski slope." "This movie takes place on a school bus." "This movie takes place at a bachelor party, and it will be a comedy."

• 37:39Speaker 03

  And I made a, I made a billion of those like that because we're just kind of like doing imitations of other people's funny movies.

• 37:45Will Arnett?

  Yeah, but here's the thing, and I've said this about, there are a few people out there who have this, and you are one of them, which is, it doesn't matter what the movie was, you are always good. You're always, even, even doing, I joked about doing the Dan Sullivan, no matter what it is, you're committed, and that always kind of shines through. So I, I know that you talk about those, those misses, I mean, look, if it wasn't for bad movies, I wouldn't make any at all.

• 38:10Speaker 03

  You wouldn't be sitting in your dad's library.

• 38:12Will Arnett?

  Yeah, I wouldn't be my dad's, living back at my folks' house in Toronto. But, but, but, you know, but it's true, and you always, you always deliver in that way because I always get the impression, watching you, that like, you don't care what the thing is, you're just doing, I mean, you're part of it, and you're in the thing, and who gives a shit what the?

• 38:34Speaker 03

  You know, I, I don't want to, I don't want to discount some of the great stuff, I met great people, and we did, we made, we actually did some really funny stuff that, that, that really did work, and it was always, it was always, always fun.

• 38:45Jason Bateman?

  Also known as classics.

• 38:46Speaker 03

  It was, well, you know, it's funny, you know, they, I don't think I, we ever had a movie, Splash was well reviewed, and I don't think I had another decent review for about, I don't know, six or seven films, but now you read about them, and they're, they're cult classics, you know? What? They're a cult classic? No? Geez. Didn't happen back in the day.

• 39:10Jason Bateman?

  But once Philadelphia happened, I would imagine some of the scripts that were coming to you started to confuse things for you and your team a bit.

• 39:19Speaker 03

  Well, I got older, you know, that, that's the other thing, too, and, you know, there's, there's a type of movie you can make in your late twenties. I turned, here's a story, I turned 27 the day of we wrapped the motion picture Splash. It was the last day of shooting, we were in the Bahamas, we had a cake that was actually for the wrap. Hey, let's celebrate the last day of shooting with a cake, and someone, I think with a tube of toothpaste, added in icing on the cake, happy birthday, Tom, because they found out it was my birthday. So that was, you know, there's a movie that you make when you're 27 and in your early 30s and what have you, and, you know, I made, I made a, a number of them, in which, but you have to get older, you know, you can't.

• 40:05Speaker 03

  And I was able to age into Gary Marshall gave me a great role with Jackie Gleason in a movie called Nothing in Common and then David Seltzer wrote and directed with Sally Field Punchline and then Big came along.

• 40:21Sean Hayes?

  That's great, yeah.

• 40:22Speaker 03

  But you get older and so and you start saying I will tell you I look, I'm not big on this kind of stuff, but there was one time I was sitting around with my crack showbiz expert who works for CAA and he said to me, what do you want to do? And I and I said, you know.

• 40:40Sean Hayes?

  Sounds exactly like Richard. That's a great impersonation.

• 40:43Speaker 03

  Richard Lovett, there you go.

• 40:44Sean Hayes?

  Beautiful impersonation.

• 40:45Speaker 03

  What do you want to do? And I said, I said, I want to play grownups. I want to I want to play people who've been through bitter compromise because I was in my mid 30s by that point.

• 40:56Will Arnett?

  Compromise, Jason, is a thing that people do.

• 40:58Sean Hayes?

  Yeah.

• 40:59Will Arnett?

  When you hear the other person's side and then you go, OK, I'm willing to shift my position a little bit and whatever, we'll talk about it later when Tom is gone. Sorry, Tom.

• 41:07Sean Hayes?

  Wait, Tom, you know what I always wanted to ask you and this is going to be the dumbest question in the world, but. Guaranteed.

• 41:12Speaker 03

  He is the host, latest in.

• 41:14Sean Hayes?

  That's right. In Cast Away, right?

• 41:17Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 41:18Sean Hayes?

  You, the volleyball is named Wilson. Now, you're married to the wonderful Rita Wilson, who I love, I adore, we all do. Was that by design because it could have been called Spalding?

• 41:30Speaker 03

  Jesus. Could have been. It was written by Bill Broyles and that, man, that movie took about six years to figure out. Bill Broyles and I started talking about it and we didn't, we weren't shooting it until six years later. And he came up with the idea of a volleyball and he named it Wilson in honor of my beautiful bride. We've been married, it'll be 34 years in next.

