"Graydon Carter"

Don’t curse - it’s Graydon Carter. Soft Power, subtitles, and a cat teaching itself to read. Meta much? We’re offending somebody. It’s an all-new SmartLess.

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

• 0:00Sean Hayes?

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• 0:44Sean Hayes?

  Compatibility and availability vary.

• 0:49Sean Hayes?

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• 1:25Sean Hayes?

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• 2:01Sean Hayes?

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• 2:46Sean Hayes?

  season.

• 2:55Will Arnett?

  Knock, knock. No, I guess you can't say. So I'll do, okay, I'll play both. Knock, knock. Who's there? Smartless. Smartless who? It's an all-new Smartless.

• 3:25Will Arnett?

  I realized that I think that I curse too much. You do? Oh, yeah. What are you fucking talking about? There we go.

• 3:34Will Arnett?

  Wait, really? Why do you say that? I don't think you do. Because, don't you think I do? I feel like I do. It just occurred to me that I feel like I curse too much and maybe... I disagree. I think not enough.

• 3:44Jason Bateman?

  Why? Did you get that feeling because you were hanging out with your dad and you had to, you caught yourself a couple of times?

• 3:53Jason Bateman?

  No, truly, like, where did this thought come from?

• 3:55Will Arnett?

  No.

• 3:55Jason Bateman?

  Your kids are old enough.

• 3:56Will Arnett?

  I just, I think I was, uh, I think I was talking about hockey with somebody the other day, and I realized that every other, I think when I, especially when I talk about hockey, I'm like, these fucking guys, and look at this fucking TV, blah, blah, blah. And, and I was like, wait, how often do I say? And, and I saw this review of some gadget that somebody, uh, that they've just released, the, some AI gadget that documents the, you know, words that you say throughout the course of a day, or a week, or a month, et cetera. And, uh, and this woman was talking about how much she had heard she was cursing, and I was like, I wonder how much I curse.

• 4:30Sean Hayes?

  Really?

• 4:30Will Arnett?

  Yeah, a little bit.

• 4:31Sean Hayes?

  It, it used to be my, if I got nervous, I used to swear a lot. Like, the very first time I met Steven Spielberg in his office.

• 4:39Will Arnett?

  Oh, no.

• 4:39Sean Hayes?

  All I did, every other word was fuck.

• 4:41Will Arnett?

  What?

• 4:41Sean Hayes?

  I was like, yeah, and his kids were playing video games, like, oh, that's fucking cool, how many, when did you fucking get that? That's fucking amazing. I couldn't stop saying it.

• 4:49Jason Bateman?

  Remember, I once, I, I once had a, I want, the guy who, uh, wrote and direct, I think he wrote, but he definitely directed, uh, Napoleon Dynamite, this guy Jared Hess, he's a great director.

• 4:59Sean Hayes?

  Yeah, amazing, he's great.

• 5:00Jason Bateman?

  And, and I, I got a, a meeting with him just after Napoleon Dynamite, I was so excited, and, uh, it, it just like, I get lazy with cursing, it's just like, sort of like a way to bond, you know?

• 5:11Sean Hayes?

  Yeah, that's what I'm saying.

• 5:12Jason Bateman?

  Yeah, right. And, and so, I'm just like, every word is this, and that, fucking, blah, blah, blah. And I'm driving home, and I call my agent, I say, oh, the meeting went really, really well, and, and, uh, and he goes, he goes, you know, I, I was gonna say something, I was wondering if it did, did, uh, cause I know you, your family lived in Salt Lake City for a few years, and I was wondering if your family had any Mormonism in their, in their background, did you guys talk about, uh, Mormonism? Cause, you know, he's a big, big Mormon.

• 5:41Sean Hayes?

  Oh, I didn't know that.

• 5:42Jason Bateman?

  And I'm like, oh, no. Cause then I started like, then I was flashing back to the meeting, from driving home, like, yeah, he didn't say anything that was off color. Of course, I never heard from this guy yet.

• 5:56Will Arnett?

  To this day, to this day, have you spoken to him?

• 5:58Jason Bateman?

  To this day, no, I probably was just deeply offensive to him.

• 6:02Will Arnett?

  Ah, that's so funny. We gotta get him on here and ask him about that.

• 6:05Jason Bateman?

  Yeah.

• 6:06Will Arnett?

  I'm sure, I'm sure he didn't even notice.

• 6:08Jason Bateman?

  Well, I don't know.

• 6:09Will Arnett?

  That's funny. Um, I tell you, uh, I tell you what.

• 6:13Jason Bateman?

  This is a segue, Sean, this is a segue into the guest.

• 6:15Will Arnett?

  Incredible, it's so smooth. This is a segue. And, and my, my guest, my guest is, you know, we all like cool things and we like, we like being, feeling like that we're part of, uh, you know, that, that we're up on culture, that we're up on what's going on in the world. This is a guy who's been not only at the forefront, but I think, I would dare to say, been, been shaping it for many years. He happens to be.

• 6:38Jason Bateman?

  Jan Wimmer?

• 6:39Will Arnett?

  Oh, he happens to be from my home.

• 6:41Jason Bateman?

  Is it Jan Wimmer?

• 6:41Will Arnett?

  It's not, Jan Wimmer's not Canadian.

• 6:43Jason Bateman?

  Are you sure?

• 6:44Will Arnett?

  I, I'm, I'm very sure that Jan Wimmer's not Canadian.

• 6:47Jason Bateman?

  Okay.

• 6:48Will Arnett?

  Uh, he, uh, you didn't know him when he was in Canada, but, uh, he'd started a, a magazine in nineteen seventy-three called The Canadian Review that was very popular. He then moved to the States and he, he worked for Time Magazine, he worked for, uh, a bunch of other things.

• 7:06Jason Bateman?

  Graydon Carter.

• 7:06Will Arnett?

  Life Magazine. And then in nineteen eighty-six, he co-founded a very, very popular and influential magazine known as Spy Magazine.

• 7:17Jason Bateman?

  This is not Graydon Carter?

• 7:19Will Arnett?

  Left that in great shape.

• 7:20Jason Bateman?

  It is Graydon Carter.

• 7:21Will Arnett?

  Went on to become, over twenty-five years, the editor of Vanity Fair. He's got a new book coming out called When the Going Was Good, Guys, It's Graydon Carter.

• 7:28Jason Bateman?

  Nice. Good morning, sir. I read the, I read the airmail, uh, email this morning.

• 7:34Will Arnett?

  Bless you.

• 7:35Jason Bateman?

  Yes, it's, yeah, you didn't mention airmail, Willie?

• 7:39Will Arnett?

  I know, well, I was about to get to airmail because you kept saying Graydon Carter, so I was like trying to get through it and that.

• 7:43Jason Bateman?

  This is an awesome guest.

• 7:45Will Arnett?

  I know.

• 7:45Jason Bateman?

  Yeah. Nice going, Will.

• 7:47Will Arnett?

  Uh, welcome, Graydon, and I mentioned all the various things that you did, that you started. Uh, you started as, uh, as a young writer and you founded him. How old were you when you founded The Canadian Review? What, what was that in nineteen seventy-three?

• 8:00Jason Bateman?

  I was twenty-three.

