Judd Apatow Returns

Filmmaker Judd Apatow feels very needy about being Conan O’Brien’s friend. Judd sits down with Conan to discuss his new visual memoir Comedy Nerd: A Lifelong Obsession in Stories and Pictures, how auditioning for Jim Henson turned him away from stand-up, the books that educated his younger self on life, divorce, and how babies are made, and more. Plus, Conan follows up with his lawyer David Melmed for an example of a call to secure the rights to a popular song. 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.

• 0:02Conan O'Brien?

  This fall, LL Bean is celebrating the moments people look forward to all year. The first school drop-off, the first sweater weather day, and the first chilly evening around the fire pit. For over 100 years, LL Bean has been part of these traditions. Crunching leaves in Maine-made Bean Boots, cheering from the sidelines in Scotch plaid flannel, and walking the dog in a rugged field coat. So grab the layers and people you love and get outside, because that's what makes fall feel like home. Visit llbean.com to shop the fall collection. LL Bean: Be an Outsider.

• 0:43Conan O'Brien?

  Have you ever had a cat, Sona?

• 0:44Speaker 01

  Never.

• 0:45Conan O'Brien?

  Okay, I have had multiple cats.

• 0:47Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 0:47Conan O'Brien?

  I had a cat growing up. It was my cat. My wife and I now have three cats.

• 0:52Speaker 01

  That's a lot.

• 0:52Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah, we have three cats and two dogs. And I have to say, the dogs are so appreciative. Cats, hard to win over.

• 0:59Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 0:59Conan O'Brien?

  Cats are cats. They're tricky.

• 1:01Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:01Conan O'Brien?

  Sometimes I feel like I'm working for them, you know? Well, Temptations Classic Cat Treats is the solution, okay? Temptations Classic Cat Treats are the crunchy outside, soft inside treat any cat obsesses over. Each treat is under 2 calories per treat. It's 100% nutricially complete and balanced for adult cats.

• 1:20Speaker 01

  Oh, good.

• 1:20Conan O'Brien?

  That's important. And to appeal to cats with finer palates, Temptations Lickable Puree has a perfectly creamy texture they can't get enough of. Some say the Roman Empire collapsed because the Romans became too obsessed with their own pleasure. Is this a sign of things to come? I don't think so. Look for a way to make bonding with your feline friend even better. Try America's number one cat treat brand, Temptations Cat Treats. Cats can't resist.

• 1:54Speaker 02

  Hi, my name is Jed Apatow.

• 1:59Speaker 02

  And I feel very needy about being Conan O'Brien's friend.

• 2:26Conan O'Brien?

  Hey, Conan O'Brien here. Listening to the highly unedited, just off the cuff, Conan O'Brien Needs a Friend. We never stop and start again.

• 2:34Speaker 03

  No, this is definitely not a restart.

• 2:35Speaker 01

  No.

• 2:36Conan O'Brien?

  Son, how are you? You doing good?

• 2:37Speaker 01

  I'm great.

• 2:38Speaker 03

  And get it right, or we're gonna have to do it over again.

• 2:40Speaker 01

  I am doing great, thank you.

• 2:42Conan O'Brien?

  And how are you, Matt Gourley?

• 2:43Speaker 03

  I'm good, thanks.

• 2:44Conan O'Brien?

  What's on your mind?

• 2:44Speaker 03

  Hey, I have something off the cuff. We haven't talked about this at all.

• 2:46Conan O'Brien?

  I was gonna get you there. You don't have to cut me off and say, hey, I've got something. I was gonna get you there with, hey, what's on your mind?

• 2:53Speaker 03

  On a recent episode, we talked about having a listener in high school that was listening during high school. And then Adam had mentioned that he knew someone that was in 7th grade, Giles, that listened. But we now have beat that record. A friend of mine, Jeremy Connor, has a son named George who loves the show. Started when he was eight, is nine years old now, and listens to the show and would love an autograph. Would you mind signing this poster for him?

• 3:14Conan O'Brien?

  I'm not signing that. No.

• 3:15Speaker 03

  You have to.

• 3:16Conan O'Brien?

  No. I want some scratch.

• 3:19Conan O'Brien?

  I want my payday. This is so incredible. He's...

• 3:22Speaker 03

  He's nine, but he listened, started listening when he was eight.

• 3:25Conan O'Brien?

  Oh, well, nine, that's when the real cynicism kicks in.

• 3:27Speaker 03

  But this is for you, George. Thanks for listening.

• 3:30Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah, of course. This is so nice. I love that I'm doing this. It's nothing more exciting to listen to a guy sign something.

• 3:37Speaker 01

  Scribbly.

• 3:39Speaker 03

  You can watch it on YouTube.

• 3:40Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah, okay. Squeak, squeak, squeak.

• 3:42Speaker 01

  It's also very fascinating to watch someone sign a poster.

• 3:47Speaker 03

  And to hear someone comment on someone signing a poster.

• 3:50Conan O'Brien?

  Well, there we go. Yeah, that was a good use of our time. Listen, I don't understand how a nine-year-old, what would they connect to?

• 3:57Speaker 03

  We don't have any listeners over 14.

• 3:59Conan O'Brien?

  That's not true. That's not true. I have, I can beat all of this. There's a woman who is seven months pregnant and her child's been listening in utero.

• 4:08Speaker 01

  Oh, okay.

• 4:09Conan O'Brien?

  To the podcast and hates it. Loathes it.

• 4:12Speaker 01

  Kicks a lot.

• 4:13Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah.

• 4:14Speaker 01

  Yeah. Kicks a lot when you're listening.

• 4:18Conan O'Brien?

  I'm just trying to imagine, uh, maybe it's, they can tell that we're...

• 4:22Speaker 03

  My friend Jeremy was saying that when this podcast gets edgy, it still has a kind of innocence at its heart. And he felt that that was okay for the child.

• 4:31Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 4:32Speaker 03

  Maybe that's it. But that might have been negated by the recent D's Nuts Milk Dumb Titties episode.

• 4:37Speaker 01

  We did do a lot of, you know what?

• 4:38Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah, but you can appreciate that on two levels.

• 4:42Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 4:42Conan O'Brien?

  I used to watch the original Batman series with Adam West and just appreciate it on the crime fighting. When they were making jokes about politics and things like that, I didn't pick up on any of it. I just loved. And then years later, I got all the great dry humor and great references. I picked up on that much later. I think that's how people listen to our podcast. You can listen to it on this very friendly crime fighting level. And then there's all the nuances that we pack in here.

• 5:07Speaker 03

  What you're saying is people should do a re-listen to find the onion layers.

• 5:10Conan O'Brien?

  Yes, and they should listen to all the new ads, uh, that we place in there.

• 5:14Speaker 03

  Oh, I see.

• 5:15Conan O'Brien?

  Cause there's dynamic ad insertion.

• 5:18Speaker 03

  Talk on that.

• 5:18Speaker 01

  Yeah, a little bit more about that. I want to hear about that from you.

• 5:21Conan O'Brien?

  This is an idea I had. A lot of people think I don't really know how podcasts work, but my idea a while ago was, hey, we should have dynamic ad insertion.

• 5:28Speaker 03

  And what is that exactly?

• 5:30Conan O'Brien?

  Well, it's when you have a dynamic insertion of a forementioned ad.

• 5:33Speaker 03

  If you could expand on that a little bit.

• 5:35Conan O'Brien?

  Well, sometimes there's something that doesn't have an ad in it.

• 5:37Speaker 03

  Uh huh.

• 5:37Conan O'Brien?

  And if it does have an ad, it's kind of flaccid and not moving. So I think, well, it should be moving or dynamic and it should be inserted. So it's inside.

• 5:45Speaker 03

  And that's how you explain this to the people that put it in the process?

• 5:48Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 5:49Conan O'Brien?

  I did. I called up some, uh, audio whizzes. Adam, jump in here for a second. Aren't I correct?

• 5:54Speaker 01

  No, no, don't jump in here. I'd like to hear you keep going, actually.

• 5:58Conan O'Brien?

  Why do you need Adam?

• 5:59Speaker 04

  I'm actually still reeling from the fact that you said dynamic ad insertion, just off the top of your head. I'm impressed.

• 6:04Conan O'Brien?

  When you put the Sirius XM chip into my head, that was one of the words that was readily available. It's a dynamic ad insertion.

• 6:11Speaker 01

  Right, yes.

• 6:12Conan O'Brien?

  We covered that.

• 6:13Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 6:13Conan O'Brien?

  Listen, if you can't handle what I'm saying, or you can't understand it, don't attack me.

• 6:18Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 6:18Conan O'Brien?

  I'm telling you in a very authoritative way that I had an idea about two and a half years ago, that ads could be inserted dynamically. It's been around for about, close to 10 years, probably. No, not the way that we're doing it. Okay. My idea was that it could be, what's a good word for constantly changing, always in motion? Dynamic. Okay. And that it could be put into something, which would be, I don't know, inserted, and that you could use it on an ad. I started that idea, remember this?

• 6:43Speaker 04

  Like it was yesterday.

• 6:44Conan O'Brien?

  I called you in and I said, I've got three words to say to you, dynamic ad insertion. You freaked out, and then you left the room, and then the next thing you know, we were doing dynamic ad insertion.

• 6:54Speaker 04

  We were the first to do it.

• 6:55Conan O'Brien?

  I do apologize, because you've clearly demonstrated your knowledge on this subject. It is a way that people can have their ads dynamically inserted. And it is one of the reasons that I think, I mean, this podcast used to make about, I think it was $300 a year.

• 7:11Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 7:12Conan O'Brien?

  But after dynamic ad insertion, we now make more than the gross national product of many countries throughout the world, including Switzerland, and countries that border Switzerland.

• 7:23Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 7:24Speaker 04

  I'm still just, I can't believe that you even know, that you even think about dynamic ad insertion, and you actually understand how it works.

• 7:31Conan O'Brien?

  For you to say- I've never seen Adam so excited.

• 7:33Speaker 01

  I have, he's really happy.

• 7:35Speaker 04

  I am.

• 7:36Conan O'Brien?

  I remember the day I came in and I said, if we're using microphones, I want them to be shure microphones. Do you remember that? Why didn't you just, just take some time?

• 7:43Speaker 01

  You just checked it.

• 7:44Conan O'Brien?

  What do you time that?

• 7:44Speaker 01

  Also, it's here, too?

• 7:46Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah.

• 7:46Speaker 01

  Um, yeah, yeah, you said that, I remember you saying that.

• 7:50Conan O'Brien?

  I wanted that.

• 7:51Speaker 01

  Guys, let's shure it up, everybody.

• 7:52Speaker 04

  What was the model, though?

• 7:53Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 7:53Speaker 04

  What model? Recommended?

• 7:55Conan O'Brien?

  Well, it's interesting, what I wanted was, I wanted it to be in this shape. Uh, remember that? And I drew the shape for you. And did these mics need a preamp, or no? Well, I said, as long as it's an SM7. B or eight. I don't have my glasses on. It's a B. What's that? It's a B. Well, I said B or eight. Right, right. Because the eights are fine, but you really want the B. And so, once I knew that we had the shure and that it was an eight and not a B, I was like, we are ready to go and we should have dynamic ad insertion. And what I've done is I've created many platforms and these are trilingual, uh, quadrilingual, quadrilateral. We have achieved a new level. These are actually dynamic microphones as well, so dynamic. And I've had this mic inserted.