• 41:55Sean Hayes?

  Hold for a pause.

• 41:56Speaker 03

  No, for applause. Yeah, good for you. So, no, it could have been, and I think we added the There you go. Thank you, thank you, Will.

• 42:03Jason Bateman?

  Will, Jesus Christ, that is a whole new level.

• 42:06Will Arnett?

  I'm like Fred, I'm like Fred on Stern.

• 42:08Jason Bateman?

  This is, um, now, you know, uh, but that brings me to Finch. Finch seems like it's got some qualities. It's, I, I mean, if I was a Hack Studio executive, I'd say it's, it's Cast Away meets Martian.

• 42:20Speaker 03

  All movies are like that now. All movies are like that now.

• 42:23Jason Bateman?

  Yeah.

• 42:24Speaker 03

  Aren't they all, essentially, you take a, it's

• 42:26Jason Bateman?

  I suppose, yes.

• 42:27Speaker 03

  On the waterfront meets Pal Joey by, uh, by way of Paw Patrol. They're all, uh, movies are all kind of like that.

• 42:35Jason Bateman?

  But what you need is a, is a relatable, everyman that is, uh, empathetic, sympathetic, uh, can alpha and beta, uh, inside a page. Uh, I mean, you, you are the man that could service all things.

• 42:49Speaker 03

  I came up through that era of which every genre movie was about somebody who could not be killed or defeated, you know? The cop that could not be filled, the

• 42:58Will Arnett?

  I'm with, I'm with you.

• 42:59Speaker 03

  The fighter who could, who never lost, the, uh, and so I would, you know, a geeky guy with a big butt, a big nose and a squeaky voice.

• 43:08Jason Bateman?

  Mm-hmm.

• 43:08Speaker 03

  Uh, I, I, I took all the jobs away from Will, uh, because

• 43:12Will Arnett?

  I know. By the way, I do have a big, I have what's called a pro dumper.

• 43:16Jason Bateman?

  Yeah.

• 43:17Speaker 03

  Well, you can't drive a spike with a tack hammer, as I have, uh, I've heard in

• 43:21Sean Hayes?

  Wait, I just have a really quick Cast Away story that we might cut out of this, but, um, and Tom, I think I told you this, but I was working on Will and Grace with, with somebody who worked on the show, and we went after, uh, to his house after a taping one night, and we got super, super, super stoned, and Will knows this.

• 43:37Speaker 03

  This won't be cut.

• 43:38Sean Hayes?

  Yeah, we got super, super, super stoned, and he, he said, look, I got a copy of Cast Away, I got the DVD, let's fast forward it to the plane crash because the effects are so crazy, let's get totally high and watch, like, how do they do that, right? And so, we, um, so he just moved in this house, it was this brand new equipment, and we're, and I'm sitting in the back of his screening room, and he's up front, he just moved into this crazy house, it's gorgeous, and he had no idea how his own equipment worked. He's sitting in the backseat and he can't get the DVD to play. And I said, "Oh, no, is that a Sony?" Totally high out of my mind. I go, "Is that a Sony?" He goes, "Yeah." I go, "Oh, they're voice activated. Those are the new ones." You don't even know what you have. You have to speak the name of the movie into the machine after you put it in. He goes, "What are you talking about?"

• 44:23Sean Hayes?

  I go, "Just listen to me." You have to say the name of the movie as you put it into the DVD player. He's like, "Are you serious?" I go, "100%. I just read about these." So he turns back to the machine with his back to me and he goes, "Cast Away." And it didn't play and he waited a beat and then he did it again and he goes, "Cast Away." And he turned behind me. I was, I couldn't breathe. I was laughing so hard.

• 44:52Speaker 03

  Bob Zemeckis on that, he never cuts to the outside of the plane. That's one of the reasons why that plane crashes is good.

• 44:59Sean Hayes?

  It's so cool.

• 45:00Speaker 03

  Just from the perspective of inside the plane. No, no, I am God kind of stuff there. That's Bob.

• 45:06Sean Hayes?

  Now, Tom, with all of your incredible set experience, was that what drew you? Was it part of what drew you to the director's chair? Just the effort to streamline things because you knew probably more than a lot of the directors you may have been working with?

• 45:23Speaker 03

  No, I think directing in that becomes a bit of an ego thing because you become convinced that you know more than you actually do. But seriously.