• 8:02Will Arnett?

  That takes a lot of, I was gonna say guts, but it takes a lot of hot spot to start a magazine when you're 23 years old.

• 8:09Sean Hayes?

  Wow. How do you even, how do you even start?

• 8:11Will Arnett?

  How do you get there?

• 8:12Sean Hayes?

  How do you know where to start?

• 8:13Speaker 03

  I actually didn't start it. I bumped into a bunch of guys who were starting it in college and they needed an art director. And I said, well, I can draw. And they said, well, one should be the art director. And then little magazines are just festering pits of bitterness and jealousy and envy. And so, one by one, they all left and then I became the editor. And it wasn't as good as Will was pointing out and he was being very kind about it. Nobody knew what they were doing and that was completely evident to readers and advertisers that we were completely incompetent. But it did lead to a job at Time Magazine when Time Magazine was like probably one of the most important magazines on the planet.

• 8:57Sean Hayes?

  Yeah. And what did you do there at Time?

• 9:00Speaker 03

  I was a writer, but you know, it was 1978, the city was still teetering after bankruptcy and was like dangerous. And there were burnt out cars everywhere, but rents were really cheap. And I lived, I live in Greenwich Village. My first apartment was about a block and a half away from here. And it was $200 a month and it had, you know, high ceilings and a garden. But then when I got to Time, it was, they were restocking it with a bunch of young writers. And there was people like Walter Ossikson, who became, you know, the great biographer. There was Michiko Kakutani, who became the chief book critic of the New York Times for 35 years. Frank Rich, who became the theater critic of the New York Times and then the producer of Succession.

• 9:44Speaker 03

  And Maureen Dowd, who was there. Rick Stengel became the editor of Time, my best friend Jim Kelly, who became the editor of Time. Anyway, it was just, it was a remarkable period and we were all still, you know, keeping in touch with each other.

• 9:59Sean Hayes?

  Wow.

• 10:00Speaker 03

  It was, yeah, it was very intimidating for me because I thought, wait a minute, are all Americans this smart? And thankfully, they're not.

• 10:10Jason Bateman?

  Well, that's true. You're talking to three of them.

• 10:12Speaker 03

  There you go.

• 10:12Will Arnett?

  Exactly. Well, two and a half.

• 10:15Speaker 03

  You're like the smartest.

• 10:19Jason Bateman?

  That's amazing.

• 10:20Will Arnett?

  And so you work at Time Magazine with all this great talent and then you and Kurt Anderson form Spy Magazine, which, boy, I remember Spy Magazine and a lot of people do. It was so, it was, it's been described as like, as sort of like vicious and cruel, but also like really dead on and you sort of, somebody quoted something like, you despised all the right people.

• 10:46Speaker 03

  Well, you know, there was, there was the time, all of a sudden, in the mid 1980s, New York had sort of come alive financially and, you know, investment banks had been sort of invented and it meant there were investment bankers around and they already had a lot of money and they loved showing it off. And accidentally, I think our timing was, was wonderful. And we used to call it destringent rather than mean.

• 11:08Jason Bateman?

  Destringent. It did occupy a space of sort of, I don't know what the term might be, sort of a healthy cynicism and, and, and, and, you know, like David Spade had, we've talked about it a few times on this show, he had a, a segment on Saturday Night Live, I think it was called The Hollywood Minute.

• 11:29Jason Bateman?

  Where, you know, you'd kind of watch through, through your fingers, you know, sort of like you didn't want to see it or hear it, but it was always so accurate and, and.

• 11:37Will Arnett?

  And funny.

• 11:38Jason Bateman?

  I don't know what point I'm making, but I just, I guess I want to say that there, that, I don't know if it's unique to this country.

• 11:44Will Arnett?

  Do you feel that's gone or no?

• 11:44Jason Bateman?

  No, I don't. I, I feel like there, there is a space somewhere for people having the balls to call out that which is kind of apparent to all of us, yet only discussed in quiet circles with your closest friends. Yet everybody says it. You just don't say it in a big group. You say it in small groups. You're just calling out accuracies on people's foibles. And it, it is interesting and maybe healthy. I guess this is the question, what do you guys think? Is it healthy to have mainstream media, to have, to have a place in mainstream media for that type of release?

• 12:22Speaker 03

  I mean, look at John Oliver, people like John Oliver and Seth Meyers and their their news elements and they do it better almost than, they do, they do do it better than the evening news in a certain way. You know, not everything is objective, you know, if you're talking about the earth being round, you don't need somebody from the Flat Earth Society to come out and give the counter argument.

• 12:43Sean Hayes?

  Right, but Jason's, I think maybe, I don't want to put words in your mouth, but maybe you're talking about insults.

• 12:48Jason Bateman?

  Well, yeah, but that cynicism that exists in some corners of mainstream media, I, like, I don't know if this is fair, because I'm not a student of all this, but I feel like Vulture on New York Magazine, they sometimes, like, they even have like a hot radar, or whatever they've got a term for, and they just call out basically what everyone's talking about in sort of, I put in quotes, "the cool circles," and I mention it only because it does seem to drive some pop culture successes and create some pop culture failures when it's discussed at sort of that, again in quotes, "that high level," and then it sort

• 13:32Jason Bateman?

  of filters out into less cynical parts of our country and our media. It drives like what films get seen, I mean, it's sort of the theory of like having critics, you know, it's like, one person says something is good, and then that starts to disseminate, and then it actually forms a wave of either success or failure for some things.

• 13:54Sean Hayes?

  Right.

• 13:55Jason Bateman?

  And I wonder if that is a healthy thing that we should have in media. My guess would be, yes, but it's hurtful.

• 14:04Speaker 03

  But at the same time, you know, like everybody, excuse me, on the internet, everybody's a critic. It's a sewer by and large.

• 14:13Speaker 03

  But if you have people who have proper opinions or opinions and they're they're within the realms of accuracy, it can make a good difference, I think. And the internet, word of mouth is the most powerful tool in the world, and the internet just lets it grow, go exponentially rather than arithmetically.

• 14:31Will Arnett?

  Well, the problem, the problem is, though, is as you, as with the internet and with social media, is that often some of these voices all come at the same volume, and volume that they don't deserve. And so, and so, things get lost in the shuffle a little bit. Jason, I think you were referring to the the approval matrix, right, that they, that they do.

• 14:48Speaker 03

  Sure.

• 14:49Will Arnett?

  And there was something about Spy that did that, which was, which is it just held things up in to a light and sort of brought them into focus a little bit, things that that I remember there was a piece you guys did, you probably don't even remember this, but there was a piece you did, you may have already left, but it was certainly really tonally right in line with the kind of thing that you had set forth at Spy, which was, they had a woman holding a pair of roller blades over her shoulder, and they had her go to different neighborhoods of the city to see what reactions she'd get in different reactions. They put her on the Upper West Side, Upper East Side, Flatiron, Downtown, and what the diff, what people would say to her at different street quarters. On the Upper East Side, guys like,

• 15:34Speaker 03

  That's really funny.

• 15:35Will Arnett?

  Do you like to skate in the park? And then, and then the Upper West Side, the guy's like, hey, you look great, why don't you put those down, let's go get a drink. And then in Flatiron, the guy's like, why won't you talk to me, bitch?