• 8:38Conan O'Brien?

  My point, and you know what? We just lost our eight-year-old viewer. Parents took the...

• 8:43Speaker 01

  Oh, you think we just lost them now?

• 8:44Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah.

• 8:45Speaker 01

  I think they tuned out a minute ago.

• 8:47Conan O'Brien?

  I don't think so.

• 8:48Speaker 01

  Well, you said dynamic ad insertion.

• 8:50Conan O'Brien?

  No, if his kid's had a lot of chocolate milk, he's revving.

• 8:52Speaker 01

  You were kind of sexualizing it too, a little bit.

• 8:55Conan O'Brien?

  Well, that's the thing I was commenting on.

• 8:57Speaker 03

  George, I apologize. Jeremy, Giles.

• 9:00Conan O'Brien?

  I don't think children should be listening to this.

• 9:03Speaker 01

  I don't know.

• 9:03Speaker 03

  I don't think anybody should be listening to this.

• 9:05Conan O'Brien?

  You know what? We finally agree on something.

• 9:07Speaker 01

  Yeah. I watched Pulp Fiction when I was 12 in the theaters with my parents.

• 9:12Speaker 03

  I watched the movie 10 when I was about six or seven.

• 9:15Speaker 01

  What?

• 9:15Speaker 03

  Yeah, I know. Can we believe that?

• 9:17Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah. No, I can't.

• 9:18Speaker 03

  But I learned a lot.

• 9:20Conan O'Brien?

  Oh, my God.

• 9:21Speaker 03

  Oh, Bo Derek running on the beach. Pure cinema.

• 9:24Conan O'Brien?

  Remember the movie Nine and a Half Weeks?

• 9:26Speaker 03

  Do I remember it?

• 9:27Conan O'Brien?

  I watched that when I was 47 years old.

• 9:30Speaker 03

  Still a little early for you.

• 9:32Conan O'Brien?

  Oh, I didn't know what was happening.

• 9:33Speaker 01

  You were so uncomfortable. Why are they lying together? What's happening?

• 9:37Conan O'Brien?

  And my wife was like, you know, she was busy with the kids and she was like, no, they're, let me explain.

• 9:42Speaker 01

  Why are they in bed moving?

• 9:45Speaker 03

  Why is their nap so wet?

• 9:47Conan O'Brien?

  Oh, why did you do that for? You always go too far.

• 9:50Speaker 01

  That's gross, guys.

• 9:51Conan O'Brien?

  Do you know anything about going towards the line? You just jump right over.

• 9:54Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's not cool.

• 9:55Speaker 03

  I call them like I say.

• 9:56Speaker 01

  This is a clean podcast, sir.

• 9:59Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah, you just started this whole thing by talking about how there's a two-year-old listening who loves the show.

• 10:04Speaker 03

  I use any, any incendiary words. Nap and wet. They're not inherently dirty.

• 10:09Conan O'Brien?

  You're an awful person. Anyway, let's get into it. My guest today is not an awful person. Good transition. It's a director, producer, and screenwriter behind such movies as Knocked Up, Superbad, and The Forty Year Old Virgin. He now has a new visual memoir. It's very dynamic, I'm told, titled Comedy Nerd: A Lifelong Obsession in Stories and Pictures. I'm excited he's here today.

• 10:33Conan O'Brien?

  Judd Apatow, welcome.

• 10:39Conan O'Brien?

  You know, this is interesting because you've just flooded my voicemail with just demanding that you come on the show, which came across as very needy. Who's gonna be the neediest? This is like a real battle of wills. This is two guys facing each other in high noon.

• 10:55Speaker 02

  I'm the only guy who begs to get on podcasts.

• 10:59Speaker 02

  Like, I'm just checking the boxes because it is a way to find out if someone's your friend. Like, recently, you know, I gotta plug my book, Comedy Nerd, so I asked someone if I could be on their podcast, and they said no. And I was like, whoa, they must have checked.

• 11:12Conan O'Brien?

  Who was it? You gotta tell me. Didn't hear it? Heisen Heisenson?

• 11:18Conan O'Brien?

  Heisen Heisenson has the number one podcast in the business. I just got on his podcast. You must have been on there. No, he's since kicked you off. They're not airing it. Heisen Heisenson. Well, I think that person showed great tact and... Oh, no. What? I think oversight. Oh, you're right, you're right.

• 11:36Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 11:37Conan O'Brien?

  It should be something that is good for Judd.

• 11:39Speaker 02

  But this is a business. I need to realize this is a business. And, you know, for some people, you know, they got numbers, they gotta maintain.

• 11:46Conan O'Brien?

  Oh, not us. That is not us. That guy was like, we need asses in seats, you know? We need sex appeal. And I'm like, no, I'm the sex appeal.

• 11:56Speaker 01

  Oh.

• 11:57Conan O'Brien?

  Oh, wait. Cue cricket noise. You have cricket noise come in right here? Here we go.

• 12:02Conan O'Brien?

  No!

• 12:03Speaker 01

  Source it. You could source it.

• 12:05Conan O'Brien?

  You could source it. No, I don't wanna do the work.

• 12:09Speaker 02

  You got the cute new haircut?

• 12:11Conan O'Brien?

  You know what's so funny? You're the second person today. I came in and people went, "Great haircut." No, I was flying, got home, I took a shower, I went to sleep, and then put a baseball cap in the morning and it just flattened out my hair. I've had no haircut. You literally woke up like this. I woke up like this and stumbled in.

• 12:30Speaker 02

  What if it's better than the way you've done your hair your entire life?

• 12:34Conan O'Brien?

  It is nice. It is nice.

• 12:35Speaker 01

  It does look really nice.

• 12:36Conan O'Brien?

  You know what? I should do this way.

• 12:37Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 12:39Conan O'Brien?

  No, it's, uh, this is, uh, this is me just being me, man. It's just that kind of day.

• 12:44Speaker 01

  Oh, God.

• 12:45Conan O'Brien?

  Oh, now you're ruining it.

• 12:45Speaker 02

  Well, I've been editing Conan because he's in, uh, a few documentaries that I'm working on.

• 12:50Conan O'Brien?

  You're making nine documentaries and I'm in all of them. Sometimes, do you ever get confused and it's a documentary about Steve Martin and you have me talking about Sean Candy?

• 13:01Conan O'Brien?

  And it doesn't even matter anymore.

• 13:03Speaker 02

  The funniest one that you're in is the Elvis Comeback Special Documentary. Because you are on, not as Conan, funny man, you're on as Elvis expert.

• 13:13Conan O'Brien?

  Yes.

• 13:14Speaker 02

  There's no irony, no one mocks the idea that it's you, and you seem to know more than anyone I've ever seen about Elvis, which is something I thought you'd just like link it, link it or something.

• 13:23Conan O'Brien?

  I have to tell you this, they shot that a long time ago, or a while ago, and I forget things. And so I, this is a real story, I'm at home, I love all things Elvis. I see that there's this thing about the 68 comeback special, and I'm like, oh, I'll watch this. So I'm watching it in my room, in the TV room. I'm watching it, and all of a sudden I heard a very familiar voice saying, you have to remember where Elvis was in his career in 1968. And I'm like, what the fuck? And I'm in the documentary.

• 13:52Speaker 02

  A lot?

• 13:53Conan O'Brien?

  And I, a lot, and I didn't remember that I had done this. And then next thing I know, I'm nodding going, he's right.

• 14:01Speaker 02

  I like this guy.

• 14:01Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah, I'd do him.

• 14:03Speaker 05

  Oh, God.

• 14:05Speaker 02

  And how do they even know you're the Elvis guy?

• 14:07Conan O'Brien?

  I think it's out there a little bit.

• 14:08Speaker 02

  It is? I've been following you my whole life. I've never known that it was like enough to go doc.

• 14:13Conan O'Brien?

  No, no, it's Elvis and Son of Sam.

• 14:18Conan O'Brien?

  I'm in seven Son of Sam docs. We're not here to talk about Son of Sam, we're getting to him in the second half. We are here to talk about you, Judd Apatow. And you have a book, Comedy Nerd, which is extremely impressive. I got this book, and I'm looking at it, and one of the things that immediately drew me to this book is its gorgeous photos. It's all photos, I can flip through it, I don't have to read.

• 14:43Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 14:44Conan O'Brien?

  As much as I, and then, of course, it's interspersed with great observations. But it's basically your career, and you've had a career that merits a book of this size because you've made so many great films, and you've been involved in so much television and just comedy in general. And if you're a comedy nerd, this is the book to get. I really loved it.

• 15:05Speaker 02

  Oh, thanks. Yeah, it's, because I've always been a hoarder. I found a picture of my room from. When I was in sixth grade and in my closet, you could see I have my Phil Collins autographed album and my Dave Kingman New York Mets autographed bat. And I'm like, it's like the Smithsonian in my head. And so when we were doing the book, I, you know, I had, I just scanned everything. And then I got all the photos from all the movies and then wrote some essays after the fact. But I also finished it and thought, it's so long that it feels like a textbook about workaholism. Like, this is someone who needed mental help and should have found a better way to get help sooner.

• 15:41Conan O'Brien?

  Well, that's why I think it's good. At the end, you have a, if you need help like me. And then which medications you've tried, um, which clearly aren't working.

• 15:50Speaker 02

  Are you nostalgic as a person? Like, do you look back all the time at things?

• 15:54Conan O'Brien?

  You know, I try not to look back too much because I want to be in it now and making things now. I'm very sentimental. If, if I just bump into a writer that worked with me in 93 or 94, or an intern, I'm very sentimental for, oh, my God, you were there. That was so weird. You know, what a, what a special time that was. What a weird, raw, scary time that was. But I like to connect with people from that, from that era.

• 16:20Speaker 02

  It's weird being older.

• 16:22Speaker 01

  Is it?

• 16:22Speaker 02

  Isn't it weird?

• 16:23Conan O'Brien?

  Oh, take it easy.

• 16:25Speaker 01

  What? No, I mean, like, I, I like getting older. I was just talking to a friend of mine.

• 16:29Conan O'Brien?

  We're not talking about you and Matt. We're talking about older, older.

• 16:32Speaker 01

  No, no, no, no, no.

• 16:34Conan O'Brien?

  Judd and I, Judd and I fought in the Korean War.

• 16:37Speaker 02

  He's really having memories of Conan from the eighties.

• 16:40Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah.

• 16:41Speaker 02

  You know, like, like, you have stories about, like, Sandler from 40 years ago.

• 16:47Conan O'Brien?

  Well, here's the weird thing. Has it been 25 years since 40 Year Old Virgin? Or 20 years? 20 years. Okay. I remember when I was in college and I was working on the humor magazine and grads, old grads would come back and I'd be like, oh, my God, these fossils.

• 17:02Conan O'Brien?

  And I would say that to their faces. I would say the Natural History Museum is down the block. But.