• 45:34Sean Hayes?

  Yeah, but then you try it and you're like, "Oh, my God, this is hard."

• 45:37Speaker 03

  I believe every actor should direct. I think every director should have to act. I think we should all be writing and producing because you find out how hard it is to do that other job.

• 45:49Sean Hayes?

  For sure.

• 45:50Speaker 03

  From an actor's perspective, it's like, you know, you've got somebody saying, "That was pretty good. Try it again." And you want to say to them, "Do you realize I'm on a horse?" Weeping because my dog died. And I'm trying to remember six pages of dialogue at the same. Do you realize it's a little harder than it is? Meh, let's try it again. That along with the same thing of an actor saying, hey, we're gonna shoot this or what? Are we shooting or what?

• 46:18Jason Bateman?

  Right.

• 46:18Speaker 03

  You have to realize that everybody has nine million things going on inside their head. And also, we're all storytellers. At some point, we can have a sense of what might fit into our mouths a little bit better and maybe some options. It goes back to the thing Dan Sullivan always said, which have an idea in your pocket. You know, have something that you can come out and say, this isn't on the page, but let me show you something else.

• 46:43Jason Bateman?

  So, since you have directed, when you do come to the set as an actor with an idea in your pocket, are you sensitive to that there might actually be a plan in place that that director and that crew has been working on for weeks? And that your idea might disassemble the house of cards?

• 46:59Speaker 03

  Might suck. There might not be room for it. So then you try it once and they say, don't do that. And so, and then you don't do it. You know, it's pretty relatively easy stuff.

• 47:09Jason Bateman?

  Is that desire to direct still burning in you?

• 47:13Speaker 03

  I can't say that I have the instinctive powers of being a director. As an actor, I think I know what I want to do. I read it and I think, oh, I know what direction I'll go to. Directing is a, directing requires a fidelity and a patience and an ability to communicate. That after I've done it, I've directed two feature films. I've directed a number of episodes of the mini-series that we've done. And I like those because I wrote them more, I wrote on them at the same time. But I think directors more so than myself as an actor, they're born into it. You know, you have to think it's the greatest job in the world.

• 47:56Jason Bateman?

  Yeah.

• 47:56Speaker 03

  And oftentimes, it's not.

• 47:58Jason Bateman?

  Yeah. Do you enjoy the producing part of it all with what you guys have been doing?

• 48:01Speaker 03

  I don't really produce.

• 48:02Jason Bateman?

  Well, but you guys churn out, it's really, you shouldn't slip over it.

• 48:06Speaker 03

  It's the alliances that I make with other people that really do all the work.

• 48:10Jason Bateman?

  But the amount... You're incredibly prolific as a producer, you and Gary.

• 48:16Speaker 03

  We have a great team of people.

• 48:17Jason Bateman?

  I mean, you've employed an incredible amount of people. You've put a lot of product out there. That's not easy and it's incredibly admirable.

• 48:27Speaker 03

  Well, I'm very lucky because we have extremely good people and we do this, you know, we have a kind of like a clubhouse office where we lean in each other's doorway and say, you know, is this really a feature film, guys? I'm not so sure it's a feature film. Shouldn't it be like a 12-part mini-series instead so we can really examine the theme? And then you make nothing but a ton of alliances. But here's, I'm not a producer because this is what producers do every day. They get on the phone and they try to convince somebody to do something they do not want to do. Or they tell somebody on the phone that there's no way that they are going to do what that person on the phone really wants to do. That's pretty much it.

• 49:11Speaker 03

  It's that dichotomy. I always just say, sure, no matter what they're saying.

• 49:17Jason Bateman?

  We'll be right back.

• 49:19Speaker 04

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• 50:06Sean Hayes?

  And now, back to the show.

• 50:07Jason Bateman?

  Let me ask you, how, what is, what's your feeling about this, this transition that we're all in into a bit more of a streaming element, married with, you know, box office, you know, theatrical, you know, going to the theater, paying, paying some money for a ticket versus having it at home. Do you, what is your opinion on that as somebody in the business? And then also as somebody who is a, who is a viewer? Is it, do you like the fact that there is less pressure now, maybe, with not having to open on the weekend because it's streaming? Do you think about that?

• 50:42Speaker 03

  Well, that's, that's a pressure that doesn't come upon the actor. Because, look, the movies are always binary. They're either double zero or zero one. They either work or they do not work. And if they don't work, there's no amount of marketing or interviews that you can do.