• 15:44Speaker 03

  And Lower, Lower East Side is get the fuck out of my face.

• 15:49Will Arnett?

  And that's the kind of thing that

• 15:51Speaker 03

  That is really interesting.

• 15:52Will Arnett?

  I do think that that sort of thing is missing because everybody is so nervous.

• 15:57Speaker 03

  Yes, that's true.

• 15:58Will Arnett?

  About offending, and also, everybody is so quick to be offended, and this is gonna get, I hope this will be a pull quote about me railing against people being offended. But there is that, there was a notion back there, you know, of like, I don't give a shit if you're offended, who cares? You know, as long as I'm not hurting anybody or saying this completely, you know, I'm offended, okay.

• 16:23Jason Bateman?

  There's a healthy space for that, too, that I feel has been lacking in the last few years as we needed to make and are still working on this sort of correction for those that are marginalized. But I think the consensus is starting to come out that maybe there was an overcorrection and it's starting to come back to middle a little bit now. And so there's a healthy level of, hey, listen, offending you is part of the joke or part of this thing. And so there's some casualties that are a part of that metric.

• 16:57Will Arnett?

  What do you think about that shift that's going on right now, Graydon?

• 17:00Speaker 03

  Will and I would know this better because we came from Canada, but the pendulum in America swings in great arcs like this. And in Britain, it swings like this, and in Canada, it swings like this. So America goes way out. I mean, in the 1960s, you know, the pre-love movement was much further out in America than it was in, say, in San Francisco than it was in Toronto. And but then it swings right back. So in the 1980s, the investment banker ethos was much more pronounced in New York than it was in Vancouver, say. So America is the, it just has larger swings. And so the extremes are greater.

• 17:45Speaker 03

  And I think it is coming, it will come. It's a correction from the far left, and then it's gone, went way too far to the far right. And it will settle somewhere in the middle. You just hope that it does sooner rather than later.

• 17:58Jason Bateman?

  I think it will.

• 17:59Will Arnett?

  And of course, nobody's advocating for the marginalization of people who are different at all. And that's never been, you know, I think that anybody, you know, certainly all of us, I would, I assume none of us would ever advocate for that. But I must say, as someone, it makes sense for someone who likes to comment on culture and whose writing and whose profession is informed by that. Of course, moving to the States is a natural progression for you, right? Because you've

• 18:28Speaker 03

  And you, yes.

• 18:29Will Arnett?

  And me as well, of course, yeah. Because there is that, there is that ceiling in Canada where you can only go so far. Unfortunately, it's a great place to be from. It's a great place to live still. I wouldn't, I'm not suggesting anything otherwise.

• 18:41Jason Bateman?

  Keep going, Will, yeah, you gotta put out the fire.

• 18:45Speaker 03

  You're offending somebody here, yes.

• 18:46Will Arnett?

  I am definitely offending somebody. How far have I dug now? Can I even see the top of the hole that I'm in? You know, I've told that story before, the difference between the Canadian lobster fisherman and the American lobster fisherman, right?

• 18:59Jason Bateman?

  What is it?

• 19:00Will Arnett?

  They're walking on the road after their day of lobster fishing and the American lobster fisherman says to the Canadian, he says, "I notice you don't have a top on your pot there, by. Aren't you worried about your lobsters getting out?" And the Canadian says, "No, these here are Canadian lobsters. If one of them tries to get out, the other ones will pull them back down."

• 19:19Jason Bateman?

  That's great. That's great.

• 19:21Will Arnett?

  And there's an element of truth to that. But moving to the States and starting Spy Magazine and then moving to Vanity Fair, which has an even greater audience and even sort of a broader demographic, if you will, that must have been, you must have been very excited at the prospect of kind of opening up and a huge demo to what you wanted to say and what you thought was important to talk about.

• 19:49Jason Bateman?

  Yeah, and talk about having a piece of media that annoys, week to week, or was it, I think it was month to month.

• 19:56Will Arnett?

  My point.

• 19:57Jason Bateman?

  Who is it? You know, you and Lorne Michaels were basically, had the two levers that existed on putting people...

• 20:06Will Arnett?

  Two Canadians, by the way.

• 20:06Speaker 03

  Two Canadians here.

• 20:07Jason Bateman?

  You know, putting people on top of the mountain at your discretion, which was pretty incredible.

• 20:16Speaker 03

  It didn't, it's funny, looking back, and I realize some of what you say is, it was evident to others. It never was to me. It was a matter of survival, for the most part. I wanted to, I had a lot of children and I wanted to, I had to feed them and clothe them and educate them. And so, when I got to Vanity, I was the least popular person to get there because we had spent five years at Spy, making fun of the editor, of the house writing style, of many of the contributors. So when I walked in, there was just, it was funereal, the whole mood of the place. And I didn't fire anybody for two years, but I eventually, there was, most of the people, some of the people were left over just to

• 20:59Speaker 03

  talk about my inadequacies as they went around to dinner parties in New York. And so I, but I let everybody stay for two years. I thought, give them a chance to come around my way of thinking. And then I got rid of these three troublemakers on, in one week and my, after being there for two years. And all of a sudden, it shifted and I could bring my children into the office. It wasn't as poisonous and people started saying, "Thank you and please," and working together in a collegial way. And, um, because I don't like office drama, I like people to, to work together. I think you got something better out of it. And then, it's, I sort of built it from there. And it, I was fortunate to have one of the great owners, Cy Newhouse, who gave me a, the, the tools to succeed. He gave me the, the budget so I could, I could bring in the, I thought, must have

• 21:44Speaker 03

  been the greatest stable of writers ever. The first writer I brought in was Christopher Hitchens. Wow. And, um. He's great. Oh, he was the heaven. And, and, and then, you know, also I had, I had photographers like Annie Leibowitz and Helmut Newton and, and Bruce Weber. So I was, I was blessed by having these incredible, um, colleagues. And I was so appreciative of their, of what they did. Cause that, what, you know, taking pictures and writing stories is a lot harder work than being an editor. You're just sort of a, a wage ape. I mean, kind of a, um, kind of like a crossbeamer and a chef and an air traffic controller. Um, and a piece of mold

• 22:24Speaker 03

  just on your ceiling. We don't really have a point, but other than, um, uh, trying to assemble the thing each month. And anyway, I was just, it was a great perch during one of the greatest periods. But by the same token, it was a golden age of magazines. But one of the reasons, anytime you have a golden age, it's a golden age because everybody is good. So every other editor was, was, was, was, you know, firing on all cylinders. Yeah. All magazines were good in the 1980s and, and 90s. They were just, it was extraordinary period. And it, and also the magazine business attracted the best and the brightest then. Right. Right.

• 23:00Jason Bateman?

  And we will be right back.

• 23:04Sean Hayes?

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• 24:46Sean Hayes?

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• 25:57Sean Hayes?

  And now, back to the show.

• 26:00Will Arnett?

  What was your ethos then when you got there at Vanity Fair? When you sat behind your desk for the first time in those first couple of years? And going forward, what was your... What was your... Did you have an objective? Like, this is what we... The kind of stuff that we wanted, that I want to do. Did you have something like that, a plan in mind in a way?