• 17:10Conan O'Brien?

  I've done the math and I realized that if I showed up now would be the equivalent of someone showing up when I was in college who had been drafted in 1941. I mean, it's like the same.

• 17:22Speaker 03

  For real.

• 17:22Conan O'Brien?

  And I can't, I cannot accept that.

• 17:25Speaker 02

  No, just by being older, you're creepy. You know? Like, like, like if I just go into a dance club and do nothing but stand there.

• 17:33Conan O'Brien?

  Yes.

• 17:34Speaker 02

  People will call the police.

• 17:35Conan O'Brien?

  You just being on an elevator is creepy.

• 17:38Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 17:39Conan O'Brien?

  You want an escalator, creepy. Alone. That is the best, that is the, that is such a great observation that you don't have to do, it's not, oh, he's hitting on a 20-year-old, no. He's standing there.

• 17:52Speaker 03

  It's the less you do that's creepy.

• 17:53Conan O'Brien?

  And he's drinking a glass of water and it's creepy. Yeah.

• 17:58Speaker 02

  It's like in New York, there's a park, like for kids and there's all these kids, like little, you know, rides and stuff on it. And there's a big sign that says, "You're not allowed in the park without a kid." And like, so if I just walk in there, I'm a creepy person, I'm not allowed to enjoy the joy of children.

• 18:12Conan O'Brien?

  A creep walking around with a ventriloquist dummy. Get the, get out of here!

• 18:17Speaker 02

  But it is weird having memories that are from like decades ago and it just like knowing people from like their very beginnings to all the things they accomplished. It blows your mind, like the Mark Twain thing for you and like with Sandler, when we were all there for Sandler, you just can't believe all this stuff happened.

• 18:33Conan O'Brien?

  Right. I still refuse to believe that somehow it's been legitimized. You know, it all felt so wrong that we would be allowed to do anything. And now, all these years later, at these, some of these nice events where you get an award or something, they're acting like, whoa, what an esteemed body of work. I want to say, no! I shouldn't be here now. This is absurd.

• 18:53Speaker 02

  It's a masturbating bear.

• 18:55Conan O'Brien?

  He was getting the word out on a real problem that I was struggling with.

• 19:00Speaker 02

  But you, and you got your Mark Twain Award during the Trump administration, which makes it so much sweeter.

• 19:06Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah, yeah, it was, well.

• 19:07Speaker 02

  Because he could have killed it.

• 19:08Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah.

• 19:09Speaker 02

  It didn't hit his, his radar.

• 19:10Conan O'Brien?

  I don't think it hit his radar. I think he, he didn't think I was that Conan O'Brien.

• 19:14Speaker 03

  The wire, speaking of legitimizing, you might get the last legitimate one.

• 19:17Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 19:17Conan O'Brien?

  Uh, well, they might, I don't know what they're gonna do now. I don't know what they're gonna do, yeah. I might be the last comedian ever.

• 19:22Speaker 02

  It's gonna be Fred Travolino next year.

• 19:26Speaker 06

  I'll be there to support him.

• 19:29Conan O'Brien?

  Talk about getting older and our influences when we were young, but one of the things that is a touchstone for both of us is Mel Brooks.

• 19:36Speaker 02

  Like, it's our whole childhood was just that run of high anxiety and all of them. That's why it was fun to make a documentary about Mel. First of all, I got to talk to him for 10 hours. So just to get to ask him questions for 10 hours is amazing. And then it's also, the doc's interesting because he, it's emotional, like he talks about his life and how he feels about it. And it's not just the funny stories. He really, you know, goes deep into his friendship and, and his marriage and, and his life and his kids and, and you see what a great guy he is in a way that I think, you know, we see him as a hilarious guy, but he's also this wonderful person.

• 20:11Conan O'Brien?

  Do you think something that happens when people get to Mel's age, if they're lucky enough to get to Mel's age, I don't know what he is now, would he be in his nineties?

• 20:17Speaker 02

  Ninety-nine.

• 20:18Conan O'Brien?

  Ninety, Jesus Christ. They may be able to access emotions more than they could earlier in their life. And especially with men, some of the walls may become down and they become more accessible at this stage in their existence to really being in touch with stuff that they might not have been able to access when they were 40, 50, 60.

• 20:39Speaker 02

  Even in the doc, he talks about living through the depression, which is wild. That when he was a kid, his father died when he was really young and he just talks about his aunt took a job in a factory to help take care of her sister's kids.

• 20:52Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah.

• 20:53Speaker 02

  And just, just him talking about what that, that meant to him, you know, because he really had to work in like the, what was it called? The, the schmata business?

• 21:00Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah.

• 21:01Speaker 06

  The garment industry.

• 21:02Speaker 02

  The garment industry.

• 21:02Conan O'Brien?

  Schmata.

• 21:03Speaker 02

  Yeah. And he talks about like, it's a miracle that that's not where I landed up. The fact that I had this career and didn't just go into the garment district is incredible.

• 21:11Conan O'Brien?

  He told me once, he was telling me about being in World War II. He's in Europe and the Germans are on the other side of the river and he would mock them and they would yell back and mock him. There's the soldiers yelling back across the river and him. And I thought, Mel Brooks fought Hitler.

• 21:28Speaker 02

  For real.

• 21:29Conan O'Brien?

  And the thing is, it's, it's, no, this isn't a weird, it doesn't get more real than that. We talk about any comedian, I think, or artist who fought Hitler.

• 21:42Conan O'Brien?

  They just, they're, they're writing from a checkbook that I could never match. Springtime for Hitler. Yeah, and it was such a big part of his work, and I know that there have been, I think he told me once that the producers was on stage in New York was a massive hit, that someone once came down on the front of the theater and was screaming about, "You can't do this, you can't, because it's making light of Hitler and everything." And I thought, Mel Brooks can. Do you know what I mean? If anyone can, Mel Brooks can, because he's a Jew who fought Hitler.

• 22:11Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 22:11Conan O'Brien?

  There's no politically correct in that situation with Mel, or incorrect with Mel Brooks.

• 22:15Speaker 02

  And I asked him, I said, "Was anyone else really going hard at Hitler, like, the way you did?" And he's like, "I don't think so." Because you do think, like, who really went just hard at Hitler before him? I mean, Charlie Chaplin, I guess, before all that started up.

• 22:30Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah.

• 22:31Speaker 02

  But there's not another guy who really was obsessed with.

• 22:33Conan O'Brien?

  It's weird, a lot of performers and comics from that era were very pro Hitler.

• 22:37Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 22:39Conan O'Brien?

  From the 60s, you know, Laugh-In was really a pro Hitler show.

• 22:42Speaker 02

  Red Skelton.

• 22:43Conan O'Brien?

  Red Skelton, oh my god.

• 22:46Conan O'Brien?

  It's gonna get us sued by an estate. I got sued by Red Buttons once, because we did something in the, very early, like, the first weeks of the Late Night Show. We did some clutch cargo, and we did some joke about Red Buttons that was just literally an aside, and the next day, news came on, and they said, "And when we come back, Red Buttons sues Conan O'Brien for $20 million." That's how I found out. Oh my god. That's how I found out, the local, you know, Chuck Scarborough, the local news. Anyway, it all got resolved.

• 23:16Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 23:16Conan O'Brien?

  I paid him.

• 23:17Speaker 02

  My grandfather produced a Red Buttons album, and so, when my grandfather died suddenly of a heart attack, I was like 16, and I'm at the, with the funeral, and I'm just crying so hard, and in the middle of crying, someone walks over and goes, "Judd, this is Red Buttons."

• 23:37Speaker 02

  I guess like a comedy nerd, I was just like, huh, red button.

• 23:42Conan O'Brien?

  You immediately stopped crying.

• 23:43Speaker 02

  Exactly.

• 23:44Conan O'Brien?

  Red buttons. Um, yeah, Mel, I mean, and how is Mel? I have to ask you.

• 23:49Speaker 02

  I mean, the funny thing about Mel is his memory, short term, long term, could not be better. So much better than mine. Like, mine is so bad, like, I'll like go to leave the house and get in the passenger seat and just sit there. You know, like, I, I'm all scrambled. Like, it's already happening.

• 24:08Conan O'Brien?

  Right.

• 24:09Speaker 02

  And Mel, he doesn't reach for a name from the 50s. Like, he's just incredibly sharp. Uh, so it, it was, you know, a great conversation because he really can look back at 100 years and tell you about everything.

• 24:23Conan O'Brien?

  Unbelievable.

• 24:24Speaker 01

  That's nice.

• 24:25Speaker 02

  And he's still crazy funny.

• 24:27Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah.

• 24:28Speaker 02

  Like, if he wants to be, he's right, he's right there. I remember me and Bill Hader went to visit him years ago and, and then at the end of it, he goes, uh, "Come again, but not soon."

• 24:41Conan O'Brien?

  That's a great line.

• 24:49Conan O'Brien?

  You know, winning an award, that's a big achievement, right?

• 24:51Speaker 01

  Yeah, I love awards.

• 24:52Conan O'Brien?

  Every now and then in life, maybe something nice like that comes your way.

• 24:55Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 24:55Conan O'Brien?

  Winning them consistently is almost impossible. It just doesn't happen.

• 24:59Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 24:59Conan O'Brien?

  You know? Well, guess what? Winning five times in six years? You know what that sounds like to me? Sustained excellence.

• 25:06Speaker 01

  Nice.

• 25:07Conan O'Brien?

  Hyundai has done just that, earning the title of America's best SUV brand for 2026 from US News and World Report. You are a very happy Hyundai driver.

• 25:15Speaker 01

  I drive a Hyundai Palisade and I love my car. I love it. I love driving it around.

• 25:20Conan O'Brien?

  I've been tooling around in an Ioniq 5N, which I love.

• 25:23Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 25:24Conan O'Brien?

  Beautiful car. Well, listen, whether you need an SUV for everyday life, your next big adventure, or extra room for family and friends, Hyundai has an option for you. The Tucson Hybrid is loaded with technology and built for everyday life. The Santa Fe Hybrid's fully capable and ready for adventure. The Palisade, that's yours, right?

• 25:39Speaker 01

  Hello!

• 25:40Conan O'Brien?

  They're gonna rename that the Sona. The Palisade Hybrid, yeah, delivers premium capability and class-leading interior space with available, I have this memorized, H-Track all-wheel drive, up to an EPA-estimated 619 miles of range on vehicles like the Palisade Hybrid and Hyundai's industry-leading warranty. It's easy to see why Hyundai continues to deliver the quality innovation technology and value drivers expect from an award-winning brand. View U.S. News Best Cars at cars.usnews.com and call 562-314-4603 for complete details. When it comes to insurance, Farmers doesn't like surprises. That's why there's Farmers coverage on a page. What is it, you ask? Did you ask? I don't think you did, but let's pretend you did.