• 50:55Jason Bateman?

  Right.

• 50:56Speaker 03

  On podcasts. In order to, in order to change the zeitgeist. The, the pressure remains absolute. The pressure is the speed of light in order to make a great story. The audience, I think, if I can pontificate just a little bit here.

• 51:16Jason Bateman?

  Please do.

• 51:17Speaker 03

  Doesn't care where they see it. The business does. The marketing, the producers and the studios and the, the grand entertainment industrial complex, you know. They would, you know, they would like things to be exactly as they were. But we have a business that is forever changing. You know, back in 1980, when you guys were still in junior high school, and the concept of home video was just beginning. Here's a story that goes back a long way. When we were, the, the first year that Peter and I were in Bosom Buddies, a VHS tape machine, a player at home, cost about $4,000.

• 51:55Jason Bateman?

  Yeah. Wow.

• 51:57Speaker 03

  And the only people that had them were incredibly wealthy, rich people.

• 52:03Jason Bateman?

  Three quarter inch, or two.

• 52:04Speaker 03

  Well, by that time, VHS was just beginning and in a neighborhood, maybe a guy named Doug would open up Doug's Video Rental Shop. S H O P P E.

• 52:18Will Arnett?

  Old timey, old timey video shop.

• 52:21Speaker 03

  And on one side of, one side of the rental space would be VHS tapes and on the other side would be a smaller collection of Beta. Sony Betamax. And eventually Beta went away and it was all just VHS. And by the time, I think the next year, VHS machines were only like eighteen hundred dollars. And then everybody was renting and the concept that you could, it was great, of course, to be able to record shows. After you went through this arcane kind of like process of on off recording timing. But the bigger thing was, is that if you had kids and you had a VHS of Dumbo, you know, they would get up in the morning on their own and put in, put in Dumbo and you didn't have to get up.

• 53:05Speaker 03

  This, this was huge. And here we are in two thousand twenty one and the industry is going through something akin to that change. Because guess what? As Gary Getzman, my partner at Playtone, said, you know, sitting at home and watching something on your TV is not that bad.

• 53:25Sean Hayes?

  Right, right, right. You know, Tom, you said to me years ago, you said, you know what, Sean? The business is always changing and you have to adapt and change with it. Not as an actor or the craft of, of creating things, just you have to keep an open mind and go with the flow of it. Otherwise, and if you fight it, you're just dead in the water.

• 53:44Will Arnett?

  But why didn't you take that advice? Why didn't you do it?

• 53:46Speaker 03

  Yeah, what happened there, Sean? Because now you're reduced to hosting a Heartless podcast. Is it Heartless?

• 53:51Sean Hayes?

  It's Heartless.

• 53:52Speaker 03

  Or Smartless?

• 53:52Will Arnett?

  You're known as Dumbo, the host of Heartless.

• 53:55Speaker 03

  We were very lucky. We were very lucky at Playtone because one of our, one of our first deals was at HBO. And this was old school HBO, you know, no commercials. You could say anything you wanted to. There was no language. There was no, there was no, and at that point, HBO doing so, doing a series or a movie or a mini series on HBO, that was the gold standard. And you had, seemed as though you had all the freedom in the world. And now you have even more of that, all the freedom in the world. But it still comes down to this very basic requirement. You've got to be putting out an awfully good product. Otherwise it will disappear into the mist, like many of my early films. Thanks, guys.

• 54:35Will Arnett?

  No, no, no, no. But how have you not? I'm surprised because it seems like they've tried to gobble up everybody. How have you not? When did Marvel call you and say, Tom, we need you to play, you know, Doctor Universe? And, you know, we need you to do 12 films and you have to play Doctor Universe. Did that ever happen?

• 54:56Speaker 03

  Here's the problem. First of all, they've never called me once.

• 55:00Will Arnett?

  I can't believe that.

• 55:01Speaker 03

  No, no, never. And I think that if one of these days they will, and they'll say, is there any way you would consider playing the Secretary of Defense?

• 55:14Speaker 03

  A guy who comes and says, please, help us all for men. We can't, we can't survive. I'll be one of those guys. I don't, I don't get to play the punk kung fu.

• 55:22Will Arnett?

  But God, God bless you because you still make the kinds of films. You have continued in an era where, where most features are, you know, the feature film market is dominated by these huge.

• 55:34Speaker 03

  Some of those are great.

• 55:35Will Arnett?