• 26:17Speaker 03

  Nothing so far, but a sort of an evolving thought that I... What I wanted to do is every month, present the reader with something that is highly, highly compelling that they'll read with, and have wonderful stories that could range 15,000 or 20,000 words, which is the fifth of the size of an average book. And that they would come back the next month. I used to write thank you notes to all my contributors every month. Thank you notes to our advertisers who paid for the journalism. They... The advertising would come in at about $100,000 a page, and that sort of, you know, paid for the heat and the light and the electricity. And, um, but then there was... I got other ideas that really changed the direction of the magazine from...

• 27:01Speaker 03

  One from David Halberstam to create something called The New Establishment, which is the... In the past, you know, the establishments were the head of, you know, General Tire and General Motors and a bunch of New York banks. But in the... In the early mid to mid 1990s, America became an entertainment, uh, culture and, and, um, economy. And, and so what we shipped around the world weren't cars and tires and things like that. It was intellectual property in, in, in terms of like video games and movies and television shows and magazines and, and technology. And so, uh, we did a huge portfolio that Annie shot and, and it sort of showed the world that there was a new, because there

• 27:45Speaker 03

  was a new economy, there was a new establishment to that economy. And then, uh, doing the Oscar party, which was, um, started off small and terrified that it'd be a failure and, uh, and it just sort of grew each year.

• 27:57Will Arnett?

  It, it kind of rivals the Oscars itself in, in, in terms of its prestige. Uh, as you, as you're well aware, lots of people go, uh, will often just go to the party and not the Oscars themselves. And a lot of people who are, who are, you know, big film stars, people, names that everybody, all of us know. And, and of course, the three of us have, have gone many times and, and, and enjoyed that. And it, it has become its own thing, which is quite miraculous, really, if you think about it. It's kind of, in some ways, dethroned the Oscars on its, at its own party in a way. Uh, which, you know, you spoke some, you mentioned something that's interesting. The, the idea that America's true expert is its culture and its obsession with celebrity peaked, you know, it reached the peak, a

• 28:39Will Arnett?

  fever pitch, if you will, in the nineties. Uh, as my father calls it, celebrity, um, in a way that I think that he does that just to demean the term itself. And, um, and he will say, he will claim that that's the actual way that you should pronounce it. But, um, he also says tomato. Here's, here's my point. It, it occurs to me, and, and I've long thought this, if, if we were really smart in, about, about wanting to, to sort of peddle influence around the world, uh, in a way that America seems hell bent on doing, uh, we would, and this would never go down with the people who, you know, with the military industrial complex, which is, uh, you know, a trillion dollars, I think, as of yesterday, a trillion dollar a year business.

• 29:20Will Arnett?

  What we could do and much more efficiently is if we wanted to influence a certain country and its people, et cetera, all we need to do are, at the time, he used to say, drop our DVDs of our TV shows and dumb them down as much as we're dumbed down. If we could pump in Netflix and Amazon Prime and Max to all these countries for free, they would immediately lay down their weapons because they'd become just as dumb as we are. And, and, and, and just as-

• 29:49Speaker 03

  Or as smart.

• 29:50Will Arnett?

  Or, sorry. Or as smart, thank you for allowing me. But do you know what I mean? I mean, that would be, that would seem to me to be the, the, the answer to all of it.

• 30:01Speaker 03

  Well, it's an element of soft power and we've sort of given up all our soft power in the last three months.

• 30:07Will Arnett?

  Yeah, why don't we, why, we should be pumping them with TikTok and YouTube and paying for it and star linking it into their country. And I believe me, they'll be like, hey, listen, we gotta go, we were gonna go and fight on the front line and like, hang on a second, I just gotta watch this thing about a cat teaching itself to read. You know what I mean?

• 30:28Speaker 03

  Yeah. I mean, we do do that in a certain way. I mean, America, if you look at the way most kids dress anywhere in the world, they're wearing, you know, American style trainers, blue jeans, T-shirts with something written on them and plaid. Everybody looks like they're in a writing room, no matter what country you're in, you know?

• 30:47Will Arnett?

  They do. And you see, and you see rallies, you see these people protesting and they have effigies of the president or whatever, and they're wearing baseball caps backwards and they're wearing a guest jean switcher. And you're like, wait a second. And the irony is completely lost on everybody.

• 31:01Speaker 03

  That's our gift to the world.

• 31:03Jason Bateman?

  Well, and, and sort of expanding on that, Graydon, do you have an opinion about what sort of the, the, the current prognosis is for America being able to bear and withstand what some people are saying, kind of the, the hit that the American brand is, is taking across the world? Like, do you think after everything settles, at whatever point that is, that America will still hold a respectable place in the world?

• 31:32Speaker 03

  I think it'll all depend on the next sort of three or four years. I think it's really tarnished and I- You know, we were leaving for Europe on next weekend and for a spell. And we have these little pins made up that we made up for our airmail shop and over in Hudson Street here.

• 31:49Will Arnett?

  It's a great shop, by the way. I was there two weeks ago. It's fantastic.

• 31:53Speaker 03

  And the little pins, they just say, I didn't vote for them. And so when you're at a market in France or, you know, the pub in England, people, it's just, because it'll be, it'll be difficult. It was difficult during the years of George Bush, George W. Bush as well. And it may take a generation for the sort of the so-called American brand to correct.

• 32:13Will Arnett?

  Great. And do you want me to send you over a couple of these Canada patches?

• 32:16Speaker 03

  Love them.

• 32:18Will Arnett?

  They are, they are, they are useful to have.

• 32:20Speaker 03

  Yeah. All of a sudden, everybody who travels is a Canadian, you know, have Americans practicing their Canadian patois, you know? Every, and because Canadians end every sentence with a question mark. Like an American will say, I'm going to the store. A Canadian will say, I'm going to the store. As like, as if like, can I get you something sort of thing?

• 32:40Sean Hayes?

  Right.

• 32:40Will Arnett?

  Yeah.

• 32:41Sean Hayes?

  Wait, great. As far as journalism goes and kind of to what Jason was saying about, Scott Galloway, you know Scott Galloway?

• 32:48Speaker 03

  Oh, yeah.

• 32:49Sean Hayes?

  Yeah, we got to have him on the show.

• 32:51Speaker 03

  He's brilliant.

• 32:52Will Arnett?

  I know.

• 32:52Sean Hayes?

  Yeah, he's, he's great, very, very smart man. And I saw this clip either again on TikTok or Instagram or something. And he said,

• 33:01Will Arnett?

  We could take over your house in two minutes.

• 33:03Sean Hayes?

  Yeah.

• 33:03Will Arnett?

  You wouldn't get off the couch.

• 33:04Sean Hayes?

  Yeah, exactly. You, he said, nobody wants to read anymore.

• 33:08Speaker 03

  That's not true.

• 33:09Sean Hayes?

  Period. And, and he goes, everybody's, everybody's getting their information from obviously TikTok or Instagram, because nobody wants to sit down and read articles or magazines or books or anything. And so, and that said, people know that, people of influence know that. So they'll just speak to these kids or these people about what it is they should know. And that's how they get their information out.