• 26:25Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah, okay, let's, what is that? It's your coverage on a page, pretty straightforward. Yeah. That's good, because sometimes it gets confusing, you know? What am I covered for? What am I not? Here, it's all on a page. Does your insurance do that? Get a quote to get started at Farmers.com. Don't be confused, don't wonder. Farmers makes it pretty clear. Underwritten by Farmers Truck or Fire Insurance Exchanges or affiliate. Products not available in every state. Who do you shop for first on the holidays, Sona? Was it, do you shop for the kids or do you shop for Tac? My kids. Okay. Or Oki. You gotta get them your stuff. Or my dog. And then your husband is last. Well, guess what? It's that time of year. You feel that, you smell that, that cinnamon cider in the air? Do you smell that? Yeah.

• 27:08Conan O'Brien?

  And you see pumpkins around, people buying turkeys. Little early to buy a turkey. Yeah. Doesn't matter. Holidays, I would say it's just around the corner, but that's a cliche. It's very nearby in the cupboard. Well, guess what? Amazon delivers joy with low prices on the gifts you want, even this early in the season. So get ahead of the season. Shop early gifts, top picks, holiday decor, and advent calendars at low prices. Get ahead, start on holiday gifting with Amazon's low prices. Shop now at amazon.com/holiday.

• 27:47Conan O'Brien?

  Let's talk about you and your career because to discuss this book, we really need to go back to this interesting arc that you had, which is the beginning, it's you want to do stand-up. You want to do stand-up comedy, you're a performer, and then you have this audition for Jim Henson. And I have to ask you about this because, well, it's fascinating to me. And you claim that this audition with Jim Henson is the reason you decided to not pursue stand-up anymore. Is that true?

• 28:16Speaker 02

  It certainly was a key linchpin of the decision. But I was living with Adam Sandler in the valley. We had this little apartment and Adam would be on MTV every once in a while, or the Cosby Show was one of the Theo's friends. And there was this audition to be on a pilot where a couple of comedians would travel across the country. They were going to give the comedians cameras and their own video cameras. Right in the beginning of when that seemed exciting, like, we'll give them a camera and they'll shoot it themselves. And so all these people were handing in their auditions that they would make themselves. And so me and Sandler went down to the beach with my grandmother and made some weird, I don't know what we did. And then I had a list of ideas of things you could maybe do on the show.

• 28:59Speaker 02

  And I find out later that I didn't get it, but then they say to me, but he liked to buy all your ideas. And then they said, but he didn't want you because he thought you lacked warmth.

• 29:13Conan O'Brien?

  First of all, why tell you? Oh, and one more thing before you hang up.

• 29:18Speaker 02

  And I just thought, this guy, as Kermit taught me to read, like, this is the warmest man. It's like Kermit telling you to fuck off.

• 29:27Conan O'Brien?

  That's so great.

• 29:28Speaker 02

  But in a way, I think he was right. Like, I was probably like repressed and self-conscious. And like, he was smart enough to go, you know, like, I could feel it when I was around Sandler, Jim Carrey as a kid. Like, they are just way looser than me and just charismatic. And I'm just like in my head. So I think it hurt me because I'm like, he got me. He knows I'm too shut down right now. And so then when writing opportunities came up, I thought, well, Jim Henson thought I should be a writer. I would just take the writing opportunities and do less of the performing things.

• 30:00Conan O'Brien?

  I always think.

• 30:01Speaker 02

  And then he died.

• 30:03Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah.

• 30:04Speaker 02

  Like, not long after that, so I'm like-

• 30:06Conan O'Brien?

  Before he could take it back.

• 30:07Speaker 02

  Yeah. Like, I was so upset about it, and I'm just like, ah, God, what is he knows, jerk. And then they're like, he's dead. I'm like, oh, like, he's the most important person in a young person's life. Sesame Street, I mean, I put in a billion hours watching it. So, yes.

• 30:22Conan O'Brien?

  He's, he sounded like Kermit when he spoke.

• 30:24Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 30:25Conan O'Brien?

  Which makes it even worse, because it's Kermit saying, you don't have warmth. You don't seem like a warm person to me.

• 30:30Speaker 07

  You lack warmth. Yeah, you lack warmth. You're just not warm. Fuck off and die.

• 30:37Speaker 07

  Go shine your shoes, you mutt.

• 30:40Speaker 02

  I did get to clean it up with him later.

• 30:44Conan O'Brien?

  I'm fascinated by the leap to directing. What made you think, oh, no, I will direct?

• 30:50Speaker 02

  Well, I, you know, I went to college and studied screenwriting and took some directing classes, and I was just so terrible. My films, I mean, if I think about them, I won't sleep at night. About that, I showed them to people.

• 31:03Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah.

• 31:03Speaker 02

  Like, I couldn't even believe that the two pieces of film you would tape together, that you would see them and it would, like, change images. I was like, I was like a four-year-old, and so I lost confidence in my ability to do it. I also had an irrational fear that I would get the eye lines wrong, and I would cut a movie together and everyone would be looking in the wrong direction. Like, that probably made me not do it for 10 years, was an irrational fear of eye lines.

• 31:28Conan O'Brien?

  It is a real problem in your films. I've gone back. Even your biggest hits, no one's looking in the right direction.

• 31:36Conan O'Brien?

  It's very distracting.

• 31:38Speaker 02

  And even now, I don't know what the lenses do. You know, I always have to, like, hire, like, Janis Kaminsky to shoot it, because I'm so bad that I'd need, like, a really smart person. So, I delayed it. When we did the Ben Stiller Show, I never pushed to direct any of the sketches. I just was so afraid. And then I was working at Larry Sanders, and then one day, Gary Shandling just, literally just walked in my office and goes, you're doing next week.

• 31:57Conan O'Brien?

  Great.

• 31:57Speaker 02

  Off of nothing.

• 31:58Conan O'Brien?

  Great.

• 31:59Speaker 02

  No conversation.

• 32:00Conan O'Brien?

  He threw you into the deep end of the pool.

• 32:02Speaker 02

  Yeah, like, immediately, and came down to set and, and helped me and was so helpful. And that was the first time that I ever did it, and I just had to figure it out. And then we did Freaks I did a bunch of those.

• 32:14Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah.

• 32:14Speaker 02

  And a bunch of.

• 32:15Conan O'Brien?

  So your confidence is growing.

• 32:17Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 32:17Conan O'Brien?

  But once you start working with a huge budget and it's a movie.

• 32:21Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 32:21Conan O'Brien?

  How terrified were you with your first, what was your first directing experience in a movie?

• 32:25Speaker 02

  Well, I just worked as a producer on Anchorman.

• 32:28Conan O'Brien?

  Yep.

• 32:29Speaker 02

  And that was McKay's first time directing a movie. And so it was really fun to be there and watch Adam go through the experience. And Adam was very improvisational. And so in addition to this amazing script he wrote with Will, he, you know, he was doing what Stiller was doing, which is a lot of like playing in addition to the script. So when we were doing the Forty Year Old Virgin, I thought, okay, I'm gonna, I'm gonna do that. Even with the dramatic scenes, I think there's something good could come out of riffing. But I remember like two days before we were gonna start shooting, I was just really nervous. And it's also Correll's the lead. So I'm going like, I think this is the guy.

• 33:00Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah.

• 33:00Speaker 02

  And I watched a TV show that Steve was on, like a sitcom that had been canceled. And they were burning off the episodes like, like a terrible show. And two nights before we started shooting, I just watched an episode and I watched Steve and I went, oh, this could be that bad.

• 33:17Speaker 02

  Like if I don't do a good job, I could make Steve look so bad. Cause this show made Steve look bad and Steve's a genius.

• 33:24Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah.

• 33:24Speaker 02

  And it really like scared me to my core, like, oh, there's a way to really be a terrible director. Uh, and so I just shot so much footage, like a million feet of film. I had Steve and everybody improvising for hours. The crew hated me. They were so bored. Like it was, it was the crew from The Unforgiven.

• 33:44Speaker 02

  It was literally Clint Eastwood's crew.

• 33:46Conan O'Brien?

  And guess what? Clint Eastwood famously is a one take director. Do a take and he famously like, well, it's five o'clock, everyone go home now. They love Clint and then you come along.

• 33:58Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 33:59Conan O'Brien?

  He's fantastic.

• 34:00Speaker 02

  And I'm doing like three hours of improv on like Steve peeing with a boner.

• 34:04Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah.

• 34:04Speaker 02

  You know, and the, the whole crew would look at me like, I can't believe, I can't believe. It's in the DP, when he saw the finished movie, he just said to me, oh, now I see what you were doing. But they really did look annoyed and that made, kind of made me scared. But I just thought, I just have to go into editing, knowing that if it's not working, I have other stuff to fix it with.

• 34:24Conan O'Brien?

  Whenever someone has a great success, they can actually send the wrong signal to other people. And I think one of the things you did is you made these terrific movies. Got all these really funny people. And yes, you had a good script, but you're also letting them play. You've got a deep bench. You're trying different combinations of things. And I think people started to watch your early films and think, oh, yeah. It's just letting people riff.

• 34:49Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 34:50Conan O'Brien?

  And you think, well, if it's Judd and he's got all of his people and he knows exactly what he wants to get. Yeah. I think other people who don't know that world took that as, oh, that's how you do it. And then I remembered seeing just a ton of comedies where they would just let, you know, people who shouldn't be riffing. Walter Cronkite and Dame Edna. And they'd be, uh, just, it would be painful.

• 35:16Speaker 02

  Yeah, because if you can tell an actor thinks they're being funny, it instantly is awful. Like if there's any self-awareness of like, this is really working. And so the cockiness of doing improv well, even if the jokes are good, like takes you out of the scene. It only really works if people are so deep in character that when you're in editing, it could seem seamless. Almost like a documentary, like when it works, it's like, oh, this was like a documentary of peeking in on people. And when it doesn't work, it looks like someone thinks they're hilarious. And then that creeps you out, you know, like you can't have that in it.

• 35:50Conan O'Brien?

  I recently saw one of the Pink Panthers, which are my touchstone movies. Peter Sellers, Blake Edwards. It was one of the later ones, and I think it's a scene with Diane Cannon. And this, this is how clearly she was directed to do it, so it's not on her. But it's Clouseau's being Clouseau, Peter Sellers, and she's laughing and finding it really funny. And I was watching it with my son. This is a couple of years ago and both of us were like, oh, no, no, you can't. No one in the scene can think he's funny.

• 36:17Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 36:18Conan O'Brien?

  This is, you know, someone just poured sewage into our soup. We can't eat this. Do you know what I mean? It was just so awful. And, but I love that my son saw that too.

• 36:28Speaker 02

  Who was the guy that played Clouseau's boss?

• 36:30Conan O'Brien?

  Herbert Lam.

• 36:31Speaker 02

  Oh, my God, is he funny?

• 36:32Conan O'Brien?

  Oh, Mike, with the, with the twitching eye, yeah. You didn't get that out first, though. I noticed Conan got that out first.

• 36:38Speaker 01

  I was helping.

• 36:39Conan O'Brien?

  She tried to jump in with Herbert Lam.

• 36:41Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 36:42Conan O'Brien?

  And then she realized she doesn't know what we're talking about. And she never, ever will.

• 36:47Speaker 02

  Cause I remember seeing, being there and at the end of being there during the credit sequence, they show raw footage. I mean, we had seen like bloopers before in like Smoking the Bandit, but we, but this was literally just a working, like watching the dailies of him riffing.