  Wait, no, no, no. No, I'm saying they're great and I have a lot of friends who do them.

• 55:39Speaker 03

  Well, they're not all great, but some of them are.

• 55:41Will Arnett?

  I said some, I said some, but some of them are good. And I, we all have friends who we adore and who are super talented who make those. I'm not saying that. But there is, it seems like a shrinking market for films that stand on their own because it's a great story and has a great cast and blah, blah. And you seem to be one of those people. You're in a very unique position that you're still making those films, which I think is awesome. We chastised, we chastised J.J. Abrams. We were like, go and make some comedies, J.J. You know, we were giving him shit.

• 56:15Jason Bateman?

  Because he wants to. But you know, it's because, Tom, because, because, Tom, you are us and you have maintained being us. You as first famous and as successful as you, as you have become for as long as you have been, you have still stayed very grounded, it seems, and normal. And I would imagine that that is just something you're stuck with from when you were a little kid and you've probably got a couple of parents to thank for that, I would imagine.

• 56:41Speaker 03

  My parents divorced when I was five years old, guys.

• 56:44Will Arnett?

  Way to go, Jason. Way to fucking go.

• 56:46Sean Hayes?

  This is why I'm not getting the nominations. This is where Sean really does his research. He would know that.

• 56:52Will Arnett?

  Tom, I don't know this. What did your folks think about you getting into the biz-distry, as I call it?

• 56:58Speaker 03

  You know, I started doing it for fun in high school because I couldn't believe that you could go and do plays in high school and get credit for it, you know? This is school. I remember specifically thinking that the first time I walked into a drama class. And I did it because some friends of mine from junior high had been in the plays and I just said, "What? I can come to school and do this? Well, this is screwing around, man. This is goofing off in class."

• 57:30Sean Hayes?

  I felt the exact same way. I was like, "Oh, my God. Everybody's just laughing. This is great."

• 57:34Speaker 03

  Both my dad and eventually my mom, because we lived in different places. When my mom came and saw me and stuff, they just thought, "Well, this is just wonderful." You know, "Look what Tommy found."

• 57:51Will Arnett?

  Sean, you've talked about that. You just said it. You had that same thing, right? Where you were like, "This is amazing. This is so much fun and I can't believe I get to do this." And five, six, seven, eight.

• 58:01Speaker 03

  Hit it, Sean. Hey, now, Sean, when you did Promises Promises on Broadway.

• 58:06Sean Hayes?

  Thank you, everybody. Applause.

• 58:07Will Arnett?

  He's never brought it up. That's weird. He's never mentioned it.

• 58:10Speaker 03

  And it was a big hit. And you said something to me, because Sean and I see each other.

• 58:17Will Arnett?

  Socially.

• 58:18Sean Hayes?

  Not just on this podcast.

• 58:20Speaker 03

  So after you had done Promises Promises,

• 58:24Speaker 03

  and it was huge because you played the piano on stage and you did all this stuff. It was a big Broadway hit, right? A number of years ago. And I said, "Are you going to do it again? Do you have the desire to get up and do another Broadway show?" And you said something that was, I swear to God, the only person I heard make the same sort of reference, are you ready for this? I read it as a quote from Laurence Olivier. You said, "I'm not sure I have the fire in the belly."

• 58:55Sean Hayes?

  Yes.

• 58:55Speaker 03

  In order to get up and do eight performances or something. And I remember when Laurence Olivier was older, and he was always asked, "Well, will you ever get up at the National again, what have you?" And he says, "No, because it requires a stronger heart." And he wasn't talking about medically. He was talking about all the effort that goes in, the fire in the belly.

• 59:17Will Arnett?

  Well, Sean, you would do eight shows a week. I remember you talked, we've talked a lot about Promises, Promises. But you said some of the same, you were like, "I do it." You did it for nine months or a year? How long did you do it for?

• 59:28Sean Hayes?

  A year.

• 59:29Will Arnett?

  A year.

• 59:30Speaker 03

  A year.

• 59:30Will Arnett?

  I remember you saying, similar thing that you said to Tom. You said the same thing. I said, "Would you do it again?" And you said, "I don't know if I have it in me."

• 59:39Sean Hayes?

  Yeah.

• 59:40Will Arnett?

  Five, six, seven, eight. And then you just went.

• 59:44Sean Hayes?

  No, no, it's true, Tom. You know, and I relayed that to you about the constant work ethic you have to jump from movie to movie to movie to movie over these decades. And they're all great. And your work, like Jason said, it's always, always fantastic. You're always committed, you're always in it.