• 33:31Speaker 03

  Okay. Well, a counter argument to that would be that the fact is, The New York Times has never been more successful. It's never been larger. You look at a magazine like, say, The Atlantic. The Atlantic is exponentially larger and more influential than it was, say, 15 years ago. But that's a certain demographic, I think. It is a certain demographic. But on the same token, most people watch TV with the, even with, most people watch TV with the Chyron. You know, the, whatever. Yeah, yeah. You professional show people call that.

• 34:00Will Arnett?

  Subtitles.

• 34:00Speaker 03

  Subtitles. And so, young people, I think it's harder and harder. And I have a feeling that most of us, if we were growing up with TikTok and, that we would have read less than. And but it also, you know, most, I have five kids and I know that some of them didn't read that much when they were in their teens. But they're all huge readers now. They're all writers and so they're all huge readers. You just have to wait a bit and it will come around. Yeah, that's true.

• 34:29Will Arnett?

  Sean and Jason, what are you guys waiting for?

• 34:33Will Arnett?

  I always say to these guys.

• 34:35Jason Bateman?

  You know, I've got a boring story I won't bore you with about why I'm not a great reader. But I will tell you that.

• 34:43Will Arnett?

  Does it have to do with you don't know how to read? Is that the headline?

• 34:46Jason Bateman?

  It's top to bottom, left to right.

• 34:50Jason Bateman?

  That there's now you can, every article online is now you can listen to it.

• 34:55Speaker 03

  Right, that's what I'm saying.

• 34:57Jason Bateman?

  And it is something that's helped both of my girls, where, you know, they have these large reading assignments for school. And now that all those books are audiobooks as well. And so, one of the teachers suggested, and that was a great idea, get them the audiobook so they can listen to it as they read it.

• 35:15Speaker 03

  I agree.

• 35:16Jason Bateman?

  And that's helpful and you get some momentum going, you get engaged in the story. And now maybe you don't need that crutch for chapters five through 10. You can actually just read the book. And so, I do, there's, that's helpful. That's somewhat of a phenomenon where, like you say, the New York Times grade. I would imagine their online business is larger than their print business.

• 35:40Speaker 03

  I think it's nine tenths of it, but still, they're reading it online.

• 35:43Will Arnett?

  But they're still, they're still reading. But I will say that though, and I do bang this drum quite. Often, but but there is a certain reading it for me, reading it the end of the day. I find to be such an extreme luxury and it's very calming because we do live in a digital world. I'm looking at my screen all day. I'm looking at my computer, at my thing, whatever. And to have that moment for 45 minutes every night to read, I do find that it is so calming in this in this sort of chaotic world in which we live, if nothing else, apart from the fact that you're it's interesting and you can be, you know, all the other great things about reading. But but in that way, and I would especially as we get older, I'm speaking, I'm not speaking to you, Gray, I'm speaking to Sean and Jason.

• 36:25Speaker 03

  Because I am older.

• 36:26Will Arnett?

  You need to calm down. You need to calm down, both of you.

• 36:29Sean Hayes?

  Yeah, no, I read, I read a lot. I still read a lot online and stuff, but.

• 36:33Jason Bateman?

  What do you what do you attribute, Gray, in the the the not the demise, but the way that magazines have have not, you know, you say like the New York Times, for example, never been more profitable, yet it is now intense online now. Why did the same not translate for the periodicals?

• 36:54Speaker 03

  I mean, the the financial crash of 2008 was a was an issue because the first thing that people could they could take off their balance off their their their accounts were advertising because then you don't have to fire anybody. So the advertising started disappearing. The news and then even in New York City, there used to be a newsstand at every major intersection, sometimes one across the street from each other. And there was a newsstand in every office building. Now, they when you see a newsstand on the street, it's it's often a like a movie set thing because they're gone. And in office buildings, they if there was wherever there was a newsstand, it's usually they're selling, you know, gum and flip flops and Lotto tickets.

• 37:39Speaker 03

  So just the fact that you used to be able to see magazines everywhere you went, you know, in Los Angeles, those those things in Hollywood with the, you know, the long walls of magazines.

• 37:48Will Arnett?

  I love those.

• 37:49Speaker 03

  Anyway, that that's sort of they're gone. And I think a lot of magazines companies were late to transform, transfer their the way a magazine looks to an electronic version. And the thing about airmail is airmail was put together by magazine people and we didn't have to work with a legacy brand and then transfer it to the Internet. Or digital, that we built, we started it from that. And so I think that made a difference there. And, you know, I read, you know, 20 magazines a month, but I read them all on my iPad.

• 38:23Will Arnett?

  Right.

• 38:24Jason Bateman?

  Yeah, but before you go too far past airmail, you know, I just love the, what you, the, it's so, and this is probably not the right term, but there's nothing intimidating about the way it comes at you at its, at its initial point in that it isn't, it's an email. And there's just like, here's, here's, it's basically like looking at the table of contents.

• 38:48Will Arnett?

  Were you talking about the subscription to Vanity Fair?

• 38:50Speaker 03

  No, to airmail.

• 38:51Jason Bateman?

  To Graydon's, Graydon's new thing is, is this thing called airmail. So you get this email and here's like five stories that you can click on, that then, if you decide to click, then it expands into the story. So there's just like, you don't have to buy a whole magazine, or you don't have to go to a magazine's website or anything and like, have to like, deal with all the advertising and the, the big pictures and all that. It's just, here's some ideas, some stories. If it's of interest to you, click on it. If not, go to your, go to the next email. Like, so it's, they're not, it's not in your face. The medicine goes down easy and they happen to be incredible stories. So, I don't know, I just think you tacked to, to a, to a, a format that speaks to the

• 39:33Jason Bateman?

  current reader's appetite as far as, you know, the attention they have to get.

• 39:38Will Arnett?

  And there's a tonal shift too, right JB? I mean, there's a tonal shift in it from Vanity Fair to airmail that's, that's.

• 39:44Jason Bateman?

  Yeah, there's no selling element to it that, that, that I think people have grown sort of an allergy to. And you're just, you're, you're very current on that, which is not surprising coming from somebody like you.

• 39:55Speaker 03

  Well, we wanted to look beautiful because I think design means, is everything these days. And look at the amount of work that goes into an iPhone, say. So we, you know, I, as I said, I'd written thank you notes to all my advertisers at Vanity Fair and I. So I wanted those advertisers in Airmail. I didn't want, you know, advertising for like, I don't know, you know, foot fungus or, you know, Geico insurance ads. I wanted, you know, much better to have Hermès and Dior and Ralph Lauren.

• 40:22Will Arnett?

  Sure, sure.

• 40:23Speaker 03

  So, um, so it, yeah, so I, the, all the advertisers, uh, once I got Hermès, uh, all the other advertisers felt safe coming in. But it's put out by people from Time Magazine, when I worked there, uh, Spy Magazine and Vanity Fair. That's the, that's the core group. And then there's about eight young people who are, you know, in their mid twenties. And they, they form like the core and the future.

• 40:46Will Arnett?

  Yeah. Well, it would be, we'd be remiss if we didn't mention our mutual friend, the great Linda Wells, uh, whom I adore.

• 40:52Speaker 03

  Me too.

• 40:53Will Arnett?