• 37:01Conan O'Brien?

  He's in the operating room and he's riffing and you know who that really pissed off?

• 37:05Speaker 02

  Herbert Long?

• 37:05Conan O'Brien?

  No. Good, but uh, good guess. Okay, you're both idiots. I just want you to know, we've been wondering, are you really idiots? But now the proof is in. You can tell your doctors, it's been confirmed. No, um, they put that in and Peter Sellers flipped out and he said, this ruins the whole movie. It doesn't, but he's kind of right that he's created this character and now you're going to show a blooper reel at the end?

• 37:30Speaker 02

  It shows that they were just so nervous because you know, the movie ends with him walking on water. It's this very surreal ending and then you cut to him going, you tell Raphael, right? It's like this really funny, dirty riff.

• 37:43Conan O'Brien?

  It's basically him breaking up. He can't get through the speech without laughing, but he just was appalled that Blake Edwards put that in. I'm not Blake Edwards, I'm sorry. Uh, I forget who it is.

• 37:52Speaker 02

  How actually?

• 37:52Conan O'Brien?

  Herbert. There you go.

• 37:53Speaker 02

  Herbert Long. But you could, you know, because you would think, oh, you're going to forget what the movie was about. But you know, I had a similar thing at the end of This is 40, I had on over the credits, Melissa McCarthy and Leslie and Paul Rudd in the principal's office. Because I just remembered Melissa riffing, saying the meanest things ever to the principal, um, was one of the funniest things I'd ever witnessed in any space. And so I put it at the end of the movie. I showed the movie to James Brooks and, and he's like, what do you think about uh, having those bloopers in there? Like, what do you think in there? Like, as he should, right? He's like, do you think that like kills the spell of, of the movie? And I said, uh, well, I kind of feel like I put people through a

• 38:35Speaker 02

  big emotional journey for like two hours and this is like my thank you for hanging in with me. And he goes, all right, man. Okay.

• 38:43Conan O'Brien?

  So you don't want to take my advice?

• 38:47Conan O'Brien?

  I'm one of the most iconic comedy writer producers of all time and directors, but I just offered you some advice. Now, you talk about comedy nerd is the title of your book. And this is interesting because I didn't even know I was a comedy nerd when I was a comedy nerd. But now in retrospect, I see I was a comedy nerd. You were aware when you were a comedy nerd that you were in fact a comedy nerd.

• 39:09Speaker 02

  Yeah, because I think people were into like sports and I, you know.

• 39:14Conan O'Brien?

  I like how you said sports. Like you're describing some inert gas out there in the end of the universe that no one's ever seen.

• 39:23Speaker 02

  People were into athletics. I'd be nerdier. And so the idea that I had found something that was just mine, because no one else cared at all. I mean, even with Saturday Night Live suddenly coming on the air. It wasn't like there was anyone who liked it like 5% as much as me. But I also thought, oh, it's cool that I have a hobby.

• 39:44Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah.

• 39:44Speaker 02

  That no one else has. And I also really liked the fact that no one liked it. And I also thought there weren't many people in the country who cared about comedy. So even as a little kid, I thought I could get a job. There's only seems to be about 100 people doing this on earth. Maybe I could slip in if I really care about it.

• 40:00Conan O'Brien?

  And you were living where? You were living.

• 40:02Speaker 02

  On Long Island.

• 40:03Conan O'Brien?

  Had you ever seen famous people when you were a kid? Because I had no exposure to any famous people. And that fueled my belief that this is something that couldn't be attained.

• 40:13Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 40:13Conan O'Brien?

  If you lived in Brookline, Massachusetts, like, no, you can't do that.

• 40:16Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 40:17Conan O'Brien?

  That's a different universe.

• 40:18Speaker 02

  I had the opposite. My grandma was buddies with Tody Fields. And she was like.

• 40:22Conan O'Brien?

  Legendary comedian.

• 40:23Speaker 02

  Kind of like a Joan Rivers self-deprecating comedian. There's a really funny clip of her on YouTube on the Mike Douglas Show. And the other, the other guest is Gene Simmons from Kiss.

• 40:33Conan O'Brien?

  Oh, Jesus. Perfect.

• 40:35Speaker 02

  And she goes, wouldn't it be funny if we found out that you were just a nice Jewish boy under that makeup? And he goes, and he kind of makes some kind of like, hey. And then she just goes, yeah, I can tell from the hook.

• 40:49Speaker 05

  What?

• 40:50Conan O'Brien?

  Jesus.

• 40:54Speaker 05

  Jesus.

• 40:55Conan O'Brien?

  You're guessing she's Jewish as well?

• 40:56Speaker 02

  Yeah, she is. She is.

• 40:57Conan O'Brien?

  Okay. She's allowed to.

• 40:58Speaker 02

  She was allowed to do that.

• 40:59Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah.

• 41:00Speaker 02

  But, um, so I went to see her as a kid and she had her leg amputated because she had diabetes. So she did this comeback tour where they, she came out like on a golf cart and they put her on the chair. And then she would do jokes about having, uh, had her leg amputated. And she had all these funny jokes about going to get the spare tire out of the car at the gas station. The guy seeing her other leg, you know, it was all like, like riffing about it. And I, I remember getting standing ovations as like a 10 year old and, and thinking, oh, wow. She's made herself cool.

• 41:28Conan O'Brien?

  Yes.

• 41:28Speaker 02

  Like she's the coolest person in the world, this kind of like chubby lady with one leg. And like people are adoring her. So I think somewhere in my head, I'm like, that seems like a good, that was my, you know, 10 from your show of shows.

• 41:39Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah. And then of course you get into Pryor, Steve Martin.

• 41:42Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 41:43Conan O'Brien?

  That's just, you know.

• 41:44Speaker 02

  Well, that era, I mean, George Carlin albums were coming out, those Richard Pryor albums were coming out. So, I mean, it's kind of insane when you look back like between 75 and 85, what happened? So if you were obsessed with it, you were just getting fed Monty Python and then Second City. And, and I, I just couldn't get enough of all of it. And then the thought, well, I wonder how could I do something like, what would I do? And I didn't really have a take on what I would do.

• 42:06Conan O'Brien?

  Right.

• 42:06Speaker 02

  I just thought, oh, I'll be a comedian and that was never going that great. It was going like, okay, I would do some of those like evening of the improv shows. But then I met Stiller and then we came up with the Ben Stiller show. And that's the thing that kind of switched the gear of the whole thing.

• 42:18Conan O'Brien?

  It was also an interesting time because we came up sort of in the same wave. There was much less comedy. It was a big deal when we were kids. I mean, now we are those guys from the 19, from the depression who were talking about when we were kids, we'd gather around the Curve Top Radio. But in the seventies, I would know that Marty Feldman has a weird comedy special that's going to come out this summer and there's only going to be three episodes of it. My brothers and I would wait for it. It was in a, it was an occasion.

• 42:45Speaker 02

  That you'd track it. Andy Kaufman is going to be on Taxi.

• 42:48Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah.

• 42:48Speaker 02

  And you knew months in advance. Yeah. Now there's so much stuff like people go, why don't people go to comedies? I'm like, because all they're doing is looking at good comedy like on Tik Tok all day. And you could go, uh, is it good or not? Yeah, it is. Like someone like pooping in a hot tub is better than everything I've ever done. You know what I mean? Like, it's all, it's the funniest falling down joke. It's the funniest sex.

• 43:09Conan O'Brien?

  Well, that's what I, that's what I keep thinking is that you've given, essentially given however many billion people there are on Earth. And you know the answer. Herbert Lamb.

• 43:17Speaker 01

  Eight.

• 43:18Conan O'Brien?

  Herbert Lamb, yeah. There are Herbert Lamb many people? Eight billion. Okay. Eight billion people on Earth. And let's just say, I don't know, let's just be kind and say, four billion of them have a phone that can record, or five billion have a phone that can record video. If you've got that many people out there, if one of them is going to beat any professional comic mind, because they were actually shooting their grandmother when a lightning bolt hit her and her wig went flying off and landed in the soup. And then they put a funny song to it. That's never gonna happen to that person again, but they have put that out into the universe. And you look at it and you go, oh my God, it's the footage you've shown me of the mascot slipping on the.

• 44:02Speaker 01

  Yeah, the guy falling.

• 44:02Conan O'Brien?

  And it's, and I think, I could get Judd, I could get all the funniest people I know. We could work really hard, none of us are gonna come close to mascot slipping on the ice while they're trying to interview him. It's just so funny. And the person who shot that will never do that again, but it doesn't matter. Because there's a couple of billion other people out there who are gonna take a shot.

• 44:22Speaker 02

  And we're competing against that. That's why I think like, one of the things people like best from my movies is Correll getting waxed. Because it is the equivalent of a YouTube video, of just watching someone being abused. As soon as it starts, you're like, oh geez, this is real, I could just see it. Like, the audience, we didn't tell them it was real, but they literally could just.

• 44:39Conan O'Brien?

  You just know.

• 44:39Speaker 02

  Feel it, you know? That's why I like Jackass is the funniest thing ever. You know, you just have to stop thinking you can compete with it. And then just, just muddle along.

• 44:47Conan O'Brien?

  I'm determined to do a better stunt than anyone on Jackass. And I'm gonna do it too.

• 44:51Speaker 01

  Yeah, you should.

• 44:52Conan O'Brien?

  Colonel O'Brien died today. If you just want me to punch you in the nuts, I'm happy to do it.

• 44:58Conan O'Brien?

  You mean again?

• 44:59Speaker 01

  We could take turns.

• 45:00Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 45:00Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 45:01Conan O'Brien?

  Do you have the ability to be sentimental and really attached to just like all the experiences that you've had in your career? Or have you worked on yourself? Because a lot of people can't. A lot of people were just, they stay in the moment and oh, I gotta get, I gotta make this work, I gotta. And I know that you work on yourself a lot. You read a lot of self-help books. And is this something you're working on to like trying to be able to access? I'm so lucky, I can't believe I get to do this, all that kind of stuff?

• 45:29Speaker 02

  I think, you know, my parents never talked about anything with therapy or religion as when I was a kid, like nothing. They didn't, it didn't bring it up. Although my dad did, when my parents were getting divorced, leave out a book of, uh, that was called Growing Up Divorced, like hoping I'd read it. So he just left it on a coffee table. And then.

• 45:48Speaker 04

  His way of helping you is just homework.

• 45:50Speaker 02

  Yeah. So like, so we never talked about all the pain. And then, and then one day, like three years ago, I mentioned to him, like, you know, the only, you never talked to me. The only thing that even ever helped me is I found this book in the house. And it was a little helpful. He goes, yeah, I left that book out for you.

• 46:08Speaker 02

  And I'm like, you left it out? Yeah, I hoped you'd read it. And I'm like, well, you didn't ask me if I read it. Like you didn't know that I read it? Yeah, but you know, it, it got moved. It was in a different spot.

• 46:21Conan O'Brien?

  This is what passed for a real heart to heart in our era. I think when, uh, my mom was pregnant with my youngest brother, someone left a book out that was called Mommy and Daddy, you know, have a, are having a baby.