• 1:00:05Speaker 03

  You're very committed.

• 1:00:06Sean Hayes?

  And I switched that question back to you about filmmaking. Is, do you still have the fire in the belly to travel and get up at five and stay in this hotel and that hotel? And you said, "Yeah, because it's what I love to do." And?

• 1:00:23Speaker 03

  Yeah, I do.

• 1:00:24Sean Hayes?

  Yeah.

• 1:00:24Speaker 03

  There's no other way of putting it. There is, look, it's more fun than fun. That was something that I learned a long time ago before I got my job at the Great Lakes Shakespeare pit. Work in the theater is more fun than fun. And I thought, well, yeah, this is a great way to spend your day. It's not just a lifestyle or a, you know, life's work. It's a life.

• 1:00:44Sean Hayes?

  I love that. And now, listen, out of all of the, your entire repertoire, all of your credits, is there one movie?

• 1:00:52Jason Bateman?

  He's gonna ask you, "What is your favorite movie?" Jesus Christ.

• 1:00:53Sean Hayes?

  No, no, no. Is there one movie or experience that was extra special to you that will always stick in your brain?

• 1:00:59Speaker 03

  You know, I will say, look, yes, they all are in so many ways. Look, I've never had a rotten time making a movie. I've always come away from a movie saying, "I can't believe they pay me to do this." That was fantastic. Despite the discomforts in the five in the morning. A little harder at the age of 65, I guess, but. Um, the, the experience of making the, the movie, uh, That Thing You Do. I cast it with a bunch of friends. We had a great time. It was the beginning of, uh, beginning of the company that, uh, that I formed.

• 1:01:32Sean Hayes?

  So great. I love that movie.

• 1:01:34Speaker 03

  Uh, with Gary Getzmann and everybody else down at Playtown. I, I could do that again and again and again. That was really.

• 1:01:39Jason Bateman?

  Was that the first film you directed?

• 1:01:40Speaker 03

  That was the first, not the first directing gig I had, but it was the first feature film, yeah. And it was, uh, it had music in it and it was very, it was very personal because it was set in 1964, so it was, uh... But, you know, uh, the, every, every gig is magnificent. The, the ones that don't, that maybe disappoint a little bit, are the ones where you don't get to spend enough time doing it. Like, I was just, uh, I just did two weeks with Wes Anderson in Spain, uh, with the Wes Anderson Repertory Company, and that was fantastic. And I was bummed out. I said, "Oh, we gotta leave. We've shot out my role. I gotta, I gotta go now. I'd like to, like to linger for a little bit."

• 1:02:21Will Arnett?

  I just got to do a couple of days with our buddy Taika Waititi, and it was just the greatest experience. And then it was just, I, we did a show for HBO, and then I just did his movie, and I was like, these were the, it was like the greatest, most fun month. And then I'm like, "Oh, and it's over."

• 1:02:35Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:02:36Will Arnett?

  And, and that was, I just wanna go and play with that gang.

• 1:02:38Speaker 03

  Can't, don't we, don't we get to have that 90-day experience here off somewhere, you know, pounding something out and getting up and, uh, loving?

• 1:02:46Jason Bateman?

  Well, you've given us, uh, not 90 days, but a solid hour of your very, very valuable time.

• 1:02:52Sean Hayes?

  Yes, thank you so much, Tommy.

• 1:02:53Jason Bateman?

  Thank you on behalf of, uh, of, of these two, uh, fellow smartless folks, uh, as well as everyone in America and the world for providing us, uh, all these little worlds that, that you have created, that we all get to live in, and they've all been fantastic.

• 1:03:08Speaker 03

  Is there a podcast award for second bananas or third bananas that you, Jason and Will might be up for?

• 1:03:14Jason Bateman?

  Will and I are gonna battle for that one.

• 1:03:17Will Arnett?

  You have to ask questions like, "What's your favorite movie?"

• 1:03:19Jason Bateman?

  Yeah.

• 1:03:21Will Arnett?

  No, you've got a monopoly on that.

• 1:03:23Jason Bateman?

  You got it all buttoned up.

• 1:03:24Speaker 03

  I would say that in Canada, this is known as Will Arnett's Smartless.

• 1:03:29Will Arnett?

  That's true, it's true.

• 1:03:30Jason Bateman?

  Wait, what?

• 1:03:31Speaker 03

  The number one podcast in Canada.