  Yeah, whom I absolutely adore and have known for many years. And, and, and she's a big part of Airmail. Um, I'm not telling you, I'm, I'm telling our listener, our single listener. Um, but I will say that, that, you know, when you were at Vanity Fair, you, it was a, there was a real balance between covering high society profiles, if you will, uh, celebrity and investigative journalism. Um, I remember there's a great article that I've referenced, uh, many times and had people read, which was about the Sultan of Burinai's brother.

• 41:22Speaker 03

  Love that story.

• 41:24Will Arnett?

  That story is an incredible story, still holds up. It's incredible. It's hilarious and it's right on point and it's, uh, scathing and yet very fair. Um, so you do that at Vanity Fair. And then now that you're at Airmail, how would you define, what's, what is your relationship? Well, I was gonna say, what's your relationship with celebrity culture? Before I say that, what was, because you were at the forefront of defining celebrity and, and covering celebrity culture back at Vanity Fair, and you still are, uh, at Airmail in a way, did you, when you were in that position, what kind of incoming calls did you get from people, from publicists and, and celebrities

• 42:05Will Arnett?

  themselves who wanted you to either amend something that you wrote about them? And I know you already mentioned this, uh, about Mr. Tish, but, but if some, but, but what celebrities did you get?

• 42:16Speaker 03

  Did you ever get a call from that, that Donald Trump pseudonym? Uh, John, uh, John Baron.

• 42:21Will Arnett?

  John Baron.

• 42:22Speaker 03

  No, but I got, would get calls from Trump and, and, you know, once they invented Twitter, he, he went to town on me. He would call me a floppy, I was a loser. The Waverly Inn was a failing restaurant. The Oscar Park wasn't hot. The magazine was terrible. And, uh, but I would take any phone call, but mostly, uh, doing the covers was actually the least favorite part of the job. But the fact is movie, you know, show people like you are more attractive than mag, than the rest of us. So having a very attractive person on the cover who happened to be talented was a great way of getting the attention of the reader so that they'd pick it up and they, they wouldn't be embarrassed putting it on their coffee table.

• 43:04Speaker 03

  And, but once you, once you got that, that was sort of like the wrapping and then the, the magazine itself was sort of the gift in the box. But I, in most of the calls, and we did get a lot of complaints, but they were routed through the office of the person who, of the people who booked the covers. So I got, I would get occasional complaints. Most of the complaints often would come from staff members and, uh, I remember Christopher Hitchens did a, a pretty rough story on Mother Teresa and, uh, he accused her of like cozying up to dictators and that sort of thing for money. It was, it was, it came out of the blue and it was wild. And Ronaldo Herrera, who's the husband of Carolina Herrera, who was on the staff, and

• 43:47Speaker 03

  he came, he's a staunch Catholic and he came into the office, stormed into the office, said, "Greg, you've gone too far this time." I said, "What do you mean?" He said, "Mother Teresa is, I'm canceling my subscription." I said, "You can't cancel your subscription, you get it for free." And so, so, but at, um, at, at Spy Magazine, once we did a story on the, on the 10 most litigious New Yorkers and Gore Vidal was on that list and we were listed in the phone book and he called me up and he said, uh, "I really object to this." I'd never met him before. "I really object to this and if you don't take my name, if you don't correct that, I'll sue you."

• 44:28Speaker 03

  And I said, I said, "Wait, wait, if we don't take, if we don't correct that you're one of the most litigious New Yorkers, you're gonna sue us." He said, "Yes." And I said, "Don't you get the irony in his whole thing that he just hung up?"

• 44:42Will Arnett?

  That's great. That's so good.

• 44:49Sean Hayes?

  We'll be right back.

• 44:53Sean Hayes?

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• 45:57Sean Hayes?

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• 46:40Sean Hayes?

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• 47:03Sean Hayes?

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• 47:48Sean Hayes?

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• 47:59Sean Hayes?

  And back to the show.

• 48:03Will Arnett?

  Your new book, Graydon, is "When the Going Was Good", which is out now. And talk a little bit about that. First of all, what a great title.

• 48:14Sean Hayes?

  You're clearly not talking about yourself, because things continue to have a nice arc forward.

• 48:20Will Arnett?

  You're talking about a cultural shift, yeah? Is that sort of... Talk a little bit about the book.

• 48:25Speaker 03

  No, I think that the... You know, if you look back in the 80s, the 90s, and the aughts, I mean, the 80s and 90s in particular, it was a great time in America. It was very aspirational. The middle class was doing well. We still had two World Trade Center towers. You could get on an airplane without stripping down. There was no cell phones or social media. And it was a... It was just a much more natural, organic time. And when my wife and I happen to love watching Frasier before we go to bed, because they're like perfectly written plays. And there's no, nobody has a cellphone. And there's just something, you know, I mean, the same thing with Will and Grace,

• 49:09Speaker 03

  or Friends, or, I'm trying to think what else, Seinfeld, say. And it was just a great time. And so the eighties, nineties and aughts, with the exception of, you know, obviously nine eleven and everything that came after that, were a great time for television. A great time for movies. And I think television has overtaken movies now to, in terms of driving the culture. Magazines do not drive the culture like they used to. It's obviously the, you know, things like Instagram and television in a big way.

• 49:40Sean Hayes?

  So do you think we'll ever get back to what you're describing?

• 49:43Speaker 03

  No.

• 49:45Sean Hayes?

  Ever, or a version of it?

• 49:46Speaker 03

  A version of it, perhaps. I think young people will come to love magazines the way they love vinyl.

• 49:53Sean Hayes?

  Yeah, I was gonna say.

• 49:54Speaker 03

  But they'll be specialty magazines. They won't have million circulation and they will be largely visual. Like, you know, you go to like Casa magazines on Eighth Avenue over here.

• 50:04Will Arnett?

  Yeah.

• 50:04Speaker 03

  And there's a ton of these big, expensive, twenty dollar, perfect bound, thick, thick paper magazines. And they, they get scooped up by young people, not by people over thirty.

• 50:16Will Arnett?

  There's one of the, there's like one of those great, there are about four, every corner from, from West Broadway to Sixth Avenue, there are three or four bodegas on every corner. There's that one at the corner of Sullivan and Prince that still has a really robust magazine section. And you know that, you know the one I'm talking about?

• 50:31Speaker 03

  I know exactly where you're talking about.

• 50:33Will Arnett?

  I've been listening, I've been living half a block from it for the last, uh, sort of six months, and it's been phenomenal. And I've gone in there, I've found myself going in there from time to time and perusing magazines again. And I feel like I'm stepping back in time.

• 50:47Sean Hayes?

  Yeah, I think it'll, it'll come back, I think.

• 50:49Will Arnett?

  What do you, what do you, what do you think is the, you know, we talk often about, and we've referenced it here today, the effect of social media has had on our culture, which to me, on, on...

• 51:03Will Arnett?

  In large part, I think, has been quite a negative effect. What do you think the future is for things like social media in going forward? Do you think there will be a whiplash or a backlash, rather?

• 51:17Sean Hayes?

  I was gonna say, I think, I'm hoping that because-

• 51:21Will Arnett?

  I wasn't asking you.

• 51:22Sean Hayes?