• 46:35Speaker 02

  I remember that one.

• 46:36Conan O'Brien?

  And I remembered when you get to the crucial part of how the baby was created, it's just a drawing of the mommy and the daddy lying in bed with their covers up to their chin. Looking straight up at the ceiling, smiling. And it just says mommy and daddy had a nap. And you're like, they get to the crucial point.

• 46:53Speaker 04

  That is how your, your family does it.

• 46:54Conan O'Brien?

  I know, exactly. Well, that's. That is how we do it.

• 46:59Speaker 02

  Oh, I have a very traumatic story around, about that book. Cause that book was called Where Did I Come From? And it was like funny cartoons of like a sperm in a top hat, you know? And, uh, and then they say, you know, an orgasm is kind of like a sneeze, but different.

• 47:16Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah.

• 47:17Speaker 02

  And, uh, and then it would show.

• 47:19Conan O'Brien?

  Not your nose, but your dick. Jesus, book?

• 47:23Speaker 02

  They had like the mom naked with her boobs out. It was like, some people call him jugs. Some people call him titties.

• 47:29Conan O'Brien?

  This is not, we're not talking about the same book. My book had none of this. I would remember a sperm with a top hat.

• 47:36Speaker 02

  So this was the book in my, in our world. And my friend had the book and I was like, literally like seven or eight. And I'm like, I need more time with that book. And so I steal the book and I take it home. And then my, my mom sees my knapsack. She's like, what's his book? And I'm like, oh, I took it out from the library. She's like, well, there's no library card thing there. I'm like, I don't know. Maybe they didn't put it on that one. I don't know. But she's like, you're lying to me. I'm like, I'm not lying, Ian. That's where I got the book from the library. And, uh, you know, so then she's like, well, when your dad gets home, we're gonna have to deal with this.

• 48:09Conan O'Brien?

  Oh, boy.

• 48:09Speaker 02

  So, you know, and my dad comes home and he's just like, don't be a liar. Don't be a thief with a liar. And so my family didn't have the instinct to go, I think he wants to know the facts of life. He wants to know.

• 48:20Conan O'Brien?

  They are pursuing the wrong avenue. Where did the book, where did the book originate? No, no, no, no. He's clearly crying out to learn about sex. Yes, yes, Ted, but bookstore or library, stolen or borrowed?

• 48:36Speaker 02

  I never left it out for you in silence. It couldn't have been. My dad comes home and then like I'm getting like a spanking. I'm gonna give you a spanking. And I'm like, I didn't steal the book. And they're like, just say you stole the book and we won't spank you. And I'm, and in my head, I thought, I will never admit it, ever. Like I, I literally like had an idea, like never admit it, no matter what happens right now. And I just like took this like spanking. And then my parents start like crying because they can't believe I'm so crazy that I won't admit I stole the book. And I'm like John McCain in the Hanoi Hilton.

• 49:09Conan O'Brien?

  To compare your experience with John McCain at the Hanoi Hilton is treason, sir.

• 49:22Speaker 02

  And finally, my dad's just like, if you just admit it, we'll never spank you again. And I went, yeah, I stole the book. And then they never spanked me again.

• 49:30Conan O'Brien?

  What a good deal you got, though, man. You really won that negotiation.

• 49:35Speaker 02

  But that's how you become the guy that makes a 40-year-old virgin.

• 49:39Speaker 02

  That kind of trauma just lives in you.

• 49:44Conan O'Brien?

  There were so many, um, Jason Segel's character in Knocked Up. That, I remember having that moment of seeing that in the theater and, and so much I loved about that movie and still do. But his character, the way he talks to Katherine Heigl and says like, oh, the, you know, talking about her body. And it's, he's actually being quite warm, but it's also, he's, he's not, I don't think he's crossing a line, but he's on a line and he's kind of crossing it.

• 50:11Speaker 02

  It's douchey.

• 50:12Conan O'Brien?

  It's, but the other thing too is like, he's just so, and because he's so lovable and sweet, he's the perfect guy to do it. But I thought, oh, this is new ground. Like, I haven't seen anyone do this guy before.

• 50:25Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think he said, I see the milk came in. Wasn't that one of his lines? You know, if someone said that to me, I'd be horrified, but I'd also be like, I'm impressed that you know that.

• 50:36Conan O'Brien?

  Oh, no, he knows so much about what a woman goes through. And he's saying it with such empathy that you have to remind yourself, he's a guy.

• 50:46Speaker 06

  He couldn't, but I mean, it's.

• 50:48Speaker 02

  Well, it was funny because when we were shooting Knocked Up, you know, we had gotten canceled with Freaks and Geeks and Undeclared. And I felt really bad because I thought, all these people are so great and we, we keep getting kind of crushed by people. So when they said, okay, to Knocked Up, I'm like, oh, I could make all of Seth's friends, Seth's friends, everyone I think should be a star.

• 51:05Conan O'Brien?

  Right.

• 51:05Speaker 02

  And just like, and in one movie, if I can make them all funny, then they all can like work and do cool things. And so everyone was very aggressive, so it was almost competitive on set. You know, I would even have sometimes have two people do the same scene and go, hey, this is see who does it funnier. Like, it was kind of not even nice. Looking back, it was Gladiator days, yes. And, uh, but everyone was a lot of high energy and then. Siegel was doing this kind of mellow, douchey guy. And I remember thinking, I don't know if this is working, but I'm gonna just go with it. And then I got into editing and I realized, oh, he had countered the vibe of everyone else and everything he did.

• 51:44Conan O'Brien?

  He's playing a different part of the guitar neck. Like, he's getting a different, he's in a different register completely from everyone else.

• 51:50Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 51:50Conan O'Brien?

  Which is fantastic.

• 51:51Speaker 02

  Yeah, no, so, so funny. Jason was always the funniest to deal with, like on Freaks and Geeks when he was miserable and in love with Linda Cardellini. And you knew if you asked him to sing Lady to her and make her cringe, he, he just was so hysterical doing it.

• 52:05Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah, and he really is that sweet. When you, when you hang out with him or talk to him, he's got that sweetness. He can access that.

• 52:12Speaker 02

  It was funny the other night, seeing Siegel and Seth on the, at the Emmys.

• 52:15Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah.

• 52:15Speaker 02

  Like, sitting in the front row next to Harrison Ford. I'm like, I was like, so excited.

• 52:22Conan O'Brien?

  Something's been a fold in the universe.

• 52:26Conan O'Brien?

  I think one of the, the big lessons that comes away from me, when I talk to you or flip through your book, is my favorite part of this whole business has been collaboration. To me, that's the great scam of this business. It's madness that you get to be around these people and it's just, uh, it feels like I should have paid for the privilege, you know?

• 52:46Speaker 02

  Yeah, cuz you'd love it so much. Like, I've been editing a documentary about Norm MacDonald, uh, which will be on next year. So I've watched all of his clips with you.

• 52:55Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah.

• 52:55Speaker 02

  And they're just, they're so good. You, you kind of can't believe how many times something magical happened on the show.

• 53:02Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah.

• 53:02Speaker 02

  You don't realize till you kind of really line up all the things Norm MacDonald did, how many times he did some breakthrough riotously funny thing. But what, the thing that I was delighted about while making the documentary is when you go through his whole life and you go through all the clips. There was a simplicity to Norm, which is he loved comedy more than anything, like comedy and his family, and that was kind of the main thing.

• 53:24Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah.

• 53:24Speaker 02

  And he just loved to make you laugh, like more than almost anyone where you go, oh, that was just the whole thing to him.

• 53:32Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah.

• 53:33Speaker 02

  In fact, I think he said, well, maybe it was like Jon Stewart was talking about this, and maybe I'm conflating it. He loved, that Norm loved his jokes so much that he didn't care how you reacted.

• 53:42Conan O'Brien?

  Oh, that's the other thing. I mean. I remember this so clearly, Norm being on the show and being fantastic. But he had more nerve than anyone I've met in comedy. So he's done and he leaves the stage, the band's playing and Andy leaned over and said, "Norm doesn't care in a way that frightens me."

• 54:04Conan O'Brien?

  And I was like, "That's exactly it." It's just terrifying because he will, he just, and you can see him on Update, all those times he would lean in and hold the camera.

• 54:15Speaker 02

  If the joke doesn't work, he slows down.

• 54:17Conan O'Brien?

  He slows down. He's not gently speeding up to get on to the next one. He is, and he just, I don't know, he was a magical, magical person who somehow knew, "I won't be here long. I apologize to no one. This is how it should be done."

• 54:31Speaker 02

  Yeah, because when I was a kid, like, the dream was like, could you ever be around Bill Murray or Gilda Radner, just to even watch it happen? So sometimes I think the only reason why I ever did anything was just to be able to watch. Like, all the work I ever did was just to sit in a chair on the Anchorman set and watch them sing "Afternoon Delight." Like, "Oh, I found a way to have credibility, to be a fan."

• 54:54Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah, yeah. It's a lovely thing. What I just always think, this is a dodge of some kind. We snuck our way into this thing and soon they will find out and escort me out. But I'll take it. The book is called Comedy Nerd and it's a delight. It's just so nice to have all of this here. And even just flipping through it, you get hit with so many images of hilarious moment, hilarious moment, hilarious moment, you know?

• 55:19Speaker 02

  And there's photos of you in there.

• 55:21Conan O'Brien?

  I know, and I didn't clear them.

• 55:24Speaker 02

  And the money goes to fire charities in California.

• 55:28Conan O'Brien?

  Now that I'm suing you, the money goes to me.

• 55:31Speaker 02

  And 826.

• 55:33Conan O'Brien?

  Breaking news, Conan O'Brien taking fire funding, much-needed fire funding over a small dispute with Judd Apatow. And you've got all these, you're constantly making these documentaries, which, this is a new thing for you. I mean, you're, the first one I think you did was Carrie Shandling. Is that right?

• 55:53Speaker 02

  Well, the first one was- Thirty for thirty about Dwight Gooden and Daryl Strub.

• 55:57Conan O'Brien?

  Yes, that's right, that's right. But I think the first comedy one was what you did for, and I think I told you at the time, this is a mitzvah for Gary, because Gary really, really deserved the full treatment, and you gave it to him. And then I'm looking forward to all these other ones, and I'll be in some of them, I suppose.

• 56:14Speaker 02

  You're in a lot of them. You're talking about Elvis during the Maria Bamford documentary.

• 56:22Conan O'Brien?

  Elvis just had a thing. Maria Bamford.

• 56:28Conan O'Brien?

  Maria Bamford took black music and white music and fused them at a time after World War II. All right, go with God, that's what I say to you.

• 56:38Speaker 02

  Thank you.

• 56:46Conan O'Brien?

  You know, winning an award, that's a big achievement, right?

• 56:48Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 56:49Conan O'Brien?

  Every now and then in life, maybe something nice like that comes your way. Winning them consistently is almost impossible. It just doesn't happen, you know? Well, guess what? Winning five times in six years? You know what that sounds like to me? Sustained excellence.

• 57:03Speaker 01

  Nice.