• 1:03:34Will Arnett?

  I think I just got voted Canada's favorite son, I'm not sure, but I'm putting it out there in case anybody wants to latch on to that and start making that a thing, I'm happy to.

• 1:03:42Speaker 03

  Well, it's a delight talking to you guys.

• 1:03:44Jason Bateman?

  You too, Tom. Thank you for saying yes to this.

• 1:03:47Will Arnett?

  The delight is ours. Tom, I just, words don't express how I feel, I'm such a...

• 1:03:51Speaker 03

  You're very kind, very kind, guys. And, uh, listen, good luck on the, uh, is there a name for this award yet?

• 1:03:57Jason Bateman?

  It's the iHeartRadio Award.

• 1:03:58Speaker 03

  The iHeartRadio Award.

• 1:04:00Jason Bateman?

  It might be called the Aorta.

• 1:04:01Speaker 03

  Who are you up against? That would be a big question there.

• 1:04:04Will Arnett?

  Oh, that's a great question.

• 1:04:05Speaker 03

  Hardcore history, maybe? Up against hardcore history?

• 1:04:08Jason Bateman?

  Sure, mhm. Fingers crossed.

• 1:04:11Sean Hayes?

  It's so great to see you.

• 1:04:12Jason Bateman?

  Thanks, Tom, very much.

• 1:04:13Speaker 03

  Thanks so much. Good to see you guys. Hope to, well, we'll hang at all those places that people like us end up at.

• 1:04:19Sean Hayes?

  For sure.

• 1:04:20Speaker 03

  All right, take care, guys.

• 1:04:21Will Arnett?

  Bye, thank you, Tom.

• 1:04:22Jason Bateman?

  All right, buddy.

• 1:04:22Sean Hayes?

  Lots of love to you.

• 1:04:23Speaker 03

  Bye-bye.

• 1:04:23Jason Bateman?

  Bye, Tom. I think he's gonna, I think he's gonna make it. That guy's got some charisma.

• 1:04:28Will Arnett?

  Jason, let me just say this. You've been complaining for a couple of years, saying, "Man, great guys, you guys", and then you just decide you pulled out at one of these, uh, what I now refer to as, because I don't use this word, as the topper card. I'm gonna now call it the topper card.

• 1:04:42Jason Bateman?

  He's, he's, he's that. He's a blue chip, that one right there.

• 1:04:45Will Arnett?

  Ah, man, what a delight. I mean, he's just like...

• 1:04:48Jason Bateman?

  He does have that thing, and I kept trying to figure out a way to ask him this without him deflecting, as he does so well, so humbly. Um, and I just kinda bailed on it, because I knew he just wouldn't. Uh, like, he's just got that, he's, he is us. He is completely personable and authentic. He is, he's every bit a leader that you'd want him to be, but he doesn't seem like he's too arrogant or cocky to, like, I don't know, how does he...

• 1:05:16Sean Hayes?

  You mean us as an audience, not us three?

• 1:05:20Jason Bateman?

  Yes, like, he's just like, he's the guy you wanna follow and are never annoyed, you know, watching him, or, I don't know. It's, it's been so consistent.

• 1:05:31Will Arnett?

  Yeah, I don't see myself as an everyman.

• 1:05:33Jason Bateman?

  Oh, no, you definitely not. No, definitely not.

• 1:05:36Will Arnett?

  I'm special.

• 1:05:37Jason Bateman?

  Yeah, well.

• 1:05:40Will Arnett?

  I'm like the boss of the everyman, you know? So when I'm there, when I see Tom come in, I'm like, it's great spending time with one of my employees.

• 1:05:49Jason Bateman?

  I hope he keeps staying as prolific as he is. I mean, what he's doing like, what? At least a film a year?

• 1:05:55Will Arnett?

  Same, same here. That's what I meant about the movies he makes. I love that he keeps making movies that are like, it just seems like not a lot of other people are making. And his new movie, which we talked on, what is the, uh, the Finch?

• 1:06:06Sean Hayes?

  Yeah, Finch.

• 1:06:07Jason Bateman?

  No, no, not the Finch.

• 1:06:08Will Arnett?

  Just Finch. Finch.

• 1:06:10Sean Hayes?

  The bird.

• 1:06:10Jason Bateman?

  Yeah, Finch. It's on Apple and it's basically.

• 1:06:13Will Arnett?

  When is it on Apple? When is it? It's not on now.

• 1:06:15Jason Bateman?