  No, no, but I want to say- No, it's funny because you brought up social media because I think we've so overshared our lives in such a massive way and billions of people, now we know everything about everybody always, that I think, if I'm guessing correctly, we will go the opposite way in five, 10, 20 years, whatever it is, I don't know, where people will be like, wait, we've all overshared, I'm gonna get off it, I think it's cooler to hang out without it. I think it's a long way away, but I think that's what's gonna happen.

• 51:52Will Arnett?

  Great, what do you think?

• 51:53Speaker 03

  100%, I think, yeah, I totally agree with Sean that it is, again, it's a correction. And so the correction, now you share everything, pictures of your children, picture of your children's birthday, them having cake on their nose and all the rest of it. I have five kids, none of them have a social media presence and no tattoos either. So that's a major accomplishment. But I don't have any social media presence and I think, and I know this sounds strange for somebody who's just written a memoir, but I'm a very private person. And I think a private life will have greater currency in maybe three to five years than it does now and it'll be standard much cooler than having a social, for young people than having a social media presence.

• 52:35Will Arnett?

  Greater currency and it gives you more cachet, if you will.

• 52:39Speaker 03

  Much more cachet, there's a mystery.

• 52:40Jason Bateman?

  Well, it's so great and kind of on this sort of this cultural, you know, transition period we find ourselves in, hopefully, and you being the head of a major, you know, media effort.

• 52:58Jason Bateman?

  Talk to us about your process with you and your team when you decide what stories it is you're going to go forward with there on airmail. Is there any- Agenda is such a pejorative, but do you consider the effect and the move that you guys can make for people as you try to encourage them towards a better, healthier, you know, cultural position? Or is it just stories of interest to you guys personally?

• 53:27Speaker 03

  I mean, I put the next issue together on a Sunday morning, and it's my favorite process of the week. But by and large, we look for stories that have not appeared in the American papers. It's sort of intended as the weekend edition of a nonexistent international newspaper, like the old International Herald Tribune.

• 53:51Jason Bateman?

  Wow.

• 53:52Speaker 03

  And the fact is, there's so much to celebrate about life. It's not all about Donald Trump that we have, you know, it's hard to avoid Donald Trump. I mean, it's certainly worth the effort to avoid him, but it's almost impossible. And so he winds up in there. But it was designed as a, we started it during the first Trump administration, and I was living in France, and it was designed as a, sort of not the same, like every single newsletter you get in America is, you know, it's all basic Boston to Washington, sell a corridor news. And we have very little of that. There's enough of that to go around. So ours is very international. Stories have to be just interesting and things that reflect changes in the culture, hopefully for the better, not always.

• 54:37Speaker 03

  And just sort of spirited writing, you know, that can be funny, but informative, and, you know, some new, fresh voices. And it's just something that you can wake up Saturday morning and read it without completely hanging your head in despair over the news. I took the New York Times alerts off my phone.

• 54:58Jason Bateman?

  Yeah.

• 54:59Speaker 03

  Because every 45 seconds, it's like the end of the world.

• 55:01Will Arnett?

  I know, same here. And I've been doing my best to try to avoid it.

• 55:05Jason Bateman?

  Totally, same.

• 55:06Will Arnett?

  Do you, you've been, for lack of a better word, a tastemaker for decades. It's just simply true. What cultural trends, are there any that you now, that you miss most? Or, and what do you think, what cultural trends you think are wildly overrated now?

• 55:26Speaker 03

  Well, the social media, as I think Sean points out, that it will have a swing back because the... Not sharing everything will be a value in your, both in your life and your personality and your interactions with others. I think kindness would make it be a wonderful addition back in the world because I think the sort of wanton cruelty you see coming out of Washington is a, it sort of reflects badly in us, even though most of us are not like that. I don't think it's going to get better soon, but I think it will get better. I think so too. He's a very strange man. I've known him for 40 years. He's both loved me and hated me.

• 56:06Speaker 03

  And he reads young, you know, he reads like a young 78, whereas Biden read like an old 81.

• 56:13Will Arnett?

  I know. You gotta, you gotta give him that credit. It's hard not to.

• 56:18Speaker 03

  I know.

• 56:19Jason Bateman?

  Graydon, at the great risk of offending you, okay?

• 56:23Will Arnett?

  Oh, go ahead. Oh, boy. Oh, no, this is his favorite.

• 56:27Jason Bateman?

  Can you please walk me through the genesis of your incredible and impressive hair?

• 56:35Speaker 03

  Oh, my God. Well, take a good look at it because it's disappearing as we speak.

• 56:39Jason Bateman?

  No, no. What it is, is it's, it's, it's, it's, it's one of my favorite things about you, always has been. To the extent you're comfortable, can you please walk us through how it, how it started and what the process is to make, is there, is there a pic involved? Yeah, because put a baton in your hand, you can conduct the New York Phil. I just fucking love it so much.

• 57:02Speaker 03

  No, I had this hair, and it's the same hair I have on the cover, cover of my book when I was 30. And it's sort of, you know, in the old days, when I didn't have much money, you'd get it all cut off and you'd wait three months and it would grow back. And now I get a cut every month or so. And it's just, but it is, it's gone gray. And if I'm out in Los Angeles and I go and there's a lot of people my age in the room, I'm the only man with gray hair, which I find really amazing. How is that possible?

• 57:31Will Arnett?

  It's incredible. It has something to do with the water out here, I think.

• 57:33Jason Bateman?

  But the styling of it is just, I just love it because it's just a perfect juxtaposition between this incredible place of...

• 57:42Jason Bateman?

  Oh, influence and success and sophistication that you hold and it's sort of offset. I mean, it's like Einstein, you know, like Einstein was like the greatest brain ever, yet he counterbalanced it with his.

• 57:58Speaker 03

  Well, Pete Davidson once said, Pete Davidson told a friend of my daughter, he said, "Your dad, he looks like, with that hair, he looks like he should be on money."

• 58:11Will Arnett?

  Well, it's sort of, you know, there's a confidence to it, which is intoxicating.

• 58:19Speaker 03

  That's code for what a fool who would do that.

• 58:22Will Arnett?

  No, not at all. No, no, no, no, no.

• 58:23Speaker 03

  Anybody who says, "How brave of you to wear that," or something like that.

• 58:27Will Arnett?

  The opposite, the opposite. Well, great, I'll leave you with this, and again, we pointed out all the great things, Spy Magazine, Vanity Fair, Airmail, and now your book, When the Going Was Good. After decades.

• 58:41Jason Bateman?

  And don't forget the Waverly Inn.

• 58:42Speaker 03

  And the Waverly Inn.

• 58:44Will Arnett?

  And the Waverly Inn, which, sorry, the Waverly Inn, which is, I must admit, I haven't been to in a long time, but I love the Waverly Inn.

• 58:50Speaker 03

  And you can make a reservation through my email.

• 58:53Will Arnett?

  Is that true?

• 58:54Speaker 03

  Yeah, do all the seating, do the seating every night, we'll treat you well.

• 58:57Jason Bateman?

  No, really?

• 58:58Speaker 03

  Oh, yeah.

• 58:58Jason Bateman?

  Oh, my God, what a dream.

• 59:00Will Arnett?

  I'm coming back.

• 59:01Speaker 03

  I mean, don't put it on your website or anything like that.

• 59:03Will Arnett?