• 57:04Conan O'Brien?

  Hyundai has done just that, earning the title of America's best SUV brand for 2026 from US News and World Report. You are a very happy Hyundai driver.

• 57:12Speaker 01

  I drive a Hyundai Palisade, and I love my car. I love it. I love driving it around.

• 57:17Conan O'Brien?

  I've been tooling around in an Ioniq 5N, which I love. Beautiful car. Well, listen, whether you need an SUV for everyday life, your next big adventure, or extra room for family and friends, Hyundai has an option for you. The Tucson Hybrid is loaded with technology and built for everyday life. The Santa Fe Hybrid is fully capable and ready for adventure. The Palisade, that's yours, right?

• 57:36Speaker 01

  Hello.

• 57:37Conan O'Brien?

  They're gonna rename that the Sona. The Palisade Hybrid, yeah, delivers premium capability and class-leading interior space. With available, I have this memorized, H-Track all-wheel drive, up to an EPA-estimated 619 miles of range on vehicles like the Palisade Hybrid and Hyundai's industry-leading warranty. It's easy to see why Hyundai continues to deliver the quality, innovation, technology, and value drivers expect from an award-winning brand. View US News Best Cars at cars.usnews.com and call 562-314-4603 for complete details.

• 58:10Conan O'Brien?

  Who do you shop for first on the holidays, Sona? Was it, do you shop for the kids or do you shop for Tac?

• 58:14Speaker 01

  My kids.

• 58:15Conan O'Brien?

  Okay.

• 58:15Speaker 01

  Or Oki.

• 58:16Conan O'Brien?

  You gotta get them your stuff.

• 58:16Speaker 01

  Or my dog.

• 58:17Conan O'Brien?

  And then your husband is last. Well, guess what? It's that time of year. You feel that, you smell that cinnamon cider in the air? Do you smell that?

• 58:27Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 58:27Conan O'Brien?

  And you see pumpkins around, people buying turkeys. A little early to buy a turkey.

• 58:32Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 58:32Conan O'Brien?

  Doesn't matter. Holidays? I would say it's just around the corner, but that's a cliche. It's very nearby in the cupboard. Well, guess what? Amazon delivers joy with low prices on the gifts you want, even this early in the season. So get ahead of the season. Shop early gifts, top picks, holiday decor, and advent calendars at low prices. Get ahead, start on holiday gifting with Amazon's low prices. Shop now at amazon.com/holidays.

• 59:03Conan O'Brien?

  Technology can generate salary recommendations in seconds, but building an offer that lands skilled talent? That takes more than just an estimate you came up with.

• 59:11Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 59:11Conan O'Brien?

  You know?

• 59:12Speaker 01

  You're right.

• 59:12Conan O'Brien?

  That's where Robert Half's new 2027 Salary Guide can help.

• 59:16Speaker 01

  That's good.

• 59:17Conan O'Brien?

  Did we use a salary guide with you, Sona?

• 59:19Speaker 01

  Uh, no, but maybe-

• 59:20Conan O'Brien?

  For several years, I just gave you groceries, remember?

• 59:22Speaker 01

  I know, yeah, I remember that. That was not good.

• 59:25Conan O'Brien?

  Uh, well, anyway, now you got Robert Half's new 2027 Salary Guide. As a staffing firm placing talent every day, Robert Half combines compensation data with the experience of local recruiters. You can hire with the confidence that comes from experience. The new Robert Half Salary Guide is here. Visit roberthalf.com/salaryguide.

• 59:49Conan O'Brien?

  We're back, part two, with fake lawyer David Melmed, who works here at Team Coco. We're talking to him about music rights. We are talking, I was gonna get there. Oh, sorry, because this is a different episode.

• 59:59Speaker 01

  Among many other things, too. I mean, you devoted a huge chunk to how good it looking is.

• 1:00:03Conan O'Brien?

  Unlike a certain lawyer, I don't drone on and on.

• 1:00:08Speaker 01

  Unless you're talking about how attractive he is.

• 1:00:10Speaker 08

  Well, and you're being billed. So this, we can talk as long as.

• 1:00:13Conan O'Brien?

  Oh, your meter's running?

• 1:00:14Speaker 08

  Absolutely. We can go all day, Conan. We can go all day.

• 1:00:18Conan O'Brien?

  Fortunately.

• 1:00:19Speaker 08

  All day, buddy.

• 1:00:20Conan O'Brien?

  I love that. I'm gonna get a bill tomorrow for $900.

• 1:00:25Speaker 08

  Keep going. I love this.

• 1:00:26Conan O'Brien?

  David Melmed is his name. He does a wonderful job here at Team Coco. And we had a legitimate question. We're following up this previous conversation we had. This is part two. Can we sing popular ditties on the show? Even if we're singing them badly, out of tune, using incorrect lyrics, do we still have to pay? And David, your answer was maybe. And the thing that got my attention is that you say, whatever happens, you have to start making phone calls and writing emails to people to ask if we can buy it, which is, it sounds draconian to me.

• 1:01:00Speaker 08

  It can be, but it's also you have to look at what you're trying to clear. So you mentioned Led Zeppelin, Beatles, Michael Jackson. I mean, these are iconic bands, music. If you were, let's say, in that band and you created this original work, right?

• 1:01:16Conan O'Brien?

  Yep.

• 1:01:16Speaker 08

  You would, not say you necessarily want to be compensated for it, but certainly credit. And that's something that you have brought into the media space that you are protecting.

• 1:01:28Conan O'Brien?

  Okay.

• 1:01:28Speaker 08

  Right? So I think you had mentioned, Conan, before, wouldn't you want your material out there being promoted? Wouldn't you want to be on the Conan O'Brien Needs a Friend podcast of music? It depends on who you're trying to copy, if you will.

• 1:01:43Conan O'Brien?

  Okay, I'll be Paul McCartney.

• 1:01:44Speaker 08

  Sure.

• 1:01:44Conan O'Brien?

  You've called Paul McCartney because I sang a quick snippet of Let It Be. You call me, hello?

• 1:01:52Speaker 08

  Sure. Paul McCartney came on your podcast.

• 1:01:54Conan O'Brien?

  No, I'm doing it. I'm doing it right now, David.

• 1:01:57Speaker 01

  He's trying to improv.

• 1:01:59Conan O'Brien?

  David, this is a role play.

• 1:02:01Speaker 08

  I understand.

• 1:02:01Conan O'Brien?

  Are you a lawyer and not a comedian?

• 1:02:03Speaker 08

  I wouldn't be talking to Paul McCartney, but if I had been.

• 1:02:05Conan O'Brien?

  No, no, listen.

• 1:02:07Speaker 06

  David.

• 1:02:08Speaker 08

  David.

• 1:02:09Conan O'Brien?

  Your improv skills are terrible. I would not be talking to him. That would not happen in this scenario.

• 1:02:15Speaker 08

  But if I was.

• 1:02:16Conan O'Brien?

  Okay, that's what we're doing right now. You just rang the phone.

• 1:02:19Speaker 06

  Hello, uh, who's here? Who's, who, who's there? Hello, is this a telephone?

• 1:02:25Speaker 08

  Who's here?

• 1:02:26Speaker 06

  Who's, who's on the phone? Is this? I just picked up me phone and I was wondering. I, you went all jingly wingly and I picked it up. Who's there? Please identify for yourself.

• 1:02:35Speaker 08

  This is David Melmed with Team Coco slash Sirius XM. I work with Conan O'Brien.

• 1:02:42Speaker 06

  Oh, Conan O'Brien.

• 1:02:43Speaker 08

  Yes.

• 1:02:44Speaker 06

  He was on the, uh, I was on his podcast, I think. And he's interviewed me, uh, I've interviewed him a few times. He's a very good musician and singer. Um, what was your question?

• 1:02:54Speaker 08

  My question is, we would like to use a few seconds of your Let It Be.

• 1:02:59Speaker 06

  Oh, that's not fucking happening. No fucking way. No, it's a song I wrote and it's a big song. 1969.

• 1:03:06Speaker 08

  Paul.

• 1:03:06Speaker 06

  It was on Let It Be. And, uh, you know, I just had a little tune in me head and then it came here. And he said, hey, John, what do you think Let It Be? And he was like, I don't know, as I was, uh. I was like, oh, that's that singer. And Mika was like, I'll just play the drums. And then George was like, oh, I'm kind of grumpy. And then, uh, so, you know, we made it in a, so no, I, I wouldn't. What do you, what do you want to do to Let It Be? What do you want to do? Hi, this is Michael Jackson. I think I actually own all the rights and I'm willing to sell.

• 1:03:31Speaker 08

  That's a great point.

• 1:03:31Speaker 06

  Oh, I, I forgot to mention that I'm here having tea with Michael Jackson's ghost. So, oh, by the way, boo. That's not so scary now, is it? He wouldn't, he wouldn't say boo. He would say boo hoo.

• 1:03:46Speaker 06

  Oh, so, it's so funny. I never knew Sona was the super funny one, but she is. She's like the funniest one on this podcast and she was just Conan's assistant. I'm a kind of a deep fan. I go really deep on this stuff. What? Paul, you know who I am? Oh, yeah, you're hilarious. Oh, cool. I remember you were on the tour and you've done a lot of funny videos with Conan. I follow you religiously. And hey, shout out to the Armenian community. Oh, my God. Yeah, I read your book. Michael, could you just lay back a little bit? Oh, sure. Okay, so, uh. I'll be over here, here.

• 1:04:17Speaker 06

  Oh, he just walked out of the room backwards. Something he does. You know, with the Beatles, we just sang the songs. We didn't do all the leaping and the jumping around, but, yeah, he did it really well. Um, so listen, David Melmed, uh, do you mind if we switch to Zoom for a second? Because my line isn't so good. Can we switch over to Zoom?

• 1:04:32Speaker 08

  Absolutely.

• 1:04:32Speaker 06

  Okay, we just try. Oh, fuck your hands.

• 1:04:35Speaker 08

  Thank you, Paul.

• 1:04:36Speaker 06

  Oh.

• 1:04:37Speaker 08

  Much appreciated. Does that change your opinion on...

• 1:04:39Speaker 06

  You've got like a golden glow and I don't fancy, I don't fancy the fellas too much. But I gotta say, you're a very good looking...

• 1:04:46Speaker 08

  Thank you.

• 1:04:47Speaker 06

  You might not be a lawyer, I've heard you're some question. You're a very good looking fellow.

• 1:04:51Speaker 08

  Thank you. Does that change your, uh...

• 1:04:53Speaker 06

  Oh, not at all, no. The law's the law. Do you mind on doing that one button? Just don't do it just a little bit.

• 1:05:00Speaker 01

  No, David!

• 1:05:01Speaker 08

  Whatever it takes to get these cleared, okay. So, you know what I would say, you know what I'd say? Whatever it takes.

• 1:05:08Speaker 06

  Now the lawyer's the funny one, the assistant's the funny one? The lawyer's the funny one? And where's Conan in all this? He's been quiet for a while. Haven't heard him. I guess he makes all the money, he's out counting the money. Oh, I gotta make some pounds, I make some pennies. Now, David, I've got to go, but no, you can't have "Let It Be", there's no way, it's a special song to me. Unless it's something Conan wants, and then I'll do it instantly.