  First week in November.

• 1:06:16Sean Hayes?

  November 5th.

• 1:06:17Jason Bateman?

  First week, November 5th.

• 1:06:19Will Arnett?

  November 5th.

• 1:06:20Jason Bateman?

  Yeah.

• 1:06:20Will Arnett?

  So, yeah, so he's doing this movie Finch. Um, and the sequel is gonna be The Finch, I heard.

• 1:06:25Sean Hayes?

  Yeah.

• 1:06:26Jason Bateman?

  No, it's called Fincher. It's called Fincher.

• 1:06:27Will Arnett?

  Oh, it's called Fincher.

• 1:06:28Jason Bateman?

  And David Fincher is directing it. Yeah.

• 1:06:30Will Arnett?

  David Fincher is directing it?

• 1:06:31Jason Bateman?

  Yeah.

• 1:06:31Will Arnett?

  Are you kidding? Dude, this is, showbiz is incredible.

• 1:06:34Jason Bateman?

  I know. It's, it's, everything is aligned. Um, but it's about, it's him and a dog and a robot. And this is not the start of a joke, but like, could anybody pull off a high wire act like that?

• 1:06:45Will Arnett?

  But they do walk into a bar.

• 1:06:46Jason Bateman?

  There is one bar.

• 1:06:47Will Arnett?

  They do walk into a bar. Be fair. In fairness, they walk, but I saw the trailer too, too with my almost 13 year old and we watched it and looked at each other. We're like.

• 1:06:55Sean Hayes?

  Yeah, absolutely.

• 1:06:56Jason Bateman?

  Yeah. And don't you feel like he's kind of like our ambassador, not just for the business? And not just for Hollywood, not just for Los Angeles, but like, America too?

• 1:07:06Sean Hayes?

  Yes, absolutely.

• 1:07:07Jason Bateman?

  He's like quintessentially American and like.

• 1:07:10Sean Hayes?

  He's one of the few people we can, both sides, if you will, can agree on.

• 1:07:14Jason Bateman?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:07:15Will Arnett?

  What do you mean?

• 1:07:16Jason Bateman?

  Wait, what's the other side?

• 1:07:17Sean Hayes?

  I just meant like both, like, never mind. Everybody in America can agree on.

• 1:07:22Jason Bateman?

  Oh, those most, yeah. LeSean, we are not political.

• 1:07:25Sean Hayes?

  Sorry, sorry.

• 1:07:26Jason Bateman?

  Please.

• 1:07:27Will Arnett?

  What are you trying to do?

• 1:07:28Jason Bateman?

  You trying to lose your award?

• 1:07:29Will Arnett?

  You trying to wade me into deep water and then you're gonna take me down like a crocodile and keep me under?

• 1:07:34Sean Hayes?

  Bye! Bye!

• 1:07:38Jason Bateman?

  God damn it.

• 1:07:39Will Arnett?

  You can't fucking bail out like that. You can't bail yourself out. Yeah. You can't be saved by your own bell.

• 1:07:45Sean Hayes?

  We've used every word that you could do with bye.

• 1:07:48Jason Bateman?

  No, not at all. Not at all.

• 1:07:51Will Arnett?

  You were just trying to bail yourself out of a sinking ship and you can't, you can't use bye as, as a, as a, as some kind of, you know, instrument to bail out your sinking ship.

• 1:08:01Sean Hayes?

  Why not? I just did it.

• 1:08:02Will Arnett?

  I guess you can. Sorry. There is no rule in that. You're right. You can.

• 1:08:05Jason Bateman?

  Um, but do you think that when he first moved?

• 1:08:10Will Arnett?

  Oh, boy. Oh, no, sorry. Sean, let's hear it. Come on, go ahead.

• 1:08:16Jason Bateman?

  One of the questions I did get to here was, uh, he was 1979. He made a move to New York City.

• 1:08:24Will Arnett?

  Right.

• 1:08:25Jason Bateman?

  Um, and he was trying to be an actor full time. So I wonder if he was just trying to take a bite out of the apple. In 1979. A bite? A bite? I'm not confident with this. A bite.

• 1:08:40Will Arnett?

  That's the least.

• 1:08:41Jason Bateman?

  It's the worst.

• 1:08:42Will Arnett?

  Bite, we were having, I'm gonna, I'm gonna allow it. A bite.

• 1:08:46Jason Bateman?

  Bite out of the apple.

• 1:09:01Will Arnett?

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