  No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. Oh, believe me, I'm gonna guard it with my life.

• 59:07Jason Bateman?

  I will tell you, and this is probably won't be much of a compliment, because I'm probably one in a long line, but I just finished doing this show, and it's about an incredibly beautiful, hip restaurant on the Lower East Side. Called Black Rabbit. Shots of inside of Waverly Inn was up on our production designers' board. Oh, sweet. And we basically modeled the aesthetic in there, it's just so incredibly beautiful.

• 59:37Speaker 03

  And built down in Atlanta.

• 59:40Jason Bateman?

  No, actually, we shot in New York. We built an entire restaurant at Steiner.

• 59:44Speaker 03

  Oh my god.

• 59:45Will Arnett?

  You know what would be great to do? Let's do something like, now that we have Grady here, like, let's do a thing where, like, we get Thoreau banned from the Waverly Inn forever. Like, you know what I mean? And don't let him know.

• 59:54Jason Bateman?

  Yeah, don't see Justin Thoreau anymore.

• 59:55Will Arnett?

  Like, you're always busy, you're full, so that you can never get a fucking ticket.

• 59:59Speaker 03

  No, Con Ed has shut us down, yes.

• 1:00:01Will Arnett?

  Yeah.

• 1:00:01Speaker 03

  But when we opened, we wouldn't take reservations from the 203 area code. Because that's Greenwich, and that's where all the hedge fund guys were.

• 1:00:09Will Arnett?

  Oh my god, that's so good!

• 1:00:11Speaker 03

  So they'd make a reservation, we'd say, "I'm sorry, shut," you know, "Con Ed." Like, they're cut off.

• 1:00:16Will Arnett?

  Listen, Grady, and you're speaking our language. I have said many times, nobody is more responsible for the destruction of this planet than, you know, sort of, private equity guys and bankers. They have absolutely ruined it. Except for Dandies, who is one of the all-time great guys.

• 1:00:33Jason Bateman?

  One of the all-time great guys. Double D.

• 1:00:35Will Arnett?

  But I want to ask you this. As a sort of parting shot, if you will, what would you like your... God, this is a tough one to answer, I'm sure. What would you like your legacy to be? If you've even thought in those terms. As a Canadian, you probably never have.

• 1:00:49Speaker 03

  No, I mean, first of all, I'm really proud of being a Canadian, and especially now, and I'm sure you feel the same way. I like Mark Carney. And I think that, you know, you just want to leave... If you got to a beach and it's filled with candy wrappers, you know, my inclination would be, and I'm sure, you know, for you guys as well, that to sort of clean up the candy wrappers and try to leave something in better shape than when you got there. And in a large part, we do that through our children. And it's my kids, I'm very proud of them, and they're truly good humans, and funny, and well-read, and that's... Because that's your legacy, because they're going to go on after you're turned to dust and all the rest of it.

• 1:01:33Speaker 03

  And, um, and you know, leave a modest, you know, body of decent work behind you.

• 1:01:40Jason Bateman?

  What a great answer.

• 1:01:41Will Arnett?

  Well, listen, Graydon, thank you so much for joining us today.

• 1:01:46Speaker 03

  Such an honor.

• 1:01:47Will Arnett?

  The honor is ours. Yeah, we've been, we've been such fans and we've spoken about you before. The three of us have, and we've been just a fan of everything you've done from Spy to Vanity Fair to Airmail. And now your book, When the Going Was Good, is out now for all our listener.

• 1:02:06Speaker 03

  All our listener?

• 1:02:09Will Arnett?

  All our listener.

• 1:02:09Speaker 03

  Tell him to get there quickly then, or her, or them, or them.

• 1:02:14Will Arnett?

  I encourage him, or her, or them, or whoever it is to go out and get it today. Graydon, we wish you nothing but continued success and thank you so much.

• 1:02:23Speaker 03

  Thank you so much, guys. Yeah, nice to meet you, Graydon, yeah. Okay, pleasure.

• 1:02:27Jason Bateman?

  Thank you.

• 1:02:27Will Arnett?

  Cheers, bye.

• 1:02:28Jason Bateman?

  Bye, buddy. Nice guest, Willie. Now, you know, again, every time we have somebody that is not one of these big fancy A-list celebs, whom we love, it is, I just love talking to other folks.

• 1:02:46Will Arnett?

  Well, I mean, think about it, and it is true, not only, and Jay, you said it, I said it, you said a version of it, that he was a tastemaker, if only because he was, because he was on the front lines of reporting what was happening culturally, whether it was a film, or television, or art, or media, et cetera.

• 1:03:05Jason Bateman?

  Vanity Fair.

• 1:03:06Will Arnett?

  Because of that position, he ends up, in a lot of ways, steering culture because of what he decides to report on.

• 1:03:14Jason Bateman?

  Yeah, that's what I'm saying about him, and like, and Lorne Michaels is still doing it. Like, who's hosting Saturday Night Live and who's the musical guest? We'll tell you who's the top of the zeitgeist.

• 1:03:21Will Arnett?

  He and Lorne are still doing it, and again, I should be pointing out that these are Canadians, and I think that there's something to that, that Canadians, well, Canadians, we, we just inhabit a, just a slightly higher place in the space.

• 1:03:36Jason Bateman?

  You're breaking up a little bit. Are you going over a canyon? I know we're losing you.

• 1:03:40Will Arnett?

  No, I've got full bars.

• 1:03:42Jason Bateman?

  Shut off this mic. You turn off this mic.

• 1:03:46Will Arnett?

  Well, you know what, there is this, and I've spoken about this before, as Canadians, we grew up, we are so culturally close and geographically close, so we are kind of observers of American culture in that way, and very close, and so we do-

• 1:03:59Sean Hayes?

  Wait, what do you think that is now, though, if it's not Vanity Fair? Maybe it still is Vanity Fair, that is the quote tastemaker. Like, where do people look? Because it seems so fragmented now.

• 1:04:08Will Arnett?

  Yeah. Well, you know what, it's much more, I think that it's been divided into these different pieces. Vanity Fair was much more of a catch-all back at the time-

• 1:04:16Sean Hayes?

  Right, right.

• 1:04:17Will Arnett?

  -that inhabited a big space. I don't know if there's anything that inhabits-

• 1:04:20Sean Hayes?

  Unless it's air mail, which I didn't know-

• 1:04:22Will Arnett?

  I think a lot of podcasts do.

• 1:04:24Sean Hayes?

  Oh, yeah, that's true.

• 1:04:25Will Arnett?

  Maybe Smartless, maybe the Smartless podcast. You know, I haven't heard that, but I did hear about it, and I hear it's not great. It's not great. So a little overrated is what I'm hearing. Very overrated, and these guys, they swear too much, they interrupt people, but you know what, they do have really down pat, bye! Reference our own bye as the bye. Bye, all night, bye! You mean how they say goodbye at the end of each episode? Meta, yes, they go bye! Meta much, meta much.

• 1:05:04Will Arnett?

  Smartless is 100% organic and artisanally handcrafted by Bennett Barbaco, Michael Grant Terry, and Rob Armjarf.

• 1:05:21Speaker 04

  From the original Free Second Opinion studio, here's Hugh Joitz.

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• 1:05:51Speaker 06

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