• 1:05:28Speaker 08

  There you go.

• 1:05:29Speaker 06

  Okay.

• 1:05:29Speaker 08

  Much appreciated. We are gonna send you a sample, Paul, of Conan singing "Let It Be" in his form, and I think we're gonna change your tune.

• 1:05:38Speaker 06

  You know what?

• 1:05:39Speaker 08

  No pun, Paul.

• 1:05:40Speaker 06

  Cut to the chase, David. I give you oral permission right now, and I'd like to give you oral another way. If it's okay, if it's okay, I'd also like to, from this point on, give Conan a songwriting credit. It's Lennon, McCartney, and O'Brien on "Let It Be".

• 1:05:56Speaker 08

  Fantastic.

• 1:05:57Speaker 06

  I think what he's doing is a bang-up job. He's surrounded himself by people who are very funny.

• 1:06:00Speaker 08

  Let me write, I'm writing this down. Paul, thank you.

• 1:06:03Speaker 06

  Well, anyway, I gotta sign off now and turn it back over to Conan. He's, what a career, what a career.

• 1:06:08Speaker 08

  Oh, fantastic. I love it.

• 1:06:10Speaker 06

  Yeah, he's great.

• 1:06:11Speaker 08

  He's amazing.

• 1:06:11Speaker 06

  I'm gonna go now.

• 1:06:12Speaker 08

  Okay, thank you.

• 1:06:13Speaker 06

  Doop-dee-doo. Oh, it's a good song, I think I'll write that down. That could be pretty good. Doop-dee-doo, doop-dee-doo, let's put that out.

• 1:06:19Speaker 08

  Okay, I'm back. Okay, I would say that would get me nowhere, and I'll tell you why. Because it's oral. No. Oh. Because it's Paul, and it, okay. Oh, I see, you need it from the actual people who... Now, if he wrote, you know, we need the publishers, so we need the writers, so I assume Paul and who else wrote "Let It Be", help me out here. I mean, McCartney wrote it, but it's back in the Lennon-McCartney days. Sure, okay, so we would go to Lennon's estate, right? We'd have to go Paul. Okay, Paul's great, let's do it. Then we'd have to go to John Lennon's estate.

• 1:06:47Conan O'Brien?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:06:48Speaker 08

  Then we would have to go to the record label and say, hey, we would like to do this.

• 1:06:51Conan O'Brien?

  What a nightmare. What a nightmare.

• 1:06:52Speaker 08

  It's a nightmare. I'll tell you what's.

• 1:06:54Conan O'Brien?

  I hate your life. I mean, and you.

• 1:06:56Speaker 08

  You know what?

• 1:06:56Conan O'Brien?

  You know something? I wish you had a better life because this is an awful job.

• 1:06:59Speaker 08

  Well, you know what? It's prob- you know what? It's actually problem solving because I'll tell you why I like doing it. Because if, if you come to me and say, we want to do this, I think my joy is to try to make that happen. Mm. It really is like I.

• 1:07:10Conan O'Brien?

  That's good for you.

• 1:07:11Speaker 08

  It is. I, I really, because once we get down to step 12 and I can, I have not been able to convince you to do something else. And you say, look, Conan wants to do this, then you just try to make it work.

• 1:07:22Conan O'Brien?

  This is amazing.

• 1:07:23Speaker 08

  And.

• 1:07:23Speaker 04

  Can I?

• 1:07:24Speaker 08

  And it's not my money.

• 1:07:25Speaker 04

  What's that? Can I just chime in with a genuine statement that David is, to his credit, and this is, he, everyone loves him for a lot of reasons. But one of the reasons is that he is a genuine problem solver. Anytime you come to him with an issue.

• 1:07:36Conan O'Brien?

  And can I say something that is not common here? At Team Coco, there's a lot of people around here who just want to bitch and moan and make problems. You are the rare person who actually gets in there and tries to solve a problem.

• 1:07:46Speaker 01

  You're like a fixer?

• 1:07:47Conan O'Brien?

  You could like get rid of a body.

• 1:07:48Speaker 01

  That's a real morale booster for the team.

• 1:07:50Conan O'Brien?

  Oh, I think, I, I, I, you know, I want to call this company Deadweight. 90% is just pure rot, you know? And, and everyone's just bitching and moaning all the time and Jeff's back is out again and who, you know? Whatever. I don't want to hear it. Everyone shut up.

• 1:08:05Speaker 01

  Can you just, if he does do something and someone calls and says, hey, he used our music, can you just be like, no, he didn't?

• 1:08:11Conan O'Brien?

  Yes. What about, what about lying?

• 1:08:13Speaker 01

  Yeah, just lying or hanging up on them or like just avoiding it completely.

• 1:08:17Conan O'Brien?

  Uh, what are you talking about? This is a pizza place, you know, that kind of thing.

• 1:08:20Speaker 08

  So, so you're saying that a podcast that goes out to what? A million? We get a what?

• 1:08:25Conan O'Brien?

  Oh, please. Our numbers are way higher than that now.

• 1:08:27Speaker 08

  Four million, whatever.

• 1:08:28Conan O'Brien?

  I thought you were on our side.

• 1:08:28Speaker 08

  I, I don't, I don't really follow the numbers or even listen, but I'm just, I know it's a lot. I know it's a lot.

• 1:08:33Conan O'Brien?

  You're one of the biggest podcasts in the world.

• 1:08:35Speaker 08

  Okay, biggest podcast in the world and you're saying that wasn't Conan?

• 1:08:38Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah.

• 1:08:39Speaker 08

  Right?

• 1:08:39Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:08:40Speaker 08

  I don't know if that would fly.

• 1:08:42Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 1:08:42Conan O'Brien?

  Okay.

• 1:08:42Speaker 01

  I would do.

• 1:08:43Conan O'Brien?

  I want to say that, um, I have just made some jokes today about, oh, you're not a real lawyer. You are a lawyer. You're a terrific lawyer.

• 1:08:51Speaker 08

  Thank you. Appreciate that.

• 1:08:52Conan O'Brien?

  I'm going to double down on maybe the best looking guy.

• 1:08:55Speaker 08

  Yeah.

• 1:08:55Conan O'Brien?

  On staff, sorry Blay, but, uh, Jesus, Mary and Joseph. Well, thank you. I try to get on as many Zooms and meet in, you know, it does help the conversation. Can I say that? It does help the conversation. It does. It does. Paul, when Paul- Now, I don't know what's going on in your personal life. What's happening there?

• 1:09:09Speaker 05

  Conan! Stop!

• 1:09:12Conan O'Brien?

  What?

• 1:09:13Speaker 05

  You can't ask these questions, then he's the lawyer!

• 1:09:15Conan O'Brien?

  And guess what? If you don't answer me, I'll fire you. What are you gonna do about that? I'll tell you what I'll do with that. I actually work for Sirius XM now.

• 1:09:23Speaker 05

  Oh!

• 1:09:23Conan O'Brien?

  Not Team Coco. I don't know if you can fire me, Conan.

• 1:09:26Speaker 03

  Oh, for Sirius XM?

• 1:09:27Conan O'Brien?

  Phone call to Mr. Scott Greenstein- There you go.

• 1:09:30Speaker 03

  And you're pounding pavement. That also means it's okay for you guys to have a relationship.

• 1:09:33Conan O'Brien?

  That's true. Hey, if you work for Sirius XM, we can have a relationship. We can.

• 1:09:38Conan O'Brien?

  Um- Uh, my personal life. Oh, wait. Out of control?

• 1:09:43Speaker 05

  Out of control.

• 1:09:44Conan O'Brien?

  David, uh, I applaud you. I applaud your good works, your Golden Hue, uh, and everything that you do for this podcast.

• 1:09:51Speaker 05

  Golden Hue?

• 1:09:51Speaker 03

  He does. He's like a renaissance-

• 1:09:53Conan O'Brien?

  He's a Renaissance painting! I don't know how they let him out of the Louvre without setting off an alarm. Um, David Melmed, our thanks to you. Thanks for clearing this up, and I guess we just-

• 1:10:03Speaker 03

  Clearing it up?

• 1:10:04Conan O'Brien?

  We can't sing a song.

• 1:10:06Speaker 03

  What? I am no closer to understanding anything.

• 1:10:09Conan O'Brien?

  We can't do anything.

• 1:10:11Speaker 03

  But I think that's good, though. I think that's where we should leave it, because we have plausible deniability. He educates us too much.

• 1:10:15Conan O'Brien?

  That's right. I consulted my lawyer, and I'm still confused. What are you gonna do? Sue me? Uh-oh. Absolutely. David, thank you. Yes, thanks for having me. And, um-

• 1:10:23Speaker 03

  When they go, "You, sir, you stole our money, and it's here on this podcast," and you go, "Uh, I wasn't listening to that. I was too busy sexually harassing my lawyer." That's your defense.

• 1:10:34Conan O'Brien?

  Sir, I was busy

• 1:10:39Conan O'Brien?

  making my lawyer very uncomfortable. So you don't have a leg to stand on.

• 1:10:45Speaker 03

  And what a leg.

• 1:10:47Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah. You didn't even, I didn't get started on his calves. All right, peace out, Tupac. But not gonna sing any of the songs.

• 1:10:57Conan O'Brien?

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

• 1:11:17Speaker 03

  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.

• 1:12:06Speaker 09

  Hey, it's me, Teddy Swims. You hear that? That's life. So go grab it. Grab your old friends, grab new friends, grab a White Claw. Grab flavor for everyone in your group. Grab music, laughter, and moments you'll never forget. You'll never regret it.

• 1:12:26Speaker 06

  Oh, hey, man.

• 1:12:27Speaker 09

  Grab new friends, grab old friends, grab life by the claw. White Claw. Please drink responsibly. White Claw Seltzer, Chicago, Illinois.

• 1:12:37Conan O'Brien?

  When you hear Alka Seltzer, you probably think heartburn, right?

• 1:12:40Speaker 06

  Yep.

• 1:12:40Conan O'Brien?

  Well, did you know Alka Seltzer has a line of cold and flu medications known as Alka Seltzer Cold? Did you know that, David?

• 1:12:48Speaker 06

  No, but I feel like we need it.

• 1:12:49Conan O'Brien?

  Why didn't you know that, David?

• 1:12:50Speaker 06

  No, you expect me to know everything.

• 1:12:52Conan O'Brien?

  I knew this.

• 1:12:53Speaker 06

  Did you?

• 1:12:53Conan O'Brien?

  Yeah, I've tried it. It's really good. And I like that fizzy, fizzy, fizzy when you drop the Alka Seltzer Cold into the water. Alka Seltzer Cold Fast Dissolves Tablets are designed to deliver cold and flu relief fast. Just drop the two tablets in water and hear those bubbles bursting into action. Ready to work faster than pills. Bubbles faster than pills. Pills take time to dissolve, not bubbles. Next time a cold or flu strikes, quick! Alka Seltzer Cold. Nothing works faster for cold and flu symptom relief. Among oral products used as directed.